The Cult of Following, Book One

  ‘What shall we talk about?’ asked Norm. ‘You seem to be deep in thought, Joyann. Maybe we could begin there?’

  She started, until that moment unaware that her thoughts were not passing but had been holding her attention. ‘We could forget formal discussion for tonight and relax, since we are only three,’ she said. ‘I need a glass of something cold and probably quite strong. A cocktail, perhaps.’

  Phrike raised a hand and summoned a waiter. As he did so Percy appeared.

  ‘Good evening, Percy,’ Joyann said.

  ‘Is this it?’ he asked, sitting down.

  ‘It certainly looks that way,’ Joyann took the cocktail menu offered. ‘We should have started forty-five minutes ago, so I think we are probably all there will be this evening. This reminds me of our first meeting in The Bean. Do you remember? Except you, Phrike. You must sit on the other side of that big plant pot over there.’ She flipped open the menu, and while the waiter asked everyone else what they wanted, Joyann scanned the pages before choosing a gin and tonic.

  ‘That’s not very exciting,’ Phrike commented.

  ‘I do not want exciting. I want long cold and strong. Make it a double.’

  ‘You okay?’ asked Norm. ‘You seem…’

  ‘What do I seem?’

  ‘Weird.’

  ‘Weird?’

  ‘Yes. Weird. Not yourself. A little odd.’

  ‘Odder than meeting up with men I did not know in order to start a Discussion Group?’

  ‘You knew me,’ defended Norm.

  ‘You were a customer I knew, that is true. But my point is that I am perfectly fine.’

  Percy leaned back in his chair. ‘You never drink cocktails.’

  ‘And how would you know that?’

  He shook his head. ‘I don’t.’

  ‘Exactly. So when we all have our drinks I propose we make a toast to change. New friends, new situations, new lives.’ She turned her attention to Norm. ‘And, of course, existing lives. Why it is that I am sitting here with three foreign men, soon to be divorced, with a new store opening, I do not…’

  ‘A new store?’ interrupted Norm, clearly interested.

  ‘Yes. A dog boutique, Norman. Just for you.’ She began again, ‘Why I am sitting here with three foreign men, soon to be divorced, with a new store opening, I do not know.’ Her gaze fell on Percy, ‘But what I do know is it all started with you, Mister Percy Field.’

  ‘Me?’

  ‘You.’

  ‘But you just said you knew Norm already.’

  ‘As an acquaintance. Through you he has become a friend. Through him I have thought to move into dog clothes. Through you I have lost my husband, through that I am free.’

  ‘Blame my wife, not me.’

  ‘And,’ she added, ‘it is through you that we have this very successful Discussion Group.’

  ‘It was your idea. Your grandmother’s.’

  ‘But I only saw it through because I met you. Because you were looking for something, Percy, and I thought I could help.’

  ‘Lots of throughs, Joyann. And me?’ asked Phrike.

  ‘You should go through there and sit on the other side of that plant pot. I told you.’

  He laughed. ‘Well, we all have our drinks now, so cheers.’

  ‘Cheers,’ Joyann said, thinking that she might have let herself go rather too much, even before the gin.

  Chapter 32

  LETTERS

  When Percy finally passed the guardhouse to his complex, some forty minutes late for his meeting with Sal, he saw in the distance the figure of the boy from next-door lingering on the steps to his house. Drawing closer he noticed the bald guinea pig cradled in his arms.

  ‘Hello, Uncle Percy,’ the boy greeted, cheerfully, when Percy reached him. 

  ‘Hello, boy.’

  The boy shifted an arm, and in doing so angled the animal’s naked face towards Percy, the few hairs ripped from its nose now grown back. ‘Hello, Uncle Percy,’ the boy squeaked, through pursed lips.

   Percy rolled his eyes.

  ‘Dad says we have to call him Kojak.’

  Grudgingly, Percy took up the conversation, ‘Yes, so I hear. Not a girl then?’

  ‘No. She’s a boy,’ came the bright reply.

  Percy stepped a little closer and lifted the animal’s backside. ‘How can you tell? I can’t see any balls.’

  The boy laughed. ‘They’re not obvious.’

  ‘This is a girl.’

  ‘It isn’t.’

