“I DIDN’T notice Siti when I looked at the new intake. She’s one bundle of woman. WOMAN. Not the usual gangly U.P. girl. She’s solid, fleshy, matured to round hard nipples, Vicky. She would excite you, sweetie.”
“Phil! For Gawd’s sake!”
“Anyway, I didn’t notice Siti until the day before yesterday. And of course I checked the files. She’s a Gemini. She’s quite a …”
“Look Phil, I done my penance by listening to your beginning of term reports with all the Cancers and tigers and even a spicy bit from Ipoh this year. Siti has got to be really good or we watch the Black and White Minstrel Show.”
“Siti is something else …”
Vicky got up and switched on the television.
“HEY IGNATIUS, I met a chick who is really something else,” Andrew said to Ignatius.
Ig, as they shortened his name, Australian style, had made friends with Andrew Lee and Cheng of A.C.S. Those A.C.S. guys weren’t so proud after all, he’d decided after talking to them on the first day. Andrew clicked with Ig because they spoke the same kind of lingo. Both of them read Mad magazine and agreed that Lolita was the greatest movie of all time. The Longest Day came damn close to it though, they also agreed. Helen Reddy, Dean Martin, especially his King of the Road, and Barbara What’s-her-name who sang People … People … people who love people, are the luckiest people … Yah, yah … No need to sing it, I know it. They had so many touchpoints.
“She’s something else, that girl.”
“Don’t know her.”
“Man, you haven’t lived!”
“What’s so great …”
“She’s built for the big screen, boy. Big, chunky, solid. And her eyes. The kind that make guys write poetry, man. Shit …”
“You mean Gadzooks.”
“Christ, she’s it.”
“Good thighs too,” a voice chipped in. It was Cheng who had walked up to them and caught Andrew’s last sentences.
Andrew turned round aggressively to Cheng. “How do you know?”
Ig saw Andrew was a bit upset that Cheng could add more to his description of Siti.
“I sat next to her and the last button of her skirt was undone.”
“Sex maniac!” Ig said.
“Also Nora Chang … that R.G.S. girl, you know. You know Nora Chang?”
“Yep.”
“No.”
“Nora Chang told me Siti was really fierce on the basketball court.”
“Eh. Please. Malay girls don’t play basketball,” Ig said.
“I believe it! I believe it!” Andrew burst out with his arms spread wide. “That girl is something else …”
There was so much to discuss. The whole scene was new. The girls. The labs. The teachers were different, all agreed, not seeing it was only because the teachers treated them differently. They were no longer schoolboys and schoolgirls.
The P.E. teacher became their friend and confidant from the first day. They were amazed how he put his finger on a fault in an arm movement, in the way the racket was held. The tendency to cut into the centre of the field when taking the ball down along the sideline while passing it infield was so seldom considered, he pointed out. The way he just slipped over a hurdle, flicked the hockey ball with such ease into the top corner of the goal. Not just that. He talked of people, motives, feelings, reading the opposition, life, explained so many things in scientific terms: body structure, muscles, presenting the minimum body drag in the water, the mathematical arc of the javelin … It all fitted in. Their science, biology, mathematics, the scraps of human psychology thrown to them in history, lit., G.P., human reactions, norms and probabilities.
They had never imagined that out there in the field, in the squash courts, the swimming pool, it was not just learning a skill but finding out about other parts of one’s body, of one’s self, of strengths and weaknesses, physically and mentally.
At tutorials they were alternately led through a demolition of all they had held as basic truth and sacred, destroying their images of the teacher, and building new attitudes of respect, admiration and person-to-person relationships with their teachers at U.P.
U.P. was a totally different brave new world.
There was a students’ council, a mini-parliament for the U.P. students. It represented the students in talks with the college staff and was supposed to ensure that students’ rights were maintained. Although the seniors did not seem to be sure what their rights were. Members of the council were elected by the students every year. The election, the first years were told, was contested fiercely and was a high point of excitement in the college year. The seniors told the freshmen they should start looking around for possible council members among those in their year.
