For sometime after, the jungle again seemed devoid of life, though the distant sound of a digger or some other machinery interrupted the silence. Then, Percy realised what sounded like bird song had slowly crept in unnoticed, and all about him different degrees of whooping and shrieking echoed from within un-viewable spaces. It was certainly not the twitter or chirping of birds from home. He smiled, and again took some water.
Before long, he arrived at the noisy machinery. Work was being undertaken felling a few selected trees. Behind him, what had become quite loud calling was fading away. Again drinking, he stood for a moment and looked about, aggravated at the sight and sound of the men, not thinking critically as he normally might about the fact the path was left open to walkers despite possible danger. Today a different grumbling thought dominated, that he would see nothing now because everything would have been frightened off.
He was wrong. Because it was then he noticed what looked to be a length of bright blue rope lying on the ground near the path, except the rope was moving. A snake; blue with an orangey red head and tail. Percy stepped closer, breath held. With that colouring it had to be poisonous, but he wanted a photo. The snake moved off. Percy took a picture of it disappearing under a log, almost shaking with excitement. First the scorpion and now this.
He couldn’t believe his luck, and had there been another walker passing by he would have certainly set aside his nature and shared his enthusiasm. But besides the two men working on the tree, Percy had not seen another person for miles. An odd feeling descended, not nervousness at being isolated or joy from being alone, or even underlying fear of the snake, just a peculiarly edgy kick. He smiled, drank more water and walked on.
The sound of calling was again growing louder. Percy could not see what was making the noise, and so leaving behind the inner workings of the jungle, took the boardwalk option that had opened up ahead of him. He hadn’t realised he was walking so close to the water again and couldn’t tell if it was the same reservoir or some other lake.
At the start of the walkway, a huge Malayan water monitor lizard was lazing on the wood, but on seeing Percy slipped quietly away, fat thighs framing its tail as it disappeared over the edge and beneath the surface. He had seen these giants before, on Pulau Ubin, and remained in awe of their great size. This one was at least three feet long and he was glad it had moved because he hadn’t wanted to walk near it; they weren’t necessarily shy so it might have let him stand within striking distance. Did they strike people? It didn’t matter, for though Sal had never mentioned these monitors while filling Percy’s psyche with all things dangerous in Singapore, the look of Komodo dragon put him off risking too close an encounter. Though protected, they remained a popular dish in Malaysia, and Percy had read in the local paper of a case where one was found live, tied up inside a holdall, abandoned by a rumbled poacher. Circumstantial evidence pointed at a Malaysian culprit. He wondered at anyone wanting to eat such a thing, but wondered then what it might taste like. Crocodile, perhaps.
Though still unable to orientate himself, Percy enjoyed the now open view of the water. Darting red dragonflies were shooting about, and he saw the quick blue flash of a kingfisher, though flying too fast for him to see which species. Birds were not his favourite type of animal, reptiles were, but there was something about birds and water that he always found strangely compelling.
The walkway was immaculately maintained, following the shoreline and passing under overhanging branches that cooled the air beneath. He’d been walking only a short time when he decided to sit down on the wood and eat his snack while looking across the water, so tranquil that its reflections created a vivid picture. Percy hadn’t been there for long when the strange call he thought he had left in the trees returned, and it was very close. He swivelled round but could see nothing through the dense undergrowth to his back. He looked in each direction along the walkway. Nothing.
Percy heard rustling above him.
He looked up. There, several pairs of pale eyes met his. Monkeys.
Quickly, Percy repacked his bag and set off. The low branches above the boardwalk, he realised, were strung with an entire troop of long tailed macaques. His pace quickened. Percy did not want to be where the monkeys were, for he had deliberately ignored a glaringly sound piece of advice regarding walking in the park: bring no food. With relief, Percy spotted the end of the walkway, recognising then that it had merely been a brief detour from the main route.
Just when he was almost on solid land, a large male appeared, walking on all fours, blocking the exit. A quick glance over his shoulder revealed to Percy a furry audience gathering behind, dropping one by one from the trees.
