At this point they turn back to the house.
* * *
‘I’m taking you home,’ Agnes orders. ‘Your home.’ She is again the resolute, strong Agnes. She leads me through K’s garden gate to Chin’s car in the drive.
‘What about your husband? How will he get home?’
‘Who cares?’ says Agnes. Well, I for one do not.
30
Agnes Reveals All
BARNABY, LOCKED IN the flat, judging from the wood shavings on the floor, has been scratching all evening to get through the door. She gets her wish and rushes out as Agnes is shown in. The door closes and locks on her, and she immediately begins scratching to get back in. Dogs! I ignore her.
Agnes leads me by the hand straight to the bedroom, my one at the front, not the notorious back room. And there, sitting on the bed, she tells me exactly what was said in K’s garden between Super Wong and Chin. There are lots of tears from her, lots of comforting from me and lots of agreement that she married a complete louse.
Agnes perhaps isn’t the most objective interpreter in the world, but I believe her. If she’s making it up, I tell myself, she would not make such a strong case against herself, reporting Chin’s words about an unsound mind turning on the fan once Bernard’s hanging from it. I know Superintendent Wong will, sometime, review this voice-activated recording and can compare it with what he heard in K’s garden. Knowing the super will hear what is being said, I prompt Agnes to retell her version of events – the version in which Harry Chin does it. Only an hour has passed since she last told it but she doesn’t seem to notice her two accounts are completely different.
* * *
‘I innocently gave that pie to Bernard in the afternoon without knowing Harry had laced it with sedative. I knew Bernard’s housekeeper was away and I thought he’d enjoy snacking on it. I didn’t stay long, I needed to get back and change for my evening run. Much later, as I was watching News at Ten on TV, Harry came in carrying what turned out to be Bernard’s manuscript. He was so nervous he couldn’t speak and was sweating. I sat him down and he drank a litre of water before he could tell me what he’d done. He said he’d taken my key, gone to Bernard’s, found him slumped in his arm chair and thought he was dead. I told him I was sure Bernard was just asleep. But I was worried enough to go back with him. We opened Bernard’s back door quietly and went inside into the dark. The shutters were all closed and I couldn’t see anything at first. Then the front door opened and I saw Li Fang.’
‘Li Fang?’ I ask with surprise.
‘Yes. He was opening the front door from the inside. He went out and left it open. What I saw next almost made me faint. Bernard was not slumped in his armchair at all, he was hanging from the fan and the fan was turning. Harry looked like he was about to die. I recovered enough to turn off the fan and check that Bernard was really dead. There was no pulse. Harry refused to call an ambulance, saying it would just incriminate us rather than Li Fang and he turned the fan back on saying, “That’s the way Li Fang left it.” Then he said we should get out of there before somebody came in the open front door. We did, taking the pie dish with us and locking the back door after us. I had no idea what had happened or if Li Fang had killed Bernard or come in as we had done and found Bernard hanging and gone out to call an ambulance from his phone.’
My ceiling fan is on fast but after that story I am sweating. We are both sitting fully dressed on my bed. I ask Agnes if she minds me removing my shirt. She doesn’t mind at all; in fact, she helps me out of it. Then, clearly thinking ahead of me, she opens the buttons on her one-piece dress … all of them.
‘Tom, it’s hot in here. Did you never think to get an air-con?’
‘I never felt the need.’
‘But everybody has an air-con these days.’ The dress opens and slips from her shoulders. I notice Agnes wears no bra. I also notice her breasts are very firm … nicely firm.
‘Bernard never had air-con.’
‘He did in the bedroom,’ Agnes is purring her words. I’ve never seen those breasts before and they are every bit as my mind had pictured them.
‘I never went into Bernard’s bedroom.’
‘No, I suppose you had no reason to.’
But you did? I think but do not say. In fact, I don’t say anything.
‘You should take these off as well. They look awfully tight.’ They are indeed very tight. Agnes opens my belt and zip and rolls down my trousers. ‘Now isn’t that better?’ Yes, it is.
