Miss Seetoh in the World

by Catherine Lim

  Meeta had discovered, quite by accident, that a student at Palm Secondary had the same unusual surname as Byron, and found out that she was his niece. ‘You mark my words,’ said Winnie, secretly gratified that the intimidating Meeta was in the same sad boat of rejection as herself, ‘she’ll try to befriend the student to find out more about him.’

  Maria thought, no, I couldn’t handle the complexities of this man-woman thing. They brought out the worst in her girlfriends and would wreak havoc in her peaceful life. Meeta and Winnie with their obsessions about love were quarrelsome and unreasonable; divested of them, they could be such delightful company. The social grapevine was full of tales of rich society women who were so lonely they could not see through the machinations of their young escorts, not even after they were cleaned out of their money. Men and women, whether gawky teenagers or matured adults, whether in their first experience of life or on its last lap, hankered after love and fed on an endless stream of encouragement from the entertainment media, listening to the soulful songs of men who cried out that they couldn’t bear to sleep alone, of women who said they waited for the phone call that never came.

  Never mind if this many-splendoured thing, enjoyed in the imagination only, was but a pale version of the real thing. I’d rather spend my time with my unreal books, thought Maria. The Botanic Gardens with their lovely quiet walks, shady corners, their twittering birds and humming insects right in the midst of a bustling city, was a favourite place to bring a book during the weekend and enjoy at least a full hour of solitude.

  ‘Hey, that’s an interesting title,’ said a young man in jogging gear, looking at her book as he wiped off the perspiration from his face with a towel. ‘Hmm, Jane Austen. I had to do her in my first year at the university. Never could take to her!’ He recommended himself instantly to her, quite unlike the other fellow, also in the Botanic Gardens, who had said, by way of introduction, ‘My name is Professor S.Y. Yong, and I’m Head of the Neurology Department of Raffles Hospital.’

  She had responded silently, with a teasing twinkle in her eye, ‘Go on, tell me about your salary, your next promotion, your new Lexus.’ The jogger was infinitely preferable company. She had chatted with him for a few minutes, but the next time he saw her again in her favourite shady nook, she chatted less and smiled less, afraid to appear encouraging.

  A curious thought occurred to her: Meeta and Winnie were close friends by default only. The tenuous bond of their similarity in status would break as soon as one found a partner and waved a cheery goodbye to the other. The co-dependence would sunder even more dramatically if one stole the boyfriend of the other. Then another thought occurred and made her smile, in the gratification of vanity: the supreme irony, part of the hunter-hunted paradox, of eager women being ignored and completely indifferent women, like herself, being pursued.

  Both their unhappy affairs behind them, Meeta and Winnie turned to a new subject of interest, eliciting much noisy protestation from Maria. ‘No, no! I don’t want to hear of it!’ she said, stopping her ears against their remarks about the reasonably good-looking Bernard Tan Boon Siong who, from his first seeing Maria in the compound of the Church of Eternal Mercy, had eyes for nobody else.

  Eight

  ‘There he is, under the tree, looking in our direction. He’s coming towards us,’ said Winnie.

  ‘Alright Maria, prepare for another display of gallantry from your knight in shining armour,’ said Meeta. ‘Shall Winnie and I make ourselves scarce?’

  ‘No, no!’ cried Maria in alarm. ‘You stay right where you are. Don’t you dare go away!’

  The situation had taken on the childishness that grown women, in a group, sometimes displayed in the invigorating game of the hunted leading the hunter on a lively chase, and mobilising the help of their friends to form a phalanx of protection against the persistent pursuer. Meeta and Winnie were geared for the fray.

  They sometimes helped out in the sale of breakfast food for a charitable fund-raising activity in the compound of the Church of Eternal Mercy, after the Sunday morning mass, seeing themselves, non-Catholics, as doing a favour to Maria who saw herself, already beginning to move away from the childhood faith, as doing a favour to her fervidly religious mother who was in charge of the fund-raising. Maria, to preserve the peace at home, accompanied her mother to the Sunday mass, as well as managed the fortnightly breakfast stall for which, from the beginning, she had recruited the help of the dependable Meeta and Winnie.