Percy had been clutching the rucksack under his arm, but now he let it slip so his fingers gripped the strap, ready to swing out to defend himself. Fleetingly, he thought about giving in and leaving the food, but resentment niggled. Why should he?
Though trying hard not to make eye contact, Percy could see the big male had started making faces and was baring his huge teeth. Percy prepared to fight. His heart raced. He bloody hated monkeys, he decided. The male launched itself, screaming. Percy ran towards it, yelling. But there was no swing of the bag, only it passing from one large hand to one small one. Seconds later, the bag and the big male were gone and Percy was left wondering what the hell had happened.
He was quite able to see where the animal had fled. Surrounded by interested relatives, Percy watched as the monkey expertly opened the bag before scuttling away with a packet of digestive biscuits, leaving others to fight over an apple. He thought about waiting and retrieving his bag, but watching another animal rip off an outer pouch, Percy decided to cut his losses. The insect repellent was pulled out. He felt uncomfortable, hadn’t there been some advice in the book about that? Now hoping to distance himself from the crime, he turned away and reached round for the water bottle. It had gone, stolen while he was distracted.
Bloody bastards, he thought.
Thirstily, he continued what was left of his walk, ever alert for monkeys though he had nothing left to rob. As he went, he looked up the snake on his phone, thankfully kept in his pocket, and quickly discovered it was a Blue Malaysian Coral snake. Normally hidden away, it was rarely seen by day and rated as deadly. The two workmen he resented had done him a great favour, and inadvertently flushed it out.
Mugging aside, it had been a good day, he decided, even though he no longer felt inclined to look for a lost shrine.
Chapter 19
THE NORM
A python as long as two tall men, end to end, had just been removed from Norm’s condo after being found with a pair of fluffy black and white legs protruding from its supple mouth. In panic, the snake regurgitated the late Fluffy in front of its young mistress, before holding up in a drain for as long as it could, until finally it was wrestled away to the zoo. This destination was something of a myth, created by pest controllers to ease the soft whims of Western expats. Norm was distraught.
‘Oh my, Percy, it was awful,’ he said, as the pair sat amid the throng of the Discussion Group. ‘Truly awful.’
The meeting, held on the wooden veranda of Singapore Polo Club, courtesy of a polo-playing member of the group, was quickly filling the small space allocated to it, and spilling into other areas. The waiting staff looked on, concerned. No match had been played that day, but club members were clearly finding the group’s presence an inconvenience.
Percy shifted his chair to allow a short, serious faced, jodhpur clad man to pass by. He was feeling decidedly uncomfortable, for getting back to something resembling normality after Sal’s betrayal was so horribly exposed, had not been easy.
‘I didn’t think you liked cats, Norm,’ he said.
‘That is not the point. The little girl was in tears, so was her maid, so was I. It was just heartrending.’
‘Shame. Dead cat. Dead snake. All a bit pointless, don’t you think? Maybe the little girl should have kept the snake. Fluffy would have lived
on inside and she would have had a new pet.’
‘But Fluffy didn’t live on, Percy, that’s the problem. Fluffy was partially digested.’
‘Spiritually I meant.’
Norm shot him a look, ‘I see. Yes, I suppose so.’
‘It was a joke, Norm.’
Norm did not respond.
‘Speaking of pets…’ Percy lowered his head as if sharing a secret, ‘that guinea pig...’
Norm smiled, ‘You like her!’
‘No. What were you thinking of?’
‘That you wouldn’t want a dog.’
‘Or a bald rodent,’ added Percy. ‘What am I meant to do with it?’
‘I can’t believe you don’t want her. I thought she might have a home for life with you, Percy. That’s what she needs. That’s what all those poor little animals need.’
‘Point of fact, Norm, she does have a home for life, providing she dies this week.’
Conversation naturally paused as new arrivals for the meeting squeezed by, and for a moment Percy’s eyes roamed across the flat expanse of the polo field, its green grass dulling in the fast fading light.
