The Catherine Lim Collection Read online

  The boy had little more to communicate afterwards, but he looked better, happier. Mark told his father the news at dinner-time that night, and the father was sufficiently buoyed by the good news to suggest a family dinner in a restaurant the next day. “What a superb idea,” said Angela enthusiastically. “Mikey’s sufficiently recovered to go, and Michelle will like it, won’t you, darling?”

  “Yes, Mum!” said the little girl obligingly. Michael’s silence when Angela spoke about the celebratory dinner did nothing to mar the happiness of the occasion.

  “I do need more of such happy days,’ sighed Angela to her husband as she prepared for bed that night. She looked at him, this wonderful husband of hers, and she did not tell him that just a few days ago, out of sheer coincidence, one of the regular coffee parties she had had with Mee Kin had actually ended on a visit to Mrs Daisy Perez’s apartment. She had caught a glimpse of her beautiful antique bed – and as she had suspected – now cluttered with heaps of garish Thai silk cushions of various shapes. She recollected the dream – those dreams – and she shivered.

  But that, too, did not mar the happiness of the day.

  Chapter 25

  Poor Gloria, I do feel sorry for her, thought Angela, as she paid one of her regular calls, and saw the girl, thin and pale in the first months of pregnancy, emerge from her room. She stayed in her room all the time now.

  Who can blame her, with the old one wandering about the house, muttering and still talking to the old man’s photo? thought Angela.

  She came regularly to ascertain that the servant was doing her work; she brought cooked food and plenty of tinned stuff for Gloria, and being informed of her pregnancy, made a mental note to get some really pretty maternity dresses for her. There was nothing she wouldn’t do; Gloria had removed the thorn from her side, if only temporarily. But who could tell what would happen in the meantime?

  Her visit coincided with that of Wee Tiong and Gek Choo. The pair had felt it their duty, apparently, to call; this was indeed their first visit to Gloria’s house. They brought along their little boy, now much bigger and healthier looking, and gifts of biscuits and fruit.

  “Call your foster-mother,” said Gek Choo to the little one in her arms, in courteous deference to the sister-in-law whose favour, no matter how grudgingly sought for, had brought about this happy result. The baby turned away shyly, Angela took him into her arms, but soon returned him to Gek Choo, for he had begun to cry.

  Old Mother, looking thinner and much older, had the ubiquitous ang-pow of goodwill; she tucked it into the waistline of the baby’s pants with the usual good wishes.

  Angela spoke to Gloria extensively, trying to piece together a picture of the state of affairs now that Old Mother was there. The picture was not a very comforting one – but what could be done?

  Wee Nam was away most of the time now. He seemed to be feverishly exploring one business opportunity after another. First it was goldfish, then orchids, then he wanted to go in on computer parts, and the latest was that he was teaming up with someone to start an agency for hiring domestic servants from the Philippines, Indonesia and Sri Lanka. Hearing about the high wages of domestics in Singapore, the foreign women, young and middle-aged and some with diplomas and even University degrees, were flocking to Singapore to seek employment. Wee Nam felt there was a lot of money to be made there.

  “I’m alone most of the time,” said Gloria. She need not have added, “I’m lonely and miserable,” for her eyes, her thinness, the nervousness with which she avoided the direct gaze, spoke it. Poor girl, thought Angela.

  The servant cooked for them; Gloria and Old Mother used to eat together, but Gloria had taken to eating in her room. She never came out, except to meet visitors or to do the needful. It was not only Old Mother whose presence made her feel uneasy; it was the possibility of her meeting the idiot one, for he had come on a few occasions to see Old Mother, and once, while Gloria was praying in front of the altar to the Virgin Mary saying her daily rosary, she felt a presence behind her, turned, and saw the idiot grinning at her and about to touch the statuette of Our Lady and the sacred Heart of Jesus on the altar. She ran into her room and shut herself in.

  And the photo of the old man.

  The altar was in the old one’s room; she had to pass the room to reach the toilet, and no matter how hard she tried to avert the gaze, she invariably saw the small piercing eyes, the stiff wispy beard jutting out on the thin chin. Old Mother spoke to the photograph often, Gloria stopped her ears, ran to the toilet and ran back, panting.

