The Hills of Singapore (15 page)

“An assistant has finally arrived to continue the work here until my return. I am planning to leave in the next week.”

Charlotte looked up now. Leave, next week? she thought. When I have just met you?

“Oh, really? I see. How long will you be away?” she asked. She put the cup to her lips distractedly, then remembered and put it down on the saucer.

“Several months. There is a great deal to observe.”

“Yes, of course. Pulled thither by magnetic attraction.” Charlotte laughed lightly though she felt a constriction in her throat.

Charles looked up and smiled. He had a lovely smile, the more so because he used it so little and obviously only on those he cared for. Charlotte rose quickly. She had wanted to reach out to him, touch his hand. No. More than this, she had wanted to walk into his arms, feel them around her. Now such thoughts felt foolish.

She moved towards the door, reaching for her hat. “Thank you, Charles, for a delightful and informative visit.”

Charles bowed, suddenly distant. Charlotte turned, frowning. His attitude, so warm, even passionate, on her arrival, had cooled. She did not understand. She made her way to the carriage and climbed up, picking up the reins. Ravi, who had been half slumbering in the shade of a tree, jumped up and scrambled onto the carriage.

“Goodbye, Captain, and bon voyage.”

“Kitt,” said Charles, but she had jigged the horses into movement and before he could say anything more she set off down the road.

Charles turned and went to the verandah where her cup lay. When the Malay boy came to clean the table, Charles waved him away. What are you doing, Charles Maitland? he thought. In his mind he saw her lips on the cup and he rested his head against the back of the chair. Not again. He had been quite wrong to be so forward. What on earth did he intend by it? And now he had hurt her.

“Damn,” he said loudly and got up. He had let his heart rule him once before. It was so easy to be swept away. And what did he have to offer a woman of such beauty and wealth? He rose and walked towards the observatory.

17

Alexander ran over Thomson Bridge. This was his favourite part of the day. He was accompanied by Tarun, his syce. Tarun was an Indian-Malay man of about twenty years of age. Tarun's job was to watch him, take him places, keep him safe and bring him home. Luckily, Alexander thought, Tarun had many friends among the boatmen on the river and in Serangoon, also in Telok Ayer, around Boat Quay and seemingly everywhere. Tarun had been born in Singapore to a former Indian convict turned boatman and his Malay wife. His mother had died of fever when Tarun was the same age as Alexander, and he had been raised by his father on the river and in Kampong Kerbau, where his father's new woman lived, raising buffalo. His mother tongue was Tamil but he spoke fluent Malay.

Charlotte had engaged him to improve Zan's Malay, for with the
babu
Zan only spoke Javanese—and not even good Javanese, but baby Javanese. It would not do here. Tarun took him to school, picked him up and together Charlotte let them wander around Singapore from two until five in the afternoon. Tarun knew that he and Alex must return home to North Bridge Road by five o'clock. That was the rule.

Charlotte had investigated Tarun carefully. He was a pleasant young man. He had married at sixteen and already had two children of his own. His father had crushed an arm in a boating accident, for the river was a dangerous place, with
tongkangs
and sampans constantly smashing against each other in the crush of the boats. Tarun's father could no longer work; the woman in Kampong Kerbau had deserted him and this, the accident and the hardship, had made him old before his time. Tarun had been a boatman for a time but was very grateful that Charlotte had taken them all into her compound.

Tarun's wife cared for his father, who could sit under the mango tree with their children, and she helped in the laundry of the house. Tarun's own duties were not onerous, and he was paid quite generously, and his shelter and food were supplied. He had arrived in a kind of heaven and he liked Alexander very much. He took care of him as he would his own sons. When they were older, they would all roam around Singapore. This roaming was a source of hilarity in his family. The idea of paying someone to wander about was at first a source of wonder and then amusement. Of course he must also take care of the horses and the carriages and carry out gardening duties in the morning. Alex and Adam played with his sons under the mango tree and Adam too, could chatter in Malay with these boys.

