by Hilary Plews, winner of the second prize in the 2009 Asham Award

Every afternoon the shutters were closed at Singapore House for the siesta. Cook stopped cooking, Amah put Lily to bed and disappeared but, best of all, Lily’s mother was out of the way, felled by the shutters.

Lily was finally alone, commander-in-chief of the sleeping house. Her army – the dolls – were lined up in battle formation around the table and chair legs and flat on their stomachs along the bottom of the wardrobe. Their lack of anything sensible to wear was camouflaged by the ribs of shuttered light which seeped into the room and dulled the bright colours of their dresses. No-one had ever asked her if she liked dolls; she didn’t. They reminded her of snakes with their rubbery skin and blank eyes. The dolls arrived with monotonous regularity after her mother’s trips to Raffles Hotel for afternoon tea – a place visited far too often in Lily’s view, since she was never invited. She didn’t complain. To do so would have lit the angry volcano that smouldered inside her mother, and once she had devised a use for them, the dolls were almost welcome.

There were plenty of enemies crouched in the shadows cast by Lily’s rattan furniture, waiting to take the place of the enemy asleep in the other room, but in the striped light of the siesta, it was the air-born enemies who were more easily spotted. Lily knelt on her bed and despatched some of these with scythe-like movements of her arms, as they drifted downwards in their parachutes of dust. But the mosquito net she had been told NEVER, EVER to touch on pain of a good hiding constrained her enthusiasm, and she was forced to leave most of the action to General Wavell of Far East Command. He was assisted by General Percival, whose stupid plaits she had only yesterday cut off and by the daringly-named General Yamashita. Lily reasoned that whilst he was on the wrong side during the war, he must have been a good soldier to have won the battle for Singapore, and therefore she would have him as one of her generals.

The troops were obedient. Hardly were the orders out of her mouth than a battalion had rushed to repair a breach in the supply lines under the wardrobe, or had hurled itself into the darkest of shadow pools that dotted the bedroom floor to bayonet whatever lurked within. The object of the battle was both unattainable and totally desirable: to keep the siesta going until her Daddy came back. He was fighting the communists in the rubber plantations of Malaya and was away more and more often. His safety depended on Lily’s army fighting as long as it possibly could in the dim light of the siesta.
Amah was the only grownup who understood that it was important to fold back Lily’s land of shadows slowly, so that the child had time not to show her troops the disappointment she always felt when she saw their flowery dresses and peep-toed sandals in the unforgiving afternoon glare.

Lily’s mother did not belong in the world of the siesta. On Amah’s day off she crashed open the shutters, kicked the troops out of her way and snapped at her daughter to get up. Now.The shadows fled. She had no time for them. She wore bright lemons and limes and painted her nails a fiery red that clashed with the backs of the mah-jong tiles she clicked across the card tables of Singapore. She drank flower-coloured cocktails out of glasses with long stalks and smoked a lot. Her face was perfectly white and smooth, and whenever Lily was permitted to accompany her mother to an engagement, she noticed that men stared.

Sometimes Lily was allowed to watch her mother putting on her face in the morning. When she smoothed foundation over the two deep lines that ran across her forehead, Lily thought of monsoon rain transforming their cracked garden into a green jewel. One for the British Army, her mother once said, as the top line disappeared beneath the foundation, And one for the Japs, as the flow buried the second line. It wasn’t often that Lily’s mother joked with her so Lily giggled, but she stopped immediately when her mother’s face closed like a fist in the mirror. After the foundation was applied, Lily lost interest. She disliked her mother’s red lipstick because it often got stamped across her cheek and looked silly, and when her mother made eyelash fans with a black brush it seemed overdone and false. Lily knew that men, especially Major Carshalton, a frequent visitor, thought her mother was beautiful, but he couldn’t really read her mother’s made-up face without lines. Only she, Amah and Cook knew that beneath the smooth white mask, her mother was so angry that she could explode at any moment and burn forever, like the sun.

Her Daddy came back from Malaya.   ‘Hirushala!’ he said, as he threw her into the air and caught her. Lily asked what they would do when she got too big for that. He promised to think of something. Lily thanked the Army for their good work and sent Wavell and Percival home to England for a rest by dumping them at the back of her wardrobe. She thought it would be alright to send Yamashita to Japan and was arguing the point aloud when Amah slipped into her room. She made a shush sign and began talking in Cantonese; something she only did to communicate extreme seriousness.

‘Give doll another name,’ she said.
‘Why, Amah?’
‘Your mother will be very cross with both of us if she hears that name.’
‘I won’t tell her.’
‘I know. But you talk out loud – she might hear you. I did.’
‘Oh. But I need good generals.’
‘Lily. There is no such thing as a good general.’
‘If my Daddy were a general he’d be good.’
‘Your Daddy is a good man. Quite different.’

Everything was more fun with her Daddy around. She could actually sleep during the siesta. He would play hide-and-seek with her and push her past that place on the swing where she always stuck. He would point out all the animals in the night sky – the Swan and the Scorpion, the Crane, the Eagle and her favourite, Pegasus. Her mother looked less like the beautiful Chained Princess, who also sparkled in the sky at night, and more like other girls’ mothers, because his jokes cracked her white mask. The cracks revealed sun rays at the corners of her eyes and crescent moons on either side of her mouth. She stopped buying dolls.

