“Wah! So romantic,” Goldie says. “I’ve never heard this story before. Dad never tells us anything. So this is the part of me I inherit from you and your side of the family. Besides our complexion. Now I am beginning to understand why I have been having certain feelings.”
“Come on, let’s order, and I will tell you more. You have to taste the gong-gong,” she tells Goldie. “I guess these days, they won’t be directly from the surrounding sea here, but I must show you how I taught grandpa to skewer out the meat. We used to boil them fresh and eat them with sambal belachan.”
In her telling, Pansy relives her youth, and for a while she loosens the stranglehold of old age. The past is so much clearer to her than the present. She can’t remember what she ate for dinner yesterday but she can remember making the sambal belachan for George’s first meal with them, and how she had laughed when he gagged on it because of the chilli padi. In recounting that incident to Goldie, she laughs again at the memory, and Goldie chuckles.
There, Pansy thinks with relief. Now George will not die when I die. His granddaughter will remember him and keep his memory alive.
“Oh, I absolutely love the story,” Goldie says. “Tell me more, grandma. I feel that being with you, the missing pieces of my life’s puzzle are falling into place.”
“You know, something is falling into place for me too,” Pansy says. “I’ve been trying to figure out why I find you so familiar. Now I know. You look just like my mother had looked at the same age.”
“Oh, do I?” Goldie asks, preening.
“Not your hair style or earrings, I mean, but your slight figure and your features. She was so feminine and beautiful. If your hair is long as hers had been, I’m sure I won’t be able to tell you apart. I made her have her photo taken on her thirtieth birthday. I paid for it with my bonus from work. It was not easy in those days to take photos. People had to go to a photo studio to get it done. And they were all in black-and-white. I have it somewhere in my apartment, I’m sure of it. Give me time to look for it and then you can come and visit me and I will show it to you. Would you like a homemade pie? I will bake one for you.”
“That would be lovely,” Goldie says, smiling broadly, the smile rubbing out all traces of boyishness and making the girl in her come alive.
“By the way, did you know that my mother’s name was Kim Guek? It’s Teochew for ‘golden moon’. How interesting that your mother should pick Goldie Hawn’s name for you. Maybe she is quite perceptive after all.”
“Oh, what a beautiful name! I love that,” Goldie says. “Maybe I’ll change my name to Golden Moon. Mum would probably get into a fit. Would you mind if I take on the name of Kim Guek?”
Pansy is overwhelmed. Not only will George live on through his granddaughter, now Kim Guek too will live on through her great-granddaughter.
After lunch, Goldie drives up the hill into Haji Salam Road. It’s not difficult to find Haji Kahar’s house. It is a splendid Malay wooden mansion, the shutters still painted green. But a fence blocks closer access to it. Trees and bushes are planted along the fence, so the house has privacy and is not easily visible, except for its roof and upper floor. What used to be the servants’ quarters and outside kitchen are still within the compound, though it now looks as if it has a different owner from the main house.
“Wow, it’s still beautiful!”
“Well, I’ll be blessed!” says Pansy. “That this should still be standing here all these years. Especially in a place like Singapore, with its penchant for getting rid of the old to replace it with the new.”
Pansy gives Goldie the background of the house and its famous owner who had it built, one of the early immigrants who had made good and was a benevolent landlord and businessman.
“We do have a great deal of history in our small island,” says Goldie. “I’m glad that there is now a heritage board which stops the destruction of our historical places. These places need to be preserved for future generations. I’m glad people are protesting about the exhumation of Bukit Brown. So many of our famous pioneers are buried there. Fancy trying to destroy that to put in a road! I wish people could see this house and appreciate its beauty and history. I wonder if this is a heritage house yet.”
“We used to have a clear view from here to my village,” Pansy adds. “No high-rise condominiums to obstruct the view of the river and sea. That’s how I could see the green shutters whilst standing at my favourite lake. Talking of heritage, we must stop at the heritage tree your father was talking about…”
They get into the car and Goldie drives past the Bedok Camp, then the Bedok Food Centre. The Minangkabau-design food centre is an impressive building compared to the shacks of the old food stalls that used to be across the road on Long Beach. Unusual for Singapore’s buildings, the toilet stalls are surrounded with a brown wooden wall to emulate kampong structures.
“Oh, this place has really changed,” Pansy says, pointing to the army camp and its surroundings. This was all white sandy beach before. This sharp turn on the corner marks the very spot. The tree must be just here on the left…”
True enough, as soon as the car turns the corner, the tree comes into sight. Goldie parks the
