‘Don’t forget, 8.30. And better get that bell fixed; it could wake the dead.’ Ra’mad throws the words joyfully over a shoulder as he bounces out the lobby with a spring in his gait that looks like it will take him across the cricket field in a single bound.
‘Isn’t she the happy one,’ David pronounces in his saucytart personality. ‘Wonder what miracle drug the old goblin’s on today. Maybe she’s born again. There’s a lot of that going around.’
‘He’s Muslim, David. Muslims can’t be born again. That’s reserved for Buddhists, Hindus and Singaporean Christians.’
‘Must be sniffing formaldehyde, then. Anyway, can I come in, darling, or is the magnificent Venus reason to lock all the bleeding doors and shutters? Trying to keep her in, are you?’
‘Want to know why the door’s locked, do you? Into the bedroom, David!’
‘Oo I say, lovely.’ David scampers to the bedroom and opens the door on Barnaby struggling to lift her head from the pillow. ‘Don’t get up, Barns old chapess.’ David sits on my bed and cradles Barns’ head in his hands. Barnaby sighs from the stomach up and closes her eyes. ‘I say, Doctor Hard-Cock, what have you been up to with this canine beauty? Collar undone. Hairs all over your sheets. Saliva on the pillows. Even the Straight & Narrow Times couldn’t resist a front-pager on this one: “Drugged bitch found sighing in lecturer’s bed”.’
‘The tranquilliser wore off at four this morning,’ I say as I fasten back onto Barnaby the dog collar Venus found on the kitchen counter top the night before. It has a robust lock that’s a bit over the top on a dog collar but Venus insisted Barnaby wear it – especially now the place will be crawling with police – to avoid her being rounded up as a stray. Clearly last night I had not been up to fastening a collar on a sedated dog; the distraction of having Venus on my bed – only to tuck in Barnaby.
‘Apart from undressing her, squire, what have you been doing with this lady dog?’
‘Bitch,’ I correct.
‘Wish you wouldn’t use that word. Makes me go all goosy. Anyway, you going to tell me why Professor Barnaby is asleep in your knocking shop?’
‘Yes, David, I am.’ I pause for effect. And pause again for added effect.
‘Shall I make an appointment or are you going to send me a letter?’
I laugh. ‘No, David. If you’re good, I’ll tell you now. After supper at Newton Circus, we came back here and put her into my bed; I think Venus saw her as a surrogate. When the sedative wore off, Barns almost clawed her way through the bedroom door. Well, I couldn’t have her zooming back home, not with trigger-happy Madhu around, so I crushed a few Valiums and sprinkled the dust on her tongue.’
‘A few Valiums! Christ, Haddock old fruit, this is our Barnaby you’re messing with, not one of your little undergrad sweeties. You can’t keep stuffing Valium into her to keep her quiet. Where’d you get the stuff anyway?’
‘Venus left them with me last night. Thought they would help me sleep. A dozen or so.’
‘A dozen or so? My God, Haddock, you’ll kill her. She’s a dog, not an elephant.’
‘I was trying to keep her calm.’
David sighs in reproach. ‘You know, there are other ways to calm the excited.’
‘Such as?’
‘Well, normally darling, I’d say sex. But since you’re not into bestiality we must try the next-best non-narcotic thing, mustn’t we? Which sounds like it’s time for Tosh. I’ve been trying to find a use for him for a week now. Never had a house guest quite like Toshi. Only opened my heart to him because Bernard asked me to give him a home. Imagine, staying a whole week with me and Toshi still can’t bring himself out of the closet and admit he’s bent as a coat hanger. Every time I lie down, he starts massaging me. Spends hours at it, toe to head but never the middle thing. If I get any more relaxed, I’ll melt. A Toshi-san massage for Barnaby might keep both of them cool. Who knows? They might fall in love and get married. I’ll prance off and get him.’
David’s Toshi is a guest in David’s place at the request of Bernard? News to me. I wonder vaguely how Bernard came to know a Japanese masseur. After all, on the whole, Bernard’s not over keen on the Japanese – a war thing.