The three of them picnicked under the flame tree in the garden. Her mother smoked whilst she squatted on the soles of her bare feet. Lily felt strangely proud of her. Only children, Chinese and Malay grownups could do that. Her Daddy said once he’d made Malaya safe, he’d take them to the Cameron Highlands, and there they would enjoy the cool dark under the great forests of oak and laurel.

‘Doesn’t the sun shine in Malaya?’ Lily asked.
‘You know it does,’ he replied. ‘But the forest roof is so thick that only a few fingers of sun can get through, so underneath it’s shadowy and dark. Slices of the dark turn into bats if you stay still for a long time.’
‘Mummy’s scared of the dark,’ Lily said, not quite certain what she based this on, but knowing it to be true.
Her mother’s eyes glinted. She screwed her cigarette into the ground.
‘Mummy’s not scared of the dark,’ she said. ‘She’s scared of the Japs.’
‘Geraldine.’ Her father’s tone was Morse code for Danger!
‘She’ll have to know sometime. Anyway, it’s true.’
‘What’s true?’ Lily asked.
‘Put it this way.’ Geraldine’s eyes bored through her daughter. ‘I’d rather slit your throat than have you marry one.’
‘Geraldine! Stop it.’

Lily’s mother jumped up and headed indoors. When Lily judged her out of earshot she said:
‘I’m never going to marry.’
‘She doesn’t mean it,’ said her father. His eyes followed her mother’s progress. ‘Some Japs are good people.’
‘Was General Yamashita good?’
‘Lord, the things you ask. I suppose he was a good general.’
‘Amah says there’s no such thing as a good general.’
‘Amah’s Chinese.’
With this, her father patted her on the head and went inside. Lily was disappointed. He should have answered her question.

‘Let’s go to Raffles for tea,’ he said one afternoon after the siesta.
‘Yes!’ Lily yelled.
‘No,’ said her mother.
‘But I’ve never been and you’ve – ’
‘No means NO. Amah!’

Amah appeared immediately, talking in Cantonese, as if to Cook in the kitchen behind her: Quiet, little one. I’ll take you to Pasirpangjang market instead. ‘Yes, Mrs. Hazelburn?’

‘Take her away until she’s learned some manners. Sorry darling, Raffles is such a bore these days.’
Her Daddy usually got his way. Towards the end of his leave he did take her mother to Raffles. Thankfully no doll appeared afterwards, and Lily was almost glad she hadn’t been invited, because it was obvious from the silence between them when they returned, that something unpleasant had occurred. Her mother’s normally white face had acquired a flush and her mouth reminded Lily of a cut. Amah and Cook swapped glances. Their employer was in one of those moods when the most innocent of Yes Mrs. Hazelburns could turn her intermittent criticism of their work into an all-out assault on their personal dignity. As for Lily, she knew when to stay in the kitchen. She shovelled chopsticks of boiled rice and chicken down her throat and only half listened to Amah and Cook nervously gossiping in Cantonese.

‘You think he knows?’ asked Cook.
Amah shrugged.
‘Perhaps he’s found out?’
‘How? We’re the only ones who know.’
‘They all know... maybe a warning? He likes you.’
‘Ai yaah! You want my job as well as yours?’
The next day her Daddy took her to the Singapore Swimming Club whilst her mother attended one of her mah-jong coffee mornings. She dived off her Daddy’s shoulders and performed underwater rolypolys for him. As she steadied herself for another dive, she saw Major Carshalton drinking out of a long glass and waved at him. He didn’t wave back. In fact when she surfaced he’d gone, but his drink was still there, unfinished, on the table.

They ate kedgeree under huge sampan-like umbrellas for their lunch, and despite lots of laughter, she knew something was wrong.
‘Is it because you’re going back to Malaya that you’re sad?’
‘No,’ he said. ‘Who says I’m sad?’
‘I do. Is it because you don’t want to leave me and Mummy behind?’
‘You know I don’t,’ he said.
‘Do you have to go? I don’t want you to go either. Don’t go, Daddy. Daddy...?’

Lily found herself weeping uncontrollably. She longed to explain what a relief it was to have him home so that the dolls could be left where she had hurled them in the wardrobe; so that she didn’t have to keep watch for him every siesta because she knew he was safe. He lifted her on to his knee and said that when you grew up you sometimes had to do things you didn’t like, and that things happened you didn’t intend, but that she was to dry her eyes, because otherwise she wouldn’t be able to see the enormous knickerbocker glory he had ordered for her.