Charlotte knew that Tarun did not fully understand. Charlotte wanted a man to be around Zan. His true father could not show him how to be a man, and Tigran, who would have been wonderful, was gone. She needed a man who was already a father, had fatherly instincts but was young enough to be his friend too. Zan's Malay had become very fluent, and he had become strong and smart and independent, qualities she desired for him. She wanted him in the company of men.

When he was in the town too, he spoke to the Chinese and his Hokkien had become very good, the natural chattering abilities of a child, for he translated for Tarun who spoke no Chinese. Tarun did not trust the Chinese workers and shopkeepers in the narrow streets of the town. He knew the Indian boatmen well but even as a young child had stayed away from the Chinese.

But his orders were clear. Alexander must go everywhere in the town. One day to the Chinese quarter, one day to the Indians in Serangoon, one day to Kampong Glam and one day to Kampong Bugis by the Kallang river. On the fifth day Charlotte took both her sons out on Robert's boat, teaching them to sail on the quiet waters around Pulau Brani.

Alexander jumped round a post and onto Boat Quay. He loved the river, loved the day spent here. Tarun would josh with the Indian boatmen. He knew them all and Alexander was deeply impressed. To know every man on the river! Such a thing. Tarun showed him how to steer the sampan, and the other boatmen encouraged him and laughed, slapping him on the shoulder till he hurt. Alexander shared their food, this spicy stuff of southern India, and chattered to them in terrible Tamil.

When he first came here he had wanted to be a boatman, to take the big
tongkangs
out to the ships on the harbour. Of course when he was in Serangoon, he wanted to raise buffalo, and in Kampong Glam he yearned to make boats.

But eventually it became clear to him that it was Kampong Bugis on the Kallang River that he loved most. There he wanted to
be
Bugis, a Rajah Laut, the king of the sea, a pirate if need be, a man who ruled the waves. Yes his favourite was the Bugis village. The men were hard and copper skinned. They handled boats like no one; they owned the sea. He loved them and strangely, they took him in and even his Indian guard.

Tarun was even more wary of the Bugis than of the Chinese, for they were warriors. But they liked this English boy who came and sailed their boats with their own boys, who was brave and willing. And Tarun, too, was clever with boats. They had not seen this before. And the boy understood them. The Bugis language was a mix of Malay and Javanese, and here in Singapore more Malay than Javanese, and he found he could talk to them. This ability, above all, had amazed and endeared him to them. The women gave him
lepat loi
, glutinous rice cooked in coconut milk and wrapped in banana leaves. The men gave him a small kris which he kept concealed from his mother but which he loved like life itself.

Today Tarun had stopped to talk to a boatman, and Zan ran off to the Malay boys and their cockle-shell boats. For two doits they carried passengers across the river, and they shouted to him as he arrived, pulling him into the boat and showing him how to steer what was really nothing more than a large basket. All he could do was make it go round and round in circles, and they laughed and joshed him. Finally some customers arrived, and the boys loaded up and moved their boats swiftly away from shore.

Alex began to wander along the quay. He loved the godowns and shops here. He wished Ah Soon was here, but today his friend could not come. Each shop was a wonderland of stuffs from everywhere in the whole world. He knew geography now, knew about Scotland and Armenia and Java. And Singapore stood in the centre of his world, on the trade routes of the English ships, standing on the lip of the Straits of Malacca, of travel from India and the West, from China to the East and guardian of English trade in Southeast Asia. This town was important and he was proud to live here. He knew he had a home in Batavia but he never gave that place a thought. He had vague memories of speaking Dutch with his father but they had mostly faded.

He knew very well Mr Whampoa's godown, an emporium of everything naval. He turned briefly to seek Tarun and saw him still talking. He knew he must not lose sight of Tarun in the busy Chinese town. Not because he was fearful but because he knew Tarun would be anxious and his mother would be angry.

Alexander knew his way home but he knew too, despite his young years, that if he was lost Tarun would suffer, and Alex would not be permitted to roam any more. So he lingered longer than usual in front of Whampoa's emporium, looking at the shipping tackle, the infinite variety and sizes of cords and rope; the tools, the axes and chisels, lanterns, nails, spikes and hooks. A family of kittens had made a home in an old basket, future mousers for the godown, and he played with them for a little while. It was a boy's dream, a ship's chandler, and he inhaled the musty and pungent odours of turpentine, tar, pitch, linseed oil, tallow, lard and varnish.

