“KEH,” PHILIPPA turned to him, sitting on the sofa beside her at Vicky’s. “Are you quite sure Duncan Gudgeon is on our side?”
Keh went rigid. He drew on his cigarette and stared over her shoulder for a full minute in silence. He didn’t ask her the obvious question. He knew he didn’t have to. He looked into her eyes.
“There’s something … er … I mean I have a prickly feeling there’s some misfit somewhere …”
She stopped but he did not prompt her on. Vicky walked in from the kitchen and sensed at once the hollows pregnant with unknowns in their eyes.
“I think I should tell you about our conversation at the Officers’ Club the other night. Maybe I’m being too suspicious.”
Vicky sat down opposite Philippa.
Philippa related what Duncan had said.
“Hmmm …” Keh grunted without comment when she finished.
“I don’t know …” she muttered, barely audibly, just to say something, to cut the still air.
“That’s very … good … er … good thoughts … another angle … But. You just carry on as you are. Be careful not to let any names out. I know you can hold your drink, but still, be conscious. Don’t slow down your drinking with him. That’ll be suspicious. Just be on your guard.”
He got back in step.
“The worst that can happen is that the police will knock on your door and take you to the station for questioning. Probably early in the morning. Stick to your story, our story, that he’s fallen in love with you. You don’t know what they are driving at. All you know is he’s mad because you keep having a headache when he … You know what I mean.”
“Of course Josephine knows,” Vicky interrupted with a snigger.
“Tell me, do you think the Hainanese boys at the Officers’ Club think he’s crazy about you? Or you over him?”
“Cripes, Keh, how the hell do you expect me to …”
“Your behaviour, sweetie,” Vicky cut in. “Holding hands, touching and that kinda slush …”
“All I can say … Or put it this way … I really think the club boys think I’m a kwei loh, a foreigner. And they wouldn’t notice if he kissed me there. Which I’ll have you know,” looking at Vicky, “… he hasn’t. If I was an Indian or Chinese they would notice and talk.”
“Yaah …” Keh drawled. “You’re right. All that blonde hair.” He smiled at her. Then he turned to Vicky, “Food, Vivvie, I’m sure Philippa’s hungry. I am, for sure.”
“Yah, yah … but I don’t want to miss out on anything.”
“What Phil has just told us makes it more important that none of us should have unnecessary information. I don’t want you to hear what I am going to say to Phil now, Vivvie.”
Vicky left them, the lines around her mouth hard.
Keh started talking when Vicky went into the kitchen. “Tell him this is to be treated as very confidential at this stage. I want any information he can get on one Lim Song Kah. He’s a small-time rice merchant renting a room and some warehouse space on Boat Quay. I want anything you and D.G. can get hold of even if it’s his brand of samsu or how he picks his teeth. What is important is that no one must suspect we are hungry for information. So I have thought up a cover story.
“Here’s a little 555 book with his name and a company name on it. In Chinese. But no address or telephone number. And lots of unintelligible numbers. Tell D to work on that as best as he can. The police would be the best bet. But with the utmost discretion. He can say he found it. I leave that to him.
“And, Philippa, he must ask only once. Then enquire later disinterestedly over a drink perhaps if they found the man. If he gets bogged down, report back to you. If he draws a blank, I mean.”
Philippa thought the whole thing odd. She took the pocket-size book with ‘555’ printed on its cover. It was dirty, stained with coffee and some green stuff and frayed at the edges.
They had dinner and Keh asked Philippa to refresh his memory on Duncan’s background, saying, “Maybe I’ve forgotten what you told me before. That’s the snag about not writing anything down.”
Vicky grinned and did not interrupt at all.
After dinner Keh said he had some phone calls to make and went to the telephone in the corner of the lounge. He dialled and spoke in Hokkien.
“Oh, yes, Vicky, with all that about Duncan, I forgot to tell you he’s asked me to an Officers’ Ball. Full dress.”
“That means an evening gown and …”
“Haven’t got one. But there’s time. I wanted to ask you if I should get a black one made.”
“Oh no! Makes you look old, sweetie.”
“Not if you’re young …”
“You’ll be thirty-two this year, my dear.”
“That’s young,” Philippa said, then added, “Still …”
“Blue,” Vicky said, “… the pale blue of early morning skies and duck’s eggshell.”
“But I’m always wearing blue.”
“Or white. No. That’s too suggestive.”
“Suggestive?”
“Yes, wedding gowns.”
“Ahh … you and your …”
“One is wise at forty-three, you know,” Vicky said with a supercilious smirk, sat back in her chair and continued, “So he’s asked you to the ball of the year.”
“Who said it is the ball of the year?” Philippa retorted with a question and in the background saw Keh start and turn to look at her. Then he muttered a word which sounded like tongue and something stored in memory told her it meant wait in Hokkien. He covered the mouthpiece with his hand and waited, listening to their conversation. “He’s sweet on you, isn’t he, Phil?”
“Maybe it’s just lust.”
“You’ve used that before to avoid the question.”
“I don’t know. Nor do I care.”
“Oh?” Vicky acting very surprised, following quickly with, “But Mummy knows when her baby is in love.”
“Like a cabaret Mummy?”
“Now don’t get nasty.”
About a week after Duncan invited her to the Officers’ Ball, he telephoned to say he had news. She said she had a pile of essays to mark but she could have a drink with him. A preprandial quickie.
“Sugar. A big shipment. Could be a target.”
After he delivered his news, he said in a matter of fact way, “I’ve also asked Tony and Gloria.”
It came as a surprise to her. She had assumed they would be part of a big group with people like Fergus and WRENs and WACs, and they would be in a sense isolated and apart. Because of her. He’s not considered what the other officers would say. Gudgeon’s really going overboard fraternising with the locals. Maybe it’s deliberate.
As she brushed her teeth that night she wondered why she had felt let down, deflated, when Duncan said he had invited Antonio. And she reminded herself that Daud was always there, waiting for her. Duncan was an outsider intruding, but an intrusion moving into her, heavily, slowly, like a water buffalo.
Daud possessed her, her whole soul and body. And he had begun to take up more and more space in her life after work. Vicky’s visits to her flat and dinners with Vicky and Keh had dropped back. There were days when she pleaded with Daud that she had to catch up with domestic tasks she had postponed for weeks or even months. Or that there were stacks of exercise books to go through.
“You know I’m an English teacher and that means I have a far heavier load of corrections than the other teachers.”
“Yah, but they adjust your teaching hours — how do you call it, contact time? — because of that?”
“They say they do, but they don’t really.”
“O.K., O.K., Phillie.”
“Oh! You know I don’t like that Phillie of yours.”
“I’m sorry. I forgot. But you’re not a filly for a stud,” he tried to defuse her irritation with a joke.
“Don’t be crude. You know I can’t stand …”
“So tomorrow’s out because of homework. And our usual Islamic Saturday lunch is also out because of … what is it? I can’t remember.”
“The christening.”
“Oh yes. Do you really have to go? Do you know them so well?”
Philippa just looked at him without saying anything.
“I mean, do the Reads mean so much to you?”
“Kiss me, my darling.”
They reran the same script two weeks later. With different digits. A meeting to organise the seminar on the Shakespeare play of the year’s exam paper on Saturday afternoon. And again. Carl Leicester’s wedding anniversary. And the exercise books.
“Tell you what. Why don’t you bring your exercise books over and do them here. I could even help you, my love.”