One day one of the student counsellors approached Toni Ng and told her that the first years, Pre-U Ones, as some called them, had to organise a Freshers Dance, and seeing she was by far the oldest of the new ones, the council had decided she should chair the organising committee to manage the whole thing.
Toni put up a notice informing everyone there would be a meeting of the first years at the canteen on Friday at four thirty.
Miss Wee spoke to Toni within an hour after she had pinned up the notice.
“Why didn’t you ask one of the teachers how we usually do it?”
“Oh? Did I break a rule? I’m sorry.”
“No, there’s no such regulation but …”
“Oh, thank goodness!”
“But, as I was about to say before you interrupted, we could help guide you to organise the dance. For one thing, you could have got permission to use the hall or Lecture Theatre One for the meeting.”
“Thank you.”
“I’ll arrange that. The hall’s too big. I’ll get Lecture Theatre One for your meeting.”
“Don’t trouble yourself, Miss Wee. The canteen will be fine.”
“It’s not a suitable place. There’s so much traffic and noise. And it’s not private.”
Miss Wee gave more reasons. When she had finished, Toni spoke.
“Please don’t worry about it. Leave it as it is. It is not good to make changes like this for minor matters.”
Miss Wee glared at Toni. Toni looked into her eyes, trying to show her determination without rebelliousness. Miss Wee turned sharply on her high heel and walked away.
As the boys were changing into their running shorts, the podgy guy from Gan Eng Seng said to Cheng Ho, “Did you see that notice? They’ve made that Toni Ng the chairman. A Malaysian. A foreigner.”
“Yah. I guess they thought it doesn’t matter whether she’s a …”
“But she knows nothing about Singapore. We’ll probably have to dance the old twist all evening.”
Cheng smiled at him and did not say anything more. As they walked out to the field he sounded Ignatius out.
Ig turned to look at Cheng. “Have you met her?”
“No.”
“She’s quite mature. Got more brains than half of A.C.S.”
“You mean S.J.I. and St Patrick’s combined, don’t you?”
Ignatius put on his best sickly grin.
“But seriously, she seems to be a good one. The council guys are not fools, you know. They must have checked her out.”
“Was she a captain of some school team or a prefect in her school?”
“Dunno.”
“How come she’s so old?”
“She said she worked for six years after her O-levels.”
That impressed Cheng. He had spoken to Ignatius twice in the last fortnight but had not really got to know him. He took the opportunity to keep talking as they waited for the others to trickle out of the changing rooms.
“How come you didn’t stay on in your school?”
“My aggregate was twenty-one. And I didn’t play for any school team. So I was at the bottom of the list …”
“Ah.”
“But the more interesting question is why are you here in this new college? Second boy in A.C.S., aren’t you?”
“I got fed up of the A.C.S. type …”
Ignatius thought he was going to continue and waited. Cheng did not say anything more.
Siti felt uncomfortable under Andrew’s stare as they sat in the canteen. At their first meeting she was thrilled at the way he had looked at her. Andrew Lee, the top boy in A.C.S., was giving her the eye. That would impress her friends at Crescent Girls’ no end. Andrew couldn’t take his eyes off her. She thought of him as she lay in bed that night for hours. But the way he was looking at her here in the canteen, in public, made her uneasy. She saw Lettie Takanashi looking at them.
“Tell me, Andrew, why did you come to U.P.?” she asked, more to distract him than anything else.
Andrew was looking at her lovely big black eyes and imagining her round shoulders in a bare-top evening gown. He loved to imagine her in Dior creations, leaning against the penthouse bar, holding sparkling crystal glasses of deep red wine and long cigarette holders, talking coquettishly to him in an impeccably cut pale blue lounge suit of light material that hung easy on his muscular shoulders, and would not impede a sudden lunge or a swing of his right if some bastard tried to grab at her.
