“I have to get out,” she decides. “I must see the open sky and sea, hear the waves.” Pansy dresses herself, wondering which fabric would be more comfortable in the humidity she has to get used to again. Her arthritic fingers fumble with the buttons. She puts on calf-length capri pants. It took her a while to adjust to calling trousers “pants” as they do here, like in the USA, when in England “pants” refers to one’s underwear. To think that when she was a teenager, she had to overcome staid rules in order that she might wear slacks! Her father, Hock Chye, would not have approved. He would have said, “Tak seronoh sekali!” Pansy smiles at the recollection. Her father had been strict. What would he have made of George appearing in their village to ask her out? Would he have castigated the teenage George or be reminded of his young self who had run away with someone’s potential bride?
One of the saddest things about being old, Pansy thinks, is that so many people you know are ill or dead.
Pansy used to take pride in what she wore but these days it doesn’t seem to matter anymore. Who would notice or care? There’s no one to pay her compliments anymore.
“Darling, that dress looks lovely on you,” George might have said. “That colour is perfect! Oh, I like the way you’ve done your hair…”
Small things. But they were treasures. It meant he bothered to notice. It meant she was somebody to be noticed, somebody to someone. His comments had made her feel feminine, youthful, not old as she was beginning to be. It’s as if George had held the elixir of her youthfulness and in his going, he had taken it with him. When you’ve been a part of someone for so long, knitted to each other in so many ways, it’s hard to regain that sense of being on your own again.
Pansy tries to uplift her mood by singing the opening bars of ‘So Nice’:
Someone to hold me tight
That would be very nice
Someone to love me right
That would be very nice… so nice
She grabs a handful of shelled groundnuts to stop her blood sugar from plummeting, knowing that she needn’t worry about eating properly as she’ll most certainly run into a food centre with a myriad of food stalls selling Chinese, Malay, Indian and Western food every few hundred yards, in this country where eating out is a national pastime. Has food been made easily available to satisfy the people’s basic hunger, so they will be contented? A type of soma perhaps? She is very likely to come across a food centre that’s open for breakfast through to late supper, or even one that is open twenty-four hours. Pansy pauses a few seconds as if waiting to hear the cry of the itinerant hawker calling out his wares as they did in the old days, the noodle seller clacking his bamboo clappers and calling out, kway teow mee! Or another, shouting, satay-satay! Or kachang puteh! But there is no such need now: the hawkers are housed in sanitised food centres with running water and electricity where they wait for customers to call on them.
Indeed, Anthony had obeyed his father’s last wish at least partially, and had bought Pansy an apartment, although it is a little distance from his own home near Newton Circus, which is accessible to District 10, a much sought-after neighbourhood. Like the majority of kiasu Singaporean parents, afraid to lose out, he and Emily had settled themselves in a district where the top schools were, so that their three daughters had a better chance of getting into the school of their choice according to the school admission system. In this country, people do not move house just to get better views but to be nearer schools, work or aged parents. Anthony had used up most of George’s savings and money from the sale of the house in Bracklesham Bay to move his family to a more posh apartment, so he had little left over to buy his mother one that was in a similar class to his. But he had made sure she was near a wet market, food centre, facilities, bus-stop and mass rapid transit or MRT station, the kind of accoutrements that a housing agent will include in his spiel to raise the value of a property.
“You got everything here an old person like you could need,” Emily had stated firmly, in a tone that did not brook a challenge.
“Honey…” Anthony said weakly, then faltered.
Goldie came for a visit, and when she saw the tight space of the apartment for the first time, her face fell. “Oh, grandma, this must be so terrible for you after your beautiful home in Bracklesham. You are deprived of your wonderful view!”
Her words so succinctly expressed her feelings that they nearly made Pansy weep. But she put on a brave front and said, “But I’m lucky to be here, to be near you all. No house or scenery can take the place of family.”
“When I get time off, grandma, I will take you on holiday
