Emma's Tapestry E-Book

Isobel Blackthorn

• Herausgeber: Next Chapter
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2022

Beschreibung

At the dawn of World War Two, German-born nurse Emma Taylor sits by the bedside of a Jewish heiress in London as she reminisces over her dear friend, Oscar Wilde.

As the story of Wilde unravels, so does Emma's past. What really happened to her husband?

She's taken back to her days in Singapore on the eve of World War One. To her disappointing marriage to a British export agent, her struggle to fit into colonial life and the need to hide her true identity.

Emma is caught up in history, the highs, the lows, the adventures. A deadly mutiny, terrifying rice riots and a confrontation with the Ku Klux Klan bring home, for all migrants, the fragility of belonging.

Leseprobe

EMMA'S TAPESTRY

ISOBEL BLACKTHORN

CONTENTS

Acknowledgments

Author’s Note

1939

Drylaw House

1914

Singapore

Settling In

The Teutonia Club

Mutiny

1939

Cottenham House

1917

Kobe

Hawaii and Montréal

A Riot in The Bund

Influenza

1940

Cottenham House

1919

A Change of Plan

Brush

An Illness

The Census

All Under One Roof

1940

A Day Out in Wimbledon

Epilogue

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About the Author

Copyright (C) 2021 Isobel Blackthorn

Layout design and Copyright (C) 2021 by Next Chapter

Published 2021 by Next Chapter

Edited by Lorna Read

Cover art by CoverMint

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the author’s permission.

For my Aunt Sandra, and for all those left behind.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This novel could not have been written without the involvement and keen interest of my mother Margaret Rodgers and her own detailed research of our family tree. She has many recollections of my great-grandmother which helped me give shape to the character of Emma. I would like to thank members of the 1841-1939 Beyond Genealogy Discussion Group on Facebook who helped me unearth the story of my great-grandfather. My warm gratitude to Reverend Ray Robinson of the Wimbledon Spiritualist Church for providing me with my grandmother’s Baptism record. I am enormously grateful to Philip Wallis for his encouragement and insights which have made this book so much the better. Many thanks to Karen Crombie for her editorial comments on the first chapter and her enthusiasm for this project. And my warmest thanks as ever to Miika Hannila and Next Chapter Publishing.

AUTHOR’S NOTE

The timeline of this story is true and based on extensive genealogical research. My great-grandmother Emma Katharine Harms, born 19 January 1885 to German parents in an unknown location, was a devout Spiritualist, faith healer and highly regarded private nurse who cared for Jewish heiress Miss Minnie Adela Schuster in the last years of her life. Miss Schuster’s affection for Oscar Wilde is noted by historians. Adela’s portrait of Oscar Wilde is as close to the historical record as I could make it. However, the letters from Oscar Wilde to Adela Schuster referred to in this story are pure fiction.

The first chapter of this novel was shortlisted for the Ada Cambridge Prose Prize for biographical fiction in 2019 and appears as a short story in All Because of You: Fifteen tales of sacrifice and hope

1939

DRYLAW HOUSE

A bell rang, the jingle making its way down the stairs to where Emma stood. She was forced to ignore it. Gathered in the hall with the servants – butler, chauffeur, cook and maid – she was awaiting her turn to receive a national identity card, stamped and her responsibility to keep safe for the duration of the war. The mood was grave and laced with apprehension. The woman seated at the console table wrote with much care. Mrs Davies, the secretary, watched on. The bell rang again, a trifle more impatiently. Emma waited.

The housemaid received her card and returned to her duties. Emma watched the woman inscribe the chauffeur’s details onto his card. With every word, her heart beat a little faster. Her palms felt warm. When Mr Webster walked away, card in hand, she strove to maintain her composure. Mr Holt, the butler, was next, followed by Mary Stoker, the cook. Only Emma remained.

‘Mrs Emma Taylor,’ Mrs Davies read, her tone authoritative. ‘Nineteenth of the first, 1885.’

This was all the woman wrote on the card. The rest, her marital status and occupation, would be kept in the register. Emma’s mind flitted to her daughters, to their husbands, to what loomed for them all.

‘Very good, Mrs Taylor.’

She pocketed the card she was given.

‘Emma!’

The bell jingled and jingled.

With a quick glance at Mrs Davies, she hurried up the stairs. Miss Schuster might be eighty-nine in years, but her mind remained youthful and sharp and her will demanding.

Upon entering the room, she saw immediately the cause of the bell ringing. Miss Schuster – Adela, Minnie to her friends – lay askew, the bedcovers half off her. It appeared to Emma that she had tried to rearrange things and gotten herself into a pickle.

‘I hope they shan’t be bothering with me,’ Adela said, breathless and flustered as Emma straightened out both her patient and the bedding. ‘I shan’t even be leaving the house.’

