Читать книгу A Better Life - Isobel Scharen - Страница 7

CHAPTER 1

FEBRUARY, 1941

THE TAXI INCHED THROUGH A downpour, the wipers beating and beating, dragging the heavy sheet of water back and forth. Then as abruptly as the rain hammered down, it ceased.

When the car stopped, Ada remained seated and watched the steam begin to rise from the ground and unravel above the trees. She was reluctant to move. The driver’s lack of interest in her meant there was no need to talk. She could brood without guilt, without being reminded how lucky she was.

“Can go no more, mem,” the driver said. He could not take her right to the gate of the boarding house. Streams coursed down deep furrows made by bulldozers when pipes had been laid for the new housing estate in Geylang.

Grateful for the respite he had unknowingly granted her, she tipped the driver generously and stepped out onto the ridged earth in her thin sandals. Workmen, idling by the roadside, stared brazenly at her and called softly. She ignored them and made her way up the path to the boarding house, entered the gate and climbed the battered wooden steps. Ada noticed, as she always did, the flaking paint on the verandah posts and the crumbling plaster, and felt the usual flicker of despair even though she knew that there was no longer any need to worry. The old bungalow, with its mottled tiled roof and pillared base, had recently been sold to a Chinese businessman, buying it for his newly married son.

The house was quiet. Vera, her sister, had left for work, and their mother, Elizabeth, was taking her nap. Ada glimpsed the shy Eurasian boarder disappearing into his room along the corridor. He seldom spoke, although he’d stammered congratulations when she became engaged, and nowadays managed a timid smile.

The kitchen smelled of raw onion and coconut grated for sambal. Chicken curry simmered on the stove top, but the vegetables lay unsliced. The maid, Amah, had abandoned cooking for a task more to her liking. Through the open window Ada heard her voice, small and sharp as a razor, scraping across the thick midday heat. Ada rolled up the blind and leaned out, the scent of bougainvillea and jasmine coming up to greet her. Amah, her thin shoulders bent forward in belligerence, was scolding Abdul, the houseboy and gardener. He was knocking rambutans from the tree, wielding his long pole in extravagant arcs that threatened to end up on Amah’s balding head. Ada could not hear what she was saying, but guessed it was to do with some unfinished job. Amah had this notion that Abdul was deceitful and lazy, and she was forever prowling about the house and garden in her soft black slippers and pouncing on him. Admittedly, he liked nothing better than to lean against the wall and smoke his pipe, his sturdy parang beside him, but he willingly did all the heavy jobs.

Ada was about to call Amah in, stop her from hounding the poor boy, when she reminded herself that this quarrelling would soon be a thing of the past - in two weeks’ time, to be exact. After the wedding Abdul would go with her to the Woods’ in Serangoon, and Amah would be with Elizabeth and Vera.

Ada let the blind down and hurried to the bathroom for a throw-over. She kicked her sandals off her swollen feet, stripped, grabbed the pitcher from the bucket, and began dousing herself vigorously. It was simply pre-wedding nerves, she reasoned. There was no need to feel apprehensive. She loved Michael, and he loved her.

She dabbed all-cure Tiger Balm on her temples and made a cup of coffee, sweetened with an extra comforting teaspoon of condensed milk, before seeking the shade of the front verandah. This overlooked waste land, and on the far side a Malay kampong, the thatched roofs of the huts partly screened from view by a fringe of king coconut trees. Ada could see a group of children from the kampong splashing one another in the rusty puddles. A few were chasing a ball, some racing beyond it simply for the pleasure of running. She heard their shouts and laughter and thought how she would miss them. Their fathers, too, when they came across to sell vegetables and fish, especially Ali, who had invited Ada and her mother to his son’s wedding. “More the merrier”, he’d grinned. She remembered the laughter and jests of guests trying to waylay the groom as he walked to the far end of the village where his radiant bride waited for him on a raised dais. Paper lanterns hung in the trees. She remembered how at ease people had been, and reflected wistfully that her own wedding day would certainly not be so relaxed.

She did not hear her mother come out from her bedroom that opened onto the verandah.

“Ah, you are back, Ada.” Elizabeth sat on her cot. “I’ve been worried about you. You shouldn’t have gone on your own.”

Ada longed for more solitude, but tried to keep her tone free from irritation.

