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By Root 2776 0

there was a great stirring in the darkness; from what had seemed to be empty rickshaws shadowy figures emerged. Further shapes could be seen shifting in the obscurity beneath the trees; beyond, anchored at sea in the inner roads, were a great number of ships of which only the lights were visible. In a moment, to Matthew’s surprise, the open windows of the taxi were entirely filled with women’s faces, piled one on top of another like coconuts; shortly the windscreen, too, was blocked by the faces of yet more women leaning over the bonnet. A soft murmur filled the air from which an occasional word in English detached itself: ‘OK John!’ … ‘Nice!’ … ‘Back all same flont!’ ‘Whisky soda!’

Meanwhile, the driver, an elderly Malay with a brown face and the white hair of a grandfather, had groped for an electric torch and shone its beam on one window after the other.

‘Can these be real women?’ wondered Matthew as the beam wandered unsteadily over the serried painted masks. Yet on many of these masks the wrinkles stood out despite the paint and powder; the angled light etched them all the more harshly, replacing sunken eyes with a blob of darkness. At the same time, here and there skeletal arms had stretched through the open windows to trail about in the interior of the cab, floating and flickering like sea-weed, plucking weakly at his shirt and trousers, palping his arm or thigh.

‘Hags!’ declared Monty. ‘Drive on!’

The driver raced the engine and the windscreen cleared. One or two other faces showed themselves fleetingly in the places of those that had gone: younger, weaker, more innocent, but no less desperate, trawling unhopefully with this brief glimpse of their younger faces for the twin male lusts which they knew were swimming back and forth like sharks somewhere in the depths of the cab. The hands groped more desperately, pleading, tugging, pinching. Then the taxi moved off in a hail of curses and vociferation. One or two of the women even tried to follow in rickshaws, hoping to catch up at the next traffic lights. But in no time they were left behind.

Monty explained, with the weary condescension of an expert, that certain of these women had their own permanent rickshaw coolies, usually ancient, hollowed-out skeletons of men, excavated by the pursuit of their shattering trade in the Singapore heat, who could no longer compete with younger rivals but might still, now and again, whip their broken limbs into a trot to reach some likely looking prospect with their fair cargoes of flesh … by which he meant, he added with a chuckle, those leathery harridans whose services you could always purchase for a few cents. And they weren’t all Chinese, Malay or Tamil either, by any manner of means. Sometimes you came across Europeans, yes, women who had ‘gone wrong’ in some Eastern city, who had found disgrace through opium or alcohol in Calcutta, Hong Kong or Shanghai … He, Monty, as a student of human nature, took a pretty keen interest in the stories that some of these women could tell you … there were even aristocratic women driven out of Russia in penury by the Revolution. And more recently, as a matter of fact, things had been getting better in Singapore as far as women went. Young Chinese girls had been arriving in droves, refugees from the Sino-Jap war escaping from Shanghai or Canton …

‘Not better, Monty!’ cried Matthew indignantly. ‘How can you be so heartless!’

‘Oh, I just meant younger, you know,’ muttered Monty sullenly. ‘No need to get worked up, old boy. After all, it’s not my fault …’

‘But it’s all our faults! It’s disgraceful! This is supposed to be a prosperous country. We send huge profits back to our fat shareholders in England and yet we can’t even provide for a few refugees without them having to go on the streets.’

‘It’s no good taking this high moral line out here in the East, you know. People don’t go in for that sort of thing out here. It’s not our cup of tea. You just have to accept things the way they are. In the Straits it’s every man for himself, if you know what I mean, and it’s as well not to over-do