  ‘It is.’

  ‘It isn’t.’

  The boy scowled. ‘I don’t want it to be a girl.

  ‘Fair enough.’

  Making Kojak comfortable in his arms once more, the boy changed the subject. ‘My friend says you are God. Are You?’

  ‘You know how to ask a question, don’t you?’

  ‘Are you?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Are you sure? Only Johnny knows quite a lot of things. More than me.’

  ‘I am certain of it.’ Percy was about to skirt around the boy, but a glance through the slats in the wooden gate revealed Sal waiting inside the house. It couldn’t hurt to delay a little further. 

  ‘And my dad said he heard you talking about a group of people who meet up and talk about things. He said that you seemed to think you were God, too.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Or someone said something about someone saying something about God?’

  ‘Son of God?’

  ‘Yeah. Maybe, Uncle Percy,’ came the squeaked reply.

  ‘How did he hear this?’ Percy found himself momentarily addressing the guinea pig.

  The boy nodded to the house. ‘Your windows are open all the time. Everyone can hear you. It’s true that you’re part of some club, isn’t it?’

  ‘I’m part of a group of people who discuss…’

  ‘I’ve got to go in now,’ the boy interrupted. ‘I’ll tell Johnny what you said.’

  Willing interest rebuffed and play-for-time foiled, Percy grumbled to himself before easing open the gate. A thunderous face turned his way. It didn’t seem fair that after all he’d been through he still had to put up with this kind of crap. A man condemned, Percy pushed his shoulders back, stood straight and opened the glass doors, braced for the onslaught.

  ‘And where have you been, Percy Field? You’re late! I’ve been calling you.’

  ‘My phone was off. I see you let yourself in.’

  ‘Actually, Mila dropped by to borrow the iron and she let me in. Although I do still have a key; after all, it is my company that pays the rent.’

  ‘Not your company,’ Percy corrected. ‘The company which employs you, the company that brought us here. Oh no, I forgot, it wasn’t the company, it was your boyfriend.’

  ‘I have no idea what you are talking about,’ she snapped.

  ‘I think you do.’

  ‘I think I don’t.’

  ‘I don’t believe you,’ said Percy, calmly passing Sal and heading for the kitchen. ‘Water?’

  ‘No.’

  Percy pressed a glass to the automatic chilled water-filler on the fridge. ‘Sal, you and I both know that we only came out here so you could be closer to… to… Ethan.’ He said the name as if it were poison in his mouth.

  ‘Utter rubbish.’

  ‘Is it? So you decided to leave me, your husband of many years, for a man you’d just met? Bit like when I first met you, isn’t it?’ 

  Sal was silenced, but not for long. ‘It is because of you that I left, Percy, not because of Ethan.’

  ‘No denial, I see. So it is true?’

  ‘Just give me the letters.’

  ‘Not until you answer the question.’

  ‘I am not accountable to you, Percy Field!’

  Percy realised he had accidentally stumbled upon a way of accessing the facts. ‘You tell me the truth, I’ll give you the letters,’ he said, coldly. ‘Simple.’

  Sal’s face tightened. ‘Is that s
o?’

  ‘It’s the price. Hardly much to ask.’

  ‘Who in the hell do you think you are?’

  Percy shrugged, ‘Give me the truth, I will give you the letters.’

  ‘Blackmail from the man who thinks he’s above the law? Oh yes, Percy, I know all about it. I’ve heard how big your group has become. Ethan thinks you should be more careful. You won’t get away with it forever, not here.’

  He laughed. ‘“Get away” with what? I haven’t broken any laws. We’re very careful not to, as you well know. And it’s not my group.’

  ‘I am mystified by it all,’ Sal’s voice calmed fractionally, ‘what has happened to you, Percy? It is so unlike you to enjoy being part of something. Why couldn’t you have been more like it for me? Why did I have to suffer the sour recluse?’ She sighed, wearily. ‘You’ve changed.’

  ‘Maybe someone I loved and trusted uprooted my life so she could fuck her boyfriend more often. That kind of thing can change you, if you are sensitive.’

  ‘You can be such a pig, you know that?’

  ‘Better a pig than a fucking bitch. If you’ll excuse the pun.’ Percy smiled.

