The Girl in the Red Dress

by Elaine Chong

  “Did you have lessons with a professional instructor?” When I didn’t reply she went on, “You’re never too old to learn to do something new, or to learn to do something properly, you thought you knew how to do already.”

  “Well, I’m not having lessons with you.”

  “Why not? It’s cheaper for a group lesson.”

  “I might need a family-sized cubicle to get changed in, but me plus you doesn’t make a group.”

  She carefully placed her cup on its saucer. “It’s important to learn how to swim,” she said.

  I’d been enjoying our verbal jousting – it’s what we did, what we’d always done – but her tone of voice and solemn expression indicated that the fun had ended. I said, “I can swim well enough, Aggie.”

  Her eyes narrowed and she began to stare at a point in the café just inches above my head. It was slightly unnerving because she only had to drop her gaze fractionally and she’d be staring directly into my eyes. She said quietly, “Did you know you can drown in a bathtub? Just a little bit of water; just enough to cover the mouth and the nose.”

  “That’s why I take showers,” I quipped, in an effort to lighten the mood. “It’s much safer.”

  “My mother died in the bath,” she said, still staring off into the distance.

  “Your mother had a heart attack, Aggie.”

  “Yes, in the bath.”

  Well, that was news to me. “Why would you say that? You called me when you found her. I came straight round so I know she was in bed.”

  “She was in bed when you got there, but that doesn’t mean she didn’t die in the bath,” she said and she slowly lowered her head, still managing to avoid eye contact with me. “I wanted to tell you what I’d done, but you were so kind and caring. I decided to let you think I’d just found her there.”

  “If this is some kind of a joke, Aggie … well, it’s not funny and it certainly isn’t going to convince me to have swimming lessons with you.” I waited for her to say something, but she just sat there looking at the empty teacup.

  We sat like that for several minutes, and eventually she spoke. “She looked so … so undignified lying there without her clothes on and her hair sticking up like a wet toilet brush. It was horrible.”

  “Are you telling me you got your mother out of the bath and carried her into the bedroom?”

  She nodded, and suddenly she felt able to look me in the eye. “It felt like the right thing to do.”

  We used to go swimming quite regularly after that, but I could never get that conversation out of my mind because I was quite a nervous swimmer and the idea that you could drown in six inches of water was frankly terrifying.

  Now I can’t remember if Aggie said that her mother had drowned in the bath, or if she’d had a heart attack in the bath. In fact, I can’t remember if I just dreamed up the whole conversation. This is the problem.

  I wanted to tell Richard that I’m seeing things and hearing things, which, if I think about it, don’t make sense, but I’m certain that somewhere in the midst of this madness is an uncomfortable and unfathomable truth about life and death.

  Julia

  As soon as I’ve finished my lecture about timekeeping and maintaining standards of customer service, Connie flees, phone clasped to her breast. For the last three days she’s been forced to watch me return artfully arranged baskets of flowers to the florist on the ground floor. It’s humiliating having to pretend they’re for somebody else, but the sight of them makes me want to weep. A particularly beautiful display appeared soon after lunch today. She grabbed them from my hands and chased after the delivery boy. When she came back, she said, “I told him, ‘Enough already!’” I tried to thank her, but the words dried in my mouth.

  I tell Aysha to go home as well. The welfare of her young son clearly weighs so heavily on her mind that she can barely string two sentences together when she serves customers. While it’s impossible for me to truly empathise with her, the pain she’s suffering is etched on her face, and I know exactly how that feels, but I warn her that she has to get her act together before I leave tomorrow.

  Jian has tried to call me several times a day and left messages on my phone. He wants to see me before I leave for London, but I don’t think I can bear to see him. I’ve spent every evening since I last saw him in my own apartment. Colin has spent every evening at the LingLang Club. He’s a wily old bird and knows that something is going on. He’s questioned me repeatedly over the breakfast table: ‘What’s the matter with you this morning?’ ‘Why the long face?’ ‘Why are you really going to London?’ ‘When are you coming back?’ ‘Have you booked your ticket yet?’ It goes on and on.

