The Red Thread (6 page)

Zhen took a look around, scratched his chin and said quietly,

‘
Aiya
! Still the mind, you big girl. Remember the farmer. Tomorrow we will go to the temple and speak to the gods and anyone else who might be around for a chat. I'll have a word with Pock Face tonight.'

He sat at Qian's side.

‘Take the top shelf, rats have further to run.'

3

When Charlotte awoke it was late afternoon. She could hear movement in the house. She was bathed in sweat and flung open the shutters to the verandah. Air wafted over her. She went out again to the big earthenware water jar, took up the ladle and began to pour the cool water over her body, slip and all.

‘That you, Kitt?' called Robert.

‘Who else?' she called, happy he was home.

‘Will you nae join me on the sitooterie, Miss Macleod?' It was their grandmother's term for a verandah or a gazebo or any place where you ‘sit oot', and it never failed to reduce them to giggles.

Laughing delightedly, she wrapped a large cotton cloth around her and went, trailing watery footsteps across the wooden floor, into the front living room. He was seated in a big rattan chair on the verandah, which looked over the fort and out to sea. The awnings on the riverside were all down against the sun. She plopped wetly into the seat beside him.

‘You look cool. Auch, it's been damned hot today and I've been on horseback most of it. This job is turning out to be tough.'

He smiled as he said this, though, and she knew he enjoyed policing more than anything he had done before. He told her he had been investigating the mauling of two unfortunate Chinamen by a tiger not more than a mile from the settlement; and he talked of two other Chinamen found on the same road with their throats cut. There had been a murder at sea, the captain of a brig which had sailed two days before. Two sailors had attacked the captain while he was asleep and thrown his body overboard. The second mate was also missing. The trial would be held in the next few days.

‘Robert, this place really is rather wild, isn't it?'

‘Kitt, my love, you don't know the half of it.'

As they chatted, a handsome middle-aged Indian turned the corner of the verandah and began to approach.

‘
Stop jemadar
,' said Robert in Malay. ‘I think my sister is not dressed to receive company.' The man immediately turned his back and began to retreat.

‘The police office is around the corner and is generally stuffed full of men from morning to night. Poor Kitt, you will have to put on a dress when you come to the sitooterie!'

This set them off in a fit of laughter again. When it subsided, finally, Charlotte rose and went indoors, and Robert called to Azan, the Malay boy who was their servant, to bring them lime juice drinks.

After she had dressed, he showed her the police office, a large room on the river side of the bungalow next to the sitting room. Seven men were sitting in it and rose and bowed when she entered. Most were young Malays and Indians. Robert introduced Charlotte to the group generally, and particularly to Jemadar Kapoor, whose wife she had met today. He was one of Robert's best policemen and spoke excellent English.

Back outside, on the verandah, Robert said, ‘You see it's quite separate from the rest of the house. We go in at the steps and front door, and so we are quite private. Sometimes one or more men may be sleeping in the office, but this should not alarm you. Actually it is safer that way. All my men are either Indian or Malay, and there are two English sergeants whom you'll meet later. There are no Chinese, for we fear they are all more or less involved with the secret societies here.'

He told Charlotte briefly of the Chinese
kongsi
, a sort of fraternal brotherhood that looked after the needs of the Chinese coolies. This was laudable and necessary, he said, but he suspected that they were also somewhere behind the increasing number of robberies taking place in the town, in Kampong Glam and out where the dhobi washermen lived, by the freshwater stream. Only a week ago, the dhobi village had been attacked and hundreds of clothes stolen. He and some men had followed a trail of washing into the jungle, but it soon petered out, and no one had been arrested. Policing here was a matter of good relations with the community, members of which, in turn, gave him and his men information.

The image of Robert following a trail of underclothes through the jungle was amusing, but Charlotte hid her smile, for she saw how serious he was.

