Even the mere sight of a letter addressed to her brought unease. When V.K. Pandy, without a word, handed her a brown envelope with her name written on it, she felt a little frisson of alarm. She had, as usual, after her visit to the dispensary in Middleton Square, walked up to him, in the most casual way, and bought his pamphlets, gesturing, with a smile, for him to keep the change. Each time he would say, looking at the money, ‘Oh my, my, are you sure, Miss? Thanks, Miss.’
He looked shabbier and thinner than ever, and on the few occasions when she had actually stopped for some minutes to talk to him, he had launched into his usual diatribe against the great TPK for ruining his life and possibly bringing about his wife’s cancer.
‘The Almighty God is just after all,’ he said bitterly, referring to TPK’s wife’s numerous health problems. ‘As you Chinese say, Sky God has eyes and ears.’
Inside the taxi on her way home, Maria tore open the envelope and expected more reproach from a world that she was not at all helping in its distress. Maggie had accused her of heartlessness; would V.K. Pandy denounce her for cowardice? Would he ask why she had stayed in fearful hiding instead of coming out to support Big Bird and why she vanished from the scene as soon as the police arrived?
The message, written in neat, old-fashioned handwriting on old-fashioned blue letter paper, said, ‘Dear Miss Seetoh, from what I can see, you are a good, intelligent, kind person. I would appreciate it very much if you could join me for lunch at Raphael’s Place on Junie Street (just behind Middleton Square). I have important things which I want to talk to you about, because I trust you.’ Trust. She had begun to distrust that word about herself, because a student had repeatedly thrown it back at her.
The day of the lunch would be a Saturday; V.K. Pandy must have inferred she was a teacher and would not be free for lunches on weekdays. Another concession must have been the written form of the invitation instead of a verbal one that would have attracted attention. V.K. Pandy could not have been unmindful of the very brief duration – barely a minute – that she allowed for each encounter with him, as if she, like the others, was aware of the presence of those infamous surveillance cameras that, as it turned out in the end, had been no more than a figment of the fearful imagination. He probably also understood that as a teacher, she came under the strictures enjoined upon the entire civil service against any political activism, meaning any support of the opposition.
Before the end of his first month in St Peter’s Secondary School, Mr Ignatius Lim had already circulated three reminding messages to the staff and singled her out for special attention. As she sat before him in his office, and he poured out coffee and went into a long, smiling preamble on many subjects including the highlights of his career in education, she could not help thinking, ‘The man’s detestable. How I miss the principal.’
At last he said, ‘I understand, Miss Seetoh, that you sometimes buy the pamphlets of the opposition member.’ The school had its spies, and she had no idea how thorough they were. ‘May I remind you, as your principal, that this is contrary to official regulations.’ He fished about busily among a pile of important-looking papers on his desk, pulled out one, and put on his reading glasses. ‘Ah, here it is. It says ‘No civil servant should –’ ’
Maria, all outward calm, was all roiling irritation inside. She had to grip the sides of her chair to prevent the contempt from pouring out: ‘May I remind you, Mr Ignatius Lim, that you are the best example of the civil servant becoming less civil and more servant by the day.’ She had shared the scathing pun with Dr Phang who had reacted with a self-deprecating roar of laughter that Mr Ignatius Lim would have been constitutionally incapable of.
It was a rather pricey Italian restaurant and Maria had already planned on how to take over the settling of the bill without embarrassing poor V.K. Pandy who was gratefully receiving donations casually dropped at his side in Middleton Square by compassionate Singaporeans. She had some wild conjectures as to the purpose of the lunch – to get her to help in raising funds to settle his debts and pay for his wife’s cancer treatment, to get her help, as a teacher of English, in the writing or editing of his pamphlets, to get her support to draw public attention to the fear gripping an entire society under the great TPK, as Big Bird had done.
What she was not prepared for was his announcement that he was quitting politics for good and returning to India, to the village of his birth and boyhood. Why was he telling her, of all people?
He said he had been touched by her generosity and her kindness. ‘Altogether you have bought my pamphlets thirteen times, Miss Seetoh, more than any other Singaporean,’ he said. ‘I don’t think you bother to read them; you probably just throw them away, but that doesn’t make your kindness less.’
Some diners at the restaurant easily recognised V.K. Pandy, nudged their companions and began casting curious glances in their direction. Even if Mr Ignatius Lim had made a severe appearance then, she would not have cared. Her heart went out in overwhelming pity to the man who looked very old and defeated. She asked him about his wife. ‘A little better, thank you. She’s responding quite well to the treatment.’ She asked him about his plans. ‘I will live a quiet life. There’s an ashram near my village that I will go to for peace of mind.’
