SQ 04 - The English Concubine

by Dawn Farnham

  Min fanned herself and watched Charlotte from the verandah of the Heaven’s Gate brothel. She knew exactly who this woman was. Min had been crazy for Zhen when he first came to her brothel and he had saved her life after she had been half beaten to death by an English sailor. He had secured her release from the kwai po through a combination of bullying, influence and money, and she had gone to Malacca as a tap tang, a free agent. She had served Qian in the brothels there and made a great deal of money. Enough to give up the life but when Qian had fallen on hard times, Zhen had sent for her and she had remembered her obligations to him and returned to take charge of Qian’s four ah ku houses.

  Her obligation to him and Qian was therefore deep and not just because she had burned the yellow paper and sworn an oath to the kongsi. They had saved her from the ultimate degradations of such a life.

  As a dirt-poor girl of fifteen, she had been sold by her parents to the dealer and shipped to Canton along with thousands of others. This sale condemned her to a life of sexual slavery from which there was little chance of escaping, except by death. It was in Canton that she, along with hundreds of other virginal young girls had been turned over to the highest bidder and been deflowered not too gently by a fat old Mandarin. She had been terrified and cowed, as they all were, surrounded by heavy-set thugs.

  Having made the first part of his money from her, the virgin price, the pimp then sold her on for shipment to Singapore where she had been forced to have an abortion, a job so botched, there had been no more pregnancies. A small mercy she supposed, growing hard in this relentless life. For two years she had served in a loh kui chai, a high-class brothel in Smith Street reserved for the well-off Chinese tradesmen and merchants who could pass the night with their favourite. Then she had been moved to the brothel for the foreigners, ones with money, the government officials and officers of the regiment for she was still pretty and only seventeen. These establishment were, at least clean, but she had got the pox, of course, all the women had it and she had successfully concealed it. The pox could mean you were sold on down instantly into the lowest class brothels, or even simply murdered or abandoned.

  After a time she had been put down to the second-class brothel. Here she had met Zhen and ultimately been saved from what followed. Usually, after six years, women like her were moved along, to the very low-class coolie brothels, the pau chai, firecracker brothels, so named for the swiftness with which the prostitute dealt with her clientele of drunkards, poor coolies, sailors and soldiers. Within a couple of years they were sold out of Singapore and moved to Malaya or Borneo, or the Indies and as they aged, to lower and lower places, the huts on the plantations of gambier and pepper and the tin mines until they were worn out. The women were never free, always indebted to their owners, until they died of disease or despair.

  There was always a steady stream of new young women arriving to replenish those moved on. As a kwai po with a decent heart, Min tried to mitigate to a certain extent the misery of the girls in her charge, but there was only so much she could do. She trained them in the life and if they didn’t work, they were moved on or beaten. They were like dust, carried on the wind and their graves could be anywhere.

  Min could see the Mah Nuk woman was distressed. Doubtless her blue eyes never saw such sights in the quiet spaces of the European town. What she was doing here was a mystery, but she was Zhen’s woman so Min rose and went down the stairs. She whispered to one of the samseng slouching in the verandah and he raced away.

  ‘Can I help you?’ she said in Malay and Charlotte turned.

  The woman she saw was Chinese, slight and dressed in a colourful baju and sarong. Her face had been hurt at some stage and the scars were obvious.

  ‘I seek Sang Qian. I was told he lives here.’

  ‘There,’ said Min and pointed to the small house squeezed between two of the brothels opposite Heaven’s Gate. Charlotte stared in dismay at this poor-looking establishment. She knew Qian had fall on hard times and taken Ah Soon out of school, but she had not seen him for at least two years.

  ‘Thank you,’ Charlotte said to Min and turned towards the house.

  ‘He’s not at home,’ Min said and Charlotte paused. ‘At this hour he is upstairs with the accounts.’ She pointed to the Heaven’s Gate brothel.