“I didn’t have the choice. Amah was unwell. Complained of a headache. But I think she wanted to keep an eye on Abdul.” Reluctantly, she added, disliking the need to be accountable, “I kept to the quayside.” She was aware of the dangers lurking in a side-alley – the brothels, the gambling dens, the opium houses. “And I took a taxi to come home.” She would not say that she’d paid the costly full fair, having instructed the driver not to stop for another passenger. After her episode with the godown keeper, she deserved the luxury.

“You look very tired, child.”

“There’s a new godown keeper. I had to use all my patience and hold my ground. Old Mr Lee,” she said, referring to the previous keeper, “used to go out of his way to be helpful, especially when I first started going in after Daddy died. He knew Daddy of course. Respected him.”

She would not tell her mother of the new keeper’s leer, the way he had tried to touch her when she’d entered the musty warehouse. She was young, white and unescorted, and he might have thought she was a refugee from the war in Europe. It was said that many of the women were struggling to survive in the East. “He was shocked when I spoke to him in Malay. And he gave me a reduction on the oil. Though I paid what he wanted for the milk powder. I remembered Daddy saying that you should never let a Chinese lose face or you’ll lose more.”

Ada pictured her father now – the lightly crossed arms, the faint smile - emblems of his calm steadiness in the face of formidable guile. Noel Pendel had never been like other tuans and their wives – he had no need of theatrical gestures and huffy dismissals.

“Your father would’ve been proud of you, child. He always thought you would go far. If only he could’ve been alive to give you away.” This was not the first time Elizabeth had said this, so Ada made no comment. “You’ll never have to go to Boat Quay again.”

“But I want to.” Ada thought back to the morning - coming out of the dim warehouse into the glaring light of the riverside. The rotting egg stench of the river carried on the heavy air. And all around was bedlam - the barks of the lightermen jostling their wide-bellied craft, the excited cries of old men playing cards, the shouts of coolies heaving bales of sugar-brown rubber from sampan to the dockside. She would miss the productive chaos. She could not imagine Evaline Wood, Michael’s mother, allowing her to go there.

Elizabeth did not hear her, or chose not to do so. “You’ll get your life back. You’ll never have money worries.”

Ada did not brighten at this, which she instantly regretted because Elizabeth continued. “I know how hard it’s been for you.” Her mother’s deep sigh encoded a frequently expressed guilty regret for taking a good-for-nothing as a second husband. “Never marry again if you marry well the first time.”

“I know,” Ada replied. “You’re always telling me. And I’ve no intention of doing so. Michael’s only twenty-four anyway.” Only four years older than her. It was hard to believe sometimes. “He’s not going to die for a long time.”

“Young men sometimes do die. They’re dying in the war now.”

“We haven’t got a war here.”

“Good people are taken because they’re too good for this world.”

“Oh, Mummy. For goodness sake. What a thing to say! Telling me Michael is going to die young.” Elizabeth had the knack of handling worry about the unpredictable future by imagining the worst. Ada understood her mother had grounds for pessimism due to her own experience, and perhaps it was wise to be constantly prepared for disaster, but it was still irritating.

“I wasn’t saying Michael was going to die. He’ll always be there for you. He’ll give you an easy life.” Elizabeth clasped her hands together. “You don’t know how lucky you are. Every day I thank God my daughter is marrying such a thoughtful and generous man.”

“Are you talking about the butterscotch?” Ada said. Michael always arrived at the house with small gifts, such as a tin of Parkinson’s butterscotch, much appreciated and not seen in the Pendel household for some time.

Elizabeth, aware that Ada was teasing her, continued. “I’m thinking about him taking me out when he was so busy with his teaching and scouts, because he knows how confined I feel.” He had driven her in his father’s Vauxhall, once to Mt. Faber, another time to Katong Park. Ada had nearly cried with gratitude seeing Elizabeth so happy.

“He’s very patient too. Hearing me going on.” Elizabeth loved to talk about her life in service in Kent – where she’d met her first husband Noel – getting up at dawn to light fires and press clothes. She knew what hard work was. If Michael was bored he did not show it, Ada thought, and recalled the time when Elizabeth had said that she could never believe her luck now, having servants and all. Elizabeth was so thankful to Singapore and people such as Michael for sharing it with her. Michael’s face had softened, and he replied quietly that his family had also come for a better life.

Elizabeth had such simple beliefs. She was naive like a child. She even looked childlike, Ada observed. With the medication for her heart, weakened after a stroke, Elizabeth’s blond prettiness was becoming more like that of a 10c doll – round cheeks, a squeezed rosebud mouth, and her once long hair worn in a chignon, now cut and styled in a girlish bob.

