“Wah! Straight from plant to wok,” George used to exclaim. The courgettes, runner beans, carrots, potatoes, or tomatoes she had plucked or picked just before their meal could be prepared simply because of its freshness, sautéed lightly with butter and crushed garlic and maybe a touch of light soya sauce. “So delicious. Can’t get fresher than this man!”
Occasionally, just for the fun of it or to remind themselves of their former home, they slipped into playful Singlish. They may have been away for years but in their hearts, Singapore was still home. For dessert, Pansy would serve him strawberries from their own patch or blackberries she had picked from the brambles in the countryside hedges, laced with Dorset cream, crème fraiche or ice-cream. They had their own miniature cooking-apple tree and she would combine the sliced apples with the tart blackberries to bake into a crusty pie. George would invariably comment on the delicious aroma wafting through the house when something was baking in the oven.
“Oh, the fragrance! The fragrance!” he would enthuse. “Wangi sekali! My mouth waters! This is the epitome of homeliness.”
Usually, George’s eyes would light up and he would express his joy as equably, wrapping his arms around her from the back if she was busy at the sink or busy cooking, nuzzling her neck. How she longed for his touch again, his breath on her neck.
He was her soul mate, and now he is gone.
Pansy goes up close to the daffodils that are planted on raised banks in the Flower Dome. She wants to smell them, as if in smelling their gentle scent she can be transported back to England, to her life with George. Smells are such profound triggers of emotional memories, taking one back to one’s childhood or adult experience. Like the scent of the bunga rampay, the Peranakan and Malay floral potpourri always reminded her of Kim Guek, though the Malays called it bunga rampai. Or the tiny creamy bunga melor which Kim Guek used to thread into her sanggul for special outings. Pansy remembered watching her mother comb her long hair, then twist it into a chignon, inserting the string of bud-like flowers to complete her ensemble with the elegant sarong kebaya. So many things link Pansy back to her past. Is this what it is like to be old? To recollect the past as if it has only just happened and yet forget what you did minutes ago? The two people she had loved so strongly are appearing in her daydreams more and more until she sometimes feel as if they had not died. It is still an uphill task to disassociate herself from the memory of George. There were so many more flowers that made her think of him. He never failed to buy her flowers for her birthday—long-stemmed roses and irises, tiger lilies, stocks and camellias.
“Darling, look!” George had said on one of their outings in England, pointing in the direction of the water’s edge, under the chestnut trees.
They had gone to the lake on their regular walk the last spring they shared, though she hadn’t known then that it would be their last one together. If we knew that something was going to be our last, how differently would we have done things? Would we treasure the moment with greater intensity? Pansy tried to bottle up the precious memory, though she was becoming aware that it was already slipping from her. It is this that distresses her the most. That she might forget George, the shape and texture of him. Now she sets out with steadfast purpose to recall the memory so that she can stitch it into her decrepit brain.
Both George and she knew that the secret of enjoying the outdoors was to dress appropriately for the weather. The wind was still bracing, so George and Pansy had worn their down anoraks and thick gloves, their necks covered with woolly scarfs. If you were born in the equatorial belt, you never get used to the bone-chilling English cold. The trees were starting to come alive, fresh green buds unfurling from their branches. In the distance they could hear the bleating of the sheep birthing spring lambs. Everywhere in the animal and plant kingdom was evidence of new beginnings and cycles. It was such a thrill to be part of it all.
People who have lived only in the tropics cannot know the anticipatory feeling that fills the heart when the long, grey winter is over, and the arrival of spring and all the new life it heralds is in the air. It is simply magical to see the first crocuses push their colourful heads out from the frosty ground; the dainty snowdrops, appearing shyly, small, white and bud-like, clustered against fresh, verdant green.
“Oh, daffodils!” Pansy had clapped her hands in delight when she followed George’s pointing finger. His smile was broad. He was the glass-half-full type, always managing to see something positive in everything. He had the kind of manner most suited for a doctor, hardly ever losing his cool. The only time that Pansy could remember him getting angry was when he thought the fishermen in their seaside village in Bedok were unfairly treated. He raised hell with the authorities.
“How do you expect people who spent a lifetime by the sea to cope with living in high-rise HDB flats?” he challenged. “How are these fishermen going to earn their livelihood? What? You expect them to dangle fishing lines from their tenth floor?”
“George, George!” the Medical Registrar had said. “This is 1970s Singapore. A period of great change. You have to learn to go with the flow if you want to survive. Don’t talk so loud. Walls have ears. Just calm down. Why are you getting involved? It’s not as if you have any relatives who are fishermen…”
George. Her George would
