THE MATTER OF MEI Lan’s marriage began to obsess Second Grandmother. She would not let the matter rest until Lim Hock An and Boon Eng both took up the refrain. ‘It’s time you were married. You do not need more education. You’re not a man; you’ve no need to earn a living.’ Once the men of the household were of her own mind, Second Grandmother wasted no time in calling the matchmaker, who immediately suggested as a prospective bridegroom the eldest son of an abalone cannery millionaire. A bride viewing was suggested and Mei Lan’s protest dismissed.
‘Only seeing you, lah. Can do at distance in hotel tea lounge. You sit one end of the room and he sit another,’ Second Grandmother suggested with an impatient wave of her blood-coloured nails, the scent of Schiaparelli and mothballs wafting about her.
It was unbearable. Mei Lan locked herself in her room and would not come out, anger and fear drumming through her. She threw herself down on her bed and listened to Second Grandmother beat her small fists on the door.
‘Do you want to be an old maid?’ Second Grandmother screamed.
‘Yes!’ Mei Lan screamed back. Outside the door she heard whispering and knew Ah Siew was also there.
It was unbearable. She was nineteen; it was almost four years since her mother died and her life was being squeezed into a box. After finishing at the Chinese Girls’ High School she had expected to continue on to Raffles College where, she secretly hoped, she might win a Queen’s Scholarship and go to England to study law. It was a shock to have her plans so brusquely thwarted. At last they left her alone and she heard the tiny shuffling steps of Second Grandmother, supported by Ah Siew, fade away down the corridor. After a while she got up and, opening the window shutters wide, observed the slender branches of the Mexican lilac pushing up beneath the sill, wondering if it would hold her weight.
It was not easy to reach the tree without falling from the window but at last she grasped a strong branch and swung herself forward, her feet scrabbling for a hold against the trunk. Almost at once she heard a loud crack, and fell with the branch the short distance to the ground. Her leg was scratched and her shoulder bruised but nothing more, and scrambling up she ran off through the gate of Bougainvillaea House to flag down a rickshaw on Bukit Timah.
She remembered a hairdresser near Robinsons that her mother had used, and directed the rickshaw to take her there. The bell rattled as she pushed open the door, just as it used to when her mother had entered. Inside Mode Elite, Madame Chan, who had always created the elaborate coifs Ei Ling demanded, greeted her in amazement, not having seen her since her mother’s death.
‘Cut it off,’ Mei Lan ordered as the woman undid the long plait, weighing the thick hair in her hands.
‘Really modern women nowadays not only cut but also perm their hair,’ Madame Chan solicitously advised, pointing to a fearsome contraption of electrical wires. It reminded Mei Lan of a picture she had seen of a machine invented to milk cows.
‘It’s the latest thing from England,’ the hairdresser informed her.
For several hours Mei Lan endured the torture of having her hair wound about the rods hanging from the monstrous machine. Rubber pads were placed upon her head, her hair was doused with vile-smelling liquids and then heated and steamed like a turnip, burning her scalp. At last it was done, and in the mirror Mei Lan saw an unrecognisable face framed by a frizzy halo of curls; it was just the reincarnation she wanted and she smiled in delight. Even the birthmark on her jaw seemed to gain authority. She wiggled her lips to make it move, pleased suddenly that it was there.
Bougainvillaea House was in an uproar when she returned. The open window and broken branch had been taken as an indication of dire events. Workmen had been summoned to force the locked bedroom door, and policemen were searching the neighbourhood for her. Ah Siew and Second Grandmother grew apoplectic at the sight of her as she came into the house. Boon Eng, who had been called home from the office, shouted and raised a hand as if he would hit her, although he did no such thing.
‘Aiyaah! Look like someone pull her out of a bush. Who will marry her now?’ Second Grandmother screamed, while Ah Siew scowled behind her. Mei Lan pushed her chin up determinedly; what was done could not be undone and this small triumph was pleasing. Only her grandfather, who had come into the room at the commotion, remained silent, staring at her enigmatically. The next day Lim Hock An made his decision known to the household: the question of Mei Lan’s marriage could wait until she was of a more pliant state of mind.
