A card showing a church in the lovely Irish countryside arrived nearly two weeks after his departure. ‘To my dear Maria,’ it said and was signed, ‘With love, Philip.’ Yearning women, holding a gift or card or letter, did a thorough search for signs of love, looking up and down, around and through, inside and out, so that no sign of the love whether already lost or still unclaimed, would be missed. Sometimes yearning embellished truth, turning morsels into a feast to feed the hunger. Maria was ready to believe that the little postcard with the usual inquiries about her health, family, schoolwork, etc was some kind of love note, emboldend by distance and absence, until she realised that it was the exact reciprocation of her own endearments in a card she had written to accompany the gift of the pen. It would be the first of many cards, cheering her, also filling her with deep melancholy.
As soon as she entered Mr Ignatius Lim’s office, the woman who had been talking to him, swung round in her chair to face her. She was Mark’s mother; in front of her, laid on Mr Lim’s table were a number of sheets of paper which Maria instantly recognised to be the pale blue paper that Mark and Yen Ping favoured for their poems to each other. The woman had a look of intense hostility which was accentuated by her heavy make-up and the long jade earrings swinging from her ear lobes.
Mr Lim said, ‘Miss Seetoh, this is Mrs Gloria Wong, the mother of Mark Wong.’
Preparing for a confrontation between the silently fuming visitor and the difficult maverick teacher, he assumed the look of the consummate peacemaker and mediator, and said with slow deliberation, ‘Miss Seetoh, Mrs Wong has drawn my attention to a certain – ahem – issue, problem which I have no doubt we can all solve peacefully together.’ The principal then showed her the love poems and notes that Yen Ping had been writing for Mark, apparently during her creative writing classes; indeed one of them referred to a time when they were together, sitting side by side in the class.
Impatient with the principal’s slow dilatory way of communicating her complaint, Mrs Wong took over, saying in a voice shrill with anger, ‘Miss Seetoh, I must protest! I had understood that the staff of St Peter’s had the responsibility of making sure their students behaved properly, and yet you have allowed this girl to write love poems to my son! Luckily, my sister found them in his room.’ She launched into a bitter tirade against school laxity allowing young boys and girls to indulge in nonsensical behaviour when they should be studying hard and making their parents proud of them. ‘Miss Seetoh,’ she said standing up and holding up a warning forefinger. ‘I want you to promise me that in future you will not allow this girl to write love poems to my son! I don’t know how she manages to smuggle them to him because he’s on twenty-four hour surveillance!’
‘I make no such promise,’ said Maria coldly, and made to leave.
‘What – what, how dare you –’ she turned to the principal who, realising that a noisy quarrel between two women was the last thing he wanted in his office, began to pacify her.
The last words that Maria heard as she strode out were those of earnest assurance which rose above the woman’s noisy protestations, ‘Yes, yes, I’ll make sure it doesn’t happen again.’
How she wished Brother Philip were around for her to share the angriest thoughts and feelings she had ever experienced: ‘The detestable man is closing down the creative writing class, with immediate effect, as his letter says. It doesn’t mention Mrs Wong at all, only the need to cooperate with the National Productivity Campaign.’ More fervently than ever did Maria utter an increasingly felt need: how I wish I had more money. Into her mind came the deeply gratifying image of herself sweeping into Mr Ignatius Lim’s office, laying a letter on his table, saying nonchalantly, ‘Mr Lim, I resign, as of now,’ and then sweeping out.
She had done some quick sums, which only cast a pall of gloom. Even if she gave up her dream of buying that studio apartment, she would not have enough money, without her monthly salary, to continue with her mother’s monthly allowance and the cost of keeping Por Por in the Sunshine Home. Resignation from her job was not an option.
