Suddenly at Singapore (4 page)

“I dreamed about Booney,” she said suddenly.

I sat very still, waiting.

“He’d grown bigger, Paul. Just about as big as he would be now. I dreamt that last night.”

My stomach closed tight with pain. It was three years since either of us had spoken of Booney. And the last time it had been me. Ruth hadn’t wanted to then, it was something I tried to force, and she cried out to stop me. So I’d stopped.

Booney was Richard Jeffrey Harris, our son. He was dead for nearly four years, and at three years old. It was leukaemia. We flew with him to a clinic in Switzerland and then one in Chicago. The doctors told us to take him home, that it wasn’t anything the tropics had done, and that we might keep him alive for a while with blood transfusions. I didn’t want to do that. Ruth made me. He died more slowly, watching us.

It was Ruth who cut all that there had been of Booney out of our life, she never mentioned him, there wasn’t a thing left in our house that had been his.

“Paul, I did wrong. I shut that door, didn’t I? I shut it on Booney and you and locked it. It was my fault. Only I couldn’t help myself then, I just couldn’t. It was as though I hadn’t the strength to do anything else.”

“I know.”

“That tore us apart, didn’t it?”

“Ruth, it’s something that was over, long ago.”

She shook her head.

“I don’t think it will ever be over. I don’t seem to have ever made anything good for anyone. But I want to try again, Paul. Come to America with me! And don’t just say you can’t. You could if you wanted to. You’ll have all Jeff’s money now. We could live anywhere we wanted to. I wouldn’t mind where so long as it isn’t here. Can’t you see what all this is doing to me? I’m going to be living with plain naked fear, getting up with it and going to bed with it.”

“You could go to the States. I think maybe you should.”

“Without you? Wouldn’t that be wonderful? A nice hotel somewhere and I’d just sit and wait, wondering when they were going to get you, too.”

I went over and sat on the bed. Ruth’s hand was lying on a gold thread Kelantan bedspread. I covered it. There was no movement of her fingers inside mine. She was looking at a wall. In a little I said good night and went out. She didn’t say anything.

Ruth always locked her bedroom door because she was afraid of burglars, even though my room was just opposite. I didn’t hear her get out of bed to do that, but I knew she would. In a little I lay in blackness and thought, not of my wife, though I should have done, or of Jeff, whom I had loved. I remembered Booney, the child whose hair was as dark as mine, and whose eyes were much bluer.

You commit yourself a few times in this life. I’d been committed, to plan and scheme and shape, to the old dream of making a straight road for a son, with the errors … your errors … marked plain to be avoided. Booney had been going to walk like that, on a clear road, in the sun.

S
YLVIA
F
LORES
had been my secretary for twelve years and I still called her Miss. It was that kind of impeccable relation, which had matured, but in which the partitions were still high. She was thirty-eight and unmarried, with faint traces of that brief flowering of looks which might have even been beauty. At twenty-six, when she first came into our office, the best had somehow gone, you felt you would have liked to have seen her at nineteen. Her father had been more Portuguese than Chinese and her mother was more English than South Indian.

Mrs. Susannah Flores, to whom I took a Christmas present every year, had been ailing for as long as I could remember, looked after with great devotion by her only daughter, and I tried at least once a week to ask after Mrs. Flores’s arthritis which was never any better because, as the daughter explained, the damp heat of Singapore was the worst possible climate for this complaint. Mrs. Flores wanted to get “home” and it had long ago been made clear to me that this was England.

Miss Flores was extremely sensitive and three days after my brother’s death her face still bore the traces of shock, as if the lines of this were scored on and could only be expected to fade slowly. Miss Flores had herself spoken to me of time as the great healer.

I dictated to her whenever possible and time permitted and she would on occasion correct my grammar. She sat still in a posture that had been taught as correct at her commercial school, very upright in a stiff chair, her pad on her knees, and taking shorthand with a pencil, not a pen.

