Waiting for Venus - A Novel

by Robert Cooper

  ‘Kingsley Woolf, sometimes called “K” – that’s what we call him – was just about the only lecturer apart from myself who didn’t back down on the issue of campus relocation. And David Bent used to pop in. Bernard was interested in the open discussion of homosexuality – but don’t get the idea he was homosexual, he told me he was attracted to the abstract idea of homosexuality as an antithesis to the norm of reproduction inherent in what we think of as instinct and society. Agnes, the wife of the acting dean, also used to drop in occasionally in the afternoons. I think she’s a bit lonely – understandable if you are married to Chin. Bernard’s housekeeper saw the manuscript every day but probably had no idea what it was about. Li Fang, the Guild House manager, saw Bernard every day but he’s no reader. I doubt if anybody apart from me knew much about the explosive nature of some of its contents.’

  ‘Those people are all, like you, neighbours or regular contacts of the professor. Most murders, if this is murder, are committed by people who know the victim well. Murderers rarely just drop in, kill a stranger, and leave. That’s why we focus on motive.’

  ‘You asked me, Superintendent, who regularly visited Bernard. But you showed no surprise just now when I told you about the German. I never saw him before last night. He came to my house around 10.00 and said he had tried to visit Bernard. Perhaps he succeeded and was the last person to see Bernard alive.’

  ‘That,’ replies the super, ‘was the distinguished criminologist Professor Von Führer Düsseldorf. You haven’t seen him before because he only came back to Singapore last week. I met him earlier yesterday evening – so his alibi is gold standard. The Vice-Chancellor held a small reception for him. Professor Fox and Doctor Chin were invited but both declined; seems Düsseldorf’s an old friend of Chin’s father. We’d talked at the reception about long-term institutional memories in Singapore and I mentioned Professor Fox as one of the most important. I told him Professor Fox lives right next to Chin; he said he knew the house as Chin had mentioned it. He was familiar with some of the professor’s writing and openly praised his work on suicide. You’ll be meeting Düsseldorf professionally before long.’

  The superintendent’s car has been brought to Guild House for him. He reaches a tired hand to open the back door. ‘Thanks for providing a motive for murder: theft or destruction of the professor’s manuscript. By one of life’s endearing little ironies, that motive also makes you prime suspect and your friend Woolf number two – supposing only the two of you had much of an idea about the contents.’ He calls across the road into Guild House that the professor’s house should now be relocked. ‘You’ll excuse me Doctor Haddock, I’d rather crash on my bed than in the car. We’ll be talking again once I have seen the coroner’s report – and once I have read A Social History of Suicide. Let me know if your cleaner turns up and so as not to disappoint your expectations,’ he gives a wry smile, ‘… please don’t leave Singapore without my okay.’

  I walk towards home feeling the excitement of novelty rather than the disquiet of sadness; murder is anything but boring. Real grief seems as elusive as ever. Bernard’s death has added spice to my life at a time when I am still young enough to enjoy an increase in adrenaline. Barns hugs my side as I walk. ‘Well, Barns, I’m prime suspect and K is only number two – he’ll be furious.’ Christ, I am not only hearing voices from the other side, I’m also sharing confidences with a dog.

  I know Venus is waiting for me in the flat, something of a role reversal, but I can see K’s car still there and I don’t feel like any company more demanding than Barnaby. It’s time for a mad dog and a sort-of-Englishman to take a walk in the midday sun and have a little man-to-dog heart-to-heart.

  7

  Ice Cream and Orchids

  I WALK ALONG the shaded open-air corridor between the two quads at the heart of what Bernard refers to affectionately in his manuscript as the ‘imitation intimations of immortality associated with the great universities of the world’; I’m not quite sure what he meant by that, having gone to a very mortal place full of red bricks, sounds impressive though. Whatever Bernard meant, the imitation succeeded so unpretentiously in his view, he approved it. Certainly, nothing is overdone. There are no fearsome gargoyles on high or highly-placed people from centuries past lowly placed under flagstones in chapels for feet to walk over, but there is a harmony of structure and mood that any visitor from anywhere in the world would associate with a university of standing. The magic of the place is, to use Bernard’s words: ‘strong enough to take students out of the everyday without stranding them in never-never land.’