Within weeks of Mei Lan’s haircut, Lim Hock An suffered a stroke and lay in a coma for days, plunging everyone in Bougainvillaea House into foreboding and depression. Mei Lan wondered guiltily if her behaviour had added to his stress, as Second Grandmother angrily insisted. Yet, defying the doctor’s worst predictions, Lim Hock An opened his eyes one morning as calmly as if awakening from sleep. Second Grandmother struggled from her chair with a gasp, startling Little Sparrow who had been allowed into the house to sit at her husband’s bedside to await his death. At once Bougainvillaea House, sunk for days into a state of lowered voices and black reverie, regained its old momentum. The kitchen bustled with the preparation of elaborate dishes, gardeners were summoned to trim the trees, the barber was called to the sickroom, cars and rickshaws deposited a stream of visitors at the door, delivery boys from Robinsons and Cold Storage were forever begging entry with gifts. Lim Hock An was at a loss to understand the celebratory atmosphere in the house or the incredulous shaking of heads that afflicted whoever observed him. Little Sparrow rashly suggested they light firecrackers in celebration. Second Grandmother looked at her askance and soon withdrew permission for further visits to the house.
‘While you were in your long sleep could you hear what we said?’ Second Grandmother asked her husband, the smell of her decayed teeth covering his face.
‘Did you say things I was not to hear?’ he demanded, wanting at once to get up but finding his legs would not hold him. He could no longer bear the smell of his wife’s rotting teeth.
‘Get some more gold ones,’ he told her as she threw aniseed into her mouth.
Mei Lan woke early. Ah Siew rubbed her ageing arthritic limbs and brought hot tea for them both. She drew the curtains and plumped up the pillows behind Mei Lan as the sun streamed in. Already, Ah Siew was opening the cupboard and asking what she would wear that day so that it could be ironed. Mei Lan gave directions from her bed as she stared out of the window at the distant turrets of Lim Villa and the shutters of her old bedroom; the loss of Lim Villa was still felt keenly by the family but no one spoke about it. Although his great fortune was lost, Lim Hock An had recovered enough for them not to have to live too frugally, but everyone understood they would never move out of Bougainvillaea House.
After a breakfast of rice porridge, Mei Lan made her way to her grandfather’s room. As soon as he saw her Lim Hock An pulled himself up on his pillows; there was now no joy in his life like the joy of this granddaughter. Mei Lan, who from her own parents had received little more than a lukewarm love, subject always to their self-absorption, saw her world increasingly now in her grandfather. His love once of child brides and bound feet seemed part of another man. The most important thing about her grandfather, Mei Lan realised, the strength that accounted for his enormous success before the Depression, was his ability to embrace the new and leave the obsolete behind him.
Lim Hock An was hungry for news of the world and especially of China, afraid too much might have happened while he slept in his coma. His mind appeared to be working as usual but illness had shrunk him, his skin hung loosely upon his wide jaw, his eyes were clouded and rheumy. There was the smell of old age about him.
‘What news of the China Relief Fund?’ he asked.
After the haircut, which she had not regretted, Lim Hock An had suggested that Mei Lan become involved with the China Relief Fund to keep herself busy. The Japanese had pushed through China with unimaginable brutality to occupy most of the country. So great was the distress of the Chinese community in Malaya at these events in their homeland, that a relief fund was formed in Singapore to collect and send money to China; there was also a boycott of all Japanese goods. The China Relief Fund was the idea of Lim Hock An’s old friend Tan Kah Kee, who was chairman of the Fund Committee. Contributions were demanded from all Chinese; even poor coolies and rickshaw runners were encouraged to give what they could.
Mei Lan had become a Youth Leader in the China Relief Fund, and helped to raise money by organising the selling of handmade paper flowers and flags. There was also the making of bandages to be sent to wounded soldiers in China, scarves and sweaters to be knitted for the troops, medicine and food to be collected. Dances, concerts, Chinese opera and patriotic plays, food fairs and boxing tournaments were organised; every Chinese in the colony was involved in the effort.
‘Japanese goods are being boycotted everywhere,’ Mei Lan reported as she sat beside her grandfather’s bed.
‘If we need to pledge more money to the fund, we can sell off some jade. Whatever it takes, we must give.’ Lim Hock An closed his eyes, his voice unfamiliarly reedy. His famous jade collection, still packed away in stout wooden crates and stored in a shed behind Bougainvillaea House, remained unopened since the move from Lim Villa
Soon, the day nurse approached Lim Hock An brandishing a thermometer. Behind her Second Grandmother hobbled forward upon her two canes, her slave girls hovering at her side.
‘Grandfather, open your mouth,’ Mei Lan chided, and the old man obeyed with a sigh.
He looked up at the three women standing about his bed and knew himself reduced. He shut his eyes and his memories slid into a previous time when there had been no limit to what he could do. Thoughts came to him constantly now of Chwee Gek, his first wife, the mother of Mei Lan’s father, his son Boon Eng.
‘Chwee Gek.’ He allowed himself to murmur her name.
Mei Lan looked at her grandfather in surprise; she had never heard him say First Grandmother’s name. She glanced at Second Grandmother in trepidation and saw the shock on her face.
