The Catherine Lim Collection (10 page)

She’s an idiot, thought Angela with
exasperation. If she’d told me earlier, I could have arranged for an abortion.
Now it’s too late.

But compassion – compassion was her
overriding weakness, Angela told her friends. She loaded the miserable woman
with food – condensed milk, biscuits, fresh eggs.

“Every day when you come, Mooi Lan will give
you a fresh egg which you will take directly, is that clear, Minah?” The
washerwoman cried softly. “You are very good to me, mem,” she said.

“But you must help yourself too, Minah,”
said Angela, exasperation returning. “So no use thanking me unless you promise
that after the birth of this baby, you’ll let me take you for the operation. Is
that clear?”

The washerwoman cried again and said with a
sob, “Sharifah.”

“Now what’s she been up to?” asked Angela
severely. Sharifah was the eldest girl, aged 15. A pretty, well-formed girl. A
part-time maid-servant for two households.

“Can she come and sleep in your house at
night?” asked Minah with a sob.

“What are you talking about – can she come
and sleep here? Whatever do you mean?”

“It’s her father. She’s afraid of him. And
I’m afraid. He’s okay when not drunk. But when he’s drunk, we’re afraid.
Sharifah’s very afraid of him.”

“Oh my God,” said Angela. For days, the
plaintive Malay words ‘Takut-lah, mem, susah – takut!’ would ring in Angela’s
ears, a dreadful howl for help from dark depths.

Oh, my God, she thought. “Minah,” she said
with great authority. “Don’t let her father get near her! Be vigilant, let me
know. If necessary, we’ll have to tell the police.”

Poor child, she thought. She felt sick at
heart.

“They’re all like that,” she told Mooi Lan
later. “You look at that miserable wife of Muniandy. Her husband beats her, and
she gets pregnant every year. They all sleep together in one smelly bedroom,
including the eldest son who’s 16, I think, and the eldest daughter who’s 15.
Like animals. One of these days we’re going to hear the same story. Poor
things. But what can we do for them? These low-class labourers are real
animals, brutes who get drunk, beat up their wives and then sleep with them.”

Mooi Lan looked down, the heat of coy
embarrassment spreading on her face and neck. She giggled a little. “You are
only 18, Mooi Lan,” said Angela smiling. “You don’t know what happens among men
and women. But Mooi Lan, you’re not going to be like the miserable Aminah and
that Muniandy’s wife, when you get married. You know better, for I’ve told you
a lot of things. You’re going to marry better and have only two children.
You’re not going to be as stupid as Aminah or Muniandy’s wife, are you?”

Mark usually
met his English Language
teacher in school on
Saturdays, to discuss and prepare for the National Speech contest. It was
months away, but the teacher, a very conscientious and committed man who also
happened to be very fond of Mark, felt that it was never too early to prepare
for a competition that would receive extensive coverage in the press and on
television and that would be graced by the presence of the Minister of
Education himself. Mark was the star student, the school pinned its hopes on
him, and he had never disappointed the school yet in the myriad inter-school
oratorical and essay-writing competitions carried on throughout the year. The
school grounds being used for the band practices that particular Saturday,
Angela suggested that Mark invite his teacher home for the discussions, to be
followed by lunch.

The boy did not object to the suggestion and
Angela immediately flew into a whirl of activity, giving instructions to Mooi
Lan to prepare something really good and to get a flask of hot coffee ready,
while she herself would drive out to get some nonya kueh for tea, in case the
discussions went on till tea-time. Mooi Lan suggested Hokkien mee; Angela
thought it was a good idea as Mooi Lan made excellent Hokkien mee. She
consulted Mark again, and again the boy made no objection. Mooi Lan was to
prepare a lot of the good stuff for Angela wanted to take some for Old Mother
and Mee Kin. She would deliver the food and still be in time to take Michelle
for her practice at the Century Swimming Club.

