Turtle Beach

by Blanche d'Alpuget

  After a while Aunt was speaking aloud in the dialect they both understood. She said, ‘You poor child. It is such a strain for you to be continually amusing an old man. I can feel the tenseness in your muscles when I rub them. Why don’t you go home to China? Life is good there. It’s so clean and beautiful and there are plenty of handsome men if you want to get married again. I go back every year now to the sisterhood’s shrine and each time I feel more joyous. On my next trip I will die. China is safe. It is the only safe place in the world now for us Chinese. Everywhere else they want to kill us. We are the scapegoats for all their stupidities.’

  Minou replied quietly, ‘I know. In Ho Chi Minh City they treat us Chinese as if we were alleycats. But my mother and my three sons are trapped there. They can only escape to the south. I must stay here and wait for them. While they are trapped, I am also.’

  ‘You chain yourself up,’ the old woman sighed. ‘I have nobody. I’m lonely sometimes. But I’m free.’ In English she said, ‘You lie on back now, Missus.’

  12

  Sancha Hamilton was fond of saying, ‘The Club is a lifesaver when the servants are away.’ People knew immediately that she was referring to the Royal Selangor Golf Club. Her clothes and accent debarred her from interest in the Lake Club, nice enough as it was, even smart, these days.

  The Golf Club was off jalan Pekeliling, conveniently close to the Hamilton house, its gateway set in a part of the thoroughfare lined with huge trees which, if growing in a less luxuriant country, would have been considered miracles of nature. Their trunks rose twenty-four metres, massive and fluted like columns of grey smoke which, at a sudden moment while moving upward, had solidified. Awestruck newcomers to the city would often say, ‘It’s like The Garden of Eden’ when they first saw the giant waringins and the rain trees, their outstretched arms dripping with ferns, giving shade to the club’s lawns. Sancha would reply, ‘More like the better parts of Brisbane, really.’

  Sancha had invited Judith to lunch at the club, rather than at home because, as she had explained, ‘The wretched cook expects a holiday for the Prophet’s Birthday, and frankly I’m too desperately out of practice to manage more than fried eggs.’ She had added brightly ‘There are super people at the club. I’ll introduce you to Tunku Jamie – he’s one of the modern royals. Sure to be playing golf instead of going to the mosque.’

  By the morning of their luncheon appointment, when Judith had been in KL thirty-six hours, she had received two cables from her editor. The first had said ‘APPRECIATE YOUR URGENTEST ON KIDNAPPED WIFE’ to which she had replied ‘KIDNAP STORY A FURPHY APPRECIATE YOU DONT HASSLE’. But she had sent a seven-hundred-word backgrounder, marked ‘HOLD’. The second cable, delivered an hour before she was to meet the Hamiltons, read ‘REQUIRE YOUR PROFILE ON NON KIDNAPPED WIFE STOP IMPLICATIONS OF HER ETHNIC BACKGROUND COMMA INFLUENCE ON HUSBAND COMMA CONSEQUENCES FOR OZ REFUGEE DIPLOMACY STOP DEADLINE WEDNESDAY STOP APPRECIATE FINGER OUT’.

  She stood at her window looking down seven floors to where the Chinese mother from the pork shop was scolding her teenage sons who were leaning, as limp as boiled noodles, over their bicycle handlebars. A pink facsimile of a pig’s head – a real pig’s head, Judith realized – lay on the ground. Neither boy seemed inclined to pick it up. Just as insolent as my brats, Judith thought.

  ‘You are sabotaging me, Bill,’ she said aloud, as if Bill in his editor’s glass box, thousands of kilometres away, could hear her – or would care. This sort of thing always happened. The minute you were out of his – any editor’s – sight he got ideas for half a dozen stories, all of which would conflict with the main assignment. ‘Require’ in a cable was an order. She would have to produce the piece and jeopardize her chances of getting into the camps by offending Minou – or try to talk him out of it.

  She rang through to Sydney. A photographer answered the telephone. ‘Jees, dear, it’s Friday lunchtime here,’ he said. ‘Bill’s taken everyone to lunch in Dixon Street. I’ll give you the number.’ The photographer must have been looking over notes on Bill’s desk, for he added, ‘It says here, “Page 5 held for Wilkes’ story on Lady Hobday, ‘The One Who Got Away’, spill to page 6 with government, opposition views on boat people”. Mean anything to you?’

  She groaned. ‘Listen, don’t tell him I rang, O.K.?’ She knew, from that note, that the machinery would already have been thrown into gear: two or more journalists would already be working on the domestic political angle. The mere fact of their interest would have alerted the politicians, who were always keen to get some publicity at this time of the year, when Parliament was not sitting and they were suffering from Attention Withdrawal. The government and shadow ministers would issue Press statements the moment they realized there was some benefit to be gained in the news media. This would attract the TV boys, which in turn …

  Judith glared at her hired typewriter, then sat down to write. She typed ‘YOUR REQUEST FOR PROFILE JEOPARDIZES CO-OPERATION OF LADY COMMA HUSBAND STOP PLEASE DELAY’. She thought of trying to explain in cablese that any half-good profile of Minou would need to be carefully etched in acid; that Minou would be unlikely to speak to her again after such a story had been published; that as Hobday’s houseguest she would get the whole story, anecdotes, internecine diplomatic manoeuvres … Bill would always listen with curiosity to explanations of why an assignment was impossible. At the end of them he would say, ‘Now you’ve told me why you can’t do it, you can do it.’ He was nicknamed The Zen Master. By general consent he was known as A Great Editor.

  She took the cable form downstairs where a uniformed employee was wiping dust from each leaf of the plastic peach and mandarin trees in the foyer. In the morning light the female desk clerks looked even more like advertisements for cosmetics. One pincered the cable from Judith’s fingers with her long nails. On impulse Judith snatched it back from her. She crossed out what she had typed and printed instead ‘GONE TO EAST COAST STOP INCOMMUNICADO FOR ONE WEEK’. In the surprised silence this produced from the desk clerk Judith felt she could hear the shouts of rage in Sydney.

  ‘If they ring?’ the girl asked.

  ‘I’m not available,’ Judith replied. He would know it was all lies, she realized. Bill fought with the management when it perceived a left-wing bias in her Canberra profiles and he fought with the politicians when they complained of right-wing bias. He roared at libel lawyers. He had only once sacked a senior journalist – for lying to him.

  ‘I’ll take local calls but no international calls,’ Judith added.

  Sancha and Ralph Hamilton arrived a few minutes later. Ralph was seated in the front passenger seat of the powder-blue Mercedes, and leapt out for the introductions. He was affable, even effusive, as he helped Judith into the back seat. He had a small overnight bag at his feet and chatted about his trip to Pulau Bidong. He was to leave immediately after lunch. There he would interview the new load of boat people whom Minou had encountered during her beach adventure.

  When Sancha swerved past a Sikh boy on a bicycle, saying, ‘Watch out, Sambo’, he jerked round to face her.

  ‘Are you blind?’ he shouted. He turned back to Judith. ‘I don’t drive a car in this city,’ he said.

  Judith thought, Just as well, with a temper like yours.

  She looked at his pale grey eyes and his well-cast features, deformed almost to ugliness by the anger in his face, and wondered, What does a job like yours, having power of happiness or misery over thousands of people, do to a man born enraged against the world as you obviously were? The thought gnawed at her for the rest of the car trip, Sancha gingerly navigating between bicycles and motorbikes, until the distractions of the Royal Selangor Golf Club took over.

  The golf course came to within a few metres of the swimming pool which had a wire fence and some long grass to keep stray golf balls off those bathers who chose to sit on the lawn under the umbrellas. Those who did this were nearly all Caucasians; other races preferred the shade of the poolside dining pavilions. A first i
mpression of the place was one of apartheid. All the sunbathers, whether well-tanned, biscuit-coloured or pink, looked strangely etiolated, Judith noticed. The sunlight was too intense here for skins designed for more subtle illumination. Under the glare of noon, when black shadows shackled the feet, people’s bodies looked gross and unhealthy – open-pored, hairy, fissured, spotted with pimples which the heat drew out on their shoulders and backs. Most of them seemed too stunned to swim or even talk but lay in sodden trance states, jerking their wrists occasionally for the attention of waitresses.

  When Judith and Sancha returned from the changing sheds Ralph’s eyes lingered on Judith’s bosom but he soon lost interest when a Chinese waitress came to take their orders and stood gazing at him with admiration and promise. His chin went up and he flicked off his sunglasses to look back at the girl, a half-smile cracking one of his cheeks.

  Judith had seen this expression often before, in Canberra, on the faces of men conscious of their power – big-time fixers, ministers and business lobbyists. But Ralph was no tribal warrior. He was a bully of small-fry – his wife, his children probably. She thought, His job must corrupt him; it gives him power beyond his capacity.

  ‘What effect does interviewing refugees have on the morale of immigration officers?’ she asked.

  Ralph shrugged. Sancha was fussing with her hair. ‘I wish I could find that new Mason Pearson brush,’ she said.

  He glanced at her irritably. ‘Go to the hairdressers again,’ he said. To Judith he added, ‘Lee Kuan Yew answered that. He said “You must have callouses on your heart or you bleed to death.” After you’ve heard the first one thousand sobstories you don’t listen any more.’

  ‘But the refugees are desperate. If they don’t get accepted for a country they know they’re facing years in the camps. They’ve risked their lives to escape. Surely they’re going to try to bribe …?’

  ‘Oh, it’s awful,’ Sancha said. She was referring to her hair.

  ‘Shut up about your bloody hair, Sancha,’ Ralph returned his attention to Judith. ‘What are you trying to suggest?’ he asked coolly. Judith thought, I’ve hit a nerve.

  ‘I’m really trying to work out the morality of the whole business,’ she replied.

  The drinks and food arrived. Sancha pulled a face as she sucked her straw and said to the waitress, ‘I ordered gin in my lime.’ To Judith she added, ‘God, they’re hopeless. Back in the fifties, people say, there was one servant to every three members in this club. You’d only have to lean back slightly in your chair and a little man would appear at your shoulder. Now you have to shout your lungs out, and they can’t even get the orders right.’

  ‘Very sorry. I get gin-lime,’ the waitress said.

  Ralph had relaxed. ‘There is no morality. One million Chinese, the Hoa Vietnamese, are going to be forcibly exiled from Vietnam in the next year, and when they arrive off the coast of Thailand and Malaysia and Indonesia their boats will be pillaged and capsized. So many of them will drown, and those who manage to swim will be shot or stoned to death.’ His mouth was set in a hard smile. ‘And that process will go on until China can’t stomach it any longer. Then she will attack. And the whole of Indo-China and South-East Asia will blow up.’ He leaned back, sipping his lime drink, satisfied. ‘In ten years Australians will say “If only the West had taken more refugees this war wouldn’t have broken out”.’

  ‘Darling, don’t be morbid,’ Sancha said. He didn’t bother to glance at her.

  ‘Hitler wasn’t stopped. People always realize too late. You know that the Chinese are known as the Jews of Asia?’ He laughed. ‘There is already a staggering breakdown of international morality. The shipping code, Christ! It’s hundreds of years old, but it has shattered in a few months. Ships of every bloody country simply sail past refugee boats in distress. In defiance of the rules – they’re not just rules, they’re the laws of humanity – they ignore distress signals. I’ve interviewed people who were dying of hunger and thirst, who were seen by ten, twelve ships, and ignored. We always think it doesn’t matter if it’s somebody else copping it in the neck. But it does. It will be our turn next.’ His face muscles were tightened, pleating the flesh between his nose and mouth.

  ‘What do you think it does to us here who care, spending all our time with people – the bravest people in the world – who are being hacked up by Thai corsairs, while we can’t do a thing?’ He suddenly doubled over.

  Judith turned to Sancha, who was sitting up rigidly on her sun-couch. Her eyes warned Judith not to speak.

  Ralph straightened up. ‘Bit of gut trouble,’ he said to Judith. He managed to smile, although his face was still grey. ‘Were you asking what I personally do during the selection process in the camps?’

  She nodded, dumbfounded. She found him appalling. What he said and what he did – his cruelty to Sancha – were so at odds.

  ‘I take the strong ones,’ Ralph said. ‘The ones who’ve proved they can survive this mess. They’re women mostly. I don’t know why, but they’re tougher.’

  ‘We’ve had years of practice at surviving,’ Judith said.

  Sancha gave a little scream, ‘Jude, you must not get Ralph on to that. He can’t bear women’s lib.’

  I bet he can’t, Judith thought. It probably scares him to death. He’s only a mangy tomcat in lion’s clothing. She and Ralph grinned at each other, bonded by mutual dislike.

  Not far away an Indian, teaching his son to swim, was saying in a Cambridge voice, ‘I shall now turn you on your back, isn’t it?’ and over on the golf course a group of Chinese in jaunty peaked caps were slapping each other and laughing. A light breeze rustled the palm fronds and the pink leaves of the crotons planted at the edge of the lawns. Although the sunshine was still strong outside the shade of the umbrellas, cool air came in light puffs off the pool’s surface, momentarily drying the sweat which had broken out all over their skins. More fresh lime drinks arrived.