  Charlotte stared and tried to think what to do. She felt afraid. Then she saw one of Robert’s peons talking to some men on the corner and this sight, irrationally, reassured her.

  ‘Can you ask him to come out?’ she said.

  ‘You’re his woman,’ Min said. ‘Master Zhen’s. They call you the English Concubine.’

  Charlotte felt the blood of her face rush to her cheeks. My god! She was known to even the lowliest whore. Mortified, she turned away, ready to fly back to the carriage. The two women had now become the centre of attention. Several of the prostitutes hung over the verandah and men emerged from the small shops and taverns.

  Min knew Zhen wouldn’t like this. She took Charlotte’s arm and ushered her into the hall of the brothel.

  ‘Wait here, I’ll get him.’

  Charlotte now knew not whether to stay or to flee, but at least no eyes were peering at her. She calmed herself and had only an instant to wait as Qian came down the stairs.

  ‘Miss Xia Lou, what?’

  ‘Qian, oh, I am so happy to see you.’

  Charlotte looked around her. Faces had appeared at the doorway. Min came down the stairs and opened the door to a room, ushering them inside. Qian moved slowly and she saw that he was drugged. She stared at him and at the red cotton cover on the mean little bed and swallowed.

  ‘I have to speak to you about Zhen.’ She took her fan and moved it briskly. The room was insufferably hot.

  ‘Yes,’ Qian said warily.

  Suddenly Charlotte knew she could not ask this man about his friend. Zhen would never forgive her and he might well lie. And his mind was flying somewhere else. But she persevered for Lian’s sake.

  ‘Actually about Lian, his daughter.’

  Qian nodded, waiting, blinking slowly.

  ‘ She has spoken to me about the marriage you are planning with Ah Soon. She begs not to be married to him because he is … he is …’ Charlotte found her courage. ‘He’s an opium addict.’

  No sooner had the words fallen from her lips than she realised the stupidity of talking about an opium addict to an opium addict. She was floundering in a world of vice and filth and attitudes she could not begin to fathom.

  ‘What you say?’ He lost control of his English and began to rant at her in Hokkien.

  Charlotte backed away from. She had made the most dreadful mistake. What had she been thinking? This Qian was not the man she had known. These men did not care about some young girl and her wishes. The evidence lay all around her. They were surrounded in these whorehouses by thousands of them whom they prostituted for money.

  She turned to go when suddenly the door flew open and Zhen walked into the room.

  ‘Go,’ he said and Qian scurried away. Zhen shut the door and turned to Charlotte.

  ‘What are you doing here?’

  ‘How …?’

  ‘I know everything in Chinatown.’

  Her eyes opened with surprise. Did he? Was he so powerful? She felt a tremor of fear. Over here she understood nothing.

  ‘What are you thinking being here, wandering around brothels and dens? Everyone knows who you are.’

  ‘So you have spies everywhere, is that it?’

  ‘Kongsi eyes are everywhere if that’s what you mean. The whole town will know I have come here to meet you when I gave an oath not to do so.’

  ‘I see. So I have embarrassed you in ways I can hardly begin to understand. You and your oaths which are so hurtful.’

  He was heartily sorry he had ever agreed to this arrangement but on top of her other transgressions, she had made him look utterly ridiculous, wandering around like this. To be the pawn of a woman was to be the laughing stock and was the end of authority
. But how could he express this to her? Why had she come here?

  He ran his hand over his face in utter frustration.

  ‘I came to speak about Lian, but I realise now that my words will carry no weight, with you or Qian. I find you both disgusting. You might as well put her here in this whorehouse as marry her to Ah Soon.’

  He stood impassively. Charlotte found his face impenetrable. He kept his emotions under tight rein and sometimes she took it for stubbornness or indifference, even though he had told her that in China, for a man to show his feelings was weak, impolite and impolitic.

