ROSE BURNS SAT AS always at the long table before the window. The white shutters were folded back and the afternoon light blazed behind her. In the half-wild garden beyond the window the sun was caught in the mangosteen trees. The fruit hung heavily, the colour of burgundy and resembled a mass of hard cricket balls. From where she sat Rose had seen the new lodger arrive. Hamzah had helped him in with his luggage but, sitting in the alcove at the end of the room, she would not immediately be in his view. She continued with an account of the week’s expenditure, one list for the wet market, another for Cold Storage where the greatest expense was the meat; it was her policy to put the best before her lodgers. Local mutton was no more than goat meat and the local fowl so tough it drew complaints; only Cold Storage with its imported produce, its Scotch beef and New Zealand lamb, could be relied upon.
She looked again at the new arrival who was just as young as she expected and saw he wore a woollen suit and that his face was wet with perspiration. Two large suitcases, an umbrella, a tennis racquet and a bulging attaché case stood on the floor beside him as he looked anxiously about Belvedere’s dim vestibule. In his hand was a spotless white pith helmet of an expensive English brand Rose recognised. She wondered how much longer she could keep him waiting. It was her habit to hold back until the last moment from personal encounters or demands.
Already, Rose noted, even in the cool of the vestibule the man had wiped his face and neck several times with a large red and white spotted handkerchief; most of her lodgers used pale monogrammed handkerchiefs of fine Egyptian cotton. The man was growing restless now, taking small steps to the right and the left of his luggage, clearing his throat and coughing politely in the hope of attracting attention. She pushed a stray hair into place and straightened her skirt as she stood up, preparing to make herself visible.
‘Mr Patterson?’ Rose queried as she walked towards him. ‘Welcome to Belvedere.’
‘You must be Mrs Burns,’ Wilfred Patterson answered in relief, stepping forward to hold out his hand, observing the short, thickset woman before him, hair pulled back severely into a coil on her neck. Her pale powdered face contrasted with the darker, moist skin of her neck.
‘Did you have a hot journey?’ Rose asked as he mopped his damp face once again. He had needed two rickshaws to bring him from the dock, one for himself and another for his luggage. Rose had heard the sharp crunch of metal wheels on the drive and knew he must have had an uncomfortable ride. As a new arrival he would not have known that for a few extra cents he could have taken a rickshaw with rubber tyres for a less bone-shattering ride.
‘Did no one from your company meet you at the dock? You would have been more comfortable in a motor taxi than an old rickshaw,’ she suggested as she led him inside.
‘Someone was supposed to meet me. I waited about but no one came. On the ship I was advised that taxi fares were exorbitant, and rickshaws were just as good,’ he explained as he followed her into Belvedere’s cool and cavernous interior.
His nose was crooked, Rose noticed, as if it had once suffered a break and his open, pleasant face with a narrow moustache above a generous mouth was lit by eyes the colour of stagnant water. It was not an attractive comparison, but she thought of the lichen-covered pond in the garden and knew the colour a perfect match. Cynthia too had eyes that colour, although they appeared the more startling against her olive skin.
‘I’ll show you to your room. Hamzah will bring up your bags,’ Rose said, surprised at how she had warmed to the young man.
‘It’s a beautiful house,’ Wilfred remarked as he followed Rose up the stairs. Over the banisters he looked down upon the open space below, the red Malacca tiles of the floor swimming away beneath him. Belvedere’s high ceilings and white latticed woodwork gave the place an airy, stately feel. Both downstairs and on the landing before him, large bowls of bright tropical flowers he could not name brought a graceful vibrancy.
‘The ground floor rooms are more expensive. They are larger and cooler, but are usually shared by two gentlemen. They have their own bathrooms and a private veranda,’ Rose informed him.
‘I’m not fussy, a small room upstairs is fine,’ Wilfred replied but rethought his remark as they reached the upper floor.
Climbing the stairs he had been aware of a rise in temperature, and already wondered how he would cope with the humidity and heat. As the rickshaw had turned off Bukit Timah into Chancery Lane on its way to Mount Rosie, he had been delighted to find that the shady, equatorial street, so far from its staid London namesake, was a road of lush jungle foliage, thick twisting vines and tall rainforest trees. Beneath the constant whirr of crickets and cicada, he sensed the drowsy silence at the heart of each tropical day.