  Bernard saw the university as a vital bridge between the abstract concept of learning and the concrete but pragmatically-changeable realities of Singapore. To him, the university’s standing and mystique captured and held those privileged to be part of an institution older by far than any of them and much older than the Republic of Singapore, which at this time of Bernard’s death is in its spotty teenage years.

  The university is, Bernard had argued in a passionate address made when discussion on relocation had yet to become taboo, an institution that has much contributed to the formation of the city state, an institution that contains the wisdom of generations – a wisdom greater than any single person can hope to possess or fully comprehend. Bernard cautioned that because Singapore University is much older than Singapore, the nation should respect the university as a son should respect his father and keep it close to its heart. Although his arguments were conservative and cautious and fully in keeping with Asian values, Bernard must have known that Singaporeans do not like to be warned publicly they are making a mistake – and warned by an ang mo at that.

  ‘Is this the way Bernard really saw the place, Barns? As substantively different from the modern structures that will be the new campus on the southern coast?’

  Barnaby pauses as if considering her reply, steps off the path onto the harsh blades of tropical grass, stretches out her hind quarters and has a pee.

  ‘Yes, Barns. I get your point. We must respect the path that brought us to this point in history and at the same time we should be free to step aside and have a pee when we want it. I wonder if Bernard went into that in his manuscript. I expect he did, his book isn’t just a bunch of photographs and a list of great names – we know that much.’

  ‘Sure thing,’ says Barns. ‘Master used to read out loud what he had written. I can only suppose he was speaking to me as I was the only one there. He went into everything, including my close encounter with a full-grown cobra. I sure respected that snake – just rose up in front of me on the cricket pitch of all places. A thousand people cross that grass on a normal day. And there in front of my eyes was a dancing cobra to remind me that any of us is here only because that snake and his friends allow us to be here. No reason we can’t co-exist – given a little tolerance all round. People should learn tolerance at university. That’s my special role, Professor Emeritus of Tolerance.’

  ‘Yes, Professor Barnaby. I do understand. Is that why you walked along the lines of freshers when the Vice-Chancellor was welcoming them onto the campus and stuck your nose up all the skirts?’

  ‘Don’t forget, us professors have our little eccentricities. That’s what gives a university character. The up-skirt welcome was a first lesson in tolerance. And one has to learn tolerance before discipline. It can’t be learnt after. Once kids are programmed to jump up and obey, it’s too late to add on a vague slogan reminding them to be tolerant while they’re at it.’

  ‘How right you are, Barns. Tolerance is an understudied area in the social sciences. And the limits of tolerance. And of course, there’s cats.’

  ‘Cats! Intolerant and arrogant monsters. Must be kept in their place, lah. Singapore cats are okay, lah, you know, the ones without tails, they do their job and keep the rats down. But those long-tailed retrograde cats of Chin! They just cause trouble, lah. Worthless and spoilt, lah. No sense of values.’

  ‘I suppose you’re right Barns.’ I w
onder how often she and Bernard shared a good talk. I suspect quite often. ‘And since I’ve got you in a talkative mood and since you are the only known witness to the death of your master, how about telling me just what happened last night?’

  Barns looks at me as if considering my request, then folds her legs and toboggans her rotund tummy down the steep grassy bank to the cricket pitch and rolls on her back.

  * * *

  I am loitering in the limited shade of the admin block, wondering if I should slide down the slope and join Barns in her rolling, when Chin’s wife, Agnes, turns the corner and walks straight into me. I almost jump out of my skin. And Agnes almost jumps out of her shorts and singlet.

  That first impact is memorable. I am day-dreaming about lots of things and my mind is far from prepared for the impression of Agnes’s outstanding breasts as they bump into my tummy. The bit of a strange thing is – although I don’t get bumped in the tummy by a pair of remarkable breasts every day so perhaps it’s not so strange at all – Agnes gives just a little gasp of surprise and jumps, if jumps is the word, no further than a simple rebound from a well-cushioned impact. The tips of her breasts don’t hang around in contact but they leave a lingering impression. Agnes then stands closer than necessary for polite conversation and much closer than Asian norms require for sexual opposites meeting in public. I can smell her moist sweat and feel sparkles of electricity playing on it and reaching across to me.

