Miss Seetoh in the World

by Catherine Lim

  Fiction coincided perfectly with fact to produce a detailed description of the terrace-house jointly rented by the two women, which Maria had visited a few times, with the main sitting room wall dominated by images of Hindu gods and a huge framed portrait of the great Sai Baba in the act of administering a blessing, a gigantic garland around his shoulders. Facing the wall was a sideboard on which stood a silver cross mounted on a white marble orb, and a large, leather-bound Bible, both belonging to Winnie.

  ‘You know what all this means?’ The liberal-minded Meeta would say to surprised guests, her hand doing an immense sweep to take in the entire panoply of religious objects. A deliberate demonstration of the eclecticism that should rule Singapore society, instead of the narrow-minded bigotry. She said to Maria, chuckling, ‘Every morning I bow before my Sai Baba and kiss his portrait, then I turn and bow to the cross. If your Por Por gives me one of her Kuan Yin statues, it too will have place of honour here!’ Meeta expected to be invited by the Ministry of National Affairs to be a member of the Council for Religious Harmony. ‘I’d love to sit down with those stodgy priests, imams and pastors, and shock them with a truth or two!’

  Every day, as soon as the two housemates returned home from school, they changed into casual wear: Meeta into a cotton caftan as colourful as her sari, and Winnie into her flannel housecoat. Each had a clearly demarcated part of the shared house, in an arrangement that roughly reflected their physical proportions, Meeta having the largest of the three bedrooms, the larger bathroom, and the larger share of refrigerator space for her special vegetarian fare, healthful yoghurts and face creams.

  Each kept strictly to her apportioned space, but met for afternoon tea and dinner prepared by their jointly employed Filipino maid Philomena, as well as for the frequent consultations requested by Winnie who would knock gently on Meeta’s door and ask deferentially, ‘Meeta, may I come in? I need your advice,’ and the other would emerge, sometimes with a show of weary resignation as she said, ‘Alright, what now, Winnie girl,’ and prepared to play her role as advisor, mentor and guide all over again.

  They had been brought together not only by a social status maligned by the society, but by an agreeable mesh of opposites that complemented and fed each other in perfect co-dependence, like that of the bully and the weakling, the imposter and the gull, drifting naturally together. Out of the enormous differences was forged an unbreakable loyalty and generosity.

  Meeta once nursed Winnie through a serious illness, taking extended leave from school to stay with her in hospital when her own sisters were unable to do so. ‘I had no time for anything else,’ she said l3ater. ‘I was running here and there, doing this and that, like a mad woman, just wanting poor Winnie to recover from the operation. My hair, my nails, were a mess. Even Dr Pillay noticed. He said to me, ‘Promise me that the next time you come to see Winnie, you will look your usual self.’ Promise!’ ’ She went to offer prayers, on Winnie’s behalf, in a Hindu temple.

  Winnie, on her part, once saved Meeta’s father from bankruptcy by giving her a large sum of money from the proceeds of a rubber plantation left by an uncle in Malaysia. She whispered the sum into Maria’s ear, and watched her wide-eyed reaction. ‘Don’t tell anybody, not even your mother,’ she said. ‘And don’t tell Meeta that I’ve told you. She doesn’t want anybody to know.’

  Maria thought with twinkling mischief: ‘Well, she didn’t say, ‘Don’t tell your brother,’ so it will be okay to tell Heng, watch his face contort with trying to digest the sum and hear him call Winnie a mad woman!’

  Fiction departed from fact only in the ending of the story, when one of the women got married, and the other felt so repudiated and hurt that their bond was broken forever. ‘Neither of us is likely to get married,’ said Meeta. ‘I’m so fussy that I’ll never find men who will meet my requirements, and Winnie’s so keen she frightens them off.’

  Winnie did frighten off Teik who not only failed to propose but left Singapore without a word. Weeping silently, incapable of angry recrimination, Winnie left it to Meeta to heap abuse upon the miscreant.

  After each failed relationship, Meeta came in to energetically clean up the mess, beginning with the famous scolding lecture, then looking into the messy state of Winnie’s finances. ‘Aiyoh!’ she would exclaim, laying a dramatic palm on her forehead. ‘You wouldn’t believe it. I sat down with her for three hours, to straighten out things. That woman could have been cleaned out! If she isn’t careful, all that inheritance from her family in Malaysia will be gone.’

