Mr Chen's Emporium

by Deborah O'Brien

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Why did you leave the dance so abruptly? Was it to meet your secret fiancée?’

  ‘There is no fiancée.’

  ‘Then why did you run away?’

  ‘It was because I was faced with a crushing dilemma. As you are aware, my mother has always expected me to marry a Chinese bride. But I found myself irresistibly drawn to the young lady with whom I was dancing. And I knew I shouldn’t feel that way. For my mother’s sake and for yours.’

  A blush was rising up Amy’s face, but while they were speaking frankly, she wanted answers. ‘Have you ever been faced with that dilemma before?’

  ‘To be honest, no. I have met many affable young ladies, but none who combined that quality with a sense of justice and compassion.’

  He had turned to face her, but she didn’t dare look at him.

  ‘Was it you who left the orchids on little Peggy’s grave?’ she asked with lowered eyes.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘My heart broke for you that day, Amy.’

  ‘Not long afterwards,’ she began, ‘I went to the emporium to speak with you. To make things right between us. But your brother said you had left for China. And then Eliza told me about the arranged marriage and I decided I would never marry. Not if I couldn’t have you.’

  She was weeping. He took her hand and put it to his lips.

  ‘When I was in Canton, all I could think about was you, Amy Duncan. I remembered how it felt to be close to you when we waltzed. I told my mother I could not take a Chinese bride, not when there was a young woman whom I loved back in Millbrooke. And I dared to hope you might feel the same. I couldn’t wait to come home. I couldn’t wait until you came to my store. Then you walked in wearing that pink dress and . . .’

  He leaned across and kissed her on the mouth. At last Amy knew how Aladdin’s princess felt when Aladdin embraced her. As if she were floating weightless above the ground.

  ‘Will you marry me, Amy Duncan?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes, I will, Charles Chen.’

  They kissed again. This time she couldn’t stop herself from pressing against him and the strangest shiver passed through her body. Gently he pushed her away from him.

  ‘Did I do something wrong?’ she asked.

  ‘No, Amy. But you might make it difficult for me to be a gentleman.’

  ‘But you are always a gentleman, Charles.’

  ‘You might be surprised how tempted I am to abandon the decorum and give vent to my unbridled passion. Right at this very moment.’

  ‘Really,’ she gasped, until she saw a smile forming on his lips and realised he had been speaking at least partly in jest. All the same, ‘unbridled passion’ was a thrilling notion. But what exactly did it mean? There were so many mysterious things between men and women that she didn’t yet understand.

  After a moment Charles spoke again, and this time his tone was serious and urgent.

  ‘Amy, I must ask your father for your hand in marriage. I shall come to see him this evening. After supper.’

  Until that point, it could have been a dream. Now Amy woke up. And she felt ill.

  ‘My father won’t be happy, Charles.’ But she didn’t elaborate. She couldn’t bear to tell him the names her father had called him.

  When she remained silent, Charles said: ‘It is because of my race, isn’t it? There will be many people who feel that way, Amy. They will look down on you because of me. They may even call you horrible names. Can you live that way?’

  ‘I don’t care what people think.’

  ‘You should. It is your reputation which is at stake.’

  ‘Reputation is simply the way I am viewed in the eyes of others. But I know who I am.’

  Charles took her in his arms. ‘I love you, Amy. I can hardly believe you feel the same. And that is all that matters. Do not worry about your father. I shall win him over.’

  ‘He’s a stubborn man, Charles.’

  ‘I can be stubborn too, when I have a cause that is dear to me.’

  From the house she heard the boys’ voices. Their Latin lesson must have finished. They were coming out to play. Oh dear. At any moment her father might appear at the back door. And then he would look towards the creek and see his daughter in the arms of the man he had called an infidel and an opium user.

  ‘You must go.’

  ‘I’ll return tonight at half past seven.’ He kissed her chastely on the cheek, and then seemed to remember something, removing a parcel from inside his jacket.

  ‘I brought this back for you from Canton.’

  It was a fan made of silk. As she unfurled it, a charming scene appeared. Outside an Oriental palace, a young man, who might have been Aladdin, and a young woman, who could easily have been the princess, were locked in a tender embrace.

