The Hour Before Dawn. Sara MacDonald

be horrified at the huge varicose veins that stood out like spreading roots of trees on the rickshaw driver’s legs.

      She stood on a corner waiting for the lights to change and suddenly saw, across the road in a space between the shops, a children’s play area and some market stalls. She crossed the road with the surge of people and went to look.

      There it was, pale green, the perfect Shantung blouse with small daisies embroidered on the front. Fleur held it up to judge its size. Of course she couldn’t be sure, but it seemed to be about right. She saw it had a price tag on and hesitated to barter. Perhaps people no longer bartered?

      Did she have enough Singapore dollars? She opened her wallet to look. The small Cantonese stallholder touched her hand. ‘I take card. You have this one too, velly good for you. Good colour for you.’ She took up a red blouse and held it against Fleur.

      Fleur bought both blouses and a length of batik for a sarong for Jack and paid with her credit card. She was feeling sick and dizzy now with the heat and the crowds and she turned back towards the hotel. Even at this time of night the sweat trickled down the inside of her shirt and thin trousers.

      Back in her room she made tea, nibbled a biscuit and fell into bed feeling pleased with herself. She had at least small gifts to give to Nikki and Jack. She fell asleep almost instantly.

      

      In the morning Fleur woke disorientated and went to draw the curtains. The steamy rain of yesterday had gone and the day glared and flashed against the window. She felt excited and rested. She had the whole day, until four thirty, when the airport bus would come to collect her. She could do anything she liked.

      She made coffee, showered quickly, and put on a thin dress against the heat outside. She opened the glass doors and walked out onto her balcony that looked down on Orchard Road. She leant out and watched the cars snaking along bumper to bumper through the city and saw what you could not see from the road.

      A line of trees edging the pavements made a long green snake through the heart of the city, as if the trees had sprung from the roots of the buildings, so that the city could constantly be reminded of the jungle from which it had sprung.

      Hundertwasser! Fleur felt astonished to see so clearly and by chance a view he must have looked down on, here or in some other eastern city that steamed with heat and vibrant colour. The ghosts of the jungle and dead tribes rising from the pavements in leafy green, their wavering branches, the arms of the dead, re-created to live again, to breathe again in the heart of a city. Forever alive, forever continuing the pattern of life. A city that had once been jungle.

       The Garden of the Happy Dead.

       If I had not come, if I had not stood on this balcony eight floors up, I would not have seen so extraordinarily dramatically what Hundertwasser meant and what he practiced so clearly in his colours and architecture.

      She smiled, drinking in the snake of green trees below her, a wavy line through the flash of metal cars and spirals of buildings. She could have read and read and studied and stood in front of one of his paintings or buildings, but she might never have glimpsed the exactness of meaning, that bolt of sudden understanding of something deep and fundamental which drew her and thousands of others to his work and philosophy.

      Fleur turned away, back into the room. It was like a small sign from the gods. Hope for her and her daughter; new life in the grandchild to come. She ate a quick breakfast and took the lift downstairs. The young Malaysian porter stood by the huge glass doors. He beamed at her.

      ‘Selamat pagi! Apa khabar?’

      Fleur beamed back. ‘Baik. OK. Terima kasih. Can I walk to the Botanical Gardens from here?’

      ‘Yes, Mem, turn left out of hotel. About fifteen minutes’ walk.’

      ‘Terima kasih.’ ‘Sama-sama.’

      Outside on the steps she blinked in the glare and put on her sunglasses. She turned left, waited for the lights and crossed the intersection. The heat bore down on her. Fleur lifted her arm for a taxi. She could not walk far in this heat without melting and she wanted to explore the gardens.

      The taxi turned off Bukit Timar Road and into a wide road full of colonial-type buildings that had probably been embassy houses. At the end of one leafy road stood the Botanical Gardens with its gated entrance. Fleur remembered none of this. The taxi took her inside the gates and dropped her in front of the building where groups of taxi drivers waited for fares. She walked through the entrance and inside.

      Years ago, there had been no formal entrance. Fleur remembered entering from a small side gate off a busy road. It must have been at the other end of the gardens. It had been more of a park then; people picnicked on the grass. There had been one small place to eat and buy drinks. Amahs and Indian ayahs pushed prams or ran after toddlers and flitted like exotic butterflies round the small paths through the trees. There had been a fountain and in the pool fat yellow fish hid behind lily leaves. There had been monkeys swinging from the trees and down beside you to pinch your food. Grumbling and fighting up in the branches, their tails switching, their voices screeching ominously above you. There had been a man in uniform leaning against a tree by the fountain, waiting for her.

      Fleur’s heart pounded in memory as she walked the wide tended paths that were all signposted now. Large glasshouses stood on a hill and a new pavilion was being made. The grass was neatly kept and there were fewer trees to hide in the shade. Fewer places to hold hands when you should not; to kiss, shaking with the possibility that all might become well and whole again if you did not think, if you pretended for an afternoon away from the army base, away from the uniforms, in this one anonymous place in the centre of a city. If you clung to the only sure and safe person in a life so suddenly turned on its head.

      Restaurants and cafés were now placed strategically in clearings. There was no anonymity any more. Wealthy Europeans and Chinese walked together, pushing expensive buggies full of children down the wide cleansed paths. It had all been sanitised and commercialised. It was beautiful still, but the gardens had lost their mystery. Without the monkeys and the deep shade of trees and the hint of danger, it was a place that could have been any botanical gardens anywhere in the world.

      Fleur made her way to the Orchid House and bought a ticket. Instantly she was back in the army quarter in the naval base with Ah Heng bringing orchids back from the market and placing them in Chinese vases all over the house. Ah Heng arranging them just so, her stiff little back and dark glossy hair drawn back in a bun, bent to the blooms, her face inscrutable.

      She took some photos, unable to compete with some Japanese tourists who had cameras the size of matchboxes. She stood still, watching water trickling on polished stones and small tendrils of ferns arranged against trees. One orchid stood in a wooden vase by a sculpture.

      Ah Heng had slept in a little room in a block behind the kitchen with a lavatory and shower. Her small shuttered room had contained so much: an aged sewing machine, materials bought in Chinatown, chairs of ironing ready to bring into the house, toys and books for the twins. Baskets of personal things, hanging chimes, but always, always flowers for luck in a little wooden vase outside her door.

      The heat trickled down the inside of Fleur’s dress. She was not used to the humidity any more and her tongue stuck to her mouth. She had left her bottle of water in her room. She made her way slowly back to the café; she had seen. The gardens were not the same, but she was glad she had come; they were still an oasis in the middle of the teeming city; still somewhere you would come for peace again and again.

      She bought a cold drink and ordered nasi goreng. She glanced at her watch. Plenty of time; she had nothing to pack. Everything was still in her suitcase. All she had to do was change into trousers and check out, and then she would wait in the foyer with her book for the airport bus.

      This time tomorrow she would be with Nikki. The Chinese waitress flip-flopped over with her food. Fleur got herself another drink. The nasi goreng was wonderful; familiar. Ah Heng had made it once a week, usually when David was flying, because it was light and Fleur and the twins loved it. She smiled as she remembered