The Red Thread by Dawn Farnham Page A

warehouse, but some items required negotiation. Opium was controlled by the European houses. This would be no problem as Sang was a man the British trusted to regulate the affairs of the Chinese community. The captain was in no hurry. He would be trading as a chinchew , sailing from port to port in the region, picking up goods from the local Chinese until the trade winds changed to carry him back to China four months from now. There was a woman in Palembang he would like to see again.
    Before the captain left he said, ‘Don’t know if it’s of interest, sir, but there are two men on the ship who are hardy-looking and can read and write; they actually sat around spouting nonsense poetry.’
    The captain looked as if he wanted to spit, but rapidly thought better of it.
    â€˜In case you’re interested, sir, these are their names.’ He passed a paper across the table.
    Sang eyed him, looked at the names and passed the paper to his chief clerk.
    â€˜If they are interesting, you will be paid.’
    When the captain had departed, Sang looked at his clerk. Ah Liang was a small, fat man with droopy eyes and crooked yellow teeth. He was the master of the Ghee Hin Kongsi, keeper of the seal and rule book, and collected subscriptions from the large membership. Sang trusted him most of all the brotherhood. He looked after all of Sang’s business and most of his private affairs. Sang had brought him from Malacca; Liang owed his livelihood and his success to Sang, and he’d never forgotten it. Thanks to Sang he had a house, a Balinese wife and two Sumatran concubines, sisters he had bought at the slave market a few years ago. Sang envied him his three sons, all married, and his five grandsons. There had been a time when Sang had thought to marry his young daughter to one of Ah Liang’s sons, but they were all mixed blood, and he wanted a pure Chinese for his daughter, one who could speak the language, fresh blood from home.
    After discussing business, Sang tapped the names of the two coolies the captain had written on the paper with his yellowing fingernail.
    â€˜Find these two and look them over. Let me know what you find out.’
    He dismissed Ah Liang and, rising, made his way to the garden courtyard.
    There he called his old wife, and she came and sat beside him. ‘Second daughter is fifteen,’ he said. ‘It is time to marry her. If something happens to the son, there is no one for the ancestral rites. He must take my family name.’
    His wife nodded; she was glad he had raised the subject. She detested the child of the second wife as much as she detested the second wife. But this was an important decision. There had been no sons born alive to either, and her own daughter had married a man who had pocketed anything he could get his hands on: the daughter’s jewellery, two chests of silver and five chests of opium, and run off within a year. Sang had hunted high and low, brought all his money and influence to bear, but the man had either disappeared up some river somewhere or was lying, with his money, on the bottom of the sea. The first daughter had never been able to marry again. It had left an ache in her heart, and her mother took out her anger on the second daughter.
    Sex was of little interest to Sang, who had taken no concubines, an expense he deemed unnecessary. He had reluctantly married his second wife when he was fifty-three and she was seventeen. His first wife, a second cousin, he had met as a young man on a visit back to China, through the matchmaker, the usual channels, and he had fallen, he supposed, in love. He had, contrary to custom, brought her from China, for she had no close family living. The second was a mixed-blood daughter of a Chinese headman of the tin mines in Perak and his Malay wife. He did not like her much. She was polluted. But pure-blood Chinese wives were not to be had. There had been the birth of the daughter, then miscarriages and a