AT SIMMONS’S SUGGESTION WILFRED went into Chinatown for the first time. Get the feel of the place; write me something interesting, Simmons said. Wilfred’s guide in Chinatown was Chen, a Chinese Eurasian who had lived many years in England and joined The Straits Times on his return to Singapore.
‘There’s to be a big raid on the opium dens tonight. Miller, the Chief Detective Officer, knows we’re coming. They’re looking for arms and drugs. Singapore can be a rough place,’ Chen explained as they walked along Chinatown’s dark crumbling alleys and Wilfred peered up at the filthy, peeling façades of houses festooned with poles of dripping washing. Stray dogs and ragged, skeletal men slipped in and out of the shadows. He thought of the unhurried world of the Cricket Club with its ubiquitous white-uniformed waiters, the beer and ceiling fans, and the vast green Padang floating always serenely before it. These images returned to him in a wave of unexpected nostalgia. Yet he knew that this visceral place was the true essence of the town, not the world he so easily inhabited. Everywhere here he sensed death, cunning and despair, bound together by the teeming tide of the living. He saw now that there were two towns on the island, as distinct from each other as summer and winter, each all but unknown to the other.
‘That’s Miller,’ Chen said, recognising the Chef Detective Officer, a tall gaunt man who stood head and shoulders over his local detectives. Wilfred saw a group of men working on the door lock of a ramshackle house by the light of their torches.
As Chen and Wilfred joined them, the door swung open and they followed the men inside. Immediately, an overwhelming stench surrounded them, a stench that Wilfred now recognised as the odour of poverty-stricken Chinatown; a thick miasma of sewage and garlic, opium dross and the rancid fermentation of old cooked rice. The detectives quickly disappeared up an almost perpendicular stairway, Chen behind them; Wilfred climbed more cautiously, unused to the steep, shallow stairs. He found Chen with the detectives, who were shining their torches upon several men lying inert on the floor of a large unfurnished room. Chen nudged one of the addicts with his foot. The man looked up with a glazed expression.
‘Everyone else has fled, they must have had word we were coming,’ Miller said over his shoulder as he turned to search the house, emptying half-eaten bowls of rice, opening cupboards, raking through baskets of decaying vegetables, and probing the warm ashes of the kitchen fire. No drugs or arms were to be found in any of these locations and Miller’s frustration was obvious.
As they emerged into the fresh air of the night, two figures ran off along the side of the house and up an alley. Miller gave a shout and with his men raced after them. At the corner the fleeing men turned and unexpectedly raised guns at the detectives. Before they could shoot, Miller fired his own revolver, the loud crack of the shots breaking open the night. Wilfred jumped in shock at the sound. One of the men was hit and collapsed in the road, the other took to his heels.
Even as he ran after Miller and Chen, Wilfred had the feeling that nothing he was experiencing could be real. Reaching the body, Miller bent to pick up the man’s discarded gun then walked off without a word to a police car waiting at the top of the road. Wilfred stared down at the lifeless body. By the light of Chen’s torch he saw a growing patch of blood spreading over the man’s loose shirt; his eyes, still open in surprise, gazed up into Wilfred’s face. Chen appeared unperturbed by the corpse.
‘Gang members will come later to collect the body. We can go home now,’ Chen announced unemotionally, walking ahead, looking for a rickshaw.
Soon Wilfred was on his way back to Belvedere, while Chen departed in the opposite direction. A cool breeze blew about him as the rickshaw gathered speed. The rasp of the runner’s breath mixed with the sound of the wheels bowling unevenly over the road. A light rain had started to fall, Wilfred felt his shirt grow damp on his shoulders and found he was trembling. He had never seen a man killed before, shot like a hunted animal, and the scene returned again and again to his mind. When at last he reached Belvedere and lay in bed, his dreams throbbed with voices and faces. Rain beat against the window shutters and spat on the lowered bamboo chiks. A gecko clucked on the ceiling and he was conscious that the mosquito netting was entangled about his leg. Childhood memories welled up confusedly, pushing free of their hidden place.