  She whispered to Maria who felt sorry enough for Winnie to take her out for lunch. ‘Relationship? What relationship? It was all in her imagination! He never took her out once on a date. She was the one taking all the initiative, paying for the lunches and dinners, making all the assumptions, buying him those expensive vitamin pills, the expensive Korean ginseng. It was the same with those two others – I can’t even remember their names. They took everything, then vamoosed.’

  She brought her lips close to Maria’s ears. ‘Let me tell you this. They took everything except her virginity – they didn’t want that!’

  ‘How do you know?’ asked Maria, intrigued.

  ‘I know, I know,’ said Meeta, giving a knowing wink. When Winnie joined them, she launched on a little homily on women’s need to be the hunted, and to take a stance of great aloofness, to whet the chase. ‘I blame the government,’ she concluded, ‘All that fuss about woman needing to get married, and look what it’s done to our poor deprived Winnie!’

  Meeta herself, as Maria privately observed, was capable of the greatest vulnerability of women when they became the hunters: they built a huge superstructure of hope upon a little hint dropped by the man, a little compliment offered in the expansiveness of mood after a good dinner, a cheerful promise to call again that he would promptly forget.

  She had occasion to observe this single weakness in the awesome Meeta one evening at the Polo Club to which Meeta, a long-time member, generously invited friends for dinner or drinks, or to watch the monthly movies. At every public place where men walked in and out of rooms, where friends introduced their friends in an ever expanding social circle, both Meeta and Winnie would be completely immobilised into a state of acute expectation as they sat rigidly in their chairs, two statues, except for their eyes moving swiftly here and there, to pick out the presentable male, with an intensity matching that of the predatory lioness crouching in tall grass or the female chimp in oestrus, waiting upon a leafy branch. Completely unlike in every way, they were perfectly united as they looked out for the eligible male in their display of mesmerised anticipation which broke into uncontrolled eagerness as soon as he appeared.

  That evening at the Polo Club was exceptional for Meeta’s eagerness approaching delirium. There was a good-looking habitué of the club, always seen at the bar, somebody named Bryan whom she called Byron in teasing tribute both to the resemblance in profile and the aura of romance exuded by his entire person. From the moment she sat down at their dinner table, she was oblivious to everyone else as her eyes did a sweeping survey of the room, then fixed themselves at the entrance. Maria and Winnie began teasing her, but the controlling Meeta Nair was now under the complete control of that one organ of her body, which quickly took on a life of its own, refusing to leave its station at the doorway.

  An amusing picture in full technicolor formed in Maria’s mind: a stage magician in full regalia of black-and-red cape, top hat and gloves hypnotising Meeta in her beautiful green-and-purple sari and commanding her to do this and that. She walked, bowed, sat, waved her arms, swayed from side to side, lay down on the floor, every part of her body obeying the magician’s commands, except her head which moved to a separate command, like a puppet’s head on its own strings, jerking and bobbing, twisting and bouncing, to keep the eyes transfixed upon the doorway.

  At last Byron made his appearance, a tall, handsome man radiating charm and goodwill as he strode towards the bar in the adjoining room, wavi
ng a friendly hand to everybody along the way. By now Meeta’s fingers had done their quick check of hair and hair clip, and all her features had tightened into a single expression of hope and yearning; it broke into a burst of smiles when Byron suddenly noticed her and strode towards the table. From then on it was an execution of unabashed purpose that was noticed by the surrounding diners. It embarrassed Maria and amused Winnie who never stopped giggling. Meeta held Byron in the grip of her attention, making him sit down with them at the table, ordering a drink for him, fixing her eyes unwaveringly on him, plying him with a stream of questions and comments which, like a net, held him fast to his seat even as he was looking longingly in the direction of the bar. ‘Thanks. Sure, I’ll be free for lunch next week; I’ll give you a call,’ said the affable man, and left hurriedly.

  All the way home in her car, the aggressively practical Meeta became the languidly fantasising schoolgirl as she recounted the events of the evening, culminating in that promise of lunch, that promise of a call.

