by Dawn Farnham
She whipped round, her dress sweeping her ankles. ‘I am not married and I have a child. The father is Zhen.’
Alexander burst out laughing. What on earth was she saying?
Charlotte had had enough. It had to come out and she had to do it all, headlong, like water rushing and tumbling over rocks.
‘I hardly think to shock you, with the tales I have heard of your doings in Scotland. I have for some years had a relationship with Zhen. It is …’ She hesitated, the words sticking in her throat and swallowed hard, turning her face to the window.
‘It is over now, but we have a daughter.’
Alex stopped laughing.
She waited until she felt her emotions under control, then turned to face him. ‘You would have found out within the hour. I’m very notorious.’
She went forward quickly and stood in front of him.
‘This does not mean your behaviour can be excused. You are a boy and I am a full-grown woman. I make my own life. I have said all I wish to say to you on this matter.’
Alex rose. She raised her chin defiantly.
‘Doubtless you are tired. This is a lot to take in. I will see you at dinner. We dine with Robert. And Amber.’ She gathered her skirts and swept from the room.
16
Alex bathed and rested half an hour in his old bedroom. Everything his mother had told him settled in his brain. What hypocrites they were. He had never thought to think this of his mother, but what other conclusion could he draw.
All this posturing about his wild ways, all these demands to marry and lead a righteous life. All this was complete hypocrisy. His mother was, or had been, the lover of a Chinese man, lived with him out of wedlock and kept it all a secret from her children, her aunt and all her acquaintance in Scotland. What did the town think of her? What did his uncle Robert think of her?
He wanted to empty his head of these thoughts and left the house. He turned his steps to the house of his old friend, Ah Soon, on High Street but to his astonishment, the huge old Chinese compound which occupied the entire corner from High Street to the river, was no longer his home.
He crossed the river into Chinatown. Nothing very much had changed here. It was bigger of course, but still filled with the endless busy world of hawkers and hustlers and shopkeepers, tradesmen of every hue, the bullocks plopping hot steaming turds on the street. He addressed a few shopkeepers in Hokkien and their mouths dropped open with astonishment. He had hardly forgotten it at all, the sounds popping in his mouth. He loved to speak Chinese. No-one knew of the old Chinese compound, almost everyone he spoke to had arrived in the last three years. Finally he found an old man, an apothecary, who knew of the old Sang property and the owner Qian. The son was always in the den, he said, every afternoon after four o’clock. Alex frowned. The den? The opium den. The man told him the address.
Alex consulted his pocket watch. It was only three and he wandered slowly, savouring all the noise and bustle around him, occasionally alarmed at the rubbish and filth in the streets and the sight of an emaciated coolie propped up in a ditch. Things had gotten worse over here since he’d left. More men, the crowding and poverty appalling. A procession with noisy drums and a lion dance was progressing round the streets. He knew they were chasing away evil of some sort. He turned his feet to Hong Kong Street and the ah ku houses of his uncle Qian. He stood outside number 23, Heaven’s Gate, the house of Min, the brothel keeper and friend of his uncle Zhen.
Uncle Zhen, he thought and grimaced. Turned out Uncle Zhen had been the lover of his mother. He had had no time to take this in but now he found it annoyed him. When had this happened? How had it happened? What could have drawn a European woman to a Chinese man? Of course they knew each other, the way he knew Ah Soon and his father. And Zhen was a close friend of them all and spoke good English.
He put it away. Alex was not one to dwell for long on the mysteries of others. He looked at the upper windows and the faces of the girls who stared down at him. He grinned and they waved. He felt the itch. He’d not had a Chinese woman in three years.
He went inside. It was hot and sticky, airless.
‘Min,’ he asked, ‘the kwai po, is she here?’
She ignored him though he spoke in Hokkien. ‘You want girl?’ she said in Cantonese.
He didn’t understand a word.
The toothless crone rose and bowed. She ushered him into the next room. Here sat five or six young females, none older than fifteen.