‘I expect Mrs Davies will be taking care of it.’

‘And you have yours safely pocketed?’

Emma gave her hip a soft pat. Adela fixed her with her gaze.

‘Did Mrs Davies tell them we shan’t be here long?’

‘She told them Cottenham House is where we all live.’

‘Cottenham.’ She trailed off. Then she said, with fresh concern, ‘Did she tell them we shan’t be at Drylaw?’

‘She did.’ The woman hadn’t been the least interested.

‘Not at all reassuring, though, is it? War will soon be upon us, again. I won’t be here to see it. But you will. You must be strong.’

‘Best not dwell on such things.’ She didn’t want the conversation to settle here, not on the prospect of the war. ‘Are you comfortable? Can I fetch you anything?’

‘A new heart would be nice.’ She issued a soft chuckle.

Emma sat in the chair by her bedside and reached for Adela’s hand, cradling her wrist, feeling the pulse, counting. A little racy, she thought, but it should settle with rest. She’d been nursing Adela for about six months and had become accustomed to her frailties, the slow deterioration of her heart. Accustomed, too, to sitting in Adela’s spacious bedroom, with its high ceiling and elegant furniture. The sort of furniture only the rich can afford, all finely turned wood and stylish upholstery, although not modern, not even of the century. Long before she grew ill, Adela created for herself another boudoir of flamboyance, similar to her bedroom at Cottenham House. All swirls of colour, the wallpaper, the rugs, the soft furnishings a riot of movement inspired by William Morris. Not a restful room and not to Emma’s taste, yet there was always something to get lost in, something to absorb the mind if not quieten it.

She tucked the old woman’s hand beneath the covers and smoothed a lock of stray hair from her face. She was still handsome, despite the deep wrinkles and the folds of flesh about her neck. She had kind eyes and a perspicacious turn to her lips.

As though aware she was being studied, Adela muttered something incomprehensible under her breath and her eyelids drooped.

Emma sat back. Her gaze drifted, first here, then there, settling at last on the curtains, the brocade, noticing a touch of fading at the opening, the result of a keen summer sun. Autumn now, and the days were shortening. She preferred summer. The dying were always happier in the summer months, eager to hold on. Winter brought gloom to the spirits and the long nights were wearing, the curtains almost always drawn. She was certain she had lost most of her patients in the winter.

Adela’s breathing became rhythmic. Emma took in her sleeping patient, a small mountain beneath the quilt, rising and falling. Adela was a large woman, so large her friend Oscar Wilde nicknamed her “Miss Tiny”. Emma imagined her laughing with him, wearing the name with good-humoured grace. Adela said he also called her the “Lady of Wimbledon”, a more flattering title. In Emma’s mind, Adela had always been a lady, if not in title. Even now, at her age, she never faltered, never slipped and most certainly never complained. She was always charming, always knew what to say. Ever since they met at church many moons before, Emma had found much to admire in Miss Schuster. She regretted only getting to know the Jewish heiress so late in her life, when much of her vibrancy had left her, after her world had shrunk to just the four walls of her bedroom.

Few visited. At her grand age, many of her contemporaries had already passed on. There were no children. There had never been a husband. Emma wondered why she’d never married. Perhaps her size was off-putting or she preferred the single life. Surely she had had suitors. Here Emma sat, as she had sat with many patients over the years, so often at the end of life, always wondering what adventures they had had, the highs and lows, successes and tragedies.

It was much easier to dwell on the lives of others than on her own turbulent past.

Adela’s breathing slowed. At times, all she needed was Emma’s company, a presence in that room that had become her universe as she ever so slowly slipped from this world.

Emma reached into the wicker basket at her side. Her fingers met cane, and she extracted the oval hoop. Blue silk thread dangled from the shuttle. A thin band of plain blue sky capped a simple garden scene. She was keen to finish it. The wedge-weave tapestry would look pretty on her mantelpiece and the work was small and light enough for her lap. She drew the shuttle in and out of the warp, tugging gently, careful not to yank the thread, keeping the tension just so.

Time drifted by.

The door opened on the dot of nine and Susan tiptoed inside. They exchanged a few words in low whispers. A serious and plain young woman, Susan had her youth, if not experience, on her side. She was employed to be the guardian of the night shift.

‘Sleep well,’ she said as Emma left the room.

She didn’t think she would. She might have gone downstairs and shared a cup of tea with Mrs Stoker in the kitchen, but she was troubled and sought the solitude of her room, where she could pray.

Pray for her daughters, for their husbands, for the safety of them all back in Wimbledon. Her youngest, Irene, was with child and Emma said a little prayer to keep it safe, hoping the world in which they lived and moved would not be destroyed, that mayhem wouldn’t descend, that it would all be over quickly and peace would reign. She prayed, too, for her other family far away, whom she had not heard from in so long.

