“I wandered lonely as a cloud…” George started to recite and they both completed the poem together, holding hands and swinging them as they walked, as if they were still young lovers. Although George was largely pragmatic, he had an artistic side too, and loved poetry as much as Pansy.
In the Flower Dome, Pansy walks slowly, in search of more daffodils. Her hips and knees ache; age and the harsh English winters had exacted their price, chilling bones and weakening cartilages. If her mother was still alive, she’d probably prescribe a dose of jamu beras kencur—a pounded mixture of a special type of galangal, rice, rock sugar, salt and tamarind, made into a drink, which was Kim Guek’s antidote for rheumatism, sore muscles and joints. Pansy herself had found that some of the Asian herbal drinks were too pahit or bitter, so in her work in England, she had treated patients with local homeopathic cures and flower essences like Bach Flower Remedies. Jamu would have been too foreign for the English. Homeopathy and alternative therapies became popular in the UK only in the late 80s and 90s, fuelled by the New Agers. In medieval times, women who used herbs as remedies were often accused of witchcraft and burned at the stake. Now, women happily declare themselves as witches and practise Wicca. Seen in this light, perhaps Kim Guek was a White Witch too because she had been so capable of healing others. Whatever magic she wielded was always for the good of others.
There the daffodils are, and their small cousin, the narcissi, planted in pots, on banks and in the flower beds, scattered under the arched, giant glass sky of the Flower Dome. To piece this brittle, curved jigsaw together must have been an engineering feat. Opposite to the Eden Project in Cornwall, the purpose of the conservatory here is to keep the hot air out and the cool air in. The energy for the cool air-conditioning and the lighting comes from burning lopped branches, shrubs, leaves and grass; the whole system is eco-friendly, with a giant chimney hidden in one of the ‘supertree’ structures, steel conduits with a frame that house real plants and exude changing coloured lights at nightfall. These structures have now become an iconic feature of Singapore’s new city seafront landscape as much as the lotus-shaped ArtScience Museum and the three pillared Marina Bay Sands hotel. Spread across the grounds of the Flower Dome are yellow daffodils, some sienna coloured, others white. There are single-tiered and double-tiered varieties, ordinary ones and tiny ones in clusters, like bright stars. She loves them all and can pretend she is in an English country meadow. Except that she can no longer share them with George.
A year after George’s death, she had fallen in the woods and broken her hip.
“You see,” Anthony, who was now an eminent architect in his late fifties, complained. “I had to rush all the way from Singapore. I was in the middle of an important project. Told you, you should have come home straightaway after the funeral, as dad had suggested. But you’re so stubborn lor…”
Curious, the way married people have the propensity to echo their partner and even morph into each other.
On that fateful day, Pansy had walked the usual trail through the beech woods that she and George had taken often. The slim, tall trunks of the trees with their silver bark were like friendly sentinels, so she did not feel lonely. There is an energy in trees that revitalises the heart, mind and body. Ancient druids whose names came from the oak tree, paid homage to their spirit. Like them, Pansy was a tree hugger, putting her arms around the trunks to absorb their life force, or sitting on the ground, resting her back against the tree. In Singapore, as a teenager, she had leant against the banyan and tembusu trees. She had two favourite banyan trees which used to grow near her seaside village. What names did she give them? She struggled but couldn’t dredge their names from her teenage years. After she had arrived in England, she resonated with the tall oak tree and loved hugging it and leaning her back against it. She had thought of Sister Catherine the first time she saw an oak tree because it was Sister Catherine who had first told her about it in her letters from England.
All of nature offered its healing vibrations for free. Her mother and Sister Catherine had taught her that. Whenever she felt lonely, Pansy would go into the woods. She also wanted and needed to walk the familiar trail so that she could recall George’s presence, the way his breath would come out in cloudy swirls, or the manner in which his coat