Rose walked ahead of him to unlock the double doors of his room and he followed her inside, looking apprehensively about. The window shutters were closed against the afternoon sun and the small room vibrated with trapped heat. Looking up at the ceiling he saw, from the abrupt end to a line of wooden beading, that it appeared to be partitioned off from a larger area. Yet, the whitewashed room had the same fresh feel as the rest of the house, the rattan chairs with their chintz cushions looked new, the bed linen crisp with starch and on a carved desk was a small bowl of yet more flaming flowers. He was pleased with what he saw.
‘You have a nice view,’ Rose announced, walking over to the window to open the shutters and filling the room with light. The garden was lush with tall clumps of red-stemmed lacquer palms, white spider lilies, ginger flowers and orange heliconia that he thought resembled lobster claws. A frangipani tree laden with pale, fragant blossom stood outside the window.
‘Everyone leaves their room doors open; it gives some through breeze. You’ll still have your privacy with the swing doors closed.’ Rose pointed to a set of short louvred flaps filling the middle of the door frame. She turned again to the window to adjust the slats of the shutters. None of the windows in the house had glass, Wilfred noticed, just these heavy louvred shutters.
‘This time of year we have the monsoon. The rain comes down suddenly and if it’s at night you’ll have to let down the chiks yourself, otherwise the room will be drenched,’ Rose said, touching the rolled up bamboo blinds before the window.
‘The room rate includes your meals but not a Boy to clean, wait at table and attend to valet duties.’ Rose mentioned this fact as casually as she could and saw the expected consternation in his face; she knew he would be earning the meagre starting salary of all young European men on a first tour of duty in the Straits Settlement.
‘Usually, most of the gentlemen here are glad to share a Boy. I will speak to your neighbour, Mr Boffort. However, I’m afraid there is no way around the cost of the dhobi,’ Rose added.
At the door she hesitated and then turned back to face him. ‘It is not my business, Mr Patterson, but I would advise an outlay on some white cotton suits. It is what all the gentlemen wear here.’
Wilfred looked down at his woollen clothes and the colour deepened in his face. ‘I had not expected quite this degree of heat, Mrs Burns,’ he replied stiffly, but then asked in a lower voice, ‘How many suits do you think I will need?’
‘At least twelve or fourteen, that would be my advice,’ Rose replied evenly.
‘Fourteen.’ Wilfred’s face dropped in dismay. He sat down on the bed and looked up at the mosquito net gathered above him on a tall frame.
‘A fresh suit must be worn every day, Mr Patterson. They go to the dhobi for laundering only once a week, so you need a week’s supply in hand,’ Rose explained as gently as she could.
‘You will not have to pay the tailor immediately,’ she added, hoping to relieve his despondency. ‘In this country you sign a chit that can be paid off with a minimum sum every month, or later.’
‘I don’t want to get into debt. Do you sign chits?’ Wilfred regarded her in a worried way, seeking reassurance.
She gave a slight smile, knowing he meant no insult. ‘As a local person I have to pay my bills promptly each month. Come, let me show you the bathroom.’ She walked along the corridor towards the back of the house.
‘We have a flush system now for the toilets, not like the old days,’ she assured him proudly. The bathrooms had been built out over a veranda with their own flight of stairs to allow coolies to carry up bathwater and, before the flush system had been installed, collect the buckets of waste from the toilet. A strong smell of disinfectant hung about the tiled bathroom but could not quite cover the odour of drains. In a corner stood a huge Shanghai jar of water with a metal dipper. Rose turned to him apologetically.
‘Water pressure is low and sometimes stops altogether. You have to sluice yourself down from the Shanghai jar for your bath, but you will get used to it, just like the heat,’ she smiled, shutting the door. ‘Dinner is at eight.’