She sat at her dressing table and slid a hand in the pocket of her uniform, and took out the card. Her name, date of birth, some numbers and a stamp. Her identity. She hoped Adela held on to life a while longer; here, Emma felt secure. She put the card in her handbag. The clasp made a muted click as she directed her gaze at the room.

Adela had insisted she took the main guest room next door to her own and not, as was customary, a room in the servants’ quarters. She was privileged, a matter Mrs Davies, who had a much smaller room in the east wing, brought to her attention whenever she could. Emma took no notice. Not since Singapore had she dwelt anywhere so fine and she was grateful.

As she readied herself for bed, she wondered what the future held for her now another war loomed. The last war had proved difficult but not unbearable for her, as it was for many, yet her troubles, brought about by the happenstance of her birth, formed a dark backdrop and, in the finish, tremendous loss.

Would this time be different? Worse? She was here, an alien in England, a country at war with her own, and not as she was before, a British subject by marriage living in far-flung climes, in Singapore, in Japan, in America. Memories crowded her, chattering voices, distressing scenes. She shook them away.

She did not care to think of the past or indeed too far ahead, for such musings inevitably involved death and now that war was here, death loomed far larger than Adela in the room next door. She went back to thinking of her patient. She would do better to keep it that way. Nursing held her in the present, which was where she preferred to exist.

The following day, Adela was as bright as a button. She was always at her best in the morning. Unlike Susan, all bleary-eyed and eager for sleep. Once the two women had heaved Adela up on her pillows Susan left the room. Adela chattered while Emma drew the curtains and attended to the blackout fabric that Mr Holt had attached to the window frames only the other week. Adela watched.

‘I have no idea why we must bother with those things.’

‘Because we have to.’

‘We shan’t be here long.’

‘Just you rest, Miss Schuster. It really is no trouble.’

They’d come to Guilford to enjoy the last of the summer and then to shut up the house for the winter and gather various items precious to Adela, most importantly her signed copy of The Happy Prince, which she had inadvertently left behind on her last visit and could not bear to be without with war on its way.

Done with the curtains, Emma returned to the bedside and propped Adela up even higher on her pillows, just as Mr Holt knocked and entered with Adela’s breakfast.

‘I’ll take care of this,’ Emma said, meeting him in the centre of the room and reaching for the tray.

He glanced over at the bed and raised his eyebrows a fraction as though about to mount a challenge. Then he said, ‘As you wish,’ and he let go as Emma took the weight.

Tea, a soft-boiled egg, toast and marmalade, and a small bowl of bottled fruit. There were two cups. The teapot was brimming.

Emma set down the tray on the trolley table and poured before the tea stewed, adding a dash of milk. She preferred coffee but had learned to enjoy tea. The English loved their tea. She discovered how much in Singapore. Even in the heat, the English drank hot tea.

She helped Adela, whose unsteady hand was not as adept as it once was at finding her mouth. Emma’s own, gentle and guiding, helped steer from bowl and eggcup and plate all that Adela could manage to eat. It wasn’t much. Then they sipped tea together, Emma sitting on the chair at Adela’s bedside.

‘Is the sun shining today, Emma?’

‘I believe it will be.’

An expectant look appeared in Adela’s face. Emma knew that look. She smiled to herself. The dear old thing loved nothing more than to voice her reminiscences of the times she spent in Torquay, at Babbacombe Cliff. They were heady, joyful days. Back when Emma was a small child growing up far away in Philadelphia, Adela and her mother would travel from Wimbledon to Devon to stay at Lady Mount Temple’s manor house.

‘Georgina was the perfect hostess and you would journey far to find a more interesting woman. You know, in those days, people took interest in the most fascinating things. Unlike today. Today, things are much too grim.’

‘What was the house like?’ Emma said, pretending she didn’t know, guiding Adela’s thoughts back to the past.

‘Just magnificent. Rather like this room, Emma. Can you imagine an entire house festooned with such floral prints as these? Not to mention the most glorious of paintings! Those pre-Raphaelites could surely paint. Remind me to tell you about the pre-Raphaelites, one day. Such interesting people. And rather wicked, at times.’ She giggled and Emma saw a flicker of the youthful Adela in the old woman.

‘And then, of course, Constance would come and bring her dear Oscar. That was how we met, you know, Oscar and I.’

She broke off, lost in a private world for a moment. Emma waited, expecting more. Every day Adela sang the praises of her precious Oscar.

‘We did have a lot of fun in Torquay, although when Oscar came, we didn’t leave the house much. There was simply too much going on inside it to be bothered with outdoors.’ She laughed. ‘I suppose the others took walks. He was such a wit. What was it he said to the customs agents in New York?’

