Miss Seetoh in the World (36 page)

Maria wanted to ask: surely all this
kindness towards V.K. Pandy has got nothing to do with high moral principles,
because you have none? Dr Phang had instead what even the great TPK ultimately
trusted more – a natural honesty born of the impulse to be happy and to bear
goodwill towards the whole world.

 For the first time since they met, her
heart ached to a fervent wish: if only. If only he were not a married man. If
her mother had heard the wish, she would have cried out, ‘Ah, Maria, you’ve
come to your senses at last! It’s immoral to go with a married man!’

For many women, morality was suspended for
the duration of an affair, and after the affair was over, could be brought back
to give it closure: I did something wrong. I am sorry. I wasn’t thinking at the
time. The conscience, in any case, was a pliable organ at the mercy of head and
heart. Hers was exceptionally vulnerable in the presence of this extremely
seductive Dr Phang who must have tamed his a long time ago. He had more than
once hinted to her that if she wished, they could have occasional vacations
abroad – in Europe, the United States, South America, South Africa – that would
not be interrupted in any way. He was so enormously attractive to women
precisely because he was so avowedly amoral.

The sudden departure of the principal of St
Peter’s Secondary School provoked speculation which, for the time being at
least, had to lie silent beneath the proper public response of polite
acceptance of any decision taken by the Ministry of Education. The Ministry
promoted deserving principals in secondary schools to senior school inspectors
or administrative officers in the various departments of the ministry
headquarters, or transferred them to larger, more prestigious schools and
junior colleges. The sudden decision to let the principal of St Peter’s go on
‘indefinite leave’ was only slightly less foreboding than the decision of a
‘suspension’ which would mean that he was being investigated for some serious
misdemeanour. What wrongdoing could the principal be possibly guilty of? He was
an exemplar of professional and ethical conduct and had been so long at St
Peter’s that he was simply known as ‘the principal’; many among the staff did
not even know his full name. Besides, he had unfailingly shown support,
expected of all school principals, for all government policies on education and
gone beyond that to laud all other government decisions, whether on the
promotion of marriage among eligible Singaporean singles or the punishment of
those who chewed gum and stuck them on the seats of buses and trains. In
political matters, he had been most enthusiastic in his prohibition of even the
mention of V.K. Pandy in the classroom. All the newspaper cuttings of
ministerial speeches put up on the school bulletin boards for the students’
edification could only confirm the ardour of his support. He was the ideal
civil servant.

It fell to the vice principal, a small,
nondescript, hard-working man with a nervous twitch, to make the announcement
to the whole school, which he did with great difficulty, confirming the
suspicion that something serious must have taken place to plunge the poor
principal into disgrace. What it was, nobody dared discuss openly; Maria
noticed small groups of the staff huddled in urgent discussion from which she,
the maverick teacher, was necessarily excluded.

The vice principal, a week later, introduced
the new principal, a Mr Ignatius Lim Song Kooi, who, without any reference to
his predecessor, launched into a long speech about how he was determined to
make St Peter’s one of the finest schools in Singapore. He had a bright smile
for everyone, a hearty laugh and a readiness to talk about his rapid ascent up
the ranks in his chosen career in education, which he spoke of fervently as a
mission and a vocation. He spent his first day meeting the staff over coffee
and cake and interviewing them individually afterwards, and the following days
visiting every class in turn. Each visit began with a singing of the school
song by the students standing up very straight, which he listened to very
attentively, nodding amiably throughout. After he congratulated the students on
their inspiring rendition of the song, he launched upon an enthusiastic lecture
on living up to the high ideals of both the school song and motto. He made it
clear that everyone was welcome to come to him with any problem, any time in
his office.

Maria thought, I’m going to miss the
principal, realising with a start that for the first time in her many years in
the school, she had heard his name mentioned in full: Augustine Tan Chee Kuan.
She had a burning curiosity to find out the truth of his disgrace. That would
come only after the task of regaining Maggie’s trust and finding the truth,
probably heartbreaking, about her family circumstances that could be destroying
her. Her school programme was full, and for the first time, had nothing to do
with exams but unhappy persons gone into silent, troubled retreat.