‘What the hell do you mean, a war thing? I take a perfectly balanced view of the Japanese. I approve heartily of the way they kill themselves; I disapprove of them killing others.’ I don’t answer; I know it’s my imagination playing Bernard in my head. I don’t believe in dead relatives contacting the living. I’m an anthropologist; there’s always a rational explanation. Bernard was the biggest influence on my life. He was a Fox not a Haddock, the younger brother of my mother. He came over from Malaysia to England just for Mum’s funeral. As Mum went up in flames, Uncle Bernard and I picked up a relationship interrupted when I had left to be educated ‘back home’. Following the funeral, Bernard had extended his stay to see me into university and had received me in his home in Singapore every summer after that. He looked after me like a father and in many ways was closer to me than my real Dad; he was my friend, I could and did tell him everything. And after helping me through my doctorate, Bernard supported my application to lecture in Singapore – on strict condition I tell nobody he’s my uncle. And when I got here, I found he’d arranged for me to have a flat on campus just up the road from him; maybe he too needed a relative, albeit a secret one. Still, I can’t tell anybody he’s my uncle, or was my uncle, and I can’t tell because he made me promise not to tell. Ours was a secret relationship; nobody else allowed in. Perhaps that’s why he’s in my head now; he’s too secret to let out. But much as I loved him, I’m not talking to him now.
Given our special relationship, I thought there’s not much I didn’t know about Bernard. But there’s a whole Japanese masseur called Tosh who entered Bernard’s life and has been passed to David without my having any idea he exists. Of course, my mind has been so nicely tangled up lately with images of Venus that I might have missed the odd roaming samurai. Anyway, a voice in a sleepy mind doesn’t mean it’s time for the straightjacket, does it?
* * *
Tosh, when he appears, is not the Samurai Superman I expected. He’s more a Japanese version of David, painfully thin, transparently effeminate and well-mannered. Not David’s type at all. ‘Good morning, Doctor Hard Rock. I am derightful to meety. My name it is Toshi and I am massage.’
‘Good morning, Toshi. You speak excellent English. Where did you learn?’
‘David teach me good. She teach me Engrish rike in Engrand. No Engrish rike in fucking book.’
‘Yes, David very good teacher,’ I agree.
‘She is good man. Invite Toshi in her house. Better than Hirton.’
‘Hirton?’
David intervenes. ‘Tosh got thrown out of his job as masseur at the Hilton. Some bastard tried to get him to do dirty things. When Toshi refused, the rat complained that Tosh had made the advances.’
‘Toshi no do dirty things,’ Tosh confirms.
‘Glad to hear it,’ I say seriously.
The canine patient is lifted gently from the bed and carried limp and forlorn into the living room. Toshi directs precisely how Barns is to be positioned. I open all the shutters and doors. Barns turns her eyes towards the light but makes no effort to leave her inert state. She looks nicely stoned.
Tosh kneels and croons to Barnaby. ‘Okay, baby-dog?’
Barnaby grunts that baby-dog is very okay, rolls over on her back and places a rear paw into Toshi’s lap to be thumbed. She looks as if she regularly pulls into the Hirton to massage away the stresses of life in Singapore’s dog-eat-dog fast lane. Sighs of contentment come from both Barns and Tosh. At this point, Venus breezes through the open door bearing huge paper bags. ‘Coffee,’ she says, ‘two gallons of it, croissants and Danish pastries. Plenty here.’
Venus always takes my breath away. She left me at two in the morning and is back looking as fresh and stunning as when Uncle Bernard introduced her to me. Bernard had insisted I go with him to the ope
ning night of a Singapore Thespians play – ‘I’ve ordered a taxi and two are the same price as one’. He rarely went out in the evening and we could have sat comfortably in Guild House and watched it on TV, but he insisted we go. He also insisted we go backstage when it was over. Venus was interviewing the players. Bernard made a point of introducing me as his very close friend who lives next door. Then, having brought us together, Bernard said he had a taxi waiting outside and that I should stay and introduce Venus and her cameraman to the lead actor, Kingsley Woolf, my colleague in the Anthropology Department and self-proclaimed star of the Singapore stage, ‘He’ll give you a lift home’. I stayed. Venus camera-interviewed the cast, we all had a drink or two and I ended up being driven home by Venus, who knew my place because it was next to Professor Fox’s house, which I’d never thought of as a national landmark. She dropped me at the door and gave me her official-looking Singapore Broadcasting Corporation name card, writing her home phone number on the back. I called her from Li Fang’s phone the next day.
