The Rose of Singapore

by Peter Neville

“Hello, Maxel,” she said in a demure voice. She could never pronounce Maxwell. It never came out right.

  “Rose! How are you? Christ! Was I hoping to see you here. I lost your home address. How’s my lovely little Butterfly girl?”

  “I am well, Maxel,” Lai Ming replied, a radiant smile on her face. “And now I am happy because I see you again. Please, come, sit down with me.” She led the man to a vacant table that was furthest away from the now crowded dance floor.

  The same waitress as before pounced on them. “You like drinky?” she asked.

  “I’ll have a Ding, Ding and Dong,” laughed Maxwell. “What’s your poison, Rose? Your usual watered down tea?”

  “No Ding, Ding and Dong,” the waitress apologized. “Ding, Ding and Dong Hong Kong beer. No Three Bells beer in Singapore. Here, Tiger beer.”

  “Oh, shucks, I forgot. Yeah, I’ll have a Tiger beer. And get a drink for the lady. God, it’s good to see you again, Rose,” said Maxwell, catching hold her hands, looking longingly into her eyes and laughing. “You’re as beautiful as ever.”

  “Thank you,” said Lai Ming. She liked Maxwell. He was a bit loud but he was a kind and generous man. He had often talked to her about a wife and two children somewhere miles away in America. But he was a sailor, often far from home and needing female companionship. “When did your ship arrive in Singapore?” Lai Ming asked.

  “Yesterday morning. I looked for you last night but couldn’t find you. I thought I’d find you here. God, it sure is great to see you again, Rose.”

  “Thank you,” said Lai Ming. “I am happy to see you, too, Maxel.”

  Maxwell Clinton, the radio officer aboard the general cargo carrier, the MV Southern Star, flying the flag of Panama, but owned by an American company, had been to sea almost all his adult life. When ashore he appreciated the niceties taken for granted by landlubbers; for example, a good woman. He knew a good woman when he found one, and Rose happened to be one of them. During the past two years he had paid several visits to her home, generally for a two- or three-day period. He was never drunk, always a gentleman and also very generous with his money. Lai Ming wished all the men she took to her home were like Maxwell.

  She smiled. “How much time will your ship stay in Singapore?” she asked.

  “She’s out of the water. We’re having a paint job done on her from stem to stern. Yesterday they hauled her, scraped her bottom and cleaned all the rust and barnacles off her. Today they’ll finish cleaning her, then they’ll be painting her with antifouling paint. The job won’t be finished for at least another three days, so how about I stay with you until she’s ready to be put back into the water? I could stay until Monday evening, or perhaps even until Tuesday morning.”

  The waitress brought their drinks. Maxwell paid for them while Lai Ming gave thought to his suggestion. Two weeks had passed since Peter had been so ill. Since then she had enjoyed his almost daily visits and his passionate, insatiable lovemaking. She delighted in every minute he spent with her and she begrudged him nothing, but because of his frequent visits she was losing a considerable amount of business, and that meant loss of money. It was now eleven in the evening; Peter had returned to camp at midday. She had told him she would be entertaining her son for a few days, Friday, Saturday and Sunday nights being her busiest times of the week. Monday was her slowest, therefore she had asked him not to visit her until Monday afternoon. Peter, however, had told her that he was on late shift on Monday, so would not be able to visit her until Tuesday afternoon. It would work out perfectly, she decided. Maxwell could stay with her until Monday, or even until Tuesday morning if he so wished, and the money he paid her would make up for much that she had failed to earn because of Peter’s visits.

  “You stay at my home how much time you like. We go when you ready, Maxel,” she said. “I want make you happy when you come Singapore.”

  “Attagirl,” said Maxwell, getting to his feet and towering over her. Stretching forth his big hands, he took her dainty hands in his and pulled her to her feet. “Screw the beer,” he said. “Come on doll-baby. Let’s go.” And hand in hand they walked out of the Butterfly Club and climbed into a waiting taxi.

  Later, up in Lai Ming’s room, Maxwell kicked off his shoes. “That’s better,” he said, smiling to Lai Ming. “It’s great to be back.”

