Her Master's Voice (28 page)

He kissed her forehead. “You’re wonderful. Darti’s pussy is nice, but I like yours much better. It’s so tasty, and so rewarding.”

“After this afternoon, I’m not sure I should reward you anymore.”

He kissed her again. “Well, up to you, of course. I mean, if you didn’t enjoy it…”

Chapter 29

Tim enjoyed the luxury of owning a car in Singapore. With private car ownership taxed almost out of existence by a caring Government, the possession of a licence to buy a car was something treasured like a family heirloom. Transient foreigners, except for the obscenely rich, just gritted their teeth and used public transport, but businesses were a different matter. Krumbeins had leased a car for Tim to travel back and forth to Jurong every day. Of course, he resented commuting and regular hours but after all, it would only be for a few months and then he could go back to operations.

For the moment, he was concentrating on getting bulk cement silos installed in a converted oil rig supply boat at the Jurong Marine Base. Krumbeins were going to try delivering bulk cement straight to the rigs and platforms in the JavaSea, once Tim had got the silos and compressors hooked up and working. The dockyard hands had finished most of the heavy work of piercing the deck and dropping the pressure silos into place. Now they were busying painting and finishing. Tim and a small Krumbeins crew were installing the rat’s nest of valves and pipes and the large low-pressure compressors that would move the cement around and blow it up to the rig tanks. It was noisy and frustrating work, below decks in temporary lighting, manoeuvering awkward lengths of pipe in confined spaces. No matter how hard the fans were run, the air was hot and oppressive and every day Tim welcomed five o’clock and the chance to relax for half an hour as he drove home in air-conditioned comfort.

The girls waited for him. They had been to yoga again and wanted to tell him how much Darti had enjoyed it. She seemed to have taken to it like a native Indian and particularly enjoyed the comfortable friendship of the ashram. Lunch with Ranji and the girls suited her very well. Tim wondered if she admired Papi Bombar quite as much as the other students, but if she had doubts, she did not show them.

“Ranji is taking us to Bugis Street tonight,” announced Sherry. “We’re going to pick her up on the corner of Serangoon Road at eight thirty, so you’ve got plenty of time to get cleaned up and relax.”

“Eight thirty? But I’m hungry, and I’ve got to be at work tomorrow, don’t forget.”

“Never mind. There’s no point being early, the fun doesn’t start until eleven. I’ll make you a sandwich, but no more or you won’t enjoy yourself.”

Later, as he worked his way over to Bukit Timah Road, it occurred to Tim that having two women in the house was not simple. Sherry and Darti had formed an unlikely partnership. They looked different. Tall, short; blonde, dark; European and Asian, and everything in their education and background should have set them apart. Some sort of sistership had grown up between them and they were rarely separated. True, Hangchi had taken to coming around and whisking Darti off for evenings around Singapore, but for the rest they lived together like sisters.

They made plans that filled Tim’s spare time. With demands from the girls and ideas from Hangchi, he started to see more and more of the island nation, and to grow closer to its ramshackle Chinese soul. He learnt more of its short history and began to feel wistful for the time, not so long ago, when Chinese and European influences were more nearly equal. A time when everyone had his place and rubber plantations grew on Orchard Road.

Ranji was waiting at the bus stop. They snapped her up and Tim drove the chattering car on to find a parking space near enough to Bugis Street.

Bugis Street was an anomaly in Puritan Singapore, an unlikely honey pot of naughtiness. It looked normal enough, and during the day it was in fact a normal side street, bustling with city life, all shops and food stalls. Some time during the evening, as some shops closed, the food stalls expanded and set out more tacky tables and chairs. People started to drift in, ordering food and beer, and the whole street became more crowded, more raucous, everyone waiting for the fun to start.

They picked their way through the gathering crowd and caught a stallholder bringing out another table. They commandeered it and waited for him to return with the chairs. They sat and looked around them as they waited for their drinks to arrive. The place looked old and run down. Stuccoed shop houses with heavy piers supporting their upper floors over the narrow pavement. Dirty pastel colours, different for each shop, gave the street a sort of grubby charm.

