The Red Thread (45 page)

‘Aye, yes. My sister is leaving Singapore soon.'

If Robert had expected a reaction, he was disappointed. Zhen's face was impassive. Really, he thought, you could never tell what these Orientals were thinking. Made them hard to deal with, especially the ones from China.

Without a word Zhen bowed, turned and disappeared down a small lane leading to Circular Road.

Extraordinary. Perhaps if Charlotte knew how little he cared, it might do her good, thought Robert, angry for her, wishing now he had never agreed to the whole thing. Women were terribly vulnerable to blackguards like this. He should have seen that, taken better care of her. But at bottom Robert knew he would never have been able to impose authority on his sister.

Zhen walked along Circular Road to South Bridge Road and turned past the gaol, then went as far as the Indian temple, his mind a complete blank. He stopped, a feeling of desperation coming over him. He turned and began to walk back the way he had come. Clouds scudded overhead, casting darkness on the ground as they passed over the sun.

Tan had not seen Zhen depart, and only when he called for him did one of the coolies tell him he had gone down the quay. Putting on his black top hat, he went outside and gazed the length of the promenade towards the bridge, but there was so much traffic and activity there that he couldn't see anything. Then, just as Tan was about to turn back into the godown, he saw him. Zhen was in a
sampan
which was sculling quickly down river. What by all the gods was his son-in-law doing on the river?

He watched as Zhen got out at the landing and walked quickly along the bank and disappeared towards the European town. Tan could not understand what Zhen was doing and, curious now, began to walk along the quay towards the fort. As he got to Tanjong Tangkap, he stopped. Now he could see Zhen in conversation with a fellow at the police office. Suddenly Tan's mind began to make connections. Miss Mah Crow was leaving, and Zhen was at the police office, suddenly disturbed. Could it be—?

All at once, Tan knew it. The woman Zhen had been seeing all this time was Miss Mah Crow! The devil!

Tan was not especially annoyed. Rather, he was impressed at this young man's prowess. Tan had sometimes wondered what it would be like with a white woman. Well, carrying on with Miss Mah Crow and getting his daughter pregnant! He certainly had energy. Still, it was probably just as well that the sister was leaving. That could have become very complicated. He would have had to put a stop to it at once. He continued to watch until Zhen abruptly turned and walked around the police office, and Tan lost sight of him going along High Street.

The man had said Miss Mah Crow was at her friend's house, Miss Mah Nuk. Zhen was confused. He thought the friend had left with the sick child. He walked until he saw the white house, which looked completely deserted. He went into the garden and under the huge porte-cochere. The white men had amazing buildings, was his first thought. Every one a palace. One day he would like a house like this. Build it for her.

A bolt of lightning fizzed and crackled across the sky. A great roll of thunder boomed overhead, and he ducked involuntarily. Zhen sensed a bad squall and knew the boats out on the harbour would be turning tail and racing to the river mouth before they became deluged by the storm. Certainly by now Tan would be wondering where he was, but he did not care. He'd given the blasted man a grandchild.

He could see a dense black cloud rising from behind the distant islands and quickly overspreading the sky.

The door to the mansion was locked, and he began to circumnavigate the building. He heard a clack of shutters closing. Someone was inside. Convinced it was Charlotte, he went to the back of the building and found a door slightly ajar. As the first drops of rain fell, he went inside. It was dark, but he could make out a corridor. This led to a storeroom and kitchen area.

He continued deeper into the house and came to a tiled hallway. Several rooms led off this hallway, and he peered inside each of them. There was furniture, stores of some sort, but no living person. Now he came to the large main entrance hallway and looked up the great height to the chandelier. There was a room off to one side, where the door stood open and he could see light. Going quickly across the hall, he pushed the door open and saw her.

She was packing some of Takouhi's china into a wooden chest. Tigran was coming personally in his ship to take her to Batavia. With Takouhi's welcoming response to her letter had come a request to bring with her personal items and gifts from George. Charlotte hoped against hope that when time had passed, Takouhi would return to him.

Hearing the movement in the doorway, Charlotte turned.