He remembered the rubber estate where he had been born. He remembered a time when his mother had gone away, to stay with the wife of a neighbouring planter and he had been left alone with his father. She had departed with angry tears that frightened him, but it had been a companionable few days for him and his father. They had drunk the strong Indian tea his father liked, and he had been allowed to dip his finger in the evening stengah and suck the hard raw taste of whiskey. They had trekked together through the jungle and his father had examined the oozing wounds of the rubber trees and shown him the small cup of sticky white sap that would eventually make tyres for motor cars. Then, one day, the woman had arrived.
A little horse-drawn cart had stopped by the house and she had descended wearing a smile and a wide straw hat with blue ribbons. She sat with them on the veranda and spoke to his father as if he were a friend. She did not have the pale beauty of his mother; her skin was the colour of polished bronze, her mouth wide and red, and dark hair curled lavishly about her shoulders. He had thought her beautiful and, he remembered, the emotions had been thick in his father’s face. Wilfred was sent to play and when he looked back to the house from the swing his father and the woman had vanished from the veranda, their drinks untouched upon the table. He thought something must have happened and ran back into the house. The door to his father’s bedroom was locked; inside there was only silence and no one had answered his knocking. In the end a servant had pulled him away and he had returned to the swing, anxious and confused. Then, as abruptly as they had vanished, his father and the woman reappeared upon the veranda, as if they had never left. These shadowy images were all he remembered. His mother’s death from a snake-bite a short while later he had all but blocked from his mind. After her death he had returned to England, to go to boarding school, sailing back in the charge of a missionary family, and was met at the dock by an uncle. He never saw his father again for he died of cholera one year later and the uncle adopted Wilfred.
Freeing his leg from the mosquito net, he flung it over the long thin bolster that Mrs Burns called a Dutch wife. He pulled it close and wished that instead of the kapok-stuffed case he could feel Cynthia’s smooth body beneath him.
Howard made his way to the orchard. Already it was dark, the tennis court invisible in the shadows beneath the trees. There was a seat here near the shed where the gardener, Rama, sat in the day to smoke a bedi. Light from the kitchen outhouses, which were separate from the house and linked to it by a covered walkway, diffused the darkness so that he could make out the tangled branches of the mangosteen trees behind the shed. As the night descended Belvedere’s windows brightened and the smell of frying fish came to him from the kitchen. There was no sign of the girl they called Nona. Part Malay, part Chinese, she was the least attractive of Belvedere’s servants but raised no objection to assignations. Howard had only to appear at the kitchen door and within minutes she would make her way to where he always waited, by the shed that housed the heavy roller used on Belvedere’s lawns and the gardener’s scythe and shears.
The humid scent of the undergrowth, damp after a sudden shower, filled his head. In the distance the open doors of the candlelit dining room gave him a shadowy glimpse of the lodgers gathering for drinks before the evening meal. Beyond the mangosteen trees he could see the roof of Bougainvillaea House. As he did so often, he remembered Mei Lan, the taste of her lips, the smell of her hair, and the way she had made him feel, as if their lives ran together. Over the years he had only occasional glimpses of her in her small garden surrounded by bushes of bougainvillaea, the old nursemaid always beside her. In the beginning, after the fence was put up, he sometimes took his saxophone down to the canal and played in the hope that she might hear.
His mother’s voice came to him ordering the servants about in the kitchen, and he was filled with shame for what he was doing. He came here despite his fear of scorpions and snakes, driven to risk such dangers by the heat of his need. There was still no sign of Nona and he paced about, his body full of anticipation. At last he heard the soft clack of her sandals coming towards him and saw her dark, squat shape emerge from the shadows about the shed.
He pushed open the door and Nona squeezed past him releasing an odour of cooking and perspiration. As soon as the door was closed he was ready and aching, but she held up a hand for patience, folding back her sarong. Unable to wait, he pulled roughly at the skirt as he forced her back against a pile of heavy sacks. He thrust into her but within a few moments pulled back from her warmth, spilling himself over her plump thigh. Teddy de Souza at the Harbour Board had told him to withdraw before the climactic moment, insisting that this one small sacrifice in a waterfall of pleasure would save him from disaster nine months later. Nona sat up and stared sourly at her wet thigh. He had come so quickly she had not even begun her usual heavy breathing and groaning.