Where were we? The story of her and Chin finding Bernard dead. Agnes has completely changed her story within the hour. She also seems to have forgotten completely what we were talking about. I suddenly remember Wong will be hearing all this and that in the new version Li Fang, not Chin, is the principal suspect. Some clarity is needed before I get up and turn off the kitchen light; then I remember there’s no point in turning off that light.
‘If you saw Li Fang leaving, why didn’t you tell the police? You just went home and went to bed?’
‘Harry said we should not get involved,’ Agnes purrs slowly and reflexively, twisting fingers around my member in rhythm with her words. ‘That Li Fang must have hanged Bernard during the time between Harry’s first visit to get the manuscript, when Bernard was in his armchair and this visit, when Bernard was hanging on the fan. He said Li Fang was sure to deny having been there at all. So, I went along with Harry’s idea that we say we were both together at home in bed; that was our alibi. When we got home, the maid was asleep in her room – we have so many rooms we let her have one; she doesn’t sleep in the servant’s quarters outside. We changed into pyjamas, then Harry woke her up and said it’s almost 10 o’clock – although it was really 11.00 – and he feels like some corn flakes but can’t find the packet. The maid found it, put some in a bowl, added milk and sugar the way Harry likes it and gave it to him. I was watching from the bedroom door and saw our alibi give Harry a sideways smile and look that she never gives me – the little bitch.’
‘And the maid supported your alibi?’
‘Yes, which means I still can’t get rid of her. And after making a big thing about being home together, I couldn’t change my story for that lovely superintendent.’
I think of the super smiling at those words. He’ll be interviewing Agnes and Chin more vigorously after this. Agnes removes a familiar pair of yellow panties covered in red love-hearts and hangs them on my erection. I have a brief moment of conscience – Agnes is vulnerable and I’ve extracted a sort-of confession in a manner uncomfortably similar to K’s escapade. But what worries me more is that Agnes had seen Li Fang leaving through Bernard’s front door after 10 o’clock and he had not raised the alarm until over an hour later.
* * *
My head is bursting with competing images of Bernard swinging from the fan as Li Fang sneaks out the door and those very present breasts of Agnes and her hands which are expertly everywhere. I half-heartedly suggest she better make for home before Chin gets back, notices his BMW outside my flat and comes banging on my shutters. Agnes says, ‘Don’t worry, Tom, I’ll never return to that fiend.’ Actually, I don’t want her to go just then.
We never get down to considering where Agnes might go if she is not to return to that fiend. Comforting and cuddling are not the same thing but come pretty close in practice, particularly after a few drinks and a touching of bare flesh. But as cuddling merges with fondling and one thing leads to another … a sharp rat-a-tat-tat hits the shutters.
I reach a hand to cover Agnes’s mouth.
More heavy rapping from outside as Agnes shudders and almost bites my hand off.
31
Through the Window
‘I’VE ALWAYS LOVED HER. Ever since she was born that day in the jungle. When Bernard helped her out into a very uncertain world and a dog licked her. I loved her as much as Bernard loved her, as if she were my child. I loved her mother too, in one way before Bernard came into our lives and in another when she gave herself to him. I loved them both: Syep �
� Bernard’s wife and Syou – Norsiah I should say – Bernard’s child. I’d cried along with Bernard when Syep was killed and I vowed along with Bernard to find her killer and kill him. When Bernard left the jungle after the war, I was a father to Syou. Bernard approved and I loved Syou as a father. And when she married and had a child, I loved that child as my own grandchild. And when that child was killed with its father, leaving Syou a widow, then I looked after her, cared for her, and began to love her, quietly, another way.’
* * *
Li Fang’s telling me some of the bits I don’t know. After he steps in for Uncle Bernard in my life, he’s filling in the gaps.
* * *
‘There’s an uncertain tap on the glass, a pause, more timid taps, more hesitant pauses, then a decisive rat-a-tat-tat. Someone is at my bedroom window.
