From her compact studio apartment, Pansy senses a change in the atmosphere. The air feels turgid and oppressive as it reaches its apex, then explodes. Lightning flashes across the sky, so bright and swift that she thinks it is going to enter her room. Eight seconds later, the rumbles catch up with the flash. The sky opens, lets fall a curtain of water that sweeps away the seam of ash. The air is revitalised and cooled. Pansy loves the sound of the rain; she imagines how the thirsty earth must be drinking it all in, dry roots sucking from the runnels of water that are seeping underground. She recalls how the raindrops used to tap rhythmically on their attap rooftop, the gentle drumming connecting her to the source. She remembers how George would cuddle her whilst sitting in her mother’s living room in their house on stilts by the sea as they looked out to the expansive seascape and horizon, watching as the lightning ripped apart the dark brooding sky.
Kim Guek had offered George a refuge and invited him to live with them when he and Pansy married, not long after the Queen’s coronation.
“I am indebted to you forever, Mak,” George had said with total humility. “And to Pansy. You’re accepting me without a penny to my name. I’m deeply honoured to have a mother-in-law and wife who will support me through university and provide me a home. As soon as I graduate, I will pay you back a million fold. I will take care of you both till I die.”
“It’s good to have a man back in the house again lah. Hock Chye would have blessed your marriage. We married for love, you know, Hock Chye and I. Not done in my time. I was supposed to marry a rich man’s son. When the family came to our house in Jonker Street to propose the match, I peeped through the hole in the floorboards of our Peranakan townhouse and didn’t like his arrogant look and haughty manners. In the kitchen, I accidentally bumped into the man’s valet and fell in love with him instead. You can imagine the uproar it produced. So I too was disowned and we fled to Singapore. But we never regretted our decision. That’s why I understand yours. Without money, life can be a hardship, but without love, life is a hardship. I wouldn’t have given up Hock Chye’s love for all my parents’ wealth in Malacca.”
It was the first time that Pansy had heard her mother talk about her past.
“How come you never told me before, Mak…”
“There was no need. What is done is done. But now that you two have made the same decision, you should know. In some ways, you’ll find it an uphill struggle, but you’ll also know the joy that others can only imagine. It requires courage to give up everything for true love. Your whole world turns upside down. And yet, you know the love you share is beyond the average person’s understanding, and it helps you to withstand all the storms. You’re my son now, George,” Kim Guek said. “We are family. Families do things for love lah, not in anticipation of rewards, or to make someone feel obliged. True love should be unconditional.”
“Remember what William Blake said about possessive love, George?” Pansy reminded him, then quoted,
“Love seeketh only Self to please,
To bind another to its delight,
Joys in another’s loss of ease,
And builds a Hell in Heaven’s despite.”
“I’ve lost one family and gained another,” George said, with a catch in his voice.
Pansy had written to Sister Catherine with the happy news. To their joy, they received an airmail envelope from England, this time with a stamp of the new queen. In it was a pretty, homemade wedding card from Sister Catherine. Pressed onto the front of the card were dried pansies, pink, yellow and blue, with their dark happy faces, plucked from the convent’s garden. For someone in her sixties, her calligraphy was still strong and beautiful. Sister Catherine had scripted the Corinthians’ message on love:
Love is patient, love is kind.
It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud.
It does not dishonour others, it is not self-seeking,
it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs.
Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth.
It always protects, always trusts,
always hopes, always perseveres.
“It’s a holiday so we’re free. Why don’t you come and meet us for dinner?” Anthony says on the telephone. “I can’t come and pick you up as the car is already full. Just take a taxi and meet us at VivoCity. The kids want to have burgers. Come to Level Two. There’s a restaurant there which makes homemade burgers. It’s called Flintstones and it overlooks the bay.”
How does one get homemade burgers when one is not at home?
“Thank you. It will be good to see you and the family,” Pansy says.
She would have liked to abstain from meat