‘Hey God,’ she said, feeling that humour was necessary to dispel the growing gloom, ‘if you’re still there, and itching to work a real miracle, I have a suggestion. Tomorrow, when I pass that newsstand that sells the National Jackpot lottery tickets, could you guide my hand to pick the winning one? The first prize, nothing less, God, that will enable me to buy my dream apartment and pay Mother her monthly allowances and transfer Por Por to the Silver Valley Home.’
It was said that there was a one in a million chance of winning that jackpot in the National Lottery, a one in a five or even ten million chance of winning the mega millions in those amazing super lotteries in the US and the UK. That meant that God only answered one out of the millions of beseeching, bombarding prayers from hopeful punters. It was as good as saying that God was merely following the laws of probability by which there would always be someone, somewhere who would hold the winning ticket. ‘Well, God, may I call you Chance, or Randomness, or Luck or Probability, whichever is the truest,’ said Maria, ‘and if you are so kind as not to mind this rude reduction of your name to the mean calculations of science, then you could still listen to my prayer!’
The jesting put her in a light mood that lasted long enough for a single, smiling thought. One of these days I could write a humorous book and call it ‘God and Me (Not our Real Names)’. She would invite Brother Philip to contribute some witty limericks that would still be in keeping with his vocation; the irreverent humour would be all from her side. She imagined Brother Philip in Ireland reading a copy of her book, rolling on the floor with laughter, and then writing her a reply: ‘You prodigal daughter, you,’ ending with ‘Still praying for you, Love, Philip.’
About a month later, Yen Ping waited for her at the school gates after school to say, almost choking with tears, ‘Miss Seetoh, Mark will be gone. In two days’ time.’
‘What do you mean?’ said Maria.
‘His mother has arranged for him to study in London. His air ticket’s bought, he’s all packed. She will go with him.’
‘How do you know, Yen Ping?’
‘He told me yesterday. He managed to make a quick call when his mother was upstairs.’
Mrs Gloria Wong had stopped the maths tuition, suspecting that her son had been making use of the trips to and from the tutor’s home for his secret meetings and exchange of love notes and poems.
Yen Ping was inconsolable. Maria could only remind her of the promise she had made to herself some time ago, and turn it into both advice and consolation.
‘Yen Ping, you told me once that you and Mark would study hard and prove yourselves. Once Mark’s mother and your parents realise how serious you are about each other, how responsible you are, they will cease their objections. It has happened before.’
And Maria told some stories of young, thwarted lovers that had happy endings, creating one or two of her own.
Yen Ping wiped her tears and said, ‘Thank you, Miss Seetoh. I will do as you say,’ adding in such a wistful voice that Maria felt a little catch in the throat, ‘he leaves so soon, and I can’t even say goodbye to him.’
Thirty-Four
It was Sunday, her day to luxuriate in bed with the perverse intent not to rise until the hour of noon that officially marked the end of the morning to compensate for the previous six days’ tyranny of the alarm clock.
At about six in the morning, when it was still dark, the phone rang shrilly. It was Maggie. She said, ‘Miss Seetoh, did you read your newspaper yet? Look at page six of The Singapore Tribune. Also the Chinese newspaper. They even show picture.’
It took Maria a few seconds to shake off the languor of sleep and ask, ‘Maggie, what on earth are you talking about?’
The girl, wherever she was, whatever she was doing in her new life, had not left off her old love of positioning herself with new knowledge that others would have to come begging for, exerting new power that would require others to come plea
ding for forgiveness. Maria would never forget that day in the café when Maggie had gone all out to humiliate her.
But the girl’s voice had none of the remembered defiance or malice. She repeated matter-of-factly, ‘Miss Seetoh, I just told you. Look in newspaper. Better the Chinese newspaper. More news.’
‘But, but – Maggie, wait!’ The girl had already hung up. Maria was sure, as she got up quickly, that it would not be the last of Maggie’s calls.
She wished that her former student, hard, bitter, relentless, were completely out of her life. Somebody had told her that Maggie had been seen in lounges and bars with hard-drinking men, almost unrecognisable in the full unabashed trappings of the playgirl companion: heavy make-up, tight-fitting clothes with plunging necklines, black stockings, high-heeled shoes, the defiant cigarette in the pouty red mouth. She wondered what was happening to her sister Angel.