  ‘You have no idea what it was like living with you, do you? You’re not normal, Percy. You made my life unbearable. You gripe and moan and nitpick constantly about everyone you come across. You think it’s funny – I thought it was funny – but it’s not. It’s just sad.’

  Untouched, Percy drank down the icy water. ‘Tell me everything that happened, when it started, how it started… everything… and I will give you your letters. I told you, it’s simple.’

  ‘Why? Why do you want to know? Has there not been enough hurt already?’

  ‘Clearly not.’ 

  Outside, hanging on the gate, Percy could see his young neighbour peering at them. From the way his small fingers gripped the slats, hooking him like a monkey, it was clear the boy had returned Kojak to his cage. Percy waved him away, but misunderstanding the gesture, the boy waved back, opened the gate and knocked on the still open glass door.

  ‘What?’ Percy snapped.

  ‘Sorry. Dad says can you stop shouting. Everyone can hear you. And if you have to speak that loud to be heard, then maybe you are not the Son of God after all. He also said something about being a son of a …’

  ‘Okay!’ Percy interrupted. ‘Off you go.’ He was startled. Clearly Norm had been here, talking with the neighbours. 

  ‘You swimming later?’

  ‘What?’

  The boy’s eyes were wide, ‘You swimming later?’

  ‘Maybe, why?’

  ‘Dad wants to see you walk on water.’

  Percy shut the door without further discussion, and turned his attention back to Sal. ‘What I don’t understand is why you won’t tell me the truth. What are you afraid of? I assume you are ashamed of yourself. But whatever you did is done, so why hide it from me? Aren’t I entitled to know?’

  Sal shook her head. ‘I’m trying to be patient with you, Percy. I didn’t plan to set about divorcing you just when you were trying to settle here, if that’s what you are doing, but I am divorcing you and so you need to sort yourself out. You need to decide what the hell you want next. Really Percy, I am trying to do the right thing for us both.’ She paused. ‘I know I hurt you.’

  ‘You did.’ 

  The mutual words of admission altered the atmosphere. Percy could feel Sal’s tension lessen, and with it his own.

  ‘I just want to make things better,’ she said, quietly. ‘Have you found somewhere else to live yet?’

  ‘No. And the constant stream of prospective tenants for this place is a pain.’

  ‘It can’t be helped.’

  Percy wanted to say that it could have been avoided, had they stayed together. He chose to be silent.

  ‘You are going to have to find somewhere else, Percy, and soon. And find a job, or you’ll have to go back to England.’

  ‘When I need advice I’ll ask for it.’

  ‘Not advice Percy, just a few facts. You can’t keep burying your head in the sand.’ 

  He watched Sal smooth back her blond hair. Her tanned face was as flawless as ever, but even less expressive. ‘Have you had more surgery or something? You look weird.’

  ‘Dear God, and you wonder why I left you.’

  ‘You look like a Barbie Doll.’ With this remark Sal’s eyes seemed to brighten fractionally, so he added, ‘with less expression. More like a Barbie that has been dipped in boiling gravy.’

  Never one to crumble under personal attack, his wife’s voice was steely, ‘You are a cruel man, Percy Field.’

  ‘Just flesh and blood, rather than silicon and Botox.’

  ‘Do you hate me so much?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Just for a moment I thought we were getting somewhere,’ she said, ‘making some progress. Actually talking.’

  Percy was bewildered, ‘we are talking. What do you think we’re doing?’

  ‘I think we’re not getting anywhere like this. It is perfectly simple, Percy. Find a job and find an apartment or go back to England, but whatever you do… and I really don’t care which… I am divorcing you. Now, I am going, so we both can get on with our day.’

  Percy refilled his glass. ‘Don’t you want the letters? All you have to do is admit how long you have been with Ethan, that’s all.’

  ‘You are such an arsehole, Percy. Mila gave me the letters already.’

  His jaw dropped.

   She smiled victoriously. ‘Yes. I know you threw them away. She took them from the bin and kept them for me.’

  ‘So why the charade?’

  ‘To see what depths you are capable of sinking to, and the word low does not do it justice.’

