by Ann Massey
‘Cow!’ It was said mildly; Imelda came equipped with her own set of dangerous curves. She sat down, lit a cigarette and blew a perfect smoke ring. Then she started firing questions at the newcomer. ‘If we’re going to be sharing a bath, I want to know who the hell you are.’
Crystal found herself telling two women she’d known for less than thirty minutes things she hadn’t talked about with anyone: how she felt about her mother, the woman who’d run away; and her busy father and his succession of stylish career women, none of whom lasted more than six months. And she showed them the snapshot with Taylor taken at the school ball. She bragged a bit about being picked for the lead in the school Eisteddfod, but when Imelda asked what her father was thinking of, letting her travel to Asia on her own, she decided she’d said enough.
‘Can’t we talk about you now?’ she said to Imelda.
Crystal’s eyes became rounder and rounder as Imelda told her about the clubs and casinos where she’d topped the bill, the celebrities she’d dated and the expensive gifts from rich admirers, and Crystal blushed remembering how she’d boasted about a mere school production.
Imelda exhaled a lazy plume of smoke with a distant look in her eyes. ‘You’ve no idea what it was like performing at the Lido in Vegas on the same bill as Neil Diamond and Barry Manilow.’
‘Too right!’ said Melanie. ‘I’ve got a whole lot to learn about show business and that’s why I love listening to you talk about the old days, Imelda. I bet Crystal feels the same,’ she added and winked mischievously.
Imelda’s response was lost as a Boeing 747 took off from Changi Airport.
‘You’ll get used to it,’ shouted Melanie.
But Crystal didn’t think she ever would. This wasn’t what she had signed up for: sharing a crowded room with two women who were, well, not really respectable. She was wondering if the unhelpful clerk would call her a taxi when the door opened and Jimmy Wong rushed in like a mini tsunami.
‘Aiyoh! Welcome to Singapore,’ he said breathlessly, flicking ash onto the stained carpet. ‘Did you have a good flight? I hope the girls have made you welcome, lah. I apologise for not picking you up in person but I’ve been out to lunch with Suzy Chang from The Straits Times. She’s set up a photo shoot to publicise the dragonboat races. Get into your glad rags, girls, we’re off on jet boat trip round the harbour.’ He laughed, showing off stained, gold-filled molars.
He looked so pleased with himself that Crystal felt slightly ashamed. So what if she had to rough it, she was only just starting out. Her dark eyes flickered over Imelda and Melanie, who were talking together. They weren’t the kind of people she was used to mixing with, but all the same they obviously knew their way around; she’d watch and learn from them. There was one thing she knew for sure: she wouldn’t still be in the chorus when she was their age.
Jimmy looked round the room. His fleshy lips drew together, his jaw dropped and he picked up the phone. ‘This is Jimmy Wong, room eight-eight-eight. Send a housemaid to tidy up immediately,’ he ordered. ‘And some fruits. Make it jolly quick, lah.’ He slammed down the phone. ‘Wear the white cancan costumes with the ostrich feather headbands and bird of paradise tails,’ he said, already opening the door. ‘Be ready in an hour. That’s one hour, lah.’ He looked at Imelda sternly. ‘Where are the others?’
Imelda and Melanie exchanged glances. ‘Out shopping,’ they said in unison.
‘Aiyoh! Call them on their hand phones. Tell them to get back here pretty damn quick. Wah, so much pressure,’ he said and swept out of the room.
‘How the hell are we going to get hold of them,’ Melanie said, running her hands through her curls. ‘If I know Tracey she’ll have turned her mobile off.’
‘Who gives a damn?’ said Imelda. ‘It’ll be their own fault if they get kicked out. They know the score.’
For the next ten minutes Melanie showed signs of intense anxiety, jumping up every time she heard footsteps in the corridor. After Crystal caught her checking her watch for the umpteenth time, a warning bell went off in her head.
‘I’m sorry,’ Crystal said, her voice deliberately casual, ‘I don’t mean to pry but can someone tell me what’s going on … please?’