They were all dressed in a shift of cotton and looked at him silently, their eyes blank, their lips red, their skin white with powder. He felt repulsed, not attracted. This was not how he remembered the brothel. He had been brought here by uncle Zhen, and taken in hand by a girl, older than him, sweet and tender, and taught the ways by Min, her hand guiding him, her words in his ear as she told him what women liked.
The old crone stared at him, sucking her teeth. ‘You want girl?’ she said in Hokkien.
He left the building and walked with more purpose and found himself, at last, at the door of the opium den. A man staggered past him. He stood and gazed at the entrance and felt a sudden thrill. The girls in the brothel, the vice and the dirt and the heat were overwhelming. The feelings of shock which had assailed him at the brothel evaporated. This was the East.
The awful cold morality of the Scottish kirk, the dull order of each passing day, had no play here. The east was vivid, the people a cacophonous mix of every race, the vibrations of the day filled with a riot of sin and violence and colour. He sniffed the air and the sweet odour of opium assailed him. It drew men in, into the dark, hot rooms and the oblivion and dreams which lay inside.
He had taken opium once, when he and a friend had spent the term interval in London, whoring drunkenly from morning to night until their money ran out and they were forced to return to Aberdeen. It had made him sleep and he had forgotten all about it.
A girl appeared at the door, her face deformed and carbuncular, the nose half eaten away. Alex stepped back. He recognised the face of the poxed child as they were known, those born with the French disease. Alex had contracted the pox but ointments and a series of doses of calomel had been effective in ridding him of the chancre and he no longer gave it a thought, except when he saw these faces. The child was no older than fifteen he guessed. She beckoned him in and lifted the curtain.
‘I seek a man, a friend,’ he said in Hokkien. She looked alarmed and dropped the curtain. A few moments later an older man appeared. He was thin, the ribs lying like shadows on his sallow skin.
‘Sir,’ he said deferentially.
‘I seek Ah Soon, of the old Sang House, the son of Qian.’
The old man’s face showed no expression. Perhaps he wanted money, thought Alexander, but currently he did not possess Straits dollars. He hardened his tone. A touch of colonial arrogance might induce the fellow to speak.
‘Speak up, man. Ah Soon, is he here?’
‘Who seeks me?’
Alex turned and looked into the eyes of his old friend. He was shocked. At seventeen, Ah Soon looked like an old man. His eyes were bloodshot and his skin was grey.
‘Ah Soon, it’s me, Alex.’
Ah Soon stared at the man in front of him. Alex went forward and clasped his arm.
‘Ah Rex?’Ah Soon said. ‘You’re here? My God.’
Alex clasped Ah Soon in his arms and felt his bones, as fragile as a bird. When they released each other Ah Soon took Alex’s hand.
‘Come, we shall have a pipe or two and you will tell me about your life.’
Alex glanced at the doorway of the den. He realised that Ah Soon would not be deflected. This was his habit, his need, his desire. It had taken over his life.
‘We shall talk. You will smoke, but I will not. It does not agree with me.’
Ah Soon smiled. His teeth were yellow and his breath exhaled a fetid odour. ‘Come then, old friend. We have much to discuss.’
Ah Soon put his arm through his friend’s, the old man d
rew the curtain aside and the darkness of the den swallowed them.
* * *
The house in North Bridge Road rested somnolent in the silence of the hot afternoon when nothing stirred, when animals and humans alike rested from the oppressive humidity of the day. The only sound was the shrill trill trill of the cicadas in the shrubberies.
Charlotte sat in the chair under the trees. Lily was in her hammock, the little Chinese maid seated by her side, pushing it, her fan moving to and fro over the child. She reread the letter on her lap. It was from Edmund, arrived on the steamer from Hong Kong this morning. She was in his thoughts, he said, and when this war was done he longed to see her again. More, he had written, he loved her, had always loved her and wished to marry her. She had not absolutely told him she was not free when he had left Singapore. And so he permitted himself to hope. When she felt able to do so he begged her to write to him. She touched her neck where a small rill of sweat ran into her collar. The sudden memory of Zhen, of that last afternoon they had spent here flooded her and she dropped her head into her hands.
