“Jack,” he said, welcoming me, showing me an empty chair. Good old Gunstone.
“Evening, Mr. Gunstone,” I said. It was a servile greeting, I knew, but I could not see Leigh and I was worried.
Gunstone seemed glad to see me; that was a relief. I feared questions like, “Who are you and what are you doing here?”
“What’ll you have?” asked Gunstone.
“Small Anchor,” I said, and as Gunstone turned to find a waiter Leigh appeared with a drink in his hand.
“Chappie here wants your signature, Flowers,” said Leigh.
I took the chit pad from the waiter and put it on Gunstone’s table, saying “All in good time,” then introduced Leigh. Gunstone said, “Ever run into old So-and-So in Hong Kong?” and Leigh said charmingly, “I’ve never had the pleasure.” Gunstone began describing the feller, saying, “He’s got the vilest habits and he’s incredibly mean and nasty and—” Gunstone smiled—“perfectly fascinating. He might be in U.K. now, on leave.”
“Do you ever go back to U.K.?” Leigh asked.
“Used to,” said Gunstone. “But the last time I was there they passed a bill making homosexuality legal. I said to my wife, ‘Let’s get out of here before they make the blasted thing compulsory!’”
Leigh laughed. “I meant to ask you, Flowers,” he said, “are you married?”
“Nope,” I said. Leigh went on talking to Gunstone. Once, and it was at the Tanglin Club, I used to fix up a certain feller with girls. The feller was married and I eventually got friendly with the wife, and “She’s ever so nice,” I said to the feller. On the afternoons when he had one of my girls I visited his wife at their house in Bukit Timah and had no fear that he would show up. But there were children; she hollered at them and sent them out with the amah. She was very sweet to me, a moment after she had cuffed the children. One afternoon I was in the Bandung. I had agreed we should meet, but I realized I was late, delaying over a large gin. She was waiting; I was waiting; I did not want to go. It was like marriage. I went on drinking, and lost her.
“I must be going,” said Gunstone. He pulled the chit pads over and signed them. He said, “I scratch your back, you scratch mine.”
“Tomorrow,” I said, and winked.
“Lunch,” said Gunstone. “The usual time, what?”
“Sounds frightfully hush-hush,” said Leigh.
To Gunstone I said, “We were just leaving, too,” which made it impossible for Leigh to object. It was unfair to do this, but I was sore: Leigh’s two gin slings were going to cost me a whole afternoon of waiting in the lobby of a hotel, cooling my heels and worrying about Gunstone’s engine.
Yardley was telling his joke about the Irishman and the love-starved gorilla as we entered the Bandung. We walked over to the bar and, perversely I thought, Yardley delivered the punch line to Leigh, “‘One thing more, sair,’ says O’Flannagan to the zoo keeper, ‘If there’s any issue — any issue at all — it’s got to be raised a Roman Catholic.’”
They started to laugh — Yates, Smale, Frogget, and loudest of all and closing his eyes with mirth, Yardley himself. I smiled, though I had heard it before. Leigh wasn’t amused; he said, “Yes, well.” That was his first mistake in the Bandung, not laughing at Yardley’s joke. Yardley, an old-timer, had been drinking in the Bandung for years, and one day when Yardley was out of the room Frogget said, “Yardley is the Bandung.” Every bar had a senior member; Yardley was ours. Frogget, a large shy feller, balding but not old, was Yardley’s ape. Frogget — Desmond Frogget — ate like a horse, but he was sensitive about his weight; it was considered impolite to remark on the amount of food Frogget ate, the platters of noodles he hoovered up. Frogget could not have been much more than thirty-five, but the ridiculous man had that English knack of assuming elderly biases and a confounding grumpiness that made him seem twice his age. He regretted the absence of clipper ships, he remembered things that happened before he was born and like other equally annoying youths who drank at the Bandung started sentences with “I always” and “I never.”
“Don’t believe we’ve met,” said Yardley, putting his hand out to Leigh.
Leigh hinted at reluctance by frowning as he offered his hand, but the worst offense was that after he said his name he spelled it.
“Been in Singapore long?” asked Smale. Smale was a short, ruddy-faced man whose squarish appearance gave the impression of having been carpentered. He carried a can of mentholated cigarettes with him wherever he went. He was working the cutter on the lid as he asked Leigh the question.
“No,” I said, “he just—”
“To be precise,” said Leigh in a prissy voice, and checking his watch, “four hours and forty-five minutes.”
“We like to be precise around here,” said Yardley, nudging Frogget. “Don’t we, Froggy? I mean, seeing as how we’re all on the slag heap of life, it’s a bloody good thing to know the time of day, what Froggy?”
“I always wear my watch to bed,” said Frogget.
“You come down from K.L.?” Yates asked, seeing Yardley getting hot under the collar.
“Hong Kong,” said Leigh, stressing the Hong the way residents do. He looked around the room, as if trying to locate an exit.
The Bandung was a huge place — in its prime a private house with an elegant garden, birdbath, and sundial and intersecting cobblestone paths. But the garden had fallen to ruin and the trellises had broken under the weight of vines which had become thick, leaning on and pinching the frail trellis ladders. I liked the garden in this wild state, the elastic fig trees strangling the palms, the roots of the white-blossomed frangipanis cracking the stone benches and showing knuckles between the cobblestones. And the vines, now more powerful than the trellises that had once supported them, needed no propping; they made a cool leafy cavern from the walled front entrance to the verandah, where there were pots of orchids hanging from wires, with gawking blossoms and damp dangling roots.
The bar itself stood in what was once a vast parlor, colored glazed tiles on the floor and a ceiling so high there were often some confused swallows flying in circles near the top. The windows were also large and Yardley said a swarm of bees flew in one day, passed over the heads of those drinking at the bar, and flew out the other side without disturbing a soul. The adjoining room we called the “lounge,” where there was a jumble of rattan furniture, a sofa, the piano Ogham used to play, and little tables and potted palms. No one sat there except the barman, Wallace Thumboo, when he was totting up the day’s chits at midnight, sorting them into piles according to the signatures. I was seeing the Bandung now with Leigh’s eyes, and I could understand his discomfort, but I didn’t share it.
“Could use a coat of paint,” Leigh said. “Do I smell cats?” He wrinkled his nose.
“I was in Hong Kong a few years back,” said Yardley. “My towkay sent me up to get some estimates on iron sheeting. I was supposed to stay for a month, until the auction, but after two days I came back. Couldn’t stick the place. They treated me like dirt. Told the towkay the deal was up the spout. Ever been to Hong Kong, Froggy?”
Frogget said yes, it was awful.