It was the group’s first evening meeting. Planning each event had now fallen out of Joyann’s hands entirely. Since the devastating events of Pulau Ubin, she had stopped attending. Those who had risen up to make venue choices had also taken charge of everything else too. Because of this, the group had rapidly evolved from casual and open to slick and exclusive.
As more members edged by, Percy looked about him. The group had become everything he did not want it to be, the complete opposite of what he had hoped for the day Joyann first mentioned it. Where now were the few grumpy men he’d managed to drag in, elite in their cynicism rather than social standing?
And what would happen to Joyann’s wonderful topical input, boring at times but never frivolous or without meaning? Would she ever come back and share her intelligence?
Percy felt these new members were not people who would end up comfortably slumped on a bench in the Botanic Gardens, or shuffle parkland jungle paths, liver-spotted and grey, reviewing the moments of their active lives with satisfaction. These were people destined to run out of skin, as it slowly stretched and thinned, scant eyebrows lost in hairline, panty beard unwittingly relocated to chin, eyelids curling under the strain; a remodelled army. Sitting in a consultant’s waiting room, they would review not the depth of their lives, but the superficial qualities of the young receptionist, and with a bitter envy. Maybe in the Great-Waiting-Room-in-the-Sky they would be so beyond recognition they would be turned away.
Percy checked himself; there was no Great-Waiting-Room-in-the-Sky. But if there were, would people who had cosmetic surgery for vanity’s sake go to a different place than other people? Percy was tempted to ask Norm what he thought. Assuming God existed and truly made Man in His own image, did Norm agree that He might be a bit pissed off at Man altering that image the moment advances in medical techniques allowed. There wasn’t a fourth bridge in the Ten Courts of Hell. Percy thought better of saying anything, feeling that encouraging theological discussion with Norm might be the wrong thing to do.
The crowd settled and talk commenced. Slowly, the evening passed by and Percy found himself bored but feeling better than he had. Clearly the moment had come to return to the land of the living.
*
The second time a Discussion Group meeting was held in the evening, Percy again found himself with Norm.
It was a later meet, and the venue a popular seafood restaurant. At first, Percy considered it a bizarre choice, because eating there tended to become a battle of messy chilli crab and aprons, something the manicured and lovely might despise. But several large round tables clustered together under the warm night sky might make for easy conversation, was his counter thought once he’d arrived. Reflected light shone from the adjacent river, and Percy was reminded of the time he’d first met Joyann. That restaurant was not so far away, but the evening they had spent there seemed to be a very long time ago.
Across the bridge over the waters, the youth-filled centre of Clarke Quay buzzed brightly with life. His circumstances – the group, Norm, the evening meeting – brought to Percy’s mind his Heavenly ponderings at the Polo Club. This bridge would not be any good as a fourth option, for people crossing it were yet to face the challenges of aging.
Sitting beside him, Norm saw Percy looking.
‘Have you been there?’ he asked him, ‘to Clark Quay.’
‘Walked through it a few times,’ said Percy, ‘coming here tonight, for example. I did see a few oldies though, making tits of themselves; two Sikh men dancing around with a couple of half dressed young Singaporean girls…’ He had been about to add a comment about their wives, but stopped himself. Wives, he thought firmly, should not be routinely portrayed as innocent victims of their husbands’ philandering.
Norm smiled wistfully, ‘I wish there had been places like that when I was a young man.’
‘There were Norm, you just had a sheltered life. And face it, you wouldn’t have been allowed to go. You wouldn’t have wanted to, anyway.’
Norm shrugged, ‘There used to be a bar in there with golden wheelchairs, called The Clinic.’
‘The Clinic?’ Percy repeated.
‘Yes, golden wheelchairs to sit in, operating trolleys as tables, and cocktails served in those bags saline solution is put in. You know, drip bags.’
‘You’re kidding?’