Leaving Wilfred Patterson, Rose made her way downstairs, returning to her place at the table and old chintz sofa near the window, to put away the week’s accounts. Ah Fong brought her a cup of tea and she drank it gratefully. The new lodger had filled her last vacancy, and she was surprised to hear him say that he found Belvedere beautiful. All she saw was a worn expanse of red Malacca tile, the dusty wooden fretwork below the high ceilings and the innumerable small dining tables that she had bought from a bankrupt restaurant owner. Still, it pleased her that Belvedere had established a good reputation; all the big firms recommended it to young men coming out to Singapore on a first tour of duty. She felt she had more than proved herself, but to whom she was not sure.
With the main doors and windows of his room open, Wilfred found there was some cross-ventilation as Rose had promised. He was intrigued by the novel arrangement of short swing doors spanning the entrance to his room; his head could be seen above them and his legs below. He remembered a book he had liked as a child, where each page with a picture of an animal had been cut into three. Flipping over the separate sections created beasts of fantastical design, the head of a dragon joining the belly of a bear and the feet of a duck. He thought he must appear just such a creature to anyone looking in from outside – head and lower portions visible, the middle part still blank. Inwardly, he felt no less cut about and abstracted, his battered emotions left at sixes and sevens by his sudden entry into this tropical world.
When he lay down upon the bed he was relieved to see that, at the horizontal, the swing doors assured his privacy; no one could see him from the corridor. He lay there for some time, the pith helmet sitting where he had deposited it on the bed, a resting place for his ankle. He had paid far more than he had wanted for the thing, which had come from Heath’s in Bond Street. Although he had been offered a cheaper variety made from cloth-covered cork, he had liked the importance of the bolder shape, representative of the adventure ahead. At last he was back in Malaya, at the very centre of his memories, back where he had been born on a rubber estate near Johore. Already, Wilfred was beginning to see his life as a series of ever widening circles. Above him the mosquito net was bunched up in a gauzy cloud, bringing back to him memories of his childhood, of hot nights when he slept wet with perspiration, the enraged whine of a mosquito near his ear beyond the white shroud of netting. And always, in his memories, there was the distant sound of his mother’s voice, shrill or broken by sobbing.
He remembered his mother’s excited smile as they sailed back from England to Malaya to join his father after a long spell of home leave during which his father had remained behind. When at last they arrived back at the rubber estate, his father had shown him a new swing hanging from the mango tree, and happiness had exploded within him. His mother too had laughed, happy to be back. Yet, within days her expression changed to one of anger; she began to complain of the heat and humidity, of dust and untrustworthy servants. The bungalow was whipped into a frenzy of polishing and scrubbing, but whatever it was his mother wished to erase, it would not go away. He had run each day to the mango tree, the tree he now called ‘his tree’, with the sun-warmed swing. He had pushed his body backwards and forwards, looking up at the sun through the dark pattern of leaves, moving higher and higher until at last he flew with the clouds, the vast jungle sweeping away on all sides beneath him.
Wilfred stood up and went to the window, throwing off his unbearable woollen suit, stripping off his shirt as he pushed back the louvred green shutters. At once the hot sun poured over his flesh and he closed his eyes in pleasure. This was how he remembered it, running bare-chested and barefoot as a child in the compound of his home on the rubber estate with the servants’ children. Although this was Singapore and not upcountry Malaya, a familiar smell drifted to him, of hot damp undergrowth and frangipani, of spice and carbolic and excrement. Already, some part of him had come home.
Cynthia Burns, walking along the drive of Belvedere after leaving her rickshaw, looked up at the house to see a naked man in the frame of a window. She was well used to the presence of young bachelors in Belvedere, and over the years had grown adept at deflecting unwanted attentions, so she quickly lowered her eyes before this unexpected sight. But when she looked up from under the rim of her straw hat, the man was still at the window. She saw then that he was oblivious to her presence; his head was thrown back and his eyes were closed. He had blond hair and muscular shoulders, and resembled the narrow-hipped plaster cast of a Greek god she had once had to draw in school. She put up a hand to secure her hat as she tilted her head for a better view, but lost her grip on the books she carried. Her hat slipped from her head as the books fell about her, and bending to retrieve them she cursed loudly in annoyance. As she straightened up she saw that the man at the window was now staring directly down at her. An expression of embarrassment filled his face and he closed the shutters quickly. Cynthia was left with an abrupt sense of loss.
