The Red Thread (4 page)

She felt a sudden upsurge in spirits. Here was a place intensely familiar, yet brand new. It was a frontier. Perils lay beyond, perhaps, but promises too. She felt a mantle of the past slipping from her shoulders and, for the first time, she was willing to let it go.

It was ten o'clock in the morning and the heat was already wilting. The parasol shaded her but did nothing to stop sweat trickling down her neck. The street was deserted. The only noise to be heard was the squeaking of the big wheels on the carriage and the sonorous buzzing of a thousand cicadas in the shrubberies. Fiery air shimmered on the plain.

A few minutes later, she caught sight of another large, columned building at the end of the plain; then the carriage turned left, and a gleaming white house came into view. Charlotte had never been to Pall Mall, but she had seen pictures, and she thought this house would not have disgraced it. The two storeys of the house were fronted by a great porch supported by six slender fluted columns, topped with scrolls in a neo-classical style. A deep frieze supported the long triangle of the roof front. On this, in foot-high, exquisite Celtic script were carved the words: ‘Tir Uaidhne'. Charlotte recognised the lettering from the books of Scottish myths and fables in her grandfather's library but had no idea what the words meant. She liked it, though: a house with a mysterious name.

Half-columned bays projected from the sides of the house into the gardens. Unlike the other houses she had seen, the shutters on this house were white and the roof tiles green. Surrounded by tall trees and palms in a myriad of verdant shades, the house had an air of undeniable coolness.

Like an emerald isle in an emerald sea, thought Charlotte, remembering that Coleman was an Irishman.

Before the porch, a mass of bushes covered in tiny white flowers spilled frothily onto a lawn. As they turned in to the gate and drew up in the deep shade of the porte-cochere, a woman descended the marble steps and put her hands together in greeting.

Charlotte had never seen such a woman. She wore a silk
sarong
, which played about her ankles as she moved, a shimmering garment in hues of lime, gold, brown, tan and black, a tumbling profusion of geometric and floral designs. Over a tight bodice she wore a plain tunic in pale green, of a material which was gossamer fine. The borders of the tunic and sleeves were filigreed lace, and it fitted her body like a glove. The jacket made a deep V-shape over her tiny waist. She wore no shawl. Her jet-black hair was drawn up into a loose chignon and held with a simple gold lacquer pin. The colours so matched her light brown skin and black eyes that she seemed almost unreal. On her feet she wore open sandals so delicate they seemed to be made of diaphanous threads. Then Charlotte noticed that the skin from her toes to her ankles was covered in fine coils and tendrils of black and brown vines and leaves, as if she had stepped from a magical autumn garden. This was so fascinating that Charlotte knew she was staring and had to drag her eyes away.

‘Come,' said the vision, seemingly unmoved by her inspection, and took her hands. Up they went into the great hall. Charlotte had no time to crane her neck before they reached a sitting room on the side of the building. A wide bay window overlooked a grove of trees, with leaves which drooped prettily in pinkish–purple tassels. There, on a long sofa of pale yellow silk, sat Mrs da Silva and her three charges. Seven other ladies were also present, seated apart on pale green, damask-covered chairs. They all rose when Charlotte entered.

Without ado, Takouhi had introduced them, and Charlotte had curtsied to each in turn. She took in only a blur of green and gold robes, white organza, pretty eyes with a pink
sarong
, sallow skin, red hair and freckles, black curls on a bulky frame, and fragile paleness.

The room was relatively cool, the shutters of the windows thrown open to catch the breeze. It was a high-ceilinged room of elegant proportions, entirely white, with pale yellow silk curtains. An unusual, low black table stood before the sofa; it had a shiny lacquered surface and stocky legs in square geometric shapes. A large round bowl of pure translucent white stood in the middle, filled with greenish–white jasmine flowers which imparted their faint sweet scent to the air. The sofa itself was a shape unlike anything Charlotte had seen, the back a series of undulating curves that scrolled outward at the arms. A long sideboard of glowing teak, carved with floral and vine motifs, stood against a wall. An English Georgian silver tea service stood on a side table with the pale green porcelain tea cups and saucers. Chased silver platters held small pastries. Two pretty young Javanese boys dressed in white cotton
sarongs
and short green jackets served. They wore green and white
batik
head scarves and had long, feathery eyelashes.