Maria cast a glance around the students
getting ready for the creative writing lesson, and was relieved to see Maggie
sitting at the back, looking down resolutely, and Yen Ping and Mark two rows
ahead. It would be the first time that Maggie’s story would be used for class
discussion. The girl was proud and sensitive.Maria had spent considerable time
working out an agreeable balance between the need to please her by, first,
emphasising the creative elements in her story while suppressing the really
awful ones, and second, by drawing attention to the worst clichés without
embarrassing the poor girl who wrote and lived by them. She knew that Maggie,
like a small quiveringly alert creature, would detect the remotest hint of
condescension or patronage and rise to strike with her sharp responses.

But no strategy of balancing could have
out-manoeuvred Maggie’s purpose to shock everyone with her story. The
outrageous tale was already outlined in the brazenly raw title ‘How Dirty Uncle
Joe Lost his Bird’ and could not be read out to the class without extensive
prior censorship and editing. Maggie had written, using incredibly crude
imagery throughout, about a lecherous middle-aged man trying to seduce a pretty
young girl who, at precisely the moment of danger, grabbed a pair of scissors
and executed her bloody act, leaving Dirty Uncle doubled up in agony, his hands
pressed on his now vacant crotch, hopping madly about and swearing. Of the half
dozen words he used to describe her, ‘bitch’ might just be permitted in the
reading out of the story. ‘You think this punishment enough?’ screamed the
young girl. Of the numerous invectives she used, none was replicable in class.
‘You think I not suffer and suffer because you are so dirty and always try to
touch me? Even when I asleep, even I take my bath, I have to watch for you, you
dirty old man!’ ‘Oh no, oh no,’ screamed Dirty Uncle, as he saw her open the
window and fling out his manhood, now no more than a tangle of bloody bits,
like discarded offal on a butcher’s chopping block. He screamed even more when
he heard loud quacking sounds outside the window. The girl looked out and
watched four ducks fighting over the offering. She said smiling, ‘Good. Now you
will not disturb me any more, you wicked, evil, sinful, dirty Uncle!’ Maggie must
have built up her stock of stories from those she regularly heard from her
mother and the other lounge waitresses, gathered together in their free time to
drink and laugh at the men whom they would, after their brief respite, have to
start pleasing all over again.

Stripped of the lurid imagery, Maggie’s
story was still stunning in the sheer daring of its theme and dialogue. Peals
of laughter erupted in the classroom, in which Maria joined readily, at one
point wiping the tears off her eyes. One of the students, a bright-eyed girl
with long plaits, collapsed in a wash of merriment upon the back of the boy
sitting in front of her; another, a mischievous-looking boy with a pimply face
cried out ‘Dirty Uncle Bird! Dirty Uncle Bird!’, using a ruler to beat rhythmically
upon his desktop.

Maria was about to call a halt to the
rowdiness and explain that saucy stories like Maggie’s were alright for the
creative writing class but not for the G.C.E. O Level English Language paper
when she saw Maggie look up with an expression of such concentrated fury that
she stopped suddenly, said, ‘Maggie, wait –’ and the next moment rushed to stop
the girl make a dash out of the classroom.

She yelled, ‘Wait, Maggie, come back!’ but
the girl was gone in a flash. Maria said, ‘Oh dear, oh dear,’ and stood
helplessly at the doorway, wondering what to do next. She returned dispiritedly
to face the class, now quiet and looking at her for the next stage of action in
the unfolding drama.

One of the boys volunteered to go and look
for Maggie. ‘Oh dear,’ Maria said, quite pale with the shock of the sudden turn
of events. ‘We have upset Maggie. We shouldn’t have laughed so much. She must
have thought we were making fun of her story.’

‘What about her making fun of our stories?’
said the bright-eyed girl with long plaits. ‘You remember when I read out my
story, she kept giggling and making all sorts of comments?’