  I have now booked my ticket, and I’ve booked a room at the Marriott. I’ll have to tell Colin when I get home. He’ll complain about the cost and the inconvenience of me leaving at short notice, but now I find myself counting down the hours, so he can say what he likes.

  Nancy called in to the gallery at lunchtime. When I told her what I’d done – gone directly to Jian’s apartment and confronted him – she asked me if he’d ended our relationship.

  “I ended it,” I said.

  She looked surprised. “You ended it?”

  “Well, I told him we were done, but he wants me to reconsider; think it over while I’m away.”

  Nancy’s dark brown eyes mirror her emotions: she was disappointed. “Oh,” she said.

  “I thought you’d be glad. You told me it was never going to work out. You said there’d be no beautiful sunsets for us.”

  She immediately removed her gaze from my face, pulled open her bag and reached inside for her inhaler. I’d never known her to sidestep a question before, but this was clearly an attempt to avoid responding, because she wasn’t straining to breathe. Puzzled, I watched her go through the usual motions of taking into her lungs the metered dose of medication, and then I realised why she didn’t want to reply: she’d hoped that Jian would do what she thought I couldn’t or wouldn’t do. Well, I had, so I didn’t understand her dismay.

  “Talk to me Nancy,” I said.

  “I don’t know what to say to you, Julia. Actually … I do know, but I just don’t want to say it because I don’t want to lose your friendship.”

  “If it’s something that needs to be said … well, if you can’t say it, then who can?”

  “Okay… I wanted, I hoped that Jian would put an end to this … I’m not going to call it a relationship, I’m going to call it what it really is: an affair.” When she saw me open my mouth to interrupt, she put up her hand to stop me. “Let me finish. Clearly, I don’t know Jian as well as you do, but I do know that men who have a wife and take a mistress – because make no mistake, that’s what you are…”

  “It isn’t like that!” I protested. “He was already with me before he married Lì Húa.”

  “He was never truly with you, Julia. You’ve only ever been an … an appendage. Can’t you see that?”

  Her words were cruel, hurtful, and I was stung into replying, “Are you jealous of me? Is that what it is?”

  Her eyes widened in surprise. “Jealous? Are you kidding? I feel sorry for you and I’m scared for you, and that’s the truth. You’re infatuated with a married man and you can’t see that you’re just a postscript in his life. You say you’ve ended it with him, but you’re just angry and when you stop being angry, you’ll go back. Sooner or later that husband you despise? He’s going to stop looking the other way. Where will you be at the end of all this, Julia? What will you have? I wanted Jian to end the affair: I wanted him to do the decent thing and let you go. Because if not now, then when?”

  I forgot my anger with Jian and told her, “It doesn’t have to end. It’s my choice. Jian told me we could still be together. He still wants me.”

  This time Nancy offered me an unflinching stare. “I know he still wants you. But why do you still want him?”

  She didn’t wait for me to reply; she was already walking away when she wished me
a safe journey and asked to be remembered to my mother.

  What will I have? It was a fair question, and I’m now pained to admit that Jian couldn’t have made it clearer: I won’t really have him – at least not in the way that I want. We could continue as before and I would be first in his affections, but only ever runner-up in his life. As for Colin, he knows better than anyone that the love we once shared has faded, and only the bare, frail fabric of a legal marriage unites us. If he knew, knew for certain and for sure that I’d been unfaithful? Once upon a time he may have forgiven me, but not anymore.

  I take a last look around the gallery. I’m closing early tonight. In Orchard Road, the heavy fall of rain late in the afternoon cleared the air of ash, but the smell of smoke still lingers. It will pass, but for now it’s a reminder that our island is forever subject to winds of change – both political and ecological. Colin says that behind the gleaming, glass towers, beyond the faces of unbridled capitalism, little worms of doubt and discontent are wriggling their way to the surface; that’s why he plans to leave. But I intend to stay, whichever way the wind blows.