At eight o’clock after a rest and a bath, Wilfred made his way downstairs to the sound of a melodious gong. As Mrs Burns had said, water pressure was low, and he had sluiced cool water over himself from the Shanghai jar in the bathroom. Although he could see there was a constant attempt to scrub it away, traces of green algae clung to parts of the tiled bathroom wall and floor. A high window filled by wire mesh let in filtered light. He recalled that childhood house in Malaya where spiders as large as a man’s hand had stalked a similar window above a similar Shanghai jar. Now, as he walked down the stairs for his first dinner at Belvedere, he was surprised to find himself descending into a world of candlelight; everything appeared charmingly unreal and he looked about with pleasure. From across the room Rose saw him and came hurrying up. She had wound her long hair high on her head for the evening and crimson lipstick brightened her face above the lace collar of a dark silk dress. Although not beautiful, Wilfred decided, she was what was called a handsome woman and carried herself with dignity.
‘I’ve arranged for you to sit with Mr Boffort since he is your neighbour and you’ll be sharing a Boy,’ Rose said as she showed Wilfred to one of the small tables, her smile almost motherly.
The glow of so many flickering candles gave the large dining room unworldly appeal. Doors and windows were thrown open to the warm tropical night and the powerful scent of the garden. Light from the kitchen outhouses illuminated part of an orchard of mangosteen trees, their branches knitted together in impenetrable darkness. A dog barked. For the first time that day Wilfred felt there was no need for a fan. Looking up he saw the extraordinary height of the ceiling, far higher than those of the second floor rooms. A single old-fashioned punkah of yellow cloth had been electrified and hung above the long table where Rose sat with her children at each mealtime.
A fleshy-faced man a few years older than Wilfred now came hurrying up to the table, his hand already extended in greeting from a distance away. Even before he was seated, Arthur Boffort began to explain that he was coming to the end of his first tour of duty and would soon be returning to England.
‘Getting married. Valerie has been waiting five years. No firm will allow you to marry on a first tour of duty here.’ He spoke forcefully, projecting spittle across the table from beneath a ginger moustache.
‘When we return as a married couple, Mrs Burns will be giving us one of her big, cool ground floor rooms. I should be able to afford it on a second tour; promotion and salary raise and all that.’ Boffort worked for Stewart and Lloyd, a British firm dealing in pipes and fittings.
‘Gas, water or steam. Large stocks always on hand. Sole agents too for United Engineers.’ Boffort stretched across the table to a pile of bread and began to butter a slice industriously. He asked no questions of Wilfred, speaking, even as he chewed, of his home in Manchester and his mother’s battle with asthma. He absorbed without comment the information that Wilfred was a journalist and had come out to work for The Straits Times. Yet, on hearing that Wilfred had been born in Malaya on a rubber plantation his father had managed, Boffort paused in the midst of his buttering and looked up.
‘I suppose that makes you half native; better be careful of going all the way. It’s not done for the races to mix here, you know,’ he murmured, returning to the bread.
‘I have only the most shadowy memories of Malaya. I was seven years old when I returned to England, to go to boarding school. I never came out here again until now.’ Wilfred was irritated but broke off as a Chinese man in a high-necked white uniform appeared beside their table. Boffort turned upon him impatiently.
‘Food at last. Took you long enough. Need to learn to hurry yourself,’ Boffort admonished before turning to Wilfred and gesturing in the direction of the man. ‘By the way, this is our Boy.’
Wilfred nodded to the middle-aged Chinese, who placed a bowl of thin soup before him. ‘What’s his name?’ Wilfred asked Boffort, unsure if the Chinese spoke any English.
‘No idea. Just call him “Boy”. They all come to the call of Boy whatever their age, no need to bother with names. They all look alike as well, you’ll find it difficult at first to tell them apart.’ Boffort sucked hungrily at a spoonful of soup. Wilfred glanced at their Boy and found his features distinctly different from the Boy serving at the next table.
