by Dawn Farnham
Amber came onto the terrace, her face contorted with grief. ‘He hates me too. He hates you and now he hates me.’
Charlotte straightened her back and looked at Amber. ‘This is not about you, child. It goes far back.’
Amber came forward in a swift movement, drew back her hand and slapped Charlotte’s face. ‘You are evil,’ she said. ‘You put us together knowing he would never love me. Knowing he loved his own sister.’
She ran away into the house.
Charlotte watched her. She was a child in love. Sixteen, pregnant and heartbroken. How could she explain all this to Amber? It was her fault. They were all right. Her stubbornness and her fear had caused this.
She grew suddenly deathly tired. At her age this pregnancy was taking its toll. She remembered Shilah. Perhaps she would die giving birth to this child. Perhaps that would be right. She smiled. Come what may. She no longer cared.
A long shudder passed through her body as if the hand of death had truly been placed on her shoulder and she cried out.
‘Zhen,’ she said.
Why had she let him go? She didn’t want to die. He was right. They could be together. The pain stabbed her so suddenly it took her breath away and she stood, her hand to her back. A second knife thrust to her guts and she leant against the table and cried out.
She looked down. A bright red stain spread slowly on her dress and she collapsed to the floor.
41
Charlotte touched the two statues on the plinth.
‘This is really a very good likeness of you and Mariam.’
Takouhi smiled.
‘I feel rather foolish, coming to church and gazing on my image. Still they aren’t inside the church anyway. That feels like blasphemy.’
‘You and Mariam have donated a great deal of money to the church and to the poor and destitute Armenians through the Haykian foundation. The Armenian community naturally wanted to thank you.’
‘And I thank them. Come, let’s go back to Nordwijk. To the Salon des Glaces. The newspaper reports a shipment of ice. And Pascal’s advertises un grand deluge de chaussures.’
The carriage took off at a clip up Koningsplein West.
‘You will be all right here?’
Takouhi held her hat and gazed about her.
‘I shall do very well. I have friends all around me. My old house is now like new. To tell the truth, at my age I prefer it to that huge house.’
‘Yes, you’re quite right. My agent has let Brieswijk to a very grand man. Albertus Jacobus Duymaer van Twist who is to be Chief Counsellor to the Raad van Indie. He will come with Mevrouw van Twist and half of his dozen little van Twists. Perhaps he has allowed himself to be deprived of the great and sophisticated pleasures of Amsterdam because he has heard that, here in Batavia, the strictures on keeping only to his lady wife alone, are not so onerous as in Holland.’
‘Men have been coming here for that for centuries. And Madame van Twist will forget all about the little nyais when she realises that, as inferior in all the land only to the Governor General’s wife, she can play the lady of the manor in grand style.’
The two women smiled. Takouhi put her arm in Charlotte’s.
‘Still nothing about Alex?’
‘No. Nothing. Disappeared. The servants at Buitenzorg say he never went there.’
‘When he has done with grief and anger, he will come back.’
Charlotte nodded. ‘Perhaps. I have accepted my guilt. I only wish I could apologise to him.’
At the Salon des Glaces, they waited. All the seats were taken, the place overflowing. When ice arrived in town, it was always bursting with women and children. The owner, Georges Pouligner, came rushing forward, bowing.
‘Mesdames, soyez les bienvenues.’ He signalled to a waiter and in an instant a table and two chairs had been placed in the shade of the large fig tree which stood before the house. A snow-white cloth flew over it and silver cutlery and a vase of flowers quickly adorned it.
Takouhi and Charlotte sat.
‘Vanille,’ he said, ‘ou chocolat. Sorbets de fruits, aussi.’ They placed their orders and he bustled away.
‘He is keen to pack us in whilst the ice lasts.’ Takouhi smiled.
‘We are very well placed here to observe the rest of the town. It is my new pastime.’
‘How does Amber?’
‘Not well. She cries a lot. But at least she will talk to me now and I’ve tried to explain my actions.’