It troubled Ada to think how vulnerable Elizabeth had become since Noel died. Ada recalled the time, soon after the move to Geylang, when she returned from school to find Elizabeth wandering aimlessly in the garden, then staring up at the tulip tree as if expecting some mystical truth to emerge from the branches. When Elizabeth started to have panic attacks, there had been no choice but to leave school and help run the boarding house.

“If only I hadn’t been so foolish. If only I’d seen through that good-for-nothing,” Elizabeth said.

“We were all taken in, Mummy.” The good-for-nothing, Hilton Frugneit, was a lanky bald Dutch Burgher introduced to the family by an acquaintance of Noel. He began to be a frequent visitor, welcomed for his cheerful company. “All his talk about being in the import export business.” Ada pictured Frugneit selecting a pastel-coloured Sobranie with feline grace from a gold cigarette case engraved with his initials. He had elegance, she conceded, but he was not handsome, not handsome like Noel had been.

“We weren’t to know about his drinking and gambling,” Ada said.

She shut her eyes against the image of him shouting and striking out like a madman when he wanted money from Elizabeth. “He seemed the most generous man on earth. Flowers, perfume. Jewellery too, for you. And taking Vera and me out.” Several times to the racecourse, as it happened, where they’d gorged on fried bananas and watched the card tricksters and the raucous Australians standing on boxes with their slates and chalk. Scoundrels making a packet, Frugneit complained, but he had spent a lot of time with them exchanging dollar notes.

“If I’d told you that he chased the horses, you might not have trusted him.”

Ada wondered, not for the first time, if she’d ignored the signs of Frugneit’s waywardness because she craved an easier life. She’d welcomed the chance to be free of boarding house duties and to find a job in the Municipal as a Power Samas operator doing the gas, water and electricity bills. The trouble was that having tasted independence, when Frugneit showed his true colours, it was a grave disappointment for her to return to managing the boarding house. Every day Ada felt that life was passing her by.

Elizabeth was tearful.

“Oh, Mummy, please, don’t get upset.” Ada hated Frugneit. He not only robbed Elizabeth of her money, but also of her health and self-respect. “We must put the past behind us and look forward to a better life,” she said, recognising that they each had a different view of what that better life might be.

“Yes, a better life.” Elizabeth managed a timorous smile. “We have much to look forward to. You to your marriage, me to my new home. I can’t believe how kind Patrick Wood has been.” Michael’s father had sold her a small house far below market value, so she had money left over from the boarding house sale to buy a flat for renting out.

Ada was grateful for his generosity, but she disliked the sense of being beholden. Not that she believed Patrick would consider that she owed him anything. He was not a petty man. Tall and angular with hawkish features and darkly circled eyes, she found his severe expression rather intimidating at times. But she could cope with Patrick. She liked Patrick.

✬✬✬

Two days later, when she arrived for a lunch party at the Woods’ home, Patrick was waiting to greet her at the top of the verandah steps. She was late and more than flustered. The kitchen had flooded that morning. It had been an ordeal to keep Amah calm while summoning a repairman to unclog the pipe. Ada babbled her apology to Patrick, who smiled, took her hand and bowed slightly.

“You look beautiful, my dear. Beautiful as ever,” Patrick said, admiring her dress. “Your mother’s work?”

Ada nodded.

“Michael asked me to give you his deepest apology. He has school affairs to attend to, but will be here as soon as he can. Come.” With his hand cupped lightly on her elbow he steered her down the wide verandah into a room at the furthest end of the large, rambling bungalow.

They entered through wide-open doors into the spacious dining room used for entertaining. It was a formal room with a big mahogany side-board, high-backed padded chairs, and several portraits of severe-looking men in stiff collars. Guests were seated at the long table beneath steadily beating fans. She recognised a few people from previous gatherings but there were some strange faces. Everyone else seemed to know one another, and the chatter was warm and animated

Ada sat beside an elderly woman wearing black. She smiled at Ada and asked her name. “Oh, so you’re Michael’s betrothed. I’ve heard a lot about you. Evaline has…” She looked beyond Ada, and there was Evaline. Ada rose to kiss her.

“I was introducing myself to your future daughter-in-law,” the woman was saying. “She’s indeed the beauty you said she was, Evaline.”