I never did get around to asking Bernard how he got on such friendly terms with the most beautiful girl in the world and now I never will. That was a couple of months back. Since then, Venus and I have shared two late suppers, three early lunches, an afternoon viewing of the incredibly old and boring Lord Jim – that would have sent me to sleep had the scent of Venus not been stirring my nostrils – and one trip to the zoo, where Venus interviewed Singapore’s new poster girl, Ah Meng the orang utan. I’m not sure that constitutes courtship. But I haven’t touched her; Richard won’t let me.
Venus sets out a picnic breakfast on the coffee table. We seem to have progressed overnight from sharing supper to sharing breakfast, missing out the rather important bit in between.
‘Venus Goh,’ Venus holds out her hand to David.
‘I know,’ says David. ‘I’ve seen you on the news. I’m David.’
‘And what do you do, David?’ Venus asks.
I stiffen. Last time somebody asked David that, he’d replied, ‘I suck cocks.’ But David clearly likes Venus, who has no cock to suck but bears proxy Danish pastries. ‘I try,’ he says with feigned resignation, ‘to get Singaporeans to speak a whole sentence in one language, preferably English, leaving out the lahs and the is-its.’
‘Ai yah, mana boleh? Very difficult job, susah lah, isn’t it?’ Venus, in three of Singapore’s four official languages, makes David grin and turns her charms to Toshi.
‘I am Toshi,’ says Toshi. ‘I am massage.’ Toshi bows his head towards Venus without taking his fingers from Barnaby.
Ra’mad pokes his head – just his head – around the front door frame and says in a colloquial Welsh accent, ‘You do know about the meeting at 8.30, don’t you, like?’ Then, seeing Venus, he smiles. Definitely a smiling day for Ra’mad. He makes no move to advance the rest of his body into our line of vision. ‘Venus Goh! Quite a surprise to see you here. I suppose you’re following up on the story, like?’
Venus smiles back. I frown. ‘In a manner of speaking, yes,’ she says. ‘Have you had breakfast, Doctor Ra’mad?’
‘Yes, yes, thank you. I’ll be popping along. See you as usual on Sunday, like?’
See you as usual on Sunday, like? Little hairs rise on my neck. What on earth can the lovely Venus have in common with the Rat Man that would bring them together on the Sabbath? Not church, that’s for sure.
While I wonder what meeting at 8.30, a very bleary-eyed guardian of the law places himself in the open doorway. Seems like this is open day at Haddock’s.
‘Superintendent Charles Wong. May I come in for a moment, Doctor Haddock?’ The super stands, a courteous if somewhat awkward stranger at the gate.
Venus tries to put him at ease by patting a chair and saying, ‘Come here, Inspector, and have some coffee. Did you see yourself on the early show today?’
The superintendent takes the coffee gratefully and ignores the demotion in rank. Yes, he saw the early show. His crumpled police shirt suggests that what the super has not seen is his bed. He wastes no time in getting to the immortal words that open Chapter One of the TV detective’s handbook: ‘I was wondering, Doctor Haddock, if I might have a quiet word with you?’
I suppose nobody ever says no to such a wondering. Superintendent Wong clearly is going to have a word with me, quiet or not. The ‘wondering’ is not intoned as a question and there is no pause for an answer before the super continues with what seems a total non-sequitur. ‘Somebody will be coming to take a blood sample of the dog shortly. It should be done as soon as possible.’
‘What do you want to talk about, Superintendent? Can we talk over coffee?’
‘I’d like to see you in private, Doctor Haddock. After the meeting, of course. If you could just make yourself available. It is about the … er … death of Professor Fox.’
It’s the first mention in the early morning-after of the death of Bernard. Until this moment, my flat has been a hub of denial. With the superintendent’s words blackness enters, as can only happen in Singapore. Everybody looks at the super as if he has angered the heavens. The poor man falls into a pit of silence and nobody helps him out.
Within consecutive seconds: darkness envelopes us, blue lightning sends veined fingers searching through the heavens, a slap-clap of thunder shakes the plastic coffee cups and rain hammers down. Humbled by the elements we sit in silence; but not for long. The Ride of the Valkyries surges over us in full quadraphonic. Battling its way through the downpour, a powerful engine announces the arrival of the man in a Mustang.