The Singapore Tribune ignored suicides unless committed in unusual circumstances that made for newsworthiness over at least a successive week’s reporting. It carried a brief report only of the suicides of Mark Wong and Loo Yen Ping but the details in the report were tantalising enough to promise follow-up reports: both were wearing the blue-and-white uniforms of St Peter’s Secondary School, a mixed Catholic school, when they plunged from the twelfth storey of a block of flats in the vicinity of the school, probably in the early hours of Saturday morning; both carried farewell letters to various people in their pockets; both had died on the spot. Probably the most tantalising detail was the fact that they had jumped side by side, their wrists bound together by a red silk scarf.
The Chinese newspaper carried a picture of the dead couple, under a large white plastic sheet, with the right foot of the boy peeping out, as well as of a hysterical Mrs Gloria Wong kneeling beside the bodies, supported by two relatives or friends. The report was very detailed. Mrs Wong was screaming again and again, ‘I curse the day that you were born!’; she could have been directing the curse at the girl who had caused her son’s death, or even at her son who had brought her so much suffering despite all her efforts to give him a good future. The newspaper reporter, looking to flesh out his report, quickly concluded that parental objection had been the cause of the suicide pact. He did some quick, skilful investigation and interviewing of those relatives who were prepared to talk. He made much of the fact that the pair had been classmates in St Peter’s Secondary School, and that the boy had chosen, in death, to wear his old school uniform. How had he got the information that the silk handkerchief of intimate union in death bore the couple’s initials? There was reference to a small teddy found on the scene. Maria remembered that Yen Ping had told her of her having embroidered their initials on its collar.
Mrs Wong had been too distraught to say anything after the cursing; she had fainted several times, and had to be carried into a car and taken home. There was no mention of the parents or relatives of Yen Ping arriving at the scene of the tragedy. The Chinese newspaper reported, accurately, that the boy was preparing to go to the United Kingdom for further studies, and, inaccurately, that the girl was preparing to join him there. In the following days, journalistic enthusiasm overreached itself, and managed to secure some pictures of the couple in happier times, which were splashed in the newspaper. One showed Mark and Yen Ping at some school outing, dressed in their blue-and-white school uniforms, another in an unidentified place with trees in the background, standing very close to each other, but not touching. The Straits Tribune did not have any follow-up report on the request of the Deputy Minister of Trade and Business who was related to Mrs Gloria Wong.
‘Oh my God, oh my God,’ gasped Maria, and rushed to the bathroom to be sick. The school would be full of the terrible news the next morning, but meanwhile, she found herself being propelled along, pale and hollow-eyed, in a thick, dark fog that seeped into her mind and clogged it, preventing her from thinking clearly, and into her heart, suspending all feelings except shock. In the numbed state two thoughts occurred but were soon absorbed back into the dark, chill numbness: should she put a call to Brother Philip in Ireland to let him know, since she had been confiding the story of poor Mark and Yen Ping to him? And should she go to the mortuary to take a look at the two broken bodies, as they really looked in the tragic culmination of their love, bearing the marks of their violent death, before the embalmer came to do his work of erasing the brutal truth with his powder and paint? Maria had seen few corpses in her life, and they all looked peaceful and serene as they lay in their coffins, the lines of anxiety or pain on their faces smoothed out, their hands placed gently by their sides or folded upon their chests. Sister Elizabeth, despite the ravages of her cancer, actually looked beautiful, as if she were in calm, undisturbed sleep.