  ‘When he calls, he’ll find I’m not one of those easy dates,’ she said smiling, as she looked dreamily into the distance. ‘Shut up,’ she said cheerfully to a car behind, honking impatiently. ‘Well, darling,’ she continued, still more dreamily, ‘as I say, I’m not one of your easy pick-ups, your dime-a-dozen tarts! You’ll have to sweat a bit, my dear, and make another call.’

  Maria who was sitting beside her in the front passenger seat felt a little poke in the back from Winnie that said, ‘Poor Meeta!’

  Later that evening, when Meeta was in the shower and out of hearing, she called Maria to say excitedly, ‘What do you think? He won’t call! You want to take a bet? Did you see how he wasn’t even paying her any attention?’

  Timid, flustered Winnie had her moments of shrewd observation when she took on a totally different persona, and enjoyed taking revenge for all the humiliations constantly tolerated. Without exactly the ferocity of the worm that turned, she had the satisfaction of the laughing stock sometimes having a few laughs herself. ‘He paid more attention to you. Anyone could see that.’

  It was always a source of mild amusement to Maria that her girlfriends’ boyfriends, at group gatherings, invariably paid her surreptitious attention. One of the men whom Winnie was always picking up and laying claim to, the shamelessly sponging Benny Ee, had actually laid a sly firm hand on her back as he stood next to her for a group photograph.

  Meeta would have reported such clandestine acts with uproarious humour to feed her large vanity, watched the look of jealous resentment on the face of her repudiated friend and chortled, ‘Dear, dear, don’t worry. I’m not a boyfriend stealer. I had enough in my time!’ She counted a relative of a maharajah among them.

  I don’t want all that to be part of my world, thought the peaceful Maria, determined to keep it free of the squalor of petty deceits, rivalries and jealousies. They simply consumed too much precious time and energy. She knew of a group of five women, all securely married, who lunched, played mah-jong and travelled together. They welcomed into their midst a playboy bachelor who, since he dispensed his hugs and kisses openly and equally, became a commonly owned, favourite mascot who could, without any qualms, be introduced to the respective husbands. Thus did the married women enjoy the titillating pleasure of flirting with a handsome, much younger man, with the full knowledge of their husbands. The safety of their married status freed them to tease him endlessly, pull his shirt, pinch his cheek, share risqué jokes, ask him to guess their bra sizes. We know our limits, he knows his, they said; as long as both sides understood the rules, there was all the pleasure to be had, and no harm to be feared. One of them got bolder; when he dropped a mah-jong tile, she picked it up, put it inside her ample cleavage and looked at him challengingly. He made only a show of retrieval and the ensuing merriment meant that the limits were still being observed.

  Then he had a secret affair with one of them, and all hell, of women’s fury when betrayed, humiliated, shocked and, most of all, threatened with loss of an immeasurable pleasure in their jaded married lives, broke loose. They turned on the traitor and expelled him from their group. They reserved their greatest fury for the other traitor, calling her all sorts of names. The treacherous pair endured months of acrimonious opposition and punitive action from the woman’s husband, which gave rise to all kinds of rumours about an approaching break-up, feeding the insatiable fury. It received no more sustenance and sizzled to an end when the couple finally got married and were obviously very happy together.

  Miss Seetoh imagined that if her artist student did a cartoon drawing of her girlfriends, it would be of a screaming horde of women attacking each other in a furious blur of flying hair, fists and high heels, while their frightened-looking prey, with suit and tie askew, crawled away unnoticed.

  Less humorous would be the cartoon of the lonely woman parlaying a man’s smile, a greeting, a nothing, into massive hope and longing. Maria had heard of a clerk in St Margaret’s Convent, a forty-six-year-old unmarried woman named Celestina who told anyone who would listen, endless stories of being courted, each story gathering more tantalising details as it rolled along. Much of the pleasure of teasing poor Celestina was in the seriousness of her answers to the most outrageously teasing questions. ‘Well, Celestina, did you accept your surgeon boyfriend’s invitation to join him in New York for the conference?’ ‘Good morning, Celestina. So have you made up your mind about whether it will be the handsome young lawyer or the rich towkay?’ The teasing invariably ended with a request. ‘Well, Celestina, don’t forget to invite me to your wedding,’ for the sole purpose of eliciting the solemn response: ‘Sure. I never forget good friends.’