  And, she confided to Angela, when Wee Tiong and Gek Choo had left, the pleasant dreams of herself with her sisters in Canada and Australia had disappeared and had made way for those frightful coffin and temple dreams. “I use the holy water of Lourdes every night, and I have my rosary, but they still come,” whimpered Gloria.

  Angela decided there and then, out of pity for the poor tormented girl, that the stay would last no more than two months, the time given by the contractors for the completion of the new house.

  “Wee Siong sends me these pamphlets, I hardly read them,” said Gloria, showing Angela a whole stack of the materials.

  “I don’t read them either, just ignore them, throw them away,” said Angela. “Now you listen, Gloria. I know this is not an easy time for you. You are pregnant and the first few months can be quite bad. I had a bad time with Michael, especially. But you will go through it bravely, won’t you? After all, as you can see, Boon and I have done our best. Since Wee Nam has been freed of this loan to his brother, he can now have more money for business or whatever he wishes to do. And you have Ah Choo to do all the housework for you. I shall come regularly to take Old Mother to the oculist and physiotherapist and you can always ring me up if there’s anything to be done. You don’t need to do a thing. All Boon and I are asking is a place to put the old one while waiting for the new house to be ready. And that will take no longer than two months. Those stupid contractors have promised me that, and they’d better keep their promise. You know that mother can’t go back to her old house any more; everything is in a mess there and I went to scold that irresponsible Ah Kum Soh for turning it into a gambling den, but I won’t be surprised if she’s gone back to her old tricks. Anyway, Old Mother’s health is not good, and I won’t feel easy about her there with that woman and her idiot son. And don’t worry about that idiot. Ignore him totally. He means no harm really. You know that that stingy, calculating Wee Tiong and his wife can’t take in the old one. They will remain in that miserable flat of theirs, as long as they can, to make it impossible for the old one to move in. And of course, they’ve now cooked up all this nonsense about their baby son’s star clashing with Old Mother’s, or some such superstition. Notice it doesn’t clash with mine. So Gloria, I beg you to be patient. Do your duty for another two months and then I’ll take over the entire responsibility.”

  The girl listened and nodded, but utter wretchedness was written in the hair that had grown thin and straggly, in the thin pale face that only a year ago was beautiful with the freshness of youth.

  I know it’s a burden, thought Angela as she left, but what’s a few months compared to the years I’m going to endure with the old one? Everyone must share the burden.

  “Mikey darling, have you finished your homework?” asked Angela, when she got home.

  “There’s no homework for tomorrow,” said the boy. “May I watch TV?”

  “Of course, darling,” said Angela, for whom the reply, in a full sentence, and the request for permission constituted such a vast improvement over the taciturnity and rebellious silence of a few weeks back as to make her heart almost sing for joy. Dr Wong was so right, she thought. She cast a surreptitious look at a composition that had been marked in school. It was entitled ‘A Happy Dream’. Angela read, puzzled, of her son and his uncle Bock catching golden fish in a pond, of a Moon Goddess, of Grandmother making a pair of walking tins that went Plock, plock, plock, of a strange bird that said tee-tee,
tah-loh. The teacher’s comments, written neatly in red ink at the bottom of the page were: “Your sentences are disjointed. They do not seem to link up to form a sensible story. But your grammar, spelling and punctuation have improved. Keep it up.” Even Michael was doing better in school. Angela was happy.

  Chapter 26

  “It’s all over now; he’s selected another man, an idiot named Choo Beng Siew, a stupid, grinning idiot with some vague engineering qualification,” muttered Boon. It shocked Angela; he had come home, drunk, dishevelled. The bitter chagrin was in the forehead, suddenly deep-furrowed, in the voice louder than usual.

  “How do you know? Is it official? This thing has been vacillating for months,” said Angela with the greatest of anxiety, wanting her husband to go to the bedroom, but he persisted in throwing himself upon the sitting-room sofa and remaining there. “It’s official; the bastard’s played me out.”

