Miss Seetoh in the World

by Catherine Lim

  Anna Seetoh said, ‘I’ll have to get some new furniture, a new fridge, as the old one’s broken down, everything’s just so pitiful there – ’ Maria thought, ‘There goes my dream’, and the little apartment she had dreamt of, a pretty studio apartment that she had seen advertised in the papers where she would live all by herself, rapidly retreated into the distance and vanished. She wished she had more money. It could buy dreams and vanquish nightmares, including the most horrible ones created by one’s own family. Money, even if the filthiest of lucre, could help save family relationships.

  It could also save friendships or destroy them. Winnie had told her, with much agitation, that Meeta’s very expensive wedding present of the sapphire earrings had been more poison than gift. She had sent it through the maid who arrived, looking very embarrassed, at the hotel where she and Wilbur were temporarily staying before leaving for Washington.

  Philomena had said very briefly, ‘Ma’am said to give you this,’ then left abruptly. There had been no card carrying the felicitations demanded by the occasion.

  ‘I was going to return the gift,’ Winnie had confided angrily in Maria, ‘but Wilbur said, ‘Never mind, honey, don’t upset yourself. Just take the gift and forget all about it.’ Wilbur’s so right. You know what? I’m going to sell it and give the proceeds to charity!’ The twenty-year-old friendship had come to an end.

  Maria thought with some envy that Winnie was the only one carried along on life’s friendly, placid stream, while all around, everyone was tossed about in the dark churning currents of disappointment, disillusionment, fear, anger, greed, lust, jealousy, hate – herself, her mother, Heng’s wife, Meeta, Maggie, Yen Ping and Mark. Also poor V.K. Pandy, now freed by death, but not Mrs Pandy who was said to be in India, still struggling with her cancer. And the great TPK’s wife who was lingering on in her illness, beyond the power of even the most advanced medical skills. All, all in this tumultous vale of tears, humanity’s unavoidable passage in its long journey.

  There was another, of course, besides happy, smiling Winnie, being borne along serenely on untroubled waters. Until she subdued the turbulence of feelings inside, she could not even bear to mention his name, although she thought of him often, wondering how he was faring in his ambassador’s post in Germany. There had been a dream, a very brief one, in which he was speaking at some glittering diplomatic function, with Olivia sitting beside him. At one point he looked up from his speech and saw her as she stood observing him from behind some tall plants. He waved cheerfully to her, until rebuked by Olivia who turned to her and said angrily, ‘Leave my Benjy alone!’

  She practised what she had preached to indolent, careless students: don’t just make a resolution to work harder, write it down, paste it on the mirror and stare at it every day. Her resolution stared back at her every morning before she left for school: no looking back, only looking forward. She would pull herself out of the quagmire, sluice herself clean with pure water and start working towards a new life.

  ‘Hey, God,’ she said, glad that her old irreverence was coming back, a promising sign of the restoration of spirits, ‘are you still there? You take care of Mother and Heng first, and then, if there’s anything left of your largesse you can throw it at me!’

  Her mother’s all-out storming of heaven through a series of novenas in church, during which she was half the time on her knees, could only be matched by Meeta’s massive plan to go on a pilgrimage to India to personally meet with the holy god-man Sai Baba and return with his blessing. The plan had nothing to do with winning back Byron who she realised was just a useless bum not worth having, but everything to do with regaining her precious health and peace of mind. She would make a request for something rarely conferred, that is, a personal meeting with His Holiness. But even if that request was not granted, she would return to Singapore a happy woman, for the saint was known to see into the hearts of grieving women and relieve them of their torments.

  ‘Oh Meeta,’ Maria said, grasping her hands for the sight of the defeated-looking woman who had lost much weight, pained her. ‘I hope everything works for you, and you’ll be happy.’

  It consoled Meeta somewhat to have company in suffering. ‘Just forget him, Maria. He’s a cad, like the rest. I can see you’re taking it all badly, despite your brave attempts.’

  She invited Maria to join her on her pilgrimage to India. Maria said, ‘I wish I had your faith, Meeta. Or my mother’s. That might make things less complicated for me.’ Too much cerebra, too little viscera, he had said jokingly to her, tweaking her nose in the endearing way she would always remember. Neither had worked for her, either on its own or in combination. You think too much, he had said. You should feel more. She thought, Maybe I think too much and feel too much. That was why her tunnel had become twisted, darker and more difficult to negotiate, with the light at the end always eluding her.

  ‘I am making a visit to the principal,’ said Brother Philip. ‘Would you like to come along? I think he’s not averse to visitors now, and might welcome our presence.’ Almost a year after his departure in disgrace from St Peter’s Secondary school, his teachers and students were still referring to him as ‘the principal’, as if in subconscious rejection of the new head. Even at that stage, nobody knew the exact nature of his offence and his fall from grace; the story was still of the improper awarding of the building contract to his brother-in-law. It was a reflection of the general goodwill towards him that nobody cared to find out the truth but stuck to the belief that he had been manipulated by an unscrupulous relative, and had not profited by a cent in the whole sordid affair.

  Money, money, money. Was it an even stronger force than love? Did it create jealousies among women that were even more corrosive than sexual jealousy? Betty told the story of a grand-uncle who put an end to the jealousies of his three wives, not by giving them equal time on his bed, but equal allowances from his coffers. Did men become corrupt because money could bring them love, and not the other way around?

  The principal was glad to see them. Maria had brought a gift of fruit for him. He had lost a great deal of weight and his hair had become thin and grey. But as soon as he talked to them about a hobby he had just acquired, his face lit up with deep satisfaction and joy. He called it a hobby but it was a mission of mercy, a vocation to imbue his new life with purpose and meaning. For he was now doing charitable work in a community that his member of parliament, a kindly person who had kept in touch with him during the months of suspension from school, had arranged for him.

  ‘I visit the homes of the aged, the poor, the destitute,’ said the principal smiling. ‘I talk to them, read to them, bring them simple gifts of food and groceries. They show such deep appreciation!’

  There could have been the merest tinge of disillusionment with the world of power and influence that had not shown appreciation for the support he had given them through the years; he reminded Maria, in a voice filled with regret, of the many times that he had got her help for crafting papers to help the Minister of Education make decisions on a variety of educational issues. In the depths of despair when he was first suspended, he had written a pleading letter to the minister, but had got no reply. She tried to remember his real name and had to ask Brother Philip on their way back. Augustine Tan Chee Kuan. No, she would always refer to him, and remember him, with affection, as ‘the principal’. Exactly a year later, she would be shocked to read in the Obituary pages of The Straits Tribune that Augustine Tan Chee Kuan, aged sixty-two, had passed away. She would have gone to the funeral with Brother Philip except that by that time Brother had gone back to his native Ireland, and too many distressing things were happening to make it the darkest period of her life.

  ‘Brother Phil,’ she asked after waving goodbye to the principal who had walked with them to the gate of his modest one-storey terrace house, ‘have you ever gone through a time in your life when you were tormented by doubts and misgivings, when you actually hated yourself a little?’

  ‘I don’
t know about the hate,’ he replied smiling, ‘but yes about the doubts and misgivings. All the time.’

  She needed the fresh air of the Botanic Gardens to clear her mind and her heart. The place could not hold very happy memories for her, with the two rings of unhappy association with her husband lying at the bottom of its fish pond, and the wooded area deserted at night, not far from its gates, holding the most painful recollections of her erstwhile lover. But she continued to love the place and to be drawn to it as a living, breathing entity that had become bound up with her very existence. She looked at her favourite tree, a very old gnarled and fascinating structure of trunk, branches and roots so closely, densely intertwined that you could not tell them apart anymore. During the brief period when its pale pink flowers burst into bloom and drifted down with the slightest touch of breeze, she liked to sit under it and turn her face to receive the falling showers. She thought, how nice, when I die, to have my ashes scattered among its roots and washed into the ground by the rain.

  Romantic notions always had a softening effect on the mind and heart, no matter how burdened with pain, confusion, regret. Everybody, when faced with pain, summoned their coping strategies, whether of religious faith, like her mother and Meeta, or humanitarian instincts, like the principal, of sheer serpent’s wile, like Heng, Maggie, Mark and Yen Ping. Perhaps even V.K. Pandy’s dull-eyed despair, ending with death, was a kind of coping mechanism.

  She still had to work out hers, and right now, as she sat under her favourite tree, she was contented with simply enjoying the beauties of her favourite spot in Singapore. She saw a jogger approaching her and recognised him instantly, the one who had first seen her with her Jane Austen novel some years back. He was waving and smiling broadly, and as she expected, immediately sat down beside her, wiping his handsome face with the towel round his neck and peppering her with questions; how she had been, when they had last seen each other, did she remember playing like a child in the fountain playground. She had her own questions which she had never been able to ask other men – her husband, her near-lover, her best friend at St Peter’s – but which she was going to throw at him now, systematically, one by one, in the manner of the serious investigator and inquisitor. She only needed the opening gambit, which came very soon. As they talked about a whole range of inconsequential things, she noted, as she had indeed expected, that he was making a conscious effort to turn the conversation towards the subject of sex, all the time watching her reaction. That was assuredly a man’s way of assessing his chances with a woman pretty and friendly enough to mark out as a potential. If she smiled, that was encouragement; if she frowned or looked down in embarrassment, that was the end of the move which could be wrapped up and saved for another day.

  Maria smiled throughout as the jogger, by now cool and rested, talked extensively about an encounter, not too long ago, with an American lady jogger who happened to be jogging at the same time in the Botanic Gardens. She was on a month-long visit to Singapore, on some assignment from her company based in New York, and had taken a service apartment very near the Gardens.

  ‘She invited me for a beer in her apartment,’ he said casually, and added, casting a sly glance at Maria, ‘It was the most wonderful experience – for both of us.’

  Maria said, also very casually, ‘But you told me you’re married!’

  He said, ‘Aw’, dismissively, as if the question had no relevance. But her blood was fired up. There was no stopping her questions now.

  She said, ‘You’ve got to tell me this: just how do you reconcile these two things?’

  ‘What two things?’

  ‘The fact that you’re happily married, with three children, and your having an affair with this woman.’

  He did not like her question, but answered it with much bravado, ‘Hey, it doesn’t mean I don’t love my wife!’ And he went on to protest that it didn’t mean either that the lady jogger – he even revealed her name, Bonnie – didn’t love her husband.

  She had been married six years, with two lovely kids. She had shown him their pictures, which she carried around in her travels. The jogger added, ‘It’s just an affair, that’s all. Everybody’s in the game,’ adding with a wink, ‘those who aren’t, can’t.’ And still she wanted to ask him questions about men and what they wanted of women, whether they were capable of loving more than one woman. And like the rest of men, he did not like questions and evaded them. Soon he grew tired of the subject, turned to her and said, ‘You’re very attractive, you know. Care to have a drink sometime?’

  She was out of the game because she could not cope with its complexities. Right now, she was still coping with the painful doubts and misgivings arising from those complexities. There was only one thing to do because of its certain rehabilitative power. She would adopt the principal’s exemplary coping strategy, which in fact dear Brother Philip had already articulated for her: get outside yourself, get outside your skin, get into another’s.

  And the skin that needed getting into was Meeta’s. Winnie had called to say that she was delaying her trip to Washington to help Meeta through a crisis: the poor woman had gone into deep depression and was in fact on medical leave at home, being attended by a younger sister who had flown in from New Delhi. The pilgrimage to India had not been made after all. Perhaps Meeta had never been serious about it.

  A student from her class in Palm Secondary School had one morning run into the office of the principal and said breathlessly, ‘Please, Madam, Miss Nair has collapsed. She was teaching us when she suddenly collapsed to the floor, and now she’s crying, pulling her hair and beating her chest, and nobody knows what to do!’