To one side, not far from their table, stood the famous Bugis Street toilet. Somewhere, in the bowels of a city office, at some time in the late fifties, a budding town planner had laboured and brought forth an icon of modernism—a public toilet. God knows what arrangements people had made before this flash of enlightment, but now they had a public toilet. True, it did not fit in with Bugis Street architecture and ambiance. True, its linear godfather was Josef Stalin but, never mind, it was free, available and it worked. The locals accepted the dour, faceless roughcast block with machinegun ports in place of windows, set high up, just below its flat concrete roof. It is remarkable that such a miserable piece of municipal mindlessness later grew to be an internationally recognised artistic venue. Its concrete roof made the perfect al fresco stage to display dancing girls and the annual Queen of Bugis Street competition.

Tim sipped gratefully at his beer and half listened to the girls’ chatter. He liked sitting at a table with three pretty girls, and enjoyed the questioning glances they collected from passers by. Not that they noticed. Beautiful women are used to being looked at, especially when they are dressed up for an evening on the town. They were in no hurry to eat and Tim ordered his stomach to stop rumbling.

Darti dragged Sherry off to look at the tourist junk on offer down the street but Ranji stayed to help him keep the table.

“How’s your father going, Ranji? You’ll have to introduce me one day.”

She smiled, not certain if Tim was proper enough to rate an introduction. “Yes, one day. He’s fine.”

“Business good?” Tim persisted. “No problems came up?”

“Of course there were problems! After I spoke to you the police came and found that shipment, but my father wasn’t involved with that place anyway. I don’t think any of his friends were either. I don’t know who it belonged to, but the Irishman was upset. He’d paid us, so he must have been paid already, but he says it’s not good for business if the police get involved. Someone put a bomb in his office, you know, and Papi Bombar told me that the people who were getting the shipment are blaming the Irishman. He thinks it’s their own fault. He doesn’t believe the Indonesians can keep secrets. He’s a racist like all the Chinese. He doesn’t like us either, but that doesn’t stop him taking our money when it suits him. Or other things.”

Tim thought about the ‘other things’ the Irishman had taken from Ranji and laughed at her bitterness. “Never mind, Ranji. At least he appreciates you for a beautiful woman.”

“But so do other people, and they don’t … well, you know.”

“Maybe, but I bet they wish they could!”

Ranji looked at him with more interest. “You think so?”

“Of course! Every time they see you, and I do too.”

She had the grace to look shy for an instant. “I could be persuaded, Tim…”

“Oh, you’d have to see Sherry about that,” he chuckled. “She’s in charge of me.”

“Mmmh—then we’ll have a long wait. She’s too beautiful, anyway. What do you want with Indian girls when you’ve got her? Or Indonesian ones either?”

“You ladies are all beautiful. All different but beautiful, and I’m definitely not racist when it comes to women.” He thought his own thoughts about Ranji’s naked body as they sat and listened to the tinny Chinese music filling the air.

They were satisfied and pushing their bowls away when an excited buzz announced the arrival of the girls. They picked their way through the tables in twos and threes, stopping to banter with the diners and moving on. They were glamorous, dressed like film stars. All had long hair, either their own or a luxuriant wig in chestnut or honey blonde. In their walk, their talk and their coyness they painted a provocative parody of real women. There was nothing, absolutely nothing, male about them but their fertile, sexy femaleness hardly felt feminine either. They were what they were, and right now they were the stars of the show. They slowly fanned out to sit with the tourists, gracefully accepting the offer of a drink and posing for photographs with fat Australian couples. The music switched to disco and the volume cranked up.

Darti’s eyes were bright and she clapped her hands as she watched the display. She, at least, had no problem with billy boys. The atmosphere warmed and a couple of the girls got up to dance together for the cameras. They blossomed in the photo flashes.

Darti wanted a photograph and called out in Indonesian to a pair of shorter dark girls. They came slowly, shyly to the table. One wore a long blue cocktail dress with a halter neck and a dramatic décolletage to show off her adolescent breasts. The other had a knee length red dress, light and flared. Tim recognised it. Janice came up to the table, embarrassed and determined not to know him.

