“SO WHAT’S the 1966 intake like?” Vicky asked. It was getting to be an annual thing, like an A.G.M., or writing out the car insurance cheque, sending Ma a birthday card, Christmas shopping, Easter duty, dental check-ups.
“Oxen, of course. With a sprinkling of rats.”
“What’s oxen in zodiac terms?”
“Oxen!”
“Oxen?”
“The Capricorn sun-sign equivalent.”
“One of the dual personality sun-signs? Like Pisces. Two fishes?”
“No. No.”
“But the mountain goat and the village goat are diff—”
“The three dual signs are Gemini …”
“Yah. That’s obvious.”
“… Pisces, and Sagittarius.”
“Sagittarius? I thought Libra …”
“No. Sagittarius.”
Vicky decided she didn’t really want to pursue the subject.
“They get more and more the same every year, Vicky.”
“Isn’t that good in a way?”
“No. It’s like stamping out biscuits with the steel shape from a soft flattened sheet of dough.”
“Not a good simile. Biscuits made that way were always different. One’s hand shook. Sometimes they were cut too near the edge of the sheet … The thin steel of the cutter got bent now and then … Cookies do not crumble any more the way they used to.”
“I meant machine-made biscuits …”
“If they were like that when I was on the road, it would have been so much easier. Every customer the same.”
“And harder to introduce a new line, right?”
“Yah …”
“It’s murtabak and curried long beans tonight. O.K. by you?”
“Sure. Take everything in my stride. Same routine. Same stride. No problem, as my nieces and nephews say these days.”
“But this new year has brought a certain sadness to me, Vicky. The rats and pigs had a lot of individuals.”
“A lot of personal involvement, wasn’t it? What with Ignatius and Toni Ng …”
“You’ve got to meet her. You’ll love her, Vicky. I’ve been keeping that up my sleeve. Wait till the A-levels are over.”
“I’m not sure if I want to get involved in your family skeletons.”
“That’s not a nice thing to say.”
“But those boys like David what’s-his-name and Andrew Lee and that Chinese-ed chap with the admiral’s name …”
“Cheng Ho. He’s not really Chinese-ed.”
“Well, very Chinese, then.”
“He seems to be adapting to the western style of U.P. very …”
“Anyway. The love bits are more interesting. Tell me, what’s that bombshell Siti you talked about been up to?”
“She’s not a bombshell. She just looks so good. She doesn’t chase the guys. They chase her. Not like Lettie.”
“That’s Anna Perera’s girl, isn’t she?”
“Yes. Siti seems to have paired off with Andrew. But Cheng Ho is still prowling around. You know, their parents would be horrified to know their sons were running after her …”
“Why? From what you tell me she’s quite a nice person. You keep saying she won’t … she’s not like that.”
“Part class snobbery, part racial. And there’s the Islam element.”
“It’s not class, Phil. The Chinese haven’t got those hang-ups …”
“The Chinese of your generation, Vicky.”
“You make me sound like a hoary old thing. H-O-A-R-Y.”
“A surgeon’s son marrying a Malay girl who’s the daughter of some senior technical officer or a hawker’s son marrying a Muslim?”
“What’s happened to romance? The prince and the pauper …”
“Coming back to the class business … money is becoming the great divide.”
“So if Siti won the lottery …”
“Come on. Let’s eat.”
JUST BEFORE the June break Philippa surprised Vicky with her U.P. gossip.
“Hey, there’s been an interesting change of scene in the …”
“Yah. You told me. The P. is going to H.Q.”
“Not that, lah.”
“Toni Ng?”
“No. The Siti drama.”
“Make it brief. There’s a Bette Davis film on channel five.”
“You wanna hear or not?”
“Yah, yah, yah, yah …”
“It was about the time of the first year’s dance. Cheng …”
“Cheng Ho?”
“Yah. Cheng suddenly switched his attentions to Lettie. It’s almost a Noel Coward farce.”
“Anna’s girl?”
“Yes. Cheng moved in. They got on like a house on fire. I was happy for Cheng. I mean you can’t go on forever mooning about somebody else’s girl, can you?”
“Huh,” Vicky grunted.
“Then Lettie became the U.P. star overnight. Best speaker in the interschool debate. Laura … you know Laura Dengah? She’s at R.I. She told me Lettie even became a sorta dreamboat over there. At R.I. She has that figure of course.”
“It cannot be just sex.”
“Anyway, listen! All U.P. woke to the fact that that Lettie was now spoken for. Cheng Ho, of all people.”
“Hurry up.”
“Now Andrew Lee’s chasing Lettie … It’s partly due to Siti. She’s started drowning herself in mugging. That girl’s got her head screwed on right. She’s had her fun. The heat is now on. She’s determined to get G.P. one and four A’s. She’s going to get into medicine if it kills her …”
“Time, Phil. Switch it on.”
A few minutes after the film started Vicky turned to Philippa and asked, “Would you say Andrew Lee is a spoilt child kinda bloke?”