‘I really have no idea.’

‘“I have nothing to declare but my genius,”’ she said, more to herself than to Emma. ‘That’s it,’ she added with a self-satisfied smile. She paused and patted the bed. ‘Sit here where I can see you.’ Emma stood and moved her chair forward, facing her patient, and Adela went on. ‘Now, Georgina knew how to put on a good séance. Have you ever been to a proper séance? They are nothing like the after-service sessions they put on at the church.’

Emma pretended she had never heard the story. Of a large, circular table in a darkened room. Of hands joined together and resting on the indigo velvet covering. Of the charged feeling. Of the strange utterances of the medium as she slips into a trance. Of the messages that would come through from the dead. Of the squeals and screams and tears and fainting. Emma pictured the drama with ease. For those adventuresome aristocrats, a séance was little more than a parlour game. Spiritualism for some had always been reduced to a parlour game. For others, for those missing departed loved ones, a séance was not a game, but rather a genuine means of contact and a source of solace and hope. And that was the way it should be, Emma thought. Yet she resisted now, as she always did, the urge to defend her faith to a woman more interested in the frivolous and the social.

Adela’s concentration slipped and her memories faded. She rested her head back on her pillows. The dear old thing had so little energy for anything much.

‘Read to me, dear,’ she said breathlessly.

Emma took away their teacups and picked up the book by Adela’s bedside, the only book ever there. This was the second time she had read The Picture of Dorian Gray. She suspected once she arrived at the end, she would be required to start over again. But she preferred it to The Happy Prince. Early in her stay, on Adela’s insistence, Emma had tackled The Importance of Being Earnest, but the two women soon agreed it was beyond her capabilities to deliver the dialogue with any finesse. As a consequence, unsurprisingly, she had never been asked to tackle Lady Windermere’s Fan. Dorian it was to be.

Emma managed to read two whole pages without interruption. As she turned to the next, Adela broke in with, ‘Mrs Taylor. You haven’t told me what name you started out with.’

Her non-sequitur took Emma by surprise.

‘My maiden name?’

‘I don’t know it.’

‘I prefer not to say.’

Adela lifted her head off the pillows and scanned Emma’s face before letting her head fall back.

‘I’ve embarrassed you,’ she said lightly. A lightness belying tenacity. Then, ‘Don’t you like your name?’

‘It isn’t that.’

‘Then what is it?’

‘Please, Miss Schuster, I would rather not have to tell you.’

‘Oh, but I insist. You needn’t fear. I shall not laugh and I shall not breathe it to anyone. I shall no doubt forget it, in any event. Do tell!’

There was no choice. She was too honest to lie.

‘Harms,’ she said softly.

‘Harms?’ Adela boomed. ‘What on earth is wrong with Harms? Much better than Taylor, if you want my opinion.’

‘I suppose Taylor is somewhat…’

‘Common. There, I’ve said it. Do forgive me. I prefer to think of you as Mrs Harms.’ She took a breath then added conspiratorially, ‘It can be our secret.’

Emma was relieved and hoped the conversation would end there. She picked up the book and inhaled, preparing to continue. She hadn’t had a chance to utter her next word when Adela said, ‘Where is he? Do you ever wonder where he is?’

‘Who?’

‘Your husband.’

‘He passed away, Miss Schuster. I am sure I told you.’

‘Yes, yes, I know that,’ Adela murmured vaguely. ‘But has he ever been in touch?’

‘No.’

‘Pity.’

Adela said no more. Seeing her patient had expended all her energy for now, Emma closed the book.

The conversation had left her unsettled. And she quickly told herself these were unsettling times. Unsettling for more reasons than Adela could suppose.

Too much long buried now bubbled under the surface.

She thought she had succeeded in vanquishing the memories but, as she moved her chair back beside the bed, Adela’s probing stirred in Emma sensations she at first did not recognise. Something laboured its way up in her, a slow and steady climb, and she felt the pressure like heavy footfalls in her belly, at last pressing down on her heart, a heavy pressure weighing her down, an iron searing that vital muscle until the pressure no longer burnt, but ached. Moisture burst from her eyes and she fought back the tears, swallowed, choked on the impulse to give in to the unbidden anguish. She found herself taken back to a place she had long refused to recall. To a vicious summer followed by a bitingly cold winter, to a room too small for her and her babies, to loneliness and confusion, and then to the malicious hatred; hatred for being who she was: German. A single burning tear slipped, unseen, down her cheek.

Later, when the house slept, she threw off the bedcovers, let her feet find her slippers and tiptoed over to her dressing table. In the bottom drawer, tucked beneath her cardigans, was a brown envelope. She didn’t look inside at her birth certificate, her papers. She slipped on her dressing gown, crept down to the kitchen. The fire in the Aga was still alight.