  Lai Ming acknowledged his remarks with smiles and an approving nod of her head. And when Maxwell removed his jacket, she took it from him and hung it on a hanger in the wardrobe. He then took off his perspiration soaked shirt, which she took and draped over the back of a chair. The amah would wash the shirt and his socks and underwear in the morning.

  Although Maxwell had not visited Lai Ming in almost six months, he felt quite at home in her little apartment. Everything looked the same, just as he remembered it, even the pillows with ‘Good Morning’ embroidered on the snow-white cloth, and the dressing table, with the family photograph of Lai Ming, her late husband and the sleeping baby, as well as others of shots of Lai Ming, under the glass top. All appeared to be the same as before. No, there was a difference, an addition. Another photograph had been slipped under the glass and was now the centrepiece, a photograph of a smiling young white youth with a protective arm lovingly around the waist of a happily smiling Lai Ming. Maxwell studied the photo for some moments. Obviously the pair knew each other intimately, as both appeared to be so blissfully happy.

  Reaching even lower than Maxwell’s navel now that she had taken off her high-heeled shoes, Lai Ming looked up and into the other’s face with inquiring interest.

  “Your boyfriend?” he asked, tapping on the glass top above the photograph.

  “Yes,” Lai Ming replied.

  “Gee! He sure is a lucky guy,” said Maxwell. He then said, “He looks very young.”

  “He’s almost twenty.”

  “A British serviceman?”

  “Yes. He is in the RAF.”

  “The Royal Air Force, eh. A pilot?”

  “No. A cook.”

  “Oh!” exclaimed Maxwell, as if surprised. “I’ve never thought of cooks in the Royal Air Force. Pilots come to my mind, and navigators and gunners, but not cooks.”

  “Someone has to cook,” smiled Lai Ming patiently.

  “Sure. Of course. I hope he treats you right.”

  “He does.”

  “Rose, I’m just curious, so don’t get mad at me. Does he pay you? Or is he happy to have a business woman like yourself as his girlfriend?”

  “He does not know of my business,” said Lai Ming flatly.

  “He doesn’t. He sure must be goddamned naive, Rose.”

  “He is, Maxel. That is just one of the many reasons why I like him.”

  “He’s gonna be in for a helluva shock when he eventually finds out. And he will. He can’t be that dumb.”

  “I know,” replied Lai Ming sadly. Then she brightened. “But, please, no more talk. Amah bring you beer. Then we make something.”

  “OK, honey. But I’d hate to see you get hurt in any way.”

  Lai Ming shrugged. “I’m sorry, because I think he will get hurt the most,” she said. “Ah! Here is my amah with your beer.” Taking the bottle, she thanked the old amah who, nodding a reply, clip-clopped back down the stairs on wooden-soled shoes. Lai Ming took an opener from the drawer, flipped the cap of the bottle off, and handed Maxwell the bottle and a glass. “Now I go wash,” she said, and she disappeared into the bathroom.

  Maxwell poured himself a glass of beer, murmuring, “Christ, it’s warm. Won’t they ever learn?” He stripped off the remainder of his clothes and stretched himself out upon the hard bed. His head touched the headboard and his feet overhung the rail at the bottom. Why did the Chinese always make beds that were too short for his lanky six-foot, six-inch frame, he wondered. Surely there must be some tall Chinese people. He sat up and took a drink of warm beer, grimaced, then reached for his trousers which lay on the floor. Rummaging through the pockets, he pulled out a pack of Chesterfield ciga
rettes and a silver lighter. He flipped a cigarette from the pack, lit it, then lay back on the bed and blew smoke rings towards the ceiling.

  A few minutes later Lai Ming emerged from the bathroom wearing a sarong. She smiled at Maxwell. He was a good customer, very easy to please and always one of her best payers. She had learned long ago never to even think of quoting him a price, because at the end of his stay he always paid her much more than the amount she normally charged her clients.

  Reaching between her dresses, and to the rear of the tall wardrobe, Lai Ming’s hand contacted what she sought, a box of Durex contraceptives. Always she bought a gross at a time and hid them away at the rear of the wardrobe so that Peter wouldn’t find them. Peter never used contraceptives. Both he and she preferred it that way. But with Maxwell, he was different. From the time of his first visit to her home he had insisted on using a contraceptive.

