Some of My Friends Have Tails

by Sara Henderson

  When he wanted to mark his territory, he would stand by the light pole waiting; the maid would unstrap the platform, he would complete his task, then wait for his platform to be buckled back in position before he headed for his next pole. There were some very funny situations when he met another dog in his territory, and wanted to fight. He was very nifty at skating around on his platform, and would thoroughly confuse the other dog. But, of course, at times he was a bit too cocky, and would challenge a large dog who was too much for him, even with his trusty platform. On these occasions you would see maids or children struggling down the street carrying the dog on his platform with some dog snapping at him, as he carried on the fight from an elevated position. They were very patient people, because they took him walking every day!

  I settled comfortably into this animal-loving environment and I no sooner had the house furnished and the last vase of flowers in place, than I wanted a dog. The next December I found a beautiful German Shepherd puppy under the Christmas tree. I named him after one of the reindeer, and called him Dasher. He soon grew into a very large dog, and because of the lack of garden space, I joined the ‘walking brigade’ every afternoon up and down the street. We would end up in a little walled park at the end of the block, and Dasher loved to play ball with anyone willing.

  Marlee was toddling around at this stage, and had great fun with Dasher and Rita, her amah. I was very pregnant with Bonnie, so we all took a regular daily constitutional in the park. Midway through my pregnancy, Mum and Dad arrived from Australia aboard a P&O liner. Dad enthusiastically took over the daily parade to the park and started Dasher’s obedience training. I am not too sure who was in control, or who was training whom, but by the way the dog and everyone bounded in the door each day, they all enjoyed the dog-training sessions. The few times Mum and I went along, it was certainly entertaining. Dog, child, maids and Dad all had a wonderful time, and it was never decided if Dad was training the dog, or Dasher was training Dad. Still, Dad must have been doing something right, because they came back one afternoon with a prize. Dasher had won a silver cup in a dog show. Mum said when they arrived in the park, a dog show was about to start, so Dad entered Dasher. Mum was convinced they gave Dad the cup for prancing, not Dasher. Dasher only wanted to play ball, and was not the least bit interested in prancing around in circles on his leash with a lot of other dogs.

  So Dad put the ball in his pocket, and Dasher followed the ball, watching Dad’s every move, waiting for him to take the ball out of his pocket and throw it. What impressed the judges was this young dog’s attentiveness to his owner, eagerly awaiting his next command. I wonder if they would have awarded the prize if they knew Dasher was just watching and waiting for Dad to throw the ball. Mum said it was really Dad who got the prize because his prancing was far superior to Dasher’s. After this achievement Dad had to rest for the next few days, so Dasher had to be content going to the park with the maids and Marlee. It was only a few days, though, before Dad was back to normal, and he and Dasher bounded off again with the ball each afternoon. Dasher was certainly well named, at least after Dad came into his life.

  Mum and Dad stayed for six months on that visit, and it was very much enjoyed by everyone. Dad was keen to participate in everything—well, not quite everything: he did steer clear of sailing after Charlie gave him his first lesson.

  Dad loved going to the office with Charlie. I am not sure Charlie was too pleased, though he thought the world of my Dad and wouldn’t dream of doing anything to upset him. So when Dad showed interest in the business side of the shipping company, Charlie included him wherever possible.

  Dad’s days then were divided between going to the office with Charlie in the mornings, and dashing around the park with Dasher in the afternoons. His afternoons were full of physical activity, and he soon had his mornings following similar lines. He organised the office staff to do exercises, to get them ‘stimulated’ (was Dad’s favourite expression). As disruptive as this was, Charlie allowed Dad to continue his exercise breaks.

  In the 1960s, the office girls, like any women in Manila, were not too keen on physical training. They all wore complicated attire, lots of make-up, beehive hairdos, stiletto heels, and flashed long, bright red talons; none of which was conducive to Dad’s energetic work-out routine. But they all thought the world of Dad, and went through the motions in a superficial way that did not crack the perfectly groomed façade that the era demanded of them. Dad finally had to accept that his physical training class was not living up to his expectations. These stiletto-heeled, tight-skirted, beehive-haired females, who collapsed into a near faint if they even chipped their nail enamel, finally wore Dad down, and his visits to the office were not as regular. Soon, however, he had another distraction.