  ‘I told you it would happen!’ Winnie excitedly gave a blow by blow account of Meeta’s torment. It had begun on the very next day after the Polo Club dinner, and continued through the entire week, as Meeta returned from school each day to check for voice messages on her phone and found none from the desirable Byron. The phone, both by its silence and its ringing, became a source of great agitation that infected the whole house, unnerving the maid Philomena. Meeta’s ears, from whichever part of the house she was in, strained towards it, its silence working up an immense anxiety, the slightest hint of a ringing tone causing a feverish sprint towards it and a crestfallen look as she put it down. The wrong caller came in for some of the pent-up frustration, the nuisance caller for its full discharge. ‘You fool, you idiot, you bastard! I’ll set the police on you!’

  Winnie helpfully suggested a number of face-saving reasons for the broken promise. He was too busy, he had gone outstation for a while and would call when he returned, he had lost her telephone number, he was ill.

  To Maria, she said at the first opportunity, ‘We saw him! Meeta and I were at Robinson’s yesterday afternoon, and saw him in a café drinking coffee with a woman, a very young and pretty woman. It was definitely him. I think Meeta saw but pretended not to.’

  Both Maria and Winnie tried to help salvage the badly battered vanity. As soon as she realised all hope was gone, Meeta acted quickly. The reclamation of pride was a systematic affair, beginning with a dismissal of all sympathy from her two friends and a resumption of the old stance of brimming confidence and loud humour. It was followed by vigorous denial of any intention of having lunch with that man in the first place, which in turn was followed by sharp attacks on that individual’s character.

  Within a week of the episode, Meeta reported, with much gusto, an unsavoury detail of his past: he had left a job, years back, under the suspicion of embezzlement of company funds. He fell woefully short of her high standards, both morally and aesthetically.

  ‘Did you notice,’ she said to Maria and Winnie, ‘that he has an ugly mole on his right cheek that sprouts bristles, like a wild boar? He has bad breath and speaks with a lisp that makes him so effeminate!’ She imitated the lisp and joined in the laughter.

  The more she derided him, the easier was the restoration of the lost pride, and exactly a month la
ter she was able to report, with gleeful triumph, that he had waved to her one afternoon, and she had completely ignored him. She went to the Polo Club a few times for the sole purpose of snubbing him, reporting her victory each time.

  Winnie whispered to Maria, tittering, ‘All bluff, let me tell you! He doesn’t remember anything. Yesterday he happened to be at a table near us. She said loudly to me that she had no time to waste on worthless men, and all the time, he wasn’t even aware of her presence!’

  Buoyed by a new boldness, Winnie shared her discovery regarding the alleged royal conquest. ‘Maharajah, my foot! He was some pretentious bum, and they met just once!’ She shared another discovery, speaking eagerly behind a cupped hand, ‘You know what? Meeta’s a virgin, for all her boasting about spending a secret holiday with the maharajah in a desert palace!’

  ‘How do you know?’ asked Maria. Winnie, removing the cupped hand, laughed hysterically. ‘She said so herself. But not to me. To the great Sai Baba. In a prayer loud enough for me to hear. She said, ‘To your Holiness, I offer you the most precious gift of all, my virginity.’ ’

  Maria, in the privacy of her room, laughed so much she had to cover her mouth with her pillow in case her mother heard. If she wrote comedy, she had the perfect raw material: three modern women coping with their virginity, Winnie offering hers on a platter; Meeta variously claiming she had joyously lost it to a mortal and solemnly offered it to a god-man; herself wondering about whether, should her time come, the experience would live up to the breathtaking expectations of romantic novels, or even of Victorian ones, where its loss was signified by a row of coy asterisks. An asset and a prize in the days of their mothers and grandmothers, it had become an ambiguous symbol in a society that was still traditional while claiming modernity. Among the expectations of the men who took part in the government-initiated matchmaking exercise, virginity could still rank high.