Percy manoeuvred his bike so he could again see her face, ‘No. It doesn’t. That… that back there… it doesn’t change anything,’ he thought for a moment, ‘Well, not much. Maybe it changes any settlement… hopefully… but that’s good…’ His voice trailed away. She wasn’t to be moved. ‘Come on. Please don’t look so sad.’
Percy was almost overwhelmed by Joyann’s strength of feeling. It was not often people came to his defence, and he found it undeniably pleasurable.
The silence hanging between the three was so great and so peculiar that Percy felt deeply uncomfortable, and he could see Phrike did too. Accepting Joyann was not prepared to speak further, they cycled back to the hire shop together. Once the bikes were given back, they waited at the quay for the ferryman to decide he had enough passengers to justify a return journey to Singapore. They stood in silence; Percy, ever watchful for his wife, Joyann consumed with misery, Phrike ill at ease.
Eventually, Phrike wandered off and spoke with the captain and handed over twenty-five dollars. When he came back he patted Percy on the back.
‘We can go now. Come on. I could do with a cold beer or four, I’m sure you could, too.’
A scattering of waiting passengers looked to Phrike hopefully. He gestured for them to follow, and with a boatload of just seven but a full pocket, the captain merrily motored off.
*
Once away from the island, dark storm clouds could be seen over Malaysia, the reason for the mounting heat. This was not the strange swirling grey of a low electrical storm, twisting and churning and making a person feel trapped in the surreal. It was a featureless sheet of pure black. Even in the boat, the once still air started moving and lifting with the change in pressure; a sure sign something big was coming. Percy knew they would make it back to shore before the rain hit, for the edge of the storm looked to be more than twenty minutes away, but the drive home in Phrike’s car would be painfully slow as the expressway would surely grind to a virtual halt. Not that it mattered. There was nothing to get home for, he reminded himself. It was only that if Joyann persisted in her curious mood it could be a very awkward journey indeed; he had never before had to deal with her in such an odd frame of mind. With the exception of one or two recent occasions when he supposed she was tired, Joyann was a consistently cheerful person, and Percy had always regarded consistency as a vital quality, even in happy people, and something the emotionally jumpy should aspire to.
Continuing his efforts to put her ahead of his own anger, Percy put an arm around Joyann. He made sure he seemed friendly rather than intimate, because he’d seen plays and films where grief had driven strangers to bed. ‘Joyann, will you talk to me now? We may have a long journey ahead, you know. It will be easier.’ He felt a little foolish, as if patronising her.
Joyann shook her head, clearly afraid to speak for fear of crying. The tears came anyway. ‘I am so sorry for you, Percy,’ she said eventually, ‘so sorry about your wife. I did not recognise her.’
‘We all look the same, huh?’
Joyann allowed the smallest of smiles to escape, really no more than a twitch. ‘Well yes, you do,’ she agreed, shakily, ‘but I have met her only once, that time at Boat Quay. The meal.’
Percy nodded.
‘Percy, there is a big storm coming,’ she continued, ‘in more ways than one.’
He pulled back his arm and retrieved his water bottle, feeling overwhelmingly dehydrated from the shock as much as the heat and exercise. ‘I guess I got to see my snake,’ he muttered.
‘Me too,’ she said.
‘Joyann, you shouldn’t feel so bad about it. Please.’
She began to weep again, ‘It is worse than you think, Percy. Much worse.’
‘Why?’ Phrike asked. It was clear to all that more was bothering Joyann than Percy’s cheating wife.
‘Yes, why? How can it be worse? What could be worse than seeing your wife in the arms of another man?’ Percy was puzzled.
‘Seeing your husband in the arms of another woman.’
‘Excuse me?’
Joyann straightened and wiped her wet face with the heel of her hand. ‘I told you, Percy. I did not know she was your wife. That man you saw her with, he… he is my husband.’
‘Shit!’ Phrike exclaimed.
‘As you say, Percy, we all look the same,’ Joyann said feebly. ‘I wouldn’t expect you to recognise him. Actually I do not think you even spoke to him the night of our meal. You being you.’