  ‘It’s beautiful, Charles. I shall treasure it.’

  After she watched him make his way along the creek towards Schoolhouse Road, Amy went inside the Manse and upstairs to her room. From beneath the underclothing in her bureau she took Monsieur Galland’s Arabian Nights. The book fell open at page three hundred and fifty-four as if it had been waiting for her – Amy’s favourite part of the story, Aladdin’s reunion with the princess.

  It wasn’t possible to express the joy they both felt at seeing each other again after being separated for what seemed like forever.

  It might have been written for Charles and me, she thought to herself. Then she returned the book to its hiding place.

  Amy couldn’t wait to tell her mother of Charles’s imminent visit. Margaret Duncan might be an ally in what could well prove to be a battle of wills between father and daughter. While they were seated at the kitchen table, peeling potatoes, she asked: ‘Mama, have ever you been to Mr Chen’s Emporium?’

  ‘Yes, but don’t tell your father.’ Her mother lowered her voice. ‘It was when we first came to Millbrooke. I bought some silk to make a blouse.’

  ‘So you met Mr Chen?’

  ‘Yes, he’s a most personable young man.’

  Amy continued to peel the potatoes, placing each one in a bowl of water.

  ‘You and Papa fell in love, didn’t you?’

  ‘Indeed we did, even though he wasn’t the well-to-do husband my parents wanted for me.’

  ‘You put love ahead of everything else.’

  ‘I suppose I did.’

  ‘Mama, how old were you when you married Papa?’

  ‘I was eighteen.’

  ‘So am I.’

  Her mother put the knife down and turned to face Amy. ‘Amy Duncan, what are you trying to say?’

  ‘A young man has asked me to marry him and I’ve said “yes”. He is coming tonight to ask Papa’s permission.’

  Margaret held her gaze for what seemed like an eternity. ‘It’s Mr Chen, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes. I love him, Mama. He is the most extraordinary man I have ever met.’

  ‘Oh, Amy. There are so many suitable young men in Millbrooke and you have to choose the one your father detests. What about Joseph Miller? He’s a fine boy and your father likes him.’

  ‘I don’t love Joseph.’

  ‘Did your Aunt Molly put this idea in your head?’

  ‘No, but she knows about Charles.’

  ‘Charles? You address him by his first name? Amy, has anything of a forbidden nature happened between the two of you?’

  ‘Only a kiss. This afternoon.’

  ‘Don’t tell your father that.’

  ‘Please, Mama, speak to him. Remind him of how you felt when you were young. Tell him Charles and I feel the same way.’

  Her mother was shaking her head. ‘So he’s coming tonight?’

  ‘At half past seven.’

  ‘Amy, don’t you realise this cannot possibly end well?’

  Now

  The painting ladies had been so taken with Angie’s picture of Amy that they wanted to have a go at doing portraits themselves. Although Angie explaine
d the difficulties, particularly in the hands of inexperienced artists, they kept nagging.

  ‘When I was at art school,’ she told them, ‘we weren’t allowed to paint people until third year. The first two years were spent doing bottles and vases. And sometimes we did cubes, prisms and spheres, mostly in monochrome.’

  ‘How boring,’ said Narelle.

  ‘I suppose so, but it was also a good grounding.’

  ‘Couldn’t you distil the essence of portraiture for us?’ asked Moira.

  Angie knew she wasn’t going to win this one. She might as well give in now. ‘All right, but it has to be a painting of a child. Adults are too tricky. With children, you can be a bit chocolate-boxy and get away with it.’

  She did a sketch of Jennie’s face, showing them the proportions. Then she demonstrated how to mix flesh colours and how to paint hair with a rake brush so that it looked as if you could see every strand.

  ‘Next week bring a large photo with you. It might be your child, your grandchild, niece or nephew. It could even be you when you were little.’

  The room was abuzz with enthusiasm. Over the top of the din she shouted, ‘Don’t expect to win the Archibald Prize with your first attempt.’