“Janice! What the hell are you doing here?” The rest of the table stared at him.

Janice whispered something to Darti who clapped her hands again and shrieked with laughter.

“You know her!” accused Sherry.

“Yes. I met her offshore last month. She works on one of the crane barges. Or she did then. She’s a camp hand, with Renaldo the cook. I told you about him.”

Darti laughed again. “Timmee suck cock!” she teased. “Very good, no?”

Sherry was scandalised. Tim just sat there, looking a little uncomfortable it was true, but he had been playing with this—this  person beside her. She could hardly believe it, and Darti said he had sucked her cock. She just could not imagine it.

Darti noticed her. “Oh-oh! Sherry cross.”

“No, no!” she denied it. “Not at all. Why should I be cross?” She held her hand out to Janice and invited her to sit down. Her friend had already squeezed onto Darti’s chair so in a show of defiance she moved her bottom over and pulled Janice down to share. All the time her mind was turning somersaults.

“Photo!” called Darti, “We want photo.” A skinny Chinese man of uncertain age appeared from nowhere with a large Polaroid camera and flash. “Ten dollars three,” he shouted over the noise, holding up three fingers to make his point.

Ranji would not stand for that. “Five dollars three,” she shouted back.

“Cannot, lah,” tried the man half-heartedly, but he knew when he was beaten.

“Five dollars three, lah,” insisted Ranji, closing in for the kill. The man shrugged and resigned himself. The girls squeezed together with their new friends and smiled for the camera. Tim put twenty dollars on the table and nodded to the photographer. The money disappeared and he kept shooting.

“Timmee—with Timmee now,” shouted Darti. Janice and her friend came around the table and draped themselves over Tim, pushing their chests out to make the most of their assets.

“Sit down, sit down,” the girls were calling and Janice sat on one knee with her arm around his shoulders and posed with their heads together. The photographer stopped to change film.

“What are you doing here, Janice? Given up on Renaldo?”

“No, I short time only with Mr. Renaldo. Now I come to Singapore on
pinisi—
how you say?” she turned to ask Darti.

“Schooner. She cook on Makassar schooner.”

“Yes. Schooner. We come Singapore empty for cargo, but now, no cargo and we wait. I like Singapore; I like come here. Every night—make money for photo. Very good.”

“What are you two talking about?” demanded Sherry.

“Nothing, love. She’s come here on a trading schooner, but it sounds as if they’re stuck here without cargo. She’s making money by coming here every night to have her picture taken. I’d better give her some.”

“As long as it’s just for photographs…” and everyone laughed at her. The photographer started posing the two girls all over Tim while Ranji counted the pictures that were developing on the table. They divided them up so that everyone had souvenirs, even Janice.

“It’s probably just nothing,” said Tim on the phone to Hangchi the next morning, “It’s just that I can’t see them coming all the way from the Mahakam delta empty. It’s not normal, and they must have got here just about the right time. I know she was working offshore there not long before I got attacked.”

“What a nasty suspicious mind you have,” mused Hangchi. “You’re probably right and it’s nothing, but all the same, I think I’ll give the schooner wharf a call. I don’t believe in coincidences.”

Chapter 30

Hangchi was sitting alone in the living room when Tim returned home that afternoon, watching television and sipping a cup of tea with milk.

“Hi—all alone? Darti getting ready?”

“No, Tim. We have another problem. It’s the girl called Janice.”

“Janice? What’s happened to her?”

“Exactly. I called the schooner wharf as soon as you put the phone down, and they said they were holding a naked billy boy in the guardhouse and didn’t know what to do with her. I told them to give her tea and biscuits, and wait for me, and to close the wharf off until I could get there.

“So—there she was. Sitting in the sergeant’s office, with tea and biscuits just as I’d asked. They’d even run out to get some biscuits for her and set them out on a plate. At least the sergeant had been clever enough to lend her his uniform jacket to put around her shoulders, but apart from that she was naked and she’d been beaten. Nothing seriously wrong I think, but she’s not looking very pretty.