The Rose of Singapore (15 page)

“We are getting terribly morbid. It's time we changed the subject.”

Lai Ming smiled at him, “Yes, you are right,” she said. “I am sure that you are not a man of violence.”

“I like peace and tranquillity. I hate anything to do with war,” Peter replied adamantly.

“You remind me so much of my late husband,” said Lai Ming. “You have his good qualities and the same principles.”

Shrugging his shoulders, Peter replied, “Really?”

“Yes. I realized this very shortly after we met on the beach.” Lai Ming chuckled, “When at my apartment, you were so completely occupied with me and my body, you said very little about yourself and your family. I would like to know something about them.”

“What would you like to know?” asked Peter.

“I'd like you to tell me about your father and mother. Do you have brothers or sisters? Just little questions,” said Lai Ming.

“My mother is alive and well, and I have three brothers, two older and one younger. We were still very young when my father was killed.”

“Oh! Your mother also must have a sad story. How was your father killed? In the war?”

“Yes, in the war, by the Germans.”

“I'm sorry. Was he also in the RAF?”

“No. He was a private in the army, just an ordinary soldier. He was called up at the beginning of the war and killed shortly after, in France, at a place called Dunkirk.”

“Your mother must have had a terrible time, to lose her husband and to have four hungry little boys to feed.”

“Yes, I'm sure those were bad times for our family, but I didn't think much about it at the time. I was too young to understand. I must have been about seven when we had news of my father's death.”

Hand in hand, a young Chinese couple walked past them along the gravel path, not looking twice at the European boy with the Chinese girl. They were too preoccupied with each other. They too were in love.

Another half-hour slipped quickly by.

Chattering monkeys still swung to and fro in the treetops but the birds were quieter, snoozing now on boughs and among the tall grasses growing around the pond. In the pond, silver and gold coloured fish swam lazily in placid water, not even disturbing the bullfrogs that were silent and asleep beneath great green lilypads. And Lai Ming and Peter Saunders laughed together, talked on many things, and enjoyed feelings of blissful closeness to one another in the little world they had created and shared only by themselves.

Eventually, Lai Ming said, “Peter, let's go home. We shall eat and drink at my house. There,
amah
get you one Carlsberg. You drink, then we make something. After,
amah
get dinner. After we eat, we make something all night. We go taxi home. You pay taxi. I pay dinner. OK?”

Peter, laughing at her sudden change to pidgin English, teasingly asked, “What is the something we make, Rose?”

“You know what something. Something you like make with me.”

“Something I like make with you, but something you no like make with me?” Peter teased.

“You know what I speak. I show you later how much I like.”

Minutes later a taxi sped the two southward, seemingly the whole length of Bukit Timah Road, then through a labyrinth of minor roads foreign to Peter until it arrived at the junction of Bendemeer Road and Lavender Street. The driver, following Lai Ming's instructions, eventually pulled up outside the alleyway leading to her apartment. Peter paid the previously negotiated fare, as well as tipping the driver handsomely, and was about to get out when Lai Ming hissed the one word, “Wait,” and she grabbed hold of his arm. “No move,” she whispered. “RAF police car behind.”

Peter froze in his seat, then nervously sank lower, to be out of view through the rear window. In the out-of-bounds areas he was safe while in a vehicle but the moment he got out the military police could arrest him. “No look up,” whispered Lai Ming in a surprisingly frightened voice. Suddenly, he heard an engine rev up, and he saw a white jeep with two RAF military police in it pull alongside him. He tried to look away but he was sure their eyes were on him. This is it, he thought. He was about to tell the driver to move on and out of the out-of-bounds zone, when to his surprise and relief the jeep pulled away. He watched until it disappeared, far ahead, among the traffic.

“Phew! That was damned close,” he exclaimed. “I could have sworn they saw me.”

“You must always be very careful when you come to my home,” said an obviously frightened Lai Ming. “Always look before you step from car.”

“Yes, I'll remember that,” said Peter, still unnerved by such a close call. He looked around him, at the people on each side of the street, at the traffic flow coming from ahead, then turning, he made sure there was not another military police jeep behind him.