  Agnes is no Venus. Of course not. But the firmly pronounced bosom and nice legs compensate for the fairly standard, if unusually fair, Chinese moon face. This face is set off under a broad-brimmed hat which, by accident or design, allows stray strands of hair to hang provocatively down her bare and attractive neck. She is shorter than Venus and looks up to me with the curiosity of a precocious child. Neither of us excuse ourselves. Agnes speaks first.

  ‘Doctor Haddock. A pleasant surprise. I was beginning to feel like the last person on earth. Where are you going?’

  ‘Just walking. Trying to put things into perspective. You know: the university moving and everything.’

  ‘Me too. Just walking. I’m going over to the Botanic Gardens. There’s a small café there. I sit among the orchids and eat ice cream. Would you like to join me?’

  ‘Why not?’ I answer with a smile, for some reason trying for a casual and sophisticated allure that’s not really me – hell, not me at all. I don’t ask Agnes why, if going to the Gardens, she is walking in the opposite direction. She turns and walks beside me. To escape the sun, we hug the shaded perimeters of the building and in order to maintain conversation, almost hug each other. Barnaby charges up excitedly, sniffing and sneezing at Agnes’s bare legs and tightly-outlined crotch. I try to call her off.

  ‘That’s all right,’ says Agnes. ‘Barnaby always does that. It’s the smell of Harry’s cats.’ She reaches down and ruffles Barns’ neck folds with affection. More surprises; the two are clearly on crotch-sniffing and neck-fold ruffling terms. Barns licks the sweat on Agnes’s inner thighs and Agnes giggles like a schoolgirl. ‘I’m not usually ticklish but Barnaby’s tongue sets me off every time.’

  So, frequent wet contacts between the thighs of my head of department’s wife and the tongue of my dead uncle’s dog. And ‘Harry’s cats’, I had presumed the beasts to be joint possessions, divisible on divorce. What further revelations await?

  We have our ice cream among the orchids, with double helpings of chocolate for Barns. Agnes insists on paying, taking damp folded notes from a pocket inside her shorts and waving away the change. The only customers, we linger, sip iced tea and talk. I stick to the neutral ‘you’ rather than ‘Agnes’, and we talk about everything except her husband’s rise in status and Bernard. But Bernard is there all right, coming between us or bringing us together, I’m not sure which.

  I’ve never spoken to Agnes one-to-one before and, until we literally bumped into each other, had stereotyped the 5.30 evening jogger as a colourful appendage of a colourless man. I tend to do that: profile people. I know it’s wrong but still I do it – it gives me some nice surprises when what emerges from the profile is so much more than the stereotype, and that’s the case with Agnes. She demonstrates an independent intelligence that – as much as her lightly-clad boobs, or almost as much – make her attractive company. I learn about her family in Ipoh, how difficult it is to persuade Harry to drive her there and how when he finally does, he always insists the cats go along. I learn she went to Oxford University and studied English on a Malaysian scholarship that would normally have tied her into the army as an officer for seven years. I learn that she wanted to make a career in the military, a bit of a surprise, and had completed basic training when she accepted Chin’s proposal of marriage and he bought her out by paying back the scholarship – even more of a surprise. I’m also surprised she’s tall enough for the military, but I say nothing. Agnes is so open and full of surprises that in half an hour I learn far more about her than I know about Venus after two months. I say little about me in return.

  ‘You must be looking forward to moving to a modern campus,’ I say, conscious of inserting an element of controversy under the guise of small talk. ‘Fully air-conditioned, sea breezes and all that.’

  ‘I shall hate it,’ she replies. ‘I love this old place. Singapore is so lucky to have a real university. It’s ridiculous to give up this heritage for a place with no history.’ Agnes pauses. The word ‘history’ seems to trouble her.

  ‘And are you happy here after Oxford?’ I ask, playing the controversy.

