CHAPTER EIGHT

TYERSALL PARK, SINGAPORE

Before Rachel was even fully awake, she could smell the coffee. The aroma of the Homacho Waeno beans she loved so much roasted, ground, and poured into a French press with boiling water. But wait a minute—she was still in Singapore, and the one thing that wasn’t absolute perfection at Tyersall Park was the coffee. Rachel opened her eyes and saw her usual breakfast tray placed on the ottoman next to the tartan-covered armchair, the beautiful silver curves of the Mappin & Webb teapot glinting against the morning light, and gorgeous Nick sitting in the armchair smiling at her.

“Nick! What are you doing here?” Rachel sat up with a start.

“Um, last time I checked this was our bedroom.” Nick laughed as he got up and gave her a kiss.

“But when did you get back from Thailand?”

“An hour ago on Prince Jirasit’s plane. Guess what type of coffee they had on board?”

“Oh my God—I think I smelled it in my dreams!” Rachel exclaimed as Nick handed her a cup and sat cross-legged on the bed next to her.

“Mmmmm!” Rachel sighed in contentment after taking her first sip.

“I love seeing you so satisfied.” Nick beamed.

“I thought you were going to stay in Chiang Mai until the end of the week?”

“You know, I went to Chiang Mai expecting to meet a guy who would lend me a few billion dollars. But what I discovered there were treasures far beyond my imagination, things you can’t place a monetary value on. I was reading Ah Ma’s diaries, and what I found in them was so important that it couldn’t wait another day. I needed to share them with you.”

Rachel sat up against her pillows. She hadn’t seen Nick this excited about anything in a long time. “What did you find?”

“There’s so much to tell you, I don’t even know where to begin. I think the first revelation was that Prince Jirasit was my grandmother’s first love. They met in India, where she had escaped to just before the Japanese invaded Singapore during World War II. She was twenty-two, and they had a passionate wartime affair and traveled through India together.”

“That’s not too surprising. I mean, she did entrust him with her most private journals,” Rachel commented.

“Yes, but here’s a surprise: At the height of the Japanese occupation of Singapore, my grandmother actually managed to sneak back onto the island with Jirasit’s help. It was pure madness, because the Japanese were on a torturous rampage, but she did it anyway. And when she was reunited with her father, she found out he had arranged for her to be married to a man she had never even met.”

Rachel nodded, recalling a story Su Yi had told her. “When we had tea five years ago, your Ah Ma told me that her father had specially chosen James for her, and that she was grateful for his actions.”

“Well, she was actually dragged kicking and screaming to the altar by her father, and for the first few years, she resented my grandfather and treated him abominably. After the war, she reunited with Jirasit in Bangkok and although both of them were married to other people by this point, they couldn’t resist resuming their relationship.”

Rachel’s eyes widened. “Really?”

“Yes, but that’s not even the real shocker. She found that she was pregnant in the midst of her affair.”

“Noooo!” Rachel gasped, almost spilling her coffee. “Who’s the baby?”

“My aunt Catherine.”

“Oh my God, it all makes sense now. That’s how Auntie Cat knows Prince Jirasit, and that’s why she was left the estate in Chiang Mai! Are you the only one besides her who knows?”

Nick nodded. “I actually flew back to Bangkok last night and had a very interesting conversation with her. We sat in her garden overlooking the Chao Phraya River and she told me the whole story. My grandmother was in a terrible bind, of course, when she found out she was pregnant. Jirasit couldn’t leave his wife—he was a prince and too bound to all the family politics, and they also had two young children—so my grandmother was faced with a choice: She could either divorce my grandfather and live as a single woman alone with an illegitimate child, cast out by society, or she could tell him the truth and beg him to take her back.”

“I can’t even imagine how hard it must have been for her in those days, especially for a woman of her background,” Rachel mused, suddenly feeling sorry for Su Yi.

“Well, I always knew my grandfather was a saint, but I didn’t realize quite how much. Not only did he take Ah Ma back, he apparently never once gave her any grief over the affair. He knew going in to this marriage that she wasn’t in love with him, but he was determined to win her over. And that he did. Being the good Christian man that he was, he forgave her completely and he treated Auntie Cat exactly as he did his other children. In fact, I always thought she was his favorite.”

“So you think your grandmother grew to love him then?” Rachel asked.

