That night Lu See found Mother lying flat on her back on the billiard room floor. She had her arm flung above her head. She did not appear to be breathing.
‘‘Mother! Have you fallen? Mother!’’
Her mother stirred. There was half a walnut shell over her left eye and a crudely rolled lit cigar smouldering in her ear.
‘‘What the hell–?’’
‘‘All okay!’’ blurted Mother, sounding anything but okay. ‘‘This is old-village acupuncture therapy. No need to panic!’’ she said sounding panicky.
‘‘Why do you have a walnut on your eye?’’
‘‘I soaked it in herbal tea. For treating eye disorders. And burning dried moxa leaves in ear helps circulation.’’
‘‘I didn’t know you had an eye disorder?’’
‘‘I don’t.’’ She lifted a pyjamaed leg and bent it at the knee. ‘‘It’s my nerves. Seeing what happened to you make them shake all over.’’
Lu See wanted to tell her not to worry, but what good would that do? All her mother did these days was worry and complain.
‘‘I told you about the reprisals, but you always too stubborn. The shame of seeing you kneeling in the dirt today.’’ Her hand went to her heart. ‘‘How can I hold my head up in this community now?’’
‘‘It won’t be for much longer. I discussed it with Uncle Big Jowl and we’ve decided to make the move to Kuala Lumpur.’’ Lu See peeked out the window for any sign of villagers. ‘‘He will put the house and the remaining acreage up for sale. We will start a new life in the city. Maybe I can open a small restaurant or something.’’
‘‘Restaurant,’’ Mother said with disdain.
‘‘But there’s something Uncle Big Jowl and I have to do before we leave. We have to reclaim the pipes we buried years ago and restore the church organ to its former glory. I owe it to Second-aunty Doris and Tak Ming.’’
‘‘Restaurant,’’ Mother repeated. ‘‘One of the most powerful families in Penang state before the war … and now? Running a chop suey house,’’ she spat. ‘‘What am I going to do, wash dishes?’’ Lu See pretended not to listen. ‘‘I’m sorry but I still cannot forgive your father selling our land to the Japanese. And for so cheap too! We used to have status …’’ The smoke billowed from her ear. ‘‘In one foul-bowel swoop he turned us into paupers! Paupers!’’
‘‘Calm down, Mother. I thought your generation was meant to be good at hiding your feelings?’’
‘‘How can I hide when your father acted like fishmonger on a hot day? Everything sell, sell, sell.’’
‘‘His actions kept us alive.’’
‘‘Alive? Who cares about alive? What about our social standing?’’
Exasperated, Lu See made for the kitchen. She brewed herself a cup of Boh tea and leafed through the newspaper. ‘‘What’s this?’’ she said, reading a headline. ‘‘Mother, Uncle Big Jowl!’’ she cried, racing into the living room. ‘‘Listen to this! It says here that the chairman of Hip Sing Rubber Processing Co. confessed on his deathbed that he was responsible for the 1935 dynamiting the Juru River dam. He claimed he did it in an attempt to ruin the nearby plantations and buy up land on the cheap.’’
Her uncle winced. ‘‘Bloody no-good scoundrel, aahh! That fellow like a spider creeping behind a stone.’’
‘‘Wait, there’s more. It says that he conspired with the late Woo Hak-yeung, an unashamed Japanese collaborator, who had been cast out of the Woo clan years before. Woo Hak-yeung’s body was discovered hanging from a tree in Juru last week in what was believed to be a retaliation killing.’’
‘‘Woo Hak-yeung was known as the Black-headed Sheep,’’ said Uncle Big Jowl.
‘‘The man with the mole. So it was him. He really is dead. I must have been wrong; the MPAJA did kill him. Don’t you see what this means? It means an end to our feud with the Woos.’’
‘‘Nonsense,’’ said Mother, walnut still attached to her eye like a pirate’s patch, ‘‘this feud started years before that bloody dam-bursting.’’
‘‘But we can start afresh now. Forgive and forget.’’
‘‘The Woos never forget. Never!’’ said Mother, removing the smoking cheroot from her ear.
Lu See puffed out her cheeks. ‘‘Well, I have never had an issue with them.’’
