State of Siege

When I got to the club, I went through into the bar. It was fairly crowded, but I was relieved to find that neither Lim Mor Sai nor his wife was there. The Dutch couple were at their place by the piano. I had a drink and watched them for a time. Once, the pianist nodded vaguely to them and began to play what was evidently their favourite tune. The man touched his wife’s hand, and she looked at him fondly. The man smiled and said something to the pianist; but he was bored with them again. For him, no doubt, they were merely two pathetic Europeans who drank too much and breathed across the piano at him every evening, distracting him with their tiresome adulation from his private world of soft lights, rich boy-friends and American recordings. It was all rather depressing.

Then, Rosalie arrived and things were suddenly different.

She was wearing a light cotton dress that should have made her look more European, but for some reason had the reverse effect. As soon as she saw me, she smiled and came over, nodding to someone she knew on the way. There was nothing self-conscious about her greeting, no arch pretence that she had not really expected to find me there. She was glad to see me and I was glad to see her, and, as I was drinking gin, she would drink that, too.

It was a good evening. I don’t remember all the things we talked about; Mina and Jebb for a while, I know, and the police department, food, clothes, Singapore, air travel, and the black markets; but after we had dined, and then danced a bit, we talked about ourselves. I learned that she had a sister who worked for a shipping company, that her father, who had been in the Dutch army, had died in a Jap P.O.W. camp, and that her mother preferred to live now with relatives who owned land near Kota Baru. She learned that, after a spell in the Western Desert, I had spent most of the war building airfields, that my wife had gone off with a Polish army officer while I had been away, and that my firm in London had written asking me if I would like to do a job in Brazil.

Lim Mor Sai showed up later in the evening and went round the tables making himself agreeable to the customers. When he stopped at our table I gave him Jebb’s message about the cigars. Just for a moment it seemed to disconcert him.

“Cigars? Ah yes. That is most kind.” He paused. “May I ask where you are staying, Mr. Fraser?”

“Jebb’s lent me his apartment. Why?”

He hesitated, then shrugged apologetically. “Here one always asks. The hotels are so full. You are fortunate.” He bowed slightly and moved on; but I had a feeling that he had left something unsaid. So had Rosalie. I saw her look after him in a puzzled sort of way; then our eyes met, she smiled as if I had caught her out in an indiscretion, and we got up to dance again.

We left the place soon after eleven. Mahmud was waiting outside. There is just room for two reasonably slim persons in a betjak, and he waved away a colleague who tried to muscle in. Rosalie gave him an address, and he set off enthusiastically, the chain making cracking sounds as he threw his weight on to the pedals.

The street to which he took us was on the outskirts of the Chinese quarter. The pavements were arcaded, and between the shops there were broad, steep staircases leading to the upper floors. About halfway down the street, Rosalie told him to stop. Then she got out and hurried up one of the staircases. I lit a cigarette and waited. A little way along the street, an old man was sitting on the edge of the open drain with his legs dangling into it, solemnly combing a long grey beard. On the opposite pavement there was a Sikh watchman asleep on a charpoy placed across the doorway of a furniture shop. Only two or three windows in the street showed any light. It was so quiet that I could hear Mahmud breathing.

Rosalie was gone about ten minutes. When she returned, she had a small dressing case with her. I told Mahmud to drive us to the Air House.

There, the policemen on duty at the door glanced casually at my pass and nodded. They paid no attention to Rosalie. The generator in the basement was silent; presumably, the radio station had shut down for the night. The lift was working again and lights had been left on in the fifth-floor corridor. Beyond the swing doors at the end of it, however, there was pitch darkness and I had to strike matches to light the way to the apartment. I remembered how unprepossessing it had seemed to me the previous day.

“It’s not all as bad as this,” I said.

“I know, Mina told me. Besides, I helped her choose the furniture.”

When I had left the apartment, I had locked all the windows on to the terrace. She sat down while I opened up the living room, but when I came back from doing the bedroom, I found that she had gone into the kitchen and was looking at the refrigerator.

“Thirsty?” I asked.

“A little.” She patted the refrigerator. “Does it work?”

“Oh yes.”