Miss Seetoh in the World

by Catherine Lim

  There were deadlier demons than Yen Ping’s evil spirits to vanquish; she had no idea how a student’s caring act of the silly makeover could unleash a torrent of emotions that would end all hope of anything like a peaceful closure for both herself and her husband.

  There had been no time to remove the make-up; she would realise its treachery only later. Right now, as she entered the private room in the Pavilion Hotel and everyone looked at her with surprise, all was good-natured jocularity.

  Mrs Olivia Phang cried out, ‘Oh my, oh my, how beautiful you look! I could hardly recognise you!’ She turned to her husband and said teasingly, ‘Darling, if you keep looking at Mrs Tan like this, I will get very jealous!’

  Her mother said, ‘What happened, Maria? You’ve never worn make-up in your life’, to which Mrs Phang said very loudly, ‘But don’t you think she looks simply beautiful? I’m glad she’s taken my advice at last to pretty herself up for her husband.’

  Then she said to Bernard, ‘You’ve got a very glamorous wife, Bernard – beats all those socialites in the glossy fashion magazines! All the more reason for you to get well and keep an eye on your wife. Otherwise, all the men will be chasing her!’

  Carried away by the gratification of her useful advice to Maria, and unmindful of the constricted smile on Bernard’s face, she laughed merrily into her perfumed handkerchief. Maria briefly acknowledged the presence of the two other guests for the lunch: Bernard’s colleagues at the Ministry, whom she must have previously met but could not now recognise; they were staring at her as much as decorum would allow.

  She had to get the explanation out as quickly as she could. Mrs Phang said, ‘Well, your students have certainly done a good job. Tell you what, Mrs Tan, I can introduce you to my beautician and my hairstylist. He can do wonders with your hair. Bernard, you lucky man!’

  Without looking into her husband’s face, Maria knew the damage was already done; she could hear the words screaming inside his head: what are you trying to prove? Why have you chosen to taunt me publicly, on my birthday? Indeed, to the outsider, the radiantly beautiful wife could only increase the pity towards the husband and fuel speculation about a very merry widowhood.

  ‘Come, time to cut the cake!’ said Mrs Olivia Phang. ‘Mrs Tan, you come and hold your husband’s hand while he cuts the cake, just like a bridal couple. Here,’ she called to a waiter, ‘you take a picture of all of us.’ And she led the others in the birthday song.

  Days later, Dr Phang brought the birthday picture to show her and her husband. It showed both of them with wan smiles, their hands clasped over a beribboned knife held over a large chocolate birthday cake. Together with other photographs of themselves, it would have no place of remembrance in her heart.

  Back home, she went straight to the bathroom and scrubbed off every bit of paint and powder.

  ‘I see you’ve removed that make-up,’ said her husband, as she got ready to massage his legs. ‘So it wasn’t for me that you went out of your way to make yourself beautiful.’

  It would have been futile to remind him about that silly student caper; in his mind, the image of her flaunting her beauty in public was yet more fuel for his unquenchable self-pity. ‘Go and put it on again.’ The peevish perverseness to goad her all the way provoked, for the first time, a sharpness of tone in the sickroom. She said, ‘But I don’t have make-up. You know I never use it.’ Maggie had actually slipped the stuff into her handbag with the words, ‘You try it yourself. Very easy. Practise. You look better than some of our TV stars.’

  ‘There you are, you see,’ he said, ‘you never do what I want you to.’ And it was then that despite her determination to submit to all the torments with unremitting patience and kindness, she lashed out bitterly, ‘Why are you so unreasonable, Bernard? I’d already explained that it was all some silly students’ whim. Why are you so bent on making me miserable?’

  He said, closing his eyes, ‘I’m tired, I want to sleep. Leave me alone now.’

  Seventeen

  Dr Phang said, ‘I had to tell you all that because I think he wished it.’ A reluctant messenger with an accusatory message from a dying man to his wife, he kept his imperturbable demeanour but dispensed with the engaging smile.

  They were outside the sickroom, standing near the door that was only half closed to allow her to hear any movement from her husband who appeared to be sleeping peacefully. She looked down, with a heaviness of heart, while Dr Phang looked anxiously into her face. Her mother passed by; she threw them a sharp, angry glance on behalf of a dying man whose wife and best friend were talking together in unseemly intimacy just outside his room. Later she would say to her daughter, ‘Why does he come so often? Is it to see Ah Siong or you? You want to have people talking?’

  Dr Phang’s conveying of the message was as brief as he could make it, the chief point of which, in Bernard’s own words, was her culpable encouragement of him all along, leading to the enormous commitment of the Tiffany ring. He would never, ever have flung it away if he had not been so devastated by her sudden inexplicable change of behaviour. And she would never have changed her mind about him if it had not been for that Brother Philip. A Christian brother in charge of moral education in a Christian school? He had as good as seduced her. There was proof. She talked in her sleep. She uttered his name. Not once but a few times. Dreams never lied. Dream-talk was incontrovertible proof. He had never confronted his wife with the proof of her sinful liaison out of sheer shame and respect for the Church and Father Rozario.