‘Everything is based on trust. Heavy-handedness will not work. My men use a soft approach, and I believe we have gained the respect and cooperation of most of the law-abiding community of all the different races. If things get very bad, of course, I can call on the military, but that would really be a last resort.'

Charlotte was glad to hear Robert talk so enthusiastically about his job. His eyes grew bright and his face animated. He clearly loved this work and the men he worked with.

They re-entered the bungalow at the door next to the office. Charlotte's room was directly in front, behind the sitting room. On the left, a long hall led to back steps and a covered outdoor passage to the kitchens and servants' rooms. Here lived Aman and Azan, the two Malay servants, and Mo, their Cantonese cook. They had a separate washing and closet area and a small garden where Mo grew ginger and garlic. When the wind blew in certain directions, the smell of night soil wafted from this corner. On either side of the corridor were smaller rooms. One of the rooms on the right was Robert's bedroom, and one was a storeroom. Two others were empty but for two low cots; they sometimes served to accommodate low-ranking officials of the East India Company who might be passing through the settlement. The whole building was of brick, surrounded on three sides by a deep verandah.

Their own washing and waste cubicles were situated at the back of the verandah. Washing consisted of a large earthenware pot of water, kept filled by Aman from the bullock carts which plied a constant trade around the town and drew the water from the reservoirs made from the springs on the riverside of Bukit Larangan. The governor's residence stood low on the top of this hill. The porous earthenware, constantly covered by a wooden lid against mosquitoes and other pests, kept the water cool and fresh. When it rained, they used the water gathered in two large containers beside their quarters. The front verandah extended out on brick posts over the water, which at high tide lapped and gurgled under their feet. A short jetty jutted off the verandah. At the back were two large, handsome angsana trees and a pretty grove of prickly-trunked nibong palms. To the west was the fort, the river and the Chinese town and to the east, a view along the seafront and out over the harbour and the roads. It was not Miss Manouk's magnificent residence, but Charlotte loved it just as well.

Especially now, as the evening drew in and the sun shot pink and purple hues over the masts of the ships, across the waters of the harbour to the luxuriant hills across the bay. The estuary waters were filled with large rocks, with little rivulets running between the fissures like green snakes. The reefs and rocks made it difficult to enter the mouth of the river, and it took great skill to manoeuvre the boats to and fro.

‘Kitt, I have something to tell you,' Robert said and stopped.

Charlotte was struggling with her chicken. The fiery sauce it had been cooked in was taking her breath away. After every small mouthful she took a spoonful of rice and a big drink of water.

‘Crimoney, Robbie, do you think we could ask the cook not to make it so spicy? How do you manage it?'

Robert was gazing into the distance. He was not as striking as herself. He had more of their father in him: his brown eyes and sandy-brown hair, which he wore long, gathered in a tail. It was not in the least fashionable, but he did not seem to notice. He was good-looking in a gentle sort of way, taller than her but not tall, compact and strong.

He looked at the spoon that she was waggling up and down. ‘Auch, I have no control over any of that sort of thing. Perhaps you can sort it out, no?' he trailed off.

He was actually glad she had not heard him. He poured himself a glass of claret, and after Charlotte retired, Robert wrestled with his conscience. He did not like to keep secrets from her but really, what was he to say about Shilah? Sooner or later his sister would find out that he had been living with a woman here until the day before her arrival. The men would not talk, of course; many of them had native
nyai
companions. Hundreds of slave women and boys from the islands turned up at the Bugis marketplace every season. It wasn't mentioned. In a place like this, for someone like him there had been, until recently, simply no possibility of marriage. He lacked the means to support a family. The company frowned on it, and the truth was Robert had, at present, no desire to settle down with a da Silva daughter or such like. At least not yet. Shilah was too intoxicating.

She was the unwanted child of an Indian convict woman, dead at an early age, and a white man who had long since left the settlement. As a little girl she had been taken in by George Coleman's household, cared for and taught to read, cook, sew and clean. When she turned fifteen Coleman offered to find her a husband. By then, however, she had seen Robert, who spent a good deal of time at the Coleman house, and conceived a longing for him. One evening she had stolen into his bed at the riverside bungalow. She was dark-eyed, soft and yielding, and she was a virgin. He had simply been unable to resist her.