She struggled to find the correct words for an intention shaping in her mind. ‘Mr Pandy, it will make me very happy if you will accept a small donation from me –’ She had had less money since her husband’s death, having to make a large monthly allowance to her mother, which she suspected went to the useless, gambling adopted son. But she felt that financial assistance, more than kind words, was needed by the unfortunate V.K. Pandy at this critical juncture of his life.
He pushed back the envelop containing her cheque saying, ‘No, no thank you. Right now, we’re okay.’ He leaned towards her and his face was contorted in the vitriol of a gathering rage as he said, ‘It’s not even the hundreds of thousands I’ve lost, my house, my business. It’s my dignity, my pride! You know what the great man said to me?’ His voice rose in its pain, and the diners at the nearby tables looked down and concentrated on their food. ‘He said to me, ‘You are nothing but vermin! You will come crawling to me, and then I will grind you under my feet!’
Maria felt anger rising on his behalf. Tua Peh Kong who sat on a throne with a mass of writhing worms under his feet was alive and well in Singapore. V.K. Pandy was by now gesturing angrily with both hands and raising his voice. ‘I am a man! I am a human being! I am a Singaporean! He has no right to use all kinds of insulting words to me.’
Publicly the great TPK made it clear that political opposition in Singapore was a useless legacy from British colonial rule, creating nothing but disruption and disorder and thus hindering the smooth carrying out of government policy. He said any thorn in the side of the body politic should be yanked out at once, singling out V.K. Pandy for special opprobrium. V.K. Pandy said, ‘You know why? I’ll tell you why. I had caused him the greatest humiliation of his life. When his party lost that seat to me and he saw Singaporeans wildly cheering me and hissing at his defeated candidate, that must have been the moment when he swore, ‘That man will come crawling to me, and I will grind him into the ground!’ Well, TPK, I will show you! I will show who comes crawling to whom.’ Aware of the sheer impossibility of that absurd self-promise, V.K. Pandy’s eyes flashed with angry, hot tears and his hands trembled.
She had to do something to calm him down. It was not exactly appropriate, but it might work. Taking out a folded piece of paper from her handbag, she passed it to him and said with a smile, ‘Here, read it. It’s a poem on the great TPK, which I was inspired to write after a friend gave me an idea. We had a good chuckle over it.’
Dr Phang had made a bet with her. ‘If you can get The Singapore Tribune to publish it, you win one hundred dollars.’ She had said incredulously, ‘The Singapore Tribune? Are you crazy? Well, you’ve already won your bet, but I’m not paying you one hundred dollars.’
V.K. Pandy read the poem. A small twisted smile appeared on his face. ‘I like it,’ he said, ‘especially the comparison of Tua Peh Kong’s thunderbolts to TPK’s crippling defamation suits. I like the ending:
Even Tua Peh Kong must bow before a greater,
Who has no thunderbolts, no warrior suit, no throne, no spears
Who has no name
Because simple humanity needs no name.
‘I like it very much. May I have it?’
‘Of course,’ said Maria, and was glad that the man’s fury had abated enough for him to start eating his pasta. There was a whiff of alcohol about him that added to the overall appearance of defeat and despair.
He said, as they shook hands before leaving the restaurant, ‘You will not see me again in Middleton Square or anywhere in Singapore. I leave for India in a week’s time.’
‘Goodbye, Mr Pandy, and good luck. Do take care.’ The newspapers carried a very brief report of his departure; almost immediately there were rumours circulating about how the man had gone back to India to die in his native village, for, unknown to anyone, he had a serious illness that he had kept secret for years. Then for months afterwards, all thought of V.K. Pandy vanished as if he had never existed.
‘Oh no,’ thought Maria when she reached home and her mother handed her a note, saying, ‘It’s from Heng. It’s urgent, he says.’ Why were people coming to her with their problems in writing, as if to use hard documentary evidence against her, if necessary, in the future? I’ve got a headache and a paranoia coming, she sighed. I want nothing more to do with the world! She slumped into a chair.
‘What’s his problem now? Why can’t he just tell me? Or why don’t you tell me, Mother? He must have told you about it.’
‘Read it,’ said Anna Seetoh miserably.