She opened the door to the fire box and shoved in the envelope.

Seeing the flames rear, the core of her felt cindered, as though she had erased her own existence.

1914

SINGAPORE

The Kaga Maru had only just docked in the port and already the derricks were in action, hoisting large wooden crates ashore in heavy nets. Below, men steadied the loads as they descended to the wharf. Others were waiting to ferry the cargo elsewhere. An officious-looking Englishman in a white suit marched up to a stevedore who might have been Chinese or Malay. There was a brief exchange and then the official, satisfied perhaps, crossed the wharf and entered the office building beside a warehouse.

Emma’s gaze drifted. A tram had stopped at the far end of the wharf, as though awaiting the ship’s passengers. A few gharries and rickshaws had drawn up. In front of all that activity, porters rushed up and down the gangway with luggage. The passengers, who were required to wait on deck until the porters had finished their task, crowded around, eager to disembark. Emma hung back, absorbing the scene, even as she was eager to leave the ship and the bustle of the port, eager to put distance between her and those funnels that had belched smoke the whole journey, infusing everywhere on board to a greater or lesser degree with the stink. And, above all, she was eager to find some relief from the heat.

The ankle-length skirt and cotton blouse she had on were much too much in the steamy afternoon air. The constant breeze upon the moving ship had provided a false sense of the climate and as she stood beside her husband, waiting to disembark, she felt warm trickles of perspiration descend from the pits of her arms. She held her elbows out a little from her body, hoping the moisture would not wet the fabric of her blouse and show.

Despite her discomfort, she grew fascinated by the people she saw down on the wharf, the funny conical hats, the oriental and Indian features of the men. But the waiting dragged on, and the heat and the stink took their toll, and as she lifted her gaze from the wharf and let it settle on the shabby-looking buildings and the flat, open fields beyond, she had no idea what could possibly attract anyone to Singapore. She had to suppose that, unlike her, many adored or thought they would adore the tropics. They were taken in by the romance of a luxurious, colonial lifestyle. When her colleagues at the nursing agency had discovered where she was headed, they were thrilled and envious and spoke of little else. All she had thought of then and could think of now, were the tropical diseases she would need to avoid and the loneliness she was sure to endure. She really couldn’t fathom what sort of a life she would lead as Mrs Ernest Taylor, wife of an export agent, a nurse cooped up indoors fanning her face while her husband went to work. What would be expected of her?

She spotted movement among the passengers and a slow trickle headed down the gangway. Ernest began busying himself with their hand luggage as they inched forward. A man of average height, he was already portly and balding and, at the age of thirty-four, turning into something of a dandy. His face wore a permanent veneer of playful joviality, masking the steely resolve within, resolve only apparent about the eyes, which tended to penetrate and at times disconcert the unwary recipient of his gaze.

This current Ernest, all fuss and bonhomie, was a far cry from the man she had married. Awaiting his turn to walk down the gangway, he had regressed into a boy of about six. He had been so beside himself with enthusiasm ever since they left Southampton, there were times on the voyage Emma thought she had caught him bobbing in his seat.

His voyage had been markedly different from hers. She had felt heavy and ill the whole trip. The Bay of Biscay had been most unkind and the Indian Ocean little better. She had spent most of the six weeks in their cabin, lying down to ease her throbbing head and sitting up for as long as she could bear it, tatting to take her mind off the hideous sway, the lurching, the rolling. Through a conscious force of will she had managed to stave off being sick, but the awful headache never went away. All the while Ernest, decidedly indifferent to her malaise, had flitted about on deck, mingling with the others. He could not get past the fact they were travelling first class and was determined to make the most of every moment.

The cabin door burst open as she emerged from sleep. Ernest made to approach her bunk, staggering halfway and grabbing at nothing before lurching on and bending down to plant a sloppy kiss on her lips. His breath reeked of whisky. She pushed him away and he turned on the light.

‘Ernest, you woke me,’ she said, shielding her eyes from the sudden brightness.

‘You were awake when I came in.’

She recalled faintly the giggling and whispering outside the cabin. Female voices, mainly.

‘Emma,’ he said, removing his coat, ‘you missed an extraordinary night. You would have loved it. Miss Frobisher has a Ouija board!’

Her heart sank. Ouija was surely the devil’s game. Contacting the spirits of the dead. Whatever was he getting himself into?

He sat down on the side of his bunk and leaned forward to untie his shoes. It proved an ordeal. When at last he had removed both shoes, he said, ‘Have you ever…?’ He paused to look at Emma. ‘No, but you know how the game works. The letters, the upturned glass. We sneaked into the dining room after the waiters had finished setting out the breakfast cutlery.’