  ‘How you insult me. I am disgusting. I see. And what of you and your inexcusable behaviour with another man in front of the entire Chinese community?’

  Charlotte felt her temper flare.

  ‘My behaviour was not inexcusable. The man was an old acquaintance. I am not Chinese. I am not to be bound by foot and by mouth. I will speak to whomsoever I wish.’ It came out in a rush, hard and angry.

  Zhen felt his own temper and made an effort to suppress it.

  ‘You made me look like a fool. The fool they all think I am because of you. And you shame me more by visiting his ship.’

  Charlotte’s hand flew to her mouth and she was momentarily lost for words. Then the full import of this statement came upon her.

  ‘My God!’

  ‘You spent hours on the ship of another man, alone, when all the world knows you are my woman. If I lose the respect of my fellows, my power is nothing. Now you come here asking about my daughter, interfering and speaking about things which are not your concern. Again you shame me. I warn you.’

  Charlotte looked him in the face and a feeling of deep resentment crept over her.

  ‘Warn me? Warn me? Of what? That you will have another bride, is that it? You have already selected a suitably grovelling and obedient mare to give you more sons.’

  She spat the words at him. He was utterly amazed. What had she heard?

  ‘I have made no such selection. Who has been talking to you?’

  ‘Never mind. Is it true? Have you been presented with such a girl?’

  Zhen felt nonplussed. He hesitated.

  Charlotte saw it and walked up to him and with the swiftness of all her anger, slapped him across the face, her nails raking his skin.

  ‘So it is true. You liar.’

  She lifted her hand again. She wanted to strike and strike him until her anger and despair drained out of her. But he took her wrists in his hands and in one movement pinned her to the wall, her arms above her head. He stood over her, his eyes angry, blood pouring from the wounds on his cheek. At that moment she felt they were like two rivers which had poured into each other, filled with both fury and lust. Her breathing became short and shallow. She saw that he knew, that he could read it in her. He put his mouth to hers and kissed her hard, crushing his lips to hers. She tasted his blood on her lips and felt a rage of passion. He took her waist in his arm and pulled her tight against him and grabbed her hair, holding her face to his and kissing her until she could hardly breathe. She abandoned herself, her mind black, her blood on fire.

  He pulled his lips from hers, threw his head back and roared, a great shout of anger and frustration, filled with the fever in his blood. Charlotte, afraid, tried to pull way from him, but he held her fast.

  ‘Zhen, stop.’

  He looked at her with a gaze so black she could not be sure he even saw her. He pulled back his hand and threw his fist at the wall by her face. The wall crumpled under the blow sending splinters of wood spinning away. She screamed, a piercing scream of terror and he released her. She scrambled away from him.

  He smeared the blood on his face with the back of his hand. She heaved air into her lungs.

  He sent a stream of Hokkien over her until he felt a calm return.

  ‘You cannot humiliate me,’ he said. ‘Do you hear me, woman?’

  ‘I …’ she began, the blood in her veins still on fire, a sudden fear of his anger filling her and her breath not yet fully returned to calm.

  ‘You are not my wife and even if you were, I would not have to answer to you. I am a Chinese man, and we do not kowtow to our women. If I choose to take another wife, and another, and another, I will.’

  Charlotte gazed at him, fear left her, and the trickle of doubts which had been seeping into her over the last month, rushed into a flood.

  ‘And so, without telling me, you are choosing to do just that. If I know it, the town knows it.’

  Anger was not Zhen’s natural state and the blood fever went off him as quickly as it had come. He realised what he had said.

  ‘But I do not choose,’ he said. ‘We …’

  ‘There is no “we”,’ she interrupted. ‘There is no “us”. We are a figment of our imaginations, a dream. We have no reality. I am Scottish and you are Chinese, we are impossible.’

  Zhen was thunderstruck.

  ‘I make one last appeal to your decency, if you have any left. I am warning you that this situation with Lian is very serious. I no longer care about your rules and strictures about your Chinese family. That is nothing to me now. I talk as a human person. You cannot marry Lian to Ah Soon. You will kill her.’