‘I installed the glass window instead of the wooden shutters because I like to see outside at all times. Even lying in bed in the dark I can see Bernard’s house opposite and the back path to it; I can also see up the road to the flats where you and Ra’mad are now the only occupants. If I approach the glass and look past Bernard’s house down Evans Road, I have a full view of Chin’s house, its front gate, its side parking space and its back path. Not that I spend my life at the window. When not in the bedroom or at the morning market, I’m always somewhere in Guild House with its wrap-around veranda, getting a clear view of anyone approaching or leaving.
‘It’s Norsiah at my window. I’m not surprised and indicate she should go to the veranda. It’s 1 o’clock in the morning. I note Chin’s car outside your flat and wonder what it’s doing there. I’m relieved to see Norsiah; she would have walked on foot out from her village to the nearest road, taken local buses to KL and Johor Bahru, taken a motorcycle taxi through the rubber plantation to the Orang Laut aboriginal settlement on the “almost island”, got an aborigine to boat her across the Strait to northwestern Singapore, then found a taxi into campus; exactly the no-passport route I used to take throughout the war – no taxis then, of course – and the route Bernard insisted she take in reverse when leaving Singapore; a route that leaves no paper trail. The Malaysian police had been searching for her in Perak aboriginal villages, but they had been looking for Norsiah, not Syou. She must be very tired. She must also be confused and worried at the police tapes sealing the doors of her father’s house.
‘I see her on the open, dark veranda before she sees me, the concern in her tired face too evident. I take from the fridge a pitcher of cold water and two glasses: this is not going to be easy.
‘“Excuse me …” Norsiah begins. “I walked out many times to a telephone and tried to call Father but he never answered. I was so worried, finally I came back.”
‘Why didn’t you call me? I’m always here.’
‘“I know. It’s stupid – I’ve never had reason to call you, so I don’t know your number. I see police warning signs on Father’s doors so I dare not enter …” words clog her throat.
‘I’m very sorry …’
‘“I can guess,” she spares me. “Dead, right? His heart?”
‘Yes, his heart. And other things.’
‘“Please tell me. Tell me everything now. I won’t be able to sleep anyway. I did not understand why Father insisted I leave here and return to the village. He had warned me to be careful, but not why.”
‘Your father sent you away the day before he died, but not because of Chin. A German who was here during the Japanese War had just returned to Singapore and teamed up with his old Japanese partner. They wanted something your father and I would not give them. Bernard was afraid they would use you to make him cooperate, so he sent you away to safety. It was the Japanese who killed your mother. Both the German and the Japanese worked with the collaborator Chin Jin-Hui – that’s the father of the man you know as Harry Chin. Chin Jin-Hui paid for his crimes back in 1945. Harry Chin has been silent all these years but the German was staying at Chin’s house, so the chances are he told everything to Chin. Your father wanted you out of harm’s way until we neutralised all three. But they got him first. You can take some comfort in knowing that revenge has now been taken against both the Japanese who killed your mother and his German accomplice. You are safe here now. Your father died before they were removed, so he could not tell you to return and I could not get a message to you.’
‘“Thank you,” that’s all she said. I swore her to secrecy, saying her cousin Tom was involved in the revenge and that you now know you are cousins. I told her she could talk to you freely when she felt up to it – but not in public.
‘She wanted to sleep and I accompanied her to the maid’s quarters behind Bernard’s house. I checked out her room and told her to lock the door after me.
‘Returning to my room, I saw Chin’s car leave the flats and travel the short distance to park beside Chin’s house. Agnes was at the wheel.
‘Norsiah told me the next morning she was awakened by the noise of her father’s back door opening, looked out her window and saw Chin going into Bernard’s house.’
32
Panties on My Pillow
‘COME ON TOM, open up. It’s me, Venus, out here with Barnaby.’
O Lord, you write a nasty plot. The long-awaited love of my life, freshly widowed from her imagination, raps at my shutters just when the lady of the orchids is blossoming in my bed.
