The Moonlight Palace (9 page)

“It is possible,” Mr. Singh said slowly.

“People like to read about themselves in the newspaper,” I said. “So if you write about the wedding of a businessman’s son, the businessman is more likely to place an advertisement,” I said. “Not to mention the businesses who make the bridal dresses and provide the wedding rings.”

“I take a monthly ad in the
Singapore Gate
evening edition,” said Mr. Kahani mildly. “Kindly do not encourage more ads from my competitors.”

“Mr. Kahani has great respect for our newspaper,” Mr. Singh said. “We will always be loyal to our established clients. But not everyone appreciates an evening newspaper,” he added. “In the old days, gentlemen would read the newspaper after work. They would relax after the long day.

“But nowadays,” he said, warming to his subject. “People have to know the news as soon as they open their eyes. What will happen today, they want to know. This minute. Rushing blindly around. Morning newspapers,” he said with contempt, “are not prognosticators. They can only tell you yesterday’s news. In fact, they are worthless. If you want to know what happened that day, if you want
fresh
news, then you must read the evening paper! That is all there is to it!”

“Of course, Miss Agnes can only work in the evenings,” said Mr. Kahani, trying to bring matters closer to hand.

“I don’t need a secretary at this time,” said Mr. Singh. “I have an excellent typist in the office. She can pour me an occasional cup of tea. What more do I need?”

I sank back into my chair, defeated. Apparently, I had just talked myself out of a job.

“But,” he said. “I want this clever young woman to write a few columns for me. These puff pieces, as you call them. Weddings, engagements, etcetera. I can’t pay you for these columns, but it is excellent experience, excellent . . .”

“My dear Mr. Singh—,” Mr. Kahani protested.

Mr. Singh looked startled. Perhaps he had forgotten that Mr. Kahani was in the room. “I mean I cannot pay at the same rate I would pay professional writers, men with degrees. Three of my writers have bachelor of arts degrees. One has a bachelor of sciences degree from America. While you are . . .”

“Still in high school,” I finished for him.

“Precisely!” He glared at Mr. Kahani half-triumphantly, half-apologetically. “But we will work out a fair rat
e . . .
You need not have any worries about that. Well, now,” he said, jumping to his feet again. I would learn this was simply his way. Mr. Singh never stood, he always leaped. He never opened a door, he flung it open. “My newspaper will not write itself,” he said. “Are we agreed?” He put out his small, manicured hand for me to shake. His handshake was vigorous. He pressed Mr. Kahani’s arm as well. “I am grateful to you,” he told his friend, “for introducing me to this young lady. I think she will do very well.”

I hurried home that night with my morsel of good news. It had been so long since anything hopeful had happened in our family. We had all suffered; our lives had fallen under a cloud. I was eager to share my good fortune with the rest of the household. I flung open our heavy front door, Mr. Singh-style, and hurried to the dining room where my relatives gathered for their evening tea; even British Grandfather was there, as it happened, looking pink-cheeked, if a bit shrunken in his wooden wheelchair. I stood in the doorway, breathless and triumphant.

“I am a newspaperwoman!” I announced.

ELEVE
N

The Sheik

L
ike any teenager, I had trusted my victory to be a stay against disaster. Grandfather rallied at my morsel of exciting news, it is true, but a few days later, he insisted on being taken out for a long, damp stroll and developed a fever worse than the one he’d had right after Christmas. Thereafter, he would rise and fall on the ocean of failing health, only to sink a little lower each time, just out of our grasp.

Our household became very quiet. I had never really felt the vastness of the silver palace around us till I felt its emptiness. Dawid had gone home for the month of heavy rains. The uncles and aunties and elderly cousins of course came around, but not in the usual chattering groups, jostling and shoving to be first through the door, bearing the fragrance of cardamom and cooking oil, carrying along their latest arguments, complaints, and bits of gossip. Uncle Chachi’s “business associates”—all of them retired now—had always visited on a nearly daily basis, for Uncle Chachi was a compulsively social human being, happiest in the company of others. Now, the visits of his old cronies slowed to a trickle. Relatives and friends still came, but one at a time, quietly removing their shoes at the door. Each came bearing something—a tin of cookies, a pot of chicken rice.

I was too young to remember, or I would have recognized it for what it was, a Singaporean deathwatch. We Singaporeans are a noisy bunch; we reserve our silence for important occasions. In the face of grave danger, in battle, in courtship, or in the presence of illness or death, we preserve a deep silence. It is certain that Geoffrey Brown was the most talkative boyfriend I had ever had, and his chatter sometimes made me doubt his sincerity. A Singapore boy would have been much quieter in his devotion.

Geoffrey, of course, could not understand the silence that descended over our palace. He tried time and again to show his care for British Grandfather with friendly visits, and time and again he was rebuffed. I could do nothing to alleviate his anxiety; Grandfather was ill, and Nei-Nei Down was in charge. When I tried to talk about it with Uncle Chachi, he refused to discuss it. When I complained to Sanang, she snapped at me, “You are a very stupid girl.”