She was so surprised to see him standing there that she almost dropped the little crystal vase she was wrapping.

He crossed the room and took the vase out of her hand, throwing it to one side. She heard the glass shattering as it crashed onto the tiled floor. He swept her into his arms and went out into the hall. He said not one word, and she suddenly didn't care what happened. She dropped her head on to his shoulder.

He went up the marble staircase and onto the long landing. There he found a big room with a huge bed standing in the middle of it. The shutters let in a little watery light. Zhen moved through the gauzy netting and lay her down. Lightning and thunder sizzled and rippled across the sky, and the rain began, blotting out all sound but its own watery lament.

44

The
Queen of the South
stood waiting in the harbour. It was not yet dawn, and the sun was still below the horizon like a tiger waiting to pounce on the day. She and Robert had watched as it sailed closer, threading through the squat Siamese craft, half square-rigs, half junks, the sleek English vessels and the long-prowed Sumatran ships. Charlotte could see the oculus, the eye, large, black and white, keeping a close watch on the steely cobalt of the deep ocean. She was certain that Tigran was on board.

The anchor fell into the sea. She felt the splash she could not hear, and her heart sank down with it to the depths. The hour had come. She could already see the cutter being swung out over the sea, ready for lowering, quivering, as if impatient to be where she was waiting.

She had made her brief farewells to her acquaintances. She was on a visit to Takouhi, to pay honour to Meda's resting place. Miss Aratoun had smiled coldly and wished her Godspeed. Mrs Keaseberry had been sad, liking this young woman with whom she had spent many hours in conversation. Charlotte, too, was sad to leave this other Charlotte, for Mrs Keaseberry had been ill, and in the tropics lives were precarious.

The da Silva girls had cried briefly, then asked her to write with all the news of Batavia. Charlotte realised how little she had seen of these women over the last weeks and months. Her greatest sorrow was leaving Evangeline, and she had made promises of rapid return she was not sure she could keep.

There was a knock at the door, and Robert went out. For ten days Zhen had watched, knowing this ship and its purpose.

Every day he had searched in his mind for wisdoms to deal with this hand of ice creeping round his heart, the bleak and passionless future which lay ahead without her.

‘Double curtains hang deep in the room of Never Grieve

She lies down, and moment by moment the cool evening lengthens

The lifetime he shared with the goddess was always a dream

No young man ever in the little maid's house

The wind and waves know no pity for the frail pond-chestnut's branches

In the moon and the dew who can sweeten the scentless cassia leaves?

We tell ourselves all love is foolishness—

And still disappointment is a lucid madness'

Now he confronted her. ‘This ship take you? You want this? Leave me?'

She nodded, head down, unable to look at him.

‘Come back?'

Charlotte shook her head, not trusting her voice.

He took her hand and kissed the palm. The feel of his lips, at this parting, was not soft but like sand. Then he put a box into her hand. She could see that it was the one he had given her at the chapel. When was that? Ten lifetimes ago?

She opened it, and there was the pearl. He had made it into a necklace. It lay under a delicate, latticed silver mount shaped like the upturned eaves of a Chinese temple roof, on an entwined rope of red silk threads. The pearl was perfectly round, like the moon. She took it from the box and held it in her hand, and then he took it and turned her so he could put it round her neck. It felt light as it lay on her skin. A touch as light as him. As he tied the silk ribbon, his thoughts were bitter.

‘The East wind sighs, the fine rains come,

Beyond the pool of water lilies, the noise of faint thunder.

A gold toad gnaws at the lock. Open it. Burn the incense,

A tiger of jade pulls the rope. Draw from the well and escape,

Chia's daughter peeped through the screen when Han the clerk was young,

The goddess of the river left her pillow for the Great Prince of Wei,

Never let your heart open with the Spring flowers,

One inch of love is an inch of ashes.'

‘One inch of love is an inch of ashes.'

She did not understand the Chinese words but heard the harshness of his voice.

