Authors: Ann Massey
The White Amah
First published in Australia 2010
This edition published January 2010
Copyright © Ann Massey 2010
Cover design, typesetting: Chameleon Print Design
The right of Ann Massey to be identified as the Author
of the Work has been asserted in accordance with the
Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
This book is a work of fiction. Any similarities to that of
people living or dead are purely coincidental.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
Massey, Ann
White Amah, The
ISBN: 1456578065 EAN13: 9781456578060
E-Book ISBN: 978-1-61789-779-5
pp324
Chapter 1
S
HAKE SHAKE SHAKE
, S
HAKE SHAKE SHAKE,
S
HAKE YOUR BOOTY,
S
HAKE YOUR BOOTY ...
The funky tune blaring from the boom box could be heard as far away as the English block and irritated teachers closed their windows. The first full dress rehearsal for the Rock Eisteddfod School Challenge was underway and the girls performing the hectic routine were having fun, showing off in the gold Lurex outfits they had made in home ec, thrilled with the greasepaint and false eyelashes their teacher had ordered in bulk.
A late student strolled down the corridor, seemingly in no hurry to get to class. She pushed open the door to the dance studio and was stunned. The familiar room had been transformed overnight, with strobe lighting, dry ice and a cage suspended from the ceiling, courtesy of the design and technology boys who were rapt to have an excuse to hang around the dance students, by far the hottest chicks in school.
‘You have to sign this, Miss,’ yelled Crystal, trying to make herself heard over the deafening music.
The teacher signalled to a student to turn it off. ‘I didn’t recognise you. What a transformation,’ she said, trying to keep the disapproval out of her voice.
Crystal’s waist-length cloak of silky black hair had been bleached and crimped into a mane of wild, platinum-blond curls.
Disapproval turned to horror when the teacher realised the star of her next production was leaving school for good.
‘What about the Rock Eisteddfod?’ she said, collapsing into her director’s chair. ‘It’s only a fortnight away and you’re singing two solos.’
Crystal tossed back her bouncy blond tresses. ‘Get Shannon to take over, she’s the understudy.’
‘But it’s only three weeks before your final exams. Are you moving?’
‘If you must know, I’ve got a job. Look for yourself.’
The teacher scanned the letter offering Crystal a place in the White Diamonds tour of South-East Asia. ‘Surely your father isn’t going to let you travel overseas on your own,’ she asked. After all, Crystal was only seventeen.
‘Why not? This is my big chance. You’ve heard of the Bluebell girls, haven’t you?’
‘Of course I have. They were a legend, the most famous dancing troupe in the world.’
‘Well, the White Diamonds are as big in Singapore as the Bluebells were in Paris. Dad’s proud of me. It’s really hard to get in. Places hardly ever come up. It doesn’t matter how good a dancer you are, they won’t look at you unless you’re tall and blond. I was really smart – I wore a wig to the audition or I wouldn’t have got through the door.’
‘You’ve always been resourceful,’ said the teacher, who had spent the weekend marking assignments. Crystal’s was blatantly plagiarised, but it was too late to worry about that now. ‘You’re so close to graduating, Crystal. At least with a school certificate you’ll have career options. Show business is a very precarious way to earn a living.’
‘If Dad’s okay with it, what’s it to you? Are you going to sign the release? I’ve got to get all my other teachers to sign this too before I can leave school.’
‘I’m not happy about you backing out of the school production at such short notice.’
‘Life’s a bitch!’ Crystal’s friend Tess called out and the class convulsed in laughter.
Watching anger flash across the teacher’s face, Crystal decided it was time to get out of there. ‘Can Tess come with me to get the rest of the signatures?’
‘Just go, both of you.’
‘I thought she was going to have a hissy fit,’ giggled Tess when they were out of earshot.
Crystal dropped down on the lawn in the great court beside her friend. ‘She’s making a big deal over nothing, like usual. Shannon knows all the songs and routines.’
Momentarily Crystal’s dazzling eyes dimmed. The set was amazing and the girls looked great in their spunky costumes; this could be the year the school finally won. The Eisteddfod was a big deal. The star of the winning production could walk into any of the performing-art courses. Frustration churned inside her. It would be just her luck for that snake Shannon to end up at the National Institute of Dramatic Art. In her mind she saw her rival accepting the shield on behalf of the school, taking her bows, accepting the bouquets, the centre of attention.
Nervously, Crystal twirled a strand of hair around her finger. It felt dry and lifeless. She anxiously inspected it for split ends. She wouldn’t admit it but she cringed every time she looked in the mirror and saw her blond hair, but the troupe’s director
Jimmy Wong had insisted. The pint-sized Singaporean, in a creased linen safari suit and wearing enough gold chains and rings to stock a jeweller’s showcase, had exhaled a pungent clovescented cloud and looked her up and down in a way that made her feel uneasy.
‘Asian men like blond girls with long legs,’ he said. ‘Fix your hair and the job’s yours. I’ve got a friend with a salon. Tell him you’re one of my girls’ – his eyes flickered over her possessively – ‘and he’ll do it pretty damn cheap for you, lah.’
It’ll probably break, she thought, tucking her hair behind her ear and vowing to buy the most expensive conditioner she could find. ‘You haven’t told me what you think about my makeover, Tess. Tell me the truth, Tess. I won’t get mad if you say you don’t like it.’
‘All you need is a beauty spot and you could be Cindy Crawford’s twin sister,’ replied Tess, eyeing Crystal’s crimped platinum hair. Most of it was piled in a loose, high chignon with the rest tumbling in ringlets to her waist. ‘I wish Mum would let me dye mine. You don’t know how lucky you are, living with your dad.’
‘Yeah,’ agreed Crystal, who got tired of listening to her friends moan about their mothers. The only girl at school with a mother who’d run off to join a commune, she’d accepted living with her father as long as the compulsive workaholic didn’t interfere in her life. After ten years she could hardly remember her mother and there was nothing left to remind her. Soon after the split she and her father had moved from the homely, welcoming cottage set on five acres of timbered parkland, with a winter creek and a paddock for Crystal’s Welsh pony, into a glass-and-steel apartment in the city close to her father’s office. Every photo and piece of clothing or jewellery had been thrown away; even the
furniture had been replaced. An interior decorator her father was dating had furnished the rooms like something out of
Home and Garden.
The apartment had nothing of her mother’s quirky taste, but worse than the absence of mementos was the conspiracy of silence.
On her eighth birthday her Auntie Rose had taken her aside and told her that she must stop asking when her mother was coming back. ‘Your father can’t take much more after what your mother put him through,’ she warned. ‘You could move in with me and Uncle Bill … but that would mean your cousins sharing a room and they wouldn’t like that. You know how they fight.’
Crystal had often heard her father complaining that his lazy good-for-nothing brother-in-law should ‘get off his arse’ and provide a decent home for his sister. She couldn’t bear the thought of living in her aunt’s cramped housing commission duplex and she could still remember her father shouting at her mother, ‘Get out, you tramp, and don’t show your face here ever again.’ Crystal wasn’t taking any chances and never asked about her mother again.
‘I still can’t believe your father’s agreed to let you go to Singapore on your own,’ said Tess. ‘I mean, it would be different if you were going with me. We could look out for each other.’