Only little Danai was sympathetic. Watching Geoffrey trudge from the house, his step heavy, his head lowered, she said to me in a quiet voice, “Such a pretty man. It seems a shame to send him away.”

I squeezed her hand in gratitude, and that afternoon in Little India I bought her a bag of the sugared jellies she liked so much and a postcard of the screen actor Rudolph Valentino in
The Sheik
.

Geoffrey and I continued to meet, but secretly, away from the palace. Now that I was working at Kahani’s and also at the
Singapore Gate
, while still attending school, my free time was limited, and I spent as much time as possible near Grandfather. I felt—or imagined—him calmer when I was nearby. Certainly Nei-Nei Down seemed less anxious when I was within calling distance. So my meetings with Geoffrey Brown became rarer, and for that reason all the more precious.

I had never given my grandparents any reason to distrust me; they were out of the habit of suspicion. Like many children raised by the elderly, I had been foolish in my rebellions, which were few—smuggling sweet and salty snacks into my room, listening to music they considered scandalous, wearing my skirts too short. They had no reason to believe I would ever sneak out to see a man behind their back. And I was so positive they would come around to admire Geoffrey Brown that my own guilt in these matters was minor. In the end, they would love him as I did. For the time being, I did not need to stir things up. Or so I liked to tell myself, whenever my conscience pricked me.

The old folks were unusually distracted, in any case. I had been seeing Geoffrey on the sly for nearly two months and nothing terrible had come of it. What was the harm if he snuck an arm around my waist or stole an occasional kiss? It was no less and no more than Singapore schoolboys had tried. Yet I always felt that Geoffrey’s intentions were deeper, more serious than anyone I had ever known. He was not a trivial high-school boy; he was a grown man, and I could not get to the bottom of him. Perhaps that is the secret to love—it must have about it some sense of mystery. And also, perhaps, some bit of danger. With Geoffrey I felt both, in about equal measure.

If I announced that I was going out to study at the library, or meeting Bridget for a soda, the old folks waved me out with the usual warning to bring an umbrella and not stay out too late. Now and then, when I had no plausible excuse, Dawid would walk me as far as the Pahang Road. I could see how uncomfortable it made him, and I pitied him from the bottom of my heart. “Try not to make a fool of yourself,” Dawid told me once at the palace gate, and that was as close as he ever came to expressing resentment or offering advice.

I held my tongue. Eventually they would all come to see Geoffrey as I did. They would have to realize how hardworking he was, how dedicated and noble. You had only to look at his profile to see that Geoffrey was a man of high ambitions and lofty aims. Could the bones of a human face lie?

Geoffrey was open about his humble beginnings, and they only endeared him to me more, though one might say that my family had followed the opposite path: from riches to destitution. Still, I felt we were alike. “I came up the hard way,” Geoffrey once told me. “There is nothing posh on my family tree. My brother and I lived with my granddad awhile, when my mum got tired of paying. Those were my happiest years—then my mother came and took us back. I still remember how I howled at the sight of her. My brother went to war; I went out to work.”

He stopped and looked at me appraisingly. “Does this make you detest me?” he asked.

“Not at all,” I assured him. “Quite the opposite. —What kind of work did you do?”

“Police work. I started as an ordinary bluebottle—walking the streets, writing traffic citations. Lying about my age—I was sixteen when I started. I kept my ears and eyes open and worked my way quickly through the ranks. Do you know what my main advantage was?” he asked.

Your golden hair, I thought, but I certainly didn’t say it aloud.

“I never needed as much sleep as the other fellow,” he said. “I’ve never slept well, not through the night. I have a watchful nature. Three o’clock comes, and I’m wide-awake. It’s amazing what you can accomplish simply by being awake. Amazing what you see in the small hours of the morning, when you’re not supposed to be watching.”

I stood as close as I could without actually leaning on him. Somehow, Geoffrey Brown was not the sort of man you felt you could lean on. He put an encircling arm around my waist. He smiled at me, that dazzling, crooked-toothed smile. “I’m talking too much,” he said.

“—So what did you accomplish, in the middle of the night?”

“I learned how to talk, for one. Listening to records. Shakespearean actors, usually. —Did you know I come from County Tyne? Do you know how they sound up there?”

I shook my head.

“Like bleating sheep,” he said, “for good reason. —And then, let’s see. I taught myself history. Politics. Philosophy. Thought I’d become a philosopher. Wrote essays and everything, pages and pages.”

“When I was about eleven,” I said, “I wanted to be a poetess. —I was awful!”

“Much the same thing,” Geoffrey said, drawing me closer. “Both of us dreamers.” He rested his chin on the top of my head a moment, lightly. The bones of his face were sharp enough almost to hurt. “But I never felt at home until I came to Singapore,” he said. “That’s the truth of it. So many thousands of miles away. I just—fell in love,” he said. “Never saw a place so beautiful. Never met people so beautiful. Face after face, you would see them in the street. So open and pliant and trusting.”