“The Kubat Palm Oil Company,” she read back, “23 Sundarah Road, Surabaya, Java. Dear Sir …”

I went on with the letter, slowly. I had swung my chair around and sat looking out through huge windows to Singapore roads. It was a view that had always excited me, the little ships and the big, the little ones more interesting. They lay at anchor over an arc of two miles, their variety infinite, their purposes when they left here sometimes strange and even melodramatic. On many a morning Jeff and I had been able to look out and see our own ships resting there, two, three and sometimes four.

Miss Flores was waiting for me with a look.

“Yes?”

“I wonder about that sentence, Mr. Harris. Do you mean to suggest here that they make their claim for damages to insurance only after further consultation with us?”

“No. Let them go to the insurance company right away.”

“I can make that stronger then?”

“You can indeed.”

She took a little time off to make it stronger, dabbing down the words. I was vaguely conscious of her disapproval. She didn’t like me looking at the view during business hours.

The phone rang. She took it.

“Harris and Company here. Mr. Paul Harris’s office.”

She frowned.

“I can’t seem to make any sense of this. Someone did ask for you.”

I took the receiver.

“Paul Harris here.”

I heard distinctly an indrawn breath, as though the man at the other end had the mouthpiece pressed against his lips.

“Kuantan,” a voice said. “Kuantan.”

There was a kind of hoarse, almost rasping urgency in that voice. Then the line clicked.

“Must be a wrong number, Miss Flores.”

She reached for the receiver, but I put it back on its hook as though I hadn’t seen her hand coming out. She disapproved.

“Is that all?”

“Yes, for this morning.”

The pad was fitted into a little case with the pencil. Miss Flores stood and moved towards the door. Then she halted.

“Mr. Harris, forgive me saying this. But I think it’s wonderful. We all do. I mean the way you … the way you’re carrying on as though that was the thing to do.”

I felt a funny little glow of warmth towards her.

“It’s the only thing I can see to do, Miss Flores. But thank you. You’ve all been a great help, too, you know.”

“It’s like … a presence gone, isn’t it?”

“Yes, you could say that.”

She went out and shut the door very gently. I looked back at the view, and into the square of my window was moving slowly a new ship for that morning, a freighter, about three thousand five hundred tons at a guess, flying what we used to call the fried egg flag. She had the rakish bow of modern Japanese building, a squat funnel and a glistening white superstructure.

In a lower desk drawer were binoculars; I read the name
Misuni Maru
. I turned back the
Straits Times
to the shipping intelligence and there it was:
Misuni Maru
, fr. Trieste, arr. S’pore 22, Lv 23 for Hong Kong, Manila, Kobe & Nagoya. The
Misuni Maru
was going to make one unscheduled stop, with a cargo for us.

The buzzer went on the desk box.

“Mr. Harris? Inspector Kang is here to see you.”

I had the binoculars away by the time he came in. The inspector stood just inside the door for a moment, unwrinkled, calm and with the kind of politeness he could afford.

“Mr. Harris, I try to avoid calling on business men at this time of day. But sometimes it is unavoidable.”

“I’m not really very busy, Inspector. I can’t pretend it’s easy to get into a rhythm of work again.”

“Of course not. What a wonderful view.”

I stood and he came to stand beside me. The view meant we didn’t have to look at each other.

“My brother chose these offices, Inspector. He had the sentimental notion that it was good to be able to look out and see our own ships sometimes.”

“But not this morning?”

“No, not this morning. We haven’t anything in harbour.”

“All your fleet scattered over the Indies, Mr. Harris?”

“You might put it like that. But to talk about our fleet makes it sound like the P. & O. It’s just a collection of junks.”

“Powered junks. And you have two steamers, oil burning.”

I looked at him and smiled. His face was very smooth, an early morning freshness about the man.

“I see you’ve been checking up on us. Yes, two steamers. One three hundred and fifty tons, the other five hundred.”

“With radio communication?”

“The steamers have, the junks don’t.”

“Really. May I smoke, Mr. Harris?”

“But do. Have one of these.”

“Thank you, I prefer mine. A coarse Chinese blend. Very cheap. We’ve all taken reductions in salary, you know. To help the new régime. The gesture is voluntary.”