It was a long, type-written letter which, even at a glance, looked too tedious to be read, for it was peppered with figures and even diagrams. The innocuous technicalities were a cover for the desperate message. Heng was making a request: could she buy over his half of the flat that would go to them jointly after their mother’s death? He proposed a sum which he said was much less than the market value; indeed, in a few years, she would be able to sell the flat for a good profit if she wanted, as the accompanying figures and diagrams proved. He did not mention the debts that were behind the urgency of the letter, but as a softening touch, he referred to his decision to send his autistic son to a good but rather expensive school for children with special needs.
‘What on earth –’ cried Maria angrily. ‘How dare he talk of claiming his share, Mother, while you are still alive?’
Anna Seetoh said, looking so wretched that Maria’s anger against her brother rose to match the pity for her mother, ‘It’s okay, since I can continue living here with you. It makes no difference to me.’
Maria got up and walked straight into her bedroom, rubbing the sides of her head to reduce the turbulence of the thoughts screaming inside.
‘Well, what shall I tell Heng?’ said her mother, standing at the doorway.
‘Tell him to come and see me tomorrow,’ said Maria wearily. ‘I want to hear exactly what is in his mind.’ She threw the letter into the wastebasket.
It was the same each time – her mother’s pleading on his behalf, her remonstrances, then the buckling on account of the poor wife and son. When Heng sat in a chair before her, looking up only occasionally, she realised, with a little shudder of horror, that the standard image of the addict she had only seen on TV programmes, with the haunted eyes, the look of desperation mixed with a burning intensity of excited expectation of the next fix, was right before her eyes. She had meant, on behalf of the rest of the family who seemed helpless before him, to give him a sound lecture about his unconscionable neglect of his family and to extract a promise to do something about his addiction. But the sheer thought of its futility drained her of all purpose and energy; she knew that of all persons, she would be the last from whom he would accept advice, much less rebuke.
In the end, a single thought prevailed: she wanted nothing more to do with him, and the disbursement of the sum would be a final severance. She might even come to see it as a disguised blessing. It would deplete her savings alarmingly; she had always meant to save steadily towards some vague dream of buying a small studio apartment in a new condominium and living entirely on her own – no mother, no Por Por, no maid. Solitary, single, alone – the word, whatever its connotations for women like Meeta or Winnie, had, for her, its own special meanings of peace, freedom and self-fulfilment.
‘Thanks,’ her brother said briefly, both to her agreement to his proposal and a gift of some clothes for his wife and toys for his son, which she were in two large paper bags. She could never have trusted him to take back any cash gift for them; he would have made straight for the 4-D betting booth or the jackpot machine in the Manis Club. Anna Seetoh had watched him once at the machine, completely mesmerised by its flashing lights, its idiotic pictures of rows of fruit, lightning zigzags, clown’s faces and the seductive ringing sounds of coins pouring out on to a waiting metal furrow. He would not leave, said Anna Seetoh shaking her head, because he was bent on hitting the jackpot which had snowballed to ten thousand dollars. In the end, she had to forcibly drag him out of the gambling room.
Out of Maria’s hearing, in the kitchen with his mother, Heng’s posture of defeat vanished in a new flare of outraged pride. ‘Who does she think she is, talking to me like that?’ His dream of winning the million-dollar first prize in the national lottery fired him with the savage triumph of the ultimate revenge, ‘As soon as I collect my prize, I will say to her, ‘Tell me how much I owe you, plus interest, down to the last cent,’ and then I will throw the money upon the floor for her to pick up. But not before wiping my backside with it!’ He let out a sharp, hysterical laugh.
His mother said, ‘Please, not so loud.’ In her early morning visits to the Church of Eternal Mercy, she would double her prayers for him and make a special petition to St Anthony, the saint for hopeless cases.
‘My turn to write a note,’ Maria thought grimly and she sat down and wrote her brother a note, or rather a warning that he could expect no more financial help from her. The ending words should be seared into his brain if he had any pride at all: ‘You are an irresponsible husband and father and should be ashamed of yourself.’
Only he, she thought with a return of tender feelings as she prepared for bed that night, would be able to restore her trust in notes. He had never written her one. Even an unsigned one, making oblique reference to a happy moment shared, a joke laughed over together in the parked car outside the Botanic Gardens, or over lunch in the Bon Vivant Café would have brought her so much joy. In a week’s time, he would be leaving for Europe; in a week’s time, they would be meeting for that climactic moment, even if there were no silken bed in their hotel room. While he had waited with cheerful patience, she had been deliberating about it for more than a year, before succumbing to that irresistible ‘Well?’ The perfect, one-word proposition.