Emma made no effort to hold back a frown.

He eyed her for a brief moment as though slow to take in the meaning.

‘Don’t worry, we put it all back,’ he said, as if the rearranged table settings were the cause of her annoyance. They both knew full well they were not.

He placed a hand on each knee, locked his elbows and sat up straight, grinning. ‘You will never believe what happened. First the candle went out. Then the table rose and a strange voice that seemed to come from nowhere spoke in some ancient tongue. Then Miss Chance saw an apparition at the window and fainted.’

‘Miss Chance!’ Emma pictured the frail young thing, scarcely eighteen with a pale complexion.

‘She’s alright,’ Ernest said. ‘No harm done.’

‘If you say so.’

She wasn’t so sure. She turned over to face the wall, and waited for him to switch off the light, anticipating the snoring that would follow.

That poor Miss Chance. Summoning spirits was plainly evil and, as she watched the other passengers walk down the gangway, Miss Chance among them, Emma shuddered to think of the demons Ernest had let into his life, their lives.

They were among the last to disembark. Emma followed Ernest, relieved to be stepping onto land.

A gharry was to take them the rest of their journey. They were to spend a night at Raffles hotel while Ernest’s predecessor vacated a bungalow on Orchard Road. Raffles could not be too far, she hoped. Feeling exhaustion setting in, the perspiration building on her brow, she suddenly craved the overnight destination. Inside must be cooler than this! Besides, she was excited to see the hotel. She had heard so much about it from Ernest and, of course, Raffles was well known.

They identified their luggage among the remaining trunks and Ernest, who could don the mantle of the Englishman-in-charge with what he considered to be remarkable aptitude, summoned two porters to follow. Satisfied they understood his commands, he marched off, all arrogant bluster.

With the porters trailing behind her, she followed this colonial version of her husband, who was preoccupied with pushing his way past the others as they milled about figuring out where they were headed. For Ernest, everyone was an obstacle and he all but barged past one man and his porter – who was hefting a suitcase into his rickshaw – and narrowly missed ramming into a couple with a baby a few paces on. Emma grew breathless as she struggled to keep up, feeling as though she ought to apologise for her husband’s behaviour and refraining from doing so, except for the occasional apologetic look.

After much kerfuffle, Ernest located the gharry sent by the hotel and ordered the porters – who wore bemused expressions on their faces – to take care as they loaded the luggage. She stepped up into the seat, relieved to be in a gharry drawn by a horse and not a rickshaw drawn by a sinewy Chinaman. Those men looked too small to pull the weight of the contraption, never mind whoever stepped aboard.

They were soon away from the commotion and the stink of the docks, and Emma settled back beneath the shade of the canopy, choosing at first to take little interest in her surroundings. They hadn’t journeyed far, not much more than a mile, when Ernest, who was leaning forward in his seat, nudged her thigh and pointed enthusiastically down a side street.

‘Down there is where I shall be working.’

Emma sat up straight and beheld two rows of Victorian buildings that looked very similar to those in the City of London and were a far cry from the dockland scene they had just left.

‘Battery Road,’ she said, reading a sign.

Taking in the scene, she imagined Ernest would feel right at home in Guthries’ Singapore office. The branch had been in his sights ever since he started working for the trading company. Singapore, according to Ernest, was the real centre of operations and all of Guthries’ key men back in London had spent time there.

They crossed a heavy iron bridge and grand municipal buildings set in lush green grounds filled the streetscape. Another block and the gharry came to a halt outside the hotel.

As Emma alighted, her earlier ambivalence to Singapore vanished. Before her was a magnificent building, with its rows of arched, multi-paned windows in wings angled like welcoming arms spread wide. What struck her even more were the doormen, regaled in smart black trousers below long white jackets trimmed with red and cinched at the waist by wide belts; jackets adorned with black sashes and braided epaulettes of vivid gold. Crisp white turbans completed the costume. No detail had been spared and, together with their smiling faces and gracious manner, the doormen left on Emma a deep impression.

The splendour continued through the marble foyer – a vast rectangular atrium flanked by rows of columns supporting the upper levels – and all the way up to their room on the second floor. An elegantly furnished room opening onto a deep veranda and, much to her blessed relief, there was a ceiling fan.

Setting down her handbag on the bedside table, the arduous journey and the sticky heat caught up with her in a sudden rush. She waited as the porters entered with their luggage and, once they’d gone, she lay down on the bed while Ernest fussed about inside his trunk. He soon found what he was looking for, a clean shirt that met with his requirements, and proceeded to change.

‘I have a meeting with Mr Begg in the Long Bar,’ he said with his back to her. ‘You are welcome to attend.’

