SQ 04 - The English Concubine (21 page)

25

Charlotte found her brother’s house in disarray. Robert was distressed and incoherent. Amber had sent for her and she had come as quickly as possible. Amber rushed out to greet her, trembling with agitation.

‘She is deathly sick, Aunt,’ she said hysterically and burst into tears.

Her distress for her sick mother was real but it was mingled with the disappointment at Alex’s proposal to her. He had not gone down on a knee, nor even declared his love for her. She knew he didn’t love her yet, but she had hoped that he might at least show some affection. But nothing like that. The ring had been on the table, when she had entered the living room. He had taken it and put on her finger, just like that.

‘There,’ he had said with not even a smile, ‘we are engaged.’

She had looked at the ring and up at him, smiling and he had looked so coldly down at her, then, as if he had recalled something, he put her hand to his lips and kissed it. She had come close, turned up her mouth to his, wanting his kiss. He had dropped her hand and turned, and, without a word had left. She had stood in the middle of the room, bewildered and withered.

Charlotte ran up the stairs. Shilah lay in the semidarkness. The room was oppressively hot and the fan the maid was moving across the bed did nothing to cool the air.

Dr. Cowper was in attendance. He shook his head as she entered. They had all got to Shilah too late.

Shilah was burning hot, the sweat pouring from her. Her face was waxen and Charlotte knew that she was on the verge of death. She had seen this before. The fever burned you up from the inside and left nothing. She hardly moved, the rise and fall of her breath barely visible.

Amber came and put her head on her mother’s thin, hot hand. Charlotte took the cloth and bathed her forehead and face. Shilah opened her eyes. Amber sprang forward and put her lips to her mother’s cheek.

‘Mother, don’t die. Oh please. Look, I am engaged to Alexander. We shall be married. You mustn’t die.’ Amber put the ring in front of her mother’s eyes and began to sob. Charlotte put an arm around her shoulder.

‘Amber, kiss your mother. There is no time.’

‘Mama,’ Amber sobbed and put her lips against her mother’s skin, her tears splashing down over her lips onto the dying woman’s cheeks.

Shilah closed her eyes and took her last breath, a small rattle in her throat. Amber fell away from the bed onto the floor and pulled at her hair and screamed and screamed.

The screams resonated throughout the house and Robert fell to his knees and put his hands together and prayed for her soul, tears pouring over his cheeks. He was to blame. Charlotte had been right. Why hadn’t he listened?

Charlotte took Amber from the room and ordered the maid to stay with her.

She came to her brother and took him into her arms. ‘Stop praying, Rob, for heaven’s sake. This is not God’s but the British medical establishment’s doing.’

He put his head on her shoulder and held her. ‘Don’t go Kitt, please. Stay.’

‘I will not leave until you feel ready,’ she said and he nodded.

Alexander arrived and rushed to his uncle’s side. ‘Uncle Rob, I am so sorry.’

Robert rose. ‘I want to go to her.’ He staggered from the room. Alex made to follow him.

‘Leave him,’ Charlotte said. ‘He will grieve how he must. You had better comfort Amber. She will need you.’

Alex threw himself into a chair. ‘Yes, of course. Let her have a good cry first.’

Charlotte raised an eyebrow.

‘You too, eh? A grieving woman does not earn your sympathy. You are more like your …’ She stopped abruptly and turned away. ‘I will go to her.’

Alex rose, shamed by her words. ‘No, sorry. I’ll go.’

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘She is to be your wife, don’t forget; she is due, at least, if not your passion, then your compassion.’

He threw a dark look at her and left the room. Charlotte sat heavily. She felt as if a shadow lay over the house and she herself was mere air within it. She took the letter from her purse. He asked her to meet him at the cottage in Katong this evening. She read it again and again, his handwriting conjuring him in her mind. She crumpled the letter and called Raja, Robert’s Tamil majordomo.

‘The mistress has died. Have the salon prepared for the lying in and send for the Reverend. And have the maids bring water to wash the body and get the muslin winding cloth. There is a quantity in the store.’

He bowed solemnly. These Indian majordomos were all so similar. Stoic, quiet, unfathomable and endlessly efficient. Houses without them simply did not run.

