Here at East Coast Park, the sun is wonderfully warm, kind to Pansy’s old bones. There’s so much sunshine here that it is not regarded as precious, but she recalls deep winters in England when people hungered for a single ray, like the winter of 1986 when the white landscape stretched intermittently for miles, thick layers of snow shrouding rooftops, hills and trees. Or like the time she was in Skagway, Alaska, with George, at minus forty; office workers were given leave to go out to stand in the sunshine for the precious twenty minutes that the sun showed its face. It was so cold that if your ear-muffs slipped and exposed your ears for even a minute, they would bloom into cauliflower-swellings! Yet, here, in this country, people often complain about the excess of sunshine and humidity, and mosquitoes that thrived on such conditions. Sitting on the stone bench at East Coast Park, Pansy releases the tension in her chest with a long outbreath, breaking into a smile. At least she has the memory of a fulfilled life with George; many people go through life not having known what it was like to love and be loved. What was it? It’s better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all? Or better still, to have loved and not lost. Without love, one’s spirit becomes dry, parched, unable to sustain or render joy.
The sea here is as gentle as a millpond. Yet, this concept is relative—a few ruffles on the surface of the sea, and locals consider it rough. But the strength of the wind and waves are potent enough for gentle windsurfing and sailing. Pansy can see a few windsurfers out with their pretty sails, probably students from the school nearby. The lack of a forceful wind means that it is not easy for them to tack, their boards gliding to a standstill and hitting the doldrums, their sails becoming floppy and harder to manoeuvre. How different it was for the surfers at Bracklesham Bay. There they had to wear wet-suits, even in summer, as they braved the icy water and the cold, strong wind, riding and balancing their surf-boards on huge curling waves. Before she left England, Pansy had started watching a new sport, kite surfing, and had felt delighted. If she had been younger, she would have attempted it. Surfers sailed on their boards and hung onto colourful parasails that were handheld but not attached to their boards. When the wind took them, they were lifted aloft like giant tropical birds before they landed with resounding splashes. That was the kind of potency the wind had there.
Once, a journalist had managed to photograph a woman who had been walking along the shoreline, but was suddenly lifted by the strong wind and airborne into a parallel position with the ground, as if she were in the skydiving position! Here in Singapore, the wind is never strong enough to lift human beings into the air. It caresses rather than whips. In the distance, Pansy can see huge metal tankers, some really rusty looking. They blight the seascape as they traverse the international channel. Of course the international channel is much closer now than before, since the land reclamation. So it’s not quite the same as sitting at George’s bench at Bracklesham where the sea was open and wild, the waves rising to six feet sometimes. But at least she’s not confined in a tiny space.
This bit of coast is new to Pansy, reclaimed when she had already left for England with her family. They did not want to hang around after their home and village were ravaged by bulldozers. Like them, the other villagers had felt their hearts being torn open when the bulldozers broke the legs of their houses, toppling the houses that had sat on them. The spindly wooden stilts did not stand a chance against the open-mouthed mechanical monsters. Sand, gravel and pilings were slapped in front of the natural coast that she knew, literally burying the village she grew up in and where she had lived with George as a newly-married woman.
Fishing folk in many other seaside villages on the same coast and all the way to Pasir Panjang in the west suffered a similar fate, and were forced to become landlubbers, when they were moved inland. Like the kampongs, the long sandy beaches that gave Pasir Panjang its Malay name did not survive modernity. No memorial tablets attest to their existence. Villagers were moved from attap houses into concrete HDB flats. No one provided counselling to help them to cope with the transition. But at least there, they had running water, indoor taps and bathrooms, flush toilets and electricity. As Singapore’s land expansion crept towards its neighbouring countries, Indonesia and Malaysia watched with critical eyes, in case their fishing waters were compromised.
Pansy decides that one day, soon, she’ll go down to Bedok to retrace her old village. She had not rushed to do it because she wasn’t sure if she could handle the overwhelming memories of her mother, of George, and their early years, that the place may bring back.
Pansy talks to the waves, “Where have you just come from? Have you been round the world? Can you go and tell the sea at Bracklesham Bay that I wish I could see it? Tell George I miss him awfully…”
Through the West Sussex County Council, Pansy had erected a wooden bench in George’s memory on the shingled beach at Bracklesham Bay, the Isle of Wight, across the curved bay in the shadowy distance, between England and France. There on the shore, because of the high waves and wild winds, no tall trees can grow—only hardy brambles, tamarisk bushes and low-lying sea spinach can survive the harsh onslaught. But in summer, these enticed and brought the butterflies in colourful, fluttering flocks, which delighted Pansy: Brimstones, Large White,