She hesitated for only a moment before deciding she could think of nothing worse than finding herself listening to business banter. Mr Begg was the general manager of the Singapore operations and she could picture in an instant the fawning Ernest would subject him to. Although she did understand and even sympathise with Ernest’s enthusiasm. It was only after many years of striving to fulfil his ambitions through dogged hard work, a certain ruthless attitude when it came to getting ahead and a loyalty to the Lodge, that he had secured the position of export agent for Guthries’ tin operations in Singapore. He would also be handling their cement and sandalwood trade.

Rubber was the trading firm’s main export. Other agents worked in the tobacco trade, in sugar, flour, tea and coffee, or in whiskies, beers, wines and spirits. Even Jeyes fluid and Lipton’s tea were represented. Whatever could be imported or exported, Guthries were in on it. Guthries, it seemed, were Singapore’s version of the British East India Company and, just like Ernest, it was every young man’s dream back in the London office to secure a position in Singapore.

Ernest had got lucky. The man who hired him was Scottish and had favoured a hard worker from a humble northern background. A pottery handler’s son from Stoke-on-Trent, Ernest had fitted the bill.

She looked over at her husband, all nervous and proud as he straightened his shirt, and said, ‘I think I will rest, if it is all the same to you.’

With a downward glance at her lying on the bed, he said, ‘As you wish.’

And that was the last she recalled of her first day in Singapore. She awoke the next morning with Ernest snoring gently beside her and the ceiling fan whirring above. Feeling decidedly sticky, she slipped out of bed. A quick sort through her trunk and she found a fresh dress to put on and took herself to the bathroom.

She made the most of the running water and the deep and wide bath. As she reclined, submerged to her neck, and leaned her head against the rim, her eyes drifted to the elegant wash basin and the ornate mirror that was slowly steaming up. She gave herself permission to enjoy the luxury, the ample size of the room which was little short of palatial, and she breathed out a long sigh of contentment.

She wasn’t to know it then, that this would be the last time she would use a flushing toilet for many months.

Ernest was still asleep when she exited the bathroom. Deciding the day had well and truly begun, she threw open the French doors and stepped outside. The same sticky heat greeted her and, after a brief look around, she withdrew, this time banging shut the doors.

Ernest stirred and squinted open his eyes. ‘What time is it?’

He answered his own question with a glance at his watch before throwing off the sheet and, wearing nothing but his pride, heading to the bathroom. An awkward atmosphere hung in the room when he came back. She took in his nakedness, all shiny and clean, as he ferreted about for fresh clothes. Evidently the heat had brought out another new Ernest and it was not one she found terribly attractive. Her upbringing had been too pious for that.

Dressed at last, he shot Emma a cautious look.

‘Are you still in a mood?’

‘Ernest, please. I am not in a mood, as you say. I have not been in a mood.’

‘You’ve hardly spoken a word since we arrived. I call that a mood.’

She didn’t want to argue. ‘I am rather hungry,’ she said, injecting some enthusiasm into her voice.

Breakfast was a solemn affair. Emma could summon no conversation and neither could her husband. Gone the chirrupy Ernest of the day before. If anyone was in a mood, it was him. Had his meeting with Mr Begg not met his expectations? Then again, Ernest was bleary-eyed and, she suspected, the worse for wear from drink.

She focussed on her food, content to work her way through the omelette on her plate and sip her coffee. The meal was over when she drew her knife and fork together, Ernest having eaten little. As a waiter collected their plates, Emma glanced around at the elegance of the surroundings, then at the other diners dotted about – women in loose dresses and men in white suits – tuning in to the hushed voices and soft chinks of cutlery. It was all so elegant and civilised. She hoped the bungalow and its locale would prove adequate. Soon to leave the luxurious confines of the hotel, she had to quell the apprehension building inside her.

They wandered into the main lobby and stood where their luggage had been deposited. Then a gharry pulled up outside, and Ernest oversaw the porters as though they had never before lifted a suitcase, and they were on their way to their bungalow.

The journey took them away from the port and the coastline and up the road beside Raffles; Bras Basah Road, she saw it was, wondering if she had pronounced that correctly in her mind. Ernest, seated to her left, while lacking the ebullience of the previous day, sat forward just the same, taking everything in.

She sat back and let her eyes absorb all that appeared on her right. She was anticipating dirty streets crowded with rundown shops in dilapidated shacks, but the grandiosity of the colonial settlement continued, with large buildings and parks lining the road. They passed a new construction and she saw dark-skinned men labouring outside, wearing nothing but baggy shorts and conical hats. They were the same conical hats she had seen at the port the day before. Coolies, she understood them to be. The semi-nakedness of the workers confronted her. She was used to London and Philadelphia where people went about fully dressed. She saw, too, the underlying inequality. Those Indian men were not only barely clad, they were skinny and poor. Noting the observation, she began to suspect there was another Singapore, distinct from the grandeur of Raffles and kept, as much as possible, hidden from the colonialists’ view; one of deprivation and lack of basic services.

