Maggie despised her mother. She told Auntie Noodles that she sometimes spat at her. Upon her sister, right from babyhood, she had lavished all the love she never knew, while using all the wiles she had, to beat off any threats to the little world of safety she had carved out for themselves. Auntie Noodles hinted that Maggie sometimes joined her mother in the Blue Moon Lounge to make some money to spoil her adored little sister with gifts of clothes, toys and colouring pencils. Maria had the saddening recollection of that day in school when Maggie complained of a heavy period, making a great show of a fistful of sanitary towels; she had probably been just discharged from one of the government clinics for an abortion that had not gone too well. Auntie Noodles said, tapping the side of her head with a forefinger to demonstrate Maggie’s shrewd mind, that the girl had once talked about looking out for a rich man, even an old one, to marry, for a job with a G.C.E. O level qualification would not support Angel through university.
Maria read the infamous story again, scouring it for telling details. Then she showed it to Brother Philip.
‘Read it,’ she said, ‘and tell me if it was really a cry for help. Idiot that I was, I missed it.’
‘Don’t be too hard on yourself,’ said the kindly brother. He laughed so much over the story that Maria was provoked to laugh too. She remembered the precise moment when she had bonded with the strange, overaged, most disliked student in St Peter’s Secondary School; it was the moment she saw the truth of her entire life flashing before her eyes in the inspired words on a playful strip of paper: Mrs Tan is no more. Long live Miss Seetoh! She told Brother Philip about it.
He said, ‘Don’t worry about that girl; she’ll do well in the world. She has more savvy than both of us combined.’ He asked,‘What will you do now?’
‘Nothing,’ said Maria. ‘Clearly she doesn’t want to have anything more to do with me.’
The opposite was true of Yen Ping. The girl looked forlorn on her own, though she tried to put on a brave front. Mark Wong’s mother had made good her threat and transferred him to St Paul’s High School; she had him driven every morning to school and brought home every afternoon in a chauffeured car, with strict instructions to the chauffeur to double up as private detective and watch out for any girl trying to meet up with her son.
‘Miss Seetoh, can I see you for a moment?’ Yen Ping needed constant encouragement in her studies, in her attempts at creative writing, in her need to fight the sadness of the greatest loss in her life. ‘Miss Seetoh, I love Mark very much, and I will study very hard so that we can have a good future together.’ ‘Miss Seetoh, I received this letter from Mark; would you like to read it?’ ‘Miss Seetoh, I’ve written this poem for Mark. What do you think of it?’
Young love was so pure, simple, uncalculating.
She had but one call from Dr Phang since their last meeting, and it was to tell her, very quickly, that his departure for Europe would be postponed by a week. He said, ‘Looking forward so much; you have no idea how much,’ and hung up.
The road, it was said, was better than the inn, the travelling better than the arrival, the anticipation, if it was fed by the dreams of languorous sleep, far sweeter than the reality.
They were lying, not on the silken couch of pleasant jesting, but some kind of sofa in some kind of place that did not at all resemble a room, for she could see some pillars in the distance, festooned with plants, and hear the low hum of insects. They were laughing like happy children, their nakedness covered by a white bedsheet.
He pulled it over their heads, snuggled even closer to her and said, ‘There, isn’t that nicer,’ before his hands did a slow, luxurious exploration of her body and invited hers to do the same of his. He was a very handsome man, driven by the vanity of a regular regimen of thrice-weekly workouts in the gym.
She said, ‘Meeta and Winnie say you are the most distinguished man they’ve ever seen. They think you take great pains over those fantastic Richard Gere locks.’
He lifted her hand to let her fingers run through them and said, ‘They make Olivia go crazy. You should see her in bed.’ She said, ‘Let’s not talk about Olivia. But first a question. Do you love her as much as you love your daughter?’
He said, ‘Here’s the truth. I love my daughter most of all. No woman can come even that close to her.’ He showed a precise inch between thumb and forefinger.