Once in the alleyway and approaching the door, Lai Ming gave a nervous laugh, and said, “Peter, please, in future, when you come to my house you must ask the
amah
in Chinese to let us in. I have my key, but it is good practice for you. Do you remember the words I taught you?”

“Yes, of course I remember them,” said Peter. He knocked on the door, and when he heard movement behind it, in not much more than a whisper, he said, “
Amah, hoi mun ah, fai di ah.
”

“Who is it?” he heard the old
amah
ask in Chinese.

“Ming and Chicko,” he replied, laughing, recalling how the old
amah
had referred to him as Chicko, a boy, during that last visit.

He heard the
amah
muttering and swearing behind the locked door, but after working with the many Chinese help in Hong Kong, and among the kitchen staff at the sergeants' mess, he believed that although the majority of Chinese people swore a lot, it rarely meant anything to them.

“Ming. Is it you?” he finally heard the
amah
ask.

“Yes. It's me. Open the door.” And when the door opened and the two had stepped inside, Lai Ming said to her
amah,
“It is good. From now on, when you hear Peter's voice, you will know to open the door.”

The
amah's
toothy grin greeted Peter, and she replied, “
Wah!
He is a good boy for you, Ming, that I can see. If he is not a good boy,” and she wagged a skinny finger at Peter, and said, “
Tsam koi ge tau
!” (I'll cut off his head.)

“She is a good watchdog for me. She would protect me with her life,” said Lai Ming in English to Peter.

“Yes, I think she would,” he acknowledged. “But I am sure that you are very good to her.”

Lai Ming smiled at this remark but made no comment. Instead, she said, “Now that she knows you are my boyfriend, she will also protect and obey you.” Thus saying, Lai Ming again turned to her trusted friend and maidservant. “I need you to visit Wang's shop to buy a bottle of Green Spot and a bottle of Carlsberg beer. No, make that two Carlsberg beers.” Turning to Peter, she said to him, “Today, I make special for you, two beers. After fright from police, I think you have great need. But remember, it is special. I no like boyfriend drink too much.” Lai Ming took money from her handbag and gave it to the
amah,
saying, “Please, you go now. Hurry.”

“Tsh! Tsh! Ming, I wonder why you are so impatient,” teased the
amah,
and she laughed, saying, “but I go and come back quickly.”

Without another word the
amah
took to the alleyway, the loud clip clopping of her wooden-soled clogs audible on the concrete until she reached the street. Lai Ming smiled at Peter, and said, “Come,” and he followed her up the narrow stairway.

The moment they were in the bedroom, and with the sliding door closed behind them, she came to him, put her arms around his neck and drew him close so that her face nestled against his chest, and his face became pillowed in the waves of her silky hair. She held him thus without a word between them for several moments, then her face uplifted to his, and smiling lovingly, she said, “I love you, Peter. I love you very much.” Then, in almost a whisper, she said, “You are my boy. I want always to make you happy and content.” Her hand slid down and felt his manliness. “He is very big and hot,” she whispered to him. “He needs me. I make something special for him. You undress, Peter, and lie on bed.”

“I think we should first wait for the
amah
to return,” said Peter matter-of-factly.

“No. The
amah
will not enter my bedroom without my permission. Come! I undress you. I shall take good care of you.”

Peter laughed, “You are a funny lady. I've never met anyone quite like you before,” he said, realizing that she had already taken off his tie and was now unbuttoning his shirt. He helped her take it off, and then she undid the belt to his slacks and unbuttoned his fly. “I'll do the rest,” he said, kicking off his shoes, but she, giggling happily, persisted by pulling both his slacks and underpants down around his ankles.

When he was naked and lying on his back upon her bed, she crooned over him, her lips running over his body and her hands feeling and exploring his private parts. “Oh! Peter. You are so ready for me,” she whispered. “And I am in much need of you.”

