PHILIPPA’S MIND was still in a turmoil when she knocked on Vicky’s door the following evening. Seeing Gus Perera and Tessie Foley there was a shock for she had forgotten they were expected. They were more surprised than Philippa as Keh had not told them who would be at the meeting. Vicky ran around fixing drinks for everyone. Keh was smiling.
He started off with, “Err … this is not an A.G.M. of the Eurasian Association,” and a chuckle and got down to his agenda at once.
He outlined a plan for a team of between five and seven to operate like a fire brigade, waiting for information from his old gangland contacts and moving quickly and ruthlessly against the bandits, as he called them. They would operate only at night. They would try to attack while the bandits were loading their trucks, or swoop down on the hiding places of stolen goods and kill the guards (he said this unemphatically) then telephone the police.
“We will only call them to pick up the loot. Never expecting them to take action. And,” he added smiling smugly, “we will leave our mark.”
He paused.
“Stick man and halo?” Philippa said.
Gus Perera, Tessie and Vicky grinned at her. They knew a special Keh response was coming up.
“Ha! No. A White Y. White for purity. Three arms of equality, fraternity, freedom …”
“Or death …” Vicky added, bursting to say something.
“And why are we doing it?” Philippa asked.
They ignored her.
Keh went on with the details. Five or six of them would be waiting, armed to the teeth in a specially designed van, every night for the calls his contacts would make. He, Gus, Tessie, and two others. Vicky would man the base radio station at the flat. Philippa and some others would be their backing, getting information from other sources, or filling in for anyone who could not man the ‘fire-truck’ on any night.
He had made a sheaf of drawings on the back of an old invoice book on the coffee-table. They knew paper was still hard to get.
“There’s place for four to sleep. A table here. Storage for our guns, torchlights, thermos flasks, icebox, coffee cups under the bunks. The radio will be here.”
“It’s really a van, isn’t it?”
“Yah. The driver can come to the back.”
“Like a caravan!”
“Yah. It’s being built …”
“You got false number plates?” Gus asked.
“Three different sets.”
When the talk about the layout of the van subsided, Keh looked pointedly at Gus and Tessie and said, “Of course you realise you will be on duty every night. And go to work the next day …”
“Yeah.”
“Yes. I guessed so.”
“Vicky will stand in if necessary,” looking at Vicky.
Keh knew that as lovers Gus and Tessie could cut out their social lives now. As long as they were with each other.
“What about me?” Philippa asked after more details were discussed.
Keh sat back and lit a cigarette, as though a new chapter was to be read to the class.
“This is very confidential. We have an inside man. An Englishman.”
“Hah?” Vicky interjected.
“Yes. A European. It’s like this. What you don’t realise is that the communists here have been getting much support from the communists in Europe. England mainly. Really only moral support. There are many English communists who are dead against the colonial occupation of our country. With the liberation forces, a friend of ours came to Singapore. He knew how to contact us, and we checked his documents with our friends in London. I have met him and spoken to him about this plan. He is fully with us.”
Keh sucked on his cigarette and glanced at his audience.
“He’s with the Royal Engineers and has been temporarily seconded to the sewerage department of the Municipality. But he has friends, European friends, in most other government offices. The Harbour Board, the Police Force. He will provide us with all the official information we may need. Ships and cargo, for example.
“As usual, there is a need to maintain the greatest secrecy in making contact with him. We discussed various methods. But there is no better way to communicate than person to person discussion. Questions and answers. You know what I mean?”
Everyone nodded.
“So on the face of it he will fall in love with a Singapore girl and meet her regularly …”
“Philippa!” Vicky blurted out loudly.
“Yah …” Keh’s eyes drilled into Philippa’s.
“There’s no need to copulate with the guy, Phil,” Vicky said.
Gus and Tessie exchanged serious glances. Keh frowned and glared at Vicky.
“O.K.?” he asked softly.
“Yup,” Philippa said, nodding her agreement.
“Now and then we may need you to fill in on van duties, too.”
“Fine.”
Two weeks later Philippa went to Vicky’s flat for dinner and Keh was there as usual. He was in high spirits.
“We’ve got almost everything ready. The fire-truck’s done and I’ve got the guns. But not much ammo …”
“It’s only the sight of them we really need,” Vicky interrupted.
Keh grunted and continued, “And I could only get Tommy guns. Never mind, we’ll get Sten guns soon.” He grinned widely.
“Can we see one?” Philippa asked eagerly.
Keh frowned. “No need for you to … we must work on the system of needing to know …”
“You told us about the van,” Philippa said deliberately.
Keh grinned wryly. “You’re right. I shouldn’t have.”