The realisation, formed out of her nurse’s training, she would keep to herself. Ernest’s eyes were configured differently. There was no point trying to make him see things her way. He wasn’t capable.

She was confronted anew with the extreme inequality that was Singapore when they approached a man using a shoulder pole to carry large, open-topped buckets brimming with what she saw as they passed was night waste. The buckets swayed precariously. Where was he heading? Couldn’t be too far and, as the city quickly gave way to fields of crops and orchards, she knew what that man was planning to do with the excrement and she blenched inwardly. It was a practice that could only lead to the very worst of diseases. All her training in hygiene, all her knowledge of sanitation and germ theory that had been drilled into her at the hospitals where she had trained and worked, came rushing to the forefront of her mind. Singapore descended further in her estimation with every turn of the gharry wheels.

Bras Basah Road soon turned into Orchard Road, and now large trees lined both sides of the wide track and the air smelled sweet and fresh and Emma faced a different Singapore again. Here, large bungalows nestled behind hedgerows. The roadside drains were deep – indicative of the monsoonal rains Singapore endured – and wooden decking straddled the ditches, enabling access to the dwellings. They journeyed another five minutes and then the gharry came to a halt outside a much smaller bungalow than those they had just passed.

‘Here it is, here it is,’ Ernest blustered, clamouring out of his seat.

Emma stepped down from the gharry and crossed the decking to enter the garden through a wooden gate, leaving Ernest to fuss with the luggage.

The bungalow, a square building fringed on all sides by a deep veranda, was set in a swathe of lawn and shrubbery. She could not see the side fences. She wandered up the narrow path to the front door, which was open.

Inside, off a long and wide corridor, large rooms with high ceilings greeted her eye. The bungalow was furnished sparsely and elegantly and consisted of two big bedrooms, a drawing room and a dining room. She wandered through to the ample kitchen situated at the back of the house. Taking in the sink and the stove, she pictured herself cooking, but it was a moment too brief, for she turned and found herself introduced to, or rather she stumbled upon her servants – two diminutive women with kindly faces and subservient manners whom she presumed were to be her servants and who had walked up silently behind her. After drinking in the sight of the two women, she smiled awkwardly and introduced herself. Then she eased past them, thinking to wait for Ernest in the main bedroom, her mind in a flurry.

She closed the bedroom door and pressed her back up against it in sudden despair over what Ernest had brought her into – the steamy heat, the unsanitary conditions, the inevitable boredom – when her eyes were drawn to the dresser, where sat a fan, shiny and proud. She went over to switch it on, angling it in the direction of the bed. The breeze cooled her instantly and she sat down on the side of the bed, positioning herself to receive the full force of the fan’s blast, and as she sat, she reflected on her new domestic situation.

A housemaid, she had anticipated. But two? That meant one would cook. And could they speak English? What on earth would she say to them if they couldn’t? More’s the point, what would she do with her time while Ernest was at work, when it was not her role to cook?

Her immediate thought was that she must give him a child. She knew he hankered to become a father. Perhaps if she did, his listless gaze would settle back on her. Three years of marriage and no conception had put a strain on their union. She carried in her heart a sense that she fell far short of his expectations, whatever they might be. She did know his interest in her had waned. Sitting on the edge of the bed with the fan’s breeze blowing back her hair, she wanted to recapture the old times, when their love was young and fresh and he had shown her nothing but adoration and devotion. Back when her own heart was filled with love for him and not this creeping cynicism that threatened to become a fixture.

On a warm summer’s evening seven years before, Emma, a blushing twenty-two-year-old, stood poised to enter the front door of 92 Hart Avenue. She was filled with misgivings. She had not visited Trenton, New Jersey, in a long time and the distance from her home in Philadelphia was further than she cared to travel. But her friend Clara, a fellow student at the Woman’s Hospital of Philadelphia’s School of Nursing, had insisted Emma accompany her, and she could hear laughter and lively banter above the music spilling out onto the street.

The door was ajar. ‘Shall we?’ Clara said and went in. Emma followed. The merriment was coming from the back of the house. Ten paces later and they entered a room filled with couples dancing. A gramophone in a corner of the room played a Scott Joplin record. Women giggled and laughed. Emma recoiled inside. She was tense, unsure of herself and dearly wanted to return to the safety of her home, to her embroidery, to the familiarity of her evening routine, but she smiled and decided to make the most of the situation, accepting the glass of punch thrust into her hand by a dapper young man in a suit.