“My grandmother is anything but pliant,” I told him. I might have added, “And I take after her,” but we were still in that honeymoon phase, when you don’t tell the other person everything you are thinking. You believe you can become the person they want you to be, an idealized version of yourself.

“Your grandmother is Chinese,” Geoffrey said. “Peranakan. You are Singaporean.”

“I am a mix-up,” I said.

“You and me both,” he said. “Mutts. I never belonged in England. Too many hundreds of years of being in the wrong place at the wrong time. I knew as soon as I set foot in Singapore I could make it my own. I felt I had come home.”

He drew his head back just far enough so that he could look, long and hard, at me. I don’t know what he saw. Because of the angle of the light, his face was almost entirely in shadow, while mine was illuminated. He may have seen himself reflected in my dark eyes. He must also have seen the tenderness and admiration I could never disguise. He kissed me then, deep and slow, his arms twining around me, his tongue sliding into my mouth. I had never been kissed like that by anyone. I felt overwhelmed, as if something were being taken away from me—my breath drawn right out of my body. I was as shaky on my feet as a new colt. I could tell no one about this—not even Bridget. It felt secret, sacred, and I wanted to keep Geoffrey all to myself just a little while longer.

Soon enough, I knew I’d have to share him with the world. But he could remain my secret for a little longer. Let no one say that young love is generous. It is selfish and hungry. And I knew the dangers of the Hungry Ghosts. Hadn’t we placated them every festival season, assuaging their hunger with sacrifices of paper food? But you cannot tell a young person anything—least of all a young person head over heels in love.

Meanwhile, there was my new work at the
Singapore Gate
evening edition to keep me occupied, and there were unexpected perks of being a newspaperwoman. There were only two other women in the office, both in their sixties, one secretary and one bookkeeper, best friends to each other, and we would occasionally go out for glasses of tea at the Pek Sin Choon tea hawker on Mosque Street. But I could tell they disapproved of me, and that stood in the way of giving and accepting confidences. They dressed very plainly, in loose-fitting shifts. I was a true 1920s girl, complete with heels and bobbed hair. I loved elegant clothing, and strangely enough, my work at the newspaper fed that weakness.

For example, I had a great fondness for hats, which I had never in my poverty-stricken life been able to indulge. Scraping together the money for my school uniforms created enough havoc with the family finances. I seldom allowed myself even a glance into a milliner’s store. I did not envy my wealthy school girlfriends their many silk dresses, but I longed for a decent straw hat and an unsoiled pair of gloves.

Nei-Nei Up, Uncle Chachi’s late wife, had shared my taste in fanciful hats, and when she died she bequeathed to me two beauties. The first was a black felt hat decorated with long kuong feathers. The other was an evening cloche decorated with violet glass beads and a veil. Neither hat was appropriate for the Raffles School, but I could have found occasions to sport one or the other. Instead, I kept them locked away. I took them out of their boxes only once in a great while, to admire them in the mirror and then put them away again. This was foolish. I thought that by keeping the hats unworn, I could preserve them for all time. Instead, time nibbled away at them, as indeed it had my two inherited kebaya, one from Nei-Nei Up, one from Nei-Nei Down.

Moths had eaten holes in both kebaya, which Nei-Nei Down and Sanang painstakingly, grumblingly repaired. These kebaya I wore only on festival days, or during really special family celebrations. These kebaya were true works of art, covered with birds and peonies and intricately twisting vines and swimming gold carp—though Nei-Nei Up’s cream-colored kebaya hung a bit loose, and Nei-Nei Down’s crimson a bit wide. I am ashamed to admit I would have traded either one for a nice modern, fashionable hat.

Once I became a bona-fide newspaperwoman at the
Singapore Gate
, I could visit the millinery stores whenever I pleased—in fact, it was my job to do so. You could not write a puff piece about a store if you weren’t thoroughly familiar with its wares. I spent time lingering over shelves of kid gloves, trying on scarves, shoes, eyeglasses, and hats. Storekeepers were eager to show me their latest arrivals. They told me gripping stories about shoplifters and swindlers, family business deals gone sour—however, I could include none of these histories in my fashion pages and society columns. My pages were relentlessly cheerful. I had offered to write obituary notices, but Mr. Singh told me in no uncertain terms that there was no place for death in Society.

Instead, I wrote about the new bicycle craze and offered tips for photographers who wanted to take better snaps. I wrote pages covering engagements and marriages, charity bazaars and festival balls, church concerts; I invented letters about society events, and I wrote glowingly about every business establishment.

Advertisements in the
Singapore Gate
became more regular and numerous. I began receiving invitations to store openings. One milliner even told me if he liked what I wrote, he would send me a free hat—but I knew what to make of such promises. I took my job quite seriously. I wrote judiciously, enthusiastically, and soberly about every single establishment. Above all things, I told myself, I was a journalist. I put a great deal of time and effort into my articles, choosing each phrase with care.