“Sa poh beef tonight,” Vicky announced and added, “of a fashion of course. With what the cook could get …”
“You, the cook?”
“No, one of Keh’s buddies.”
“Yeah. And overpaid him like Hell. Because he could be useful to us. Street-stall man.”
“When do I start?” Philippa asked.
“I’ve fixed a meeting for the fifth of December to meet … For dinner with him …”
“Can’t,” Philippa cut in. “I’ve got a party that night. Antonio’s Christmas party.”
Keh’s face hardened. “Bugger the …”
“Reutens …” Philippa shot out at once. “I ditched them once. But this is different. It’s an obligation.”
“But Phil …” Keh said, controlling his annoyance, “We’ve got to make sacrifices for this …”
“This is different, Keh. Antonio is giving a party because he’s new in the P.W.D. He was working in Ipoh before the war. He doesn’t know the blokes he is with now. Even though booze and food’s so hard to get … he’s got hold of some NAFFI stuff … These are strangers to him … well, almost. I’ve got to help ”
“Ha, ha. Life ’n’ soul, eh?” Vicky interrupted. “More body than soul, my beautiful. He’s using you, sweetie.”
Keh turned to look at Vicky, surprised at her words, and turned back to Philippa.
“Your brother operates like a Chinese towkay, huh?”
“He worked for a Cantonese towkay in Ipoh. A contractor.”
Keh looked at Philippa as though expecting more from her.
“That’s about the only thing I know about his Ipoh job.”
Keh’s eyes narrowed. “Perhaps we can work this. I mean stage-organise it. That fellow’s an engineer, you know. I could get him to wangle an invitation … from one of his P.W.D. friends …”
“He’s got friends everywhere, hasn’t he?”
“Drinks around … He’s a smoothie.”
“Heard that, Phil?” Vicky asked. “You be careful, sweetie.”
Keh looked at Vicky again. Philippa wasn’t sure if he was puzzled or annoyed.
“Is that wise?” Philippa asked.
“Yes. It gives us a landmark for the cover.”
Shit! Philippa thought to herself, it’s going to be enough of a strain coping with the P.W.D. lot … and now this bod on top of it all. But she did not voice her thoughts.
The clay-pot beef was fantastic. They were all relaxed, making wisecracks as the brandy warmed them and polished their humour and their tolerance of their own lame jocular attempts.
Leaving after dinner, Philippa thought of the party as she sat on the bus. It would cost Antonio the earth. Would he agree if someone asked to bring another guest? Yes, if he was an Englishman. Britisher. Or European. How was Keh going to fix it? He had only ten days. And Vicky was right. Bloody body and soul.
She itched to ask Antonio who were coming to his party but could not think of a way to raise the subject so Antonio would not see through her interest. As he always did.
“God! I have nothing to wear!” she suddenly realised. “Even my shoes are the pits …”
No one gave parties yet, but drink was available. “God bless NAFFI!” James Rodrigues would say when he brought a bottle home, and “The Devil take the middleman,” Mary invariably added. Meat and vegetable appeared in the markets from God knew where. But the costs were crazy and few had Straits dollars for luxuries.
But the mood of the months approaching Christmas was an euphoria of liberation and celebration. The bad world had gone. Tomorrow was gleaming gold on the horizon. No one would refuse Antonio’s invitations.
The old S.R.C., the Singapore Recreation Club of the Eurasians, was actually thinking of getting up a New Year’s Eve dance. No one was sure whether it would happen, but Philippa had heard the D’Souza brothers were determined to get a New Year Eve do going. They had kept their instruments through the Occupation, making repairs with wire and soldering. Radio SEAC had brought them up to date. They were ready to go. And the Singapore folk, Philippa and Antonio were told, knew those chappies made real music. Man, they’re fantastic! Ronnie Frida had said.
So the times were right, the liquor available, the ice broken into glass-sized chunks, the yellow saffron rice smelling perfect, the furniture moved with much argument, Gloria and Vera and Catty excited and sweaty, Gloria grumbling about the lack of all the right ingredients for curries as Granpa Fonso and Granma used to make them, Catty lamenting the absence of a piano (We can’t sing and dance!) – when the first guests began to arrive, grinning with anticipation, thin and hollow-cheeked in their faded, loose, threadbare and patched party best.
Mr and Mrs Krishnan, the Senior Technical Assistant Ching without his wife, the Q.S.T.A. Harun and his wife, the Chief Draughtsman ‘Pendek’, Shorty in Malay, and the taller Mrs Pendek, a moustached Chinese with a mousy looking woman, the beautiful Mrs Lee, her hairdo perfect, her man following her. Roads, they said. Marcos – “Call me Ricardo” – as flamboyant as his missus Minda, Peter and Geok Boon, Wahab, Cheng, a surveyor, and his Ah Leng, Mr and Mrs Khoo, Jeswan Singh, Kailasapathy … Philippa lost count … But no Englishman. It suddenly dawned on her that Keh had not given her his name.
Philippa knew she looked a stunner in her pale blue dress, tight at her waist, after Ma had taken it in for her, and around the upper half of her hip-line, hanging loosely down to mid-calf, her hair washed, long and loose in a nonchalant style, as Vera said, just covering her breasts if she moved it to the front and smelling absolutely divine.
Vicky had handed her the bottle of perfume Keh had found in his mysterious way with her sharp words. “Here. For the party. It’s all for the cause, sweetie. Don’t pour the bottle over yourself. It’s like gold, you know.” Then, as an afterthought, to be doubly sure she was not misunderstood, she added, “It’s only a loan, Phil.”
Philippa knew if she had missed seeing the Englishman come in, he would notice her and come up to her. Keh said he was a smoothie, didn’t he? And tonight she was the most beautiful woman in the room. Mrs Lee’s look confirmed it.
She had told the family she was not going to help. Antonio needed her to entertain his guests, she said. Catty had let out a bellow of a “Hah!” Gloria was unusually silent.
Mrs Pendek turned out to have a hilarious sense of humour. Cheng kept looking at her breasts. Old Carlos related stories of his experiences with the Nips. Krishnan had an effeminate high-pitched laugh. All in all, they were a party-happy exuberant crowd.
When the food was served, buffet style, she continued talking to Kailasapathy. Everyone called him Kailas. He had obviously had some quick ones and was in a pleasant, uninhibited, talkative mood, telling her the story of the Jap who slapped him for no apparent reason and took his watch. And the one about his friend who knew some jujitsu and wrestled with a Jap officer in a friendly match but was slapped when he beat the Jap.
“That doesn’t sound right,” Philippa said. “I always thought everyone observed a strict jujitsu code … a code of honour …”
“Yes, yes, of course, but even on the cricket field I saw before the war an Englishman … a pukka orang puteh, not one of our boys … pretend the ball did not touch his leg-pad, which he must have damn-well felt, and stayed at the wicket when the umpire missed it … the umpire couldn’t see … er … he was blocking … I mean his body … there are always those who conveniently forget their morals on the sports field.”
He went on about cricket as Philippa threw a quick glance at the buffet table to see how the others were getting on with the food. She would stay talking to Kailas until the last of the men had filled their plates …
Kailas, Antonio, Mrs Coombes who came to help in the kitchen and the family were the last to serve themselves. To Gloria’s relief there was enough for everyone to have seconds. But there were not enough chairs. Antonio had not reckoned on so many of them bringing their wives. Krishnan, for example, had tried to persuade his woman not to come but the thought of good food in these times and perhaps even a Eurasian Devil curry, made her adamant.
With her plate filled, Philippa looked around. There was a small group of four sitting on the verandah steps, with plates on their knees, or eating with only a spoon, and one eating Asian-fashion with his fingers. She put her cutlery down on the buffet table and went up to them. “Come, come, come, come join us …” was the spirited welcome chorus.
Only one of the four men was a stranger to her. He was introduced as Daud bin Ibrahim. She knew it was the Malay and Koran version of the biblical David, son of Abraham.
She had seen the back of his tall and powerful looking body, the muscles just discernible under his thin cotton patched pale green shirt. He grinned and nodded sociably, his hand clutching a ball of yellow rice and his mouth full. But his black eyes met hers squarely, wide open and searching.
“Daud here was telling us his ideas of the ideal house for Singapore,” Jeswan Singh said. Someone said, “Carry on, Daud.”
He continued from where she had interrupted him. Gloria’s curry was delicious. Gloria’s belachan with garlic and lime on the side. She listened with half an ear, catching snatches of his words, as she explored the promises of the selection on her plate. “… It’s not just the high ceilings and the raised floors of the colonial houses … floors … old Malay, lah … the tall square plastered brick pillars, like the trees in our jungles … latticework … like the canes and creepers … column-heads simplified from the grand European styles … no colour … except the roof … the residents had the money to provide the colour with carpets and drapes … and of course, they were transients … passing through … they would take their colours with them to India, Nigeria, the West Indies on their next posting … and don’t forget the backdrop was always green … not the colours of the changing seasons of England …”
She caught the fire, almost a fury, a passion in his voice and stopped listening to watch this big ugly-faced man letting himself go. His right hand with grains of rice clinging to the fingers gesticulated as he talked. She saw he was distilling thoughts he had lived with for years, looking at them from every angle. She glanced at the other three. They were captured with his words, his glistening eyes, his greasy hand, his whole body talking. When he paused for another mouthful no one cut in. He muttered, “Whoa, bagus — Gee, it’s good” — at times and picked up his thread and his listeners’ attention again as though he had not digressed.