After her Daddy’s return to Malaya, another doll arrived courtesy of her mother’s trips to Raffles Hotel. This doll was even worse than usual and Lily blamed Major Carshalton. It was a feeble, stick-like creature called Una Señora de España with a long skirt made from layer upon layer of scarlet frills edged with lace. A black veil flounced its way down her back and was stuck to her head with a ridiculous comb. Lily didn’t need any more troops and even if she had, this frilly thing was totally wrong. Despite the gloom of the siesta there was no possibility of that fiery, enormous skirt assuming, even in her imagination, the straight and sober lines of battle dress. In the safety of her room she jumped on top of the doll several times before throwing the pieces under her bed. All armies lost troops.

Amah found the crushed body parts of the doll and squatted on the floor. She shook her head.
‘We won’t get into trouble,’ Lily whispered. ‘She never asks what I do with them. I’m going to tell her I don’t want any more. In fact I don’t need any now that I’ve got Yamashita.’
‘I thought you were going to change that name?’ said Amah.
‘No,’ said Lily.
Amah took a big breath: ‘You know that when General Yamashita captured Singapore he took many English prisoners?’
‘Yes. He put them in Changi. Everyone knows that.’
‘And you know that he treated all of us who lived here very badly, but especially the English prisoners?’
‘Ye-es,’ said Lily, less certainly.
‘Your mother and Cook and I… we survived General Yamashita’s occupation... it is not nice to remind us of it.’
‘No. No, of course not.’ Lily felt that Amah had taken her to the edge of a cliff, allowed her to lean over for a second before pulling her back to solid ground. She would re-name the doll Monty. She didn’t think he had been in the Far East, but maybe that didn’t matter.
One afternoon Amah rushed into Lily’s room in the middle of the siesta. She disrupted Monty’s march to rescue Percival’s troops, who were lost in the deep shadows of the Cameron Highlands, and included her Daddy. Her teddy bear’s outstretched arms represented the huge guns of Singapore that were meant to protect everyone from the Japanese, except that they had been facing the wrong way, but not any more. On Lily’s watch, she carefully moved teddy’s arms to track her Daddy’s movements and keep him safe.

‘Lily, Lily, you must get up now. We have to see your mother. Quick, little one, we have to be very quick.’
Everything about Amah communicated urgency. Her voice – breathless and high, the use of Cantonese, the fact that she tried to help Lily dress, even though Lily was too old to need help with this any more. When they reached the top of the stairs, Amah took Lily’s hand. She kept a firm hold of it as they walked into the living room. Lily’s mother was standing by the half-opened shutters, her back to the room. She faced them as they entered and Lily gasped. Her mother, caught between the shutters, was silhouetted by white-hot afternoon light and appeared to be burning up like a shooting star. Her scarlet lips shook and her long nails waved blood as she fanned herself with an envelope. She could hardly look at her daughter.

‘Your father won’t be coming home tomorrow,’ she said. Her voice grated like the sound of mah-jong tiles being shuffled.
Behind the curve of her hand, Amah whispered not to say anything. Her other hand squeezed Lily’s.
‘Or at all. He’s dead. Killed in an ambush.’

Amah let her hand drop as she repositioned herself behind Lily and pulled her close.
‘Darling,’ her mother hardly ever called her that. ‘I have to go out; there are a lot of things to do. Amah will look after you.’ She left the room. The glare from her orange skirt swirled after her.

Lily sank down to the floor and squatted there, dry-eyed, her head between her knees. Not even Amah’s hands on her back could save her from this cliff edge. She didn’t know when she would fall, but she knew that when she did, it would be alone.

Her mother said it would be too upsetting for Lily to attend the funeral or the burial at Kranji. It was left to Amah to tell her how straight the soldiers stood for their final salute, and how gently they carried her Daddy´s coffin on their shoulders. Lily´s mother said she could attend the reception afterwards, as long as Amah kept her out of the way.

Lily thought her mother suited black. It showed off her white skin. She wore a small hat with a veil that just covered her eyes, below which her lips shone. Lily supposed her mother wore the veil to hide her tears. Major Carshalton divided his time between guarding her mother and pacing the room to talk to guests. He even came and spoke to Amah.

‘How is she Amah? he asked, as if Lily was in another room.
‘O.K. Thank-you, Major Carshalton.’ Amah frowned.
No-one else spoke to them, although some of the women smiled in their direction, without making eye contact. After standing in the corner of the room for ages, not knowing what to do and quite unable to eat or drink, Lily asked if she could leave.

Once home, Lily marched upstairs and dragged the dolls together in the fading light. Her Daddy was dead because they had failed. She delivered several sharp kicks to her army and scattered them across the floor. She plucked Wavell, Percival and Yamashita from the mess. It took all her strength to wrench off their heads. The exertion produced rasping sobs and she fell onto the floor to lie amongst her battered and headless troops. She cried for a long time before she realised that punishing the generals would not lighten the ton of loneliness and guilt that now encased her like an iron lung. She, after all, was her generals’ general.

There was one thing she had to do before either Amah came upstairs, or her mother returned to chase away the quiet dark. She checked the night sky as her Daddy had taught her. She looked along the lines of the Water Snake, through the Crane’s trailed legs, past the Eagle to the soaring wings of Pegasus, the sky horse. Now she had North and could face Kranji Cemetery, and beyond that, Malaya. She stood up straight and saluted.