River of Smoke(24)

‘No. Not yet. But I have managed well enough so far, and I do not see why I should not get by for a while longer.’

Fitcher coughed, cleared his throat and turned around to face her. ‘And what if – what if I were to offer ee something better, Miss Paulette? A job? Would ee think of it at all?’

‘A job, sir?’ she said warily. ‘Of what kind, may I ask?

‘A gardening job – except that it’d be on a ship. Ee’d have eer own cabin, all fitted out for a young lady. Ee’d have a bosun’s pay, and nothing charged for the victuals neither.’ He paused. ‘I owe it to eer father.’

Paulette smiled and shook her head. ‘You are very kind, sir, but I am not a lost kitten. My father would not have wanted me to take advantage of your generosity. And for myself too, sir, I must confess that I have grown weary of living on charity.’

‘Charity?’

Fitcher was suddenly aware of a strange bedoling in certain parts of his body: it was as though he were being assailed by an unfamiliar illness, with symptoms that he could not remember having experienced before – a strangled feeling in the gullet, a palsied shaking of the hands, a fierce itching of the eyes. Sinking into the chair he raised his fingers to his throat and was bewildered to find drops of moisture dripping off the end of his beard. He looked at the wet ends of his fingers as though they had metamorphosed into something inexplicable – like tendrils sprouting on the ends of thorns.

Fitcher was not the kind of man who wept easily: even as a boy he had been able to endure dry-eyed any number of blows, cuffs and kicks. But now it was as if a lifetime of anguish was pouring out of him, streaming down his face.

Paulette went to kneel beside him and looked worriedly into his face. ‘But sir, what is it? If I gave offence, believe me it was not my intention.’

‘Ee don’t understand,’ said Fitcher, through his sobs. ‘It’s not out of charity that I offered ee the job, Miss Paulette. Truth is, I had a daughter too. Her name was Ellen and she was travelling with me. Since she were little she always wanted to go to China, to collect, as I had done. Month ago, she took ill and there were nothing we could do. She’s gone now, and without her I don’t know if I have it in my heart to go on.’

He removed his hands from his face and looked up at her: ‘Truth is, Miss Paulette, it’s ee who’d be doing a kindness for an old man. For me.’





Three





For many years Bahram had regarded the fledgling township of Singapore as a junglee joke.

In the old days, when sailing through the Straits, Bahram had made a point of stopping not at Singapore but at Malacca, which was one of his favourite cities: he liked the location, the severe Dutch buildings, the Chinese temples, the whitewashed Portuguese church, the Arab souq, and the galis where the long-settled Gujarati families lived – and food-lover that he was, he had also developed a great partiality for the banquets that were served in the houses of the city’s Peranakan merchants.

In those days Singapore was just one of many forested islands, clogging the tip of the straits. On its southern side, at the mouth of the river, there was a small Malay kampung: ships would sometimes drop anchor nearby and send their longboats over for fresh water and provisions. But the island’s jungles were notorious for their tigers, crocodiles, and venomous snakes; no one lingered any longer than was necessary.

When the British chose that unpromising location for a new township, Bahram, like many others, had assumed that the settlement would soon be reclaimed by the forest: why would anyone choose to stop here when Malacca was just a day’s sail away? Yet, as the years went by, despite his personal preference for Malacca, Bahram had been forced to yield, with increasing frequency, to his ship’s officers, who claimed that the port facilities were better in Singapore – Mr Tivendale’s conveniently situated boatyard was especially to their liking: they frequently cited it as the best in the region.

It was to this boatyard that the Anahita made her way after the storm: although she had lost her jib-boom and her figurehead, her other masts were intact and she was able to cover the distance in less than a week. Because of the lingering effects of the raw opium he had ingested, Bahram was unable to stir from his bed through this part of the voyage. For several days afterwards he suffered from opium-induced nausea: the attacks were more intense than anything he had ever experienced before, worse than his worst bouts of sea-sickness. Once or twice every hour his stomach would be knotted by spasms that made him feel as if his body were trying to eject his guts by pushing them out through his mouth. These seizures were so enfeebling that at times he could not turn on his side without Vico’s help.