Sara MacDonald - The Hour Before Dawn

As they reached the outskirts of the city she recognised the long Bukit Timar Road and thought she remembered some of the older buildings hidden beneath and between vast skyscrapers. Land reclamation started so long ago had continued and the city had spread out into places once underwater. Spread out and out and up.

The bus weaved in and out of the fronts of hotels, dropping passengers and their spreading pools of luggage in front of ornate glass doors with tall turbaned Indian porters. Fleur and two couples were the last to be dropped off at the Hilton in Orchard Road. An old couple who looked on the point of collapse and a young, possibly honeymoon, couple. They all smiled wanly at each other, tiredness and jetlag making everything distant.

The young couple hauled their suitcases up the hotel steps before the porters had time to rush out with their trolleys and admonish them for even thinking of seeing to their own luggage. Fleur and the old couple stood waiting, knowing, unlike England, that their cases would be loaded carefully onto a trolley, and when they had checked in they would be seen efficiently into the lift and up to their rooms.

Once in her room the young Malaysian porter showed Fleur how everything worked and she dived into her bag to tip him, trying to find her Singapore dollars. The porter held his hand up. ‘Later, later, you tired, Mem.’

Fleur smiled gratefully and thanked him. ‘ Terima kasih. ’

He gave her a wide smile. ‘ Sama-sama. Selamat tidur. ’

‘ Selamat tidur. ’

Night was approaching. Fleur went to the window and looked down on Orchard Road, at the streams of traffic heading home or into the city to eat and shop. The pavements were full of people and the volume would increase as the night wore on. Singapore was a city for serious shoppers.

She had wanted to be in the centre of the city where she could walk to shop for presents for Nikki and Jack. Right here, in the centre where, even after all this time, much would be familiar. Fleur smiled, leaving the curtains open, and went to the fridge and took out water. Then she had a shower and lay on the bed, the hum of the air-conditioning masking the noise of anything outside the room.

Fleur knew she must not sleep or she would never come up from the depth of jetlag, but she closed her eyes and let her body relax. She longed to phone Nikki, to say, Here I am in the Singapore Hilton and so, so looking forward to seeing you the day after tomorrow, darling; to meeting Jack; to looking at your lovely face, which I miss every single day…

But she couldn’t. She had brought a phone that would work anywhere in the world, but she could not ring her estranged daughter. There were no small intimacies or concerns or chit-chat that could be exchanged as comfort. Not yet.

It was the thing Fleur missed most of all with the death of Fergus, having anyone to tell, I got here! I’m fine! You needn’t have worried. Really, the journey was wonderful…no problems at all.

The room hummed around her. She knew she must get up if she wanted to go out into the streets before she collapsed. So strange that hotels could be the loneliest places in the world when they contained hundreds of people.

She dressed quickly in clean clothes and went out into the corridor. There was a lounge eating area on the same floor which served snacks and light food. Fleur ordered a coffee and helped herself to some fruit and nuts beautifully laid out on a table. She went and sat in a corner where she would not be self-conscious on her own and looked out at the night.

As she stood in the lift going down to the foyer the old couple joined her. ‘We’re just going to have a quick look round the hotel and call it a day, we’re much too tired to explore tonight.’

Fleur smiled. ‘I’m just going out for an hour or so.’

‘Well, you be careful, on your own…’

‘I think,’ Fleur said, ‘Singapore is probably the safest place I know. Certainly safer than London. Sleep well.’

She swung out of the glass doors and down the steps into the street and turned right and walked slowly up Orchard Road. She wanted to buy Nikki a Chinese blouse, green silk. All the little night markets seemed to have disappeared, to be replaced by glittering designer shops and huge stores. There was even a Marks & Spencer. Fleur, tired, did not think she could tackle working out the currency tonight. She would scout and return in the morning. She walked, jostled and pushed by the good-natured crowds. There were no rickshaws any more and she was glad. She used to be horrified at the huge varicose veins that stood out like spreading roots of trees on the rickshaw driver’s legs.

She stood on a corner waiting for the lights to change and suddenly saw, across the road in a space between the shops, a children’s play area and some market stalls. She crossed the road with the surge of people and went to look.

There it was, pale green, the perfect Shantung blouse with small daisies embroidered on the front. Fleur held it up to judge its size. Of course she couldn’t be sure, but it seemed to be about right. She saw it had a price tag on and hesitated to barter. Perhaps people no longer bartered?

Did she have enough Singapore dollars? She opened her wallet to look. The small Cantonese stallholder touched her hand. ‘I take card. You have this one too, velly good for you. Good colour for you.’ She took up a red blouse and held it against Fleur.

Fleur bought both blouses and a length of batik for a sarong for Jack and paid with her credit card. She was feeling sick and dizzy now with the heat and the crowds and she turned back towards the hotel. Even at this time of night the sweat trickled down the inside of her shirt and thin trousers.

Back in her room she made tea, nibbled a biscuit and fell into bed feeling pleased with herself. She had at least small gifts to give to Nikki and Jack. She fell asleep almost instantly.

In the morning Fleur woke disorientated and went to draw the curtains. The steamy rain of yesterday had gone and the day glared and flashed against the window. She felt excited and rested. She had the whole day, until four thirty, when the airport bus would come to collect her. She could do anything she liked.

She made coffee, showered quickly, and put on a thin dress against the heat outside. She opened the glass doors and walked out onto her balcony that looked down on Orchard Road. She leant out and watched the cars snaking along bumper to bumper through the city and saw what you could not see from the road.

A line of trees edging the pavements made a long green snake through the heart of the city, as if the trees had sprung from the roots of the buildings, so that the city could constantly be reminded of the jungle from which it had sprung.

Hundertwasser! Fleur felt astonished to see so clearly and by chance a view he must have looked down on, here or in some other eastern city that steamed with heat and vibrant colour. The ghosts of the jungle and dead tribes rising from the pavements in leafy green, their wavering branches, the arms of the dead, re-created to live again, to breathe again in the heart of a city. Forever alive, forever continuing the pattern of life. A city that had once been jungle.

The Garden of the Happy Dead.

If I had not come, if I had not stood on this balcony eight floors up, I would not have seen so extraordinarily dramatically what Hundertwasser meant and what he practiced so clearly in his colours and architecture.

She smiled, drinking in the snake of green trees below her, a wavy line through the flash of metal cars and spirals of buildings. She could have read and read and studied and stood in front of one of his paintings or buildings, but she might never have glimpsed the exactness of meaning, that bolt of sudden understanding of something deep and fundamental which drew her and thousands of others to his work and philosophy.