She rose with a sigh. There was no time to wait. In the tropics a body would rapidly decay. She had to pull Robert away from Shilah and get on with the business of her funeral. Mr. Tivendale, the shipwright, also made coffins, and she sent a boy to fetch him.

As she went to the hall, the door opened and Dr. Little appeared.

‘Ah, Doctor,’ she said. ‘You have done your worst. Just in time to sign the death certificate.’

He threw her a look of bewilderment.

‘Well,’ she said. ‘What’s one more dead mother more or less.’

He spluttered slightly but she ignored him. She looked up and out of the window at the head of the stairs. The sky was as blue as the shallow island seas.

‘Merely a passage, isn’t it, anyway?’

* * *

‘A most propitious choice,’ the old
sangkek um
said.

Widow Tan looked over the costumes she had chosen. Rose and white for the lunch for the female guests. The most spectacular for the wedding day – red silk embroidered with gold thread, resplendent in peonies and butterflies. Purple for the third day ceremony. The jewellery of the Tan family lay spread out, gold and diamond necklaces and earrings, a spectacular array of diamond pins which would form the bride’s headdress. The child had no idea how to embroider so an array of slippers had been arranged from a family who specialised in such high quality items.

Though she cared nothing for this girl, she cared for her own pride and reputation. Nothing but the finest would be allowed. It was a credit to her abilities that such a lengthy and monumental event as a Baba wedding could be organised so well and on such short notice. Of course, money helped.

The exchange of gifts had taken place and the announcement had been sent out by Wak Chik and her helpers to be taken to every Baba house in the town. The wedding would take place inside the house on China Street that Zhen had leased for Lian and Ah Soon. Here they would be wed and live. Qian, when he found out how quickly this was happening, had been surprised but pleased. Also Zhen had told him about the liquor syndicate. Things were looking up. Now if only Ah Soon could stop smoking long enough to do his duty as a husband.

Widow Tan looked nervously at the clock. The tailor had yet to come for the cutting of the cloth for the vowing ceremony. The importance of this hour was such that even a few seconds either side meant bad luck.

She rose and looked outside to the verandah and breathed a sigh of relief to see her carriage carrying the tailor. He entered, sweating copiously and wiping his face, and laid the white cloth and large scissors out on the table. At the exact time chosen for maximum good luck, this cloth would be symbolically cut and from it the tailor would make the identical simple pyjamas for the vowing ceremony. The house waited silently, all eyes on the clock. As the clock struck eleven, the tailor rose and snipped the cloth. Widow Tan felt a small tear come to her eye. She recalled the costumes made from this cloth for her vowing ceremony. She had buried her husband in one pair and she would be buried in the other and in death the cloth and they would come together again. It was the most moving ritual.

The tailor rose, mopped his sweating brow, bundled up the cloth and got back into the carriage. The actual sewing would be done at his shop. The second concubine was set the task of beading and embroidering the triangular handkerchief which Lian would wear attached to a gold ring on her hand. It was what all the guests would look at and had to be prepared in the house. It carried enormous prestige. The widow estimated that the second concubine would need to forego a great deal of sleep to finish it on time.

‘Now,’ said the widow. ‘The food for the Guests’ Day. It is in five days’ time. It will be held here as will the vowing ceremony. We shall set up the Sam Kai altar in the ancestral room. But you,’ she said indicating the
sangkek um
, ‘you shall take charge of the bridal chamber in China Street for the final ceremonies will be there. Make sure everything is done properly.’

The old
sangkek um
had never in her life had such a rushed wedding and she felt quite light-headed. She was glad to depart a house so suddenly filled with noise and bustle. Usually she took charge but the widow was having none of it on this occasion.

In particular, the wraith-like figure of the lunatic daughter threw her head into a spin and she jumped whenever this woman walked along the verandah.

Lian watched from the garden as utterly detached from all this as the sparrow in the bush. She was glad to be out of the house, to be permitted to be out of the house whilst all these women rushed here and there. Her aunt was kept constantly in a state of drugged calm. This was her grandmother’s answer to this particular problem and she recognised her own selfish relief that she no longer had to deal with it.