  ‘Happier than I might be elsewhere. I enjoy the self-contained aspect of campus life. I can walk every day in beautiful green surroundings, go for a run in the evening, pop into the library and read the foreign papers. And we do have a nicer house than we might get in Oxford.’

  ‘Biggest on campus, isn’t it?’

  ‘I think it is. There’s even a guest apartment attached with its own entrance. But that’s a double-edged sword.’

  ‘How so?’

  ‘Guests!’ says Agnes in explanation.

  ‘You don’t like guests?’

  ‘Normally, I welcome them.’

  ‘Normally?’ I’m now intruding, but it’s as though Agnes wants me to intrude.

  ‘Our current guest sits in the living room with Harry speaking Mandarin with him for hours on end.’

  ‘Is that a problem? You speak Mandarin with Harry, don’t you?’

  ‘Yes. Wouldn’t get far if I didn’t. But the Baron never stops talking. The man knew Harry’s father and keeps saying what a great man he was and what a shame for Singapore he was murdered. Of course, Harry loves to hear that. But I don’t. I wasn’t born then, in Singapore in World War II, but I know it was horrible. The Baron was here throughout the Japanese Occupation and seems to think it was the greatest of times.’

  ‘The Baron?’

  ‘Baron Von Führer Düsseldorf. You haven’t met him?’

  ‘No. Doesn’t sound very Chinese.’

  ‘German. Speaks fluent Mandarin but says nothing of interest in it and takes forever to say it. He came by a week ago and Harry seemed to think his saviour had come to the door; invited him to stay with us and he shows no signs of leaving.’ The image of the German who didn’t say thank you comes into my mind; if he is staying at Chin’s, why did he not use their phone to call Bernard? And he went off in the opposite direction to Chin’s house.

  ‘I think he came to my window last night at 10 o’clock. Said he was trying to visit Professor Fox but Bernard didn’t answer the door. He was in a beautiful old Citroën. I had no idea he was staying with you. He drove off Tanglin way.’

  ‘He likes the Tanglin Club; loves anything top drawer. Last night he’d been to a reception with the VC and other VIPs like the Superintendent of Police you’ve just been with – I noticed you with him as I left the house just now. Harry was invited to the reception but didn’t go; it would have been a speak-English do; Harry hates them. Bernard was invited too, b
ut didn’t go – I suppose he didn’t feel like it if he was contemplating suicide. The Baron had been trying to button-hole Bernard for days, even asked me to arrange a get-together with Bernard for him, but Bernard wasn’t interested and took to locking his back door and placing his phone on answer-machine mode. Don’t blame him at all. Whenever I visited Bernard, I had to knock; Bernard would come to the back door and I would have to say it’s me before he opened it.’

  Bernard? First name terms? Well, it sounds like Chin has a guest who’s overstayed his welcome, at least with Agnes. Now I know why Bernard’s back door has been locked lately. I don’t pursue the subject. Must be the criminologist the superintendent says I’ll meet soon; he sounds deadly boring.

  Agnes drops the Baron from our conversation in favour of giving me an enlightened account of the different life styles of the orchids around us, a subject I find more interesting than the plants themselves. One of them looks particularly small, weedy, colourless and insignificant: a bit like her husband Chin – there I go stereotyping again, surely Chin must have something interesting about him if Agnes gave up her own ambitions to join him in his. Not that Chin strikes me as ambitious; I don’t share K’s views there – I can’t really imagine Chin deliberately wheedling himself into Bernard’s chair; he might be happy to have it but I don’t believe he’d kill to get it. Agnes tells me it, the weedy orchid that is, is now found only in Perak State, where it grows near the tops of the tallest trees in the primary forest, far from the eyes of Man. ‘Isn’t that sad? Something so fragile and beautiful and people never know it’s there.’ Agnes speaks with the wistful implication that both of us should identify with the plant’s romantic isolation. I hold my tongue. All I can see is an unappealing straggler in a fast-moving world. Rare, wild orchid it might be, but it seems an act of mercy for the pathetic rootless wonder to be forever exiled from the human eye. Of course, I just nod my head and let her continue. ‘Bernard brought me a couple back from the jungle. One died, the other I treasure.’