THE SUN PUSHED IN through the shutters to illuminate the glass cases in Lim Hock An’s jade museum. The mysterious light came not from the sun but from the aqueous reflection of jade. Even as a child Mei Lan had entered this silent world in awe; it was no different now that she was sixteen. From the mountain of packing cases in the room came the raw smell of new wood, its astringency a relief after the fetid smells of the sickroom upstairs. There, the sight of her mother with her distraught face and unkempt hair lank from illness and fevered tossing alarmed her. Mei Lan had been happy to leave the room with JJ when the doctor arrived.
The floorboards creaked as she and her brother stepped into the jade museum. As children they had not been allowed into the room, but JJ had always known where the key was kept. Known too how to open that one special cabinet of frosted glass that held Lim Hock An’s collection of erotic jade carvings. The things inside are not for girls to see, JJ always told her with a superior smile, locking the cabinet and pocketing the key almost before she had looked within. Now, Lim Hock An’s secret collection was gone, the doors to the cabinet stood ajar, shelves empty of the miniature people in contorted postures and the men who sported giant phalluses. The family were soon to move out of Lim Villa, and the crating of valuables had already begun.
‘They’ve gone already,’ Mei Lan said staring at the empty shelves that had once housed the lewd carvings. Only one showcase remained to be packed and Mei Lan stared sorrowfully at the remaining jade cabbage, translucent Ming goblets, and a pink jade mother and child. Soon these familiar things would join the mountain of wooden crates stacked at one end of the room.
‘I’m glad I’ll have sailed for England before we move out,’ JJ said in a low voice. Behind wide-set eyes, his expression was suddenly uncertain and he looked at his sister for encouragement. In preparation for the travel ahead the barber had cut JJ’s thick hair in a pudding-bowl shape, leaving his ears looking vulnerable. He ran his hand over his head in distress, trying to flatten a disobedient tuft of hair on his crown.
‘It will grow,’ Mei Lan reassured him. She was tempted to take his hand as she had done when they were much younger and he was unhappy, but she knew he would push her away. There were just two years between them but the gap appeared more for he spoke to her now condescendingly, as if already he had entered the world of men. Their father had introduced him into his own clubs and she suspected might have arranged for JJ to visit a prostitute. This thought filled her with angry revulsion; she had been left far behind. Soon he would leave for university in England, sailing out of her life. Too many things were changing too quickly.
Lim Hock An had been forced to sell his grand mansion, Lim Villa; it was soon to become a Methodist girls’ school. His fortune had been one of many that had not survived the recent years of severe economic depression. The price of rubber and tin, in which Lim Hock An had invested the bulk of his fortune, had dipped to unbearable lows. As he slashed and sold off to save his name, Lim Hock An was unaware to what extent the extravagant gambling of his son, Boon Eng, had already undermined him. When eventually the day of reckoning came, the great House of Lim collapsed like a fragile pack of cards around Boon Eng’s monstrous debts.
Through the windows of the jade museum, Mei Lan could see Bougainvillaea House, the small home Lim Hock An had built for Little Sparrow on the edge of the Lim Villa grounds, when he had made her Third Wife. Now, Little Sparrow was being sent to a cottage on the East Coast, and within days Mei Lan and her parents, with Lim Hock An and Second Grandmother, would move into Little Sparrow’s house. How would they fit into the tiny place? Mei Lan wondered. How could they stare from its windows at Lim Villa, never to enter it again? Mei Lan sat down on a hard wooden bench beside JJ. The raw smell of the packing cases was a painful reminder that change was already upon them.
‘All men gamble,’ JJ said as if picking up a conversation, referring in a low, fierce voice to their father. Side by side on the wooden bench they stared at the empty glass cases before them.
‘But Father knew the situation, why couldn’t he control himself?’ Mei Lan’s voice was full of resentment; her father’s gambling had ruined their lives and made their mother sick. Lim Hock An’s old friend Tan Kah Kee, who himself had troubles because of the Depression, had generously offered to arrange JJ’s fees at Oxford, much to everyone’s relief and embarrassment. The shame of it all was in Lim Hock An’s face, and it shocked Mei Lan to see such vulnerability in her grandfather.