‘How long has he been your Boy?’ he asked.
‘Five years, ever since I arrived,’ Boffort replied between mouthfuls. ‘All these houseboys and cooks are Hainanese and come from the same place in China. They’re probably all related; one big happy clan.’ Some soup dripped on to his chin and he put down his spoon to dab at it with his napkin.
‘Do you understand English? What’s your name?’ Wilfred turned directly to the Chinese.
‘Name Wang, Tuan Besar.’ The man gave a grin, revealing a mouth of nicotine-stained teeth.
‘His English doesn’t stretch to much more than that,’ Boffort observed, finishing the last of his soup.
‘I thought we’d get curry.’ Wilfred stared down at the thin gruel before him in disappointment.
‘Tiffin is on Sunday, and you need the afternoon to recover from it. You’ll find Mrs Burns does a slap-up tiffin,’ Boffort replied.
Wang appeared with a course of fish. This was followed by braised lamb and boiled vegetables, a dessert of sponge pudding and some cheese. The food was plentiful and well cooked but Boffort was critical.
‘Chinese cooks never get the hang of anything other than their own food. Mrs Burns probably breathes down their necks to produce our Sunday tiffin. Now, that’s her kind of food. Shouldn’t think she was brought up on food like this. People like her want their spice and chilli.’ Boffort laughed, blowing spittle over the dessert Wang had just placed before him.
‘But her name is Burns. Was her husband English?’ Wilfred had been wondering about his dark-skinned landlady. In spite of her name she was not European, but neither did she appear completely Indian or Malay.
‘Lord, no. You really are wet behind the ears. Mrs Burns is Eurasian. Our Rose of Mount Rosie,’ Boffort laughed. ‘There was probably a long ago English ancestor who came out and married a local Malay woman, and whose name has been passed down the line. I believe she herself was born in Malacca, which means there would also be a large family tree of Portuguese or Dutch bits and pieces, all long ago married with Malay, Indian, Chinese or even Ceylonese women. Then local Malacca-Dutch marry Malacca-Portuguese, Malacca-Irish marry Malacca-Ceylonese, etcetera and hey presto, soon they’re a community of their own. They’re very particular about their white ancestors, however, even if they themselves are now as black as coal.
‘They’re a valuable community, don’t get me wrong,’ Boffort continued hurriedly, seeing the disapproval on Wilfred’s face. ‘They push our pens for us, so to speak; most are well educated and English speaking, so we give them all our clerical jobs. And of course they’re also Christian like us, Catholic mostly. Couldn’t run the Colony without them. You can’t trust the Asiatics; most of the Malays are illiterate and, except for a minority of Straits Chinese who have been educated in English-medium schools, none of that lot can speak our language, and neither do the Indians, by and large. We depend upon the Eurasians to manage everything for us. They’re a dependable lot.’
Wilfred looked across at Rose, who sat like a benevolent headmistress before a school dining room. He felt acute discomfort on behalf of his landlady as he listened to Boffort. ‘Mrs Burns appears an admirable lady,’ he protested.
‘Yes indeed. A valuable community, just as I said.’ Boffort stretched across the table to cut another chunk of cheese. Wilfred stared at the candlelight reflected on the balding crown of his head; the man filled him with shame for being an Englishman. Wilfred turned again to observe Rose, dignified and upright before the table. Beside her sat the girl who had cursed like a man below his window, and a boy of similar age.
‘They are her children,’ Boffort explained, following his gaze and swallowing in a single gulp the demitasse of coffee Wang had just served him. He called loudly for more, rattling his cup on the saucer.
‘Howard and Cynthia. He’s with the Harbour Board and she’s doing nursing. Hot little chilli, isn’t she? It’s said Mrs Burns must have had it off with one of her lodgers before Cynthia appeared. Just look at those green eyes. We’d all like a piece of Cynthia, although of course not in any permanent way. I’m telling you right now at the beginning, stick to your own kind. You won’t get better advice than that. Society here does not take kindly to intermarriage. A man’s career is finished if he takes a dusky-skinned wife. It’s just not done; you’ll be cut dead by everyone who matters. She won’t be accepted anywhere either or included on invitations, can’t enter our clubs. And anyway, who wants children with a touch of the tar brush, eh? What kind of life can they hope for anywhere in the civilised world?’ Boffort held out his cup as Wang approached with the coffee pot.
