Her Master's Voice Read online

  Her Master’s Voice

  Sherry is a lonely wife in Singapore, filling her days studying yoga under an Indian guru who loves women. The guru and her friend Ranji are helping her become the woman she secretly wanted to be, but there is a price to be paid for her new femininity.

  How will she admit to her husband what she and Ranji have been doing? But he finds out and she is trapped on a tropical island, alone with the man she has wronged.

  He has other worries; he has been targeted by Islamic terrorists. Soon Sherry and her friends from Singapore and Indonesia are fighting for his life with all determination and feminine charm they can manage.

  Sensuality Rating:SCORCHING

  Genre: Action/Adventure/Multiple Partners

  Length: 91,000 words

  HER MASTER’S VOICE

  Jacqueline George

  MENAGE AND MORE

  Siren Publishing, Inc.

  www.SirenPublishing.com

  A SIREN PUBLISHING BOOK

  IMPRINT: Romance

  ABOUT THE E-BOOK VERSION: Your non-refundable purchase of this e-book allows you to one LEGAL copy for your own personal use. It is ILLEGAL to send your copy to someone who did not pay for it. Distribution of this e-book, in whole or in part, online, offline, in print or in any way or any other method currently known or yet to be invented, is forbidden without the prior written permission of both the publisher and the copyright owner of this book.

  HER MASTER’S VOICE

  Copyright © 2008 by J. E. George

  E-book ISBN: 1-60601-269-X

  First E-book Publication: November 2008

  Cover design by Jinger Heaston

  All cover art and logo copyright © 2008 by Siren Publishing, Inc.

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED: This literary work may not be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, including electronic or photographic reproduction, in whole or in part, without express written permission.

  All characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead is strictly coincidental.

  Printed in the U.S.A.

  PUBLISHER

  Siren Publishing, Inc.

  www.SirenPublishing.com

  DEDICATION

  To the friends and colleagues who have made my stays in South East Asia so memorable.

  HER MASTER’S VOICE

  JACQUELINE GEORGE

  Copyright © 2008

  Chapter 1

  Five in the morning and already Singapore was stirring to a new day. The black, starred velvet above could never shine clearly through the haze and lights of the busy city, and now it faded further as grey light crept up from the east. Moonbeam Walk dozed quietly but the rush of passing cars on nearby Holland Road was getting more frequent. By six o’clock the sound would be continuous and it would stay that way until very late at night.

  Behind the open bedroom windows of No. 8, Sherry and Tim slept in twin beds. Tim had kicked his sheet off and lay nude on the rumpled bed. Sherry, tightly swathed in her sheet, lay rigidly on her back like a corpse awaiting burial. In her sleep she had pulled the sheet up about her ears and only the top of her short, blonde hair showed on the pillow.

  On the point of five o’clock, the alarm screeched and Tim reached out to silence it. Not allowing a drift back into sleep, he dragged himself up to sit on the edge of the bed and looked unhappily across the room. Sherry did not stir. Moving automatically he made for the bathroom.

  Still nude, he crept downstairs. His packed bag waited for him, along with his uniform and boots all ready to go. He slipped into his navy blue shirt and slacks, and sat to pull on his socks and Redwings. