Waiting for Venus - A Novel

by Robert Cooper

‘Are you going to keep me in the kitchen all night?’

  I have no idea what I am going to do with her all night; the next few minutes are what concern me. So, I blabber. ‘Actually, the kitchen is the heart of the home. The connection between cooking and sex is well documented you know, in anthropology that is, raw and cooked. Many languages use the same word for family and kitchen. It’s almost impossible for an anthropologist to make love without thinking of the kitchen.’

  ‘Well, you can think of your kitchen while we are lying on your bed! You can have me over the kitchen sink when the sink’s not full of dirty dishes. Now come along … Tom.’ Venus leads me by the hand from the kitchen through the passage that runs past the bathroom to the bedroom … and Agnes.

  ‘How about a drink first? A beer to set you up. It’d give me time to clean my teeth and, er, straighten up a bit.’

  ‘Bed full of girly magazines, is it? Never mind, lah. You know us Singapore girls. Tolerance itself.’ I have a horrible feeling I’m about to discover the limit of my favourite Singapore girl’s tolerance.

  The toilet flushes.

  ‘The toilet flushed,’ says Venus.

  ‘The toilet flushed?’ I try to sound casual about the thunderous cascade echoing round the vast sound-box of my bathroom in the dead of night.

  ‘It did. And it didn’t flush itself, Tom, did it?’

  ‘Er, well, it might have. You know what toilets are like. I think the ballcock gets stuck … you know.’ I sound pathetic. I hug her because I can’t think of anything else to do or say. She’s stiff but softens as the sound of the flush fades.

  And Agnes chooses that moment to flit past. She passes within inches, silently, without a look, and disappears into the back bedroom like a ghost.

  ‘Do you have somebody here?’ Venus asks, meaning You have someone here!

  ‘You mean … her?’

  ‘Yes, Tom … her!’ A sterner note in her voice as she breaks away from me. ‘That woman!’

  ‘Oh … her! You don’t think, do you Venus, that I and her? How could you, Venus?’ I try my best to sound offended. A pathetic best it is.

  ‘She’s in your flat at one in the morning and wearing your shirt.’

  Circumstantial evidence. There has to be a logical explanation – anything other than the truth. Barnaby joins us. I reach down and give her a playing-for-time pat. She looks at me suspiciously. Come on, brain, think. That’s what you’re for.

  ‘My shirt? Are you sure?’

  ‘Of course, your shirt. I gave it to you and that person is wearing it.’

  ‘Oh, that shirt. I left it in the bathroom. I suppose she just put it on … after flushing the toilet.’

  ‘Tom Haddock! Who is that person?’ A good direct question. Only one answer is possible and I give it.

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘You don’t know?’ Venus looks as if she will die or kill. I don’t fancy either. I think of making a run for it before Venus and Agnes reach an amicable settlement and cut me in two.

  Bernard comes posthumously to my rescue, sending ideas into my mind from his unacclaimed monograph, ‘The Big Lie’. You can fool all the people all the time if you tell big enough lies. Don’t fart around with small lies. Small lies provoke big doubts. Big lies are certainties that people will defend to the death. According to Bernard, history is a compound of the biggest lies of all. Lies have to be big, brazen, uncomplicated and, most of all, what people want to believe. They are infinitely more powerful than truth.

  ‘Yes, I don’t know.’ I sound quite convincing … to myself. ‘Be reasonable, Venus, you can’t expect me to keep track of everybody who comes and goes around here. You know I never lock up.’ There, the big lie is thrown out and Venus is checked. She won’t call me a liar, will she?

  ‘You’ve been locking up all the time since Wong told you to. You damn well locked up tonight. With that woman inside the house.’

  Maybe Venus is not going to swallow The Big Lie after all. She is, after all, with the Singapore Broadcasting Corporation and perhaps knows more about such things than Bernard and I put together. Richard the Pretender wasn’t exactly Big Truth – but not the time to mention Richard. I look to Barns. She stretches her head down onto front paws, sticks her bum in the air and tells me I can jolly well get myself out of this one.

  ‘Barnaby …’ I begin my explanation. Barns raises her eyes with a look of scorn. Well, there is nobody else to blame Agnes on; if it’s not me, it has to be Barnaby. ‘… I had to get up and open the back door to let Barns out for a pee. I must have left it open. I suppose that, er, woman came in through the back.’