‘‘They will always see us as their enemies,’’ Uncle Big Jowl said. ‘‘Look how they treat Mabel, their own granddaughter. They refuse to acknowledge her.’’
‘‘Well, in order to know your enemy you must befriend him, or at least pretend to be his friend, no?’’
Uncle Big Jowl fanned himself with a banana leaf. ‘‘What are you suggesting, Lu See?’’
‘‘We ask them over.’’
Uncle Big Jowl’s chin dropped comically like an accordion jaw. ‘‘Ask them over? What, aahh, to a tea party?’’ He laughed, pretending to hold a teacup with his pinkie in the air. ‘‘Cucumber sandwiches on the lawn, snooty British-style?’’
‘‘I was thinking more a shot of coconut toddy.’’
‘‘Hnn, this country in middle of a food crisis and you want to host a party, is it?’’ smirked Mother.
‘‘I’m trying to mend bridges. I want to talk with Matriarch Woo.’’
‘‘That stubborn old sow? Cha!’’
‘‘You will only provoke them, aahh. Speaking of provoke,’’ he said to Mother, starting one of his tangents. ‘‘Eye injury can provoke cataracts. You should remove the walnut.’’
‘‘When was the last time a Teoh asked a Woo to anything?’’ said Lu See, feeling a flicker of impatience.
The big man scratched his forehead. ‘‘Apart from to knock heads together like coconuts? Never. At least not in my lifetime.’’
‘‘Well, there you have it. Time to put that right.’’
Uncle Big jowl shrugged. ‘‘Better to have Indian pissing out of wigwam than have him pissing in.’’
The next day Lu See ground her ink stick onto some water and, using a brush, composed an invitation on a Chinese scroll, carefully writing the important family names in black lettering. When she finished and dabbed dry the ink she sent a barefoot village boy round to Swettenham Lodge, the Woo compound, to deliver it.
‘‘What, lah?’’ the townspeople asked. ‘‘It must be a trick.’’
Within hours Lu See received a reply – a short one-word response accepting her offer of drinks.
From a cabinet in the billiard room Lu See brought out the only glasses she had in the house, a set of mismatched goblets, and set them out on the dining table. She wiped her hand on her skirt and realized her hands were sweating.
‘‘Chee-chee! This is how trouble starts,’’ said Mother. ‘‘When you invite a cobra into your house, expect nothing but trouble.’’ She eyed the mismatched goblets. ‘‘You better prepare some small chow. People come expecting food. You better pick up your socks if you want to do everything on time.’’
‘‘I think the expression is ‘pull your socks up’, Mother.’’
‘‘You look nervous. Do you feel nervous?’’
Irritated, Lu See snapped, ‘‘Yes, Mother, I am nervous. Aren’t you?’’
‘‘Why should I be nervous? You are the one who invite them.’’ She removed her spectacles and polished the lenses against her sleeve. ‘‘All this your idea.’’
‘‘Yes, I’m well aware of that.’’
Mother tilted her head this way and that. ‘‘And a bad idea to boots. How many of them do you expect will come?’’
Lu See took a cloth and wiped the goblets of dust. ‘‘I think we’ll see the head of the family and perhaps one of his sons.’’
‘‘One of Adrian’s brothers, meh?’’
Lu See swallowed and felt her throat catch. ‘‘I expect so.’’
Her mother shook her head and scratched her palms. ‘‘You know they’ll come here and start blaming you for his accident.’’
Lu See gritted her teeth. ‘‘Well, I can’t change that. I’ll just have to swallow it.’’
‘‘If you didn’t run off to England he would still be alive, I bet that is what they say.’’
‘‘Mother!’’ She threw the cloth onto the table in protest. ‘‘Have you any idea how hurtful your comments can be sometimes?’’
‘‘Hurtful? How? No, why hurtful, hurtful to who-ah?’’
‘‘To me, to all of us. What is it with you?’’ she challenged.
‘‘I speak my mind, that’s all. And if you don’t like …’’ She washed her hands in the air. ‘‘… not my problem. I say what I think.’’ She eyed her daughter. ‘‘Aya, don’t look at me like that. Why don’t you sit down? Now you are even making me anxious, pacing back and forth, back and forth like a betel nut worm.’’