She felt drained of energy. She slept badly, dreams into nightmares, and now the heat sucked the life out of her. She needed sleep. She rose and pointed to the house.
‘Amah, I go.’
The young Chinese maid had been engaged from Miss Cooke’s school. She had been a prostitute of fourteen who had got sick and been abandoned and found her way to the comfort and protection of the girl’s school. After a year she had recovered and now had been engaged by Charlotte for she spoke Hokkien and Charlotte knew Zhen wanted his daughter to speak his language. They had both agreed on her hire.
The maid continued to rock Lily as Charlotte walked away. When she was alone with the child, she rose and took the basket, which had been placed by the fence. She came back and dropped the contents into the hammock with Lily.
* * *
Alex wiped his brow. The heat was intense; it boiled your blood. He went to the bathroom and eased his burning skin with water then to his room where the curtains were drawn against the assault of the sun.
His head was filled with the fumes of the opium pipes and pounded incessantly. He lay down in the dark.
Ah Soon, his childhood friend, had smoked. The first pipe had revealed Ah Soon’s loneliness after Alex had left. Their friendship had been severed and he had wished, also, to go abroad, to go to Scotland or England to school but his father would have none of it. Alex felt a great sorrow for his friend. He had departed, his eyes fixed on adventure, and never given Ah Soon a thought.
Ah Soon’s relations with his father had become terribly strained. Qian had taken a young man and Ah Soon had discovered the truth of his father’s homosexuality. It had been a shock to discover the strange facts about the household. His mother had a lover, the carpenter who lived within the compound. He found out that his two younger sisters were by this man, a servant. Ah Soon could not even be sure of his own paternity or of his younger brother who had died of whooping cough at four.
And Qian had become distant, indulging the young man, neglecting his family. And then his mother had died and he had mourned her beyond anything for she had been an extraordinary woman who held the entire family together. She had loved him, been so proud of this son who spoke English and was a scholar. Then everything had erupted like a volcano. Within six months, the business had failed, the compound sold; he’d been summarily removed from the Institution, his education curtailed, and thrown into the brothels like some filthy pimp.
By the second pipe, Ah Soon wept on Alex’s shoulder and Alex held him and read between the mumbling lines. He had taken to opium, perhaps to forget all this, perhaps to spite his father and now the drug owned him body and soul.
By the third pipe, Alex’s head was reeling and Ah Soon had sunk into the torpor of his dreams.
Alex longed to help Ah Soon but he had no idea how to do it. He dozed and the vivid dreams of the opium fumes filled his head, the brothel and the girls’ faces, drawing him in. He was wrenched from slumber by a hue and cry from below. He rose, his hand to his temple.
He opened the door and went onto the landing. A group of servants was talking loudly in the middle of the hall, the women wailing. Alex was about to open his mouth and tell them all to shut up when his mother came out to the landing.
‘What is this noise?’ she cried as Dr. Little came rushing through the door.
Malik ran into the hall, a child in his arms, and Charlotte let out a scream. Alex watched as his mother raced down the stairs.
Dr. Little spoke quickly to Charlotte, and Malik carried the child into the living room.
‘What is it?’ Alex cried and Charlotte looked up at him, her face so distraught and distorted, that he gasped with alarm.
‘Mother,’ he shouted and raced down the stairs.
She collapsed against him and he held her tightly and led her to a chair.
‘What is it, Mother, for heaven’s sake?’
‘Lily,’ she said. ‘She’s been bitten by a snake.’
She began to sob, her chest heaving.
Alexander had no idea what on earth was going on. He rose and went to the door. Dr. Little was leaning over the child examining her.
‘What is it? Who is this child?’
The younger servants were screaming, the Chinese nursemaid tearing at her hair, the Malay maids beating their cheeks.
‘Be quiet,’ Alex yelled and a shocked silence momentarily fell. ‘What is going on? Who is this girl?’