‘But it was such a funny story, Miss
Seetoh!’ exclaimed the pimply boy. ‘I never laughed so much in my life!’ The
laughter began again. Emboldened, the boy said, ‘Hey, Miss Seetoh, tell Maggie
her story is good enough to be made into a movie!  She’ll become very rich!
That part about the ducks gobbling it up – ha, ha, ha!’

Maria said, ‘Be quiet,’ then looked at Yen
Ping and Mark who had remained silent throughout; they seemed to have withdrawn
into themselves, not self-consciously as the school’s most celebrated pair but
gravely as if that position was bringing its own insurmountable problems.

As soon as she was free, Maria went in
search of Maggie. She was nowhere to be found. In the canteen, Auntie Noodles
said that Maggie had picked up her sister and they had both gone off, without
their usual meal of noodles.

‘Did she look upset?’ asked Maria anxiously.

‘She was crying,’ said Auntie Noodles.

‘Did she say anything to you?’ asked Maria
and dreaded to hear the answer, ‘She said Miss Maria Seetoh made fun of her and
her beloved sister Angel.’

Maggie did not come to school the following
day, nor the day after. After a week, Maria, sick with remorse and worry, went
to Brother Philip for help and advice. She was met with the worst possible
news. Maggie had left the school, with no intention of returning.

Brother Philip showed her the letter
addressed to him: ‘I Maggie Sim Pek Ngoh, am no longer student of St Peter’s
Secondary School, because it is stinking school. The principal, the teachers,
the students – they all stink. Miss Maria Seetoh, she stink most of all!’ Maria
burst into tears.

‘I really want to see her again, to explain everything.
She misunderstood me so badly.’

Brother Philip offered to drive her to
Maggie’s home to do the explanation. He said he would be wearing shirt and
pants, not his robe, to avoid attention.

The school administrative officer gave them
Maggie’s address from a register, saying, ‘This may not be the correct address.
She changed it three times.’ Some months back, when a school counsellor went to
the last given address, she was told by a middle-aged couple there that they
were Maggie’s relatives, with little connection with the girl or her family.
The couple mentioned The Blue Moon Lounge in an infamous part of the town where
Maggie’s mother worked.

‘That’s where we’ll go next,’ said Maria
with determination. ‘Dear Brother Phil, I’m sorry to involve you in all this
mess. But I simply have to find Maggie.’

Mrs Neo and Teresa Pang were already heaving
sighs of relief. Good riddance to bad rubbish. They added that if that
troublesome girl had not left on her own, the new principal would make her, for
he was clearly a man of action who would not tolerate a fraction of the
nonsense that the old principal did.

The search was fruitless. Nobody at the Blue
Moon Lounge had heard of a woman with the surname Sim or with daughters named
Maggie and Angel. Or they were co-operating with her and Maggie not to reveal
anything.

‘Don’t cry,’ said Brother Philip soothingly.
He offered her a large white handkerchief which he took out of his pocket. She
continued to sob convulsively.

All, all gone wrong in her world, when she
had only meant to be kind. But it all boiled down to her insensitivity. How
could she have not noticed Maggie’s distress?

Brother Philip drew her gently into his arms
and patted her back. ‘You’re alright,’ he said. Soon she stopped crying and
continued to lie in the comforting protection of his arms, a safe warm spot in
a horrible world. You’re okay. You’re alright. All her life, she needed men to
tell her that.

Brother Philip was one of the very few at St
Peter’s who could tell her about the situation regarding the principal. He was
being investigated by the Ministry of Education following a complaint, in an
anonymous letter, about unprofessional, unethical conduct: he had awarded the
contract for the building of an extension of the school library to a contractor
without the proper procedures laid down by the Ministry; the contractor turned
out to be his brother-in-law. Now disgraced, he spent all his time at home and
would likely lose his principal’s position even if he were allowed back into
education; if found guilty of corruption, he could even be sent to jail, for
corruption among civil servants, said the great TPK, was the beginning of rot
in a society and would never be tolerated. Singaporeans remembered that years
back a junior minister had been charged with accepting the bribe of a free
vacation to Indonesia for his whole family plus an Italian leather armchair,
and had, during the period of suspension, committed suicide by hanging himself.