  The two women, ever on the look-out for interesting males even in church compounds where they were notably scarce, had plenty of opportunity to observe Maria’s admirer who had as good as openly declared himself. From the start, he featured in their lively debate about the relative merits and demerits of the direct, unabashed male approach as opposed to the deliberately hesitant, elusive one, both concluding that perhaps this Bernard Tan Boon Siong was making himself too available, and hence less desirable. He spoke amiably to all of Maria Seetoh’s friends and deferentially to her elders, even the weak-minded Por Por who was sometimes brought along to church, to give the maid some respite, but it was clear that all the attention to others was but a hurdle to be quickly got out of the way to reach the prize at the end. As soon as he managed to secure Maria Seetoh’s attention, or whatever semblance of it was required by civility, all his senses were galvanised into a state of fascinated concentration on that one object alone. Everybody and everything else faded away into the background. This is most embarrassing, thought Maria, I wish he would go away.

  He had newly joined the parish, a single eligible male clearly not averse to begin the chase and had, from the very start, settled on Maria Seetoh. Maria’s prettiness, freshness of countenance and openness of demeanour gave her the special attractiveness of a girl-child, though she was already thirty-five. Bernard observed her keenly through her every activity at the church: as she sat with her mother in the pew, as she moved down the aisle, row by row, with the collection box, midway through mass (he invariably dropped a large note into the box), and as she walked behind her mother to the communion rail, returning to her seat with bowed head and clasped hands, arousing no suspicion whatsoever that within that body supposed to be housing the divine presence was already forming a secret wish to be free from it.

  Once he watched her help Father Rozario conduct some catechism lessons for small children. Her earnest sincerity of tone as she told Bible stories to the row of small faces turned up towards her, impressed him; it would only be much later that he would learn that the earnestness was even then already being claimed by the secret unholy stories of her imagination. Bernard saw a purity he had never seen before, a complete absence of the vanity and pretentiousness he had noticed in some of the women he had courted and abruptly dropped. It was as if he had an evaluation sheet in his head in which, one after another, women were systematically scored and eliminated.

  He watched Maria Seetoh with increasing satisfaction. The absence of make-up on her youthful-looking face, her simple pony-tail, her slenderness, her sensible blouses and skirts pleased him enormously. In a short while, indeed within a fortnight, she not only passed the elimination test but rendered it no longer necessary. Bernard Tan was convinced that he had at last found the woman who would make him happy for the rest of his life. After a quick, discreet check with the parish priest Father Rozario who had nothing but good to say of Maria Seetoh and her mother Anna Seetoh, he was convinced of divine endorsement of his choice. The only thing left to do was to hasten the pursuit and bring it to a fruitful conclusion. He did not believe in wasting time.

  Such single-mindedness resulted in a purposefulness of approach that no observant parishioner of the Church of Eternal Mercy could miss. Everyone whispered that Maria Seetoh was a lucky girl because Bernard Tan Boon Siong was eminently eligible, not only because of his academic credentials as a first class engineer from the Singapore University, and professional standing as a senior civil servant in the Ministry of Defence, but, most important
of all, as a fine Catholic with sterling moral qualities. For it was known that he had postponed marriage to take care of his sickly parents who died within a year of each other. Even the age was right; he was six years older than Maria. Anna Seetoh’s god-sister, a very amiable woman also named Anna, enumerated the good qualities on the fingers of one hand, then the other.

  ‘You are a very lucky woman,’ everyone said to Anna Seetoh who had been trying for years to get her daughter married.

  ‘Yes, I am, thank God for His mercy,’ said the devout Anna, and did not think that her daughter’s feelings mattered in the least. ‘You do not know your own mind,’ she scolded, ‘you have been too long on your own, doing exactly as you like. Who will take care of you when I’m gone? Now, thank God, there’s someone,’ and she thanked the good God again.

  ‘Help, he’s approaching,’ whispered Maria to Meeta and Winnie, as they wrapped up the unsold pies and sandwiches to take to an orphanage. ‘If he offers us a lift again, I’m going to say we’ve already got transport. So you back me up.’