Percy was no longer listening. Despite spending an entire evening in his presence in the fancy restaurant on Sentosa, Percy had not recognised Ethan. The man truly had the most unremarkable face. ‘What a complete bastard!’ Percy actually wanted to say her husband was a cunt, but thought better of it.
‘Cunt more like,’ remarked Phrike, casually, as if hearing Percy’s thoughts. Joyann nodded, as a murmur of agreement travelled the small boat, including the captain.
Percy exchanged a brief look with Joyann, one he could not properly understand. He was aware their circumstances were forcing them from habit; freeing them both from the emotional reticence they shared. Soon they might talk of things that would have remained secret had they not been so cruelly betrayed. Ordinarily, this prospect would be cause enough for Percy to run for the hills, but he felt that for once he might like to talk about things. The sighting had reminded him of the loneliness he had only just found enough strength to ignore. But the flip side would be that he would have to offer support to Joyann, and while he was happy to talk, he knew his interest would be limited. For a fleeting moment, Percy did not like himself.
‘How long, do you think?’ Phrike asked, ‘I mean, how long do you think they’ve been… you know…’
‘Christ, does it matter?’ Percy burst.
‘Well, I suppose no longer than Percy has been in Singapore,’ Joyann said, verging on sarcasm, ‘not that that is much comfort.’ Her face was stony. ‘I knew it. I felt something was wrong but I tried to ignore it. We have not been getting along very well, but at the same time he has been quite…’ Joyann sniffed, rather than finish her sentence.
A sudden chill enveloped Percy. No longer than he had been in Singapore? An interesting point and food for thought; surely Sal was not capable of such a thing as he was now considering. Of moving them both and allowing him to give up his own career just for her to be near her lover? Could she? Did she? After all, for a very long time she was in Singapore more than she was in England, which was half the reason for moving, the other half being Sal’s one last shot. Was Joyann’s husband the real other half of that reason?
‘Percy?’ Joyann said, ‘what is it? What is wrong now?’
‘Nothing. I was just thinking. About what you said. Tell me, do you think they were together before?’
‘Before?’ she questioned.
‘Before we moved here?’
‘You’re kidding?’ Phrike said.
‘No!’ Joyann looked distressed, fresh dismay just when it seemed the worst had already happened. ‘I don’t know,’ she added. ‘Maybe they were.’
Phrike’s expression changed, as though a mental door had opened. ‘But why? No one in their right mind would drag someone half way around the world whilst planning to finish it, would they? It doesn’t make sense. Why go to the trouble?’
Percy thought he could read him. ‘Your wife wouldn’t, Phrike. Probably not, anyway.’
‘But where’s the moral line?’ said Phrike.
‘He is right, Percy. Where is the moral line? If they are capable of deceit they are capable of deceit, it is that simple. They have not considered our feelings at all, so why would they have done so at any other time? He is, as Phrike says, a…’
‘A what?’ prompted Percy.
‘You know what Phrike said.’
‘What?’
‘A you-know-what.’
‘A what?’
Joyann wrinkled her nose, and whispered, ‘The c word.’
??
?Cruel?’
‘Cunt.’ She pulled a face and shook her head, the word unpleasant in her mouth.
Percy released a long breath, shoulders sagging, mouth gaping. ‘I just don’t know. I can’t think. It sounds mad to suggest it, but Sal’s never been on her own before, not really. Maybe she was testing the water. If it didn’t work out with him then she would stay with me. But it did work out, so she left.’
Phrike shook his head. ‘Too extreme to me. Sounds unrealistic.’
‘It does,’ agreed Joyann. ‘But that does not mean it did not happen that way.’
‘Do you know what? I think that is what happened. That’s what she did. She dragged me out here for one last fucking shot and then fired her own shot somewhere else. Or let him fire his!’
Joyann released a small sob.
‘Percy! You don’t know that. And really, does it matter?’ asked Phrike, ‘because it doesn’t make a difference to the here and now. It doesn’t change anything.’
‘Yes, Phrike,’ he replied, levelly, ‘it matters! It matters to me.’