In the back were a vast variety of livestock: poultry, pigs and sheep in pens, parrots and cockatoos in cages, ducks and geese below them on pools of water. There were ovens for baking bread, and aromas of fresh bread mingled with the dirt and smell of the animals. The noise of cackling, bellowing, braying and bleating simply added to the appeal, and Mr Whampoa's godown was Alex's idea of paradise. He never tired of exploring it.

Two Chinese boys he knew from the town came up, and they all chattered. Then one of the boys took out a woven rattan ball, and they began a game of
sepak raga
, moving swiftly to keep the ball in the air. Two old men yelled at them. Alex could play
sepak raga
well, for it was a schoolyard game, but the two boys were much better, and they laughed as he fell over, lunging for the ball. Alex laughed too and let out a string of swear words in Hokkien, which provoked sudden uproarious laughter from the shopkeepers and coolies. The sight of this young white boy, dressed in European clothes, swearing like a Hokkien sailor, could only cause merriment. And Alex played to his audience, pleased with himself, knowing it was unusual.

He felt rather than saw the presence of a large Chinese man approaching him and looked up. The two other boys ran off. Alex had not seen this man before. He would have noticed, for the man was tall and strong, unlike most of the Chinese men in the town who looked skinny. He was a towkay, Zan knew, from his dress.

His eyes met Zhen's. Alex bowed as Chinese manners required. The man stood stock still, saying nothing and Zan frowned a little. His hair had fallen around his face, and he was hot and brushed it back around his ears. Actually he thought the Chinese bare head must be cool and sometimes wanted to lose all his hair entirely. Of course his mother was horrified but, Zan had begun to discover, mothers had most peculiar ideas.

The man, finally, spoke up in Chinese. “Hello,” he said. “What is your name?”

“My name is Ah Rex,” Alexander said, enunciating his name in the Chinese manner.

Zhen was bewildered. He tried again in English. “Are you an English boy?”

Zan smiled, surprised the man spoke such good English. “I am half-English and half-Dutch, sir. I am Alexander.”

Before he could continue, Tarun rushed to Zan's side and, throwing a glance of deep suspicion at the big Chinese man, he took Zan's hand and pulled him away. Today they were supposed to visit the Indian temple in South Bridge Road, where devotees were preparing for the festival of
Thimithi
, the fire walking ceremony.

Zan bowed briefly to the man. Zhen watched as the Indian guard walked quickly away with the boy and disappeared. He could not quite organise his thinking. This boy, this English boy, looked like Xia Lou's dead husband, the way his hair was braided, long, to his shoulders, with jet beads. Yet something in his size, the shape of his jaw, in the tilt of his eyes, was different to the second son he had seen. He could not put his finger on it. But that this was Xia Lou's first son, Zhen was almost certain.

Within him awoke a fervent desire, a desire he had not thought about before this moment. He wanted a son. He was still annoyed at Noan. Tomorrow he must return to her and this time, he wanted a child. He would not be cold and quick as he knew she feared. Nothing would change. He wanted a child conceived in the joy of passion, of her desire and his. His thoughts, thus diverted, turned to Xia Lou. This was her son. He smiled inside his mind. Such a good-looking boy, strong and tall, clever and polite.

Can I meet you? he thought, Can I talk to you? About children, about life. He missed her, suddenly, in a completely unexpected way. He wanted to talk to her, to a woman full of intelligence that he loved and trusted. He wanted to share something of his life with her, his thoughts and dreams. The way it had been before they had ever made love, getting to understand each other in the old orchard on the hill. Yet it was so hard. There was this ultimatum standing between them. He wished, at that moment, that he had never voiced it.

18

The Temenggong's village was a surprise. His house, the Istana Lama, was not the large, straw-roofed ramshackle wooden hut which she had heard about but a whitewashed European villa with green shutters and roof tiles. Similar buildings and pavilions stood all around the main palace. It was unexpected though she could not now think why. Singapore was full of surprises of the architectural kind.