His mother rushed into the room and with a face as pale as a ghost and stood, waiting. Dr. Little rose and shook his head. Charlotte screamed and screamed.
Alex was utterly rooted to the spot.
‘Lily,’ Charlotte wailed.
Alex suddenly remembered. The daughter, the child his mother had with Zhen, was lying dead. He went to his mother and took her in his arms.
17
‘Were you alone with the child?’
The Chinese maid looked at the big Englishman and listened to the interpreter. She nodded.
‘Did you see the snake?’
The maid shook her head. ‘Only when it bit the child,’ she said.
The coroner returned a verdict of accidental death. Lily had been asleep in the heat of the afternoon on the low hammock outside under the trees where it was cooler. The mistress had gone into the house. The Chinese maid had just stopped rocking her and fallen into a slumber for the day was so hot and airless.
She was awakened by the child’s cries and found a viper slithering away, its long tail disappearing into the bushes. The snake had slithered over Lily and, it was presumed, she had moved under it and, surprised, it had bitten her on the face, delivering a fatal dose of venom. From the maid’s description, the snake was identified as a Malayan pit viper, an ill-tempered, poisonous serpent known for the sudden rapidity of its strike.
Evangeline took Charlotte’s arm and led her away from the gravesite. For three days they had come. The flowers for Lily were curled and rotted and Evangeline took them away. The tombstone had been put up and Charlotte stared down at the grave of her and Zhen’s child. It was a tombstone not only on Lily, sweet little Lily, but on them. She realised that Robert, who had ordered the stone, had named her Lily Manouk, though on her birth certificate Zhen was marked as the father. They were not married and so Lily was not considered a Tan, the name he had adopted when he married his first wife. She felt it terribly. Why had they not given this child his name? Lily was no more a Manouk than Alex, but two of his children carried another man’s name. She felt the terrible injustice of it and a sudden deep understanding of his feelings.
He had not come, not to the funeral, not to see her, not to grieve with her, not now, even when their daughter lay dead in the ground. She had received no letter from him. It felt as if he had simply cut away all that part of his life.
She turned and went to George Coleman’s grave and touched it. Evangeline waited then wandered away to the grave of a fr
iend. A figure approached and Charlotte looked over, hoping it was Zhen, but she recognised the slight and lonely figure not of him, but his daughter, Lian. Her maid waited by the entrance to the cemetery, fearful of entering this ang moh spirit ground.
Lian knelt at the little grave and placed a lotus bud against the stone. Charlotte watched from a distance then walked slowly over to the girl.
‘Thank you,’ she said, and Lian turned. She put out her arms and Lian fell into them.
‘I loved her too,’ Lian said. ‘I wanted someone from her other family to be here.’
Lian wiped the tears from her cheeks and Charlotte put her arm around the girl’s waist.
‘Why, why does he not come?’ she said and Lian felt so sorry for this woman who had tried to do something incredible for her. She had heard from Ah Fu about the visit to Hong Kong Street. It was the talk of all the Chinese town. Zhen, the new leader of the kongsi, had broken with the English concubine in a great fight at the brothel. She had interfered and shamed him and, white woman or not, she had been summarily dismissed. His prestige had soared.
‘Miss Charlotte, come.’ Lian led Charlotte to the stone bench under the banyan tree.
‘I have to explain some difficult things to you and some of this is secret. You must not speak of it to your brother or anyone for if you do they will know it and they will know it is me and that is dangerous. You understand.’
Charlotte nodded.
‘My father has become what they call the lord of the kongsi. You understand. It’s like a sort of prince. Prince of the Chinese. Does that make sense? Thousands of men swear an oath of loyalty to him.’
‘Lord? This is what he had to do? This is why he couldn’t be with me? Because I’m not Chinese. And because of this he cannot mourn his daughter?’
Lian shook her head. ‘A man like that, who becomes such a prince, he cannot have women he does not control, who defy him publicly. It’s impossible. You see. Ah Fu says that in China you would have been killed.’
Charlotte’s eyes opened wide with shock.