"I don't care," Su Yi said impatiently.
Felicity poured some water into the cup and brought it over to her mother. She held the cup up to her mother's lips and began to tilt it forward, noticing that her hands were beginning to shake. "Oh, silly me, we need a straw. We wouldn't want to spill any of this on you."
Su Yi let out a sigh. Even in her delirious state, Su Yi noticed that her eldest daughter always brought along a certain frenetic energy. She was so eager to please, but in a cloying, obsequious way that Su Yi found so irritating. She had been like this even as a child. Where did she get it from?
Felicity found a cluster of straws on the side table and hastily jabbed one into the cup. "Here, that's much better." As she placed the straw up to her mother's lips, she glanced at the heart monitor and saw the numbers slowly begin to rise: 95 … 105 … 110. She knew she was agitating her mother, and her hands started shaking again. A few drops of water splashed onto her mother's chin.
"Hold still!" Su Yi hissed.
Felicity grasped the cup tightly, suddenly feeling like she was ten years old again, perched on the ottoman in her mother's bedroom as one of the Thai maids arranged her hair into an intricate braid. She would shift a little, and her mother would groan in annoyance. "Hold still! Siri is doing very delicate work here, and if you make one false move, you're going to mess it all up! Do you want to be the only girl at Countess Mountbatten's tea party with bad hair? Everyone will be looking at you because you're my daughter. Do you want to disgrace me by looking unkempt?"
Felicity could feel the veins in her neck beginning to throb at the memory. Where were her blood-pressure pills? She couldn't deal with Mummy like this. She hated even seeing her like this, dressed in a hospital gown with her hair out of place. Mummy must never look unkempt. Now that she was conscious, they must send over some of her own clothes and have Simon set her hair properly. And some jewelry. Where was the jade amulet she always wore against her chest? She stared at the heart monitor anxiously: 112 … 115 … 120. Oh dear oh dear. She didn't want to be responsible for causing another heart attack. She needed to leave the room now.
"You know, Astrid's been dying to see you," Felicity blurted out, appalled at her own choice of words. She pulled the cup away from her mother and fled out the door.
A few moments later, Astrid entered, the bright light from the doorway silhouetting her, and making her glow like an angel. Su Yi smiled at her. Her favorite granddaughter always looked so calm and collected, no matter the occasion. Today she was wearing a pale lilac dress with a low-waisted sash and delicate knife pleats all along the skirt. Her long hair was gathered into a loose bun at the nape of her neck, and the delicate locks on the side framed her face like Botticelli's Venus.
"Aiyah, how wonderful you look!" Su Yi said in Cantonese, the dialect she preferred to use with most of her grandchildren.
"Don't you recognize the dress? It's one of your Poirets, from the 1920s," Astrid said, sitting in the chair beside her bed and taking her hand.
"Ah yes, of course. It was my mother's actually. I thought it was terribly old-fashioned by the time she gave it to me, but it looks perfect on you."
"I wish I could have met great-grandma."
"You would have appreciated her. She was very beautiful, like you. She always told me that it was unfortunate that I took after my father."
"Oh but Ah Ma, you're so beautiful! Weren't you the leading debutante of your day?"
"I wasn't ugly, but I didn't come close to my mother in looks. My older brother looked more like her." Su Yi sighed for a moment. "If only you could have met him."
"Great-uncle Alexander?"
"I always called him by his Chinese name, Ah Jit. He was so strikingly handsome and so kind."
"You've always said that."
"He died much too young."
"Cholera, wasn't it?"
Su Yi paused for a moment, before saying, "Yes, there was an epidemic in Batavia, where father had sent him to manage our businesses. You know, things would have been so different for all of us had he lived."
"What do you mean?"
"He wouldn't have behaved like Alfred, for one thing."
Astrid wasn't sure what her grandmother meant, but she didn't wish to upset her by prodding any further. "Great-uncle Alfred is coming home, you know? He's due in on Thursday. Auntie Cat and Auntie Alix are on their way as well."