Charlotte marvelled at the unexpected elegance of her surroundings and the extraordinary group of women seated around her.

No more remarkable assembly than this could surely be gathered in any other drawing room in the world, Charlotte thought. She was glad she had come. Sipping her tea, she began to pay attention to the women gathered around her. Fair-haired and porcelain-skinned Charlotte Keaseberry was from Boston. She had met and married her English missionary husband in America. At first she had been excited by the prospect of serving God in heathen climes, but the heat had worn at her and, although by nature resolute, she secretly longed for the bracing air of New England. There were no children; she had miscarried twice.

‘It is a common story in the tropics, my deah,' she said laconically in her nasal Bostonian drawl, the slow deliberateness of which Charlotte liked. ‘One must live with it, the will of God but I admit, at times I question the purpose of these mysterious ways.'

The older women nodded, but some of the younger ones looked startled and a little embarrassed. Mrs Keaseberry, whom they met infrequently, if at all, was a person of open and frank opinions.

Dark and curly-haired Mrs Johannes van Heyde was of Dutch extraction, with liberal doses of Indian and Malay through her maternal grandparents. Mrs van Heyde always used her husband's name. Her own first name was a mystery to everyone but her beloved. She spoke only broken English. She was more at home in Malay or Hindustani, she said through Takouhi, who translated.

‘Malay,' she said forcefully in English directly to Charlotte, ‘bes' one.'

‘True,' said Takouhi nodding her head slightly. ‘Malay best for here. You go munshi. I help.'

Charlotte nodded in return, although she had no idea what or who was munshi. She had started to learn Malay on the ship from England. Robert had told her how important it was. ‘English is fairly useless here except between white men. Malay is the lingua franca of the South Seas. Without it, nothing gets done.'

He had arranged for a copy of
Marsden's Grammar
to be sent to her. She had, to her surprise, found it easy, even familiar. There were faint echoes of the native language she had spoken in Madagascar. Now, listening to the ladies, she began to hear those distant rhythms.

The van Heyde house traded extensively with Takouhi's brother, Tigran, in all the multifarious merchandises of the South Sea islands. Of her eight children, only three had survived. Mrs van Heyde's eyes had softened when Mrs Keaseberry spoke of lost children.

The white organza clothed the plain-faced, young frame of Lilian Aratoun. She said little but twice asked Takouhi whether her brother, Tigran, was well, and when he would be visiting Singapore again.

Meena Shashtri wore a green and gold
sari
. She had been widowed after her third child had been born. Her husband, for whom she had not much cared, had had the good manners to die and leave her in charge of the family fortunes, of which she took prodigiously good care. She spoke good, clear and very correct English in clipped but lilting tones.

It was the owner of the lovely eyes and the pink
sarong
, though, who had the most intriguing tale. Sharifah Kapoor had been part of the old sultan's harem, brought here from Rhio—the islands to the south, she explained for Charlotte's benefit. Though the sultan had grown so fat he rarely went near the women, his wife would often fly into rages and take sticks to the pretty young girls. After a particularly vicious attack one day, thirty-one of them agreed to run away. One early morning they made their way out of the harem at Kampong Glam which was, in any case, poorly guarded. They turned up at the police station and appealed for mercy. Despite angry objections from the sultan, the governor, having seen the state of their backs, arms and faces, granted them freedom. Many went off with merchants, some to be concubines in the Chinese houses, but Sharifah had gone to live with her now husband, Kapoor, a policeman who was Robert's top sergeant, his
jemadar
.

Red-haired and freckled, Elizabeth Scott was a well-developed thirteen-year-old. She was a bonny creature with a fiery look which seemed to increase the heat in the room. She burned very easily in the sun and, like Mrs Keaseberry, went everywhere with a bonnet and a parasol. This last information she had imparted with an air of superiority, as if a tendency to burn in the sun were a sign of good breeding. She had the singular distinction, much appreciated by her and some of her acquaintances, of being the niece of Captain William Scott, the harbour master, himself a cousin of the famous author, Sir Walter. She had dressed this morning in a shade of fuchsia which merely added to the overall picture of a furnace. She said little, but when she spoke, Charlotte could hear her strong Scottish accent. She and her elder brother had arrived only a few months ago, after the death of their mother, to reside with their uncle. Despite her predisposition to dislike everything Scottish, Charlotte felt sorry for the girl's situation which so closely mirrored her own.