Robert had come to the settlement as the lowliest uncovenanted clerk. He had shared a room with two other bachelors on Malacca Street and, being of affable nature, had made friends easily. He enjoyed the society of the European settlement, the occasional amateur dramatics, the cricket games on the plain, the dinners and billiard evenings. The only real problem was female companionship. In the few European or Eurasian families, marriage was the only thing on offer, and not to young agency clerks with no immediate prospects. The Chinese merchants kept their daughters locked away like gold dust. The Malays and Bugis lived in kampongs with their wives and children. The Indians were mostly a floating population of men, soldiers, convicts or moneylenders, just like the thousands of Chinese coolies and, indeed, like the British agency clerks. The Chinese and mixed-blood prostitutes in Chinatown were outnumbered at least ten to one. This mathematical equation and a lecture by Dr Montgomerie on the diseases to be obtained in that quarter had left him dubious as to its pleasures. Privately, he had been advised to get hold of a native bed-servant, a
nyai
, as it was termed.

However, Robert had not tried to find a
nyai
in his first years in Singapore. Though widespread, the practice was distasteful to him, perhaps because his own mother had been a so-called ‘native' woman. Somewhat drunk, and anxious to be rid of his nineteen-year-old virginity, in the company of his friends, he had let himself be led to the room of an
ah ku
, a Chinese prostitute. She spoke no English, and his Malay at that time had been rudimentary. They had barely been able to communicate, and later, whilst certainly relieved, he had felt somewhat grubby. Since then he had thrown himself into the life of the community, taken up the study of Malay with the munshi and, apart from the very occasional transgression, had not returned to Chinatown.

Shilah was something entirely different. She spoke English, she was untouched and obviously in love with him. As soon as he put his hand to her soft breasts and kissed her lips, he was lost.

This had been going on for months and he had said nothing to George, to whose home she disappeared after each encounter. Well, tomorrow he would have to find his courage and speak to George. Coleman was not a disapproving man, and honesty was the best policy with him. Nevertheless, Robert was nervous.

He poured himself another glass of claret, looked out over the twinkling lights on the darkened bay to vague firelight at Tanjong Rhu and felt a headache coming on.

4

Early the following morning, before the gun, Robert dressed and left the bungalow. The steps to the street gave a view over the river to the town. He stood briefly and contemplated the boats, so closely packed they looked like a swarm of beetles. The tide was out, and many of them sat crookedly on the gravelly bank at the centre of the river. On the north bank, close by, was a low building used for government business, a fives court attached to its western side. Beyond and above that rose the classical lines of the courthouse, with its wide space leading to the quayside. This had been one of George's first commissions, illegal as it turned out. A private house, unsanctioned by Raffles, who had reserved this bank of the river for official buildings, it had been so splendid that it had been allowed to stand. Robert knew little of architecture, but even he could see that this building, with its deep eaves and shady verandahs, its arcades and columns and elegant central tower with the double cupolas, was a work of some refinement. Its precincts were cool and perfectly adapted to the tropical climate. The company had leased it these last fifteen years or so for the court and government offices, and Mr Church, the resident councillor, was in negotiations to purchase it outright for the administration.

Nearby, on the riverbank, was the elegant landing stage, with its steps and columned arches and, peeping over that, the inelegant roof of the post office and the master attendant's office.

A short walk from the police bungalow would take Robert directly to the offices of the governor and Mr Church for discussions about public safety and policing issues, or just to sit in its shady corridors for a chat with a glass of brandy. This suited Robert, for he was not one for memoranda, and preferred to deal directly on every issue. He was in no doubt that it was as much his easy and amicable relationship with Governor Bonham as his competence that had secured him his present position.