‘‘Please, just let me get on with this, will you? I want this to work out.’’
‘‘Cha! Waste of time.’’
Lu See shrugged. ‘‘We’ll see.’’
Mother couldn’t resist not getting in the last word. ‘‘See, my foot.’’
The following day the cookboy from the Woo house came with a box of pineapples. He bowed reverently and announced that owing to a family illness Woo-sang senior would not be coming after all and to please accept the gift of fruit as an expression of regret.
‘‘Damn-powerful outrageous!’’ bellowed Uncle Big Jowl. He drew on his cheroot and smoke hung blue in the air. ‘‘We’ve been jilted, aahh.’’
Mother tilted her head this way and that. ‘‘See? I told you, waste of time, liao. Don’t look like that, Lu See, you know it’s true.’’
The cookboy placed the box of pineapples on a table and turned to leave.
‘‘Wait!’’ cried Lu See as he drifted out the door. ‘‘Who is ill?’’
‘‘Grandson number one,’’ he replied.
‘‘Hold on,’’ she said. ‘‘I am coming with you.’’
When Lu See arrived at Swettenham Lodge armed with her father’s copy of The Household Physician the cookboy told her to wait in the poorly lit drawing room. She’d been in the house but once before, on her return from England, to inform the family of Adrian’s death. The patriarch turned her out and told her he wanted nothing to do with Mabel, his granddaughter. It had been a traumatic experience, one she preferred to forget. For several minutes she glanced about the Woo drawing room, getting her bearings, wondering how many of the objects had been here in Adrian’s time, how many he had touched with his own hands.
Moments later a parade of Woo women appeared in neatly ironed dresses and stiff smiles. The matriarch of the family stepped forward and greeted her with folded hands. ‘‘How is the child?’’ asked Lu See.
‘‘His condition has worsened,’’ replied Matriarch Woo solemnly.
‘‘May I see him?’’
‘‘Why?’’ asked the child’s mother, a young woman of about twenty-five, her voice crackly and breathless.
‘‘I want to help.’’
‘‘Unless you are a doctor I doubt you can help. And what is the point of calling a doctor if there is no medicine to be bought?’’ said one of the older aunties.
‘‘Besides,’’ offered another with an intense look, ‘‘all the doctors have run off to Kuala Lumpur where the money is better.’’
Lu See squared her shoulders. ‘‘I may not be a doctor but I have a book of medicine with me.’’
A pointed silence filled the room. The aunties exchanged reluctant noises. ‘‘Let me at least see him.’’
‘‘Very well,’’ said Matriarch Woo.
They led Lu See up the stairs to a dim outpost of the sprawling house. In the child’s room Lu See pulled up a chair so that it was next to the bed. She placed the back of her hand on his forehead. He had a high spiking fever and no longer recognized his own family.
‘‘Where is the pain?’’ she asked the boy. ‘‘Is the pain sharp like a cut or dull like a bruise?’’
When he didn’t reply his mother responded on his behalf. ‘‘In his stomach and he has been wetting his bed every hour. We gave him rancid brinjal and vinegar but his fever will not break.’’
Lu See knelt at the child’s bedside and ran a cool, damp towel over his face. She placed her palm on the boy’s abdomen and ironed it gently with the flat of her hand. Then she touched the lower right side of his tummy and pressed down. The boy barely moved. Frowning, she could feel the abdomen was distended. ‘‘Not appendicitis, otherwise he would have jerked with pain.’’
‘‘His lips have turned white.’’
‘‘He’s dehydrated. Get him to drink more water.’’
They applied a wet cloth to his mouth and dribbled water onto his tongue.
With a quiet strength, Lu See stayed by his side for several minutes unsure what she could do. She studied the young boy’s pale face and the blades of his narrow shoulders and thought of Adrian. He would have looked like, as an eight year old. He would have looked just like this.
Tenderly, she stroked his hair. She tried to recall what it was like to see Adrian’s face, what it was like to hold Adrian in her arms; when he was warm, when he was whole. But she couldn’t remember; the weight of grief had seen to that. She pinched her eyes shut and tried to squeeze the memories out. Her hands went to a piece of loose thread attached to her sleeve. And like a reflex her mind unspooled, taking her back to the hospital at Addenbrooke’s and its institution-green walls.