“You wait for our new house to be ready,
darling,” she told her daughter who had said she was feeling rather tired and
didn’t want to go to the Century Swimming Club. “There’ll be the swimming pool,
and then you can practise at home. Okay, darling?”

She peeped into Michael’s room; the boy was
lying on his stomach on the bed and drawing something. He was less sullen of
late, but he still refused to come out of his room to meet visitors. He had
reluctantly shown his mother the monthly test-sheets for her to sign. The
grades were disappointing, but not as bad as she had expected, and when she
handed the sheets back to him, she had said, with a great effort at
cheerfulness, “Mikey will try his best for the next month’s tests, won’t he?
Then Daddy and Mummy will be so happy.” She had successfully kept the idiot one
from coming to make a nuisance of himself with the boy; the further removed
Michael was from the pernicious influence of the imbecile, the greater would be
the boy’s chances of improvement.

The teacher came with armfuls of Shakespeare
texts. While he sat with Mark in the sitting room, discussing the choice of a
speech for the great event, Angela stayed in the piano room, wanting to listen
in, but not wishing to displease her son by her presence. She was all
excitement. She marvelled at the resourcefulness and imaginativeness of Mark’s
teacher – how I wish Michael’s teacher could be like that, she said later to
Mee Kin – for he was planning to tie the speech to the current campaign on
‘Filial Piety’ to make sure its delivery would have maximum impact upon the
nationwide audience. He was also planning for Mark to read a poem in Chinese,
on the same theme, following a speech from Shakespeare.

“Shakespeare,” he had said, “Shakespeare,
because his works are the best. You will stand head and shoulders above the
rest of the contestants with a speech from Shakespeare, for they will be
mouthing silly little poems from Tennyson or some obscure poet. Shakespeare’s
language is demanding – and that’s precisely the point. If you can recite a
speech from Shakespeare, and do it well, you will make all those others with
their silly little rhyming lines look childish and ludicrous.” The last
argument had appealed very much to Mark.

They pored over possible speeches from
Shakespeare, to reflect the spirit of the campaign. The teacher was for King
Lear. “It’s a superb play,” he said enthusiastically, “one of Shakespeare’s
best, if not the best, and my favourite. The theme is relevant. It’s about an
old man driven out into the storm by his wicked daughters. The play condemns
filial impiety. So it will be most relevant.”

Mark was glad. He had been afraid when the
teacher spoke about doing Shakespeare, that Mark Antony’s ‘Friends, Romans,
Countrymen’ speech would be chosen. It had been bludgeoned to death by
schoolboy orators; Mark wanted something far more challenging. “Look,” said the
teacher, opening the text. “Look at this speech. It’s my favourite, so
powerful, charged with forceful imagery throughout. It may well be regarded as
the climax of the play. King Lear cries out to the gods to punish his daughters
for their wickedness. He curses them with barrenness, so that they will never
have children to love them, since they have so shamefully treated him. But if
they succeed in bearing children, these children will grow up to hurt them, in
the same way as they have hurt their poor old father. Don’t you think the theme
is just right? Listen, I’ll read the speech to you:

Hear, Nature, hear; dear goddess, hear;

Suspend thy purpose if thou didst intend

To make this creature fruitful.

Into her womb convey sterility,

Dry up in her the organs of increase,

And from her derogate body never spring

A babe to honor her. If she must teem,

Create her child of spleen, that it may live

And be a thwart disnatured torment to her.

Let it stamp wrinkles in her brow of youth,

With cadent tears fret channels in her cheeks,

Turn all her mother’s pains and benefits

To laughter and contempt, that she may feel

How sharper than a serpent’s tooth it is

To have a thankless child. Away, away!