‘I haven’t even been introduced to the young lady.’ Wilfred turned upon Boffort in exasperation.
‘Steady on. Just trying to put you wise before you make a mistake. The races don’t mix here, you see. Chinese keep to themselves in Chinatown, as do the Malays in Geylang, the Indians in Serangoon Road, the Eurasians in their Eurasian pockets and we of course, being the ruling race, can’t afford to hobnob with any of them. Live apart, work apart, socialise apart. That old adage, familiarity breeds contempt, is more true than we know.’ Boffort leaned forward, the candlelight carving up the fleshy crags of his face until he resembled a heavy-jawed gargoyle, and continued.
‘It can get lonely here for a man; not many unattached young ladies of our own kind about. A man can easily fall prey to a local girl when he’s lonely. It’s not as if the Settlement has ever had a “fishing fleet”, as in India. If you find yourself feeling low, let me know. You can get whatever you want in the right places: Chinese, Japanese, Malay even French or Russian girls too. And there are always the taxi dancers at any of the Great Worlds.’ Boffort winked across the table.
Within a few minutes, to Wilfred’s relief, Boffort stood up and announced that he had a letter to write to his fiancée, Valerie. The Boy, Wang, appeared with a pot of fresh coffee and Wilfred accepted another cup. It was strong, bitter stuff and he drank it gratefully, savouring the few moments without Boffort. He found himself staring at Cynthia. Her brother, Howard, was a good looking young man with his mother’s dark colouring and hair, width of jaw and rounded brow. Cynthia appeared something apart from these two, just as Boffort had indicated.
Cynthia’s hair seemed lit from within by tawny light and framed a slim face of high cheekbones. Even from a distance he could see the hazel, slanting eyes, cat-like against her light olive skin. She appeared to Wilfred impossibly beautiful; unlike anyone he had seen before. Once, she looked across at him in a deliberate manner then turned abruptly to speak to her brother, taking no further notice of Wilfred. The directness of her glance surprised him, and her raw curse that afternoon below his window sounded again in his ears. At the end of the meal she disappeared through the door that led under a covered walkway to the kitchen buildings. Wilfred returned to his room and, as he climbed the stairs, he looked down on the dark candlelit space beneath him and knew he had entered the residue of his childhood memories. Nothing as yet felt real.
Later, as he lay in bed beneath the shroud of starched muslin Wilfred listened to the old house settle down for the night and wondered at the strangeness of the day. There was the low hum of voices and clink of glasses from the men who still sat in the coolness of the Lodgers’ Lounge, an airy open-walled room above the downstairs portico. A mosquito whirred near his ear beyond the tent of netting that hung about him. The night was punctuated by the full-throated call of bullfrogs, the scent of night flowers mixed with the fetid odour of the manure spread upon the flower beds. Once he heard a clock strike, and then the heavy thud of the dining room shutters as the servants closed up for the night. From the other side of the thin partitioning wall came a rattle of glass as Boffort dragged out the crate of bottled drinks kept beneath each lodger’s bed. He thought about the Boy, Wang, who to Boffort deserved no name, and the dignified Mrs Burns, so undeserving of Boffort’s disparagement. Beneath every thought he was aware that Cynthia was constant in his mind. There was the sound of far off thunder, and he wondered if he would have to get up in the night to battle with the rain and the bamboo blinds. The last thing he remembered before sleep enclosed him was the naked, straining back of the rickshaw runner who had pulled him away from the docks. He heard again the man’s rasp of breath, saw the bony protrusion of his ribs and the knotted blue veins in his neck. It had disturbed him that a man should be used like an animal for his own convenience. He understood then that he had entered a world that was a distorted reflection of the one he had left, and knew already that he could not condone it. Then again he remembered Cynthia, a hand to her hat, books in her arms, staring up at him as he stood in the open window. At last he closed his eyes and slept.