A nurse wheeling a trolley of kidney dishes immediately abandoned what she was doing to help Lu See to a bench in a big empty corridor. ‘‘I want to see my husband,’’ she said, but the nurse gave her a sympathetic look that said, Now’s not the time; he’s lying on a marble slab.
She sat on the plain wooden bench, shaking in her overcoat, the sleeves of her cardigan pulled down over the backs of her hands. Every so often she stared at the wall clock, but dark spots bobbed before her like black watermelon seeds. Only when the same nurse offered her a cup of tea did she notice that over an hour had gone by. She placed her hands on her tummy, her eight-week pregnant tummy. For the first time that day she realized the child would be fatherless.
Only last night Adrian had pressed his face against her tummy. She vaguely remembered him kissing her belly button through her dress, tickling, making her laugh. And the more she giggled the more he tickled. Had that been yesterday or some other evening?
Lu See felt a panic grow within her. She looked about and hoped the nurse with the white cape and red cross embroidered on her bosom would come and sit with her. But she didn’t.
She waited; she thought about the future of her unborn child, and waited.
Finally, the coroner appeared. He wanted her to come with him. He and a houseman led her into an old iron elevator that took her down to the windowless basement.
The houseman flicked a basement switch. Overhead lights sparked on. She saw a raised table at the centre of the room with the contours of a body shrouded by a white sheet. The houseman stood by her side in case she collapsed.
‘‘All right,’’ the coroner said in a steady, composed tone. ‘‘When you’re ready.’’
She nodded.
He pulled the white sheet from Adrian’s motionless frame, exposing his wan chest and small pink nipples, his arms arranged by his sides. The first thing she noticed was the bones protruding through his upper chest. His clavicle and ribs had splintered and pushed through the skin.
Lu See started gasping for air.
Adrian’s eyes were closed and the overhead lights turned his cheeks the blued white of an iceberg. He was as pale as a wax model. The back of his head looked warped, caved in almost; it was where he must have struck the ground, she thought.
‘‘Is this Adrian Woo?’’ asked the coroner.
She looked at him. His lips were dry and cracked, flecked with blood. The hair he was always so proud of looked sleep-tangled. She nodded.
Tremulously, Lu See touched him. She wanted to feel his warmth. There was none. He was a piece of marble, nothing but a cold shell. She leaned closer. His smell still floated on his skin. ‘‘Come back, Adrian,’’ she whispered inaudibly, lovingly smoothing his hair. She pressed her open mouth onto his flesh. ‘‘Please come back to me.’’
The coroner pulled the sheet over Adrian.
‘‘Please don’t cover him up.’’
She crumpled over her husband, her arms around him, embracing him. She wanted to cry out again and again but her throat was closed.
Her eyes remained riveted to the white sheet covering him as she was led away. It was as though her feet had been snatched from under her.
She was falling.
Some time later, Lu See found herself back in the big empty hospital corridor, on the same wooden bench. She cocooned herself in her arms and waited.
Her hands began to tremble. She felt stripped bare, like a tree ripped of its leaves. An hour passed, followed by another. Then the administrative nurse appeared with a bespectacled man from the hospital’s accounts department. He carried a clipboard. Handing her Adrian’s wristwatch, wedding ring and house keys, he wanted to know if she wanted them to make arrangements and pick out a casket. In hushed tones he asked her what was to be done with the remains.
The remains. The word burned like a flame in her chest – a moment of sickly realization.
She stared at the wristwatch and the gold band in her hand. The wristwatch had stopped ticking. Lu See retched once; then twice. Whirling round she was sick on the floor, her insides gushing out like bilge water squeezed from a sponge.
Lu See flipped through the pages of her father’s old leather bound tome. Adrian had mentioned something years ago about Arrowroot.
‘‘I think he may have a urinary infection,’’ she said to Matriarch Woo.
‘‘What can we do?’’ the mother despaired.
Lu See searched through the index, flicked from one silverfished page to another, found the section headed Maranta arundinacea. ‘‘It says here that Arrowroot plant is abundant in certain parts of Asia and produces soft, oval-shaped leaves up to ten inches long. Look, here’s a picture. The Malay word for it is Koova. Fun koat in Cantonese. White flowers. Currant-like berries. Apparently it grows inland, in well-drained soil.’’ Moments later the entire household staff went into the forest armed with lamps and candles in search of the tree.