Evaline took a step back to inspect Ada’s appearance, smiled approvingly, then looked up at Ada’s face, scrutinising it in that judgmental manner Ada had become used to. Evaline was a short woman, rather stout, and with an air of authority, despite the curly grey hair that readily escaped the fixture of hairpins. Ada, conscious that people were looking her way, was pleased to have worn her new dress, a soft pleated white-dotted silk crepe at the new shorter length. She knew from past occasions that the Woods’ acquaintances were always well-groomed. As they were polite. And somewhat aloof - as if making it clear that Anglo-Indians were equal to any member of the ruling class. She did not resent this at all. She was fully aware of the superior airs of many Europeans in Singapore.

As Evaline gushed compliments before bustling away to call the servants to begin serving, Ada, seated again, noticed that Michael’s sister Charmaine had taken the vacant chair directly opposite. She had her elbows on the table and glared down the white-clothed stretch of it as if she despised the fine patterned china and crystal decanters. Ada felt that Charmaine was deliberately ignoring her and could not help but feel slighted. What had she done to deserve such rudeness? Michael had tried to explain Charmaine’s coldness to her by saying that Charmaine was often miserable as she lacked male suitors. Ada fixed her gaze on Charmaine’s sullen, dark-complexioned face. Still Charmaine ignored her, even when Patrick stood to welcome his guests.

Wine was poured, water glasses filled, and Evaline entered proudly before a line of white-coated Tamil servants, all of whom carried steaming dishes of food. As Evaline walked up and down behind people’s chairs, urging them to sample the lavish array of curries, Ada wondered which was worse: Charmaine’s disregard or Evaline’s controlling fussiness?

Plates full, the conversation quietened while people ate. The elderly woman at Ada’s side said to her in a confiding tone, “It’s been a while since I’ve been to the Woods’. I was in Burma until recently. My husband died there suddenly. The heart. He never complained of anything, so it came as a complete shock. Seeing a loved one suffer a long illness is very distressing, but at least there is time to share the ending, and say goodbye.”

“My father died suddenly too,” Ada said. “A clot in the brain. My mother has never got over the shock, I think.”

There was a patter of applause, a scattering of greetings. Ada glanced up to see Michael enter the room. He raised his hand, smiling acknowledgement. His athletic stride took him swiftly to the vacant chair beside her. He kissed her cheek, and apologised for being late.

“I was late too. I’ve had a dreadful morning,” she began, then, judging that Michael would not be interested in drains, asked, “Have you been busy?”

“More administrative things to do with the head leaving.”

“I didn’t know he was leaving. Where’s he going to? Not back to England surely.”

“No. Australia. He’s playing it safe. Wise man.”

Waiters approached carrying serving dishes. Michael helped himself to food and began to eat hungrily. Ada ate too, tuning into the conversation around her. Patrick was talking to a man at his side, a Chinese man with a birthmark on his cheek. Seeing Ada look in his direction, he stared boldly at her with a lascivious smile. Patrick noticed her too then, and said in a louder voice, “We must congratulate the English. You can’t take it away from them. They have grit. The RAF is unbeatable.”

Patrick raised his glass to Ada as if she were in some way part of the glory. She guessed he was referring to the Battle of Britain, the months of bombing that had worried her mother, who feared for distant relatives. Ada wished that she had something intelligent to add, as she always did when Patrick talked to her about Britain. Although he always listened attentively to what she had to say, she was embarrassingly aware that his knowledge was far greater than hers. All she could offer was what her parents had told her – the ways of the gentry, fires in Kentish pubs, the blossom foaming in the orchards, frost on the apple trees, which she imagined to be like the shaved ice in kachang. She often thought that one positive fact about living with the Woods would be the chance to learn so many things.

The waiters removed the plates. Guests, replete, waited for the next course, and there was a respectful silence as Patrick spoke more loudly. “It is a great relief to know that a man of Churchill’s calibre is in control.”

“What do you mean by control?” Michael muttered quietly.

Patrick went on citing examples of Churchill’s good sense. “I think we can trust him when he says that Singapore is the Gibraltar of the East. With our naval base complete the Japanese will not be able to attack us from the sea.”

“What about from the mainland?” Michael asked in a louder voice.

“They’ll never get through the jungle,” someone else said. “Hundreds of miles of it. And thousands of Commonwealth troops ready to take them on. Even the Japs know their limitations.”

“It is very foolish to underestimate the Japanese, sir,” Michael said, leaning forward. Ada glanced at him. There was a heightened colour on his fine-featured face, and she sensed his growing agitation as he continued.