  Even though Marlee was only approaching two years old, Charlie gave her her first pony, a tiny little native pony not much taller than a Great Dane in height. He was spoilt, well fed, and so fat that when she sat astride him she was actually doing the splits. He was called Blaze (Porky would have been more appropriate); but a better child’s pony one could never wish for. I think Marlee’s love of horses developed from that first association with Blaze; they developed a great bond. And so my Dad redirected his morning energies from the grateful office staff to leading Blaze and Marlee around the polo club. They were a sight: Marlee in full riding attire and black velvet riding hat, perched regally, if precariously, on top of Blaze, and Poppa striding alongside.

  By the time Mum and Dad caught the southbound P&O liner out of England for Australia, Marlee could walk Blaze without someone leading him. But on my insistence a groom took over Dad’s duties and walked with Marlee. They would not be out of hearing range before I would hear Marlee telling the groom not to hold the bridle, in a very polite but authoritative manner. They would disappear down the riding track, groom and three-year-old, arguing this point. By the time she was three and a half, she was a very good rider, and looked forward to riding each afternoon with her Mum and Dad and occasionally her baby sister sitting up with Dad.

  We were setting out one afternoon, Marlee in full regalia, astride Blaze, proudly riding alone with no groom in sight. It was polo practise day, so I had a tight rein on my horse (a recently retired polo pony, who didn’t look kindly on being retired and tried to join any polo match, regardless of what I wanted). But I relaxed my grip when I saw the horses walking back to the stables: practise was over.

  There was a break in the stream of horses, then a bit further along the path we approached the top polo player for the Philippines, who was slowly riding back to the stables. We had seen him and his beautiful Andalusian stallion many times on the riding path. He was a gruff man, very stern and serious, a Spanish aristocrat, quite unapproachable.

  This afternoon, he was in the process of giving one of his personal grooms one hell of a dressing-down. The Spanish aristocrat, on a perfectly formed, perfectly groomed black stallion, with a long flowing wavy mane, and swishing an equally elegant tail, came abreast of a very beautiful three-and-a-half-year-old American girl, perfectly attired, astride a ridiculously overweight but very healthy, well-groomed native pony. The man was still in full verbal attack when Marlee looked up from her mount, her face about level with the man’s stirrup, and said in a very clear, haughty child’s voice, a strange combination of Australian, English and American accents, ‘That is a beautiful cwee-chur.’

  She stared up at the Spaniard with such an air of supreme confidence that it stopped him mid-word. He stared down at this tiny, long-haired, blue-eyed beauty on a ridiculous pony, and gave her a rare smile.

  ‘Thank you, and you, too, have a beautiful creature,’ he replied.

  She gave her reins a slight jiggle to move Blaze into a slow walk, touched her riding cap to bid him good day, and rode on, leaving the self-assured reply of ‘I know!’ hanging in the afternoon air.

  Charlie was quick to take up the opportunity his daughter had created, and introduced himself, but the face of the Spanis
h aristocrat had lost the smile bestowed upon the child, and resumed its severe mask. After telling Charlie, in very few words, that he had an unusually gifted child, the conversation was terminated as he rode away, leaving Charlie still conversing.

  Whenever we met after that, he would always exchange a few pertinent words with Marlee, and she would respond in the same manner. Be it about horses or weather, she would seriously agree with his statement, add a few sage words of her own, then touch her riding hat with her crop and ride on regally. A performance of such calibre any grown actor would dearly love to emulate.

  It obviously impressed the aristocrat, because he always made a point of greeting her. I think he was fascinated that a child so young had such panache. Adults clambered for his approval, business connections, judgment, advice, or just a smile, and he went to extreme lengths to avoid them. I think the man was amazed that a three-year-old held the formula to penetrate his severe façade, when hordes of businessmen and social climbers failed miserably, including her father. This relationship continued with the exchange of a smile, and brief, astute observations, each time they passed: Charlie and I, following, only ever received a curt nod.

