Bitter Sweet Harvest (20 page)

“Maybe it has nothing to do with magical charms,” he muttered. “Remember the potions you gave him? They did nothing for our cause; they did, however, make him very ill. Hussein had such extreme changes in mood, fluctuating between elation and depression, smiling and laughing one minute and in a cold sweat, the next. Leave him alone. For goodness sake!”

He was irritated and made to leave the room, but he could not refrain from making a parting remark as he left. “Now that Hussein has achieved this success, I am less concerned about who he prefers as a wife. As long as Noraidin keeps to the background, out of sight, out of mind. I just don’t want him to be distracted at this critical stage of his career.”

Faridah rounded on him venting her anger. “And you tell me that we should take a long view,” she said, wagging her finger after him as he left. “In politics, you can be in one minute and out, the next. His recent success might be a distant dream in the future, if people here in Kemun realise that he has dumped Shalimar for Noraidin, someone who has no roots here and is not even a practising Muslim.”

“
Datin
,” said Ahmad, “You are so right, but
Datuk
Rahim makes a fair point as well. The only way we can create a serious rift between them is to isolate her, make her life such a misery that she will wish she had never decided to come here to Kemun. But it will have to be done in a clever way; Hussein must not be aware of our intentions.”

Faridah rewarded Ahmad with a small smile. She looked impatiently at the grandfather clock. “Where is that girl we sent to fetch Shalimar?”

“I am here.
Minta maaf
, so sorry I did not make my presence known earlier but I did not wish to interrupt.” The maid, a slightly built young girl, was clearly frightened. Head bowed low, she whispered, “
Tengku
Shalimar
sakit
.”

“Huh! Ill, you say? Too guilty to face us more likely! Well, I will have to leave it to you, Ahmad, to do what is right and necessary.”

J
eremy took Nelly’s arm and led her to the corner seat in the café. Nelly protested, “
Aiyah!
Just call me Nelly or Nelly
sum
. As I said on the first day we met, you should call Mary your mother. I feel so bad. Like a... a usurper!”

“I shall call you mother. I will also call Mary mother. And when the two of you are together, I shall find a way of distinguishing between the two of you.” His tone was firm, but his eyes twinkled with amusement. In the short time he had known Nelly, he had come to realise that she was the gentlest of persons, who always placed others first.

“But I have not flown in from Singapore to discuss this,” he said, “I came because of An Mei.”

The twinkle in his eye was gone in a flash. His face was grave. “I had a call from our office in KL. Her boss was completely flabbergasted. You know she has resigned?”

“Yes! She has gone with Hussein to Kemun and now that she realises he was set up, she is determined not to give him up. I didn’t want her to give up her job but she has to do what she feels is best. She cannot possibly keep it and be in Kemun.”

“Well, this time, perhaps we should have tried to persuade her against resigning. She might find herself in need of it in the future. If only I had been around to dissuade her.”

She looked up sharply, surprised by his wistful tone. “Why do you think she would need the job in the future?” she asked, worried. “Tell me,” she demanded.

“I just have this gut feeling. You must have heard of all the new policy ideas that have been bandied about under the New Malaysia Five Year plan. Does Hussein agree with them? The Plan aims to give Malays greater access to universities and employment by extending the special quota systems to guarantee their entry. I am uneasy about all this talk of increasing the percentage wealth of the Malays. How can it be achieved except through redistribution from the other ethnic groups?” His hand shot up and he ruffled his hair in exasperation as though it was his hair that bothered him.

“How well does An Mei know Hussein, I wonder?” He paused to think, wrinkling his nose and screwing up his forehead in the process. “Of course I may be biased,” he added, “after all I am a Singaporean. But you know, I got to know An Mei quite well in the short time we spent together, or at least I thought I did, and I feel sure her views will clash with Hussein’s. So how can she live with him daily and support him in the implementation of policies that, to me, discriminate between one ethnic group and another, policies that she probably disagrees with?”

“Well, we do not know if she agrees or disagrees. They were very like-minded in Oxford. It is your conjecture. But what do you have in mind?” She looked seriously at her son as she tried to fathom his true feelings beneath the words. She began to wonder whether he might have a soft spot for An Mei.