Philippa looked more closely at him. He was not as big as he had appeared to be from the back. But his shoulders and arms were full and round and hard. His brown face was big. His nose was big. His eyes were big Malay eyes. There were scars of teenage-pressed-out-pimples all over his face. Not pockmarks. One would say he was ugly if one saw a photograph of him, but as he sat on the verandah steps, reliving journeys into new zones, concepts he had crossed and re-crossed many times, the coarseness of his skin, the mound of his nose, the heaviness of his jaw faded and Philippa saw a man of extraordinary force glowing, leading his listeners along the paths he was now walking and still feeling his way as he walked.
The spell broke when someone said he just had to have more of that sayor lodeh, vegetables in a soupy coconut milk gravy.
“And the rendang, and the kurma,” another chipped in, teasing.
“And don’t forget the chincharlok!”
They drifted to the buffet table and she was alone with Daud.
“You’re really into this, aren’t you?” she asked.
“Yeah. My job … I’m an architectural draughtsman. Don’t you like your job too, Miss Rosario?”
Nobody had asked her that before. But she had asked herself.
“Yes. Love it! I’m a …”
“Teacher …” he grinned. “I heard them talking, lah.”
Then he leant forward closer to Philippa and asked, “But, truly, what’s your real love … I don’t mean sweethearts and all that. Is there something you really love but …”
“I know what you mean …”
“So … what?”
“Literature … Words … the English language …”
He leant back against the rise of the step behind him and smiled into her eyes.
“You … you … are an open person, aren’t you, Miss …”
“Philippa …”
“I mean, no holdbacks. When there are no, er … no …”
“Suspicions … mistrusts?”
“Ya.”
“And your first love?”
“Music. The clarinet. Jazz … but it doesn’t pay, lah.”
“That’s it … life.”
That night, sleeping on the floor at Antonio’s place, she groaned as she recalled her inane, uninspired response, squirming as she reran the evening through her head. It killed the start of a fascinating heart-to-heart talk. The others had returned with their plates just as she dropped the ball he had started moving to and fro.
As she sipped her coffee alone the next morning while the others were at mass, she thought, I could go for that bloke. In a way he’s like Vicky. But ah … Vicky’s beautiful. And he’s a Malay.
She had spent many an afternoon after school in her kampong outside Malacca racing around with the brothers of her Malay girlfriends, climbing trees, flying kites, spinning tops, playing the horseback game of chang kuda, lying on plank floors on sweltering hot afternoons moving beads or shiny red Saga seeds from hollowed-out hole to hole in a wooden block, pitching her mind against others’ in an old Malay game. In tune with the Malays … But deep within she knew that although the old folks too shared so many common ways with the Malays from whom they were descended, the ogre of religion constantly raised its aggressive head between them. They understood why their Malay friends had to wash, pray, cover their bodies, use only the right hand for food, and all that … because they too were strapped and bound by the severe, irrational dictates of their Catholicism. The same fires flared in them, more brightly than in their disciplined Chinese friends. They shared the same carefree love of life. But once a girl reached puberty the elders moved in and drew lines of separation.
Daud was no ordinary man. But …
About a week after the party — for years after it she remembered it as THE PARTY, just as her friend Susan Donnough used to refer to the Davenports’ wedding at which she met her lifelong man as THE WEDDING — Antonio asked her if she was free next Friday.
“There’s a fellow in the P.W.D. I invited to our Christmas party who asked me if he could bring an English friend too. I said yah, but he and his friend didn’t turn up. He was full of apologies with some bloody excuse … and asked me yesterday if he could come round on Friday evening. With that English bloke. Said he was a civil engineer. In the Sewerage Department of the Municipality … Said he had got hold of a bottle of Johnnie Walker Black … NAFFI stuff, of course … Can you be around, Phil? You’re good with strangers … The bloke’s really in the Royal Engineers. The B.M.A. have roped him into the Municipality. Sort of secondment …”
Philippa made no response. It took all her concentration to control her face. He coughed and continued.
“I bumped into Gus Perera on a bridge site two days ago and casual-like asked him if he knew the R.E. bloke. Said he’s an OK chappie … decent sort.” He didn’t add that Gus had questioned him on why he’d asked. Gus seemed so inquisitive, he’d thought.
“Can you, Phil?”
“Yes,” Philippa answered at once, thinking that Keh didn’t muck that one up after all … It’s fallen into place nicely. The White Y is beginning to move. Only there won’t be enough witnesses of my meeting him casually.