SQ 04 - The English Concubine (4 page)

She examined all the wares spilling out of the shops along Circular Road, silks and nankeens from China, muslins and shawls from India, exquisite beaded slippers, silver and ivory jewellery, bangles of jade and amber. She purchased a Chinese silk purse and, lifting her petticoat from the dusty street, turned into North Canal Street and into the verandah of the house of her friend. The door was opened by the housekeeper, a Javanese Chinese woman. The usually quiet house was filled with noise and bustle.

‘Hello, Ah Ma,’ she said to the housekeeper. This woman had been with Lian’s family for years. She told the maid to go to the kitchen.

Lian rushed out to greet Amber, her hands covered in rice flour. Both girls hugged and Lian glanced upstairs.

‘Mother Lilin is sleeping,’ she said, glancing at Ah Ma, who nodded. Lian put her finger to her lips, smudging her cheek with white rice flour.

Amber smiled at Lian’s mocking reference to the woman upstairs who was not her mother but her aunt. Everyone at school knew that Lian’s aunt was as crazy as a wild monkey and poor Lian had to put up with all sorts of nonsense. Amber brushed away the flour from her friend’s face. She was the prettiest girl in school, with her long black hair and beautiful eyes. At home Lian wore the nonya dress with its tight dark sarong and shapeless white cotton kebaya, barely distinguishable from her school clothes. Amber thought these garments the devil’s handwork they were so ugly, but had to admit Lian and her slenderness would have been lost in petticoats.

‘Oh you look so cool in your sarong. I’m so terribly warm in this petticoat and flounces.’Amber twirled for effect and Lian smiled.

‘Take them off then,’ she said, wiping her hands on her apron.

Amber made a face and ignored her.

‘We are making rice dumplings for Cheng Beng. Can’t do that in flounces, which I know you love.’

Amber giggled.

‘Come into the parlour. I want to see you sit in that thing.’

Amber followed Lian and sat with the ease of two hours of practice. It was impossible to actually sit. One could only perch, but it was worth it.

‘Actually it’s much cooler than all those stiff petticoats.’

‘But you can’t sit comfortably.’

Amber shook her head. ‘Oh pooh, never mind. Look.’

She took out her purchase.

‘How do you like my new silk purse?’

Lian took it and turned it over.

‘Nice enough,’ she said. ‘Do you not have at least a hundred?’

‘One cannot have too many silk purses.’

Lian laughed. ‘No, nor Indian shawls.’

‘Alexander is coming home,’Amber said. Lian put the purse on the table.

Everyone at school knew that Amber was mad about Alex. Lian remembered him well enough. It had been at her twelfth birthday party and he was fourteen, almost fifteen. Mother Lilin had thrown them together somewhat before he departed for Scotland. She had never understood why. But then she never understood anything her aunt did. The woman had become more and more distracted and depressed over the past three years. All Lian knew was that it had something to do with her father, Zhen, for whom her aunt harboured some lingering passions. She was a perceptive girl. Growing up in the precarious sanity of the home of Mother Lilin had taught her useful lessons in self-preservation, her lack of parental guidance had made her independent and worldly-wise and her English education had made her clever and ambitious.

Alexander had kissed her. Well, hardly a kiss, when she thought about it now, a touch of the lips. But extraordinary nevertheless, for in a good and decent Straits Chinese family touching in public between the sexes was, if not actually taboo, certainly unacceptable. As for boys and girls, well, now she could hardly imagine what had possessed her aunt to allow it. She would never tell Amber about this of course and, doubtless, Alex had forgotten it himself. He was probably dreadful now, red-faced, fat, bluff and Scottish, filled with his own importance like the English officers she saw about town.

Besides, her emotions had recently been engaged by the incredibly handsome Jemadar Kumar of the contingent of the Madras Regiment, who guarded the jail. She had met him on the several occasions when she shopped with Ah Fu, her maid, for wicker baskets and woven rattans, goods which the prisoners made and sold at the prison. He was as forbidden to her as she to him but that did not stop their eyes meeting. He had wide, dark limpid eyes and a moustache to quell the masses and stop the hearts of maidens. She felt a welling up inside herself, a rising tide of anticipation. She wanted her life to begin. Not with Kumar, he was merely a titillating pastime. Not with marriage to Ah Soon which was ridiculous. But something. Someone.

