The old-timers, I found, tended to prefer Malays, while the newcomers went for the Chinese, and the Malays preferred each other. The Chinese clients, of whom I had several, liked the big-boned Australian girls; Germans were fond of Tamils, and the English fellers liked anything young, but preferred their girls boyish and their women mannish. British sailors from H.M.S. Terror enjoyed fighting each other in the presence of transvestites. Americans liked clean sporty ones, to whom they would give nicknames, like “Skeezix” and “Pussycat” (the English made an effort to learn the girl’s real name), and would spend a whole afternoon trying to teach one of my girls how to swim in a hotel pool, although it was costing them fifteen dollars an hour to do it. Americans also went in for a lot of hugging in the taxi, smooching and kidding around, and sort of stumbling down the sidewalk, gripping the girl hard and saying, “Aw, honey, whoddle ah do?” Later they wrote them letters, and the girls pestered me to help them reply.
Djamila—“Jampot,” an American feller used to call her, and it suited her — was very reliable and easy to contact. She was waiting by the Hongkong and Shanghai Bank with my trusty suitcase as we pulled up in the taxi. I hopped out and opened the door for her, then got into the front seat and put the suitcase between my knees. Djamila climbed in with Gunstone and sat smiling, rocking her handbag in her lap.
Smiling is something girls with buck teeth seldom do with any pleasure; Djamila showed hers happily, charming things, very white in her broad mouth. She had small ears, a narrow moonlit face, large darting eyes, and heavy eyebrows. A slight girl, even skinny, but having said that one would have to add that her breasts were large and full, her bum high and handsome as a pumpkin. Her breasts were her virtue, the virtue of most of my Malay girls; unlike the Chinese bulbs that disappeared in a frock fold, these were a pair of substantial jugs, something extra that moved and made a rolling wobble of her walk. That was the measure of acceptable size, that bobbing, one a second later than the other, each responding to the step of Djamila’s small feet. Her bottom moved on the same prompting, but in a different rhythm, a wonderful agitation in the willowy body, a glorious heaving to and fro, the breasts nodding above the black lace of the tight-waisted blouse, the packed-in bum lifting, one buttock pumping against the other, creeping around her sarong as she shuffled, showing her big teeth.
“Jack, you looking very smart,” said Djamila. “New suit and what not.”
“I put it on for you, sweetheart,” I said. “This here’s Mr. Gunstone, an old pal of mine.”
Djamila shook his hand and said, “Jack got nice friends.”
“Where’s that little car of yours, Jack?” Gunstone asked.
“It packed up,” I said. “Being fixed.”
“What’s the trouble this time?”
“Suspension, I think. Front end sort of shimmies, like Djamila but not as pretty.”
“It’s always the way with those little French cars. Problems. It’s the workmanship.”
The taxi pulled up in front of the Belvedere. The doorman in a top hat and tails snatched the door open and let Gunstone out. I handed over the suitcase; it was a good solid Antler, a sober pebbly gray, filled with copies of the Straits Times and an R.A.F. first-aid kit, a useful item — once we had to use the tourniquet on a Russian seaman, and the little plasters were always handy for scratches.
“You should get yourself a Morris,” said Gunstone at the reception desk.
I could not answer right away because I was signing my name on the register and the clerk was welcoming me with a copy of What’s On in Singapore. I was not worried about being asked about Gunstone and Djamila; anything is possible in a big expensive hotel, and the accommodating manager will always smile and say he remembers you. In the elevator I said, “Yes, your Morris is a good buy.”
“I like Chevy,” said Djamila.
The elevator boy and the bellhop stared at her. My girls looked fine, very pretty in bars and on the street, but in well-lighted hotels they looked different, not out of place, but prominent and identifiable.
“I hate these American cars,” said Gunstone.
“So do I,” I said. “Waste of money.”
“Nice and big,” said Djamila. She gave a low throaty laugh. Most of my girls had bad throats: it was the line of work, all those germs.
“Here you are, sah. Seven-o-five,” said the bellhop. He followed us in and swung the suitcase over to a low table; I could hear the newspapers shift inside. He started his spiel about the lights and if there’s anything you want, but I interrupted him, pressing fifty cents into his hand, and he took off.
“Your lights,” I said, discovering the switch and turning them all on. I went around the room naming appliances and opening doors, as the bellhop would have done if I had given him a chance. “Your TV, your washroom, window blinds, radio—” switching that on I got a melody from Doctor Zhivago. “I think everything is in order.”
“You couldn’t do better than a Morris,” said Gunstone. He came over to me and said, “What’s she like?” in a whisper.
“Very rewarding,” I said. “Very rewarding indeed.”
Djamila was sitting on the edge of the large double bed, removing her silver bracelets. She did it with dainty grace, admiring her arm and showing herself her fingernails as she pulled each bracelet past them.
Gunstone, on a stuffed chair, sighed and twisted off one of his shoes. He had pulled off a sock and was intently poking the limp thing into the empty shoe, pushing at the balled-up sock with his trembling finger, when I said: “I’ll leave you two to get on with it. Bye for now.”
The elevator boy, seeing the feller he had just deposited on that floor, looked away from me, at the button he was punching, and I could tell from the movement of his ears and a peculiar tightening of a section of scalp on the back of his head that he had summed up the situation and was grinning foolishly. I felt like socking him.
“What’s your name?”
“Tony-lah,” he said. A person sobers up when he has to tell a stranger his name.
“Here you are, Tony.” I handed him a dollar. “Don’t blab,” I said. “Nobody likes a blabber.”
That dollar would have come in handy, and I could have saved it if I had gone down the fire stairs, which was what I usually did. But seven flights of dusty-smelling unpainted cement was more than a man my age should tolerate. A little arithmetic satisfied me that I could afford one drink; in the Belvedere lounge-bar the hors d’oeuvres were free.
Avoiding the lobby, I nipped into the lounge, found a cool leather armchair, and sat very happily for a few minutes reading What’s On and looking up every so often to admire the decor. Yardley and the rest did not think much of the new Singapore hotels — too shiny and tacky, they said, no character at all. Character was weevils in your food, metal folding chairs, and a grouchy barman who insulted you as he overcharged you; it was a monsoon drain that hadn’t been cleared for months and a toilet — like the one in the Bandung — located in the middle of the kitchen. Someday, I thought, I’m going to reserve a room at the Belvedere and burrow in the blankets of a wide bed — the air conditioner on full — and sleep for a week. The ground floor of the Belvedere was Italian marble and there was a chandelier hanging in the lobby that must have taken years to make. I was enjoying myself in the solid comfort, sipping my gin, looking at a seashell mural on the lounge wall, periwinkles spilling out of conches, gilded sea urchins and fingers of coral; but I became anxious.
It was not my habitual worry about Gunstone’s engine failing. It was the annoying suspicion that the seven or eight tourists there in the lounge were staring in my direction. They had seen me come in with Gunstone and Djamila and like Tony they had guessed what I was up to. The ones who weren’t laughing at me despised me. If I had been younger they would have said, “Ah, what a sharp lad, a real operator — you’ve got to hand it to him”; but a middle-aged man doing the same thing was a dull dirty procurer. I tried to look unruffled, crossing my legs and flicking through the little pamphlet. Recrossing my legs I felt an uncommon breeze against my ankles: I wasn’t wearing any socks.