  But Meeta, who was looking forward to witnessing yet more of love’s melodrama being played out, had uncooperatively left her car behind, so the three of them, including Anna Seetoh, piled into the back of Bernard’s brand new Toyota, leaving Maria to sit in front with him. That was her assigned place; any other arrangement would have been the most impudent disregard of the man’s obvious purpose when he offered the lift. Later he took all of them for lunch in an Italian restaurant. During the meal, Meeta was her loquacious self, Winnie a silly echoing voice, Anna Seetoh too much in awe of the soft-spoken Bernard Tan to say anything, and Maria acutely embarrassed by it all. She now had the dubious honour of being solely responsible for any act of generosity coming from this noble man at the end of his search.

  That evening Meeta and Winnie took turns on the phone to give Maria their impressions. Meeta said with self-deprecatory humour, ‘Aiyah! Winnie and I, and for that matter, your mother, Por Por, everyone else, are just around on sufferance only. We are just pathetic wallflowers!’

  She shared the rumour she had heard of a prim and proper minister who wanted to be introduced to a beautiful woman at a glittering function, and for propriety’s sake endured the introduction to a dozen unattractive women before achieving his purpose. There was also the memorable episode from a novel, where the hero heroically carried four stranded, rather stout and plain-looking girls, across a river, one after the another, in order to reach the fifth, the prettiest in the group.

  Maria laughed merrily at the tales, but dissociated herself from their message. ‘Please,’ she would say and instinctively put her hands to her ears.

  ‘Winnie, you and I from now onwards should leave poor Bernard to woo Maria in peace!’ The contrast with their own situations produced a momentary bitterness: if only their men had shown but a fraction of Bernard’s devotion.

  ‘Look, Mother, I’m not going to church anymore, I’m not helping you with the breakfasts anymore, I’m not helping Father Rozario with the Bible stories classes anymore; everything’s getting just too ridiculous for words,’ cried poor Maria.

  She was beginning to experience some of the revulsion of the pursued against the excessive pursuer, and every act of kindness and magnanimity on the part of Bernard increased the desire never to see him again. In every encounter, there was the obligation of gratitude to clothe her words and demeanour with a polite civility that the man was clearly taking for encouragement.

  I will say a direct ‘No’ the next time, she thought, rubbing the sides of her forehead against an onslaught of headaches.

  The determination was, alas, betrayed again and again by the combined impact of her mother’s eagerness, Father Rozario’s smiling approval, her friends’ manoeuvres and her own sense of civil reciprocity.

  ‘Why can’t I learn to say ‘No’?’ she moaned. She might have rephrased the rhetorical lament: why couldn’t he be less thick-skinned and see that she was simply not interested?

  Invariably each nervously smiling response was seized upon as acceptance of the countless offers to give her and her mother a lift home in his car, to take over whatever heavy parcel or bag they happened to be carrying, to hold an umbrella over her head in the hot sun. Her mother, used only to years of abuse and neglect by a worthless husband, could only break into little effusive cries of gratitude.

  ‘How can you blame him,’ said Meeta. ‘You’re encouraging him!’ ‘No, I’m not!’ protested Maria. ‘Anyone can see I’m in fact discouraging him.’ ‘Well, clearly he does not,’ said Meeta. The alarm bells screamed in her head, as she sensed the encroachment, so soon to grow into a stranglehold, upon the precious world of private thoughts and dreams that had been hers from childhood. Back then it was a little hiding space on a mat behind door curtains, or on the cool floor under a table, enclosed by a large tablecloth, where, with only her comic books and her dolls for company, she spent long happy hours until dragged out by her mother or Por Por.

  Maybe I should write him a note, she thought, a polite note to say I’m not interested. But always, something would happen to paralyse her energies and cause her to be swept further along the powerful stream of his determination. Once or twice, as she was carried along the relentless current, there was a saving branch growing out of the bank that she could grab, a tiny outcrop of rock to leap on to; in failing to save herself, she had created her own dooming fate.

