*
‘This feels like an anniversary, Percy.’
‘Of?’
Joyann slowly smiled, ‘Of the time we came here and you had your last red bean and green tea ice-lolly.’
Percy looked at the lolly, ‘I can’t find them anywhere else. Anyway, an anniversary is a yearly event and that was only a few months ago,’
‘You cannot find them because you do not look in the right places.’ Joyann peeled away the thin paper wrapper of her matching ice-lolly. ‘I see that Norman and his girlfriends are here.’ She nodded towards the trio, who were obviously planning to join them in the café. Already sitting nearby on white plastic chairs, in overheated silence, were most of The Discussion Group. ‘All three of them are looking at you. They spend much of their time looking at you. You remember what I said?’
‘No, what? You’ve said a lot of things to me.’
‘That Norman’s interest in you is a little too extreme. He hangs on your every word. And they,’ she nodded at Trudy and Hester again, ‘are not helping.’
‘Like when? Give me an example of when Norm has overstepped the mark. But a recent one; not from when he thought he was being helpful with that bloody rodent, when I was feeling down about Sal leaving. Or when we had chilli crab in Clarke Quay and he got all excited about some silly statement I made. I think that night he wasn’t feeling himself.’
‘Nor were you, Percy, as I remember.’
‘Thank you, Joyann, for reminding me that I soiled myself in a taxi.’
‘I still feel very sorry for the way I reacted. At the time, I did not realise you were so unwell.’
‘It’s fine.’
‘It is not fine, as you say.’
Percy shrugged.
‘You know,’ Joyann said, ‘I have an example. Only the other night, at the card game, he was being overly attentive.’
‘He’s always overly attentive, Joyann. That is not my point. What I am saying is I don’t think his new friends are necessarily making it worse.’
‘The Tanglin Club.’ Joyann raised an eyebrow, as she said it.
It was true that Norm had been particularly clingy during the dinner, and sitting between him and Trudy, Percy had been left feeling as if he had, in some extraordinary way, been assaulted. At the time, a small part of him wondered if they were playing a kind of prank, but the idea had died before it took breath, suffocated by the fact that neither had the gumption to do such a thing. Both Norm and Trudy, in Percy’s view, were unrelentingly silly.
But Percy didn’t want to admit there was indeed something extreme in the level of affection both parties displayed towards him. Admitting it meant recognition, which in turn meant giving it airtime, and giving an idea airtime risked it taking that crucial breath.
Carefully, he bit off a small corner of the green coloured ice cream, savouring the sweet flavour. He particularly enjoyed the texture, which reminded him of pureed chestnuts and nice Christmases spent with Sal, as she cooked in her parents’ kitchen. He’d liked her parents, well enough.
‘You think?’ was all he said in reply.
Joyann raised her eyebrow higher. ‘I do not think. I know.’
As Hester, Trudy and Norm passed by, Percy felt awkward. There was genuine affection in their faces. They appeared to be heading for the café counter, but Trudy diverted.
‘Percy. You’ve heard of Ken Dodd, right?’
‘Uh, yeah.’
Trudy looked back to her friends. ‘See?’ She smiled at Percy warmly. ‘You don’t forget your past, do you?’
The tone alluded to a shared past, but other than this, Percy had no idea what she was talking about.
‘Ken Dodd?’ asked Joyann, as Trudy walked away.
‘Just a guy; an old British comedian. Shall we take these down to the Ten Courts of Hell?’ he held up his ice-lolly. ‘I’d quite like another look down there. It’s hot, but I’d prefer to move than stay here.’ He was desperate to get away before the doe-eyed trio returned. Though he’d grown used to Norm’s affection, three pairs of eyes roaming over him was six eyes too many.
‘Of course.’ Joyann stood up.
Percy did the same, sweaty underpants sticking to his buttocks. He made himself comfortable, and then took a large bite of ice-lolly. He winced, as pain shot through his teeth and into his head.
‘Sensitive?’ Joyann asked.
Holding his mouth as if stopping his teeth from falling out, Percy nodded sharply.
Joyann chuckled, ‘At least part of you is.’
‘Hey.’
‘Sorry. Come. We should go. They are coming back.’
Joyann walked away and Percy followed, the pain lessening. He hoped it was not a sign of something worse than sensitivity. He was overdue for a dental check up.
‘Is Phrike joining us today, Percy?’
Percy shook his head.
‘Meera?’
He shrugged.
‘So tell me, why the Ten Courts of Hell again? Are you feeling guilty, Percy? Do you think you need to be reminded of your fate if you do not mend your ways?’
‘My memory of it is that mending your ways isn’t even an option. If some poor sod has done something wrong, then he’s done something wrong, end of. He has to pay. There’s no room for penance while he’s alive. He can’t rip a page from a book and then stick it back in, and get away with it.’