  Agnes is hearing every word. I wonder if she’s laughing or crying or simply biding her time before appearing naked in front of Venus to claim me for evermore.

  ‘So that woman came in the back, locked the door after her, flushed the toilet and put on your shirt. And you don’t know who it is?’

  ‘No. No idea.’

  Barnaby looks at me pitifully and walks through the kitchen and out the back door. Want a simple life? Be a dog.

  ‘Tom Haddock, I’m counting to three. It you don’t tell me who that woman is and what she is doing here, I walk out the door forever.’

  ‘Come on, Venus love. You wouldn’t do that, would you?’

  ‘One …’

  It’s all K’s fault, I think, as usual. Why does he have to have a baby tonight?

  ‘Two …’

  ‘K …’ I say.

  ‘Kay? Her name is Kay?’

  ‘No. I was just thinking of K. You know, K, Kingsley Woolf.’

  ‘K is here?’

  ‘What do you think, Venus?’

  ‘I think K’s in the back bedroom with that woman.’ Well done, Venus. Well done, Bernard. Well done, K. Well done, Barnaby. Don’t, for Christ’s sake, pop out now Agnes, please.

  ‘Venus, you know K. He’ll never change. He regards that back room as his own and he has a key to the back door.’

  Venus looks relieved. Half as relieved as I feel. I take her hand to lead her through into my bedroom. Venus hangs back. ‘Strange I didn’t see K’s car at the back.’

  ‘Maybe he parked at the front tonight. Did you look at the front?’

  ‘No,’ Venus says. ‘I suppose there’s no reason he shouldn’t park at the front. It’s funny, that woman in the back room looks like Chin’s wife.’

  I swallow. Sometimes all people need to believe a Big Lie is a tiny truth. ‘It might be,’ I say. ‘K sees her a lot.’

  ‘And with his wife giving birth! That friend of yours takes the biscuit, doesn’t he?’

  ‘Yes, Venus, he certainly takes that all right.’

  It looks as if the revolving door farce is over. I’ll go into my bedroom with Venus and everything will be all right. Agnes will quietly exit the back bedroom and leave through the back door. That’s how it might have been. Instead, Venus opens my bedroom door and freezes. On my pillow is a pair of little-red-heart panties.

  I have zero seconds left to live.

  ‘I can explain …’ I say the immortal line as Venus rushes past me and out the back door. I stand at that door, no point in chasing her. As I hear her car drive off – it sounds angry – I turn back into the flat. I notice the door of the back room ajar. I look inside. The wardrobe is open and the tape spools from the Uher have gone. I hear Agnes driving away and return to the little-red-heart panties on my pillow, alone.

  * * *

  I can’t sleep; who could? Rather than dwell on paradise lost, I write out the versions of events around Bernard’s death as told to me by Agnes and as told to Wong by Chin as interpreted by Agnes. The accounts agree on circumstantial facts; facts I already know. They differ on the most vital points: who put the sedative in the pie, who hanged Bernard on the fan, who turned on the fan. Chin blames Agnes, Agnes blames Chin in the garden version but blames Li Fang in the bedroom version. One must be lying, although Agnes could be both lying and telling the truth. Towards dawn, I fall
asleep with the question in my mind: who turned on Bernard’s fan? Only Chin’s account answers that question, but I don’t want to believe it.

  33

  The Fan Turns Again

  I AM NOT EXPECTING to hear the voice of Agnes again so soon but there it is, echoing within the back stairwell. I’m in the kitchen with Barns making my morning tea and toast, and warming her pig’s liver. The back door is open. Agnes is talking on the stairs to Ra’mad.

  ‘Four cats,’ says Ra’mad. ‘Like last time. There’s plenty of powder here. Going to Ipoh again?’

  ‘Yes, that’s right. I’d appreciate it if you don’t mention this to Harry. You see, I’m going alone – with the cats that is – not with him.’

  ‘I quite understand, my dear. You can depend on old Ra’mad. Be careful with the powder, mind. Remember: half that amount would send a man to sleep and the full amount if taken at one go, would knock him out in no time.’

  ‘Thank you Ra’mad. I’m ever so grateful. Really, I am.’