  ‘See, we told you, it is fate,’ said Meeta and Winnie who, despite their different religious affiliations, subscribed overwhelmingly to a common belief in an ineluctable force shaping human lives. ‘Everything in life is fated. You are fated to meet this man, he is fated to follow you to the ends of the earth, you are both fated to marry each other!’

  ‘It is God’s will,’ said Anna Seetoh who had been praying for years for her daughter to be suitably married. Two things had happened that confirmed her belief. In a dream just a week before Bernard’s first appearance in the Church of Eternal Mercy and his first sight of Maria, she saw herself and her daughter, after Sunday mass, being told by a lady in white, very like the Virgin Mary, to go along a strange road that would lead to their happiness. Then a few days after the dream, Bernard appeared, exactly on the anniversary of the feast day of one of Maria’s patron saints, Saint Bernardette. Since then, a multitude of significant coincidences had strengthened her conviction, among them the perfect match between the number on Bernard’s car plate and the number sequence, when reversed, of the day, month and year of Maria’s birth. ‘God’s ways are strange,’ said Anna Seetoh in awe.

  I don’t believe in fate, thought Maria defiantly. I’ll prove that I’m my own destiny. There was a proud quotation from a poem that she had read out to her students; this was the time to live up to its inspirational call to be master of one’s fate, captain of one’s soul.

  ‘Miss Seetoh,’ said Maggie excitedly, cornering her as she descended the stairs on the way to the staffroom, ‘You have boyfriend now, right? A friend of mine, he saw you and this guy, quite good-looking and very classy, not like our Mr Chin – hey, Miss Seetoh, so you tell us of romance in creative writing class?’

  ‘Stop talking nonsense, Maggie, and mind your own business!’ she snapped.

  ‘Oh ho, ho! Now I know it’s all true! No need to be shy, shy, Miss Seetoh!’ giggled the incorrigible girl. ‘Good for everybody to have love in their life!’

  ‘Where’s Por Por?’ cried Maria in panic one afternoon. She had taken her grandmother out for a little shopping with the maid and had turned, after paying the bill at a departmental store, to find the old woman missing.

  ‘Rosiah, you were supposed to keep an eye on Por Por!’

  They searched the whole store, called loudly, enlisted the help of the sales attendants, but Por Por was nowhere to be found. Once she had left the house on her own and been brought back by a neighbour who had found her wandering in a market. Her escapades could be comical if they involved no danger; one evening she had stol
en out of the house and gone to a nearby children’s playground where Heng found her sitting on a horse in a merry-go-round.

  They caused great concern if she walked through busy roads to get to the White Heaven Temple of which she seemed to retain some distinct memories, or if she got robbed, as happened once when she came home without the jade bangle on her wrist. Heng had since removed the gold chain from her neck and the jade studs on her ear lobes, and left instructions that at no time should she carry more than two dollars in her blouse pocket. The possibility of Por Por lying crushed under the wheels of a bus or inside a deep monsoon drain was a constant nightmare.

  In tears, Maria and Rosiah returned home to report her loss and get help for a wider search.

  ‘Maybe you should think of putting her in a home,’ said Heng who happened to be on one of his frequent visits, usually to do a check on the apartment, one half of which he would one day inherit.

  Maybe I should think of cutting you off altogether from my life, thought Maria angrily. She was always comforted by the thought that he was her brother not by circumstance of blood but of some obscure Chinese tradition that had resulted in his adoption many years ago. I wouldn’t want the same meanness to run in my veins, she thought with savage glee.

  In two hours, Por Por was back at home, muttering incoherently, led into the house by Bernard Tan who had found her in a side lane near an Indian shrine at least four miles away. It was simply amazing – his uncanny ability to be in every place where his generosity could once more be demonstrated. Maria thanked him effusively, her mother invited him for dinner the next day, cooking the most extravagant meal equal to any Chinese New Year Eve banquet, the church encounters intensified with him now sitting next to them in the pew, and bouquets of flowers started arriving for her with cards filled with the most heartfelt sentiments of respect, regard and affection. Bernard had taken his pursuit on a breathlessly rising trajectory of ardour, that would surely soon peak with the realisation of his dreams.