I push Agnes away and hold a finger to my lips. The smell of her must be drifting through the louvres to crinkle the lovely nose of Venus. I have never put on trousers so quickly. I speak through the shutters with a tired voice. ‘Venus? Sorry darling, I was fast asleep.’ I look back at Agnes. If she wants revenge for what K did to her, one word will be enough. She is sitting looking lonely, tears on pale cheeks. ‘I’ll open the door, Venus. Just a minute.’
‘Make it the kitchen door. I don’t want the whole world to know I’m here.’
I take Agnes by the hand and beg her to get dressed, go out the front door, get in her car and go home before I open the back door for Venus. She pulls her hand away and lies back down on my bed, naked. ‘Tell her to go home,’ she says. ‘… Tom.’
* * *
I open the back door, rubbing my eyes. Venus looks at me. ‘Well, now what’s going on?’ I feel horribly sure she knows what’s going on. ‘Going to bed with your trousers on? And whatever’s had you tossing and turning? Your hair’s all scrambled.’ Barnaby sniffs my crotch, sneezes, looks at me in reproach and follows her nose through to my bedroom in search of neck-fold ruffles.
‘I didn’t hear your car,’ I say lamely. ‘I had a lot to drink at K’s. I just collapsed on my bed.’
‘Don’t I get a kiss?’
‘I haven’t cleaned my teeth.’
‘Oh, Tom. You are hopeless. Now give me a hug and a kiss.’
With the smell of Agnes in my nose I peck at Venus.
‘Not like that. Like this.’ Venus reaches both hands to my neck and pulls me down to a sucking embrace. Her hair flows into the whiteness of a long dress I hadn’t seen before – white dresses all round tonight, but this one doesn’t open down the front. One leg lifts up at the knee. Why does she do that? I never do. Surrogate erection? I like it. It speaks of surrender and helplessness. I doubt Agnes lifts a leg.
Venus finally releases me, takes a breath and says, ‘I parked at the back.’
‘Huh?’
‘I parked the Starlet at the back. That’s why you didn’t hear me pull up. I didn’t want Ra’mad monitoring my arrival, not tonight.’ It’s not Ra’mad you need worry about, I think, it’s voice-activated Superintendent Wong.
It’s early hours and Venus has come to me, free at last of the fantasy that kept her from me. My heart should be singing. It is pounding. This is the moment for the big love scene she’s been putting off ever since we met. The moment when the earth will move, tra-la-la; it doesn’t seem right to suggest another time might be more convenient.
With the cars of Agnes at the front and Venus at the ba
ck – I feel well and truly snared in my own deception.
Oh, what tangled webs we weave, when once we practice to deceive.
In Singapore, it never rains but it pours.
‘I came to let you know Richard is dead.’
‘I know. Siggy told me.’
‘It means I won’t be seeing you for a while.’
‘What?’ I say, confused. The phantom Richard is no more and she won’t be seeing me for a while – did I miss something?
‘The funeral,’ Venus says. ‘You know the way it is.’
I don’t know the way it is but I agree I do. It looks for a moment as if I might get away scot-free. Venus has delivered her message; it’s not very precise as far as details go but sounds like Richard the Pretender gets a pretend funeral. Maybe Venus needs a breather before she explains it all; maybe, having delivered the message, she’s off to sit by an imaginary great Chinese coffin until the time comes to throw imaginary half-dead chickens around. I edge towards the back door and say I understand and I will and can wait and so on until she is quite ready. After all, Venus, we’ve waited this long, our love will endure. I take her by the hand and swing open the back door.
But the widow in white shows no more signs of departure than does Agnes in my bedroom. Quite the opposite. Venus looks at me as though I have just made a breathtaking declaration of devotion. She begins twirling the hairs on my chest around her fingers, back in character again, twirling between no and yes. But now the reason for no is dead and I can’t take yes for an answer without spiriting Agnes out of my bed.
Come on brain, find something to say, to suggest the timing is not quite perfect. Hold it Venus, your old man is barely cold and you’ve got the hots, how about a few days of grieving? Something like that but gentler. Something unselfish and caring: I’m just thinking of your emotional state and how you might feel afterwards. Something that will get her out the door but not forever out of my life.
Waiting for Venus - A Novel Page 25