The Concubine's Daughter (75 page)

Sing listened to the words as though in a dream. “He had burns like I’ve never seen on a living creature. Hospital? They’d have let him die—put him out of his misery. Lucky I know a thing or two about burns. Trouble was, gangrene set in. There was a Chinese doctor I knew took care of that the best he could.”

Aggie faltered, as though losing track of thoughts that were too hard to bear. “We took care of him in there, in a tub of oil, for three months, then on a bed of cotton wool for the best part of a year.” She nodded toward an adjoining room, its doorway hung with a curtain of threaded bamboo. “Couldn’t touch him for most of that time … he just survived. A hundred times I thought he was gone. The pain he was suffering … forgive me, dearie, I prayed for the Lord to take him.” She
sniffled hard. “Every time, he would open his eye, to let me know he wasn’t ready yet.”

Aggie suddenly sat forward, one work-reddened hand on each knee. “Well, he never was ready. He looked the Almighty in the eye and said no … not yet. I have a child to live for.”

Sing could barely frame the question. “Do you mean … ?” “That’s right, dearie, your father is still alive … no more than spitting distance from where you’re sitting now.” She reached out to stop Sing from rising.

“Easy now, I’m not finished yet. We have to think about this. It was two years before he could leave that room. He didn’t want anyone to see what was left of him, and made me give him my solemn oath that I’d tell no one that he still lives. No one but you, that is, not even his partner, Indie Da Silva.”

Aggie’s warm hands cupped Sing’s face as though it were a precious flower. “I don’t think he ever gave up waiting for you … he said that your mother spoke to him, told him you would come. So go to him gentle-like, but be ready … his body has failed him and he was terrible hurt.”

Sing could no longer fight the tears she had denied for so long, whether of happiness or grief she could not tell. Aggie took her gently by the hand, drawing her to the window and pushing aside the chintz curtain.

“Down there, by the old jetty, there’s a seat facing the river. He made it for me when he was a boy and it still stands strong. It’s where he spends his time, listening to the voices of the river and feeding the birds.” She ushered Sing to the door with another firm hug, her voice little more than a whisper. “I have to tell you he cannot see, but his spirit is still strong. All the fires in Hades couldn’t burn that.”

Descending the stairs alone, Sing was truly afraid for the first time in her life. Afraid of what she would see, what she would say, how she would say it, afraid of what he would think of her.

The hunched figure with its back to her sat motionless, except for a slight movement every now and again as he threw crumbs to a gang of marauding gulls. Wearing a faded oilskin jacket, the hood pulled up to
cover his head, he half turned at the flurry of wings, as though sensing her presence.

“That you, Aggie? God’s teeth, you know how to creep up on a man, for one who’s built like a tugboat.”

As suddenly as it had descended, Sing’s uncertainty lifted. She saw his hand, with the top joints of his Angers missing, making a clean job of tossing crumbs to the birds. Light dancing off the water showed a glimpse of his face, so disfigured it made her catch her breath. She spoke with great tenderness.

“It is I, Father, your daughter. My name is Siu-Sing … it means Little Star.” She took his hand, placing the Anger jade in its palm, closing the crippled Angers around it.

For the next week, Sing and her father were inseparable. There was a pattern to their days together. Each morning at six, they ate a bowl of Aggie Gate’s “burgoo,” the nautical term for porridge with a sprinkle of salt, and swigged her hot, sweet tea. Afterward, Ben took his two black-briar walking sticks and, without help from anyone, found his way steadily through the fruit trees to the bench with Sing at his side. There they picked up where they had left off at seven o’clock the night before. At midday, Aggie brought them a basket of his favorite cheese and corned-beef sandwiches of a size that could choke a horse, and a flask of tea laced with rum, and there was fruit for the picking.

Drained of tears and grand emotions, almost beyond joy and laughter, they talked through each long and pleasant day. When she spoke of a doctor, his voice was harsh and deflnite. “You are all the doctoring I need.” He gave a croak of a laugh. “So just tell me all there is to know; Li-Xia is smiling on us today and there is nothing I need to hear but the sound of your voice.”

She told him of her life and what she knew of his: the childhood stories passed on by the Fish; Master To; the hut by the lake and the journey that had led her to this day. When she suggested that he should rest—he must be strong for the journey home to the Villa Formosa—he shook his
head violently. He wasn’t going anywhere, he said in a voice that held something of the man he had once been.

“I don’t need to see the house I built for her. I know every brick and every stick of furniture in the place.”

Sing spoke with gentle understanding. “Your beautiful home awaits you, just as you left it. And Ah-Kin has tended the gardens as his own. He loves and misses you so … and there is Indie, and Angus, all your old friends …”

He sensed her dismay; his voice lowered to a grumble. “Then why would I offend their eyes with this?” He threw back the hood defiantly.

Sing took his mutilated face in both her hands, brushing away his tears with her thumbs, as she would a child’s. “It is your heart they remember, your courage and your love; they care nothing for the scars of battle.”

