E-Book, Englisch, 288 Seiten
Reihe: The Miss Cassidy Series
Boey The Formidable Miss Cassidy
1. Auflage 2024
ISBN: 978-1-80533-756-0
Verlag: ONE
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark
E-Book, Englisch, 288 Seiten
Reihe: The Miss Cassidy Series
ISBN: 978-1-80533-756-0
Verlag: ONE
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark
Meihan Boey is a Singaporean novelist and vice president of the Association of Comic Artists of Singapore. She came up with the character of Miss Cassidy while writing a short story pitting a familiar Victorian British governess figure against one of Southeast Asia's most terrifying ghouls, the pontianak. That story later became The Formidable Miss Cassidy, Meihan's debut novel, which won the Singapore Books Award and was co-winner of the Epigram Books Fiction Prize. Miss Cassidy also appears in the sequel, The Enigmatic Madam Ingram, and will return again in a third book, which Meihan is currently writing.
Autoren/Hrsg.
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“Hmm,” said Miss Cassidy the next morning.
The banana tree looked no different from any other in the brilliant light of day. It was perhaps a particularly lush specimen, with unusually bright green leaves; but it was in no way more interesting or sinister than any other in the compound, except that a length of bright pink silk had been tied around it.
Miss Cassidy fingered the silk—it had probably once been some young lady’s headscarf, but was now ragged and threadbare. When the fabric touched Miss Cassidy’s fingertips, she winced slightly. This might perhaps be more difficult than she had first imagined.
“Miss Cassidy, do be careful.” Sarah Jane’s voice listlessly drifted towards her. “Ah Nai doesn’t like us touching the banana trees.”
“Ah, and do you know why this bit of cloth is here?”
“To scare off the monkeys, perhaps. There are a lot of monkeys here, and they are quite fearless.”
“I see,” murmured Miss Cassidy.
“Can we go back inside now?” asked Sarah Jane, with the first touch of temper Miss Cassidy had seen her exhibit. “We have walked ten rounds, exactly as you wanted, and it is very hot. I want a glass of water.”
“Certainly we may go in,” said Miss Cassidy briskly, tearing herself away from the tree and its odd decoration, and taking Sarah Jane firmly by the elbow. “I think we are quite done here.”
After Sarah Jane had gone off to her room to lie down and recover from her “strenuous” twenty-minute stroll (although to be quite fair, the garden path was not easy to traverse in skirts and petticoats), Miss Cassidy sought out Ah Nai in the kitchens. “Give me something to do,” she said cheerfully to the somewhat startled old servant. “Sarah Jane is done with her lessons and her exercise.”
Ah Nai, who was fanning a coal fire upon which a clay pot was bubbling, thought a little. “Will you mend?” she asked, mimicking a needle and thread to express herself clearly.
“Yes, if that is what you need.”
If there was one thing Miss Cassidy was good at, it was waiting. Of course, she was good at many (many, many) things, but she had perfected patience to an art.
However Miss Cassidy’s patience was not of that tranquil sort that allows venerable religious teachers to sit under a tree for outrageous lengths of time. Generally, when Miss Cassidy waited, she was also watching, and listening, and taking note of things and people around her, with an insight particular to a lady of her unique talents. By and by, she would hum a little, and chuckle a little, and drop an interesting observation or humorous word, and by dint of these little incursions, those around her found themselves compelled to engage with her.
Thus it was that, while Miss Cassidy sat comfortably at the kitchen door (for the sake of the breeze), mending one of the Captain’s shirts, and Ah Nai brewed her curious concoction, and despite the relative silence in which they did both tasks… in some curious way, they quietly became firm friends.
“So that is a tonic of some sort,” said Miss Cassidy with interest, as strong, bitter scents filled the kitchen from Ah Nai’s clay pot.
Ah Nai nodded. “For the Captain. For his health.”
“Hmm. His health is certainly poor. Tell me, Ah Nai,” said Miss Cassidy casually as she busily stitched away, “what ails him? Is it this house? Why do they not simply leave it, and move to a healthier clime?”