  One of the teachers who happened to meet Winnie on one of her last-minute shopping trips relayed the bad news and Winnie immediately called Maria.

  Thirty-Two

  The complete story of poor Meeta Nair’s sudden personal tragedy took some time to assemble from a variety of sources, mostly reliable. For while Meeta was noted for her loud voice, loquacity, sense of fun and love of attention, she kept much of her private life hidden, even from her close friends, carefully selecting for release only those bits that confirmed a self-image she wanted others to share – that of a supremely confident, contented woman at ease with the rest of the world. In particular she wanted the world to know that when it came to men, she was as far removed as was possible from her silly housemate Winnie and that group of nervous, eager women in the government’s matchmaking programme who were always on tenterhooks about whom they would be matched with. ‘I couldn’t be bothered, it’s beneath me,’ she would declare with queenly hauteur, blissfully unaware that at some unconscious level of body language or verbal slippage, she was conveying exactly the opposite impression, especially during her visits to the Polo Club where her avidly searching eyes had given her thenickname, among the more spiteful female club members, of ‘Meeta the Manhunter’. She had amassed an immense stock of popular gender jokes, some quite gross, which she readily shared with girlfriends, provoking hysterical laughter.

  While she had liberally divulged the secret of her liaison with the maharajah’s cousin, (the truth of which her sister, looking very puzzled, could not confirm) she had kept concealed a little affair when she was eighteen (which her sister could confirm). There was a man, a technician, shy but sincere who had courted her and applied for her hand in marriage. Because he was a Sri Lankan, her father who was a very conservative and authoritative figure turned him down and forbade her to see him again. He later married someone else, and was apparently happy in his marriage and successful in a business he had started soon after. According to Meeta’s sister, she kept his letters and small gifts, but burnt them all when he got married.

  This sad little episode in Meeta’s life so many years ago, which must have lain somewhere in the obscure depths of tender memory, had suddenly surged to the surface in the most fearsome way on the day of her nervous breakdown while conducting a lesson for her students in Palm Secondary School. Reports from vario
us sources had pieced together a story as sad as any about the forsaken, mad woman in popular literature. When Meeta finally realised the futility of pursuing Byron – he took leave from his work and fled to a little known beach resort in Thailand for a week – she went into a despondency that was noticed by her colleagues at Palm Secondary, and would have been noticed by Winnie if she had been around. The maid Philomena had made an urgent call to Winnie in her hotel to say that Ma’am Meeta would sit by herself for hours in the dark, sometimes sobbing quietly.

  Meeta agreed to take medical leave to rest at home, but on the last morning before the one-week leave, she went into class for the usual English language lesson with such a strange look in her eyes that her students looked at each other uneasily (‘Like she is possessed by devil, like in trance or something,’ said one of the students in an awe-stricken voice).

  She faced the students with her blazing eyes and said in a voice shrill with urgent purpose, ‘Today, boys and girls, I’m going to teach you the Conditional Mood. You know what that is? ‘If only.’ ‘If I could –’ ‘If I hadn’t done that –’ If, if, if. The mood that tells about wishes, hopes, dreams.’ She began to scribble sentences on the chalkboard, reading out each word as she wrote it: ‘If only I had listened to my heart!’ ‘If only I had stood my ground with Father!’ ‘I wish that I had never been born to such a selfish, mean, heartless, domineering old bastard!’ ‘What’s wrong with Sri Lankans? That man would have made me happy.’ ‘If I could make that bastard Byron come crawling to me –’ She stood majestically before her students, the bun of hair at the back of her head coming undone and falling in loose strands upon her back, and flung out her arms in a final dramatic gesture, ‘So now I have taught you the Conditional Mood. I hope you need never use it, boys and girls, because it’s the saddest mood in the English language. It’s the language of loss and missed opportunity and dreams dashed to the ground. And you know what, boys and girls? My whole life is the Conditional Mood!’ It was at this point that she collapsed to the floor, weeping, and her students sprang up from their seats and rushed to her aid.