‘No having good time,’ she hissed at him, small eyes glowering. Howard pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and she snatched it from him to wipe her thigh. Sometimes he closed his eyes and imagined it was not the sluttish Nona beneath him but Mei Lan, and afterwards was ashamed. Retying her sarong Nona departed angrily, slamming the creaking door behind her and taking the handkerchief to add to Belvedere’s laundry. As the door shut and the blood no longer hammered through his body, the odour in the hut of manure, sacking and dry soil forced Howard to think again of scorpions and snakes. Hurriedly he left, letting himself out of the shed into the dark grounds of Belvedere.
This violent awakening to himself was all the fault of Teddy de Souza who, amazed at Howard’s innocence, had seen it as his duty to instruct him in the ways of the world and had shown him some photographs besides. Teddy was married with a grown-up family, but although he was already a grandfather no moral restrictions appeared to pin down his life. Tales of his escapades with women raced around the office, and as his special protégé Howard was privy to the choicest of details.
In the office Calthrop made no further effort to hide his dislike of Howard. One morning he observed the rain sluicing down outside with the accompanying loud cracks of thunder, and fixed his eyes upon Howard; he ordered him to take some paperwork to a warehouse some distance away.
With the rain every rickshaw was suddenly in use, and roads flooded as drains overflowed. Cars and trams, bicycles, carts and rickshaws clogged up the streets, honking horns and ringing bells. In exasperation Howard removed his socks and shoes, rolled up his white cotton trousers and waded under his umbrella through the deluge. Soon, his trousers were sodden and muddied and his shirt stuck wetly to his back, but as the rain lessened he found a rickshaw at last and quickly delivered the damp bundle of papers. By the time he emerged from the godown the rain had stopped and the sun was already pushing open the sky. By the waterfront a Tamil tea vendor was removing the tarpaulin from his stall and washing thick china cups in a bucket of murky water.
‘You’ll have to wait a few minutes. I had to shut everything down because of the rain,’ the man said as Howard approached, setting a kettle of water to boil on a small spirit stove.
The low sea wall was too wet to sit on and Howard stood staring at the island of sampans below him on the water, crowded together against the wall, rocking as one on the swell. Now that the rain had stopped, the first birds of prey had reappeared in the sky, gliding over the water on motionless wings searching for garbage riding the waves. Beyond the sampans the great arc of the horizon spread endlessly before Howard, filling him with its emptiness. There was nothing here to hem in his thoughts, nothing to impede ambition or will. His heart seemed to swell as if it would burst the confines of his body and he knew life waited only for him to fill it. Gazing again at the ocean, he realised he must focus on his own horizon, and the possibilities that lay beyond.
Remembering his tea he turned back to the stall but saw that another customer was being attended to. After waiting his turn he was served a cup of strong brew that he carried back to the wall. The other customer, an Indian in a mud-splattered dhoti, stood nearby, sipping loudly at his cup. While Howard watched, the man poured some tea from the cup into the saucer and as it cooled drank directly from it.
‘This way tea is getting cold quickly and not burning the tongue. Try.’ The man smiled, seeing Howard’s interest.
Howard nodded but still sipped the scalding drink from the cup, burning his lips; drinking tea from a saucer was something his mother disapproved of. The man was looking curiously at Howard.
‘Indian?’ he asked, observing Howard’s dark skin.
‘Eurasian,’ Howard answered and the man smiled, relieved to have Howard’s indecipherable components explained.
‘My name is Raj Sherma,’ he offered.
‘Working in one of these godowns?’ Howard asked after introducing himself. Although he judged the man to be in his mid-twenties, he had the beginnings of a paunch beneath his loose shirt and a brash confidence that made him seem older. Howard wished he had the same hard-bitten look about him, the look of a man who knew the ways of the world. In spite of his smile, there was something guarded in the man’s hooded eyes, as if he were constantly appraising things and searching only for that which was of use to him.
‘I have my own business. I am a ship chandler,’ Raj replied proudly.
Raj pointed to a ship anchored in the outer lanes of the harbour. ‘That Japanese ship is one of my ships. I am supplying everything it needs when it comes into port: meat, vegetables, rice, nails, beer, soap; everything.’
‘A Japanese ship?’ Howard queried.