Kingsley Woolf – K – the leading light of the Singapore Thespians – is here. K the actor. K the gift of the gods to women. K the world’s best driver. K the academic authority on female genital mutilation. K the only proper lecturer in Singapore University, having come down from Oxford rather than up from Hull. K, the only other full-blown anthropologist in town. Together and separately, K and I teach about Man, under which K very much subsumes Woman. Slipping into a guise of mortal man, K hitches his Mustang outside and walks in through the doorway.
Wow, look at me, K screams without words. Aren’t I something! He certainly is. Tight-fitting trousers carry to the left the groin bulge that always rivets David’s attention and makes the undergrad girlies giggle. Pink linen shirt with two buttons open, sleeves turned-up one-fold below the elbow, pince-nez dangling on a silken neck-cord, a silvering mop of hair at the head and polished black shoes at the foot. And the signature K-kerchief knotted cowboy-like on the right side of the neck. Above it, a cheeky half-smile dances perpetually between a sneer of contempt and a beam of irresistible charm. Even his enemies have to admit that K, at forty something-something, looks after himself.
K hates neutrality. He has what those who love him call charisma and those who hate him label affectation. He holds to the Oscar Wilde principle: the only thing worse than being talked about is not being talked about. Kerchiefed K carries his love for amateur theatrics fully into real life – presuming a university campus is real life – and counts on exaggeration to confuse the sarcastic pith of his humour. His word games don’t always work, particularly with Chin, the Department’s Chinese-educated leader, whose English is, as K would have it, as nominal as the tits on an apprentice ladyboy.
‘’Ello, ’ello, ’ello. Now what?’ K throws out as his entrance line. ‘Morning party broken up by the police? Ha, ha, ha.’
The super remains in his pit of silence and his face registers nothing. K’s punctuational laugh persistently annoys his enemies more than anything else about him. I have got used to it – just – and in a funny sort of way K is a very good friend. Now Bernard’s gone, he might move up a notch and become my best friend. There’s really only K and David in line for the position. Of course, there’s Barnaby, who might be far less demanding. If you want a friend, get a dog.
K doesn’t introduce himself to the super but addresses him directly, recognising his rank from his uniform insignia – more than Venus can do. ‘Hope you’ll
excuse us, Superintendent. I’m under orders of the Vice-Chancellor to get Haddock to the meeting at 8.30 and there’s only five minutes to go.’
‘Could I ask you for a lift?’ The superintendent asks politely, almost humbly, and I feel K warm to him. ‘I’m to attend the meeting and my car is on the other side of campus. In this rain, I’d get drenched getting to Staff House.’ The super’s unassuming manner, I am to realise later, is no indication of his investigative capacities.
‘Of course, my pleasure. David, you come too. Even those too poor and wretched to have telephones – like Haddock – are to come to the all-staff meeting. Didn’t Ra’mad mention it? Just like the bounder. Never mind, jump in the car.’
‘What about Toshi?’ asks David.
‘What are you talking about?’ K replies, his half smile dancing towards a sneer.
‘The nipple massager,’ David explains, nodding his head at Toshi.
‘I am Japanese,’ says Toshi, smiling up towards K.
‘Sorry about that,’ K answers in a that’s-not-my-problem tone. ‘This isn’t a party. No Japanese nipple-raisers. Definitely no Barnaby. No Darling of Singapore. Invite only. The noble few … and David.’
The noble few are folded into the back-seat of K’s beloved Mustang, leaving behind a neutered bitch, her masseur who has yet to come out of the closet, and the Darling of Singapore who, I think, has yet to work out how her affections, once given unreservedly and forever to Richard, can be transferred to me without destroying a few millennia of Asian values en passant.
5
A Regrettable Inconvenience
STAFF HOUSE IS a canteen, not a meeting room. It dates from the last fling of the Raj. The cavernous roof sheltered colonial formal dinners before it capitulated in February 1942, to offer a collaborative welcome to Japanese officers of the Co-prosperity Sphere. It hosted a mix of old and new masters during the post-war decades in which Singapore and its university popped in and out of Malaya in its various forms and moved on with no substantive identity crisis to serve the pragmatic needs of the open-necked lecturers of Singapore Inc. Bernard, in the manuscript of The Social History of Singapore University, refers to the colonial building as a symbol of all who survived the uneasy birth of his beloved Singapore.
Waiting for Venus - A Novel Page 4