  ‘This is bliss,’Judith said. ‘I was so tired.’

  ‘Yes! And I’ve found my hairbrush,’ Sancha said. She had been fossicking in Ralph’s overnight bag and now waved the brush aloft, triumphantly. Judith glanced at her and saw that she was blushing.

  ‘The servants must have packed it,’ Ralph said.

  Sancha sat bolt upright. ‘Darling, how could they? They weren’t in the house this morning.’

  Ralph grunted. He made a small, uneasy gesture. ‘I don’t know how it got there. Perhaps you packed it.’

  ‘Ralph!’ Sancha had become pale. Her arms were weirdly tensed, Judith saw. Jack-knifed upright on the sun-couch, she looked like a corpse that had suddenly sat up in a coffin. ‘Ralph!’

  Ralph said quietly and distinctly, ‘Shove it up your cunt, Sancha.’

  They were all silent. People at other tables were looking at them, aware from the aura of tension that something was happening. The three of them sat, as if paralysed, staring at the plump Malay in a peaked cap who was strolling along the lawn towards them. He was light-skinned and seemed rounded with self-satisfaction as much as with fat. A golf club rested casually on his left shoulder.

  He was almost upon them.

  The spell broke.

  ‘Sancha, old thing,’ he said. ‘And Ralphie!’ It’s the rich prince, Judith thought.

  Ralph leapt to his feet. They all began talking at once.

  ‘Bugger of a game I’ve been playing this morning. Lost three balls.’ Jamie chuckled at Sancha. ‘You didn’t know I had three, did you, Sancha?’

  Tunku Jamie looked at Judith with the interest of a collector at an offered objet, then looked away. He sat down on the end of Sancha’s couch, forcing her to draw her legs up sharply to make room for him. He grabbed one of her feet and squeezed it for a moment, an easy gesture of possession. It announced, All women are mine, if I want them.

  While Jamie held Sancha’s foot he gazed at the long grass beside the wire fence. ‘One went in there,’ he said. ‘The caddy said there was a snake there and got f
rightened. I offered him two ringgits to find the ball.’ He waved a jewelled hand, dismissing the whole affair. ‘For God’s sake sit down, Ralph. You make me nervous standing up.’

  Ralph sat, and Tunku Jamie smiled around himself at his small court. ‘We’re having a little dinner up at the house tonight – just family and a few friends. Why don’t you come along?’ He nodded towards Judith to indicate that she was included in his largesse.

  Sancha’s face lit up. Jamie was no ordinary Sambo, and Sancha was not, Judith realized, often invited to dinner by him. She glanced nervously at Judith, obviously thinking that she, with her cheap, locally bought clothes, would be an embarrassing companion at a grand social event.

  ‘I’m afraid I’ve got no suitable clothes – my luggage has been lost,’ Judith said.

  Jamie regarded her tolerantly, as if she were confessing to an irrational belief – that the world was flat, for example. How did people lose their luggage? And have no suitable clothes? It didn’t make sense.

  ‘And anyway, I’ve got to be up at three in the morning to go to Thaipusam with Dr Kanan.’

  ‘Kanan! Old Fourpenny Dark! Splendid. He’ll come, too,’ Jamie said. He made a helicopter movement with his hand and a waiter appeared. ‘Go and call my chap,’ Jamie said.

  The waiter see-sawed off on bandy legs and after a few minutes, during which the prince fretted about his lost golf ball and talked about World Series Cricket to Ralph, he reappeared with another Malay. This man was younger and military in his bearing; he bowed slightly as he stood before Tunku Jamie.

  ‘You all know Rashid?’ Jamie asked affably by way of introducing him. ‘Look here, old boy, I want you to ring Dr Kanan and invite him to the house tonight. Tell him Miss Um here – his Thaipusam friend – will be with us. And Sanchie Hamilton. Kanan can sleep at your place, Sanchie.’ Jamie flapped his diamond rings at Ralph, who had stood to depart. ‘Give Ralph a hand with his bag, will you?’ he added to his secretary. For a moment they went through the polite confusion of farewells. Then Jamie said, ‘You and your refugee buggers. Eating their heads off up there on the East Coast. You know, the price of fish in Kuala Trengganu has skyrocketed since these boat people have been coming. The UN High Commission for Refugees has been buying fish from the local markets to feed them. It’s caused inflation. Well, bye-bye, Ralphie.’