  I hear Agnes coming down the stairs and fear she might pop in. After last night, I don’t fancy Agnes for breakfast. I risk poking my head out the door and catch sight of the lady in white disappearing along the back path. The kettle boils and the toast pops, and that’s about the extent of sexual metaphor my mind can handle at this time of the day. I am a bit English that way and sex can’t really compete with a nice cup of tea.

  I turn back to breakfast. If homes can miss people, my filthy flat must be longing for Norsiah. I’ve always thought of her as the woman who puts the mop around, now I wonder if I’ll ever see her again and if Bernard told her we are cousins. I had thought his insistence on secrecy was only to prevent accusations of nepotism on my appointment to university staff; maybe that was part of it, but now I know he feared for my safety and hers. Thanks, Bernard – that problem is buried now.

  I pick up my shirt from the back bedroom and sniff it for the lusty aroma of Agnes but it just smells like any sweaty shirt; I throw it in the bathroom next to the germinating coconut. Perhaps, I reflect, I should have invited Agnes in for breakfast. But if Agnes has taken my advice and is going to Ipoh, that’s the best thing for her, I wouldn’t delay that. And Chin will be nicely furious when he finds she’s taken his car and his cats.

  I suddenly feel very much alone. I need to see somebody, anybody really. And there’s that gun David took from Chin’s safe. The gun I had taken from Li Fang at the rock and left in the Citroën for Chin to find. Now back in my hands, thanks to silly David and under my mattress because I didn’t know what to do with it; I’d best get rid of it. But what to do with a WWII Luger? Can’t just throw it in the rubbish bin, at least not in my own rubbish bin. I’ll ask Li Fang; he’ll know.

  I wander down to Guild House. Li Fang is not there so I put the bagged gun down on a table and use his phone to dial Venus. An apology for last night is in order. Venus picks up and sounds like she hasn’t slept. I say that hopelessly inadequate word: ‘Sorry’.

  ‘There is no need for pretence. I know you were just waiting for Richard to die and I’d appreciate your not coming to his funeral.’ I wouldn’t be doing that anyway, I think, since there won’t be one, but I say nothing. ‘I hope you’ll be happy in your little-red-heart panties.’ Then, ‘click’. That click seemed to last a hundred years of solitude.

  Venus is upset. Not about that phantom husband but about me and those panties. I need a plausible excuse for panties on my pillow.

  I turn to Barns, my faithful comfort blanket. But she has crossed the road and is lying on the doorstep of her old master’s house. The door remains sealed and still carries the police warning against entry. Barnaby is grieving again. I dial K’s number. He’ll have a solution to the panties problem.

  ‘K. Did you get the boy you wanted?’

  ‘It was a false alarm. By the time I got to the hospital last night, the contractions had stopped. I was hustled out so the missus could get some sleep. Now they say it could be any time in the next fifteen days. I went home, back to the party. Everybody was still there, except for you and Agnes. Chin was furious – Agnes had driven off in his BMW and he was the brunt of jokes. He called a taxi. The super took me aside and gave me a lecture. It seems he knows quite enough to send us away for a long time if he chooses. He doesn’t seem keen to do so, though. He’s taken the manuscript and you won’t be allowed to publish; not yet anyway. On the positive side, the University Press is recalling all copies with Chin’s name on them pending clarification of authorship.

  ‘You still there, Haddock? Good. As far as the handwriting on the manuscript goes, Wong says Chin himself told him it’s Bernard’s. That throws our trump card out the window and brings us back to square one. As Chin now claims Bernard’s typewriter is one he gave Bernard after typing the manuscript on it, there’s still no evidence against Chin. There is, on the other hand, heaps of evidence against the Neckerchief Gang – if the super decides to use it.’

  ‘Could we get together and talk about things, K? It’s a bit difficult on the telephone. And I have a problem I need your advice on. It’s a knickers problem.’

  ‘Perhaps you should stop wearing them, old son, ha ha. I can’t help you there. I’m a married man and about to become a father. I’m busy waiting for baby. When the boy’s born though, we’ll wet its bum in style.’

  ‘We couldn’t fit in a chat this afternoon? After your 5.30?’

  ‘The 5.30 express has run out of steam, dear boy. Truth be told, it rumbled on beyond its best-by date. Anyway, the VC’s asked me to drop by his place at five, baby permitting. No idea what for. He sounded friendly, though.’