  I’ve already called Haziq and told him to drive over here. He sounded surprised, asked me if I’m feeling okay. My first thought was to scold him for his insolence, but then I remembered that Haziq doesn’t do sarcasm: he’s a kind, thoughtful individual, who serves his employers with deference and loyalty. Colin and I could probably both learn a lot from him.

  I wait for him in the foyer of the building where it’s cool and I can check my emails on my phone. Out of the corner of my eye, I see the lady who runs the florist walking towards me. She’s holding a small bouquet of orchids simply enclosed in white tissue paper. I turn my head away, pretend to be absorbed in reading the screen, but she taps me on the shoulder and tries to hand me the flowers.

  “Mrs Crane. Your friend want you to take this,” she says in a dull voice. Irritated, I begin to walk away, but she grabs hold of my arm. “You take flowers.”

  I shake her hand from my arm. “I thought I’d made it clear that there’s been a mistake. No more flowers!”

  She glares back at me. “You take flowers!” she shrills and thrusts them at the middle of my chest so that I’m forced to accept them.

  I immediately look for a waste bin to dispose of them but Haziq appears from nowhere and offers to carry them to the car. Before I have a chance to protest, he’s whisked them away, and only then do I spot the small, white card attached to the paper in which they’ve been wrapped.

  Panic-stricken, I race after him. If the message on the card is filled with the kind of declarations of love and grief, which all the other cards have contained then I’m in serious trouble.

  I catch up with him at the car and wrest the flowers from his hands saying, “I need those.” I rip the little card from the paper and stuff it into my bag.

  He looks back at me with only concern. “So sorry, ma’am. Flowers are very beautiful.”

  My breath catches in my throat and tears sting my eyes as the reality of this dreadful deceit hits home. Everything – the love, the lies, the pain and the hypocrisy are written in Jian’s own hand. The words would surely condemn me as the careless, faithless creature that I’ve become in the intervening years. I realise I can’t bear that Haziq should find me out.

  He says nothing more, opens the rear door of the car, and I dive inside.

  We drive in silence to the apartment in River Valley Road. The flowers sit on the seat beside me, fragrantly lovely, painted not in bold, tropical shades of purple and magenta, but white orchids with delicate, pale pink centres – the ones I love the best.

  I steal a look at the card hidden in my handbag and recognise the handwriting at once – it isn’t Jian’s neat, cursive script, but Nancy’s untidy scrawl. She’s written, ‘I hope this journey back to England will be a voyage of discovery for you; that you will return here to Singapore with your clouded vision cleared. The orchids are to remind you that this is your home and, whatever the future may hold, I will always be your friend.’

  I’m disappointed: I admit it, though it shames me. I’d convinced myself that this perfectly formed bouquet of orchids was Jian’s way of telling me that he will never stop loving me; that he will wait for me. Well, I was right about the meaning, but wrong about the messenger.

  I trace my finger over the words, close my eyes and thank God that I’ve been given this timeout, though I can’t help smiling at the notion that going back to Essex is the celestial equivalent of being made to sit on the naughty step. But I do need time to think about my future and I probably should reflect on my past behaviour. Whether my vision will clear in respect of Jian I can’t say, but I don’t want to live this life, this lie, any longer.

  Siti is waiting for me; she stands in the doorway, smiles her welcome home and takes the flowers from me, cradling them in the crook of her arm.

  I tell her, “Put them in that pink vase – the one Mrs Sullivan gave me for my birthday last year.”

  “Pink vase with...?” She frowns in concentration, draws a wavy line in the air as she searches for a word to describe what she knows but has insufficient vocabulary to name accurately.

  I offer her a sympathetic smile. “The one with the fluted edge, yes, that one.”

  “Fluted edge,” she repeats after me then hurries back to the kitchen.