He laughed. We had started off this contact on a new tone, as though our last meeting in my house was put neatly to one side. We stood together at the window with a kind of applied amiability, as if a few days had put everything into perspective for both of us. I suspected, however, that Kang had been very busy during the interval. The industry of the Chinese, in anything they do, makes Western complacence the saddest kind of folly. The Chinese expect to rule the world in a century or two and if they don’t manage that it won’t be for want of trying very hard indeed.

The inspector’s cigarette was not aromatic. I chose a cigar from a box on my desk and trimmed it carefully. He watched me while I got it going.

“How are you getting on with your hunt for the murderer?” I asked.

“Very slowly,” he said, as though he didn’t mind that. “I’m still at the stage of looking for motive. The difficulties press down on me. I must congratulate you, Mr. Harris.”

“Why?”

“I mean about the way you conduct your business. You and your late brother. So little appears on the surface. As a Chinese I am bound to approve even when it is a nuisance to me.”

“I’ll be delighted to tell you anything you want to know.”

Kang smiled.

“The last time you referred me to your head clerk.”

“I apologise for that. I was under considerable stress.”

“Certainly. It’s good to find you co-operative now. And there are some points on which I am troubled. I find, for instance, that as a company you operate twenty-three junks.”

“That’s right.”

“In the last year only seven of your junks have come to their home port of Singapore, some of those seven on more than one occasion, two of them only once.”

It was my turn for the polite smile.

“The explanation is quite simple, Inspector. And it accounts for my constant travelling. Singapore is only nominally our home port. We use other specific local areas on which junks are based, and from which their voyaging is relatively limited. For instance we have four operating from Kedah. We use local crews, recruited in the area. Then there are three on the north Borneo coast with Dyak crews, which cover the Sulu Sea and the Celebes and sometimes go over to Indo-China.”

“Interesting. This must present considerable administrative difficulty.”

“We find the advantages balance that up. We’re a small business. This method keeps down our overheads.”

“I’m sure. And as you say, you’re a great traveller.”

“Fortunately I like it. And I love this part of the world. The slightest excuse and I’m off to odd corners of it.”

“And your brother kept control here?”

“That’s it.”

Kang was finished with his rank tobacco, a cloying stench which my good Manila couldn’t quite cover. He lit another.

“You will remember Miss Feng? Have you met her, Mr. Harris?”

“No. My brother kept that side of his life to himself.”

Inspector Kang coughed, as though he needed to clear his throat.

“Miss Feng is rather an unusual girl for her type. Ambitious, you might say. I have just come from seeing her again.”

“Oh? Perhaps she is troubled? It might be a good idea to let her know that she won’t be forgotten. I will assume my brother’s financial responsibilities.”

“It’s not quite that, Mr. Harris. It seems she had a theory that before long your brother would be settling, that he was no longer a young man and might, conceivably, wish for a relation of a more regular nature.”

“Marriage, you mean?”

“It is the sort of thing which might even have been in Miss Feng’s mind. She’s intelligent. She also has the instinct of her kind for watching her own interests. You could say that she was jealous of your brother.”

“Surely she had no reason?”

“Perhaps not, but women are women. It was essential to her plans that no rival was allowed into the picture. And for that reason she watched him, more carefully than you would imagine.”

I didn’t like this at all, but I don’t think it showed. I waited.

“Your brother had a bungalow at Changi, Mr. Harris.”

“Yes, he used it for week-ends. He liked it a lot. It’s the only house he’s ever owned.”

“And went there without servants?”

“I don’t know. Didn’t he take his number one boy? The Changi bungalow wasn’t a place where Jeff entertained. I’ve only been in it once or twice.”

“Even though he’s had it for six years?”

“Yes. I know that may seem odd, but I never thought it strange. I assumed he went down to potter. And I should think he did. He had a boat, and used to fish.”

“At night?”

“I shouldn’t wonder. The nights are very beautiful down there with a moon. Actually I’ve been out with him once at night. He had the kind of line with hooks on it that a small boy might play with. He used slugs for bait. He got them under the casuarinas. There was a ritual about those Changi week-ends, everything simple and rather childish, and I think they were a complete relaxation from the kind of life he had here.”