‘Chwee Gek.’ It was a low groan on the old man’s lips. Second Grandmother turned upon her two sticks and hobbled hurriedly away.
The long days of coma had been dreamless but now whenever Lim Hock An shut his eyes the past rose up to claim him. Above all it was Chwee Gek’s dead and reproachful face that he saw, the brandy beside her, the remains of his best opium clutched in her hand, her eyes staring at him. At other times there was his Second Wife, Lustrous Pearl, her feet so tiny in their red silk slippers that they fitted into his palm. Chwee Gek’s large and unbound feet became hideous to him after they settled in fashionable Singapore and a new life claimed him. Then, the sight of them sticking out from beneath the quilt on their bed repulsed him; such feet proved her a peasant. In Singapore he now mixed with men of sophistication who frequented high-class brothels. There, to satisfy the nostalgic taste of a certain generation, women with bound feet could still be found. Now, he remembered Chwee Gek’s long toes covered with mud at the time of rice planting when she had worked barefoot in the fields beside him. Love was not something Lim Hock An knew much about; lust was what he was familiar with and this was all he expected to feel. The warm ache that sometimes hollowed him out when he thought of his first wife, his dead wife, was something for which he had no explanation. Only now did he realise she was the only woman he had loved. And she had loved him more than life.
‘Chwee Gek,’ he murmured her name once again.
Propped up on his pillows he could see out of the window to the turreted mountain of Lim Villa. A tall fence shut him out of the great house he had built, schoolchildren now played on its lawns. Long ago he had lain in this very room in Bougainvillaea House with Little Sparrow, and delighted in his truancy from the bed of Lustrous Pearl and the manner in which he piqued her. Little Sparrow with dimpled cheeks and a body that so attentively serviced his needs had made him lose his head for a while. Now so much was changed, and regret washed through him. In the distance he listened to Lustrous Pearl’s throaty voice asking if he had been given a laxative. Although she now encased her small feet in fashionable leather shoes, the smell of rotting flesh seemed always about her. She had taken him over entirely.
It showered through the morning, but later the sun returned and the drying earth steamed. After lunch Mei Lan took Lim Hock An’s chauffeured car to the Chinese Chamber of Commerce on Hill Street. As the car entered Chinatown, the density of life closed about her; washing on bamboo poles protruded from windows and dripped upon the passing traffic, the cries of food hawkers, and the perfume of sewage and roasting pork assailed her. People and carts and rickshaws crowded the narrow streets. As she approached Hill Street she saw two small boys, smart in school uniforms, stop before a malt candy seller. The old woman, squatting by the roadside with her metal pot of sticky black molasses, was stretching the toffee back and forth between two sticks, chatting to the children. Mei Lan remembered her own delight as a child at buying a stick of malt candy. As she turned to watch the scene, a stone came hurtling passed her and struck the elder of the boys. He jumped up in shock, his face stricken with fear. Almost immediately another stone landed on the younger boy who, with a cry, cowered behind his brother in terror, blood running off his thin arm and on to his clean white shorts. Mei Lan saw that a gang of rough youths were steadily closing in on the children. The malt candy seller put the lid on her pot and hurriedly backed away. The terrified children, hands clasped protectively over their heads, cringed beneath the hail of stones.
Stopping the car Mei Lan climbed out, recognising an overweight boy with a fleshy face known as Dumpling Pan. He was from one of the zealous groups connected with the China Relief Fund, whose work was the weeding out of pro-Japanese elements amongst the Chinese and those who flouted the Japanese boycott. In her duties as a Youth Leader she had come across Dumpling Pan before. The gangs assumed pretentious names such as the Singapore Assassin Corps or the Chinese National Emancipation Vanguard Corps; they sent death threats to people or vandalised property, and the more extreme had no difficulty in slicing off ears. Mei Lan shouted to Dumpling Pan, who turned to stare at her in surprise, a stone in his raised hand.
‘They are Japanese children,’ he told her, his podgy face creased in anger, his friends crowding menacingly behind him. Mei Lan moved to stand in front of the children and felt a small hand clutch her skirt as the younger child pressed close.
‘Our father is Chinese. We live in our grandfather’s house and he too is Chinese. Only our mother is Japanese,’ the eldest boy explained in a trembling voice.
‘Their mother is Japanese and their father buys soya flour for his biscuit factory from his wife’s Japanese family in Middle Road. Let everyone know what traitors they are.’ Although Dumpling Pan spoke threateningly, his hand had dropped to his side and he returned the stone to a cloth pouch still heavy with ammunition; he knew Mei Lan’s position in the China Relief Fund, and knew he could not disregard her.
