THAT WAS the first time Philippa had seen Vicky lose control of her emotions. In spite of their intimacy and enjoyment of each other, Vicky had never extended anything into excessiveness, nor allowed her annoyance and anger to carry her over certain limits she had decided for herself. They indulged themselves in a bottle of samsu one evening during the Occupation. After the initial taste it seemed O.K. Then good. Then quite wonderful. It was absolute nectar as they finished the bottle. Philippa was all for rushing to the shop to get another bottle, but Vicky would have none of it.
Vicky did not let breaking down that evening depress her. In fact she seemed to get more elated every day. Philippa did not ask Vicky about her Japanese man again.
August was a long month of waiting for the British to return. If they had known when their liberators would arrive in Singapore it would have been a shorter month without unknowns and doubts.
It was rumoured that the Nips were rushing to build themselves a prisoner-of-war camp. Philippa never found out if that was true. But what was clear was that the Nips treated the locals with the greatest respect and dispelled all fears that they may try one huge genocide followed by mass hara-kiri.
No one played tennis at the club. Rahman bin Ali, one of the ball pickers, and Vicky played to their hearts’ content and she got all the staff to give the place a thorough spring-cleaning. “We want to welcome the British with a squeaky-clean club,” she told them and they worked like slaves.
Vicky’s spirits rose as the days passed. She was glowing when Philippa dropped in one evening. Vicky told her she would be going away for a week from Wednesday. Back to Malacca. Philippa did not believe her. As far as she knew the causeway between Singapore and Malaya was still closed. She left Vicky’s place depressed.
Vicky’s lie rankled with Philippa. By Wednesday night she was tearing herself to pieces. After dinner she took a rickshaw to Vicky’s flat in Tiong Bahru. There was just a chance Vicky was ignorant about the causeway, that she had returned to her flat.
As Philippa paid the man, she looked up and saw the lights on at Vicky’s flat. Her heart leapt. She looked again to make sure it was the right flat and to her surprise saw a man walk into the balcony and throw down what looked like an empty cigarette packet. A red-hot bolt of anger shot through Philippa. Not just anger at Vicky for lying. It was a terrible painful jealousy. “The bitch!” she muttered.
She could not see whether he was dark or fair, whether Chinese, Malay, Indian or Eurasian. Nor what he wore. He was silhouetted against the light, and she saw that he was well built. It enraged Philippa all the more. Two thoughts struck her. First that he should be so untidy in his habits. If Vicky had seen him throw the packet she would have shouted out something nasty. That was Vicky. And just to have a packet of cigarettes meant he had money or connections. With the blood in her veins boiling Philippa looked for the packet. She found it at once and had another bad shock.
It was a packet of English cigarettes. It was impossible to get them now. Was he an Englishman? Probably one of the advance party. And the bloody bitch was entertaining him. Letting the first goddamn Englishman she met screw her! Her beautiful body. Her beautiful firm thighs. Shutting Philippa out.
Philippa struggled to sort out her thoughts and recall her brief glimpse of the silhouetted man. Rather short for an Englishman. But, there were short Punjabis and Germans, tall Japanese.
She was sick with emotion. She could barge in; if Vicky would open the door. It would be a test to see if she would. But Philippa knew her feelings would erupt uncontrollably when she saw Vicky.
Her temples were throbbing. She thought of the man with his arms around Vicky’s naked body, his lips on Vicky’s. A white man. Somehow it would have been easier if he were Indian or Chinese. But a man with skin as fair as hers, perhaps blond too, seemed to add more explosive fuel to the fire consuming Philippa.
That is why Vicky was so elated, she told herself.
Philippa’s head began to spin. She knew she was swaying. She felt she would lose consciousness at any moment.
A voice came out of her mental fog, forcing itself into her ears. It spoke in Hokkien. “Miss. Are you all right?” The rickshaw puller was still behind her. She told him she had taken ill suddenly and asked him to take her back to where he had picked her up.
Philippa spent the next eight days with jealousy tearing through her. On Sunday she decided only the calm of the church would still the storm within. Apart from the fact that Vicky had deceived her, Philippa was dazed and confused over her own reaction to Vicky’s unfaithfulness.
Church was not the solution. Philippa had long ago left Catholicism in her innermost soul, but continued to attend Sunday mass. For many reasons. The hot church, the smell of incense, the drone of the prayers, the choir with the organ, which had made her soar with happiness in her youth, all did not work. Philippa walked out as sick of heart as when she went in.
Standing under the big entrance porch of St Joseph’s Church, lighting a cigarette as though she had just come out of the church, keeping her eyes on both the big door and darting to the two smaller front doors on each side of it, was Vicky, clutching a pack of cigarettes. Philippa saw the same green-brown and white pack she had seen on the ground outside Vicky’s flat at Tiong Bahru.
She knew Vicky had stopped going to church. But before Philippa could decide if she wanted to speak to Vicky, if she was stable enough now to speak to her, Vicky walked quickly up to her.
Vicky reached out, held Philippa’s upper arm and kissed her on the cheek. Philippa’s sick mind thought of Judas and her whole body stiffened with anger, fear, hate and jealousy.
“Phil … You haven’t …”
Vicky stopped as she saw the dark rings round Philippa’s eyes and the way she went rigid and avoided her look.
“What’s the matter?”
“What’s the matter with you?” Philippa snapped back.
“Phil!”