  Charlotte walked to the door.

  ‘Be warned. Deal properly with this situation whilst you have time.’

  As swift as a panther he cut her off. He took her by the shoulders, his hands gripping her hard.

  ‘No, you may not speak like this. There is no bride. Listen to me.’

  ‘You met no man with a daughter who played music and simpered about you?’ Charlotte’s felt her breath short in her throat again and fought it away.

  ‘I met a man who has a daughter. It is common practice. Xia Lou, you know it.’

  ‘Can you honestly say you have not considered this one?’

  They stood, eyes locked.

  ‘She has not been offered to me in marriage. You mistake.’

  ‘You told Lian that you would take another wife.’

  His eyes narrowed. ‘Lian has no business doing such things. You have no business listening. Why am I plagued by disobedient women on every side?’

  He dropped his hands from her. ‘Will the gods not send me one woman who will do as I wish.’

  Charlotte dropped her eyes. ‘Perhaps you have found her.’

  ‘Stop this. I don’t mean that. You, Lian, Lilin, you are driving me mad. I know this separation is hard but why, Xia Lou, why are you saying these things? Why are you meeting men on ships, which makes a fool of me. Why are you coming here where you know nothing, to speak of things that are not your concern?’

  Charlotte tightened her lips. It hardly mattered what he thought, or whether there was a bride in prospect or not. One day there would be. It was only a matter of time, as she aged, that he would stray. Not immediately, no, but a year from now, perhaps his gaze would fall on a girl, or their own lives together would be just too complicated. Gradually he would come to her less, and then one day he would not come at all and he would have slipped away from her like a wave. A death of a thousand cuts. And all in the gaze and on the lips of the gossiping tongues of Singapore.

  She looked directly into his eyes.

  ‘I don’t trust you anymore,’ she said.

  She knew she had shocked him. He stared at her as if she was an old, old friend he’d come across suddenly in an out of the way place who had been transformed in ways he couldn’t fathom. She felt herself begin to shake with emotion and longed to leave the room but he blocked the door. She did not trust her voice to say another word to him.

  Then, in an instant, he turned, flung open the door and disappeared. Charlotte felt the liquid in her body rise like a tide and the urgent need to vomit.

  14

  The storm that lashed the island had gone on for three days. The streets were awash and river sloshed over the quayside. Houses collapsed in Kampong Glam and a great chunk of Bukit Larangan came crashing down onto Hill Street.

  Cha
rlotte stood at the window and watched the water flooding down, so strong she could see nothing outside. The day was like night.

  It hurt like a knife hurts, slicing into the skin, severing the nerves, sending searing pain throughout her body. She had left on her terms. But she loved him still. She felt emptied of blood, as if the knife cut had drained her dry.

  She took up the letter from Batavia. It was from Matthew, Tigran’s son from his first wife. Nicolaus, Matthew’s brother, who had run the affairs of Manouk & Son for the last ten years had died of malarial fever. Matthew, with the help of the office manager Pieter de Vos and two Eurasian clerks, was handling affairs for the moment. But things were bad. The company had suffered in recent times and the sugar lands of Semarang were under threat from debtors. In addition, the tea plantation at Buitenzorg had been affected by the liberalisation of the new ports of the China trade. The list of problems went on and Charlotte realised that the company might very well be in serious trouble.

  She called for her carriage though the rain was still cascading against the windows. She needed to get out of the house. She had found a terrible resolution and knew if she could lose Zhen then to find an iron resolve with Alexander was almost nothing.

  At Robert’s house, the housekeeper opened the door and Amber, who had seen her aunt’s carriage draw up, rushed to kiss her.

  ‘Send for Robert, Shilah,’ she said, as Shilah, heavily pregnant, came to greet her. ‘We have to speak of important things.’