All her childhood her grandfather had been a distant figure, but when she entered her teens an unexpected bond had developed between them. She was not afraid to speak her mind; she did not swallow her words in fear before him like JJ or their father, Boon Eng. Even when small, Mei Lan had looked directly into his face, querying his commands. When she grew older he seemed to seek her company; he spoke to her of his early years and once took her with him to the Chinese Opera, leaving Second Grandmother behind much to her displeasure. Once, he told her he wished she were a boy. Once, on an outing, as they passed the docks Lim Hock An had ordered the car to stop and from the window observed the great ships berthed along the quay.
‘Once, I was like those men,’ Lim Hock An said, pointing to lines of coolies carrying coal to a lighter, bent low beneath the weight on their backs. He spoke softly near Mei Lan’s ear and she had the feeling he had admitted this to no one before.
‘You look like her,’ he told her another time, staring at Mei Lan so hard that she felt uncomfortable. She knew he referred to First Grandmother whose name had been Chwee Gek, but Mei Lan could not tell if the resemblance to her grandmother was a positive or negative attribute, for nobody ever spoke of her.
‘It’s shameful. We’ve lost face before everyone,’ Mei Lan said to JJ, kicking the dusty floor, seeing again the weary expression on her grandfather’s face, and repeating words her mother had spoken. Her parents, between whom there was always a frosty space, were now no longer talking.
‘Even if I have to earn the money myself, I’ll follow you to Oxford. I want to be a lawyer too, then we can practise together,’ Mei Lan vowed, but to her surprise JJ gave a snort of laughter.
‘There are no Chinese women at Oxford, and not many English ones either. Women don’t become lawyers. Besides, you’re still a child.’ He turned to stare at her as she sat beside him in her school uniform of starched white cotton. His dismissal brought tears to her eyes and she turned upon him furiously; he was just like her teacher at the Chinese Girls’ High School who said ambition in a woman was outlandish. She was a good student, top of the class, yet the confines of the school closed about her while JJ, at the Anglo-Chinese School, was encouraged like all boys to look out at the world, take scholarships and enter university.
‘Then I will be the first,’ she insisted, pigtails swinging as she angrily tossed her head. JJ looked at her sharply, sensing danger; her round eyes were aflame. She was tall like their mother, with the same natural elegance and a gaze that thrust straight to the centre of him; she always seemed to know his thoughts, uncovering every subterfuge, her cool scrutiny unsettling.
‘What will happen to Little Sparrow now that Grandfather has sent her so far away?’ Mei Lan asked, seeking to change the subject.
She felt sorry for Little Sparrow. Whatever she gained in life she seemed destined to lose. Mei Lan remembered how Little Sparrow had returned from the nunnery with a baby boy, to the wrath of Second Grandmother. No longer a slave girl now, but elevated through the birth of a son to the position of Lim Hock An’s concubine, she soon became pregnant again. Although Little Sparrow’s second child was disappointingly a girl, whom she called Ching Ling, Lim Hock An still insisted on marrying her, further raising her status to that of Third Wife. Second Grandmother had nearly gone mad, refusing to allow her former slave girl to be ensconced beside her in Lim Villa. Lim Hock An then built a small home for his Third Wife in the garden of his great mansion. Bougainvillaea House had all the charm Lim Villa lacked, and was surrounded by a profusion of flowering magenta shrubs. Second Grandmother watched its construction in cold fury. In retaliation she demanded that Little Sparrow hand over her son to be reared in the main house under the eye of his father. Second Grandmother had produced no children, but as Senior Wife she had the right to claim a junior wife’s child as her own. Little Sparrow had no recourse to protest, and was forced to bow to tradition. She became thin and sad and afflicted by migraine and, on those rare visits she made to her old home, her eyes remained fixed on her son. Things did not improve; Lim Hock An eventually lost interest in her for, as Second Grandmother pointed out, his fortune began to diminish from the day he made Little Sparrow Third Wife. It hurt no one now to evict her from Bougainvillaea House and banish her to the distant East Coast. Although still young her face was drawn, life’s inadequacies now surfacing in her vacant eyes and a nervous fluttering of hands.