  She sat down on the edge of the bed, grasped Maxwell’s penis and gently squeezed it towards its tip. She performed this simple task on every man she took to her bed, every man that is except Peter. She had to be so careful; she dreaded even the thought of giving Peter any form of venereal disease. Satisfied that no creamy coloured pus appeared at the opening of Maxwell’s penis, she broke open the contraceptive packet and skillfully rolled the rubber down over it.

  “You, OK Maxel?” she asked.

  “Fine,” Maxwell answered, blowing yet another smoke ring towards the ceiling. Sitting up, he stubbed out the cigarette in the ashtray provided on the little table next to the bed. He then reached out, slipped the sarong from Lai Ming so that it fell to the floor, and pulled her onto the bed so that she lay flat on her back.

  13

  The long, curving strip of brownish sand at Changi Beach lay shimmering in the sunlight of mid-morning. The beach was strangely quiet. Gone was Sunday’s ringing laughter, the shouts from splashing swimmers, the shrieks of children and the babble of voices in many tongues from the hundreds of sunbathers.

  On this Monday morning Changi Beach was deserted. Well, almost. Three Chinese fishermen could be seen repairing a nearby bamboo and chicken-wire kelong, a fish trap, which had suffered some damage during a recent storm. Primitive yet effective, the kelong comprised a line of bamboo poles pushed into the seabed, with wire netting interwoven between the poles. Radiating from the coastline at ninety degrees and stretching from the low-water mark of the beach to more than a hundred yards out into the tidal strait, the kelong, from the air, looked somewhat like a long arrow, the arrowhead being the actual trap. On reaching the impenetrable bamboo poles and wire mesh, fish swimming parallel with the beach were forced to swerve seaward where they were funnelled into the arrowhead of the trap. There, a huge net of forty feet or more across sagged a few inches off the bottom. And there the fish remained, alive and swimming freely above the net but unable to escape, awaiting the fishermen to haul up the net and empty the trap of its sea-harvest. Usually, the larger fish were immediately taken to markets, whereas the smaller fish were soused in brine, sun-dried and eventually sold as ikan bilis, a very popular snack and flavouring ingredient in local dishes. The three fishermen were repairing a crude thatched hut built above the arrowhead, the only shelter that protected them from the elements.

  Less than a hundred yards to the east of the fish trap and a short distance along the coast from Pop’s coffee shack, eight more Chinese fishermen stood waist-deep in the murky water. Slowly, they were hauling in the two ends of a net stretched crescent-like one hundred yards out across the water. Only the murmuring of the still receding tide on the sand and the occasional loud, “Aiyah,” from these fishermen could be heard as their glistening brown bodies heaved in unison, hauling in the heavy net yard by yard to where a sampan wallowed at anchor in the shallows. The sampan was tended by its owner who skillfully shook the incoming net over the gunwale, emptying a flashing silvery harvest of fish into the bilges of his narrow craft.

  It was almost low tide. The water had long receded from the sand, exposing a muddy coastline. Reeds and several species of sea-grasses, unseen when the tide was in, now rose several inches above the surface of the water where they swayed to and fro in the gentle breeze.

  Left stranded high and dry on the burning-hot sand and far from the water’s edge, the coffee shop owner’s boats lay overturned and unneeded, their green and white paintwork blistering in the intense heat.

  Clad only in brief swimming costumes and seated on rough wooden stools at an equally rough table in Pop’s shack, LAC Peter Saunders and LAC Gerald Rickie, Pop’s only customers, sipped on cooling orange drinks while they studied a road map of Singapore. Twenty minutes prior, whilst waking through Changi Village, Peter had purchased the map at Jong Fat’s Emporium.

  “See, Rick, that’s where she lives,” Peter was saying, tapping an index finger on the map where Bendemeer Road met Lavender Street. “I’m sure I could find her home easily enough by taxi, or even by walking from the bus stop at Geylang. It doesn’t look too far to walk from Geylang to Lavender Street, then to the junction at Kallang Bahru, and finally to Bendemeer Road.”

  “Aren’t you scared walking in that part of Singapore alone?” asked Rick.

  “No, not at all. The people there won’t harm me. In fact, Rose’s neighbours are quite friendly towards me.”

  “I’m not thinking of the people, I’m thinking of the bloody military police! Her home’s in the middle of the red-light district.”