  Oh Bernard, Bernard.

  As Maria listened, she was swept up by immense waves of anger alternating with pity, pulling her in different directions, a helpless marionette between two maniacally competing puppeteers. It was heartbreaking that near the end of his life, her husband’s tormented mind should be further visited by hallucinatory demons who viciously scrambled together past and present – he had not known about Brother Philip till after their marriage. The fiends smeared the line as well between truth and suspicion – she never talked in her sleep, and if she did, he would have awakened her to fling the incriminatory evidence in her face. The faintest shadow of proof had been sufficient to unleash his anger; the cry of a lover’s name in sleep would have discharged it like a cannon and crushed her without mercy. She thought she was done with anger, but it rose to wrestle with the pity, and left her exhausted and numbed. Angry on behalf of Brother Philip, now co-villain, she thought: a person on the brink of death should not feel licensed by that fact alone to make wild accusations against the living.

  She was aware of Dr Phang looking intently at her, as if waiting for an explanation: what was he thinking? What thoughts was he forming about her? It no longer mattered; she had no more strength for explanations. She said nothing, still looking down.

  He reached for her hand and said, ‘You’re okay,’ and it was at this point that the tears, held back with great effort, burst forth, and were instantly suppressed, making her body tremble all over. He had needed no explanation to continue to believe in her. You’re okay. A commonplace banality of assurance, it comforted her as no avowal of trust and regard could. She made no effort to wipe the tears that were now freely coursing down her cheeks.

  He reached out to hold her, and she rushed into his arms, pressing her face on his shoulder, like a frightened child desperate for protection and comfort after a long pretence of brave whistling in the dark. You’re okay. In her confused and confusing little world, her husband, her mother, her brother, all looked at her and thought her mad, perverse, wilful, difficult, obdurate, selfish. They would never have said to her, ‘You’re okay.’

  By the time they appeared at Bernard’s bedside again, she had wiped away all her tears and appeared calm and composed. A deep peace, such as she had not felt for a long time, filled her heart. Bernard was still asleep. They sat on two chairs in a corner of the room and began talking, in whispers, so as not to disturb him. Dr Phang had more to say; he was done with the tiresome message of the dying man
and was now concerned with practical matters: would she need his help for the onerous matters that had to be attended to upon the death of her husband which, according to the doctors, would be quite soon? The mere mention of the eventuality still brought on a sense of surreality, still sent little shuddering chills through her body.

  The church people – they were very kind – would see to all the funeral arrangements. Her brother Heng was efficient and would also be at hand to take charge of other matters. She saw Dr Phang’s hesitancy in bringing up a sensitive point: yes, financially she would be alright. She had some savings and if necessary would sell their apartment which had seen a huge jump in price since its purchase, pay off the rest of the mortgage, and move with her mother and Por Por to live in her mother’s small apartment now being rented out with the approval of her brother Heng, who jointly owned the property with her.

  They spoke softly, their heads almost touching. There were still a few moments of talking together before he needed to take his leave, and their conversation, even if unseemly in a room of the dying, took a lighter turn. ‘Olivia has been talking of nothing but your new look at the restaurant lunch; you looked stunning,’ he said smiling. It would have cheered her more if the compliment had made no attribution to a third person. The vanity of memory years on would preserve only the latter part of his statement. Now she felt light-hearted enough to want to extend the cheerful sharing; she told him the joke about the students presenting her with a plague for all her good work for them. He laughed out loud. She felt impelled to tell him a few more. There was one about the great TPK, and she told it before realising the horrible faux pas: Bernard had spoken several times of his being a protege of the prime minister, of being earmarked for political grooming and high political office. She apologised, and he held out a hand to stem the effusive apology. No need for that, he said, for he liked the joke very much and could himself produce a few, even more irreverent, ones.

  Then he confided in her a secret which nobody, not even Olivia knew: he was seriously thinking of leaving the Ministry of Defence for another job. There had come a point in his life when he wanted change. ‘I might start another political opposition party, to keep V.K. Pandy company,’ he said, and when he saw her eyes round in astonishment, laughed again and said, ‘Just joking. Political life is not for me!’

  Oh, how she wished for them to be in circumstances where they could talk freely with each other, share views, reveal private dreams. Now there were these awful barriers between them. ‘You know, I would love to be a writer,’ she confided in her turn, and told him of her ever active imagination already filling itself with lively people and incidents that were just waiting to be spilled out upon the pages.

  The conversation could not be allowed to go along its dangerously light-hearted path in a house soon to be visited with death; both dragged it back to the sombre decorum it had begun with.

  He said, ‘Don’t forget. Let me know if you need help.’ He gave her hand a reassuring squeeze and rose to take his leave.

  She did not even dare say, as she normally would, ‘Thank you, and please come again,’ fearing to betray a greater need than her husband for the comfort of this man’s presence.