‘No. They even served snacks in those little silvery kidney dishes. It was open for quite a long time, and always busy. Closed now, though.’
‘You seem to know an awful lot about it.’
Norm said nothing, running a hand across his brilliant white hair, patting it into shape.
As they watched people meander by, Percy spotted Phrike arriving with Meera. The two women from Haw Par Villa were following close behind, and all four settled on a table together.
‘About the gift, Norm, the guinea pig.’
‘Sinead?’
‘Yes, the guinea pig. I don’t want it. I told you before. You’ll have to take it back to the shop.’
Norm appeared to quiver with disappointment, ‘I can’t. It wouldn’t be fair on Sinead.’
‘Then re-home it.’
‘You really don’t like her? She’s gorgeous.’
‘You keep it then, Norm. But I don’t want it.’
Conversation was interrupted by the repeated chinking of a glass. A sleek looking woman was calling for the attention of group members. Norm and Percy exchanged a brief look of incredulity, for this was not what they were used to. The woman, Percy guessed, was in her mid-thirties, childless and professional. She spoke eloquently, her sleek hair resisting the fuzzing qualities of Singapore’s humid air, just as Sal’s eventually had, lacquered and smoothed and weighed down with product. She was as neat in her manner as she was in her dress, exactly the sort of person Percy loathed, and had mistakenly married: tanned, blond, pretty, irritating, disloyal, complete bitch. Percy could barely concentrate on what she was saying, but she seemed to be giving instructions with regard to the evening’s topic. Whatever it might be, he expected it to be eyebrow, rather than highbrow.
To the back of her, Percy noticed Joyann arriving for her first Discussion Group meeting since the incident. She was urgently scanning the restaurant as if looking for him.
Carelessly, he shouted to her across the speaker, who issued the filthiest look possible via a fully anaesthetised face.
Joyann began making her way through the network of seats and tables.
‘That was amazing,’ Norm gasped, his eyes glowing with admiration as they darted from Percy to Joyann and back again. ‘Truly.’
Percy chose not to ask Norm what on earth he was talking about, instead making space for Joyann. He turned to steal a chair from a neighbouring table, but instead found three keenly offered. He took one, and set it down for his friend. ‘There. So how are things?’
&nb
sp; ‘That was a surprise,’ said Joyann, sitting down demurely and ignoring Percy’s question. ‘An interesting statement.’
‘I sent you a message that I was coming,’ he responded, to what he thought she had meant.
‘Not you, Percy. What you said was a surprise.’
Percy’s confusion was plainly evident.
‘Goodness, you do not change. Percy, what was that lady saying when I arrived? Hmm?’ She asked the question quietly, watching as he poured her a glass of iced water. ‘The lady that I am guessing is chairing the meeting. What did she say when everyone was quiet except for you?’
‘God knows.’
‘Something like that,’ she smiled.
‘I’m sorry?’
Joyann leaned in and spoke in a whisper, so Norm, who was now beneath the table retying his loose shoelace, could not hear. ‘I would have expected you to be a little more careful, in your situation.’
He frowned and shook his head a little.
She sipped her drink. ‘So, you do not know what she was saying, before you recklessly called out in front of everyone. In front of...’ she indicated Norm with a small nod.
‘I have no idea. Some drivel or another.’
Norm emerged, and began fanning his face with a folded apron.
‘Perhaps Norman can enlighten you, Percy,’ Joyann said, drawing Norm’s attention. ‘Norman, when I arrived, what was that lady over there saying?’
In the background, the disgruntled speaker had disappeared from view, and most members were focussing on tackling chilli crab, along with the topic issued.
Norm’s beaming face turned to Joyann. ‘She was saying that tonight we are to discuss reincarnation,’ he glanced reverentially at Percy, ‘and – assuming its truth – whether it is a possibility for higher beings, such as Angels and Messengers. She then asked everyone to consider how many times a Messenger might visit earth, and in what form and why.’ He stole a coy glance at Percy.
‘Not about makeup, then,’ said Percy.