‘The defacing of books is a terrible thing, Percy. I think this is all that is meant by it. It is how people educated themselves before the Internet.’
Percy dropped the wooden stick of his lolly into a bin. ‘What if someone deletes a page from someone else’s document? What then?’
‘That sort of deletion is never absolute. But the principle is the same.’
‘But to be boiled alive in a wok of blood? Really?’
‘Was that the punishment? I thought it was being ground under a millstone.’
Percy looked ahead, ‘We’ll find out in a moment.’
Joyann pointed to an arrow, marked Gift Shop. ‘I want to buy some Tiger Balm today. Do not let me forget. It is expensive here, but I will not have time to get some from anywhere else.’
‘This park was probably built on the proceeds,’ Percy remarked.
‘I suppose it was. I am visiting my mother later, and she likes it very much. She’s not been well.’
Percy did not ask what was wrong. Instead he strode ahead and into the dark cave. As on his first visit, he stopped next to a model depicting three bridges: the lowest heading straight to hell, the middle for the ordinary sinner, and the highest bridge for the righteous and leading directly to heaven. This bridge was empty, as it was the last time Percy had seen it.
‘Why is there never anyone on that bridge?’
‘It’s for the pure.’
‘I know that. But you’d think that just occasionally whoever makes these replicas, or whatever you want to call them…’
‘Representations.’
‘You’d think whoever creates them would try and make it all a bit more realistic. Perhaps have someone cross that top one, from time to time. Okay, not totally realistic, because this isn’t real, but you get my meaning.’
‘Do pure people exist?’
‘Of course.’
‘I think that is not possible.’
‘Then why bother with the bridge? No footfall, no bridge.’
‘I suppose there must be some who are. Babies and children. Or people who have devoted their lives to something noble.’
‘Exactly. Hey, look at that Joyann. Maybe they do change things round from time to time.’
‘What is the matter?’
‘Look. At the end of the top bridge. There, do you see? Almost out of sight. I am sure that shifty looking white guy wasn’t there last time.’
‘What white guy?’ Joyann moved in front of Percy. ‘Where?’
‘And those three women, on the bottom bridge. An old lady, a plastic looking white woman, and… what’s this… a smal
l Singaporean woman carrying a book with some pages ripped out.’
‘Percy!’
He grinned. Without Joyann, his life would be lonely, he knew.
8. CULTIVATING
Increasingly, mornings or afternoons, sometimes evenings, a newly formed group would meet. They met at first because they were friends, and Hester had declared that spending some time away from The Discussion Group, whilst maintaining its purpose, was therapeutic.
‘That group really can be too large sometimes,’ she had declared, early one evening after The Discussion Group had dispersed, having taken up a large space inside the Shangri La hotel. ‘And it is too elitist. I don’t wish to complain, but I preferred it before that woman took over.’
‘You mean Vlad the Impala?’ Trudy had said, her face freshly stiffened.
‘Let’s go for a coffee. I need one. That meeting wasn’t at all relaxing. And the topic!’ Norm rolled his eyes.
‘Coffee?’ Hester questioned. ‘I thought caffeine was a sin, Norman?’
‘I am not sure it is possible for caffeine itself to be a sin, Hester, but I was using the word coffee generically. If I’d said that I needed a drink, you’d think I meant wine and we’d be having the same conversation anyway.’
‘I enjoyed it,’ Trudy said, meekly.
‘Enjoyed what?’ Hester then asked.
‘The topic.’
‘The Perils of Surgery Abroad?’ Hester had huffed the words dismissively, and instructed Norm to choose somewhere to go. And so a café in Tanglin Mall on Orchard Road witnessed the inaugural meeting of a group that would soon be known by a name all of its own.
Unlike official Discussion Group meetings, the get-togethers were fluid, odd episodes here and there, talking over breakfast, perhaps continuing over brunch or lunch the next day, whatever they felt inclined to do with the excessive free time they shared. Meera, the only worker amongst them, fitted her time as best she could.
On the face of it, the four friends could not be more different: Norm, a repressed and rootless second generation expat; Meera, a young local woman with everything ahead of her; Trudy, an insecure and disillusioned middle aged housewife; Hester, a rich and friendly old matriarch. But they were remarkably similar, for whether borne of other people’s expectations or their own, each carried an uncomfortable space in their heart.
Only two of the four knew how to satisfy the void. Without the security of her family’s traditional religion, Meera forged ahead regardless; making her own way, content to patch the cavity by taking what she wanted and stuffing it in. Hester allowed creativity to fill it, this strange space formed long ago in some unremembered childhood moment; a lost time where Hester’s very first lie had made a half-decent lid for a space that had seemed to appear from nowhere.