Mark was impressed. He was visibly excited
by the challenge of the speech, especially when his teacher had told him, “Even
Pre-University students will not be able to manage a speech like that. But you
can, Mark. With a little bit of coaching, you can manage. Remember, the judges
include University professors who are probably going to yawn at the namby-pamby
that I know some of the contestants have chosen – snowy clouds and daffodils
and waves breaking over rocks, and all that stuff. I know Miss de Silva from
the Convent has chosen a silly poem from Tennyson for one of her students. We
go along with something sophisticated, something that gives you scope for real
expression, something that is at the same time, related to social issues in
Singapore!” Moreover his father had told him, Minister had once again spoken of
him, called him the budding orator. The teacher’s enthusiasm was infectious.
Mark looked very happy.

“I’m making arrangements for Mark to listen
to a tape recording of King Lear,” he told Angela at lunch. “The actor taking
the part is no other than Richard Burton. And there’s a certain expatriate
teacher in the Premier Junior College, a Mr Roy Nicholls, who’s an expert in
correct pronunciation and intonation. He’s a good friend of mine, and I’m
getting him to coach Mark in these aspects. I’m not very good in these,” in a
tone of humility.

Angela helped him to another bowl of Hokkien
mee, very pleased with this committed and inspiring teacher. She did not say
very much to him, apart from the niceties of polite conversation, in case she
said something that might embarrass Mark who was a very sensitive boy. But
later she told Mee Kin, with an enthusiasm bordering on elation, that it was a
good thing that there was such a teacher in Mark’s school to develop his
potential to the fullest.

“If only we had more teachers like that in
Singapore,” she said, taking out a tier of the Hokkien mee soup, and then
another tier of the boiled pork, prawns and vegetables.

“How thoughtful of you,” said Mee Kin. “Just
when I was longing for some Hokkien mee! Wait, I have something to show you.”

Mee Kin led her to the guest bedroom where
stood a large antique bed with a carved top and posts, resplendent with new
oriental silk bed-curtains. Angela gasped.

“It’s beautiful,” she said. “Where did you
get it? You never told me!”

“I meant it as a surprise,” replied the
amiable Mee Kin. “Dorothy had the same reaction. I picked it up at the old
junk-shop in Irrawaddy Road. There was only one left and I grabbed it. Then I
had it done up by the man who’s been doing up Dorothy’s antiques.”

“It looks as if I’m the only one without an
antique bed!” cried Angela laughing. “But listen, Mee Kin, I’ve no time to talk
now, I must fly. Mark’s tutor is still in the house. If he stays till three, I
must get some tea and kueh ready for him!”

She bought a new cassette recorder for Mark
to practise his speech, as the old one was not functioning properly. The
teacher appeared to have some difficulty obtaining the King Lear tape
recording. Angela made inquiries at the British Council and was overjoyed to
find the tape available, and that it could be rented out. She brought the tape
back breathlessly to her son, her joy, and was rewarded by an appreciative
smile and a “Thanks, Mum.”

“You can practise with me as your audience,”
she teased her son. “I’ll listen. It sounds a very good speech indeed.” But
Mark preferred to practise in the privacy of his room.

Angela’s heart glowed with pride as, passing
her son’s room, she heard his voice, loud and steady and strong. The boy was a
natural orator; Angela paused outside the door and heard the young, firm voice
rise in a crescendo of feeling at the end of the speech.

“How sharper than a serpent’s tooth it is to
have a thankless child!”

The
annoyance that Angela felt
about the arrangement  – a
highly undesirable arrangement – was heightened by the knowledge that Wee Tiong
and Gek Choo (
I tell you they’re snakes, real snakes
) had kept the
information from her for weeks. It was by pure chance that she came to know of
it. She had not been visiting the old one lately, and had sent a tiffin carrier
of food through Ah Kum Soh who came to collect it, but the wretched woman
didn’t have the sense to tell her. Then she had rung up Gek Choo, to inquire
about the little baby who had had his first operation. It was Old Mother who
answered the phone. Angela had thought it was a casual visit, to see the baby,
but it turned out that the old one had actually been asked by Wee Tiong and Gek
Choo to stay with them.

The old one had later insisted that she
herself had offered to take care of the baby when Gek Choo went back to work.
Angela saw things differently. She was vehement in her complaints, first to her
husband and then to her friends.