‘Why, Perc? It really makes no difference. And besides, you’ll probably never know what she was thinking. What either of them was thinking. I doubt they knew what they were thinking, themselves.’
‘You sound sympathetic,’ Joyann said, sourly.
Phrike put his large hands together, touching his lips as if in prayer. ‘I don’t mean to. It’s a terrible thing to happen… and to find out this way is… well… indescribably awful. But you may never get to the bottom of it. I had a friend whose husband had an affair for years and everyone but her knew about it. You know what? Even after they’d split he refused to admit it to her. Even after his mistress became his wife.’
‘Your point?’
‘That some people are cowards, Joyann. You have to accept that you may never know the facts.’ His hands fell away. ‘If it was me, I would go home, put his stuff outside in the bin and change the locks.’
‘I might never know?’ Joyann’s distress was turning to fury. ‘Never know? I intend to find out, and tonight!’
‘How? He’ll just lie some more,’ Percy pointed out, resentfully, ‘Sal definitely will.’
‘Listen. Things have been wrong for a long time, I know that,’ Joyann struggled to stifle angry tears, ‘but he has nothing to gain by being dishonest with me now. Has he?’ Sniffing hard, she looked back across the water to the island. ‘I suppose he planned to leave soon anyway, to be with your wife.’ She paused, and then added quietly, ‘My family never liked him.’
‘What will they say, do you think?’ Percy asked.
‘I told you so, I imagine.’
Percy longed to turn the clock back, to go to a time where he was sitting alone on Sixth Avenue drinking coffee, watching the Indian lady with her orangey brown hair and pierced face coming each day to drink latte. Where he pondered the Australian women as they gossiped animatedly, where he wondered about the flustered English woman, who, as Sal rightly predicted, had ditched her children and now came to drink only with friends, clothed in that uniform of certain expats of a certain age and gender. And Joyann, she would remain an attractive and sunny Singaporean woman sitting with two men, laughing, chatting, and enjoying breakfast. That was a good time, a time of comfortable ignorance and blissful grumbling.
Chapter 18
MACRITCHIE RESERVOIR PARK
Percy needed time to think. He hated this fact, because it meant trawling through feelings that he would rather ignore. He had always disliked emotions, because they made maintaining his preferred steady mindset something of an effort.
There were no conclusions to be drawn, but he hoped exercise might help put aside the anger and resentment unsettling him. Having read somewhere that it helped delay the onset of dementia and reduce the terrible affects of it, Percy reasoned it might help his own troubled brain, too. A long walk would be ample for the task, he felt, and if not then he would walk the whole lot again and again until it was.
He had found a nature reserve where an extensive network of paths had been cut and laid through secondary jungle. It was an interesting place to read about, since one website he looked at stated MacRitchie Reservoir Park contained a Japanese Shinto shrine built by prisoners during the second world war. It was a ruin, and off trail, and so he thought it might be a pleasant distraction to try and find it. However, the other side of the park offered a tempting suspended treetop walkway, and he didn’t feel it would be possible to do both. Percy weighed it up and opted to explore the ground, leaving the canopy for another day.
During the Pulau Ubin trip, Joyann had said there were plenty of nature reserves in Singapore, and it seemed she was right. This one was close to home and easily accessible by bus or MRT, the city’s underground train, and so after Percy had coated himself liberally with insect repellent and sun cream and donned his Aussie style hat, he threw on a pack containing some snacks, clipped a water bottle to his belt, and set off. Once at MacRitchie, he used the public toilet before starting out on an obvious pathway with a growing sense of anticipation.
The trail was routed alongside the reservoir, and there he saw people rowing dragon boats. The long crafts seemed to skim the water’s surface, gliding forwards smoothly and elegantly. Percy could feel the tension that had been gripping him since seeing Sal with Ethan already releasing itself, elbowed out by the pleasure of hopeful expectation. He absolutely loved boats, and longed to take a closer look, but they were all far out on the water, and, as it turned out, even the clubhouse was empty.
He had not been walking for long when he realised that beneath his pack his back was running with perspiration. He was glad to have selected his very lightest clothing. It was not overly hot, barely touching thirty degrees, but as was so often the case the air was very still and heavy, the mid-grey overcast sky acting as a ceiling trapping everything below in a warm, airless pocket.
