VICKY RUSHED into the flat as soon as Philippa opened the door.
“Guess what! You wouldn’t believe it!”
“Try me. B.G.A.?”
“It can wait. I must tell you …” settling herself down on the sofa.
“Wow. Must be some news!”
“I got a letter from the Custodian of Enemy Property. They found my car. In the weeds at the back of Nakajima’s house. You know it had a huge compound. Colonial bungalow. It appears he got it picked up from his house where I left it and they plonked it at the far end of the garden. I went to see it. Just as it was. But rusty here and there of course. Flat tyres. Gave me a thrill to see the old lady.
“Ah Keh arranged to tow it away before the Custodian changed his mind. And of course he has a Cantonese friend who’s a whizz at Austins. Runs a dirty little repair joint off Lavender Street. Gave him a good price too. Beautiful man!”
Vicky’s eyes were glowing with excitement.
Nakajima, Philippa noted. That must be her prewar flame.
“The wake of the war brings some wonderful surprises, Phil.”
“And some funny ones too,” Philippa added.
She told Vicky what Duncan had told her about the Swiss Club septic tank. Duncan had thought it terribly funny and she had forced a laugh to humour him. The sewerage system was working fine, but they could not find the underground septic tank. All the records were lost, he’d said.
“No one knows where all the shit is going to …”
“Happens all the time when you let it fly,” Vicky commented. Her excitement about the car was waning.
“Duncan said he sat down and thought where he would have located the septic tank if he was designing the system, and announced to the department chaps that he would show them exactly where it was … They laughed at him.”
“Sceptic about the septic tank, eh?” Vicky interrupted in a flat voice.
Philippa forced a grin and continued, “But it wasn’t there.”
Vicky had stopped listening.
“He’s lost face over that one …” Her voice trailed off as she looked at Vicky.
Then, suddenly, Vicky dropped her head into her hands
“Oh, God, Phil …”
“Vicky! What’s the matter?”
“Oh God! I shouldn’t have gone there …”
“To the house?”
“Yah. That’s where I killed him, Vicky. My Nakajima, my man in the centre of me …”
Philippa stood up and walked to the kitchen, to leave her alone for a while, and poured two drinks slowly. As she knocked the ice out of the trays, she thought that somehow the almost rabid excitement with which Vicky had given her news about the car was not the Vicky she knew.
Philippa set the drinks on the pahit table and put her arm around Vicky. Vicky turned her body and buried her face in Philippa’s bosom, sobbing. Her heart bled for Vicky but at the same time she felt isolated from her, unable to fully empathise with her. That was years ago. Why did she not crash into Keh’s arms and cry her heart out? Vicky had never told her the details of how she had killed the man she loved.
“PHILIPPA, I’LL lay down my life for you,” Duncan had slobbered the night after they had drinks and dinner of thick-cut salt-beef sandwiches at the Officers’ Club bar with his fast-drinking friends Fergus and Mac. Lots of drinks. Quickly.
She had asked if he was in a condition to drive before they got into the jeep. And as she swung her legs over the side he had grabbed her arm and tried to kiss her on the mouth, stuttering spittle-sprays. He did not say he was crazy over her. He just said it like that.
She kissed him on the cheek and walked away quickly.
He had apologised on the telephone, the following night.
Windows, she thought. Windows of his and Vicky’s souls opening suddenly.
“OH, YOU’RE beautiful, Phil,” Daud whispered as he caressed her tiredly, dreamily, with his head on her stomach as she lay naked on his bed. “Your body could even excite a woman, Phil.”
“It did once …”
“Huh?”
“Many years ago. But that’s the past, Daud. It’s behind us.”
“Mmmm, like that, ah?” Not questioning, just resigned.
“Get up. I’ll wash first. We’ve got to start moving if we want good seats.”