At long last they returned with a basketful of rhizomes. Lu See instructed them to grind the rootstalks into a powder and mix it with boiled water to make a thin gruel. Propping his head up, Lu See dribbled spoonfuls from a bowl into the boy’s mouth.
An hour went by. Fresh candles replaced the guttered ones. Lu See kept vigil over the boy.
‘‘His fever is breaking,’’ announced the child’s mother.
Lu See approached him and felt for the radial artery on his wrist. ‘‘His pulse is stronger.’’ She saw the sweat gleaming like copper off his forehead. ‘‘Perspiring will help cool him down. Just make sure he drinks plenty of water.’’
‘‘He is sleeping soundly now,’’ observed Matriarch Woo. ‘‘I think the medication has worked.’’
‘‘Then I shall leave you,’’ said Lu See, folding her hands in farewell.
As she left the room Matriarch Woo called after her. The old lady took Lu See’s arms in hers. ‘‘For years I have hated you for returning without my son. For years I blamed you for his death. For years I have ignored my own granddaughter … and for that I feel regret.’’
Lu See studied her face, which still carried the haunted struggles of a mother who’d lost her son.
‘‘Thank you, Lu See,’’ she said. They looked deep into one another’s eyes – Adrian’s mother smiled a sad smile. ‘‘I wish,’’ she said in a soft voice. ‘‘I wish there was some way, some key into the past to change things, but there isn’t.’’
‘‘All my memories of him are sealed in one place …’’ her voice trailed off. ‘‘Like a shrine.’’
‘‘Thank you for healing the child. I can see now why my Adrian married you.’’
Lu See dipped her head and kissed the old lady’s hand. When she reached the bottom of the stairs she slipped off Adrian’s old wristwatch and left it on the hall table before retreating into the shadows of the night.
With the help of a military chaplain, Uncle Big Jowl obtained the use of an army lorry and three shovel-wielding coolies.
He drove the lorry to the periphery of the jungle and instructed the coolies to start digging at a spot marked with a gravestone.
Lu See and Mabel knelt close by in the undergrowth, shaded from the sun. ‘‘Is this where the treasure is?’’ Mabel asked, trying not to sound excited.
‘‘Yes, just be patient,’’ replied Lu See. Her face was scarlet with anticipated triumph.
One of the coolies held back the encroaching elephant grass as the other two stuck their shovels into the earth. Ten minutes later they stopped working.
‘‘Have they found it?’’ cried Mabel, running up to peer into the excavated ditch.
Among the coarse earth and broken weed stalks, wedged into the soil, was a large wooden box.
‘‘What’s this?’’ Lu See demanded. ‘‘This wasn’t here before. We put down canvas.’’ She looked at Uncle Big Jowl, trying to make sense of it. ‘‘I don’t understand. We didn’t bury this, we buried pipes,’’ she told the coolies. ‘‘Copper pipes. I wrapped them myself in oiled canvases.’’
‘‘No pipes here,’’ proclaimed the head coolie. ‘‘You want us to bring it up?’’
The coolies lifted the box out of the hole and placed it on solid ground. The box was about three-feet long by two-feet wide. It was coated in a green moss.
Everyone stared at it.
Uncle Big Jowl crouched down and placed his hand on the lid.
‘‘Careful!’’ warned a coolie. ‘‘The Japanese might be responsible for this. It may be booby-trapped!’’ But Uncle Big Jowl didn’t withdraw his hand. Rather, he positioned his other hand on the far end of the lid and dug his fingers into the grooves, easing it off its hinges.
‘‘What do you see?’’ asked Mabel, almost hopping now with excitement. ‘‘What’s inside?’’
Uncle Big Jowl removed the canvas covering.
Lu See stared in horror. She shrieked and shielded her daughter’s face with her arm.
Coffin flies flew up from the putrefying skull.
Worms had eaten away the animal’s eyes. Its face was pulled back in a grimace. Only bone and tufts of black curly wool remained.
It was the severed head of a sheep.