She said, ‘I understand that perfectly. In the end everything boils down to biology, you see. It’s nature’s way.’
He said, ‘Hey, you read too much and think too much. No wonder poor Bernard couldn’t come up to your intellectual level. He passed off a paper as his own, but I could see your hand in it.’
‘Don’t talk about Bernard.’
‘Alright, I won’t talk about Bernard if you will not talk about Olivia.’
She remained silent for a while, before asking with some anxiety, ‘You think they can hear and see us?’ For now they were in a parked car in a dark area and could see the shadowy forms of people moving about in the distance. He gathered breath, then released it in an explosive expletive, accompanied by a crude raised finger. ‘That’s what we should say to them.’
She wanted to laugh but instead said reproachfully, ‘Why, Benjamin, that’s not like you! I’ve never heard you use any vulgarity!’
He said, ‘I use them enough in the office when I get frustrated. I swore once at our great Tua Peh Kong, and he swore back. But hey, you’re calling me ‘Benjamin’! At last. Why don’t you call me ‘Ben’ or ‘Benjy’? I would love the sound of that.’
It was at this point that the ever vigilant mind, never asleep even when the rest of the body was, pushed through the unreality of dreams with its own reality to sound a grave warning. It said to her, as she lay pressed against him, murmuring with pleasure, ‘Are you sure you want to cross the line? He will ditch you as soon as he gets up, puts on his clothes, returns to his wife and starts to look around for another conquest to add to his crown of victory. The man’s a bastard. The man’s bad news.’
She thought, I’m not that much of good news, either.
‘Hey, why that serious look all of a sudden?’ he said, tickling her chin with a blade of grass he had plucked. They were lying on a stretch of grass, still naked, under a large tree beside a pond in the Botanic Gardens.
She said, ‘Here’s a riddle. Two guesses. What lies at the bottom of the pond?’
‘No idea. Anyway, who cares?’
‘Well, two rings.’
‘Who cares?’ he repeated. He held up her left hand and slipped an imaginary ring on the engagement finger. ‘You’re engaged to me, Maria Seetoh. I pronounce you fiancée and dearly beloved.’
‘Enough of rings,’ she said and made a great show of removing the imaginary one. ‘From now onwards I am a free woman, wearing no ring of subjugation.’
‘Why do you women think we subjugate you? You’re as much in the game as we are!’
They fell into a long silence, during which he traced, very slowly, the contours of her right breast, then her left with a forefinger. ‘You have a beautiful body,’ he said. They were silent again.
Then she said, ‘I have a horrible sensation that Olivia is hiding somewhere with her private detective and watching us.’
‘I thought you had promised not to bring up her name. Anyway, have no fear,’ he said jauntily. ‘I’ve packed her off to Hong Kong. She’ll be so busy shopping with her mother and sisters she will forget to return to Singapore!’
She said again, this time even more nervously, ‘I have a horrible feeling that Bernard is hiding somewhere, watching us and ready to pounce at the right moment.’
‘He’s dead, you silly girl. Now come to your beloved Benjamin.’
‘I know he’s dead, but I know he’s somewhere here, ready to pounce.’
‘Well,’ he said, in a burst of laughter, ‘why don’t I do the pouncing for him,’ and the next moment he was on her and in her.
The sensation caused a loud pounding i
n her heart and ears, and she woke up. Lying very still in the darkness, she was aware of the warm convulsions of pleasure gripping her entire body, reaching to its every shuddering corner and crevice. She thought with a smile of Winnie’s shameless listening outside Meeta’s bedroom door to catch the wild moans and thrashing movements that could last a full five minutes. Perhaps at this very moment, she and Meeta were in a sisterly camaraderie of the dream-induced throes of pleasures. She was thankful, since her mother’s room was just across the corridor that she did not have the telltale unruliness of Meeta’s night dreams. Even worse, the room that Por Por shared with the maid was next to hers; it had thin walls and Por Por was a very slight sleeper, roused even by the distant bark of a dog or the honking of a car.
