“Did the villagers keep in touch with each other after they were rehoused?” Goldie asks. “Couldn’t they remain a community?”
“It was difficult in those times. To get to the one public telephone which served our village, we had to walk at least half a mile. After the villages were destroyed, people still didn’t own any telephones, and there were no mobile phones. Some people kept in touch through letters, but then many of the villagers couldn’t write. Communication was more challenging…”
“I’m sorry you can’t even see where your village was, grandma…”
“I haven’t given up yet,” says Pansy. “You know where we stopped at the heritage tree? And there are all the new supermarket and condominiums? Well, Kampong Bedok was around there and was located near the river. I think I told you that if we stood there, we would have been able to see my village across the river. And we used to cross the footbridge to get to it. Let’s go and look for that footbridge. If it still exists, it will pinpoint where Kampong Tepi Laut was located.”
“Brill!” says Goldie. “Let’s go.”
They get back to the car in a sombre mood. Pansy wants to cheer things up a bit.
“Somewhere near where the NEWater plant stands, was an old Canossian Convent retreat,” she tells Goldie. “The nuns wore white habits. All the kampong kids loved to go and watch surreptitiously when the nuns went swimming, because they swam in their full habits. When the nuns got into the water, about waist deep, the sea water would rush underneath their habits and make their clothing balloon upwards. The nuns ended up looking like white swans gracefully gliding on the waves!”
Goldie bursts out laughing, a throaty, hearty laugh. “That’s so hilarious! I can just picture them! It’s because you have such a way with words, grandma.”
“You laugh just like your grandpa. I used to love to hear him laugh.”
“So at last I know who I am, grandma, inheriting all the different genes from you and grandpa, and your parents. It’s such a comfort to know these things. I used to think that my parents took the wrong baby home from the hospital.”
Pansy proceeds to tell Goldie about the first time she had heard George laugh, on the day they met. He had recovered from the fall from his bicycle, and she had said that he looked like he was someone from a house with a flush toilet. And George had replied that he had never been defined by a flush toilet before! There! She remembers what he had said after all. Pansy knows that these days, her memory is in shreds; koyak, as they would say in Malay. But snippets do come back every now and then, though irritatingly, not always when she tries to get them to surface.
Goldie laughs even more. “Defined by a flush toilet? Wow! What fantastic use of language! I wish I had spent more time with you two.”
It heartens Pansy that part of George is already sewn into the fabric that is his granddaughter. In this way, he will never be dead. Perhaps that is why people have children, so that they can see bits of themselves reborn. Perhaps it is why parents are so afraid of their children making the mistakes they had made, suffering what they suffered. Children are the parents’ unconscious attempt to amend their lives and to grasp immortality.
When they drive past Rama and Sita, Pansy waves to her beautiful trees, calling out, “Goodbye Rama! Goodbye Sita!”
Somehow she knows she will never see them again.
“May I ask you for a favour?” Pansy asks, as Goldie drives back to Bedok Road to try to find her way to the river. “I haven’t mentioned this to your father as it hadn’t seem appropriate. I’m so glad we have this time together because I have come to know you more. You, of everyone in your family, feels so much a part of me.”
“Oh, grandma, it’s so nice of you to say that. I also feel a sense of home-coming, that at last I don’t have to wonder who I am anymore. I don’t have to be afraid to be me…”
“If you say no, I’ll understand. I will put it in my will and Anthony can do it instead. You are just so special that I feel you’re the right person to do it. I want to ask you now, before my brain becomes too befuddled and I don’t know if I am coming or going. When I die, I want to be cremated and my ashes to be scattered in Bracklesham Bay. You do remember it, right? You girls came to visit during the school holidays? I will leave enough money for expenses of course. That was where your grandfather’s ashes were scattered, near where his memorial bench sits. I’ve already reserved and paid the West Sussex County Council to have a bench erected next to his. I don’t want him to be there, all alone, on his own. You might have to pay the difference because of inflation. But I’ve included that in the expenses too. I would love for you to see England and Bracklesham Bay again. For me I would like to think that I would be side by side with George, looking out onto the sea that we both love so much…”
“Grandma, you’re not going to die any time soon! Don’t say that. suay lah!” Goldie uses the Peranakan term her grandmother had used earlier. “Maybe we can go and see Bracklesham Bay together after I return from my assignment abroad. I’m being sent to China for a few months, to do some auditing for a Singaporean company that has a branch there. Don’t worry! I understand your sentiment. But I don’t want to hear of you talking about your death. We’ve just found each other. I want more time with you. But if it will make you feel better, I will do as