The story unfolded at a gentle pace, punctuated by the bubbling of the pot. When Ah Nai had come to the family, the Captain was a happy, healthy, strong man—a sailor of humble background who had risen to become captain of his own vessel. His wife, Maria, was a striking beauty: tall, proud, raven-haired and exotic, born in the West Indies somewhere (Ah Nai could not remember the name of the island, but Maria apparently spoke both Spanish and French fluently, and it seemed likely she was from either Jamaica or Haiti). She was an ambitious woman, asking her husband to leave the seas and take up a position in the British East India Company, in order to better their position in society. When they arrived in Singapore, they already had their first child with them—the infant Sarah Jane.
They were given these splendid quarters which they renamed, simply, Bendemeer House. The couple did well at first; the Captain proved himself a much-valued employee, with his extensive knowledge of the sea (more to the point, he was also familiar with pirate routes and routines, and adept at plotting paths to avoid them). Maria added to their family every other year, and though she was a firm and rather imposing Mama, nevertheless the children were healthy, strong and intelligent, and all seemed to be well.
Then came that one dreadful year. First Mrs Bendemeer fell ill, then her husband, then the children, in quick succession, including Sarah Jane. Ah Nai herself nursed them as best she could, but she herself became ill. She recovered only in time to help Sarah Jane—the only surviving child—arrange the funerals.
Ah Nai paused over the fire to gently beat her chest with her hand, and Miss Cassidy understood that this was the old woman’s way of keeping her emotions in check. She let the quiet moment draw out a little before asking gently, “And what disease was this, Ah Nai?”
Ah Nai shook her head. The doctor was a white man; she didn’t understand what he had written down. In any case, she knew the symptoms: fever, flux and rash; she had seen many people die like this, especially those living close to the jungle or wetlands. And Bendemeer House was situated right up against the jungle, amid wild banana trees. The Bendemeers had had difficulty finding servants when they first arrived because of that.
“Hmm,” said Miss Cassidy. “How long have the trees been there?”
Ah Nai shook her head. Longer than the house, for certain; these wild trees had always been part of the jungle, till the British cleared the land to build the bungalow.
“And did no one, well, cleanse the house?”
Ah Nai knew what she meant, and took it matter-of-factly. “There was a priest,” the amah said, somewhat obliquely. “The Captain would not allow…anyone else.”
“And the priest was ineffective?”
“He was young,” said Ah Nai gently.
“And he faced something ancient? I see.”
Ah Nai shrugged, indulgent of the white man’s ignorance. “It was all right for a while.”
“Until it wasn’t.” Miss Cassidy put in a few more neat stitches. “And what do you do with the bananas from these fearful trees, Ah Nai?”
Ah Nai looked surprised. “We eat them,” she said.
“I have brought you your tea, Captain,” said Miss Cassidy cheerfully.
Captain Bendemeer looked up from his papers. For a moment he seemed puzzled, as if he did not recognise her; then, as she entered, his vision cleared. “Ah, thank you, Miss Cassidy. You can leave these tasks to Ah Nai, you know.”
“Oh, it is no trouble, I assure you, Captain,” she said briskly as she set down the tray. “This daily tonic you drink—how did you come by the recipe?”
Again it seemed to take a moment for the words to filter through to the Captain. “Maria—Mrs Bendemeer, my late wife. A family recipe, I believe. She makes us all drink it—well, she used to,” he corrected himself with a wry smile. “I apologise—she has been gone a long while, but I still feel her presence in this house.”
“Is that why you stay here? It seems a very large house for a family of two.”
“Well, we were a family of nine before…before that year.” He shook his head. “I am sorry, Miss Cassidy, but I have much work to do. Just leave the tray there, and I will help myself. I thank you for your assistance.”
Miss Cassidy was a woman who knew what the looming ubiety of death felt like. It was not a terrifying thing to her—all mortal creatures must die—and there was no place in the world where she did not feel its presence. Sometimes it was a low, gentle undercurrent, as it was in most places rich with life; other times it was a roar that drowned out all else, on battlefields, in the dark places of the world, where light and warmth and growing things had fled.
She was also not unacquainted with the beings who existed in-between life and death. For the most part, they did not trouble her—she was not their prey, and Miss Cassidy was of the opinion that creatures which did not trouble her, and did no harm to others, were best left alone.
But the farther east she went in the world (east, that is, from where she originated),...
