Taking a service staircase to the second floor, they walked down another hallway leading into the east wing. There, Ah Tock found his cousin Victoria Young on the sofa of the study room adjoining her bedroom, going through stacks of old papers with one of her personal maids. Victoria was the only one of Su Yi’s children who still lived at Tyersall Park, and in many ways she was even more imperious than her mother, hence “Her Imperial Highness,” the nickname Ah Tock and Ah Ling used behind her back. Ah Tock stood in the room for several minutes, seemingly ignored. By now, he should be used to this kind of dismissive treatment, since his entire family had for three generations basically served as glorified help to these cousins, but he nevertheless felt a bit insulted.
“Lincoln, you’re early.” Victoria finally looked up for a moment to acknowledge his presence, calling Ah Tock by his English name as she riffled through a set of blue aerogram letters. “These can be shredded,” she said, handing them off to the maid, who immediately fed them into the paper shredder.
Victoria’s severe chin-length bobbed hair was looking frizzier and grayer than ever. Ah Tock wondered if she had ever heard of hair conditioner. She was wearing a white lab coat stained with paint marks over a polyester leopard-print blouse and what appeared to be white silk pajama pants. If she wasn’t born a Young, everyone would think she’s an escapee from Woodbridge.*6 Fed up with waiting, Ah Tock tried to break the silence. “That looks like a ton of paperwork!”
“Mummy’s personal papers. She wants everything destroyed.”
“Er…are you sure you should be doing this? Wouldn’t some historians be interested in Great-auntie Su Yi’s letters?”
Victoria frowned at Ah Tock. “Precisely why I’m going through all of them. Some we’ll save for the National Archives or the museums if there’s anything relevant. But anything personal Mummy wants gone before she dies.”
Ah Tock was taken aback by how matter-of-factly Victoria put it. He tried to change the subject to more pleasant matters. “You’ll be pleased…everything is on schedule to be delivered. The seafood supplier is sending a big truck tomorrow. They promised me the very best lobsters, jumbo prawns, and Dungeness crabs. They’ve never gotten such a large private order before.”
“Good.” Victoria nodded.
Ah Tock was pleased with the huge kickback he was getting from the seafood supplier, but he still found it hard to believe that the two Thai daughters-in-law of his cousin Catherine Young Aakara—Su Yi’s second-eldest child—subsisted on a diet of shellfish and nothing else.
“And I managed to track down that mineral-water bottler in Adelboden,” Ah Tock said.
“So they can have all the water here in time?”
“Well, it’s coming from Switzerland, so it will take about a week—”
“Cat and her family arrive on Thursday. Can’t you have it airfreighted?”
“It is being airfreighted.”
“Well Lincoln, get them to put a rush on it. Or have some courier service do it if these people can’t get it here fast enough.”
“It’s going to cost a fortune to have five hundred gallons of bottled water flown overnight!” Ah Tock exclaimed.
Victoria gave him a look that said: Do I look like I give a damn how much it costs?
In moments like these, Ah Tock couldn’t believe he was actually related to these people. For the life of him, he could not imagine why the Aakaras needed to have special mineral water from some obscure spring in the Bernese Oberland flown in just for them. Wasn’t Singapore tap water—rated one of the best in the world—good enough for these people? Or Perrier, for fuck’s sake? Were these delicate Thai royals going to drop dead if they had to drink Perrier?
“How are things coming along with the room?” Victoria asked.
“The team will be here to install everything tomorrow morning. I’ve also rented two mobile-home units, which we can park behind the French walled garden. This is where the doctors and nurses can be based, since you don’t want them in the house,” Ah Tock reported.
“It’s not that we don’t want them in the house, but between Alix and Malcolm coming in from Hong Kong and the Aakaras bringing all their maids, there’s just no room.”
Ah Tock was incredulous. This was the biggest private house in Singapore—he had never been able to count how many bedrooms there actually were—and they couldn’t even find space for the dedicated medical team that would be moving in to care for their dying mother?
“How many maids is Auntie Cat bringing?”
“She usually brings three of her own, five when Taksin joins her, but with all her sons and their wives coming, goodness knows how many of them will show up.” Victoria sighed.
“The team from Mount E came earlier today to do their assessment, and they think that the best place to set up the cardiac care unit is in the conservatory,” he said, trying to reason with his cousin.
Victoria shook her head irritatedly. “No, that won’t do. Mummy will want to be upstairs in her own bedroom.”
At this point, Ah Ling felt like she had to interject. “But Victoria, the conservatory is perfect. They won’t have to transport her upstairs, not to mention all the machines and generators. It’s secluded from any noise in the service wing, and they can set up all the machines in the adjoining dining room and have the wiring brought in right through the conservatory doors.”
“It’s no use arguing. Years ago when I suggested to Mummy that she move her bedroom downstairs so that she didn’t have to keep climbing the stairs, she said to me, ‘I will never sleep downstairs. The servants sleep downstairs. And the only members of my family who have ever slept downstairs have done so in their coffins.’ Trust me, she will expect everything to be set up in her bedroom.”
Ah Tock had to resist rolling his eyes. Even from her deathbed, Great-auntie Su Yi was still trying to control the whole world. And a little gratitude from Her Imperial Highness would have been nice—he had worked nonstop to make all this happen in record time, and Victoria hadn’t uttered “thank you” even once.
Just then, a maid knocked softly on the open door and peered in.
“What is it?” Victoria asked.
“I have a message for Ah Ling,” the maid said in a very soft voice.
“Well, come in here and tell it to her. Don’t just stand there skulking by the door!” Victoria scolded.
“Sorry, ma’am,” the maid said, glancing at Ah Ling nervously. “Um, the guardhouse called. Mrs. Alexandra Cheng and family are arriving.”
“What do you mean arriving?” Ah Ling asked.
“They are pulling up to the house now.”
“Now? But they aren’t supposed to be here until Thursday like everyone else!” Ah Ling groaned.
“Oh for heaven’s sake—did they give us the wrong dates?” Victoria fumed.
Ah Ling looked out the window and saw that it wasn’t just Alix and her husband, Malcolm, getting out of the car. There were six cars, and the whole damn family was pouring out of them—Alistair Cheng; Cecilia Cheng Moncur and her husband, Tony, with their son, Jake; and who was that stepping out of the car in a white linen suit? Oh dear God. It couldn’t be. She looked at Victoria in a panic and blurted out, “Eddie is here!”
Victoria groaned. “Alix didn’t say he was coming! Where are we going to put him?”
“It’s not just him…Fiona and the children are here too.”