Melanie looked at her for a long time, wondering how much to tell her, how much she already knew. ‘The thing is, the girls are probably with their boyfriends and we’re not supposed to date the punters. Jimmy says it cheapens our image. ’
Imelda stubbed out her cigarette in her saucer. Balancing as easily as an acrobat on one leg, she grasped her other leg by the ankle and pulled it straight up above her head. Holding on to her ankle, she began to spin like a dervish. Suddenly she bent over and threw up the hem of her robe to reveal a very white, shapely behind.
‘High class, that’s us.’ She winked lewdly, her wicked face grinning from between her legs at the younger woman’s shocked face.
Crystal spluttered as her tea went down the wrong way. She’d been mooned!
Melanie patted her on the back. ‘You crack me up, Imelda. If you get any funnier we’re both going to explode laughing.’
Crystal wiped her eyes and began to giggle helplessly. She remembered a motto she’d read on a desk calendar and wondered if she dared repeat it. ‘Woman pilot who fly plane upside down must have crack up.’
‘Glory be, the kid’s got a sense of humour.’ Imelda laughed out loud, a real woman’s laugh, and collapsed in a shaking heap. ‘Oh my,’ she spluttered, standing up and holding her sides as tears rolled down her face. ‘I think you’re going to slot right in.’
Imelda still hadn’t got control of herself when the other girls burst into the room like exotic parakeets. Soon all six were fighting over the one small bathroom mirror as they painted, powdered and preened.
The promotions manager was waiting impatiently on the quay with the crew from the Malaysian dragonboat and the photographer when the White Diamonds ran onto the jetty to the ‘ooohs’ and ‘aaahs’ of the awestruck crowd.
Crystal strutted along the wharf, swaying her hips, aping Imelda like a little girl dressed up in her mother’s clothes.
Wah! Look at the way that Crystal gelek, thought Jimmy. No wonder all the men were following her with their eyes. His latest find was delectable: an intriguing mix of youth, radiant beauty and eager naivety. A woman-child. Reflexively, he licked his lips.
A gentle breeze off the water set the girls’ feathers flapping. Anxiously, Crystal put her hand up to her headdress to stop it flying off.
‘Wah-lau, that girl damn jude, lah,’ the photographer whispered to the reporter. The photo he snapped of Crystal was sexy enough to feature on page three of a British tabloid. All the same, he was surprised when the editor ran the picture in colour across four columns of the conservative Singapore broadsheet.
The flamboyant Taiwanese crew, gaudy in their gold vests and red satin pants, all wanted their picture taken with the beautiful girls. After exhausting the photographer’s emergency stock of film the party clambered aboard the jet-powered launch for a thirty-minute trip around Singapore harbour, flying through the foam at one hundred kilometres per hour. With her shapely legs clad in shiny white boots up to her thighs, lush ripe curves bursting from a minuscule gold bikini, honey hair and a smile to match, Imelda was every man’s fantasy. The drummer and steerer, by far the two best-looking members of the crew, were vying for her attention. Crystal glared at the confident, sophisticated woman. For the first time in her life she didn’t have dibs on the best-looking guys.
By the time the boat tied up the small, formal gathering of dignitaries that had seen them off had swollen into a raucous crowd. Word had got round that the White Diamonds were going to put on a free show.
‘And here are the White Diamonds,’ Jimmy announced and turned up the volume on the portable CD player.
Whooping excitedly, the gorgeous girls ran down the jetty, their ostrich feathers ruffling in the breeze. Unsure of the steps, Crystal hoofed it in the back row, kicking up her legs a
nanosecond after her companions, while Imelda dashed off a series of spectacular cartwheels that ended in the splits.
‘Okay, you want to see more, lah,’ Jimmy said to the avid-eyed men carefully folding flyers for the show and placing them in their billfolds. ‘Turn up tonight at the Merlion Club. Very cheap tickets, only twenty dollars.’
‘We’re not on tonight, are we?’ Crystal whispered to Melanie.
‘Every night except Monday.’
‘But I only got in this morning.
‘That’s show business.’
Chapter 3
‘YOU BROKE MY WILL, OH WHAT A THRILL, GOODNESS GRACIOUS, GREAT BALLS OF FIRE,’ sang the greasy MC, innuendo dripping from his lips like oil from a clapped-out engine as the White Diamonds ran onto the stage shouting, jumping and hollering. The audience went wild when the girls lifted crimson skirts and white frilly petticoats and they copped an eyeful of shiny black silk stockings, scarlet suspenders and centimetres of glorious white thighs.