‘I am only servicing Japanese ships. The Japanese are good people to work for, they are a people who keep their word. British com panies are always finding some problem, making you feel like dog shit under their shoe,’ Raj replied.
‘How are the Japanese so different?’ Howard felt suddenly disadvantaged before a man he had immediately taken to be uneducated.
‘The Japanese see Asia as a family of nations; they feel they are the father of this family. They feel they must free their family from the white man’s rule. They want all Asia to have prosperity, free of colonial rule. This is their vision. The Japanese are also a powerful people like the English people. Japan too is also conquering countries that are bigger than themselves, just like the English. Now they have conquered China, a nation that is like a giant beside their own small island. The most important thing to remember is that, like us, the Japanese are also Asiatics. It is a good feeling when you work for another Asiatic, instead of for the English.’
Howard stared at the man in surprise, and for a moment was tempted to tell him about his letter to The Straits Times. The tea had cooled and he sipped it thirstily, the taste of condensed milk sweet on his tongue. He was hungry, it was past tiffin time and Calthrop had sent him out deliberately so that he would miss his lunch.
‘We want them out of our country,’ Raj said suddenly, draining his saucer and refilling it.
‘Who?’ Howard asked, still absorbed in his anger with Calthrop, thinking of the phrases he had written in his letter.
‘We want the British out of India. We want our Independence,’ Raj answered, lifting the saucer of tea to his lips.
‘How will you get them out? They are our rulers; we are their subjects,’ Howard answered, puzzled yet excited by the audacious ideas coming from this unlikely source. Even when he had written his letter to The Straits Times he had never thought it possible to be rid of colonial rule, only hoped to expand his presence within it.
‘My brother-in-law, who is a revolutionary, says that in India the time is coming soon; there is much agitation amongst Indians everywhere for Independence, even here in Singapore. India has the strength of millions, and the British are no more than a handful of people. Why should a handful of people rule so many millions?’ Raj argued.
‘Why should they?’ Howard echoed, staring at the man in amazement.
The words cut into him, opening a space in his mind into which already he felt something new shifting. In contrast to the radical thoughts just expressed, his letter, for which he had been so chastised, was a lame thing and he was glad he had not mentioned it to the man.
Unaware of his effect upon Howard, Raj tipped up the saucer and drank down the last of the tea. Wiping his mouth on the back of his hand he nodded then walked away, shoulders swinging, his step direct and sure. Howard stared after him, trying to absorb the unexpected things he had said.
Once he had finished his tea, Howard walked along the seafront, the Indian’s unsettling words still racing through him; the sun was now hot on his head. This old part of the docks retained its tie to the days of sail, when ships were unloaded into the cavernous godowns that still lined the waterfront. Running above the open arches of the five-foot way before the warehouses, a long common veranda linked one upper floor office to another. In those faraway days of early sail every office was equipped with a telescope and from this veranda men would scan the horizon for sight of an arriving ship. At the same time each year a forest of sails descended upon the island as the indigenous tribe of Bugis from the Celebes came to trade in an armada of small boats. The town had then been a fishing village, a pirates’ den, before Stamford Raffles disembarked, possibly on this very beach, Howard thought. The men who followed him from those cold countries across the sea had left their seed in local women, breeding a race of mimic men trained to serve the new colony. They had fashioned him, thought Howard, in clandestine meetings and filthy brothels, in marriages of convenience far from home.
He turned to look back at the tea stall but Raj Sherma was gone and he wished now that he had talked more to the man. The Indian was fighting to rid his country of men like Calthrop. Howard remembered again his humiliation in the office, the silence and embarrassed guffaws and Teddy de Souza shaking his head as if Howard were a naughty schoolboy. What had he to fight for, Howard wondered, if even those he would speak for disowned him?
As Howard climbed out of a rickshaw before the office the following day, Wee Jack was also arriving and called out a greeting. He waited for Howard to pay his runner and then walked with him towards the entrance of the building.
‘Got time to meet after work?’ Wee Jack asked.
He smiled in an unusually friendly manner. Other than a thumbs-up sign after the Calthrop incident, the man had not spoken to Howard before. He was a mystery to everyone, mixing with no one yet competent in his work and with a good command of English. He always departed the office with such haste that it was thought he might have a second job.