She faced him and saw that his eyes were narrow, angry. He knew he should find tenderness, but he could find none, only a cold burning, the words of the
Taoteching
echoing dimly: ‘The deeper the love the higher the cost, the bigger the treasure the greater the loss. Seek restraint and contentment.' It was wisdom he could not find. Maybe only withered old men could find it, and he was angry at these dead philosophers, at her, at everything.

‘One inch of love is an inch of ashes.'

At the jetty, the launch had arrived, its purple covering floating in the breeze. Tigran had made a royal barge for her, as he had for his sister. Azan was helping load the chests and cases which had stood ready, waiting for this journey. Tigran had waited on the ship, and she knew he had not wanted to hurry her, wanted to let her make her farewells. Perhaps Takouhi had told him about Zhen.

Out there, in the harbour, they both knew, the boat stood ready now. Zhen had wanted to kiss her, but abruptly he could not bear it, furious, filled with a cold hard wish to smash everything.

He turned. She put her hand on his arm. He shook it off and let out a roar of anguish. She caught his hand as he moved away. He stopped, wanting to strike her, but when their eyes met, he felt turned to stone.

She moved to him and put her hand to his cheek, pulling him to her face, holding him quietly. He tried to hold on to his anger, fearful of what would rush in to take its place when it had gone.

But he could not, and he held her fast, releasing her only as he heard Robert come into the room.

She took his hand, laying a scroll of paper tied with a red ribbon into the palm. He looked perplexed, holding it. Then, as Robert came to his sister's side, he went down the verandah and disappeared.

Charlotte put her hand to her cheek, where his had been, then to her throat and touched the pearl. She took a breath and straightened her back.

From the rocks under the fort, Zhen watched the black brig turn slowly towards the south. Suddenly the slack sails stretched on the rigging, hearing the call of their mistress, the wind. In a breath she commanded, and with a snap they obeyed. The ship moved swiftly away.

He gasped. Tears sprang to his eyes. He remembered Qian's words. He had tried to weave a net to catch the wind. Then she was gone.

He looked down at the paper in his hand, opened it, read the black characters painted there. He gazed at the far horizon. Tears remained, but bitterness flew away.

The wind tasted blue, of brine and foamy swells, and the sea looked like her eyes as red threads crept up the sky.

About the Author

Dawn Farnham was born in Portsmouth, England in 1949. Her parents emigrated to Perth, Western Australia, when she was two. She grew up a sandgroper, barefoot and free, roaming the bushy suburbs and beaches with her friends. In the 1960s she, like so many other young Aussies, left on a ship for London, aged seventeen. In the Swinging Sixties she met and married her journalist husband, moved to Paris, learned French and travelled round Europe in a Volkswagen Beetle.

As a foreign correspondent, her husband was posted to exotic locations and they lived in China, Hong Kong, Korea and Japan in the 1980s and 1990s. During this time she raised two daughters and taught English. Back in London she returned to school, doing a BA in Japanese at The School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) and a Master's Degree at Kings College.

She and her husband now live in Singapore where she is a volunteer guide at the Asian Civilisations Museum. It is in this thriving port city-state that she found her muse and began to write, finding particular pleasure in Singapore's colourful and often wild past. This is her first novel.

The Shallow Seas

A Tale of Two Towns: Singapore & Batavia

{ The Straits Quartet, Vol.2 }

Dawn Farnham

Fleeing the scandal of an illicit love affair, young Charlotte Macleod arrives in Batavia under the protection of one of the richest merchants in the Dutch East Indies. Marriage to him will give her security, but can she forget the man she left behind in Singapore, the lover whose child she is carrying? Against the background of the most cosmopolitan city in the Far East and its extraordinary mix of slave, Portuguese mestizo, Arab, Dutch, English and Chinese Indies culture, Charlotte must struggle to come to terms with a marriage to a man she does not love in a city she does not understand. This is the second volume in The Straits Quartet.

Drawing on real-life historical personalities of that exciting period, Dawn Farnham deftly mixes fact and fiction to paint a vivid portrait of mid-19th century Javanese royal courts; Java's vast, sprawling colonial capital, Batavia (the city we know as Jakarta); and its annoying commercial rival—the young, ambitious Singapore.