The MC patted his chest in a stagy gesture and groaned, ‘Oh, those legs.’
‘Oh, my back,’ whispered Melanie out of the corner of her mouth. One day she’d sat down with a calculator and worked out that the troupe did eighteen thousand high kicks during a ten-minute cancan. Peeling off the end of the chorus line, she let out a spirited yell and cartwheeled across the stage to table-thumping applause from the audience.
The individual ‘specialities’ were the most popular part of the routine and the girls vied to outdo each other, but none could compete with Imelda. Her jump-slits were the high point of the show. The statuesque dancer could leap with the grace and elevation of an impala – and do the splits while she was in the air. She had the audience panting for more by the time she flashed her tight little knickers.
Crystal found it hard to keep her smile in place as night after night Imelda stole the show. It should be me in the limelight taking the bows, she fumed. She made up her mind. She’d go to Jimmy and tell him her idea, and if he refused, well, she’d quit.
It was two in the morning when she tracked Jimmy down in the Cathay’s cocktail lounge. The dimly lit bar was empty apart from Jimmy and a bored cocktail waitress. The bargirl’s feet ached and she wanted to close up for the night. Her heart sank when she saw Crystal standing in the archway. No chance now of getting out of there in the next hour. She kicked off her heels and rummaged under the bar for her sandals.
‘May I join you?’ Crystal asked Jimmy as she pulled out a barstool.
‘Of cos, lah,’ slurred Jimmy, wondering what she was doing out on her own at this time of the morning. It was obvious she had something on her mind, the way she was fidgeting with her hair. Most likely she was trying to get up the nerve to tell him she was quitting. He downed his drink and dragged on a clovescented cigarette with the air of a cornered rat. If he offered her a pay rise she was bound to brag about it and then they’d all be at him for more money. That’s the trouble with broads, he thought. They don’t know when to keep their mouths shut.
‘What can I do for you, Chicken?’ he said. ‘Have those bitches upset you? No wonder they jealous, you so pretty, lah. All the men look at you.’
Crystal swivelled round and flicked her hair back like a Hollywood starlet. ‘I was hoping we could have a talk about the show.’
‘At two in the morning?’
‘You’re such an important man. I don’t like to bother you when you’re busy.’
‘Okay, I’m listening awreddy, lah,’ he said, staring at his bar bill suspiciously. He wouldn’t put it past the slut to have diddled him. She probably thought he was too drunk to notice.
‘I’ve come up with a great idea for the act.’
Impatiently, he clicked his fingers at the waitress. ‘Same again and make it quick, lah.’ He took a deep breath, puffed out his cheeks and expelled the air in a long whistle, ‘Wah, I don’t understand why you concern. No need mend it when it not broke. You wanna go some place and dance?’ he said and leaned over and patted her on the knee.
Crystal’s chin snapped up and she pushed his hand away angrily. ‘Don’t treat me like I’m a dumb blond.’ She got to her feet, her eyes dark with indignation.
‘Aw, don’t be like that. I want be your fri-end. I have fwweelings for you, you know. We discuss the matter. No good here, too many ears.’ He glared at the hovering bargirl and guided Crystal to one of the darkened booths.
She perched stiffly on the stained velvet seat. Uneasily, she looked over at the bar; the waitress wasn’t around. ‘All I’m asking is that you hear me out,’ she said, wishing he wouldn’t sit so close.
‘Of cos, lah,’ he said, stroking the delicate veins of her inside wrist, his flank pushing intimately against her thigh. He put his arm round her. ‘Spit it out. Don’t be shy. How can Uncle Jimmy say no to his little chicken?’
Despite Jimmy’s misgivings, the saucy skit Crystal wanted to include in the routine brought the house down. Night after night the show was sold out. The jaded audience was titillated by the cute antics of the saucy ingénue and her clandestine attempts to mimic Imelda, the stuck-up star, and they fell in love with the sexy comedienne.
At the end of the sketch the White Diamonds raced down between the tables in their ruffles to a standing ovation from the nightclub’s patrons. One young man pulled Crystal down on his knee. She struggled prettily, giggling, accepted a glass of champagne, toasted the audience and pretended to burp. The audience chuckled at the little darling.