At last the doctor left, and Mei Lan and JJ were summoned back upstairs to the sickroom with its trapped heat and sour odours. The room was stifling, the shutters closed at the windows to lessen the glare of sunlight. Even the draught of the fan was too much for Ei Ling who had suddenly fallen sick the week before with a high fever that refused to respond to conventional treatment. Mei Lan was filled with fear; the sallow-faced woman, thin as a bird, tossing and groaning beneath the sheets, was but a reflection of her vivacious mother. The nurses who tended her waited, white and still as ghosts in a corner. All that could be heard was the ticking of a clock and the screech of cockatoos settling for the night in the garden. As they entered the room their father, Boon Eng, followed them in, dressed for the evening in a black bow tie and a white dinner jacket, an ivory cigarette holder clenched as always between his teeth.
‘They may take her into hospital tonight.’ He looked down at his wife dispassionately. Mei Lan watched a strand of smoke twisting up from the cigarette and a rush of terror filled her.
‘I will not. I will not.’ Ei Ling stirred and began a delirious babbling, the words pulled up from deep within her. Boon Eng continued to look down upon her without expression.
‘The fever has risen. They now think it’s dengue fever,’ he told his children. Until that morning he had dismissed Ei Ling’s indisposition as an insignificant bout of flu and had not interrupted his social life to sit beside his wife. Although nothing was said openly, everyone knew other women existed for him beyond the company of his wife. He kept no official concubine, had not installed a Second Wife in the house as his father had done, but the quarrels Mei Lan had listened to as a child and the memory of her mother’s tear-stained face held new meaning for her as an adult. She understood too something of her mother’s difficulties in the House of Lim.
Ei Ling was a Straits Chinese, the daughter of an established and educated family that, unlike Lim Hock An who had arrived in Singapore as an illiterate coolie, had left their country generations before to settle in Malaya. Although proudly Chinese in beliefs and ritual, the Peranakan Straits Chinese did not look back to China as a homeland as Lim Hock An did, nor did they oppose colonial rule; instead they adapted to its ways, educating their children in English missionary schools, adopting westernised ideas and habits. To Lim Hock An, Ei Ling had been a good choice of wife for his son, adding culture to his own raw wealth. The spoilt and dilettante Lim Boon Eng had reluctantly acquiesced to the match, meeting Ei Ling only twice before the marriage.
‘Why are you going out?’ Mei Lan demanded, trying not to shout at her father. Boon Eng frowned, pursing his lips, glancing again at his wife.
‘Because there is nothing I can do here. The doctor has given her an injection; it should work soon and she will sleep,’ Boon Eng said impatiently, as if he had acquitted himself of his duty.
Even as he spoke he was stepping towards the door, the scent of tobacco and cologne drifting behind him. As her father retreated into the shadows Mei Lan gazed at her mother’s dry lips and waxen skin, turning in appeal to JJ. They both knew where their father was going. There was the sound of the shutting door and then his footsteps fading away down the corridor. Soon, he would move lightly over the dance floor, smiling down into his mistress’s upturned face.
‘Let her sleep now,’ Ah Siew said, coming forward to stand beside the children. The doctor’s injection had already taken effect, for Ei Ling appeared calmer, her breathing easier as sleep drew her in. Mei Lan turned as JJ took her hand and led her out of the door.
As they walked together up the corridor towards JJ’s room, Little Sparrow’s son, Bertie, ran towards them from the direction of Second Grandmother’s quarters. Even before the child came into view they could hear his small grunts of anxiety and the heavy padding of his feet.
‘Get rid of him,’ JJ hissed at Mei Lan, but Bertie was already upon them.
‘Want to play,’ he said, following them through the door.