He was about to answer spontaneously that he had decided on U.P. because here he would be King of the Road and tell her of the devil of a time he had had with his mother and the principal of A.C.S. and almost the whole world who thought to a man, including his mother, that he should stay at A.C.S. He checked himself and replied, “Because I thought a new J.C. would be an exciting place. One could help to lay down the traditions. We’re lucky, Siti, you and I, we’re building for posterity here. Us. You and I.”
Siti smiled. She didn’t believe a word he said.
“Did you and Cheng Ho both decide to come here?”
The shock of seeing Cheng at U.P. on the first day came sharply back to his mind.
“No. It sorta jus’ happened.”
“So, by chance we have two stars, and two muscular, handsome guys with us here …”
“One, Siti.”
Siti laughed. Her eyes glistening, her mouth red and open.
She wanted to say “Cheng Ho?” but knew it would kill the fire she had ignited.
The word went round about Miss Wee trying to change the meeting venue. Antagonism against the Malaysian selected by the students’ council dissolved in the need to show a united front against anyone trying to treat them as school kids. There was an almost hundred percent turnout of the first years.
Toni sat alone at the table she had pulled away from the other canteen tables. She explained the setup. They needed six or seven on the committee. She invited suggestions.
Nominations, someone said.
Yes. Nominations.
Siti, who had led her school in so many debates, saw that Toni in spite of her age was nervous. She lacked the skills of public speaking. But she held the meeting’s attention and effectively cut off the smartass who shouted “chairwoman” when she informed them of her appointment with, “I’m using standard Queen’s English.”
When seven had been nominated she asked for more but no more suggestions were made. She asked the seven to sit at the table with her and then threw out an invitation to the meeting to give them ideas for the dance.
It was a good meeting.
Among the seven were Andrew, Ignatius, Lettie and Cheng. Andrew had proposed Siti, but Siti had stood up and made a little speech about her inexperience of dances and “begged the chairman and her fellow students gathered here this evening to accept her declining of Andrew’s proposal in an understanding spirit.” She ended by assuring them she would be there in the frontline when they needed her where she could make a significant contribution.
Toni saw that the woman (she did not think of Siti as a girl) had a certain charisma. Not just with the guys.
PHILIPPA SAW Siti walking fast with big strides along one of the covered college walkways one evening and called out, “What’s the hurry?”
“Our first game. Against Bartley Secondary.”
“You playing?”
Siti stopped and laughed. “It’s a rugger game, Miss Rosario.”
“You interested in rugby?”
“Yah. It’s a good physical game. Body against body and all that. We must support the guys. Why don’t you come along?”
Philippa hesitated. It was a lovely evening. But the thought of her ice-cold B.G.A. at home made her mumble that she had a pile of corrections. Siti went on her hurried way.
Only a few girls were cheering. Siti didn’t join them. She stood alone at first but within two minutes a group of guys was around her, egging her on to cheer and answering her usual question of why the ref had allowed the advantage to rule and did not blow the whistle.
A loose scrum formed just near them. The boys around her were yelling encouragement and Siti kept shouting, “Come on Up! Up! Up! Come on Cheng. Go! Go!”
“Hey, Cheng is not the only player, you know,” someone said and everyone laughed.
When the excitement dropped as the ball went out, a deep voice said fairly loudly in her ear, “Whoa. You come to see Cheng play but you’ve never been to the pool to see me swim.” The boys around must have heard, but on the other side of the field a U.P. three-quarter had the ball and was running with two U.P. men close behind in line to take a pass. Siti knew the voice and read the tone. She turned away from the thrilling run to look at Andrew. His face was black with anger. She looked into his eyes and shook her head. No one noticed her. She put her hand out and put it on his chest for a second and turned back to the game.
A roar went up. U.P. had got a touchdown.
In her elation Siti shouted, “Well done, Cheng!”
The guy on her right laughed. “Not Cheng, lah. David.”
Someone quipped, “Only eyes for him, ah? Like that?”
She laughed, “I must be blind.”
“Love is blind, lah,” from a voice near her.
“Cheh! Don’t be like that. Friend-friend only.”
Siti turned around to look at Andrew but saw only the back of him slinking away from the rugger field. She thought about his jealousy on the way home. It worried her. She had done nothing to indicate he was her special guy. She went over their conversations.