Later that day, they left the office together, Jack leading the way to a drinking place sandwiched between brothels in a crumbling shop-house outside the dock gates; beggars littered their path, dock coolies gambled and quarrelled. The sun was setting, dulling the metallic glitter of the sea to an oily beaten grey. Flies buzzed thickly over offal thrown out of a kitchen window and a couple of ageing prostitutes called to them as they passed. Howard always avoided this part of the docks, mindful of his mother’s instructions.
A wall of tobacco smoke and alcohol fumes hit them as they entered the place. The narrow room was crammed with benches and tables at which sat Chinese tally clerks and the crews of ships in port. A couple of rough looking Europeans occupied a corner. Wee Jack had to raise his voice to be heard as he ordered beer.
‘You’re not like the others, happy to take whatever Calthrop doles out. Why should such people rule us?’ Wee Jack hissed in a low voice. An old Malay man in a worn sarong shuffled towards them with their beer and a tin plate with fried shrimp wafers.
‘The world has had enough of colonial rule; native peoples everywhere now want to rule themselves.’ Wee Jack leaned forward across the table, the light reflecting on his round metal-framed spectacles. Behind the thick glass his eyes were bright but deeply sunken; the ridge of his cheekbone high. There was a rodent-like quality about the man, Howard thought, something hidden and furtive of which he was immediately wary. Yet Howard leaned forward, excited in spite of himself to hear ideas of this nature expressed yet again. Just the thought of such things produced an effervescing inside him.
‘The Indians want the British out of India,’ Howard replied, recalling the man at the tea stall. Wee Jack clicked his tongue impatiently.
‘They have their battle to fight in India; in China we have ours. They are different battles, even if there is the common motive of freeing Asia from Imperialist rule.’
‘Are you a communist?’ Howard asked in a low voice. The thought struck him for the first time. A distant memory of the riot of Kreta Ayer returned to him, and a shadow of fear flickered through him. He remembered the Chief Inspector’s bloodied sun helmet rolling in the road and the bodies of young men covered with rush mats.
‘Communists don’t eat people. Have you read Lenin or Marx?’ Refusing to commit himself, Jack took a gulp of beer. Howard had only a vague knowledge of these men.
‘I can bring you some books to read,’ Jack offered, assessing Howard over his spectacles. ‘There is a new world taking shape where the workers will have power, not men like Calthrop. He’s a clown.’ He reached into his trouser pocket and took out a sheet of paper that he carefully unfolded and pushed over the table to Howard, looking about to see if anyone was observing them.
Workers of the World, Unite. Avenge the Martyrs of Japanese Tyranny. Beneath this heading were crude drawings of Japanese soldiers with bayonets killing Chinese women and children. The pictures were printed in red. A boycott of Japanese goods was demanded but British goods were not mentioned.
‘You’re not fighting the British, you’re fighting the Japanese. This is nothing to do with Malaya. This killing is all in China,’ Howard protested as he read the crudely printed page.
‘The Japanese are also colonists. Their occupation of China is brutal. Chiang Kai-shek will never free us from the Japanese, but Mao Tse-tung has the people with him.’ Wee Jack’s eyes shone.
Everywhere he turned nowadays Howard saw posters urging people to give money to the China Relief Fund to support China in the war against the Japanese. On street corners Chinese students sold flags or paper flowers, urging everyone to donate to the war effort.
‘If the Japanese ever come to Singapore perhaps they will treat us like equals; they’re Asiatic like us after all,’ Howard suggested, again thinking of the man at the tea stall. Wee Jack drew back on his stool with a frown.
‘Do you know the things they’re doing in China? The British are an arrogant race, but they’re not animals.’ He stared at Howard incredulously.
‘Sorry, Wee Jack, I don’t know much about the war in China,’ Howard admitted hurriedly, seeing how much he had upset the man and wondering how soon he could escape him.
‘I am neither Jack, nor Wee Jack,’ the Chinese exploded, mimicking the false Scottish accent Calthrop adopted when he called Jack’s name. ‘My name is Wee Jiak Kim.’ Howard began to apologise but Wee Jack cut him short.
‘You’re taking the Public Service Examination, aren’t you?’ Wee Jack leaned forward, his eyes focused intently on Howard.