‘What is the scandal about?’ she said.

Amber shrugged. ‘Some woman chasing him, no doubt. I hear that Scottish matrons are forward and bold.’

‘It cannot be Alexander’s fault, eh?’ Lian smiled at her friend. Amber regretted mentioning him and changed the subject.

‘You wanted to tell me something.’

‘My father says I must stop school and prepare for my marriage.’

Amber put her hand to her mouth. ‘No. You are not yet sixteen.’

‘My birthday is in six months. I am to prepare shoes for the bridegroom. Can you imagine? Look.’

Lian took up a basket on a nearby table and opened it. She brought out a piece of cloth.

‘For the past two weeks I have been tutored in beadwork. It is entirely ridiculous and backward.’

Amber took up the cloth. ‘It is extremely poor.’

Lian snatched it, flung it into the basket and closed the lid.

‘Of course it is. Why on earth must I know beadwork? Are there not beaders or seamstresses or whatever they are called in the town who know about such things?’

Lian’s lips tightened. Amber put her hand to her friend’s and gripped it. The subject of this marriage to Ah Soon, the son of her father’s friend, was well known in school.

‘Oh Amber,’ Lian said. ‘To be married and to have hardly lived. I shall be forced to become a housewife, obey a man I don’t love and who is a fool, have ten babies and get fat and stupid. And do beadwork from morning to night. I can’t bear it.’

The two girls fell into each other’s arms.

‘You are so lucky. Should you choose it, you may not marry. Your father would not force you. He is a kind man.’

Amber clutched her friend. To be forced to lie with a man you hated. It was abominable. They both knew how a baby was made, for Sarah’s many sisters had been completely frank on the subject. In addition, Lian had one day found a stash of scandalous Chinese prints in Mother Lilin’s room which she must have somehow purchased in the town, and had shown them to Amber. The duties of marriage didn’t seem such a bane, thought Amber, recalling the erect male member and the looks of swooning abandonment of the women in those pictures, and she secretly thrilled at the thought of such activities with Alexander.

‘Ah Soon is skinny and debauched. I hate my father,’ Lian whispered, ‘I won’t do it.’

Amber was shocked. ‘But what can you do?’

‘I don’t know.’

The girls stared at each other.

4

‘She is fifteen. A young, obedient girl of great beauty.’

This was the hundredth girl, some as young as fourteen, who had been presented to him since his wife, Noan, had died ten years ago. He had no idea what they thought he would do with a fourteen-year-old girl. His mother-in-law was behind it all. The widow Tan was not only bored but had, since the death of her husband, become obsessed with the idea of more grandchildren, particularly grandsons. Noan had died giving birth to Kai. This death had affected his parents-in-law profoundly and, he believed, precipitated Tan’s own decline.

His last daughter, Lian, was the same age as these girls. Her marriage would take place when she turned sixteen. Lian had been given, since the death of her mother, to her aunt Lilin, Tan’s second daughter. Zhen had never liked this arrangement, which Tan had insisted on after the death of Noan. Lilin was a woman of uncertain temperament who had lusted after he himself for years, had a wild and uncontrollable nature, and, after the death of her infant son, had become half-crazed. Tan had hoped that the raising of Lian would settle her and to some extent that had been true. Lilin, for some reason, had sought to give Lian an English education and, in order to remove her as far as possible from what Zhen saw as Lilin’s pernicious influence, Zhen had agreed.

So Lian had been enrolled in the girl’s school of the Singapore Institution. She had received the Christian and English education that neither of her sisters was permitted. His first two daughters and his son Kai had been raised in the country by his mother-in-law. Presently Kai attended Saint Joseph’s Institution for his education. In this respect all of Tan’s wishes, as patriarch of the house, had been respected. Only in the matter of his own remarriage had he been obliged to ignore his father-in-law.

But they had been close, he and Tan, for Tan had had no sons and Zhen, the son of a mere third concubine, had hated his distant and cruel father. When Tan had died, Zhen had truly mourned him and paid this man all the respect that he was due. His funeral had been the finest that money could buy and Zhen tried to listen to Tan’s widow on most things. On this business of remarriage however, he had gently but firmly insisted on doing nothing and relations with the old woman had soured.