  “I know,” said Peter, “I’m certainly nervous of the patrols there. But I’d keep a watchful eye open for them, Rick. Anyway, perhaps I still don’t look old enough to pass for a serviceman. They probably wouldn’t take a second look at me. If they should try to stop me, I’d run like hell.”

  “Well, if you’re caught, it’s your funeral.”

  “I won’t get caught. Anyway, what shall we do now? The tide’s too low for swimming.”

  “Let’s sit here awhile and take life easy,” said Rick. “We’ll think of something.”

  The mongrel dog came to where Rick sat, placed his furry chin on a bare knee, looked up into Rick’s face with sad-looking eyes, and as Rick patted and stroked the nuzzling head, the happy dog wagged its brown stump of a tail contentedly. Two of Pop’s children, naked as usual, came and petted the dog, and then began to tease him, so that he lost interest in Rick and ran away, scattering chickens that had been busily scratching for insects in the sandy dirt behind the shack.

  Peter Saunders scanned the calm Johore Strait, the palm-studded green islands blurred by a heat-haze, and the almost indistinguishable coastline of Malaya in the far distance. He watched as an old Chinese junk with its tattered squaresail hanging limp and idle, chugged laboriously upstream, powered by two huge outboard motors, its great hull low in the water, and its decks heaped high with an assortment of cargo; but there were no crew members to be seen.

  Shifting his gaze from the junk, Peter’s eyes swept past Changi buoy to where a much smaller vessel, a motor cargo launch, cut a swift passage through the calm water. Silver spray swished and leapt from her narrow bow and white foaming water churned around her stern. She was but one of many vessels which plied the waters between the islands and the mainland during the course of a day. Peter watched as the craft slowed, turned from the main channel and entered the short and narrow channel leading into Changi Creek and a little harbour where many small cargo boats docked; a safe haven from storms. The cargo boat navigated a sandbar before disappearing round a bend at the entrance to the inlet.

  Pop, wearing just a pair of dirty shorts, came and collected the two now empty glasses. “Two more, Johnny?” he asked Rick.

  “Yes please, Pop. Green Spots.”

  The coffee shop owner gave the pair a friendly smile and went to where he kept his supply of soft drinks in an ice-filled chest. These two boys were his most frequent customers. He was aware that Peter was having a love affair with the pretty Chinese girl who had played mahjong weeks ago during that stormy afternoon. At times
he would ask of her, and Peter would smile and reply, “Ding ho, Pop.” Pop liked both Rick and Peter. They were good boys who spoke kindly to both him and to his wife, and often they played on the beach and in the water with his children. He returned with the drinks and set them down in front of the boys.

  “Thanks Pop,” said Peter.

  Having finished hauling in their long net, the fishermen were now seated in the sampan sorting out the fish and placing them on ice in boxes in the bilges. Soon they would depart to drift down the shoreline in search of another likely fishing spot in which to cast their net.

  The sun, higher now and almost overhead, cast few shadows. Newcomers had arrived on the beach, mostly off-duty RAF and WRAF personnel. None were in the water yet, the tide being so low. At least another hour must pass before the water would be deep enough to swim in without tangling with the sea-grasses. Now was the time to sunbathe in idleness, beachcomb, play ball on the sand or, preferably, to relax in Pop’s shack.

  Rick, sipping on his orange drink, gazed out across the water. It looked so lovely out there, the water was calm, blue and sparkling. He looked at the boats drawn up on the beach; half a dozen up-turned rowing boats and two fishing canoes, one of the latter slightly larger than the other. It was just the day for a few hours on the water, he thought. Turning to Peter Saunders, he asked, “Feel like going for a trip in one of the boats?”

  “Do you?”

  “Why not? Let’s take the big canoe over to Johore, or pay a visit to a couple of the islands.”

  “OK. It’s better than sitting around here.”

  “Right, then. I’ll speak to Pop. By the way, Pete, do you have any money with you?”

  “Just about enough to pay for the drinks. Haven’t you any?”

  “About a dollar.”

  “That’s a fat lot of good.”

  “Well, what shall we do? Put it on the book?”

  “No. I think I can make a deal with Pop. The next time I come to the beach, I’ll bring him some more tins of sardines and herrings from the sergeants’ mess.”