‘Give her time. Four months is not so long to get over such things. Especially with a baby growing inside her.’
‘Yes. We will go back to Singapore when the affairs of Buitenzorg are completed. That has taken longer than Brieswijk, but the agent says he has a buyer and at a good price. I shall set half the money aside for Adam’s heritage. He will certainly never come out here. It’s pulpits, not plantations, that interest him.’
Charlotte glanced at Takouhi. ‘Do you mind? Losing all this which was Tigran’s heritage.’
‘Oh, you know. I went up there a year ago. It’s beautiful but it reminds me too of my own father and his cruelty to my mother and me. It was him, not Tigran, who made it. I can do very well without it. It might as well go to someone who will care for it.’
‘Yes. Matthew seems to have the trading house in hand. I have made it all over to him and Nicolaus’s family. As for the fleet, well, many of the ships are coming to the end of their life. My fleet manager can sell them, one by one, for coastal vessels.’
Takouhi nodded. ‘It is good to get things settled. And Brieswijk will stay in the family for Amber’s children. And perhaps Alex may return.’
The two women gazed at each other.
‘What of this Edward you spoke of and his suit?’
‘Oh, dear Edward. But that was so impossible. I thought I could go back and recapture something with him. Some sort of spurious respectability. But it would be a disaster for him and for me. We are too changed. I have written to tell him and make my apologies. I believe I led him on for the most selfish reasons.’
Charlotte touched the huge bulge of her belly.
‘And of course this was an unsurmountable obstacle.’
Takouhi nodded a greeting to an acquaintance, an admirer, who bowed to her.
‘You had a scare. But all is well now. Must you go back to Singapore, though? So much pain over there. I could never go back.’
‘For a time I must. Amber wants to live with her father. Teresa has returned to him, did you know? They are all a little family again.’
Takouhi smiled. ‘No! After all that divorce business. Well, perhaps it’s for the best.’
‘Robert can’t live without a woman taking care of him. He always truly cared for Teresa and, despite everything, she is mad about him. I foresee more children. Amber will be well placed there to have her baby and raise it in the bosom of the da Souza family.’
The ices arrived with a flourish carried by M. Pouligner himself.
‘Then I must rent out the North Bridge house and, at some point, book a passage on the P&O. A visit back to Scotland is called for. Jeanne has not been well.’
The women put spoons into the ices and savoured the cool sweet taste.
‘Will you come back?’
Charlotte met Takouhi’s eyes. ‘I don’t know,’ she said and put her hand into her sister-in-law’s.
Takouhi gripped it then released it. ‘And what of the man, the Chinese man you have rejected so many times.’
Charlotte shrugged. ‘He is doubtless married now. I think I should leave him alone.’
Takouhi’s eyes fell to Charlotte’s bulging belly. ‘The child will be born in Singapore unless you mean to have it on the high seas. It is his child. Do you mean to repeat the same old story?’
Charlotte put her hand on her belly as the baby moved inside her. She was big with this child now but she did not mind.
‘I thought I’d lost it and found that thought was intolerable. If I never come back, I will still
have Zhen with me. It’s a boy, I’m certain of it.’
‘You haven’t answered my question.’
‘Because I can’t.’
42
Zhen put down the newspaper. There were two items of interest in it today. The first was the fact that Hong Boon Tek had been found guilty of murder. The captain and other witnesses had testified that Hong had ordered two of his men to murder a Malay headman and his family two years previously for stealing his own illegal chandu. Those men, had, since then, been murdered themselves. The article went on about the revenge killings and the appalling state of the Chinese town.
Wang had had no small hand in this, pressuring the Hongmen brothers to give Hong up to the British. The captain of the captured junk had been quick to reveal these murders for a leniency in his own punishment. These men were as ruthless as Hong and could always sense when to desert the sinking ship. For his pains Wang had been murdered one evening on the outskirts of the town, his throat cut but no-one had been convicted of that crime.