‘It will enable me to rise up the ladder,’ Howard replied defensively, echoing his mother’s words, staring at the tiny ghost of himself reflected in the polished spheres of Wee Jack’s spectacles.
‘That examination is just a plot by the British Imperialists to gain control of your life and enslave you further,’ Wee Jack said angrily. Leaning over the table he began speaking in the cajoling tone he might use to a child.
‘Calthrop and his kind are colonial stooges. Are you going to work under British running dogs or will you join the struggle to bring freedom to the masses? You should attend one of our meetings.’
The thick stale odours of tobacco smoke and liquor fumes pressed in upon Howard in the suffocating room; Wee Jack’s words swam through his head. In spite of his misgivings, Howard’s heart thumped unevenly with excitement. Once, on a trip to a nearby island he had climbed a headland and stood on the edge of a cliff looking down at the rocky shore far below and felt the same kind of excitement. A breeze had blown on his face and vibrated in his ears. Now, within the course of little more than a day, he had met two people who were convinced the world could be shaken. It shocked him to find that seditious thought and agitation grew underfoot like weeds, threatening to overthrow an immovable order, and until now he had known nothing about it. It was as if a skin had been peeled from his eyes.
The following day Teddy took Howard home for dinner; he had issued the invitation the week before. ‘Olive, my missus, is determined to meet you. She has promised to cook her special coconut chicken if you’ll honour us with a visit. That chicken is delicious, boy, as are her sugee cake and devil’s curry; I’ll be retiring soon, so you could call it a farewell dinner.’
Howard approached Teddy’s small terraced house in trepidation. He had the feeling that the nimble libertine Teddy claimed to be might soon be threatened by reality. As they entered the house Olive’s deep voice could be heard even before she was seen. She emerged from a back room to confront Howard, a large-busted woman with a dark florid face and penetrating eyes. Teddy shrank in her shadow, lapsing into uncustomary silence, his eyes apprehensively upon her.
‘So, you are the young man Teddy feels is in need of some fatherly direction.’ Olive’s voice bounced about; her chin appeared to be lost in her neck. Under her scrutiny Howard understood that, to ensure his own survival, Teddy might well have described him as a reckless young man in need of guidance.
Already Howard realised, with a pang of loss, that Teddy’s adventures were all in his mind. It was impossible to imagine his stringy limbs entwined with those of his fleshy wife, bending to perform the numerous contorted positions of penetration he had copiously described, his lips wet with vicarious desire.
‘I am sixty next week,’ Teddy told him proudly when they sat down at the table for dinner. ‘As a retired man I will have more time for the ladies.’ Teddy winked, his mournful eyes lighting up a narrow face. Olive was busy instructing a servant to add more belachan paste to the rice on the next preparation and did not hear Teddy’s whispered comment.
‘What will you do with yourself when you retire?’ Howard enquired with a nervous smile. He did not like the hollow ring of the word ‘retirement’.
‘We’re going home,’ Teddy explained, his face full of pleasurable anticipation.
‘But Malaya is your home, you were born in Malacca,’ Howard answered in surprise.
‘Singapore is nobody’s home, boy,’ Teddy chuckled. ‘We’re going home, to England. Our daughter lives there, as you know. We’ll be with her for Christmas.’
‘But you have never been to England, how can it be home?’ Howard argued.
‘A homeland is where your heart is, young Howard. England is our heartland,’ Olive announced in her booming voice, returning to the conversation as the servant departed.
‘The King, God bless him, has taken good care of me. It would not do to be ungrateful. I’m happy to sing the National Anthem until the day I die.’ Teddy smiled, bulbous eyes earnest in his gaunt face. ‘My great-grandad on my mummy’s side was a Mr John Rogers from the town of Fleetwood near Blackpool. And on my daddy’s side Great-Grandad was a Plymouth man, a Mr Prince, I believe. There has been a lot of intermarriage out here of course, which accounts for the name of de Souza that I now bear. And, although Olive was born a Remedios, her great-grandaddy actually hailed from Scotland. But through it all we have always looked homewards. Now the chance to return has come.’ Teddy’s deep-set eyes lit up as he spoke.
Howard looked at his thin dark face and the strands of grey hair that flopped over his brow and wondered at his future in the land of Calthrop.