He shook his head vehemently. “It’s too late for revenge; why pour rum on wounds that won’t heal? Why give the bastards that deserted me a look at this?”

He shrugged the hood back in place. “There’s only one who’d be glad to see the way I look, and I took good care of Chiang-Wah before I left; even a Boxer can’t stand up to three copper-nosed slugs from a Colt. 45 at close range.”

He patted the bench and rubbed its familiar surface. “This bench will be my gravestone, and that’s good enough for me.”

Regretting his tone, he added more gently, “I need to feed the birds and listen to the water. This old river is where my true friends were put to rest for backing me—where we faced our fate side by side and took what came of it.” He patted the smooth worn seat of the bench again. “This jetty was
Golden Sky
’s last berth before she sailed to kingdom come. If I listen hard, I can still hear their voices.”

His words were defiant again. “Give me your hand and your word on it. I stay here, dead or alive. And you tell not a living soul that you have found me.”

Sing took his hand and kissed it. “You have my word, Father.”

He would not talk much about himself or his life with Li-Xia, but
could not get enough of listening to her as he sat facing the river, drinking in her words like draughts of cool, sweet water after a long and terrible thirst. Occasionally, he asked a question that proved that, in spite of all he had endured, there was nothing wrong with her father’s mind. At first Sing would embellish the pleasant parts of her stories while minimizing the harsh, but he would stop her, urging her to give an honest account and leave nothing out to spare him. He detected every hesitation, preempted every omission, and chuckled deep in his chest at every triumph, great and small.

On occasion, his stiff, racked frame was seized by the unaccustomed mirth, bringing spasms of coughing and wheezing. When he found his breath, he turned his broken grin to her.

“Don’t fret; I can feel your worrying,” he gasped, still regaining his breath. “You wouldn’t stop an old man dying of laughter.”

Captain Benjamin Jean-Paul Devereaux died in his sleep on the seventh night of their reunion. Clutched in his broken hand, so tightly that nothing could take it away, was the orange-peel finger jade. Sing had sensed her father’s weakening as the long days had flowed away with the river … but she had also sensed contentment. The week spent under the apple trees, telling him the true story of her life, feeling his laughter, feeling his pride in her, were the richest hours of her life.

“He passed away as peacefully as his personal gods would allow,” observed Aggie Gates. “You brought him that peace, and as much happiness as he had left in him.”

Two days later, the old seat by the jetty was carefully taken from its moorings and set aside, while the strong hands of those few who knew him dug Ben Devereaux’s grave. He was laid to rest in the uniform he had worn only on the most special occasions. Sing herself had washed and dressed his body, draping over the casket the Devereaux house flag—the red and green dragons still bright on their flaming yellow background.

Sing watched without tears as a floating crane lowered a two-ton
block of finest marble over the grave. The garden seat was carefully restored to its rightful place, with a new brass plate on its back:

December 1941

The marriage of Sing Devereaux to the recently promoted Major Toby Hyde-Wilkins took place on the ocean terrace of the Villa Formosa under a crisp autumn sky. The brief private ceremony was performed by Col o nel Pelham in accordance with some obscure rule in the military bible known as
King’s Rules and Regulations
, with a guard of honor provided by Toby’s brother officers forming a glittering arch of drawn sabers.

The bride was given away by Captain Rodriquez Da Silva, outrageously turned out in the antiquated regalia of a commandant of the Portuguese navy, his wild gray hair tamed and his beard hastily trimmed for the occasion. Angus Grant was best man, clad in the kilted uniform of his Black Watch Regiment of Reserves. Miss Winifred Bramble was matron of honor, with Lady Margaret Pelham in charge of catering and all formalities.

Sing wore a dress made of vibrant yellow silk found among the bolts stored in the Double Dragon godowns, a close replica to the one worn by Li-Xia in her parents’ portrait, with a sash fashioned from her mother’s happiness silk. Her bouquet was made from gardenias, ringed with Cornish violets against a spray of morning stars, proudly presented by Ah-Kin, who told her that these were her mother’s favorite flowers.

Toby and Justin Pelham were turned out in full dress uniform, scarlet tunics and white doeskin breeches, with cavalry boots burnished to a chestnut gloss. Nearly all the male guests were in uniform, which not only gave the occasion a dash of color and flair, but made it hard to forget that the Japanese were marching on Hong Kong. Even Lady Margaret and Miss Bramble wore the uniforms of senior Red Cross officials. Already,
the golf course in Fanling had been turned into a field hospital, as had the Happy Valley Jockey Club, the Hong Kong Club, and other grand facilities of the British colonial establishment.

After a splendid dinner, Sing stood with Toby breathing the evening air heavy with night-blooming scents off the gardens. He enfolded her in his arms, his lips brushing her ear. “I beg you again,” he whispered. “There is a British destroyer anchored off Wan-Chai ready to evacuate British citizens. Please, my dearest, Justin has arranged a cabin. My parents are longing to meet you.”