  A tremor of terror swept through Angela; the violence of language against Minister was shocking, coming from Boon. She sat down beside him, trying to comfort.

  “Never mind, darling,” she said soothingly. “You did your best. Nobody could say you didn’t do your best. You’re absolutely in the clear.”

  Her husband sat up, the stupor of drunkenness suddenly giving way to a biting clarity as he looked straight at her and said menacingly, “Why in hell did you interfere?”

  “Whatever do you mean?” cried Angela, but beginning to feel a sickness overcoming her.

  “You went to his secretary,” snarled Boon. “You went to his secretary and made inquiries and tried to ferret things out from her. Do you deny it?” The snarl had subsided to a sarcasm, heavy, frightening. “You made yourself a nuisance, pushing like that. Surely you must have known such a step would have prejudiced Minister against me, knowing what kind of man he is?”

  “Really, I only spoke in a casual way,” said Angela, her mouth dry, her stomach tightening. “I meant to help, darling.”

  “Help!” A sardonic laugh as he fell back on the sofa, one arm across his eyes. “Pushing, you mean. You’ve always pushed, haven’t you? Me, the children, everyone else. You were impatient to become wife of a Member of Parliament, weren’t you? Perhaps later the wife of a minister?”

  “Now that’s not fair!” Angela’s fear had suddenly disappeared in a burst of anger. “I was straining every effort to please you, and here you are accusing me of interference, because things have not turned out the way you wanted them! It’s not fair, not fair!”

  Her voice had risen to a shrill pitch. She saw Michelle, and waved her off; she glimpsed Mooi Lan, loitering at the doorway of the kitchen, and suddenly grew exasperated at the sight of the girl, hanging around to listen in to everything.

  The tears came, furiously. Boon had settled back on the sofa, eyes closed.

  “How can you say things like that to me, Boon?” she continued. “You know how much I’ve gone through the last few months, what with your mother and the children and Mooi Lan.”

  “At least Mooi Lan understands, she cares,” came the muttering from the sofa, and Angela, with a new pang, tried to see if the girl was still at the doorway. She had disappeared into the kitchen.

  “And pray, how does she care more than I do?” cried Angela shrilly. Her husband had fallen into a deep drunken sleep, snoring loudly. In mounting exasperation, she wanted to shake him violently, rouse him from his stupid drunken state, extract a statement that would still the pain, newly caused. But he remained deeply snoring and in distress, she went upstairs to her room. Fortunately, the children were in their rooms and could have heard but little.

  How unlike Boon, to blame her, to reckon the ministerings of a servant girl, the offering of a cup of tea or Bovril, as greater than all her efforts of affection. Angela’s anger was soon directed against Minister – they were all like that, these people in power. They played around with other people’s lives, raised false hopes, then dashed these hopes without so much as a word of explanation.

  When she returned downstairs, Boon was sitting up, his shoulders slouching in abjection and Mooi Lan was hovering nearby, apparently asking whether he wanted a drink or some food. Angela went up impatiently, waved her away, and sat beside her husband, holding his shoulders.

  “Come up to our room now,” she said gently. “You’ll feel much better after a good night’s sleep.”

  His mood was markedly better in the morning; she needed his reassuring morning embraces, to wipe off the pain of the previous night. He gave them duly, but dully, and she coaxed him to have a good breakfast.

  “I’m thinking of joining Richard Pang in the hotel-and-restaurant business,” he said. His wife pouring out the coffee, could hardly contain her relief and delight. “A Mr Szeto is selling his hotel in Changi, a small, cosy home-like two-storey building with eighteen rooms. Richard has been talking of taking it over and improving on it. Such hotels with their home-like atmosphere are a hit with tourists, especially Japanese tourists who come on a few months’ contract.”

  “Darling, that’s a marvellous idea,” said Angela enthusiastically. Now was the time to release the latest figures on the Haryati Restaurant, to reinforce this mood of optimism and banish the dark devils of the previous night forever. “Darling, the manager of Haryati tells me that we may need to expand, to cope with the increasing business. More and more people are coming. The lunch-time crowd is enormous. I’ve seen it with my own eyes!”