  It had been a long winter, starting on ANZAC Day and reaching far into September. Since the official arrival of spring, the nights weren’t quite as cold – a matter of one hot water bottle rather than two. But although the temperatures had risen, frosts remained a problem, striking when you least expected them. This morning, however, it was easy to forget about winter and its icy aftershocks. The cherry trees were in pink blossom, the lavender aflutter with orange butterflies, and the dead-looking grass had suddenly sprouted into knee-length luxuriance like a teenager having a growth spurt. Richard arrived with a trailer holding his new ride-on mower. It took him two hours to mow the three acres – his old mower had taken two and a half to do the same job.

  Now they were sitting in the kitchen, drinking tea and eating leftover lamingtons from Angie’s painting class.

  ‘Can’t I at least pay you for mowing the grass, Richard?’

  He frowned at her as though he was offended that she’d even offered, but then he said, ‘You might want to consider getting some goats or alpacas to keep it down. Maybe not goats, because their hooves tend to compact the ground. And they’d probably get loose and eat your garden. Alpacas would be better. They’re well-behaved and have soft paws like dogs.’

  ‘Really? I don’t know much about alpacas other than they’re adorable. There are three or four in the paddock near the school. I love the white ones.’

  ‘Well, think about it. They’re not as expensive as they used to be. And they’re easier to look after than sheep.’

  ‘You seem to know a lot about them.’

  ‘I have a small herd at Millerbrooke. If you want to buy three or four, let me know. You’ll need a wether to guard the flock. Sometimes wethers can be a bit stroppy – like all old bachelors – but generally alpacas are docile. And they’re quite aloof, so don’t expect to cuddle and pat them as you would with a dog. When you come to my place, I’ll introduce you.’

  Angie felt guilty. Although there had been numerous invitations to Richard’s house, she’d always found an excuse. He unsettled her in a way nobody else could. But she would have to go up there one day. Maybe the next time the boys came for the weekend.

  ‘I like what you’ve done with the Manse, Ange.’ He hadn’t been inside the place since autumn when he’d dropped off Amy’s trunk.

  ‘After you finish your tea, I’ll take you on a tour,’ she said.

  ‘How’s Mr Songbird?’ he asked.

  ‘He’s in San Francisco. A flying visit to see his family. And please don’t call him that, Richard.’

  ‘You started it.’

  ‘I hope you haven’t told anyone that.’

  ‘What do you think I am? The village idiot?’

  Whenever she thought about Richard – which wasn’t often, despite the fact that she seemed to run into him so much – she didn’t perceive him to be stupid, just eccentric and slightly Dickensian, with his funny cap and down-at-heel clothes.

  ‘Is he enjoying his holiday?’

  ‘How would I know?’ she replied crossly. ‘We don’t exchange emails.’

  ‘I hear they’ve applied to the government for approval to build a mine.’

  ‘I wouldn’t know anything about that. He’s my lodger. We don’t discuss his work.’

  ‘It was in the paper.’

  ‘Well, if it’s in the paper, it must be true,’ she said, fed up with the conversation. ‘But you needn’t worry. It’s not going to happen overnight. In the mining game, it’s always one step at a time.’ She smiled at her clever use of the quote from Jack.

  ‘No doubt Mr Songbird is consulting with his superiors at this very moment as to how best to lobby the government,’ said Richard.

  Angie didn’t bother to reply. There was no point in engaging in a debate. Particularly when it concerned something she didn’t care about.

  As for Jack, he had paid his rent in advance to cover the period he was away. Eighteen hundred dollars had bought Angie a brass daybed she had been longing for ever since she first saw it in the antiques shop. And thanks to her Songbird windfall, the exterior of the Manse was finished at last, looking as smart as when the house was first built. This week the painters were beginning work on the picket fence. It had been a recurring nightmare for Angie and she had often experienced restless, sweaty dreams about sanding and priming hundreds of pickets. Now she could pay somebody else to do it.