“Tell me, what is the point of a naval base without battleships and submarines, and aircraft carriers? It is war we are talking about. Nasty, brutal war, which we know at this moment is being fought in Europe. Singapore is not impregnable.”

“Why would the authorities be telling us it is if that wasn’t the case?” Patrick asked, frowning. “Why would they want to deceive us?”

“It’s more that they need to deceive themselves,” Michael replied heatedly. “Convince themselves that they’re in control. That they have nothing to fear from little Japanese men.”

There was a stirring among the guests. Ada wished Michael would not be so serious. It was not the time or place.

The man with the birthmark said, “Well, I for one am not worried. I’ve visited the naval base. Singapore is a fortress, surrounded by sea. In my opinion Singapore’s never had it so good with the demand for our rubber and tin.”

There were murmurs of ‘hear, hear’, and then a bubbling of excited chatter as mango ices were brought in.

Michael ate his dessert in silence, making little effort to converse with the woman beside him. Ada knew that he was not one for small-talk, but this indifference was more than being uninterested in making polite conversation.

The guests were invited to take coffee on the verandah. Ada went ahead of Michael and expected him to follow her. She was seated on a cane chair talking to the elderly lady again when Michael emerged some time later. There was an angry expression on his face, and his hair, usually combed back smoothly from his wide forehead, now looked as if he’d been raking his fingers through it. He came directly towards her, and hardly glancing at her took her hand. “Come,” he said. She began to apologise to the elderly woman, but Michael held her hand firmly and pulled her to her feet. She was surprised at his rudeness.

He led her back into the dining room. His father was standing with the Chinese man. Patrick looked seriously at Michael, and the Chinese man turned his back as they walked through. Ada followed Michael along the back corridor into the library. He stood for a moment without speaking as if trying to control his emotions, then said, “God, how I loathe that man.”

The Chinese man, Ada presumed, the one who’d smiled lasciviously at her.

“What did he do?”

“He’s been buying up property on the coast. Malay land. And he’s boasting about the money he’s going to make developing a hotel complex. He refuses to accept that he’s robbing the Malays of their livelihood as fishermen and farmers, their traditional way of living. Whole communities are being wrecked. And he had the gall to say the Malays are a lazy bunch. I wanted to hit him.”

Ada nodded solemnly, recalling what Michael had told her when he’d first come to the house. They had been on the front verandah watching the Malay children playing on the waste land. “I remember you saying that you admired the Chinese for wanting to get on. But you wished they were more tolerant of the Malays who wanted different things out of life.”

She mentioned the feud between Abdul and Amah. Michael had listened to her with a grave attention. She felt closely observed, and this scrutiny, combined with his good looks and quiet authority, had been a little disconcerting. She wondered if there had been a note of spoiled petulance in her remarks – a white woman complaining about the onerous business of managing the servants.

The air in the library was close. Michael took out a laundered handkerchief from the pocket of his trousers and wiped his top lip. She caught the scent of eau-de-cologne. “It’s such a pity,” she said, “that races can’t get on. I’m so pleased that Daddy made sure Vera and I mixed with Singaporeans and sent us to Raffles Girls’. Everyone got on there. Chinese, Eurasians, Indians.” Noel thought little of the British tuan besar types who avoided the local markets and shopkeepers, and only shopped at the Cold Storage or Robinsons. “If we have a daughter,” she said shyly, “we’ll send her to Raffles Girls’.”

Michael put his arms around her and kissed her brow. “My darling Ada. From the first time I met you I fell in love with you. I could see that you weren’t like other English girls.”

She smiled. “And I thought you were a man with strong convictions. And very clever.” She paused, then decided to add, “But not so clever losing your temper today. Your father looked a bit upset.”

Michael stepped back. “I know. I’ll apologise.” He looked out the window, his face turned from her. “It’s just that I feel a bit frustrated at the moment. I’ve got a lot on my mind.”

“School problems?”

He did not reply immediately, then said, “I’m not going to bore you with all that.” He looked at her. “I think we should join the party. I need to make amends and do the chat. Sorry if I embarrassed you at lunch.”

She accepted his apology, but as they returned to the party she wondered how she could support Michael, and at the same time persuade him not to work so hard. She admired him for being a man with strong convictions, but he’d lost his temper today, which indicated he was under considerable stress. It was not going to be straightforward, she predicted, being married to Michael.