Twenty-Six
Even the mere sight of a letter addressed to her brought unease. When V.K. Pandy, without a word, handed her a brown envelope with her name written on it, she felt a little frisson of alarm. She had, as usual, after her visit to the dispensary in Middleton Square, walked up to him, in the most casual way, and bought his pamphlets, gesturing, with a smile, for him to keep the change. Each time he would say, looking at the money, ‘Oh my, my, are you sure, Miss? Thanks, Miss.’
He looked shabbier and thinner than ever, and on the few occasions when she had actually stopped for some minutes to talk to him, he had launched into his usual diatribe against the great TPK for ruining his life and possibly bringing about his wife’s cancer.
‘The Almighty God is just after all,’ he said bitterly, referring to TPK’s wife’s numerous health problems. ‘As you Chinese say, Sky God has eyes and ears.’
Inside the taxi on her way home, Maria tore open the envelope and expected more reproach from a world that she was not at all helping in its distress. Maggie had accused her of heartlessness; would V.K. Pandy denounce her for cowardice? Would he ask why she had stayed in fearful hiding instead of coming out to support Big Bird and why she vanished from the scene as soon as the police arrived?
The message, written in neat, old-fashioned handwriting on old-fashioned blue letter paper, said, ‘Dear Miss Seetoh, from what I can see, you are a good, intelligent, kind person. I would appreciate it very much if you could join me for lunch at Raphael’s Place on Junie Street (just behind Middleton Square). I have important things which I want to talk to you about, because I trust you.’ Trust. She had begun to distrust that word about herself, because a student had repeatedly thrown it back at her.
The day of the lunch would be a Saturday; V.K. Pandy must have inferred she was a teacher and would not be free for lunches on weekdays. Another concession must have been the written form of the invitation instead of a verbal one that would have attracted attention. V.K. Pandy could not have been unmindful of the very brief duration – barely a minute – that she allowed for each encounter with him, as if she, like the others, was aware of the presence of those infamous surveillance cameras that, as it turned out in the end, had been no more than a figment of the fearful imagination. He probably also understood that as a teacher, she came under the strictures enjoined upon the entire civil service against any political activism, meaning any support of the opposition.
Before the end of his first month in St Peter’s Secondary School, Mr Ignatius Lim had already circulated three reminding messages to the staff and singled her out for special attention. As she sat before him in his office, and he poured out coffee and went into a long, smiling preamble on many subjects including the highlights of his career in education, she could not help thinking, ‘The man’s detestable. How I miss the principal.’
At last he said, ‘I understand, Miss Seetoh, that you sometimes buy the pamphlets of the opposition member.’ The school had its spies, and she had no idea how thorough they were. ‘May I remind you, as your principal, that this is contrary to official regulations.’ He fished about busily among a pile of important-looking papers on his desk, pulled out one, and put on his reading glasses. ‘Ah, here it is. It says ‘No civil servant should –’ ’
Maria, all outward calm, was all roiling irritation inside. She had to grip the sides of her chair to prevent the contempt from pouring out: ‘May I remind you, Mr Ignatius Lim, that you are the best example of the civil servant becoming less civil and more servant by the day.’ She had shared the scathing pun with Dr Phang who had reacted with a self-deprecating roar of laughter that Mr Ignatius Lim would have been constitutionally incapable of.
It was a rather pricey Italian restaurant and Maria had already planned on how to take over the settling of the bill without embarrassing poor V.K. Pandy who was gratefully receiving donations casually dropped at his side in Middleton Square by compassionate Singaporeans. She had some wild conjectures as to the purpose of the lunch – to get her to help in raising funds to settle his debts and pay for his wife’s cancer treatment, to get her help, as a teacher of English, in the writing or editing of his pamphlets, to get her support to draw public attention to the fear gripping an entire society under the great TPK, as Big Bird had done.
