The Plantation - Di Morrissey [62]
‘Come inside and have a cool drink, then we’ll take you to your guesthouse,’ said Shane.
Ramdin smiled at Julie as he held open the car door. ‘Enjoy your visit, mem.’
Shane led the way through the house to a screened sun-room that overlooked a garden and a modern swimming pool. Julie’s first impression was of high ceilings and fans and rooms full of heavy furniture that looked as though it had been in situ for generations. There were, however, some contemporary touches. The furniture in the sunroom was covered in bold Scandinavian-style prints and the pot plants and flowers were placed in large, bright ceramic Chinese pots. A shy, dark-skinned Malay woman carried in a tray with a jug of fresh lime juice and glasses and placed it on a table. She gave Julie an interested glance.
‘This is a lovely room,’ said Julie.
‘Yes, we screened it properly,’ said Shane. ‘Martine has done some decorating, but the house is furnished pretty much as Grandfather and his father had it. Come and I’ll show you Great Grandfather’s pride and joy.’
Julie followed her cousins down the corridor and into what was not only the study but the trophy room. On the walls were the mounted heads of boars, deer and some animal Julie couldn’t identify. On the floor was a tiger skin. She looked about her in fascinated horror.
‘Not very PC now, is it?’ said Shane. ‘But different times, different customs. Grandfather was a keen hunter, too. He shot that tiger.’ He pointed to the floor. ‘I believe it was in Tampin, near Malacca. Anyway, he was rather proud of it.’
‘And Peter, where do you live?’ asked Julie, thinking that while she loved her grandmother’s things around the house in Brisbane, Caroline had somehow made the décor look fresh, airy and modern. Eugene’s home, by contrast seemed dark and a little depressing, even without the dead animal’s heads on the walls, though she supposed the drawn blinds and curtains kept it cool as well as dark.
‘I live in Grandfather Roland’s house, where my father was born,’ said Peter. ‘Our grandmother must have pret-tied it up somewhat when she married Grandfather, so it’s still full of family keepsakes.’
‘But Grandfather’s war memoirs are here, aren’t they?’ Julie reminded them.
Peter smiled. ‘We haven’t forgotten.’
Within a few days Julie had familiarised herself with the layout of Utopia and discovered the joys of the bakery near the general store. Peter told her that a colleague of their grandfather’s had come from Holland on a business trip and stayed at the plantation. When Roland had lamented the lack of good bread, Grandfather’s colleague had come to an arrangement whereby a Dutch baker came from Amsterdam, complete with a special brick oven, to set up a basic bakery. The baker became enamoured of a pretty Malay girl, loved plantation life and decided to stay. As the years went by, the bakery grew larger and larger, turning out breads, pastries, Indian breads and savoury treats for everybody on the plantation and the nearby villages, and now it also supplied bread to Slim River.
‘We’ve had offers to sell Utopia breads in KL,’ said Peter. ‘But we can only just meet local demand and we’re not really in the bread business. Come and try the best curry puffs in Malaysia and also the coconut cream pies made with our own coconut. Coconut is very healthy for you, you know. In fact, a lot of the baking is done with our coconut oil.’
‘Healthy? I thought it clogged your arteries,’ said Julie walking into the spotless bakery that smelled of warm bread and spicy cakes.
‘Not at all. We are developing some big coconut plantations here. Coconut oil’s had bad press, which has been put about by the soya bean companies,’ said Peter. ‘But that’s been proved to be wrong.’
At the weekend Peter and Shane invited several of their friends for lunch and to play tennis and meet Julie.
‘Tennis parties are a family tradition. Father loved them, and so did Grandfather,’ said Shane.
Julie hadn’t brought anything suitable