  Colin is still in his shirt and tie, has apparently forsaken the comforting embrace of the LingLang Club and is watching the evening news on the television instead. I call out to him that I’m taking a shower and changing out of my dress before we have supper. He doesn’t respond, but I know he’s heard me because he immediately turns up the volume. It’s another unspoken message. Once again, he’s been waiting for me to come home and I’m late and he hasn’t eaten, and he’d much rather be sitting with his buddies drinking whiskey in the Tavern Bar.

  When I’ve washed and changed into a T-shirt and shorts – standard casual wear in Singapore regardless of age, gender or occupation – I find Colin already seated at the table in the dining room but now he’s reading a newspaper. Siti has placed the flowers in the centre of the table, which is guaranteed to elicit an awkward question and answer session and as soon as I’ve seated myself, it begins.

  “What’s this then?” Colin asks me without looking up from the newspaper.

  “What’s what?”

  He slowly folds the newspaper and places it on the floor. “When do you ever buy flowers?”

  “I haven’t bought flowers. They were bought for me.”

  A little flicker of something unpleasant passes over his face, the pale grey eyes darken and the mouth puckers into a disapproving pout. From the pocket of his shirt, he suddenly produces the white card I left in my handbag. “What about this?”

  For a few seconds I’m rendered speechless. He’s actually searched through my handbag. The anger at this invasion of my privacy explodes inside my head, but somehow, I manage to contain it. I say, “It looks suspiciously like a white card. You know ... the kind of card that people send with flowers.”

  “There’s no name on it.”

  “Well spotted, Colin, although the message does suggest they’re from a friend.”

  “Which friend?”

  I don’t have many friends in Singapore – I could count them on the fingers of one hand. Colin isn’t unaware of my friend-light status so he could probably work it out for himself if he really tried, but this isn’t about who sent it: it’s about the content of the message. It suggests that there’s something troubling me, which I haven’t shared with him – which, of course, I haven’t. I couldn’t. This is a lie of omission.

  “How do you know they were intended for me?” I say.

  “Why else would you have them? Why were you hiding the card?”

  “I wasn’t hiding it.”

  “You removed it from the paper the flowers were wrapped in.”

  Once again, I’m lost for words. I can’t imagine for a single second that Haziq
has called Colin and told him what I did, which can only mean that Colin himself has inspected the tissue paper and discovered the telltale staple, which leads me to wonder what else he’s discovered.

  My confidence in my ability to mislead and misdirect my husband begins to falter. If I ever had a cunning plan, now would be a good time to put it into action. I haven’t got a plan, never had a plan, but if this is just a fishing expedition then I have no intention of allowing myself to be caught without a fight.

  I place the flat of my hands on the table and lean towards him. “You can stop playing Sherlock Holmes because I have absolutely nothing to hide. And if I ever find out that you’ve been rummaging through my personal things again, I’ll make you pay for it in ways you can’t even begin to imagine.”

  He looks surprised. “Don’t be ridiculous, Julia!”

  “I’m being ridiculous?” I cry. “The flowers were given to me by Nancy. You remember Nancy, don’t you?”

  “Of course, I remember her,” he says.

  I watch him, see that his nerve is failing, but I’m getting into my stride. I push myself up into a standing position and lean even further over the table so that I’m staring him down. I speak in a deliberately lowered tone. “My good friend, Nancy, has been trying to convince me to reconcile with my mother. Before it’s too late,” I add for emphasis.

  “Your mother?”

  “Apparently there’s a complication. Richard wasn’t able to go into details, but it sounds serious.”

  Colin looks crestfallen, maybe even apologetic. “I didn’t realise…”

  Oh, I’m good at this. And suddenly I know that I’m not going to tell him that our marriage is over. I’m not going to risk being thrown out on the street until I know I have somewhere else to go. Nancy is right: I have to think about my future here in Singapore, because we can’t go on living like this.

  I call out to Siti to serve dinner straight away, and when we’ve eaten, I immediately leave the table and begin to pack my suitcase.