~
Tidying up my desk at the end of a work day, I heard sobbing. Georgie had her head on her desk, her copper hair sprawling over the wood.
‘I can’t help it, Mr Joe. Sorry. I just can’t stop.’
‘What’s up?’
‘Pippy died.’
‘Pippy? Oh no.’ Pippy was a cat that had been Georgie’s companion for years, travelling around the world, spending months in quarantine in Argentina, Dubai, Hungary. She had been sick many times, only to pull through. For these last few years she had been diabetic, and quite a lot of Georgie’s wages went on medicines for Pippy. But the cat had been irreversibly ailing for months, stuck on the couch hour after hour, day after day. This morning, there she was, in her usual place. ‘But dead, m’laddie!’ Georgie had cried through her two classes that day. ‘Pippy stuck by me no matter what, no matter where. Pippy was like home to me. Oh, it sounds indescribably stupid. I know it does.’
‘Georgie, I’m going to a friend’s place. Why don’t you come?’
‘Could I?’ said Georgie, immediately brightening. ‘That’s just what I need, Mr Joe, to get out. Oh, thank you! I say, young man, where are we going?’ She began sweeping papers from her desk.
I took Georgie to the Idas. We found the maid singing as she took a load of washing down the path by the side of the house, sandals clacking, basket swinging.
‘Is Ronnie home?’ I asked.
‘No. Everyone’s out. Only Reggie’s home,’ smiled the girl. Reggie was the Idas’ oldest son.
We let ourselves through the gate down the path and climbed a flight of external stairs. At the top was a small room on the side of the house.
Reggie was alone. Slender, dreamy, lissom, he sat cross-legged on his bed in the corner, as if waiting for us. He lived on the opposite side of the house to Ronnie, and I had never seen the two brothers together. They had similar interests: both wrote songs, both were artistic. They looked almost identical. But some unspoken enmity existed between them, and each acted as if the other did not exist. One never spoke the name of the other, and they never appeared in a room at the same time. Ronnie seemed particularly irritated by his older brother’s nameless, invisible existence, and had taken on the role of eldest son almost aggressively. This included planning their sister’s wedding. In return, Reggie displayed an absolute lack of interest in Rini’s wedding. Perhaps he disliked weddings. I knew he had been divorced – Reggie quietly informed me of this the first time I had talked to him, as if to do so was his unpleasant duty.
He smiled when he saw me, and raised an eyebrow at the sight of Georgie. Rousing himself silkily, he bounded to the tiny balcony, singing down to the maid: ‘Tea for three, please.’ The maid tittered below. Reggie came back into the room, offered the single chair to Georgie, then hopped back on the bed.
‘Reggie’s a musician,’ I said.
‘Ah, not anymore,’ sighed Reggie. He looked forlornly at a guitar in the corner. ‘Once I was: we were going somewhere; some of my band mates are now famous.’
‘Really?’ said Georgie.
‘Yes. They use some of my songs, you know. You might have heard them on the radio.’
‘Really? What –’
‘Then this happened.’ Reggie rolled up his sleeve. White and pink flecks ran from his wrist to his elbow. ‘Joe knows the story. I had a car accident. My arm went through the windscreen. All the tendons and ligaments were severed in this hand. I was a drummer, always had been. Now I can’t hold a drumstick. Watch.’
He took up a snare drum and a stick from under his bed, and hit the drum. The stick bounced out of his hand into the wall above my head. Reggie winked at me. ‘See? I can’t hold a stick anymore. There’s no strength in my hand. Never mind. I can use it for other things. I can still strum a guitar, for example.’ He winked again.
‘Well, let’s hear it, then!’ sang Georgie.
Reggie didn’t need to be asked twice. He took up the little guitar sitting by the bed and crooned a quiet, melodic song in Bahasa.
‘That’s an old one,’ he said.
‘Joe! Joe!’ a voice called from the bottom of the stairs. Mama had found us. She stood looking up, in her silver satin slip and pink slippers, gesturing impatiently with one hand, cigarette in the other. ‘Come down from up there! The food’s down here. There’s nothing to eat up there. Makan! Makan! Eat! Eat!’
‘Aduh, Mama’s on the warpath,’ moaned Reggie. ‘They used to be headhunters in Sumatra, you know. I’ll tell you about her grandfather one day – big chief. You’ll be glad you never met him. You’d better go.’
He didn’t follow us as we trooped down the stairs into the house.
‘Makan, makan!’ harried Mama, coming out of her husband’s surgery and slamming the padded door behind her. Only then did she spy Georgie. ‘Aduh! Wanita!’
‘This is Georgie, Mama,’ I said. ‘She’s a work colleague.’
‘Ah! Where are you from, Jenny? Scotland? Austria? Italy? New York?’
‘England, actually!’
‘But you’re too thin – far, far too thin,’ bemoaned Mama, coming forward with one arm raised. ‘Have you got worms?’
‘I think not! Worms – did she say worms?’
‘What will they think at home? Your mother – what will your mother think?’
‘My … mother?’
‘That we have no food here in Indonesia? Don’t let her think that. You’re a beauty – white skin, red hair – but you’re far too thin. Men don’t like skin and bones. Trust me. It’s the same with Joe here. Too thin. Makan! Makan!’ She waved toward the table piled with food all day long. ‘It’s there, everything’s there. It’s laid out. Why go on ignoring it?’
Rini, the betrothed daughter, smiled at us from deep in one of the leather couches, eel eyes swimming, legs tucked under her.
‘Eh, Joe, Joe!’ Ronnie leaned over the railing. ‘Come up,’ he said, ‘I have a new song.’ After some negotiation over a plate of cakes, Mama agreed to let us join Ronnie upstairs: as long as we ate a real meal later. ‘The song’s about the atrocities in the Balkans,’ said Ronnie excitedly, ‘I cannot believe what’s happened over there. What a country. What a sad continent. How can an army turn on its own people like that?’
‘We have another songwriter in the family,’ said Georgie.
Ronnie ignored this. But he played his song for Georgie; bamboozled by the English, she looked at me cross-eyed.
The maid reappeared with a tray of brown tea served in glasses as Ronnie began giving Georgie a run-down on the wedding preparations. Her eyes boggled again. ‘And everything has to be pink,’ concluded Ronnie, ‘everything, absolutely everything – pink. It’s what she wants. She’s always loved pink.’ The pink phone rang on cue, the ring tone a cute version of ‘Here Comes the Bride.’
Ronnie offered to drive us home. On our way out, we came upon the bride-to-be standing with Mama in the hall, holding a length of satin, pink satin, running from a bolt. Ronnie joined them in a serious, rather fraught discussion about the cloth, the more descriptive remarks in Bahasa, the more emotional exchanges in heated Sundanese. They investigated the satin from different angles and in different lights. Mama was excited, Rini more considered, Ronnie attempted to remain businesslike. Finally he got emotional. He backed down on some points, but doggedly maintained his position on others, rolling up the satin to end the discussion.
Reggie appeared at the side door and silently watched us leave. He no longer had a car. He had told me that he lost everything in the divorce.
‘Lordy lordy, and I was feeling a bit homesick earlier on,’ Georgie said from the back seat, leaning over our shoulders, ‘what with Pippy dying and all.’
‘What’s Pippy?’ asked Ronnie as he drove.
‘Pippy was my cat.’
‘A cat? A cat made you homesick? We’ve got plenty of cats here.’
‘That cat was my last little piece of home, I’ll have you know, young man. She ate mice in Manchester, Munich and Montreal.’