With rapt admiration, he watched as she undressed just feet from where he lay. Sensuously, she slid the
cheongsam
from her body and dropped it to the floor. She was so lovely standing there in the half-light of early evening. She undid the little red bra and dropped it across the back of the chair. Her breasts were small but they were firm, round and so deliciously inviting he was tempted to grab her, pull her to him, and kiss and suck upon them. She saw that he might get up from the bed and come to her, so she held up both hands as if to ward him off. “No! Wait!” she said. “Watch me, but no touch.” Her eyes were on him as she slipped her tiny red panties with white lace fringes down about her legs and stepped from them. As if a statue, she stood there, knowing that his eyes were feasting on that triangular-shaped black fleece shrouding that little place which so intrigued him. “You still like me, Peter?” she was saying in a quiet, almost inaudible voice.

“Oh, yes, Rose, you're beautiful.”

“Everything is for you,” she said, and she came to him and sprawled her naked body upon his. “And all that you have is for me,” she whispered, and she put her arms around him and hugged him.

10

From six that Sunday evening until nearly one the following Monday morning, a constant rain had drenched the streets of Singapore. But the rain had finally stopped and the streets, now glistening wet, silver-streaked and grey-shadowed by the moonlit night, were almost deserted; a far cry from the previous afternoon when the city had bustled with an anthill-like multitude of people. A great majority of the people had sought the dryness of shelter when the rains began, a sudden heavy downpour which quickly turned into a street-flooding torrent. Thus it rained unabated for almost seven hours, and when, after midnight, it finally did stop, most of the populace slept, as did Peter back with his unit at RAF Changi.

Already it was almost two in the morning. Back in the city, a few people still roamed Lavender Street: those seeking pleasure and those supplying pleasure. The in-betweens were the trouble-shooting police, both military and civil, who vigilantly cruised the almost deserted streets in their jeeps and patrol wagons. Also, there were cruising taxicabs driven by weary, overworked drivers scanning the doorways of the many bars, nightclubs and brothels for likely fares because it was in this street that they could expect to find them, this being the centre of the red-light district. Here, at this time of night, there was sure to be more customers than in any other part of the city.

At Lavender Street, near the junction of Serangoon Road, an old Indian hawker, swathed in a filthy, tattered white robe, sat asleep cross-legged on the wet pavement, his basket of fruits, nuts and sweetmeats at his side. He catered mainly to the late night revellers coming and going from the noisy, garishly lit, all-night hotel bar facing where he sat. But tonight he was just too tired; his eyes would not remain open, and he had fallen asleep.

A drunken German sailor, on shore leave from his ship out of Hamburg—now lying at anchor in Singapore's vast harbour—crashed through the swing doors of the bar, tripped over the old hawker's basket, staggered a few feet, then fell face down on the wet road. Moaning, he rolled over onto his back, cursed loudly, lay awhile, then slowly regaining his feet he tottered a few yards, groping as he did so for some support but there was none. He slipped and fell again, and rolled with a splash into the filthy water of a flooded monsoon drain running parallel with the sidewalk.

The old Indian hawker, awake now and cursing for all to hear, scuttled about the sidewalk gathering up the scattered contents of his basket. A rather old and fat Chinese woman ran from the bar and in her haste almost fell over the hawker. Recovering, she ran to the German sailor's aid and pulled him by his hair from the fast-flowing water. Wet, dirty and drunk as he was, she would take him home, as up until now business had been bad that night. Surely this man would not complain after being rescued from the monsoon drain, taken home and given a good time, she told herself—at least not until he was sober. Previously, she had seen him flashing money around at the bar for all to see, and he had bought drinks for several of the barmaids whilst bragging to them about his ship and how he had come ashore at Clifford Pier by launch. Now, the fat Chinese woman was ready to relieve him of some more money. But she would be fair. Like the majority of Singapore's Chinese prostitutes, Fatty Fanny had certain scruples and was always fair. He would stay the night with her. She would attend his needs and entertain him as best she could, then she would take from his wallet the amount of money she thought due her, and no more. And in the morning, when he was in a fit state to leave her, she would call a taxi and send him back to Clifford Pier. Stopping a passing taxi, Fatty Fanny and the cab driver wrestled the drunken sailor upright and helped him into the back of the taxi. Moments later the taxi disappeared down a moonlit alley.