“According to Auntie Cat, my grandmother fell in love with him—truly, deeply—when she saw the kind of man he really was. You know, before I left her last night, Auntie Cat told me something else she’s never told anyone—what happened the day that Ah Ma died. She was the only one in the bedroom with her when she passed.” Nick’s voice became a little choked up as he recounted his aunt’s words:

When I first got to Singapore, your grandmother told me that the spirits had been visiting her. She said that her older brother, Ah Jit, had come, her father had been in the room. Of course, I thought that all the morphine she was on was giving her hallucinations. Then on the afternoon she died, I was sitting at her bedside when her breathing started becoming more and more labored. I watched the monitors, but everything seemed fine and I didn’t want to raise the alarm just yet. Then suddenly Mummy opened her eyes and gripped my hand. “Be a good girl, give up your chair for him,” she said. “Who?” I asked, and then I saw this look on her face, this look of pure love. “James!” she said in this joyous tone, and that was her last breath. I swear to you, Nicky, I felt him. I could feel my father’s presence in the room, sitting on that chair, and I could feel them leave together.

Rachel sat on the edge of her bed, blinking away the tears. “Wow. I’m getting chills. It’s starting to make sense now…why your grandmother was so opposed to our marrying.”

“She felt that her father had been right to choose my grandfather for her, and she should have obeyed his wishes all along. That’s why she was so adamant that I obey her!” Nick said.

Rachel nodded slowly. “Yes, and think about how she found out that my mother had an affair with a man out of wedlock, and that I came from that relationship. It must have brought back all her own fears and her guilt over her affair.”

Nick sighed. “It was so misguided, but she thought she was protecting me. Let me show you something. It fell out of one of her diaries.” Nick took out a small folded letter and handed it to Rachel. Embossed in red below an ornate coat of arms were the words:

WINDSOR CASTLE

My Dear Su Yi,

I cannot begin to express my debt of gratitude for all you and your brother Alexander did during the darkest days of the war. Allowing Tyersall Park to be a safe haven for some of our most essential British and Australian officers played no small role in saving countless lives. Your acts of heroism, too many to recount here, will never be forgotten.

Sincerely,

George R.I.

“George R.I….” Rachel looked at Nick incredulously.

“Yep, Queen Elizabeth’s father. He was the king during the war. Rachel, you won’t believe some of the stories in my grandmother’s diaries. You know, growing up I was told so many stories of how my grandfather was a war hero, how he saved countless lives as a surgeon. But it turns out my grandmother and her brother were also instrumental in saving so many lives. Right as the occupation was beginning, Alexander was in Indonesia officially to oversee my great-grandfather’s business interests, but secretly he was helping get important people out of the country. He helped hide some of Singapore’s most crucial anti-Japanese activists—people like Tan Kah Kee and Ng Aik Huan—in Sumatra. In the end, he was tortured to death by a Japanese agent trying to find out his secrets.”

“Oh no!” Rachel gasped, putting her hands over her mouth.

“Yes, but as it turns out my grandmother had secretly returned to Singapore at the height of the Japanese occupation. And she had made a daring trip to see Alexander in Indonesia right before he died. She absolutely adored him, and this tragedy is what galvanized her to continue his fight. Tyersall Park became a sort of Underground Railroad for all the operatives passing from Malaysia through Singapore, trying to get to safety in Indonesia and Australia. It became a place for secret high-level meetings and a safe house for some of the key people who were being hunted down by the Japanese.”

“How amazing! I would have thought that this house would be too conspicuous a place,” Rachel remarked.

“Well, it would have been, but the leader of the occupying Japanese forces, Count Hisaichi Terauchi, commandeered Tyersall Park and took over the main house. So my grandmother and all the servants were made to live in the back wing, and that’s how she managed to hide so many people right under the nose of the general. She disguised them as part of the staff—because there were so many of them everywhere, the Japanese troops never noticed. And then she managed to get them in and out through the secret passage from the conservatory to the Botanic Gardens.”

“The one you used to sneak into the house!” Rachel exclaimed.

Nick held the letter up to Rachel. “This is not just about me anymore and losing my childhood home or my connection to the past. It’s much bigger than that. This house should be a historic landmark, a heritage site for all Singaporeans. It’s far too important to be altered in any way, and I believe conservationists would argue it urgently needs to be preserved.”

“Does this mean you can block the sale to the Bings?”

“That’s what I’m trying to figure out. Knowing Jack Bing, I’m sure he’ll put up a fight.”

“And so will your aunties. They’re going to want their money from the sale. What would happen if you deprived them of what they see as their rightful inheritance?”

“What if there was another way where no one had to be deprived? I’ve been thinking it over for the past few days, and I think I have a plan that can save this historical landmark and transform it into something viable for the future.”

“Really?”

“Yeah, but we’re going to need people with really deep pockets to believe in us.”

Rachel’s mind began to race. “I think I may know just the people we need to talk to.”