What she was not prepared for was his announcement that he was quitting politics for good and returning to India, to the village of his birth and boyhood. Why was he telling her, of all people?
He said he had been touched by her generosity and her kindness. ‘Altogether you have bought my pamphlets thirteen times, Miss Seetoh, more than any other Singaporean,’ he said. ‘I don’t think you bother to read them; you probably just throw them away, but that doesn’t make your kindness less.’
Some diners at the restaurant easily recognised V.K. Pandy, nudged their companions and began casting curious glances in their direction. Even if Mr Ignatius Lim had made a severe appearance then, she would not have cared. Her heart went out in overwhelming pity to the man who looked very old and defeated. She asked him about his wife. ‘A little better, thank you. She’s responding quite well to the treatment.’ She asked him about his plans. ‘I will live a quiet life. There’s an ashram near my village that I will go to for peace of mind.’
She struggled to find the correct words for an intention shaping in her mind. ‘Mr Pandy, it will make me very happy if you will accept a small donation from me –’ She had had less money since her husband’s death, having to make a large monthly allowance to her mother, which she suspected went to the useless, gambling adopted son. But she felt that financial assistance, more than kind words, was needed by the unfortunate V.K. Pandy at this critical juncture of his life.
He pushed back the envelop containing her cheque saying, ‘No, no thank you. Right now, we’re okay.’ He leaned towards her and his face was contorted in the vitriol of a gathering rage as he said, ‘It’s not even the hundreds of thousands I’ve lost, my house, my business. It’s my dignity, my pride! You know what the great man said to me?’ His voice rose in its pain, and the diners at the nearby tables looked down and concentrated on their food. ‘He said to me, ‘You are nothing but vermin! You will come crawling to me, and then I will grind you under my feet!’
Maria felt anger rising on his behalf. Tua Peh Kong who sat on a throne with a mass of writhing worms under his feet was alive and well in Singapore. V.K. Pandy was by now gesturing angrily with both hands and raising his voice. ‘I am a man! I am a human being! I am a Singaporean! He has no right to use all kinds of insulting words to me.’
Publicly the great TPK made it clear that political opposition in Singapore was a useless legacy from British colonial rule, creating nothing but disruption and disorder and thus hindering the smooth carrying out of government policy. He said any thorn in the side of the body politic should be yanked out at once, singling out V.K. Pandy for special opprobrium. V.K. Pandy said, ‘You know why? I’ll tell you why. I had caused him the greatest humiliation of his life. When his party lost that seat to me and he saw Singaporeans wildly cheering me and hissing at his defeated candidate, that must have been the moment when he swore, ‘That man will come crawling to me, and I will grind him into the ground!’ Well, TPK, I wi
ll show you! I will show who comes crawling to whom.’ Aware of the sheer impossibility of that absurd self-promise, V.K. Pandy’s eyes flashed with angry, hot tears and his hands trembled.
She had to do something to calm him down. It was not exactly appropriate, but it might work. Taking out a folded piece of paper from her handbag, she passed it to him and said with a smile, ‘Here, read it. It’s a poem on the great TPK, which I was inspired to write after a friend gave me an idea. We had a good chuckle over it.’
Dr Phang had made a bet with her. ‘If you can get The Singapore Tribune to publish it, you win one hundred dollars.’ She had said incredulously, ‘The Singapore Tribune? Are you crazy? Well, you’ve already won your bet, but I’m not paying you one hundred dollars.’
V.K. Pandy read the poem. A small twisted smile appeared on his face. ‘I like it,’ he said, ‘especially the comparison of Tua Peh Kong’s thunderbolts to TPK’s crippling defamation suits. I like the ending:
Even Tua Peh Kong must bow before a greater,
Who has no thunderbolts, no warrior suit, no throne, no spears
Who has no name
Because simple humanity needs no name.
‘I like it very much. May I have it?’
Miss Seetoh in the World Page 28