Hong would go to Calcutta to be hanged. The lease for the opium farm had passed to Cheng as the only other bidder and he had earned the undying love of the governor by offering to continue at the present price until the leases came up again next year. The great opium syndicate of Tay-Cheng had begun and offered unrivalled prospects of peace and profit.
The second item was the shipping news. The Queen of the South, Capt. Hall, from Batavia, had arrived in the roads with a cargo of timber, nutmeg, mace, rattans, sarong cloth, Japanese silk and porcelains and would be held on commission at the godown of Robertson and Kerr.
He could not be sure that she was on it. Robert had merely told him that his daughter was returning home. The ship had arrived in the twilight and disembarked quickly. Had she returned too?
Cheng strolled into the godown.
‘You’re sure you won’t stay on?’ he said, ‘as leader?’
Zhen shook his head. ‘No, we have discussed this. Your status in the town has rapidly become very great. The Temenggong says you are “our friend, beloved of us”. The coup of continuing the lease price with the government has endeared you to the governor. Your gift of two thousand dollars to the Poor Fund has endeared you to the church and your offer to fund regular patrols of the junks to prevent smuggling has endeared you to the police. You have done very well. The English establishment adores you. I wouldn’t be surprised if, in six months’ time, they offered you a position on the Grand Jury. Better learn English.’
‘I couldn’t have done this without you.’
‘I know.’
Cheng laughed.
‘Which is why, when you become Shan Chu, I would like your word that you will help me find my Scottish son. He has disappeared but there are Chinese everywhere in the East and one day I will find him if enough eyes are watching.’
‘You have my word. I thought we might share a meal today. Jia Wen has brought us lunch.’
Zhen smiled and rose.
On the other side of the river Charlotte gazed down on Boat Quay from the open windows of the upper hall of the court house. She saw Amber move slowly across Thomson Bridge and disappear.
She returned her gaze to the godown as Zhen emerged from the darkness in the company of an older man. He stood in the brilliant light of the day, strong and handsome. He was always heart-stoppingly handsome. She put her hand to her belly. A little foot came to greet her hand.
The men greeted a woman, a beautiful, honey-skinned young woman dressed the way the Javanese did, in the tight bodice and sarong. She was slim and fine boned and even from here Charlotte could see she was pregnant. Perhaps four months. The bump was obvious and the woman stood, the way pregnant women do, her back slightly sway and one hand protectively to the side of her belly. She smiled widely at the two men. She indicated the tiffin carriers in the hands of her two servants. Zhen lifted the lid on one and peeked inside the top level. He smiled and bowed to her. Charlotte let out a gasp.
She knew the wives brought lunches to the men in the godowns. She had seen this scene enacted a thousand times.
She turned away. So now she had only to decide when to leave. She was seven months pregnant. It would not be comfortable to travel with such a belly on the open seas, even on such new steamer passenger ships as were offered by the P&O. The overland part of the journey across the desert would be arduous. She should wait and see Amber settled, have her child.
But she couldn’t do it. All the hardship in the world was not equal to the pain of being in the same town with him. Any revelations about this child would be embarrassing and pointless. He had begun a new family, one which would belong to him entirely.
She turned as Robert entered. His eyes flew open and his jaw dropped.
‘My God, sister,’ he said, staring at her belly. ‘Is there any child of yours which will not be a total surprise.’
‘Sorry, Rob,’ she said, ‘I do rather make a habit of it.’
He looked at her and put his head on one side.
‘It’s Zhen’s?’
‘Never mind that. Let’s go. I need some lunch and then I want you to send a boy to get me a first-class ticket on the next liner leaving Singapore for London.’
‘Like this. Blown up like a balloon. You intend to travel like this. And alone.’
‘I came alone and I can leave alone. There shall be plenty of passengers on board willing to be my companions. And I shall not mind if there are not.’
Robert shook his head.
‘How are little Robert and Andrew?’
Robert immediately forgot his sister’s problems.