  When Marlee was four, Charlie hired a riding instructor to teach her the finer points of equestrianism. He was a retired British Colonel, who never seemed to stop shouting orders. He didn’t faze our four-year-old, didn’t even make a dent in her composure. Marlee followed the instructions, and ignored most of the other shouting.

  When Bonnie was born, Rita, Marlee’s amah, took over the newborn baby, and Bobby, one of the housegirls, became Marlee’s amah. This was a smooth transition, because Marlee loved Bobby as much as she did Rita, and so she didn’t feel left out of the new baby celebration; rather it was an expansion of her group, she now had Bobby and Rita full-time, plus a new baby. The baby fascinated her no end, and she took part in the daily routine: with me when it was feeding time and playtime; with the amahs at bathtime, and any time they had her while I was busy with work for Charlie.

  Marlee would lie on the bed watching me breastfeeding Bonnie, and would have her usual sage, worldly-wise conversations. I told her the baby was drinking milk, which contained the same food as she ate, but because she was so small she had to have it in the form of milk. I would get questions like, ‘What is she having now? Is she up to her vegies? Is she having peas yet?’ and, ‘When does she have apple and custard? Can I taste it? When does she get to icecream? What flavour is it?’ She sat in on most of the feeding times, and she referred to my breasts as ‘feeding sisters’.

  One day, the maid sent Marlee to my bedroom to tell me someone from the office had brought papers for me to sign. I had just taken a shower, and was dressed in a bathrobe ready for a nap. I didn’t want to dress again, so I asked Marlee was it the regular girl who brought the messages. She replied, ‘No, Mummy. She’s new and she’s got the biggest “feeding sisters” I have ever seen.’ I slipped on a dress, went into the library to sign the papers, and met the new office girl … and Marlee was right.

  Another time, at an Embassy afternoon tea party, she struck up a conversation with a very terse, older British woman, and shocked her to the core during their conversation about her new baby sister. When asked did she help her mother care for the baby, and what did she feed her baby sister, Marlee replied, ‘Oh no, I don’t have to do that; the meat, potatoes, peas, carrots, apples and custard and icecream she eats, Mummy has all stuffed up her jumper; my sister gets it all out of Mummy’s “feeding sisters”!’ She paused for a few seconds and added, ‘They’re stuffed up her jumper, too.’

  The English lady quietly placed her teacup on the side table and mingled with the crowd.

  When Bobby moved into the nursery to help Rita, we needed a new housemaid; Bobby said she had a sister in the province, who could come to the city to work if I wanted her. Bobby was such a gem, and thinking her sister would be more of the same, I immediately hired her. Bobby was a small and fine-boned, very tiny girl, so I was not prepared for the half gorilla, in size only, who walked in the door. I couldn’t believe she was Bobby’s sister: they were in fact half-sisters, different fathers. Maria had Bobby’s lovely nature, but there the similarity ended. She was much taller, and about four times the width—definitely front row forward material; when she walked, even the floor vibrated. Hardworking, and a very sweet pleasant girl, she had one problem: no matter how many times a day she washed and changed her uniform, she could not get rid of a very overpowering body odour. After she cleaned a room it had to be aired for hours. I didn’t know how to solve this; I certainly couldn’t fire her, but couldn’t think where she could work without leaving lingering evidence.

  Her big test was helping serve drinks and dinner, her first meeting with Charlie. She had many showers, Bobby informed me, and to be on the safe side I doused her in perfume, so the body odour was temporarily held at bay. We just had to get through dinner without Maria dropping anything or colliding with the furniture. We didn’t get as far as dinner.

  Charlie arrived home, plonked himself down in his favourite chair, and shouted for some service. Bobby pushed Maria into the room. She was bright and clean and starched, and still smelling like a rose. She approached Charlie as if approaching the jaws of death, she stood next to his chair, and gave a slight bob.