Zhen contemplated the matchmaker, an old lean man whose wispy beard grew thinner and thinner with each passing year and now floated like spun sugar around his chin.

‘Lao Liu, how many does this make? I have told you that I am not interested in marrying again.’

Lao Liu contemplated Zhen. He was fully aware of this man’s relationship with this concubine of his, this English woman. But it would not do.

‘Honourable sir, let me be frank. This is not just a matter of sex or sons. Women are about status. The more you have the greater your status in other men’s eyes. Wives are about your heredity. Concubines are for your pleasure.’

Lao Liu bowed.

‘Naturally, the pleasures of a foreign concubine are the envy of all powerful men everywhere and this brings you enormous prestige. Especially one from the ruling elite class who has wealth and beauty, for such a thing is as rare as an honest pawnbroker.’

Zhen raised an eyebrow but said nothing.

‘But, sir, it will not do. For a man like you, with your wealth, not to have many women about him is a great loss of face. It is stubbornly wilful and wrong.’

Lao Liu’s voice took on a beseeching tone.

‘Even if you do not wish to pleasure yourself with them, sir. Just to have them around enhances your eminence. Can you not consider taking one or two?’

He waited but there was no response. He sighed. ‘It is a subject of much talk. I am being frank.’

Lao Liu stood, silent now. He had had his say. It was only fair to point out what, apparently, this man couldn’t see.

Zhen rose. ‘I thank you, Lao Liu, for the graciousness of your advice. I would be obliged if you would let me reflect on it.’

Lao Liu bowed courteously. Clearly his little speech had had no effect.

Lao Liu melted away and Zhen’s thoughts turned to Charlotte. This little foreign concubine who gave him such ‘pleasure and prestige’ was forbidden him for months. He recognised that, whether it should or not, it made her suddenly doubly desirable. He had to comply. But not until tomorrow. He took up a slip of paper and sent a note away with the boy.

* * *

‘Lian, a nice surprise. And Amber. Sit.’

Charlotte rose from the table nestled in the arms of the rain tree and kissed both girls on the cheek.

Lian and Amber had clearly come straight from school for they were both in their school uniforms. It must be important, otherwise Amber would have rushed straight home to fit herself up in her petticoats and crinolines. Their maids, who doubled as chaperones, would be installed in the kitchen eating English cakes.

‘Tea,’ she said to Malik, her Indian majordomo, as he came quietly to her side.

She caught the glance, a flick of his eyes, which Malik directed at Lian. He disapproved of Zhen and by extension, his Chinese daughter, but usually he concealed it well. She should dismiss him, but he had been with her for years. A good majordomo was incredibly hard to find and her house ran like clockwork.

She contemplated the two of them. So young and fresh. Amber was brown-haired, brown-eyed and looked like Robert. She was pretty, certainly, but she paled in comparison to the girl by her side. Lian was utterly beautiful, almost magnetically so. She had perfect skin and the blackest hair, full pink lips and her almond eyes had a small tilt to them which gave her an air of mystery. She had an inner beauty too, which glowed out of her, like a calm strength, and imparted a depth to her external appearance. Amber could be all bounce and go like a puppy, but Lian was as graceful as a princess.

She was the only child of Zhen’s Chinese family that she could ever know and she liked this, knowing this child, who was half sister to Lily. Kai, his son, she saw from time to time, but he was forbidden to speak to her by his grandmother and, rather shufflingly, ran away if he saw her. To this grandmother she was an abomination, the reason there were no more grandsons.

Lian was scarcely better, an abomination of a different kind and Charlotte felt a kinship of the damned with her.

After some desultory conversation about school, Amber suddenly turned to Charlotte.

‘Aunt, can you help Lian?’

‘In what way?’

‘Miss Charlotte, I am obliged to bead.’

‘To bead?’

‘Yes, shoes. Beading for shoes. It is unbelievable.’

The tea tray arrived and conversation ended. As the servant moved away, Amber turned again urgently to Charlotte.

‘Lian must bead because she must be domesticated and marry this Ah Soon. At the end of this term she must quit school. Aunt, you must help her.’

Charlotte frowned.

‘I understand. The time has come, has it?’

‘Yes, and I am so desperately unhappy.’

‘He is an opium fiend, Aunt. He smokes and smokes and why on earth doesn’t he just die?’