She was tempted to send him a note that was sure to make him laugh, summarising his romantic quest and its success in a cartoon depiction of a large question mark of hope suddenly straightened out into the exclamation mark of triumph. She had actually done the drawing, in bright red, but thrown it away, because he encouraged neither letters nor calls from her, never once mentioning Olivia’s powers of detection which ranged far and wide. Olivia Phang had befriended one of the clerks in her husband’s office, a very friendly, talkative girl, who, while thanking Mrs Phang for the occasional presents of perfume and costume jewellery, had no idea she was divulging much valuable information about her husband.
If not a meeting, then a note, if not a note then a call: a yearning woman sadly whittled down her hopes. If, in the midst of his hectic programmes, he had managed to give her a brief call, a very brief one lasting no more than a minute, how happy that would have made her! A woman in love grew hungry for small assurances, and if deprived of them, would pine and wilt.
Meeta and Winnie were far from wilting; both had suddenly found themselves in circumstances that, like a shower after a long drought, revived parched flowers and made them bloom and smile again. Byron was meeting Meeta for lunches and drinks at the Polo Club because he happened to be experiencing his own romantic dry season when one female companion had left with no replacement in sight, and the ever available Meeta Nair, large, overbearing, loud, might do for temporary companionship. He had never initiated any of their meetings, so it was with special delight that Meeta accepted his invitation to be his partner at the coming gala ball in the Polo Club. She understood that his insistence on her finding another couple or two to join them to form a large table at the ball was born of a general unease at being alone with her, a fact she was not too embarrassed to mention to Winnie or Maria before satisfying herself with the sneering proclamation, ‘The bastard should realise I’m playing the same game too! One of these days, when I find my Mr Right, I’m going to chuck my for-the-time-being beau!’
Winnie was in the happy position of being free from all doubts and misgivings; in fact she hinted that she would soon be engaged to a man she had met through a friend’s introduction, a Chinese-American who did secret work all over the world for the US navy.
Meeta had whispered to Maria, ‘Introduction, my foot! She found his name in some dating column in some newspaper,’ and again, ‘Secret work in the US navy, my other foot! He’s another of those sweet-talking con men that our poor Winnie’s always picking up, who will run away as soon as he’s fleeced her enough.’
Winnie seemed to have an interminable source of old money from parents and grandparents who were among the most established families in the historical state of Malacca in Malaysia. Endless rubber, coconut and oil plantations from the time of British colonisation continued to feed Winnie’s bottomless bank account which, like the magic purse in fairy tales, was refilled with gold coins, as soon as the last one was spent. Meeta said that men could smell Winnie’s money from countries far away, which was why a Frenchman and now a Chinese-American had come a-wooing.
Maria said, ‘Why, Winnie, you look years younger!’ Indeed, Winnie looked prettier, her normally sallow skin suddenly irradiated by love’s glow.
She said simpering, ‘Wilbur makes me feel so happy.’ Like a child eager to share happy secrets, she told Maria about her many happy dates. ‘We’re planning a short holiday to Langkawi,’ she confided with the unmistakable coyness about a holiday, at last, with a man. ‘I bought some suitable nightwear from Robinson’s,’ she confided further, blushing deeply.
Maria thought, ‘Poor Meeta.’ As Winnie’s housemate, she must have heard about the planned Langkawi holiday and the bought lingerie a dozen times.
Wilbur, a very happy-looking individual who talked and laughed endlessly, was all for making others happy too. ‘My philosophy?’ he said. ‘Nobody comes to Wilbur for a favour and goes away disappointed! You can back me up on this, eh, Winnie girl?’ He put his arm around her shoulder and she giggled. ‘Not exactly a useful quality for my kind of work, eh, Winnie sweetheart?’ And he winked at her.
Maria had never seen Winnie look so happy. ‘What, your friend Maria has no partner for the ball?’ he said to Meeta. ‘Why didn’t you tell me earlier? I’ll call Freddie at once. His wife’s away, and won’t mind him going out and having a good time now and then. Freddie’s a great guy!’
‘Now, Maria, you can’t say no to joining us,’ said Meeta severely, ‘because Winnie’s Wilbur has gone to all the trouble of finding you a partner. We’re all going to have a ball!’
Winnie said sympathetically, ‘What a pity your Dr Phang is married. Otherwise, he can come as your partner. I’m sure he and Wilbur will get along fine. Both of them are so handsome and distinguished-looking!’