  After they had finished their tea, she showed Richard the newly finished sitting room with its cosy sofas and checked wing chair. Above the fireplace hung Angie’s portrait of Amy, now framed in sturdy, dark wood. Amy was sitting in the window seat with her legs curled up under her. Her hair was piled on top of her head, but the odd ringlet had escaped, falling onto her shoulders. She wore a white dress patterned with flower sprigs. At her neck was the choker with the black jet cameo. The silk pincushion lay on the seat, together with an abandoned piece of embroidery. Beside her was a stack of books, there to suggest Amy was a person of substance. You could see the names on the spines. Amy’s own books – Jane Eyre, The Mill on the Floss and Sylvia’s Lovers. Angie decided the latter was a nice touch, implying there might be more to Amy than just a straitlaced Victorian girl. Another novel lay open in her lap, but you could only see impressionistic scribble for text. Even when the painting was finished, Angie hadn’t been able to decide which book Amy was reading. When she told her painting ladies, they said it didn’t matter. But it mattered to Angie.

  Finally it had come to her. On the back of the painting she’d written: ‘Amy Duncan and Pride and Prejudice’.

  Angie ushered Richard across the hall to the dining room, where the antique dresser, purchased with her first fortnight’s rent money, had been joined by a matching table with ten balloon-back chairs. Her painting equipment, easel, folding table and vinyl chairs no longer cluttered the room. Instead, they had been moved to the barn where Richard had recently cleared out a section big enough for a class of twenty. He’d turned up so quietly that she hadn’t realised he’d been until a few days later when she looked inside the empty barn. Empty except for the cartons of old magazines. How had he known to leave them behind?

  In the upstairs bathroom, Angie gave him a demonstration of the new hot water tap. She had retained the gas heater for historical value.

  ‘You realise it’s not original to the house, don’t you, Ange? It’s unlikely they would have had an internal bathroom in the 1870s. Just a bathtub in the washhouse and an outside dunny. You can have it removed, if you like.’

  ‘No, in a strange kind of way, I like it.’

  ‘If I decide to buy the house, I want to make some changes,’ Angie said when they were back in the kitchen, having another cup of tea and eating the last of the lamingtons. ‘I’d like to install ensuite bathrooms. D
o you think that’s possible?’

  She produced her sketchbook with the rough drawings she’d done on the return car trip from the girls’ weekend in March.

  As Richard examined Angie’s sketches, he began to smile.

  ‘I know I’m not a draughtsman, Richard, but is it that bad?’

  ‘No, I was just smiling at your knot garden. It’s so typical of you, Ange.’

  Did he mean she was all tied up in knots? Or was he referring to the puzzling Gordian kind, where you couldn’t find the end?

  When she frowned he said: ‘I meant whimsical. In a nice kind of way, of course.’

  He continued to pore over her drawings. ‘The plan looks fine, but then again, what would I know? May I borrow a pencil for a moment?’ He turned to a new page of the sketchbook. Before Angie had finished her next lamington, he had produced two floor plans – upstairs and down.

  ‘You could convert that funny little ante-room next to your bedroom into a bathroom and make a doorway between the two. And there’s room for an ensuite along the east wall of the third bedroom. That’s where most of the pipes are anyway, so it wouldn’t involve a lot of plumbing work.’

  She had always wondered what Richard Scott did before he became a property owner and a semi-permanent resident of the Millbrooke pub. He must have been a builder. That might be useful.

  ‘I like your conservatory,’ he continued. ‘It makes the most of the north-facing aspect. You could create a solar-passive space there. But I don’t like the half hexagon effect – it doesn’t work with the structure of the house. Look at this.’ He pointed to the outlines of the building. ‘The Manse is all straight lines – a sideways T. You need to make your conservatory rectangular to maintain the integrity of the footprint.’

  Wow. She would persuade Richard to come out of retirement to do her job. But there was no point in asking him yet. Not until she was absolutely sure about buying the place.

  Angie wondered whether her interest in Amy Duncan was becoming obsessive. At first it had been about the physical resemblance she had seen to her own younger self. But lately she had found her thoughts drifting to the character of the girl in the photograph, her interests and passions. There was something intriguingly modern about Amy. Sure, she read Victorian novels, but not the cheap romances or gothic thrillers you might have expected from a girl of that era. Amy’s books were the classics that Angie had loved when she was young, and continued to read even now.