  “That’s good,” said her husband. “I’m going full steam into business. That’s where the real rewards are.”

  Angela thought, Even if Boon does not get into politics, Mark eventually will. For hasn’t he been marked out for the Elite College already? But it would be premature, inappropriate to talk about such things at present.

  “I hear the government’s thinking of building the Elite College on Grangefields near the Su Kien Cemetery,” she remarked, giving her husband another slice of toast.

  “Yes, the cemetery will have to go,” he said.

  “Does that mean exhumation of the graves, including your father’s?”

  “That’s inevitable. The exhumation notice will be gazetted shortly.”

  Chapter 27

  Gloria listened; her every nerve was taut from listening for sounds from outside her tightly closed bedroom door. She heard the old one talking to herself, and then afterwards she heard the sliding of the metal door and a gurgling sound, which meant that the idiot one was on one of his frequent visits.

  His visit that evening had been particularly harrowing. It was Gloria’s turn to lend her house for the monthly rosary sessions conducted by Father Xavier. About 12 of the parishioners had gathered for prayers. As they knelt down in the sitting room, Father Xavier leading the prayers in his deep reverential voice, the idiot appeared, staring, grinning, fascinated by the unwonted sight. He actually moved forward, and Gloria, fighting revulsion, got up from her knees and told him to go back to Old Mother’s room. He stayed there obediently for a few minutes, then emerged again to stare and grin. Since he made no sound, Gloria left him alone this time.

  But the incident had made her sick, had given her a violent headache.

  She lay on her bed, the tears falling silently on to her pillow. She felt sick, but was unwilling to go out to the toilet; she vomited into a small spittoon kept under her bed. She wished that Wee Nam were back. He had been home for a few days, and then was off again; he said he had an Indonesian friend to meet, one who could be useful in helping him set up the agency for recruitment of foreign domestics. She wished her mother were around, but it would be a full two months before she returned from her vacation.

  The cheerful letters from Canada and Australia which enclosed photographs of the new babies did nothing to lessen the misery; indeed they accentuated it, for they increased the painful sense of what might have been. The photographs in one hand, her rosary in another, Gloria lay inert, tears silently flowing. She felt very hungry and had a violent headache, but going out of her room to
get food or the aspirin from the bathroom cabinet was out of the question. The gibberish of the idiot one with occasional deep gurgles could still be heard.

  It was getting dark, but Gloria did not feel inclined to get up or switch on the light. She just wanted to lie still, to wait for the idiot one to leave and for the old one to retire to her room and lock herself in, as she was wont to do every evening. Her head felt unbearably heavy. She got up several times with great effort, to move the spittoon to vomit into, but each time fell back on her bed, exhausted, the sickness undispelled.

  She heard sounds, they seemed to be converging upon her. With a great effort of will, she moved her head towards the door, and saw the door moving open slowly. Two figures, dark against the outside light, walked in slowly. They were Old Mother and the idiot one. A sense of panic overcame Gloria. She had locked the door; how had they managed to come in?

  The old one moved towards her bed and in the dimness of the street-light on the road outside, Gloria saw her face, ugly, distorted, blotched and her hair let down so that they floated in stiff strands about her face. She was smiling; she held out something to her, but Gloria couldn’t see clearly what it was – was it a piece of yellow paper with Chinese words written on it, or was it the ghost paper money with the square of silver in the centre?

  The old one suddenly let out a shrill laugh and that unleashed a babel of noises in the room – harsh, raucous sounds, mixed with high-pitched yells. The idiot one, his face actually contorted with the effort of yelling, stepped forward, made to touch her, was then suddenly arrested by the altar in her room where stood two candles, the picture of the Christ Child and His Mother, a statuette of Saint Theresa and a bottle of holy water from Lourdes. The idiot one moved to the altar, gurgling; he took down the statuette of St Theresa, examined it with intense curiosity, then abandoned it for the bottle of holy water, which he uncorked, smelt and sprinkled on himself.