‘I will take responsibility for them,’ Mei Lan said, ignoring the angry shouts of Dumpling Pan’s friends.
Once the gang turned away people began to come forward. The malt candy woman offered the children her toffee for free. From his pitch on the roadside a cobbler raised his eyes from repairing a clog.
‘The children live around the corner. They are old Ho the biscuit maker’s grandchildren. Already, that gang have thrown hot tar at his house and left a dead cat at his door.’
‘It’s not far,’ the elder boy said, pointing out the way as Mei Lan helped the children into her waiting car; the sky was darkening again, threatening more rain.
Soon, they reached a tree-lined road of shabby houses. At the boy’s direction they drew up before a larger but equally dilapidated bungalow. HO PROSPERITY BISCUIT COMPANY was written in faded letters above a rotted gate. The children scrambled out of the car and ran up the steps into the house. A powerful smell of baking enveloped the place and Mei Lan took a deep breath of the sweet vanilla-scented air. Soon, the children reappeared on the veranda with their mother who hurried down the steps towards Mei Lan, followed by an elderly man.
‘They were so late returning, we were worried,’ the children’s mother said as the boys jumped about her, spilling out their news, showing off their wounds.
‘I am Ho, the boys’ grandfather. Who has done this? They are just children.’ The man shook his head in distress while Mei Lan looked curiously at the children’s mother.
‘It is because of me, because I am Japanese, but I was born here in Singapore, I have never even been to Japan,’ the woman protested, tears filling her eyes. She clasped her hands together below the sleeves of her white Japanese apron, pursing her lips to hold back emotion.
‘They say you are baking biscuits with Japanese flour,’ Mei Lan told them reluctantly, but old Mr Ho shook his head.
‘We are using only what is left from our previous stock. Until now, Mr Yamaguchi, Yoshiko’s father, has always supplied us with flour, so we are in a difficult situation. Now, at Mr Yamaguchi’s own request, we are no longer buying flour from him as he knows the danger this would be for us,’ Mr Ho replied.
‘Won’t you take some refreshment? Taste some of our biscuits, please,’ Mr Ho offered as Mei Lan prepared to leave.
‘I am already late for an appointment,’ Mei Lan explained, climbing back into the car.
As the vehicle drew away, Mei Lan looked back to see the children waving to her and their mother wiping her eyes, and stared at them in confusion. The China Relief Fund had turned everyone against the Japanese to such a degree that she had not opposed the punishment and intimidation of people who did not obey the boycott. The Japanese woman standing with her arms about her Chinese children was too complicated a matter to immediately decipher.
The sky had darkened again and the first drops of rain spat down as she reached the Chinese Chamber of Commerce, and saw a large crowd gathered before the building. With a sudden crack of thunder the rain began, emptying ferociously out of the sky. People pushed into the building or took shelter under ornate parapets and eaves. Banners dripped and sagged, food hawkers huddled beneath bits of tarpaulin, their charcoal fires stowed hurriedly away. Beggars and cripples, who had been vigorously demanding alms only moments before, now huddled together against the deluge.
Mei Lan was relieved that Tan Kah Kee had not yet arrived. Shaking the raindrops off her umbrella, she entered the building. The foyer was noisy and filled with people whose wet shoes and dripping umbrellas made the stone floor slippery. A ceiling fan sped around at a great rate but had little effect on the hot and stifling space. Leaving her umbrella with an attendant, Mei Lan looked about for faces she recognised and was surprised to see a tall Englishman standing self-consciously beside the stairs. As he observed the excited crowd, he was scribbling notes on a pad that he slipped into his pocket, only to take it out again. Looking up, he caught Mei Lan’s eye and stepped forward with a smile, as if he was waiting for her.
‘I’m Wilfred Patterson. I’m here from The Straits Times to write an article on the China Relief Fund.’ He extended his hand in greeting, speaking in a direct and easy way. Still appraising Mei Lan, he launched into an earnest explanation of his reasons for attending the meeting.
‘Is there any way I could meet Mr Tan Kah Kee for an interview?’ Wilfred lowered his voice conspiratorially. The young woman had immediately caught his eye with her purposeful manner and natural elegance; her short, fashionable hair and chic clothes immediately set her apart. He noticed a small birthmark just above her jaw.
‘Mr Tan is a family friend, but you’ll have to sit through the meeting first.’ Mei Lan found herself responding to his pleasantness; Europeans were so often condescending in their manner with local people, but Wilfred appeared to have genuine interest in the China Relief Fund.