‘Marvellous, marvellous. And Teresa is marvellous too. What a woman.’
Charlotte smiled and took Robert’s arm.
* * *
Amber waited across the street from the medicine shop, watching. This was a quiet street of cloth merchants, pepper and gambier shops, spice emporia, trade goods which arrived from India and Persia and China, silks and porcelains, tin trays and manufactures from England, fine wines and perfumes from France.
An old Baba woman and her middle-aged daughter emerged and Amber crossed the street and went inside.
A Chinese medicine shop has an odour peculiar to itself of herbs and mushrooms and wood all boiled together. It was strange but reassuring like the kitchen of her mother when she tried a new recipe.
It was empty and cool. The young clerk looked up and bowed. It was somewhat unusual to see an English lady in the shop but not rare. And she was pregnant. He moved around the counter and put a stool at her disposal.
‘Thank you,’ she said.
Unfortunately he could not speak English. He put up his finger, asking her to wait and went quickly upstairs to the office of the mistress. Dr. Kow Pah was leaning towards the mistress, their heads close together over some papers. He knocked and bowed.
Lian looked up from her desk. Dr. Cowper moved away to the sofa, looking embarrassed. Lian smiled at him.
‘What is it?’
‘An ang moh, downstairs,’ he said. Lian glanced at John.
‘Not ang moh, remember, Englishman.’
‘Oh sorry. Not Englishman. Englishwoman.’
‘I’m coming.’
The young man ran downstairs.
‘I’ll be a moment,’ she said to John.
He came up to her and took her hand and put it to his lips. She kissed his cheek. She owed this man everything. Her life, first and foremost. His brilliance as a surgeon had saved her leg which had been broken in three places. He had repaired it and though she would always limp she had full use of it. He had repaired the gash in her skull too and, together with her father, they had found medicines and formulas to keep all the fevers at bay. She had been saved from instant death by a series of small shrubs that had broken her fall. John had done the rest.
But that was not why she loved him. She loved him because he had restored her mind through hours of care and love to a place where she was able to put aside, for the most part, t
he feelings of guilt and anguish.
‘Say yes.’
‘No, not until my baptism. And not until you have asked my father formally. I know he is happy about this and you’re his friend but you’re still an ang moh.’
‘Englishman, remember,’ he said and she laughed.
‘I want everything by the book. Ask my father formally.’
‘All right. But it doesn’t have to be a religious ceremony. A civil marriage can be performed by Blackwood or even the governor.’
‘I should like to be married in your church and in your faith. It’s important to you and it is important to me too.’
He kissed her lightly on the lips and she pressed against him.
‘My faith, as you put it, is not in the least important to me. I should just as well like a civil marriage. I would very much like not to wait too much longer, my darling.’
Lian kissed him again. She too wanted their married life to begin, but a swirl of doubts, like flocks of sparrows, occasionally assailed her.
‘You are not certain I can have children, John. If that is the case, are you absolutely sure?’
He put his hand to her cheek.
‘Absolutely sure.’
She put her lips to his and he took her in his arms, kissing her with a wildness belied by his seemingly gentlemanly nature. Under his English calm, he was a passionate man and she wanted his wildness and passion. It struck a chord in her nature and she loved him for being wild for her, knowing all her dreadful transgressions. His love absolved her and she kissed him back, abandoning herself to his kiss. She would be happy with him, of that she was absolutely certain. He picked up his hat and ran lightly down the stairs.
She followed him more slowly, careful of her leg, and instantly recognised the woman waiting for her.
‘Amber,’ she said quietly and went into the shop.
Amber turned. Lian’s eyes went to her belly. Alex’s baby. She was not sure she would ever quite get over Alex. She still loved him so much. The fact that it was morally wrong to love your half-brother in such a way did not mean such feelings disappeared. Certainly not in the short months since she had recovered her health. But this love was now tempered with reason and quiet resolve. Amber moved forward and Lian took her hands.