CHAPTER 81
We landed in the afternoon, just after a rain squall had blown through; the place was a lot wetter than WA, that was clear. Maz had the window, and as we descended towards Changi, she was almost dancing in her seat, pointing out places that I couldn’t actually see, as Ish was already leaning over her for his view. I would just have to see it all from ground level.
“This was the military airfield originally, Mike. Alan’s Dad used to go to the beach here. There was a place called the South China Sea Club, but it was just palm thatched huts, a bar, a juke box and a local man cooking chips in a wok over a gas ring. On the floor. Such changes!”
The landing was fine, the immigration formalities could be described as thorough, but Eventually we were in the arrivals concourse, and a little man was holding a sign reading ‘RHODES’.
I was glad he knew where we were going, because the two words that best described the place were ‘busy’ and ‘up’, as the traffic was abundant and the buildings did indeed ascend a long, long way. Maz was running her own commentary as he drove, “Oh that’s…” and “Ooh, that’s where…”, with the occasional “We’ll have to come back here and…”
The high-rises abruptly gave way to an area of what looked like lawns, with white houses scattered among stands of shading trees.
“This is the place, love. Wessex Estate. Ish, darling, this is where Alan’s father and his parents used to live”
“They’re very big houses, Mum”
The taxi driver laughed.
“Very expensive houses, these! You bought one?”
I chuckled.
“Not that rich, my friend. Someone else owns the one we’ll be using. We’re here for work”
“Old houses. No air conditioning, Boss. Ceiling fans”
“We’ve come from Western Australia, so we’re used to heat”
Maz chuckled, in a rather evil way, so I looked over my shoulder to deliver my best quizzical glare.
“Oh, husband mine, it’s not the same. We’re in the rainy season now. Not the heat that hits you, but the humidity. Be prepared to drip!”
We followed a winding road, speed held well down, until a lane cut off slightly uphill to the left, marked ‘Weyhill Cl’, and our driver stopped outside one of the white semi-detached houses.
“Number fourteen, Boss, Missus. I have keys for you and notes on alarms. I come in, okay? Show you where they are”
We were soon in and checking the place out, our driver leaving with the benefit of a decent tip offered by Maz. The FCO people had stocked the fridge with some basics such as fresh milk, as well as leaving us with some coffee and tea, as well as two bottles of white wine. The place was fully furnished, and after a little internal exploration, we gave Ish the front bedroom, which had a small balcony. I was settling our own luggage into the ‘master’ bedroom when I heard Maz squeal. I took the stairs three at a time to find her coming into the kitchen via the back door.
“They’ve knocked the ahma’s block down!”
“Sorry? The what block?”
“Oh, ahma: daily help woman. Cleaner, laundry, that sort of thing. The Army gave each family an allowance. They had a separate block with the washing machine and that, and their own type of toilet”
“Not a…?”
“Squat? Yes, one of those. Anyway, it’s gone, and…”
She tugged me out of the door, and there it was, all blue and wet and inviting. It wasn’t the biggest of pools, but it was ours. I wasn’t going to be getting damp, but wet, and there is a world of difference between the two.
I kissed her and went to put the kettle on.
Ish was bouncing around the house, looking in every cupboard he could find, while Maz logged onto the net, pulling up some of her scanned photos.
“Ish, love? This is what it looked like here when Alan’s dad was a boy”
There were quite a few shots of the ‘main’ road, Portsdown, and several of them had a number of large white buses.
“That’s just down the hill, love. Those are the school buses he used to use. Your new school is on the site of his dad’s old one. Now, shall we leave the rest of the unpacking and go and explore?”
There was a gleam in her eye that was confirmed by her choice of ‘going for an explore’ kit: raincoat, umbrella, binoculars. Despite the blue skies, she insisted that both of her men carried waterproofs and wore what the Aussies called ‘thongs’ but I still regarded as flip-flops, and we set off to the West after locking the place up. Maz paused at the edge of our little ‘close’, where the ground dropped off sharply to Portsdown Road, and pointed out past the ‘close’ opposite us.
“Over there is Queenstown, those tower blocks. There used to be a railway line between here and there, and a small stream. Railway’s gone now, and it’s a leisure path instead. This steep bit was used for sledging”
“Sorry? In snow? Here?”
She laughed, happily.
“Not quite! His Dad’s schoolmates found sheets of cardboard, and slid down that grass on them. Got to be a bit of a craze until the complaints came in as they wore all the grass away”
She prattled away as we walked, and to no surprise at all we ended up on a boardwalk through a park. Maz still chuckling as she kept up her usual recitation of bird names. It was a pleasant area, with all sorts of tech businesses and at least one university building rising up from a really green matrix of lawns and parkland.
“Mum?”
“Yes, love?”
“Are we going to have to walk all the way back in thongs?”
“Nope! We have a choice coming up ahead, either the station or the shopping centre, for a meal”
“Yeah but walking, Mum?”
“There’s a bus back to that stop by our place. Now, what do you want to eat?”
“What can I choose from?”
“All sorts of different Chinese restaurants, French, Vietnamese, Thai, Mexican, from memory. Oh, and one of those American burger places. And shops”
To my surprised delight, Ish decided to avoid both the MacVomit and the Nando’s, plumping for a Korean place, his choice turning out to be an excellent one. We had a meander through the shops afterward, and I ended up with a couple of new shirts described by Maz as not being quite so quick at turning transparent as my Aussie ones. As we walked through the centre, I caught a glimpse outside, where a solid curtain of water was hammering down just outside the doors.
I bought a golf umbrella.
The bus was on time, the ride was short, and I realised that the bus stop was exactly the one that Alan’s father had waited at for his school bus. The memories were piling up rapidly, so I resolved to keep a careful eye on my wife, just in case they broke through. All that my own voices were offering was a slightly soppy ‘Caro would have loved this’.
Night fell rather abruptly as we were walking back from the bus stop, reminding me that we were almost exactly on the equator, and I suddenly felt a sharp pain in my foot.
“What the fu—er, OW!”
Under a street light, I examined my toes, and there, hanging off one by its jaws, was a large red ant. Maz dug in ger bag and brought out a torch, as I dislodged the bastard.
“Hang on, Mike… There”
She was illuminating part of the footpath, where a double line of the creatures was crossing and recrossing it. She was still laughing, the heartless woman.
“Welcome to Malaysia, love! I know it’s really Singapore, but you know what I mean!”
Ish, of course, thought it was hilarious, and proceeded to make up all sorts of awful puns, but when he said ‘formicate’, my thought lurched from “That’s a clever one” to “How the hell did he know that word?”. I wasn’t sure if it was a word the extremely prudish HPL could have brought himself to use, so I needed to check his other preferred authors, just in case.
We settled the rest of our belongings once we were back in what would be ‘our’ house, before, without a word from any of us, we changed into our ‘swimmers’ and entered our little pool. A bottle of the wine, and some garish soft drink for Ish, went onto the patio by the pool. As Ish experimented with how long he could hold his breath underwater, I sat on the wide shelf at the end of the thing and snuggled against my wife. Mosquitoes were out now, but they didn’t like the water, and as there were also bats flicking around, as well as little wall-climbing lizards, they faced their own risks.
It rained again while we were in the pool. None of us cared.