Exhilarated by success, Crystal’s face wore a permanent grin while Imelda seethed.
One particular night was the last straw. In the finale, when the girls bent over and flipped their filmy petticoats over their heads to show off their lace-covered derrieres, instead of an intake of breath Imelda heard the audience roaring with laughter. Crystal was wearing red flannel knickers appliquéd with a giant letter ‘L’. Not in the know, the other girls were confused and perplexed. The audience and Crystal thought it was a hoot. Imelda was not amused.
Jimmy accused Imelda of acting like a spiteful cat when she complained to him about being the butt of Crystal’s comic antics, but all the other girls sided with her when she told them he had just laughed at her and said she was ‘an ngeow type one’.
‘Well, what did you expect when he’s sleeping with her?’ one of the girls said.
‘You don’t know that for sure,’ said Melanie, who had a soft spot for the younger girl.
‘Don’t tell me you haven’t heard of the old casting couch, Mel,’ said Imelda. ‘It’s one of the perks of being a producer – getting to sleep with a wide-eyed starlet who wants to take the easy route.’
‘I can’t believe she’s that calculating.’
‘Look for yourself, hot off the press.’ Imelda held up the new publicity poster.
Eagerly the girls crowded round. When they saw it they fell silent. Crystal was pictured astride a bentwood chair in suspenders and stockings, looking over her shoulder into the camera and winking broadly. Above, splashed in large red letters, the banner read ‘The Merlion Club presents Crystal and the White Diamonds’, leaving no confusion over who was the new star of the show.
Chapter 4
CRYSTAL WAS EATING BREAKFAST ALONE, sitting stiffly, head erect, trying to pretend she didn’t care. The suggestion that they all quit had been dropped when Imelda pointed out that they would lose their bonus and have to repay their airfares if they reneged on their contracts. Unable to get back at their boss, the girls closed ranks against the interloper.
Crystal’s dark gaze flickered over the boisterous party by the window. They were having fun, laughing and giggling, most probably at her. The bitches, she thought. I hope they choke on their muesli. It was pathetic the way they were behaving, just because the audience loved her. But if that was the price she had to pay for fame … She pretended to be interested in the menu.
She brightened up when the waitress put a blue airmail letter on her plate. She recognised her friend’s scra
wl. She skimmed the letter but it was all about Tess: Tess having the best time at Schoolies Week; Tess being accepted into law at uni; Tess going clubbing with the gang on Saturday nights. The only time she mentioned Crystal was when she thanked her for the poster. ‘My olds freaked out,’ she wrote.
Wasn’t that typical? Perth people were so narrow-minded. It was just a glamour shot. You couldn’t see anything, for christ’s sake. If they got their knickers in a twist about a bare back, what would they say if they saw the actual show? Maybe she shouldn’t have sent posters to her family and friends. She’d been so proud to be starring in a professional show but now she felt uneasy. What did Taylor think of the sexy pose? What did her dad think? She crumpled up the letter and tossed it in the ashtray. She wouldn’t bother writing to Tess again. She was so immature.
‘Off to try your luck on Bugis Street?’ Imelda hissed as Crystal flounced past the table looking devastating – and sluttie, Imelda thought – in a skin-tight, leopard-print mini dress. Bugis Street was a notorious red-light district, the haunt of transvestite prostitutes, the trans-women who were drop-dead gorgeous, prettier and sexier than real women.
‘How dare you, you old … has-been.’
Imelda blinked, too stunned to answer. Before she could retaliate, Crystal had stalked off.
‘I think she’s crying,’ said Melanie, and a wave of guilt swept over her. Crystal was only a kid after all.
‘Did you hear what she called me?’
‘I just want to make sure she’s okay,’ said Melanie, and she hurried off in the direction of the lobby just in time to see Crystal step into a cab. She would have to have a serious talk with Crystal tonight. If the younger woman wouldn’t see sense Melanie would have to write to Crystal’s father. It was about time he knew what sort of company his daughter was keeping.
‘We’re putting on a private performance in Johor for a member of the royal family,’ said Jimmy. The girls were huddled in their cramped, squalid changing room after the show. ‘We’ll stay overnight in the palace and be back in time for the show on Sunday,’ he said, smiling at the girls in the slimy, self-satisfied way that made Crystal’s skin crawl.