THE DANCE committee’s first meeting did what Toni had planned. Amid wisecracks and ribbing, the committee decided on all the main points she had listed and responsibilities were allocated.
Toni had done her homework. In fact she had asked Miss Wee for ideas. Miss Wee was all sweetness and appeared to have forgotten Toni’s refusal to change the venue of that first meeting.
“We’ve got to watch that Toni Ng,” she said in the staff room. “She’s a crafty politicking female.”
When Miss Wee left, Mrs Teo said to the others, “A snake can recognise a snake.”
Philippa laughed loudly. “You don’t know what a good joke that is, Mrs Teo. Toni Ng is a snake of Chinese astrology.”
“You and your superstitions!”
Toni also saw that Andrew had thought about what was to be discussed at the meeting. It impressed her.
When they came to select the committee member responsible for organising the food, Andrew pointed with his whole arm raised above the table to Cheng Ho.
“You know all about this. You should do the food.”
There was a challenge in his tone. Everyone was silent. Toni looked at their faces, but they avoided her eyes. Cheng had clenched his fists and was hanging his head. As she looked at him, he raised his head and said to Toni, “You probably don’t know, Toni, that my father runs a cooked food stall at Toa Payoh Central Hawkers’ Centre. I work there most nights.”
Toni moved at once. “Do you cook too?”
“Yes sometimes.”
“Hey!” she shouted out loud with her hand extended to him. “Shake. I was a cook for more than three years in a dirty little restaurant in Ipoh! And if I may say so, a damn good cook.”
Cheng grinned and took her hand.
“Whoa,” the lanky guy from Anderson said. “We have two experienced cooks in U.P.”
“Hey. We must have a competition one day to see who’s the better cook.”
A chorus of voices agreed. Then Ignatius said, “Why don’t we do it at the dance? We could play it up. Battle of the kwalis.”
“The woks.”
“Male versus female,” Lettie said.
“Aiyah Lettie, you always …”
“Singapore versus Malaysia.”
Toni looked at Cheng with a twinkle in her eye. “Man, you got no chance! Cantonese food will beat Hokkien any day.”
Cheng started to say something, laughing, but everybody was talking at the same time.
“Whoa. This is fierce now.”
“What about both cooking Teochew?”
“Or Toni cooking Hokkien and Cheng …”
“Monk jumped over the college wall …”
“You crazy!”
“This is a dance you know, not an eating party …”
“Good food is essential …”
“It will be really Singaporean …”
“Feet, feet, feet …”
David shouted, drowning all the others. Everybody stopped talking and looked at him.
“Please! You’re not on the rugger field, man.”
“I mean we should have that dish with chicken feet, and pig’s trotters, and …”
“Come on, David, what?”
“Three feet, man.”
“Come on, what other foot you want to put in?”
“What can you expect of a guy who’s not doing bio, huh?”
Toni banged on the table, laughing, “Order!”
“Kopi-see for me.”
Cheng agreed to be the food organiser. And they forced Toni and Cheng to agree to a battle of cooks at some other time.
“Must have a time frame,” someone said.
The business was finished and Toni closed the meeting. But no one moved. They sat around chatting.
The pimply Chinese High guy turned to Toni and teased her with, “With that experience, so marriageable, huh?”
“Nothing less than a millionaire,” she said.
“Tarek harga, ka?” Samad said.
Toni replied to his crack in Malay and they continued in Malay, which no one else understood, while the others talked.
She threw a quick glance at Andrew. He seemed to be sulking.
PHILIPPA MADE a mess of the students’ bus season passes that year and she was determined to sort it out before she went home one Friday. It was past eight o’clock when she finished. As she walked past Lecture Theatre Two she saw two students clinched in an embrace in the dark recess of the Lecture Theatre One doorway.
She recognised them at once. Siti and Andrew Lee.
Cripes, if I was caught doing that in my time Pa would have whipped the living daylights out of me, she thought as she walked past with her head in the air, seeing no evil.