The Rose of Singapore by Peter Neville Read Free Book Online Page B

“We’re heading back to the village, Peter. Are you coming?”
    Peter shouted his reply, “No. I’m staying here. You’ll get drenched. Stay here.”
    â€œNo. I’ve a buffet to do this evening at the officers’ mess. Good luck. See you later,” Taffy shouted.
    Peter watched as his two friends disappeared into the deluge of rain that was now cascading from the heavens, then he raced after Lai Ming who was already halfway between the beach and the coffee shop. In the distance, not far from the beach end of Changi’s main runway, a grove of palm trees swayed before a quickly rising wind, and huge green leaves of banana trees growing in the silt near the shack loudly rustled their warning. More vivid flashes of lightning lit up the sky, and the sharp crack and rumbling of thunder grew louder, constant, and more intense. Catching up with Lai Ming, he again grasped her hand, and feeling her fingers entwine in his, they raced to the sanctuary of the coffee shop through sheets of cold, blinding rain.
    Running, dripping with water, laughing and still holding hands, Peter and Lai Ming dashed into the palm-thatched shack which provided some shelter from the howling wind and driving rain. In several places, though, the roof leaked like a sieve, the constant dripping of water forming little pools of muddy water in the dirt below. Lai Ming’s two girlfriends were already seated at a table.
    â€œHey, Pop, four hot coffees and a packet of biscuits, please,” shouted Peter, as he and Lai Ming joined the two girls at the table.
    Pop grinned in his usual friendly manner and replied, “OK, Johnny. One minute.” He shuffled away on bare feet to where a blackened water pot stood amid glowing embers within a bucket-shaped charcoal fire, the kitchen’s centrepiece. Yellowish-brown smoked fish hung from an overhead beam of bamboo, and in a shallow china basin were several black and white striped eggs that had been buried for months in warm mud and were now ripe and ready for eating. From another bamboo beam a basket of green and yellow Chinese cabbage and lettuce swung in the wind. Beneath these were open boxes containing root vegetables, and in a corner of the kitchen were a number of smoke-blackened pots and pans in which Pop and Momma’s gastronomic delights were cooked.
    In a far corner of the shack sat Momma, once again lovingly suckling her newborn baby. Around her, still naked, her other three children played, running in and out of the tiny waterfalls flowing through the roof, shrieking with laughter, and making comic faces when the cold rainwater splashed down upon their bronzed bodies.
    A flock of scrawny hens braved the storm by scratching in the mud outside the shack, while others pecked insects from the dirty, sandy, wood-planked floor, from the rotted plywood and canvas walls, and from the termite-ridden poles holding up the place.
    â€œHello again,” said Peter to the two seated girls. “This is quite a fun place, isn’t it?”
    Both Ah Ling and Susy Wee giggled and looked with some curiosity at him, and then at Lai Ming.
    â€œHe is just a little boy,” teased Ah Ling in Chinese. “You are stealing a little boy from his Momma.”
    â€œBut you know what they say, ‘Big boy, big cock. Little boy, all cock,’” said Susy, also in Chinese. And to Lai Ming’s absolute embarrassment both girls exploded into a fit of giggles.
    â€œHe speaks some Chinese,” snapped Lai Ming at her friends in English, and then she scolded them in Chinese.
    Obviously embarrassed, Ah Ling buried her face in her hands, and said, “Me very sorry.” Peter, though, detected poorly suppressed giggles.
    Sitting across from Peter, and trying to keep a straight face, Susy said to him in Chinese, “What’s your name?” But she too could not stifle her giggles.
    â€œThey are both very naughty girls,” said Lai Ming. “I am