The Red Thread by Dawn Farnham Page A

For the rest she should speak to George Coleman, who ‘knew bally everything about architecture and much else besides’.
    Just beyond the auction rooms they stepped into the building which housed Mr Keaseberry’s mission press. A dull thump-thump could be heard coming from a back room.
    Robert hailed Benjamin Keaseberry—a tall, thin man with a slightly florid complexion—and his companion with a loud ‘Greetings, gentlemen.’ Mrs Keaseberry went up to her husband, who took her hand, and greeted the other man somewhat coldly, Charlotte thought. Having curtsied to Mr Keaseberry she was introduced to Mr Coleman.
    So this is the man who knows bally everything and has the heart of Takouhi Manouk, thought Charlotte. He took her hand lightly and bowed slightly.
    â€˜Miss Charlotte Macleod, by the saints, Robert has not been telling lies.’
    He had a way of looking directly into her eyes which was very seductive.
    â€˜Welcome to our little world. As sure as the Pope’s a Catholic, we shall be best friends.’
    The da Silva girls both kissed him warmly on his cheek, for they had known him all their lives. He was a favourite at their musical soirées, where he sang Irish songs in a pleasant baritone.
    Mr Coleman was at the mission press to pick up personal items of printing and, when pressed by the da Silva girls, revealed that they were invitations to a ball that he would be giving in honour of a visit by Takouhi’s brother and to which, they, much too young, were not invited. After a great deal of pouting they convinced him to relent, and he confessed that they might be on the guest list.
    He explained to Charlotte that he was interested in the printing process as part-founder of the settlement’s newspaper, the Singapore Free Press , although this journal was printed on its own presses in Battery Road.
    â€˜It’s only four pages long, and there’s some rather drear commercial stuff which the others insist on. But it gives the settlement a voice in a time when the lordships in Calcutta pay little interest to what goes on here. I fear there is not profit enough for them in Singapore. Only the Chinese and Arab merchants make the fortunes. So they rather see Singapore as a glorified fishing village or a repository of convicts. Yet we are frugal. The government lives off the vices of the population, taxes only the gambling, liquor and opium farms. There are no port duties, no tax on trade. We have a chamber of commerce but no hospital. We have crime aplenty but no one willing to subsidise the police force. So we rail and bemoan our sorry lot. Directly beside a letter groaning about the state of our thoroughfares, there’s an editorial against the imposition of carriage taxes, which are to go to improve them. Free trade, that’s the clarion call. So the lord must take care of the rest. Is it not delightful, Miss Macleod?’
    Mrs Keaseberry looked on disapprovingly at this bantering tirade for although she agreed with the sentiments, she had never warmed to Mr Coleman’s sense of humour, nor could she countenance his habit of dressing like the natives. She had even seen him in a turban. It was too much.
    Coleman smiled wryly, took possession of his bundle and departed with a wave.
    They made a tour of the premises, and Mr Keaseberry explained enthusiastically and somewhat at length the working of the press and the merits of Koenig and Bauer’s steam-powered single machine and Applegarth and Cowper’s four-cylinder machine versus the older Stanhope iron-frame lever press. When they took their leave. Charlotte’s head was spinning and the da Silva girls looked as if they might cry. Mrs Keaseberry had declined the remainder of the tour and stayed to help her husband.
    Stepping outside into the sunshine, the three women looked at each other and suppressed a desire to laugh until they had moved very quickly across the pretty leafy square. The girls then