She glared into Vicky’s eyes.
Vicky was silent for a second. Then she said, “Let’s go to the coffeeshop at Bain Street corner.” And quickly added, “I thought you were ill.”
“The place will be full of Serani after mass.”
“Then follow me.”
Philippa walked beside Vicky out of the church compound. Just before they went through the green steel gates, looking at Philippa and not where she was going, Vicky tripped on a stone sticking out of the sandy, grassless ground all around the church. Philippa grabbed her, her arm around the back of Vicky’s shoulders.
“Oh, thank you, Phil,” Vicky said, intensely.
Philippa kept her arm around Vicky for a few seconds longer than anyone would.
“Thank you, Phil,” Vicky repeated, looking into Philippa’s eyes.
They walked a little way in silence. When they were out of sight of the people waiting at the bus-stops near the church, Vicky moved her hand up and held Philippa’s upper arm.
She guided Philippa into a coffeeshop in Middle Road. She ordered two coffees. Then she turned to Philippa.
“Did you by any chance go to my place?”
“Yes.”
“And saw someone else there?”
“Yes. A bloody man.”
Vicky’s face hardened. “We have a beautiful friendship and intimacy.” Her tone was icy. “But you damn well know we are not bloody husband and wife. Your family at any time means more to you than I do. Like all of us. If I have a lover it does not mean I love you less. Get that straight, Phil.”
Philippa cast her eyes down, stirring the coffee unceasingly.
“I am woman … like you,” Vicky added, speaking clearly and slowly. She let it sink in. Philippa looked at her. Somehow a weight dropped off her heavy heart.
“Who is he?”
“Let’s go now. I want you to meet him.”
Philippa was in two minds. But Vicky went to the counter to pay. The coffee was still too hot to drink in spite of all Philippa’s nervous stirring. Coffee was too expensive to leave unconsumed.
“Let me finish my coffee.”
“Very well.” Vicky did not touch her own cup.
“Don’t you want to …”
“It’s not important now.”
Philippa kept her waiting. It was as though she wanted to hit back at Vicky, in any way she could.
Vicky started talking as soon as the rickshaw began moving. They sat close to each other with their hips and thighs touching. They just had to in the narrow rickshaw seat.
“I lied to you because I wanted to tell you about Keh later …”
“Keh?”
“That’s what we all call him.”
“A Chinese?”
“Yes,” very slowly and deliberately. Vicky had heard the overtones of racial prejudice and Philippa was immediately ashamed.
“I’ve know him for several years. From before the war. An unusual man. Like all people with …”
“Faults and prejudices …”
“Yes,” very sharply.
“He’s been fighting the Japs in the jungles in Malaya. With Gus Perera.”
“Gus Perera?”
“Yes. It won’t be a secret any more. Gus was in the jungles …”
“I thought they were in Bahau?”
“It’s a long story … Phil, Keh is someone special to me. Do you understand that?” Vicky did not wait for an answer. “He’ll be staying with me for another week. Then he’s got to go back to sort some things out …”
“I’m very confused.”
“You silly girl. I know you are.”
Vicky looked hard at Philippa. She turned her eyes away.
“Phil, you have never been in love? Not really in love. I know. When it comes it will hit you like an earthquake. I know. I am sure. You are a passionate woman. All the rigid traditions of our society and your religion cannot contain you. Like me. Only I have learnt that nothing is for sure. Nothing. Absolutely bloody nothing!”
Philippa sensed without analysing what Vicky was saying. She felt swamped by her wave of words and revelations.
Vicky’s man was square built with a thick set of hair and piercing Chinese eyes. He glanced at Vicky in surprise when she came in with Philippa. But there was no annoyance at the unexpected intrusion. He looked unshaven but later she saw it was because of the scars of scratches all over his face.
A terrible jealousy churned in the pit of her stomach as Philippa looked at him. She imagined Vicky clawing at him in passion and scarring him. She knew the passion in the woman.
There was small talk. Then Vicky explained Keh had been with MPAJA, the Malayan People’s Anti-Japanese Army, living and fighting in the jungles of Negri Sembilan, Malaya; to Philippa a faraway region to the east of Malacca over which the sun rose every morning, a part of her country she did not know. Vicky went on talking but little registered with Philippa. Later that night in bed, some of the talk floated back to her, and she felt a deep unidentifiable pain and the sense of aloneness.
As Philippa took her leave, Keh said he was glad she had been such a good companion to VeeVee, obviously his intimate abbreviation of Victoria Viera, during those difficult times. She thought his accent was poor.
Philippa hated herself for many days for her emotional eruptions after that first meeting with Keh and it hung in her heart for years like a leech sucking her blood away.
She only realised the full implications of her emotions after meeting Keh many years later. She and Vicky had so much in common and they both had cast off so many of the shackles of their upbringing. But Vicky had gone much further down that road. Far ahead of Philippa. There was a gap Philippa had not seen.
That night when she cried into her pillow, Philippa did not realise that Vicky, 11 years older, had lived many more lives than she had.
I killed a man, she had said.
She was as strong a personality as Philippa but Vicky rammed into people with much more force than Philippa showed. Maybe it was the age difference.
Yet, for all that, Vicky was gentle.
Years later Philippa became aware of the raw force that had mellowed Vicky earlier in her life. That was long after her own raging feelings had soared to a screeching crescendo and dropped back, muted with time and pain. In the late forties …