  *

  Percy knew that Sal had spoken more than one truth that morning, but the most worrying reality was the fact that he really would have to decide if he was to stay or to go. Singapore was a place he now liked, with a life he had come to enjoy. England was of the past, of some other time. It was someone else’s life, a person gone. 

  Standing on the bedroom balcony, Percy pushed his fingers into his hair; brown temples greying freely since leaving England. He cradled his fingers across the back of his head and stared out into the night. The softness of the air was like a smooth linen sheet replacing the thick warm blanket of day. Somewhere, in the patch of jungle before him, lowing bullfrogs gave a steady deep bass to the trill and constant chorus of their relatives, while a thousand crickets chirped like the rattling of so many maracas. A single woodwind call gave rhythm to it all. As always, bats raced between street lamps whipping insects from the air, while huge moths fluttered and pale geckos pounced. Snakes prowled invisibly. 

  Slumping a little, hands falling to his sides, Percy wondered how he would survive without it all.

  But pride lifted his chin.

  Watching and listening to the natural world thriving within the environs of the city, Percy decided that choices were not something to be made. He ignored the irony of choosing not to make a choice, of course. It was better sometimes, he thought, to let events unfold and with it discover your fate. All the animals before him might have moved on the moment the concrete started pouring, but instead they rose up and found a place. 

  EPILOGUE 

  ‘Pass the bottle please, dear.’

  Norm picked up the bottle of white wine for his elderly friend, feeling the condensation run over his fingers. ‘Might be getting a little warm. Shall I put it back in the fridge, Hester?’

  Hester smiled and said the maid would do it. Once called, the maid came and took the bottle while Norm looked about himself, satisfied.

  He was sitting on the veranda of an old house, a black and white, something of a lavish relic from Singapore’s British colonial days. When he’d first arrived, he’d shown his appreciation of the place, and Hester had offered a brief tour, saying it was larger than many of the black and white houses that remained. As she walked slo
wly from room to room, she’d explained that many fell into ruin and were demolished before being protected, and since Chinese superstition associated black with death and white loosely with heaven, expats were the only ones keen to live in those that remained. This was how it used to be, she’d gone on to say, as if suggesting superstition were a fluid thing.

  ‘Most people in Singapore are Chinese, you see, not Malay. Though a lot of the big money is Indonesian.’

  ‘Do they buy these houses? Rent them, I mean.’

  Hester had said no with gusto. ‘They prefer something far grander than this.’

  ‘It’s lovely.’

   ‘We can’t buy it, though I would if I could,’ Hester had added, wistfully. ‘The government owns it. It owns most of them now. Hence the high rent they know foreign companies will pay.’

  ‘You’ve lived in this house a while?’

  ‘A very long time indeed, Norman. Despite the rent rises. Probably almost as long as you have been alive.’ She smiled, eyes twinkling.

  Norm smiled back, ‘You flatter me.’

  Hester grinned and shrugged, as if to say, okay, but you know what I mean.

  As they’d passed an open window, he’d looked into the garden with its large grassy lawns edged with dense shrubbery. ‘Snakes?’ It was an obvious question to ask of such a vast green space.

  ‘Plenty.’

  ‘We both know a man who’d love that. And the woman who’d hate it.’

  ‘I suppose you mean Joyann Tan. I think nothing of it anymore. The gardener sees them off. 

  ‘I have none now, not for years, but I used to have dogs that enjoyed hunting and catching snakes. Both were terriers. I didn’t have them at the same time, but they had remarkably similar temperaments. It was almost as if one was the reincarnation of the other. I simply couldn’t stop either once they’d caught the scent. Berty and Beetle. Unfortunately, it took only one failure for each dog to end its game. High odds, but perhaps the fun was worth it.’

   ‘How awful. I love dogs.’

  ‘I know you do, dear. Cocoa is a delight. But animals will be animals. Fun is fun, Norman. Fun is fun.’

  Sitting on the veranda, watching her sip wine whilst enjoying his own drink, young coconut milk sucked through a long straw, Norm felt very pleased to have found Hester. She and a close friend of hers whom Norm also liked were both members of the Discussion Group. Increasingly frank conversations had revealed they both felt as Norm did, that in Percy Field there was something far greater than the man presented. On learning this, Norm hadn’t felt the envy Verity’s admiration had stirred, only a rushing sense of relief.