“Nothing much. But I would like to save her job. It would give her a fall back position. Do you think I should do it without letting her know? I might fail but I would just like to talk to her boss. I know him quite well. Get him, the bank, to propose to her that she takes leave without pay for a finite period.”

Shalimar sat on her bed with her shoulders hunched; her head drooped forward in abject defeat. She heard the distant soft sound of footsteps approaching her room and she shuddered in the expectation of what must surely follow. Yet, she remained seated, still as a mouse, frozen in fear. She recognised the footsteps as they grew closer and louder. Each step seemed more menacing than the previous. Her hands darted up to clutch her blouse. The door opened. She saw his silhouette, dark, faceless against the bright light that shone from the corridor behind him. He closed the door softly behind him, an act so unlike him that it seemed to suggest some even greater threat of what would come. She decided there and then that she would agree with whatever he wanted. It was the only way out for her. She had examined every alternative route since she seen her old nursemaid in Kuala Lumpur. And every one of them she had found wanting.

“Ahmad,” she said rising to her feet.

I
n the stately drawing room of her house in Kemun, Faridah sat laughing and talking with the friends who had gathered around her. They were women from her various clubs and associations. High society women, all clad in brightly coloured silks, congregated to discuss the latest fashions, their charities and to gossip. The sound of their chatter drifted across the room to where Shalimar sat alone embroidering. Her needle pushed and pulled with speed and deftness through the cotton, stretched out tight over the circular tambour frame. Blue, pink and yellow threads mingled and flowed to form a forest of flowers. Her head bent low, she was completely focused on her work.

From across the room, she heard her name mentioned. Then, a cackle of laughter followed. She could sense the women looking at her, but still she worked. Her fingers flew nimbly on.

“Shalimar,” called her mother-in-law, “come over here. I have been telling my friends of your good news. Come, come sit with us.”

Faridah turned to her friends. Her eyes gleamed.

“You are the first to know,” she said. “I have not, rather Shalimar has not told Hussein yet. So please keep this to yourself. He is away in Kuala Lumpur. Since his appointment as Deputy Minister in the PM’s office, he has to be there very often.”

She paused, her nostrils distended in indignation. “And that minx, that Chinese witch! She does not let him alone so she is with him. I am afraid my gentle Shalimar lets her get away with blue murder.”

“
Sayang!
Pity!
Tengku
Shalimar must learn to fight her corner. Surely she has a better claim than Noraidin now,” remarked one of the ladies.

“I would have thought that
Tengku
Shalimar has a better claim than this commoner, even without the pregnancy,” added another.

Shalimar face turned a bright pink. She heard a shuffle and looked up. The maid, Fawziah was looking at her puzzled. Shalimar turned away and dropped the tambour frame into the basket.

“Would you please excuse me, I need to go to my room to rest. I feel tired,” she explained to Faridah.

“Go! Go and rest,” Faridah replied. “Fawziah, you attend to
Tengku
Shalimar.”

“She is such a good, obedient girl. You are lucky.”

Faridah smiled. “
Nasib baik!
My good luck!” she said.

They were in the car. A stack of papers in blue and red binders sat between them. Hussein reached over and took An Mei’s hand in his before resting their hands lightly on the papers.

“What is in them?” she asked, eyeing the files.

“Draft outlines of the different measures mapped out under the New Economic Policy.”

“Can I have a peek?”

“Better not. It is an early draft and we are still debating some of the issues.”

“I overheard some of the debate during the cocktail party. Are you supporting this New Economic Policy? There is considerable unease in the country. In fact, Jeremy says that...”

“Stop quoting Jeremy to me. It is none of his business. He is not even a Malaysian. Anyway, you should not involve yourself with this.”

She withdrew her hand and sat up, her back stiff like a ramrod. Her face was a bright red. But she could not keep silent for long.

“Hussein!” she exclaimed. “What are you saying? Isn’t that what you want? My involvement? That was what you have always said to me, even when we were in Oxford together, and, when we came back here, you have said over and over again, that we should work as a team.”