Mei Lan greeted him resignedly but JJ cursed under his breath. Little Sparrow’s son, who was now Second Grandmother’s son, had at birth been given the name of Koo Chai. Soon after she claimed the baby, Second Grandmother had seen a popular American film at the Alhambra Cinema in which a handsome actor played a character named Bertie. As it was fashionable to have a Western name to run beside the Chinese name, Second Grandmother at once announced that her new child would be known as Bertie Lim Koo Chai. Bertie was now a rotund child of ten, but as he grew it became apparent that his brain was as soft as a lightly boiled egg and his thoughts ran this way and that. When Bertie’s handicap became clear everyone expected Second Grandmother to return the child to Little Sparrow, but instead, surprisingly, he inspired her devotion. In contrast, Lim Hock An ignored the child, refusing to be associated with any infirmity.
In JJ’s bedroom two large cabin trunks had been in residence since the previous week, in preparation for his departure to Oxford. They stood open and half packed and Bertie at once ran up to them to examine the contents, pulling out a belt, a sock and a couple of books.
‘Get away,’ JJ pushed Bertie roughly aside.
‘Leave him be,’ Mei Lan said, stepping up to shield the child.
‘Leave him be. Leave him be,’ Bertie echoed Mei Lan, yelling angrily at JJ as he cowered behind her. In an effort to calm him, Mei Lan drew up a chair and seated the agitated Bertie upon it. Opening a jar of pineapple cookies that stood on the chest of drawers, she gave one to Bertie. He at once stopped sobbing and began to munch contentedly, swinging his short legs about, knocking his heels in their brightly polished brogues against the rungs of the chair. Nothing placated Bertie like food. Second Grandmother doted on her half-witted child, always ordering the choicest food for him, dressing him in the latest fashions, even giving him a puff of her opium pipe to calm him down whenever he had a rage.
After dinner, when Bertie returned to Second Grandmother’s rooms, JJ and Mei Lan went back to the business of packing the trunk. Ah Fat the houseboy had already folded and stacked the many shirts and trousers, items of underwear and tweed suits that JJ would need in the miserable climate of England. At their mother’s insistence pots of Tiger Balm for headaches and bags of dried ginseng that JJ must chew each day for stamina, had been added to the trunk. They were sorting through the books and photographs when Ah Siew came running, demanding they return to the sickroom.
Although it was late, their father had not yet returned to the house. Ei Ling lay upon her bed thrashing about in an alarming manner. The sweat stood in beads on her brow, the whites of her eyes were yellow. She seemed unaware of where she was and strange cracked moans escaped her.
‘The doctor is coming,’ the nurse said, holding down Ei Ling’s flailing arms while another nurse applied a cold compress to her brow. Mei Lan was filled with panic; her mother appeared to be wrestling with something ferocious against which she could not win.
The room was lit by a single lamp on the dressing table, and the mirror above it reflected only shadowy shapes; outside a sudden downpour had begun. Mei Lan sat on a stool hugging her knees, listening to the sound of rain splattering on foliage outside and gushing off the eaves; in the distance thunder threatened. It was some time before Boon Eng returned, flinging open the door of the sickroom, bringing with him the fresh scent of the night and the rain. The bite of his cologne filled the air and his voice, loud in the silence, demanded impatiently to know why Ei Ling had not improved.
‘What am I paying you for?’ he admonished the nurses. He had returned unwillingly after a call from the house and his anxiety and displeasure, even though he held it in place, was a liquid thing lashing about them all. He breathed hard through his nostrils, staring down at the semi-conscious Ei Ling. Mei Lan sensed that her mother was in some way disobeying her husband, pulling him back to her side, forcing him to recognise her, perhaps for the first and last time.
‘I will stay with her,’ Mei Lan insisted, but Boon Eng began shouting and JJ took her arm and drew her away. As they left the room Ah Siew hurried behind them down the long corridors of Lim Villa, like an old bent rabbit, scuttling along.
‘Call the doctor again! Why is he not here?’ Boon Eng could be heard asking as the door closed.