They were going to a midnight show. It ruined their Sundays but there was something exciting, yet calm in coming out of the dark into the cool air at two or three in the morning. And the way they dawdled, unhurried, in the open at a street stall with coffee or tea with ginger and a roti prata or a murtabak on nights they felt hungry. Philippa would have loved a steaming hot bowl of chicken porridge with a raw egg broken in to cook in its heat just before it was served, but the Chinese put lard in almost everything so it was always Muslim Indian food when she was with Daud.
She heard Daud begin to hum as he shaved in the bathroom attached to his room.
“No need to shave, darling. Jim Mason and Ann Todd are waiting for us.”
“Ann Todd, is it?”
“Yeah. I love her body.”
“You? She’d love yours, I’m sure, if she saw it …”
“Your love is good enough for me, Daud.”
“And your lust for me, Phil.”
“Hurry.”
“Moving with the speed of lightning.”
“And wear that brown shirt. It’s warmer.”
“Yes, boss.”
She hugged him as she slipped onto the pillion seat. Then she remembered.
“Oh yes … I forgot to tell you I saw you the day before yesterday. I was in Antonio’s jeep. You took the turn at Still Road at nearly thirty degrees.”
“Hmm?”
“You’ve got to be careful, Daud, my darling. Your body’s no good to me dead.”
“Don’t worry. My soul will live in you after I die. Forever.”
“We’re almost out of toothpaste. And there’s no spare in the cupboard.”
“What’s the name of the film?”
“Seventh Veil.”
“KEH’S GOT a meeting tonight,” Vicky said.
“I bought enough hae piah for three …” Philippa mumbled, walking to the kitchen to dump the upeh leaf in which the food was wrapped and the old condensed milk tin with the sauce in it.
“There’s Much Binding in the Marsh on at nine,” Philippa said, returning to the living room with two B.G.A.s.
“I’ll probably throw you out before then, Phil.”
“Bad day?”
“No. Just miss him.”
“It’s like that, is it?”
“He’s a wonderful person. Alive all the time. Driven …”
After all their years together, Philippa thought.
“What’s the passion these days?”
“The brave new world of Malaya. The Reds are really hot. Determined to get the British out as fast as they can …”
“And take over?”
“Don’t know if they’ve thought enough about that.”
“What will happen to us then? … Us, non-Reds … Or us, half-whites?”
“Don’t know, Phil. Does it matter? Does it all really matter as long as we have a certain measure of freedom?”
“Ha. You now insert ‘a certain measure’?”
“Getting wiser. No. Not wiser. Knowing more. Realising it’s all not as plain as a pisang tree.”
Funny simile, Philippa thought. A banana tree. Neither English nor Malay.
Vicky shifted her position on the sofa.
“Keh is excited about his brave new world but he is worried about the drifts of his Red friends. That’s one thing he has, Phil. He can stand back and look at slow drifts behind the storms of the moment.”
“What does he see now?”
“The weight of China bearing down on them. The Chinese communists are going to take over all of China. Then maybe us.”
“Oh God, another Yellow Peril!” Philippa sat up straight.
“Keh’s a Chinese. And a Baba. But neither of these completely. You know, he’s genuinely concerned that we should build a Malaya out of the shrewdness of the Chinese, the warmth and people-sensitivities of the Malays, with bits of Klings and Seranis, or even the Singapore Jews thrown in. You see, Phil, he’s such a clean, sharp person. He’s sure of his dream yet knows he has to twist and turn, digress into things like the White Y to get where he wants to go.”
Philippa was thinking of Duncan as Vicky talked, half listening. She waited. She knew Vicky had so much more to say. Not of the politics, but of Keh.
“Soon after I met him, he discovered Karl Marx. He’s done with that now. But it’s left a deep groove inside him. All said and done, Marx by his written words, not by all the fancy talk, gesticulating, rabble rousing … got under the skin of thousands of people like Keh.”
“Susceptible …”
“No,” Vicky’s interruption was crisp. “Not susceptible people. People who think. Ponder about things. People who understand, feel humanity. Like Keh.”