  ‘But K, I need to see you. I need to speak to you about Agnes.’

  ‘That wench? What about her? Didn’t bed her last night, did you?’

  ‘As a matter of fact, K, I almost did. I feel lousy about it. It wasn’t as if I set out to do it. I was kind of taken by circumstances.’

  ‘That’s what they all say, Haddock. Pathetic. At least act like a man. You wanted her and you took her. Wasn’t that the way of it?’

  ‘Not exactly. But Venus must think it was. She found little-red-heart knickers on my pillow; you know the ones. Agnes left them there. Venus went off furious without giving me a chance to explain.’

  ‘A pair of knickers on your pillow doesn’t mean the wearer of them was in your bed. So, whatever you do, don’t apologise – just deny. Venus will never know unless you tell her. And believe me, wenches don’t want you telling them that sort of thing, and apologising for it just makes it worse since they then have to forgive you. Tell Venus you’d bought those knickers for her and put them on the pillow for her to find.’

  ‘I wouldn’t have bought her second-hand knickers. These have clearly been worn very recently – there were even pubic hairs in them.’

  ‘You had a good look then! But did Venus?’

  ‘No, she just saw them and ran out. She’d seen Agnes coming out of the bathroom. I’d explained that away by saying she was in the back room with you. Then Venus opened my bedroom door and there were the knickers.’

  ‘Did Venus believe I was there with Agnes? After all, my wife was, I thought, about to give birth; I was at the hospital.’

  ‘Yes, she had no trouble believing it at all, in fact, she came out with the idea.’

  ‘Well, don’t worry. I’ll back up your story. And while forever waiting for Venus, you can practice your performance with Agnes. You can keep my 5.30 appointments. Don’t suppose Agnes will notice the difference an inch or two makes, ha ha.’

  ‘No, thanks. Anyway, she’s running away from Chin. I heard her talking to Ra’mad on the back stairs. She got more of that sedative stuff from Ra’mad today.’

  ‘Maybe before she goes she’s going to sedate Chin and hang him from the fan, ha ha.’

  ‘She said she’s going back to Ipoh and taking the cats with her. I advised her last night to get away for a bit; going home will be good for her. What I don’t understand is, w
hy’s she taking the cats? They’re Chin’s cats. Agnes much prefers Barnaby.’

  ‘Simple. She intends to poison Chin’s cats and drive off leaving the bugger with only the maid for company. Women like to leave a consolation prize when they go. But whatever she does and whatever Chin does, there’ll be no more visitations by rampaging Sikhs. The super made it clear enough – the vigilante trail ends and we leave things to the police. Hands off everything and especially hands off Chin.’

  I wish K the best of luck in playing father-to-be and ring off. Having exposed Chin as thief and plagiarist, we are to act as if nothing happened. That doesn’t sound like K. This baby thing has gone to his head. At least Chin’s History of Singapore University won’t be in bookshops today. That means the pre-recorded TV book launch will be on indefinite hold and middle-class Singaporeans will have to wait to have the book lying on their coffee tables – hopefully with Bernard’s name on the cover when it gets there.

  * * *

  Li Fang pulls up on his motorbike, carrying bags of fresh food from the market. I tell him I used the phone and offer to pay for the calls. He says never mind and that it’s bugged by the police so be careful what you say on it.

  ‘Is there anything you don’t know?’ I ask him.

  ‘Not much,’ he says.

  ‘Then you’ll know what to do with this bag; it has a gun in it. The gun I took from you in the Gardens and left in Düsseldorf’s car outside Chin’s. Seems like Chin kept it and David, the idiot, took it from Chin’s safe.’ I hand him the plastic bag.

  ‘I’ll take care of it,’ says Li Fang.

  We stop talking as Norsiah steps out of the shadows and helps Li Fang with his bags. My cousin is back. I should hug her or something. But she looks so serious I don’t talk to her. I guess Li Fang has told her about her father; she must be devastated.

  * * *

  I cross the road to Barnaby. She is sniffing and sobbing, her nose pushed against the crack at the bottom of Bernard’s sealed front door. If dogs could cry, tears would be rolling down her cheeks.

  ‘Come on Barns, old girl. You can’t spend your whole life grieving.’ I hug her, I promise never to lock her in or out again. She will not leave the doorstep. I sit beside her in silence.