Mei Lan pulled a small ivory fan from her bag and waved it vigorously as she made her way towards the crowded auditorium, conscious of the curious glances the European man at her side drew to them both. Large electric standing fans were placed at intervals down the sides of the hall, but served only to ruffle hair and spread odours. Mei Lan burrowed through the crowd to a row of reserved chairs directly below a raised dais and Wilfred took a place beside her as she indicated.
Within moments there was a stir as Tan Kah Kee entered the hall. As he approached the stage people crowded about him. Wilfred knew the man was a mercurial figure who embodied the ideals of the Chinese community, yet his first sight of Tan Kah Kee was a surprise. Wilfred saw a small scholarly looking man in a creased suit and heavy spectacles who resembled a second-hand book dealer more than a legendary entrepreneur, social reformer and political activist. Although Tan came from poor beginnings and, with only a few years’ education could not read a newspaper until late in his life, he was one of the few Chinese the colonial government trusted. At last Tan mounted the stage, made his way to the microphone, and prepared to speak.
Wilfred could understand nothing of what Tan said, but Mei Lan leaned towards him, translating in a low whisper. Wilfred stared curiously up at the man, noting the wide forehead and thin moustache, and the shrewd but restless eyes behind his thick-framed spectacles. He took out his notebook, writing whatever he could catch of Mei Lan’s translations.
‘The Overseas Chinese have always had the reputation of being the Fathers of the Chinese revolution . . . For any country at war the most important things are manpower and money. It is impossible to successfully fight a war if one of these two things is lacking . . .’
As Tan paused, taking the heavy spectacles off his nose, Wilfred whispered in Mei Lan’s ear, ‘He’s known in the world as the Henry Ford of Malaya but I believe he doesn’t live it up like his namesake.’
Putting back his spectacles, Tan continued. ‘Since the Japanese invasion of our homeland we Overseas Chinese in South East Asia have spared no efforts in our fund-raising attempts . . . You may say you have fulfilled your moral obligation if you have given a few dollars to the fund but in terms of our sacred duty to our nation, it is not enough . . . You must give more.’
‘He lives a very frugal life and expects everyone else to do so as well. His family have a hard time. It is said they’re always in a state of near penury and on principle he allows no one to own gold jewellery,’ Mei Lan informed Wilfred as Tan’s voice flowed on above them.
‘As long as the guns at the front continue firing, the supplies at the rear cannot stop . . . From now on all of us must exert ourselves more generously . . . We must wipe out the blood and humiliation brought by the Japanese upon our homeland.’
For as far back as Mei Lan could remember Tan Kah Kee had been in and out of her home, conferring with her grandfather. Lim Hock An was the elder by a decade, but their friendship persisted on the basis of the similarity of their frugal beginnings and the mutual regard of two shrewd minds. Once, she remembered sitting on his knee as he discussed with Lim Hock An selling a pineapple cannery both men had invested in. Both had suffered during the years of the Depression, forced to sell off their vast plantations, but Tan had survived the trauma whereas Lim Hock An had not.
As Tan finished his speech, cheering erupted. At both sides of the stage rally leaders began to recite the lines of the pledge that was taken at every meeting, shouting the words into their megaphones. The crowd joined in.
We will not engage in trade with the enemy,
We will not spread or read their propaganda . . .
We will not communicate with the enemy or traitors,
I will support the relief work with my savings . . .
I am a Relief Fund worker and will do my best.
More cheering broke out as the pledge ended. A piano began to play the first bars of ‘Selling Flowers’, a popular song to boost the morale of the fund-raisers. Everybody knew the song and the hall filled with spirited singing. As Tan Kah Kee left the stage the rally leaders picked up their megaphones to read out the monthly list of Relief Fund donations.
‘The Hawkers’ Association raised $970 in the month of October. The Clog Makers of Tangjong Pagar raised . . .’ As the list droned on Mei Lan and Wilfred made their way out of the hall.
‘Do you have any booklets or pamphlets I could look at?’ Wilfred asked as he pushed forward behind Mei Lan.
‘I can get something to you and send it to the Straits Times office or your home,’ Mei Lan replied as they came out into the fresh air of the foyer to see Tan Kah Kee surrounded by a crowd of people. Mei Lan moved towards him to request an interview for Wilfred.
‘The office is fine. I live some distance away off Bukit Timah, in an old boarding house called Belvedere,’ Wilfred replied as he followed her.
‘I live next door to Belvedere.’ Mei Lana stopped and turned to him, her heart jumping in shock. ‘I know someone there – Howard Burns.’
‘My landlady’s son.’ Wilfred smiled.
‘I’ll drop the pamphlets off at Belvedere on my way home,’ Mei Lan decided, hoping she did not show eagerness.