Not for the first time, Percy noticed how tidy everything was, with metalled paths free from weeds, and grass kept short, with borders trimmed. And there was not a single item of rubbish to be seen, which he considered particularly impressive since he also noted the park contained no litterbins. His phone vibrated, but he ignored it. This walk was to be free from technology, free from other people, free from – from what? Sal was the name that came to mind. Yes. This experience must be free from thoughts of Sal. Bugger trawling through feelings; why waste a lovely day out? Percy took stock, cleansed his mind and mentally began his walk again.
Before long, the path took him from the side of the reservoir to a small junction, where the left fork was a boardwalk continuing along the water’s edge, while the right fork became grit and dust and headed into the jungle. Percy stopped. Compromise on the technology ban was necessary, because the notice board that once held a map was empty, displaying only a message from the parks authority apologising for the inconvenience. Percy drew out his phone and looked up the routes. The longest walk from that point was along the jungle path, and it could be increased by an extra few miles if some boardwalk options were thrown in later on.
He took a slug of water, and moved to the uneven ground, light immediately lessening beneath the dense trees, along with a slight drop in temperature. The short walk so far had been mosquito free, and though covered in repellent in any case, he was confident about his choice of wearing shorts instead of long trousers. He only hoped it would stay that way. He thought for a moment, and remembered that he had indeed packed the repellent, should there be a need to top up. Percy breathed deeply and contentedly. Already the walk was proving therapeutic, and though he had passed two or three other walkers, he felt to be quite alone.
As he walked, Percy’s eyes scanned the ground and undergrowth, just as they had on Pulau Ubin, and exactly as they did every time he walked in the Botanic Gardens. In fact, wherever Percy went he was ever hopeful of seeing a snake, though he had yet to brave the small dense jungle opposite his house in search of one. He considered it often, planni
ng to wrap himself up in defensive clothing procured from who knew where and go over to check it out, but so far it was nothing more than a vague intention. It was too close to housing for comfort. Houses meant rodents; rodents meant cobra. He liked snakes, but not that much.
In any green space, there was potential for snakes, he knew, though few people he’d spoken with had seen very many. Some had never seen even one, though he suspected this was from lack of observation. In this park, there was the real possibility of seeing python and a variety of tree snakes, plus cobras and a few others. Top of Percy’s spotting list was a spitting black cobra at a safe distance, followed by any length of reticulated python; but he was excited by the prospect of seeing any species of snake. Some words floated into his thinking: it is important to have your eye and mind roving and absorbing everything you see but in a very broad and general way, then when you spot a snake you will find yourself able to see many. This had been Phrike’s advice. A tiny sense of guilt flashed through Percy. Maybe he should have invited him. Next time. Besides snakes, other animals were hidden away from sight; even pangolin, though Percy did not expect to encounter one. Whatever the walk ahead held, he was sure to enjoy it, he felt.
However, after several miles without seeing more than the occasional bird, he was beginning to wonder if he should have just gone to the Botanic Gardens as usual. He stopped and drew out his water bottle, noticing then some enormous black ants walking about. He peered at them. It was a sighting of sorts, he supposed, though he’d seen this type before.
He shoved the bottle back in its holster and set off again, when just a short way ahead he spotted a large scorpion ambling across the path. Percy gasped, and pulled his phone from his pocket as fast as he could, any principles regarding the use of technology tossed aside. But he fumbled to open the camera setting, so by the time he had managed to do so the shiny dark brown invertebrate was gone. He stood for a moment looking for it, just as Phrike had looked for further signs of the boar and baby. Nothing moved, fallen dead leaves motionless.
Despite not being able to find it, Percy continued on feeling very satisfied. It wouldn’t matter if he didn’t see anything more, for the sighting had been a tremendous boost. Never before had he seen a scorpion, either in captivity or in the wild, and so he was thrilled. His excitement was tainted only by the fact that when he got home there would be no one to share it with. Percy decided he would call Phrike and invite him for a beer; invite him also for a walk.