“Ah! But things have changed and I was naïve. It is not what I want. It is what the party wants. I have to toe the party line. I cannot go against it and I cannot involve you in any major way. After all, you are not the elected officer. Come, surely we have better things to discuss than politics.”

She was shocked. She turned away to look out of the car window. The low humming of the engine was all that could be heard, but the air was filled with a tension that had not been there before.

“I know I am not the one who is holding office,” An Mei said, breaking the silence. “It has never been about my holding office in competition with you. But in the past you have always talked about your views and told me what you were thinking. We discussed things. We bounced ideas off each other. Your silence cuts me out. I hear and learn what you are thinking only through your conversations with others. And they are not changes and ideas that I recognise; ideas that I believe could have originated from you. What is happening, Hussein?”

He shrugged his shoulders, his face, impassive.

“Mother has called,” he said instead, “she asked that we return to Kemun as soon as my work in KL is over. A break from this incessant chatter of policies will help us to redress our thoughts.”

He leaned over and kissed her cheek. “Cheer up. Don’t fight the tide of history.”

But her cheek was unyielding. She remained unresponsive to his overtures.

An Mei stood alone in her bedroom in Kemun looking out of the window to the lush green beyond the driveway. Clipped hedges, almost ten foot high, marked the boundary of the grounds. Tall red-barked bamboos grew all along the hedge, their vibrant textured stems and leafy fronds softening the stark outline of the hedge. She could see staff hurrying to and from the car parked directly below as they unloaded the luggage. She had come directly to her rooms, leaving Hussein to go to his parents. It was not what she had wanted to do, but they had received instructions that Hussein’s parents wished to see him alone. She sighed. “When will they accept me,” she asked herself. “Perhaps never,” she answered the question herself.

She felt the silence of the house and her own complete isolation from its residents. But it was not this that troubled her. It was the conversation in the car that worried her. Hussein had always used her as a sounding board for his ideas and views, but over these past few months, she had heard less and less from him. Conversation between them had become frivolous, even as the opposition parties became more and more vocal. She learned about political developments from the local papers not from him. She blushed a bright red as she corrected herself. They were not local papers; they were newspapers left in Nelly’s office by Jeremy. She wondered if Hussein distrusted her. “No! That can never be,” she said aloud. “I have never given him any cause not to confide in me.”

She sat down on the edge of the bed. Suddenly, she straightened up and rang the bell. “Shalimar,” she whispered to herself. “Perhaps she knows. I shall get Fawziah here to find out where Shalimar is.”

She paced up and down the room waiting for the maid. Her eye caught the open page of a newspaper on the reading desk. It was the
Berita Kemun
, Kemun Times. She looked uncomprehendingly at the headlines in bold red: A
N
H
EIR FOR
D
EPUTY
M
INISTER
H
USSEIN AND
T
ENGKU
S
HALIMAR
!

Hussein stood in front of Shalimar, arms akimbo, feet wide apart and his lips quivering with anger. He glared at her until she dropped her gaze.

“What is this? What is this that I hear from my parents? How can you be expecting my child when nothing has happened between us.”

Shalimar shrank away from his reproach, but her face remained determined. “I am expecting,” she said. “It is... it is your child.”

He flopped down onto the armchair nearest him. “How can that be? I have never been near you.”

“Remember the night you were found in my bed. That was when our child was conceived,” she said. She kept her eyes on the floor, unable to meet his direct gaze.

“You vouched that nothing happened. You helped me, connived with me to allow me to be with An Mei. Why would you do that if you were bearing my child?”

“Because I did not know,” she answered. She looked up. That part of the answer was true. She did not know that she was bearing a child then, a child that she had to protect with everything she had. A child that she would lose on top of losing her lover, if she had not agreed to go along with her brother’s suggestion. How could she admit to having her lover Ali’s child when she was married to Hussein, a Minister? It would not only be the end for Ali but also for her unborn baby. She had to maintain, swear even in the name of Allah, that it was Hussein’s baby. She knew the pain it would cause An Mei, but her mind was made up. This was for the sake of her child; her hand went involuntarily to her abdomen. “It is our baby,” she insisted once again. “I did what I did because you loved An Mei and I did not want to destroy that.”