  He looked up at the towering girl with a shocked expression, then barked an order. She could follow slowly spoken English fairly well, but didn’t understand Charlie’s drawl. I quickly repeated his request for a cold beer, and she scurried away. He wanted to know when I started hiring the house help at the zoo. I told him to behave, saying that she was Bobby’s sister. This he flatly refused to believe, even by a different father.

  Maria reappeared balancing a bottle of ice-cold beer and a frosted glass on a tray. So far so good, I thought. Charlie reached up to take the bottle of beer and glass off the tray, then noticed the beer had not been opened. He looked at her, held up the bottle, and said, ‘What am I supposed to do, open this with my teeth?!’

  Maria saw the beer bottle, heard ‘open’ and ‘teeth’ and took the bottle from Charlie; then she put the beer cap to her back teeth, snapped it off, and handed the open bottle back to Charlie. There were very few times I ever saw Charlie completely speechless; this was one of them. He finally regained his composure, slammed the abused bottle down on the table, and stormed out of the room. His only comment later was, ‘Get rid of her.’

  I didn’t, but I solved the problem by moving her down to the laundry, after Bobby told me Maria had always been a wash amah before. She had wanted to move up in the world, but both of them had to admit in discussions in the following days that working as a housemaid was impossible. She remained my wash amah for many years. A year or so after the beer-opening episode, Maria was upstairs collecting the washing out of some of the guest rooms, when Charlie just caught a glimpse of her disappearing down the back stairs. He came rushing into the bedroom, saying he had just seen that terrible girl who opened the beer bottles with her teeth. I told him he must have imagined it, and he promptly forgot the matter, quite confident I had followed his orders and sacked her on the spot. Maria worked for us until we left the Philippines in 1965. Charlie never knew she was downstairs in the laundry, though he remarked one day, not long after she moved down to the laundry, that I had finally found a good wash amah; and I replied, yes, I had.

  When I first arrived in the Philippines, the wives at the American Embassy took me under their wing and told me all the ‘dos’ and ‘don’ts’ of living in a tropical environment away from civilisation.

  Most of the Americans and other Europeans lived in the Forbes Park compound, with a wall around the entire suburb, and sentries at the entrance gates. It was quite different from how Hong Kong was run, and very foreign to me after Australia. I was told nothing could be taken for granted, and given endless procedures and safety rules. All water had to be boiled, and even then it was advisable to drink imported bottled water. All meat was brought
in frozen, on the President Line boats, from the west coast of America, and supplied to Americans in the Philippines, Hong Kong and Japan. In fact, the Embassies had their people so brainwashed about disease that everyone waited for the ships to bring everything from America, including fresh food, which wasn’t exactly fresh by the time it was finally in our hands. Charlie’s secretary told me this was nonsense, that I would have to be careful about water and seafood, but the markets were full of beautiful fresh fruit and vegetables in abundance, and very cheap. Those from America were all of three weeks old by the time we saw them, and also extremely expensive.

  So I ventured to the markets with Elvie, and a whole new world opened up to me. The fruit included a wonderful range of things I had never seen before; I had an amazing time buying and trying. But then I entered a nightmare world, when I stumbled upon the local meatworks. It forced its presence on me when my path was blocked by a stream of blood running across the dirt road while I was picking my way along behind Elvie. I looked up and saw my first dead steer in the flesh, so to speak. There were dirty-clothed men with knives mulling around the hanging beast, some cutting, some shouting orders, some just waving hands and knives in a dangerous manner.

  The meatworks was an open tin shed with a dirt floor. The carcass was hanging there, in intense heat and humidity, while thousands of flies swarmed over it, and the men and their knives. Underneath the hanging beast was a pack of mangy, starved dogs waiting for the animal’s guts to be dropped to the floor. Well, a few weren’t waiting; they were jumping up and grabbing at the intestines as a man hacked away at the carcass. Knives whizzed close to dogs’ jaws and necks with each slash.