Evangeline Barbie perfectly illustrated why few white women cared for the tropics. She was thin from frequent fevers, her skin ravaged by the harshness of a life spent in the service of the natives and of God in regions ruder and lonelier than Singapore. She had married once, but he had died regrettably young. Now in her fifties, she was resolutely cheerful. ‘One must make ze best of zings,' she said with a brittle laugh.

Annie da Silva, though herself English, was entirely at home in Singapore. The fifth Mrs da Silva had been born and bred in India, had never been to England and didn't care to go. She had met her husband in Calcutta and, though he was her senior by more than twenty years, was very happy to be rid of that city, which she considered unhealthy, and to live in the cleaner climes and breezier town of Singapore. She took care of her twins and Mr da Silva's younger children, and had little to do with the rest of the brood, who looked after themselves. She hadn't expected twins, she had explained, and loved the name Isabel, which was her mother's, so had simply named them both a variant of it. Neither she nor the girls seemed to find anything odd about this, and the girls rather enjoyed the confusion it generally created.

Charlotte's gaze now rested on Takouhi Manouk. She was the coolest-looking woman in the room. The Europeans were trussed up like wheat sheafs in their skirts and petticoats. Charlotte herself felt like a heap of poufs and appreciated keenly the inappropriateness of their dress in these climes. Mrs van Heyde, though dressed sensibly, in similar fashion to Takouhi, with a blue and white
sarong
and loose white jacket, managed through her size to look hot and fussy, and she dabbed constantly at her brow with a handkerchief. Takouhi's Javanese slenderness made her seem to waft like a zephyr through the room. Her high cheekbones gave her a regal air; her skin was light brown and perfectly smooth; her black eyes turned up slightly at the corners; her lips were full and sensuous. When she smiled, Charlotte could see that her eyeteeth came to a point, like a cat's. No, not a cat, thought Charlotte, but something feline. Her gestures and speech were slow and purring. A lynx, yes, that was it. Like a tawny lynx. Charlotte thought her the most graceful and beguiling woman she could ever hope to see.

Takouhi came from a wealthy family in Batavia. Her brother, Charlotte learned from Miss Aratoun, was the
taipan
of Batavia, the richest merchant in the Dutch East Indies. Robert had said she was Armenian, but Charlotte was not sure where that was and did not dare ask even Lilian Aratoun, although she was most curious. Takouhi's father had married a Javanese princess. This information thrilled Charlotte. She had met George Coleman—Irishman, surveyor and architect—in Batavia and had moved to Singapore, where he had built her Tir Uaidhne, this house. She had pronounced the name ‘Teeroowain' but did not elaborate on its meaning, to Charlotte's disappointment.

For their part, the assembly inspected their new arrival and would have been surprised to know that in some northerly drawing rooms Miss Macleod was not considered a beauty. For many Scottish ladies, her skin was not pale enough, her hair too black, her nose very slightly snub. Her eyes were her best feature, a violet blue, but there was something too direct in her gaze. Her figure was reckoned to be fair but somewhat too thin. And she had that impossible name. All those French bits. Not just plain Charlotte Macleod, but Charlotte Toussaint de la Salle Macleod. It was not seemly for a good Protestant Scottish girl. But then again, her background was unsavoury. What could you expect?

In Miss Takouhi Manouk's drawing room, however, the collective opinion was one of benign and affectionate approval. The rigorous and critical class system of Europe was, like the mail, a dangerous year away by sea.

Mrs Keaseberry summed it up in her Bostonian drawl. ‘Singapore's a man's town, my deah, and we women so few that we must all get along as well as possible, no matter our skin colours or stations. All that matters very little here.'

Indeed she had discovered the meagre extent of her possible acquaintance. Apart from the women in this room, there were few other European or Eurasian women with whom she could expect to have regular intercourse. The wives of the government officals and merchants numbered no more than fifteen, few of them young. The greatest number of young women were among the da Silva daughters, daughters-in-law and granddaughters. She realised that what Robert had said was true. Her sort—youthful, white, of acceptable social standing and of marriageable age—was rare. She was not sure how she felt about this.