“I wish we could find some blackberries,” Pansy moans. “Grandpa loved his apple pie with blackberries. Their tartness contrasts well with the sweetness from the apples. I used to pick them wild, from the hedges in the countryside in England.”
“Next time we can go to Jason’s and we may find some there.”
“You know, these are not cooking apples, like the ones I used in England, so I don’t know how they’re going to turn out. Ah, apples fresh from the trees are delicious,” Pansy rhapsodises. “The absolute joy of plucking apples from my own tree!”
In the apartment, Goldie is imitating her grandmother, using her fingers to make breadcrumbs with the flour and knobs of butter. The trick to good pastry, her grandmother explains to her, is to make it light and airy. The apple slices are simmering gently with sugar in the saucepan, and the smell of the cinnamon and star anise fills Pansy’s small kitchen in the condo apartment.
“I feel like a kid playing with my playdoh,” Goldie says, smiling.
She is amazed at how the act of preparation has such a relaxing effect on her. Pansy shows her how to bake the bottom layer of pastry blind. She covers the pastry with aluminium foil and put some rice grains to hold down the pastry before putting it in the oven.
“Why do you do that, grandma?”
“This way, the bottom pastry is cooked through before you put the filling into it. If you don’t do this, the outside gets cooked but not the bottom which will end up soggy.”
“Wow!” says Goldie, impressed by the culinary tip. “There’s so much to learn.”
Pansy shows her how to fill the pastry case with the stewed apple slices, how to put a pastry cover over it and wash it with egg white. As she places the pie in the oven, her grandmother sings an eighteenth century English nursery rhyme:
Sing a song of sixpence,
A pocket full of rye.
Four and twenty blackbirds,
Baked in a pie.
When the pie was opened,
The birds began to sing;
Wasn’t that a dainty dish,
To set before the king?
“Oh no! I can’t remember the rest of the verses,” Pansy says, distressed.
“Don’t worry, grandma. As I said before, I can google the rest of the words. Google is a search engine on the Internet which is free to use and you can find out most things on it. I will sing the song to you when I get back now that I know the tune, I will perhaps sing it to my own children one day.”
“I don’t suppose I’ll be around to see that happen,” Pansy says.
While the pie is baking in the oven, the fragrance that wafts into the air is mouth-watering.
“Oh, I love this!” Goldie enthuses. “It feels homey.”
“That’s what your grandpa always used to say!”
“This is your Cho Cho with her hair down. If she was doing any work, she normally puts it up in a chignon,” Pansy says, handing Goldie the black-and-white photo in a small gilt frame, slightly worn with age. “During our time it was unusual for people to smile when their photo was being taken. They tried to look serious to make them appear more formal. But as you can see, my mother broke all conventions.”
“She’s so young here… and so beautiful…”
“Just as you are,” says Pansy, producing a handheld mirror so that Goldie can compare Kim Guek’s image with hers. “See how much like her you look. I bet you that when you wear your new sarong kebaya, you will be the spitting image of your great-grandmother.”
“I’ve decided that when I get back from China, I’m going to tell my mother that I will change my name to Kim Guek.”
“My heart runneth over,” Pansy says.
They eat the warm pie with lashings of fresh whipped cream.
“This is so good, grandma, the pastry simply melts in the mouth!”
“There you are, your first home-baked apple pie!”
“Thank you, grandma,” says Goldie happily. “It’s quite something, isn’t it? To eat something you’ve cooked with your own hands.”
“That’s what I love about it. You get the same kind of satisfaction when you craft something, be it sewing a piece of embroidery, beading your own kasut manek, growing a garden, writing a poem, writing a story, or painting a picture,” says Pansy. “When what you do is not mechanical and involves your heart and soul, you enter a different realm and have created a work of art, be it edible or not. That is when your soul sings.”
“I don’t want to open up the subject again if it grieves you, grandma,” Goldie says, when they are having their coffee. “But I just wanted you to know that when I get back from China, I’m going to approach the National Heritage Board to propose a memorial plaque at the site of the seaside kampongs in honour of the villagers and their way of life. Like the one we saw at Tanjong Katong.”
For some moments, her grandmother does not respond and Goldie wonders if she disapproves of the idea. Then she sees her grandmother struggling with her emotions and knows that she has made the right suggestion.
“You’re such a treasure, Goldie,” Pansy says in a choked voice.
“I love you, grandma,” Goldie says and she is startled at her own admission, as she has never said the words to anyone else before. She is twenty-six years old and this is the first time she had uttered those words. Is she pathetic or what? “I love you too,” her grandmother responds, hugging her.
This too is a new experience. Her mother is not a touchy-feely type.
“Now that you’ve brought up the past, you might as well know that your grandpa was censured for his behaviour in rallying support for the villagers.”
“Censured? By whom?”
“Ah, that awful period. I had no heart to