No, there was no point calling Brother Philip; she would only sound incoherent in her distress, and be unable to answer the questions that he was sure to ask. No point distressing him when he was so far away, unable to do anything. And no, she shouldn’t go to the mortuary not only because there might be regulations about admission for only family members, but also because she feared that each time she wanted to remember the much loved students, memory would conjure up only an image of two blood-encrusted bodies lying on cold stone slabs in the mortuary. She thought of the time she saw them sitting on the stairs of a school staircase, Mark helping Yen Ping neaten her plaits, combing out her long hair and watching with a waiting clip in his hands as her fingers expertly did the plaiting.
In her album of memories of the dead, the images would be carefully selected for their special pleasant associations. But it had a dark ugly twin that forced itself into memory and night dreams. It bore only fearsome images – of impenetrable forests and murky ponds, bodies and rings lying at the bottom of the ponds, owls hooting, children in flight – and she knew that it now included that newspaper picture of the crumpled bodies of Mark and Yen Ping lying under a large white sheet, with Mark’s right foot, bereft of its shoe, protruding.
The shock of an event could actually elicit hope; something so shocking could not have happened, so it could only be a nightmare. She had heard of a bereaved mother who covered her ears against the news of her son’s fatal fall from a cliff during a school camping expedition, screaming: ‘No, no, no, go away! This is a bad dream, and I’ll wake up tomorrow and find Barry coming downstairs for breakfast!’
At no time did Maria surrender to the sense of surreality that gripped her and say, ‘It’s not true, there must be a mistake somewhere,’ so that her faculties, instead of being mobilised for denial, were readying themselves to accept and cope with the brute truth of an unspeakable tragedy – Mark Wong and Yen Ping were truly dead and gone, in a suicide pact, oblivious to the messy aftermath of police investigations, parental grief, a whole school in shock.
Maria paced the floor by the phone table, wishing Maggie would call again; Maggie, the inveterate seeker of information bent on ferreting out every tantalising detail, might by now have more to share. What was in the letters addressed to the parents? The Chinese newspaper had reported several letters now in police hands; could one of them have been addressed to her, the teacher they had trusted with their innermost secrets? She would keep the letter in tender, anguished memory for the rest of her life. She suddenly remembered their pledge of eternal love written in blood, which Yen Ping had shown her, worn in a little silver locket round her neck. Mark’s token must have been hidden in some secret place; had he taken it out and worn it too, just before their plunge from the high-rise block of flats? The meticulousness of the young couple, seen in the care they had taken over their various class assignments could be extrapolated to the planning of the pact – the choice of day, time and place, the choice of clothes, the selection of the binding scarf.
In her mind, Maria had a vivid picture of the couple, huddled together in the dawn darkness on the twelfth floor of the building, speaking in low voices, checking, for the last time, that everything was in order and as planned, going through the various items they
wanted to take with them in their final, loving journey together.
Why had they chosen that spot? Did it have some sentimental value for them, having been one of their trysting places? Maria suddenly remembered that in one of her stories for the creative writing class, Yen Ping had described a suicide pact between two young lovers; they had not plunged from a tall building, but waded into the ocean together, and there was mention of a silk scarf tying their wrists together. Had the young lovers, even as they were telling her of their plans to study hard and prove themselves worthy of their respective families’ trust, already decided to die together? Maria cried out in her anguish, ‘Oh Mark, oh Yen Ping.’
All morning, she waited by the phone, longing for a call from Maggie, from a colleague who might have happened to get the news early, from a student in the creative writing class who might have hurried to the scene, from Mr Ignatius Lim, from anyone at all. On impulse, in the late afternoon, she went to the scene of the tragedy; it had been cordoned off by the police. She stood looking at the spot where they had fallen together, now cleaned of the blood that must have gushed out simultaneously from their bodies as they hit the ground together. What were their last words to each other? These could have come from any of the poems written on the favourite pale blue paper, which, if they had not been so profoundly felt, would have been dismissed as worthless cliché in the creative writing class: ‘Our bodies may breathe their last, but our love breathes on in the silent wind and stars,’ ‘We will meet on love’s eternal shore where no more tears will flow, where love can only grow.’
Miss Seetoh in the World Page 36