“Er … yes … but it’s not so much spoilt at home … it’s being beamed towards winning … not a spoilt child in the sense of losing its Teddy Bear … He didn’t lose her to anybody … yet he didn’t see what Lettie had until …”
“Shit, Phil. If you could hear yourself … Look! Look. That would really suit you. That fawn sort of colour. You know, like a beige. With pearl earrings. No need to have tiger stripes …”
“Shaddup, Vicky …”
They watched the film. They enjoyed being with each other even though they often just sat and watched Hawaii Five-O or one of the old films. There was someone to make comments to. Vicky loved watching football and got all excited and although it didn’t turn Philippa on she sometimes watched the English league matches with Vicky.
“Wow! That’s my kinda woman!” Vicky said excitedly as Bette Davis stubbed out her cigarette into the yolk of a fried egg.
The commercials came on.
“You were saying Andrew Lee has started chasing Lettie Perera, Phil …”
“So you were listening after all …”
“Yah. I am interested in all this young romance. That means the same act of competing for Siti binte whatever is being replayed?”
“Yah.”
“Does that tie in with Andrew Lee’s horoscope? What’s he?”
“Cancer. It does, in many ways. The key phrase for Cancer people is, I feel. That he does. He’s defensive as a Cancer man is. Fears ridicule. In his case fears he would be ridiculed if he lost. Anything. He’s not a team person. An individual. Childish and yet charming at times.”
“Good lover or not?”
“Possessive lover. The ‘I feel’ involves a sensitivity and a powerful jealousy.”
“Aggressive type, eh?”
“No. A Cancer is not. But Andrew is. That is probably his hereditary trait. And his brains also do not go with Cancer. That’s probably his environment.”
“Brains? Environment?”
“Brains to excel in exams, lah.”
“Shuush! She’s back. Do you think that hairstyle would suit your sister Catty?”
TONI NG let the side down the next week. They were racing against time to complete a project for the Science Centre exhibitcum-competition with one week more to go when Toni said she had to go home for two days; back to Ipoh.
Siti threw her hands up in histrionic exasperation. Andrew banged his fist down on the table with a “Shit!” Cheng Ho sighed a huge sigh. Kirpal Singh shot out, “YOU CAN’T!”
“Sorry, gang. I just gotta go.”
“What’s the matter? Someone sick?” Cheng asked softly.
“No. It’s prayers for my grandfather.”
They were silent, waiting for Toni to explain.
“You see, he died visiting his eldest son in Hong Kong. They’re sending the ashes home on Thursday and there will be the prayers. So I’ve got to go. My father sent me the plane ticket.”
“I see,” Siti said.
“He means a lot to you?” Andrew asked.
“Meant,” Cheng cut in.
Andrew glared at him.
“No. If fact he disapproved of me. Because I worked in the kitchen with the servants …” She stopped herself from adding it was also because she was not family and, worse still, not pure Chinese. “But he was a wonderful man. I know he disapproved of me, but not once did he ever show it. I mean by deeds, by action. You know what I mean. I got the same ang pows, if not the same attention as the other grandchildren.”
She paused.
“Unlike the other Ipoh families, he did not interfere with his children’s decisions. But he just couldn’t help showing when he disapproved.”
“So you are going to please your father?” Siti asked.
“No. It is my duty.”
“Hah yah!” Kirpal sighed.
“I’m going to miss you, Toni,” Cheng said.
“It’s only three days.”
“You said two days …” Andrew drawled.
She ignored his remark.
“LETTIE, DO you think Cheng is in love with Toni Ng?” Andrew asked, his eyes locked onto hers, across the table at the Raffles.
It was Andrew’s night of the kill. He had saved up to take her out with a flourish and the full works. “Raffles!” she had gasped, when he told her. He grinned in silence. It was working as planned. Her father and beautiful mother had met him when he arrived to pick her up in his lounge suit; a young ash grey, the tailor had said. And the lapels were ‘in’. He had a sherry with them, accepting their invitation to a drink with a cool remark that they had plenty of time. He saw them giving him the once-over and played his role superbly, he thought. He was sure they were impressed by his perfect English.
He waved in a subdued way as they drove off in his father’s little second car. Which Mum used. He even ordered wine, knowing it was the proper thing to do but nervous as a kitten about what to order. A half bottle.
“It’s beautifully cold,” Lettie said.
“Mountain-cold,” he added, smiling at her. He had read that somewhere. Leslie Charteris, he thought.
Andrew waited till they had finished dessert before he asked Lettie about Cheng.
“Do you think Cheng’s in love with Toni Ng?”
Lettie smiled. The family knew her as the one who would bid with only ones and twos in her hand. They had learnt to recognise that glaze in her eyes when she mustered all her self-control.
She was sure of one thing. Cheng did not back off from Siti because Andrew had won her. Cheng was the best thing that had ever happened to her. Ignatius, Catholic and all that, was a wimp next to him in her opinion. Although he was really quite nice.
“Maybe. I don’t know … can’t figure him out. Why do you ask?”
“He said he’d miss her when she …”
“Oh, don’t be silly! That was because of the project, Andy.”
“Hmm …” He liked the intimacy of ‘Andy’.
“She’s too old for any of the guys. Can’t you see that?”
“Yes. But she’s so attractive. And such a lovely person, isn’t she? At this age we are all susceptible to older women, you know.”
“Freud?”
“No, Andrew Lee.”
They laughed.
“Tell me about your father, Andrew. He sounds so very interesting.”