She knew all this was going on with Ah Soon, too; the costumes, the noise. On the wedding day he would walk in procession from his home to their new house, dressed in his red jacket with gold dragons, his skull cap with diamonds, mincing along as he was told by his
pak chindek
, waving his huge fan. He would look ludicrous. She had seen plenty of these processions, with lanterns and a noisy band wailing. She almost smiled, then didn’t.

A vast array of tradesmen had turned up, to sew, stitch, cut, hammer and decorate and when she saw the hawkers arriving with the trays of food, she left and walked down to the peace of the lake, taking with her the only book she had had in her possession when she and Mother Lilin had been bundled away from town. She had taken it from the lending library of the reading rooms run by the American trader, Wolf, whom everyone said had been a pirate. This library had all sorts of unsuitable American books unvetted by more puritanical eyes and Lian had chosen
The Scarlet Letter
, the story of Hester who, punished for adultery and pregnancy out of wedlock, must struggle to create a new life of repentance and dignity. She found it entirely fitting and thanked all the gods that no-one here could read a word of anything, least of all English.

She was so effectively cut off from everything out here she had no idea of what was going on in town and there was no way to find out. Ah Fu had been left at the house in town, judged a malefic and ignorant ally in Lian’s misbehaviour.

She settled into the pavilion and drew her legs under her chin and opened the book to the fifth chapter.

Hester Prynne’s term of confinement was now at an end. Her prison-door was thrown open, and she came forth into the sunshine, which, falling on all alike, seemed, to her sick and morbid heart, as if meant for no other purpose than to reveal the scarlet letter on her breast
.

26

‘Mrs. Manouk, each day we delay costs you money.’ Captain Elliot opened his hands.

Charlotte knew it. Each day the
Queen
stood loaded in the harbour, fully crewed and idle, did cost money. But there was nothing to be done.

‘James, there is nothing I can do. Robert has gone to pieces and Amber cannot be consoled.’

James Elliott nodded. He had grown old before the mast, Charlotte thought, much of it in Tigran’s service. He was perhaps sixty-five years old. He deserved a rest. She had offered to buy him a small house in Batavia but he had refused. He wished to return to Somerset, to his village where he still had brothers and cousins. He would not be sailing again on this ship for the P&O would be carrying him home in ten days. So she had rewarded him handsomely with a generous pension for the rest of his days.

‘If I may make a suggestion, ma’am.’

She turned her gaze onto the man James had recommended and who was the new captain of her ship. He was John Hall, an American from New York. She had been surprised and distrustful. She had known another captain from America and he had tried to kill her. But James said he was a good man, so she believed him.

‘Yes, Captain. Any suggestion is welcome.’

‘The ship is loaded with guns and powder, opium, iron goods and cloth, commodities I can trade anywhere. If you permit I will go to Pontianak, Benjamarsin and into the Moluccas. I can trade on your account, then come back here in six weeks.’

James nodded. ‘Good. John knows his business. He can get pepper, gold and diamonds in Banjarmasin, rattans, pearls and bado oil in Makassar. Pontianak has gold too.’

He can steal my ship, Charlotte thought. But what other choice was there but to trust this man? What choice but to trust any captain who set off onto the vast oceans loaded with goods. She thought for a moment.

‘John, if you trade on my account, and show a good profit you shall have a percentage and the crew a bonus.’

‘Yes, ma’am,’ he said and smiled. He knew what she was thinking. ‘You can depend on me, Mrs. Manouk.’

‘You are a young man, Captain Hall. Try not to go adventuring.’

He touched his cap. ‘No, ma’am.’

Despite herself she smiled. He had a lazy charm and good looks. He was no older than thirty, she guessed, only eight years younger than herself.

‘Well, well, we shall settle it then. You will sail as soon as you have the ship’s orders ready and inform the Master Attendant. I will expect you back in six weeks’ time.’

John touched his cap again and departed.

‘Can I trust him, James?’

‘Aye, Mrs. Manouk. He seems loose and easy but he has sailed these last three voyages with me and knows the sea and the stars. And he is good with the men and, for an American, speaks Malay well.’

‘Very well, then. Will you stay with me these next days?’