  Her husband stirred but continued to sleep peacefully. For the first time in many days, she had leisure to allow her thoughts to roam. Powered by her imagination, they took on a life of their own, bounding off in all directions like small animals let out of their cages or pens, eager to explore every corner of an exciting new world. Her new world had not yet taken on any clear shape, but in leaving behind the old one of confusion, distrust, anger and misery, it was already bright with promise. For one thing, she was looking forward to returning to the regularity and comfort of her life at St Peter’s. Into her memory a hundred images of recent events crowded and competed for attention – the Teachers’ Day celebrations, Maggie, Yen Ping and Mark, the astonishing make-over, Maggie’s young sister Angel, even the unappealing Mr Chin, coming up awkwardly to make courteous inquiries about her husband, Brother Philip and his kind words when they met along the corridor. That man’s image would be dearer for being connected with a special pain: how could he have been dragged into the sordidness of her husband’s suspicions? Had she, in fact, inadvertently done him a disservice by talking about him with so much affectionate regard, as to place him in that unsavoury light?

  Meeta and Winnie – she would be happy to re-connect with them, get into their world of man-hunting and gossip and superstitious nonsense, and as quickly get out of it back to her own. Meanwhile, she was grateful to them, during this difficult period, for having Por Por over at their house for part of the day and taking her mother out for occasional lunches. Kindness everywhere! Her new world would be full of it. You could go so wrong with love, but never with kindness.

  If she could train her thoughts to steer clear of her husband, they could be exclusively directed towards a future that beckoned with hope. So great were those little flutterings of anticipatory excitement that they carried their own seeds of guilt. They coalesced around one wish that lit up everything around it. She would write a book, and another and another. Her world would be centred on her life, and her life would be centred on her writing. There would be a neatness, an order, a peace in her world as could never be found outside it, in the madding crowd of husbands and wives, men and women constantly misunderstanding each other.

  As soon as she had the time – even in her thoughts, she skipped direct reference to the awful reality of death and its concomitant hassles, from the funeral arrangements down to the last details of administrative and legalistic procedures regarding something she had no knowledge of or inclination for, known as the deceased’s estate – she would set about this supreme, defining task. She would begin by looking into the heaps of notes and drafts of stories she had written and put away over the years, and see if they could provide the beginning of a collection of short stories, or even a novel. Might she not do a course or two on creative writing, perhaps even go abroad for the purpose? She had heard of summer schools in universities that offered such courses. Brother Philip’s words of encouragement came back to warm her heart.

  One thing was certain. She could never write a story, even if heavily disguised, about her husband. If writing was a form of escapism, there was no world greater than the one she had shared with him for three years that she wanted to escape from. She thought of his ring lying in a dark forest, its brilliance lost under layers of mud and dead leaves. Perhaps years hence, as an old woman for whom the years would have softened the terrible guilt, shock, pity and anger and transmuted them all into one overpowering desire to tell a story, she would be able to sit down and begin it with the words: ‘This is the strange story of a man who loved a woman, and bought her a diamond ring so expensive he was in debt for years. She did not want it, so he flung it away where it could never be recovered. Nevertheless, she married him, and had a greater debt to pay, because she did not love him.’

  When she told Dr Phang about her secret yearning to be a writer, was that smile one of encouragement too, like Brother Philip’s? Images of the boyish grin on the different occasions when she had witnessed it, causing a flurry of friendly crinkles around his eyes, came flooding into her mind; she sorted them out in the order of the pleasure they had given her, beginning with the one in the restaurant when she had stood before them all, blushing furiously in her new look, her face expertly made up by Maggie, her hair tumbling upon her shoulders, a multicoloured silk scarf draped around her neck. That smile of admiration was precisely replicated only a short while ago, when he had briefly referred to the new look; was it to deflect the admiration that he had to make mention of his wife’s name?

  She kept the best image for the last, like a child delaying the opening of the most cherished present while all the time looking longingly at it. For years it would remain in her memory, his comforting her in his arms while the healing warmth of his simple assurance permeated her whole being: You’re okay. She
would remember vividly the pattern of lines on his shirt on which her face was pressed, the very smell of his closeness. The image would remain free of the angry taint of scandal that her mother, increasingly watchful of them, seemed determined to daub it with: he’s married, you’re married. He has a second wife, your husband is dying. Just what do you think you are doing?

  She would ever remember his head thrown back in laughter at the funny plague joke, their turning quickly to look in her husband’s direction to make sure they had not disturbed him, and then continuing to laugh together.

  ‘What was that smile about?’ Her husband had awakened, and was looking at her. Apparently he had been looking at her for a while; his voice was very weak, but he spoke slowly, enunciating every syllable, as if to make sure she heard. She suddenly realised with horror that she had been smiling to herself for at least a full five minutes, a wifely obscenity by any standard. But she could still answer his question truthfully, and say, with an attempt at smiling casualness, ‘It was the funniest misspelling but nobody noticed it,’ and went on to describe the gaffe in detail.

  ‘Tell me about that smile.’

  Numbly she clung to the rejected explanation, saying in a bathos of desperation: ‘If you don’t believe me, I’ll show you the proof’ and went at once to get the plaque. She held it before his eyes, drawing attention to the misspelling, hating him and herself all the while for the hideous pretence of a casual tone against the cold ruthlessness of his judgement.