“My whole life married to him, I always have to hide my face. Remember the troubles when his mother died? And now this! If not this trouble, it’s that trouble! It never ends! When he first came to this country, he was in trouble with the law already. A fugitive from China with a price on his head. You know that his father went against the government? Now the son is going down the same road. What’s going to happen to my Kok Seng? The boy is going to England to study law. So we must uphold English law, right or not? If the government says Seng’s unsuitable for law studies, his father’s to blame! What am I to do?”
“Choon, we don’t know what’s to happen yet.”
“Easy for you to say, lah! Seng’s father is not like Boon. His clan and his politics always get him into trouble. How many times have I asked him to cut off ties with the White Crane? Let the Chinese in China deal with their own problems, I always told him. But he refused. He knew the authorities didn’t like it. He knew that they’d deport him. But he didn’t care! Now he’s caught! How will this affect his daughters’ chances of making a good match? Such a thought never crosses his mind, I can tell you! And just before this trouble happened, he wrote to Gek Lian. Gave her permission to take up nursing! Nursing is the most degrading work a girl can do. Even if Gek Lian herself doesn’t know any better, he, the father, should know better, right or not?”
“Tuck Heng’s thinking is very different from yours, Choon.”
“Different, I don’t mind. But have some concern for the girl’s future, lah! What else have I got besides my children? Nothing else ... In the early years, I was a very devoted wife. I helped to raise his standing among the good families in Penang. But how did he repay me? With shame and disgrace! Sure, he bought me jewellery. But do you think gold and diamonds are enough to take away my hurt? I scraped and stretched his money in the early days. Always kept his house open, his table well laid and his guests well supplied with food and drinks. But he’s got a hole in his memory! A big ... big hole!” She broke down and sobbed.
“Choon, please don’t cry. You’ll only make yourself sick.”
“Did he think of me when he went to the call girl? Just after the birth of his son! Did he think of me when he took a concubine? First in Taiping? Then in Gopeng? In Malacca, in Kuala Lumpur and the latest one in Singapore. A woman in every place! But still not enough. He sent for his mother and his China-born wife. Built a mansion for them! Ten times bigger than my bungalow!”
“Lie down and rest for a while. You won’t be able to sleep on the train.”
How could she rest? Kim had a good marriage. A good life. So it was easy for her to talk. Sir Boon Leong never looked at another woman after marrying her. Theirs was a good Christian marriage. Boon Leong’s brothers, Boon Haw and Boon Pin, also Christians, each married one wife. She envied these wives of Christian men. Tuck Heng would never ever see the goodness of a rich man having only one wife. “Such a man is a fool,” he said. “One man, many wives. As natural as one teapot to many cups.” But not to her! Not after what she’d seen in Roseville. There was a better kind of marriage than this! Why should a woman share her husband with others?
She wept and was angry with herself for weeping. She shouldn’t cry and fret for Tuck Heng after all these years. Better save her tears for herself. She sat up. Opened her suitcase and started to re-pack for the coming trip to Kuala Lumpur.
If the gods had been kinder to her and if her father richer, she would have been the wife of Sir Boon Leong today. She could not think of him even now without some memory of their younger days creeping in. They played hide-and-seek in the garden, fed the carps in the pond, rode in pony traps to Baba Wee’s orchard in Ayer Itam. In the orchard they were allowed to roam and pick rambutans in the long hot lazy days of the fruit season. When she was about sixteen, Boon Leong had peeled a rambutan, kissed it before giving it to her. He did it not once but twice, and those were the sweetest rambutans she had ever tasted.
The memory brought a sudden hot flush of colour to her face and left her drenched in a cold sweat. In three hours she would be leaving for Kuala Lumpur with Sir Boon Leong and Kok Seng, travelling in a first-class carriage by themselves. What could she possibly say to him during the long journey? Thirty years of small talk across the dining table in Roseville, always in the presence of others, had built a monumental mound beneath which lay buried the feelings she had once harboured for him. Her heart had died the day he married Kim Neo. It was a match which her own father, a poor distant cousin of the Wees, could not make for her because he was just a clerk from a poor family.
She brushed away a tear, closed her tired eyes and tried to get some sleep. But her heart was beating too fast. Instinctively she put her hand on her breast and tried to still the chaos which threatened to overwhelm her. A storm was brewing in her mind. The wind was blowing asunder the closed pages of her past, sending the leaves fleeing before her as she stumbled after them, now with the sun in her eyes, now with the shadows and dust, half-blinding her to the present. She clutched at her bitterness. Struggled in vain to drag a millstone over the memories of her girlhood and what-could-have-been, till finally, exhausted, she fell asleep on the bed.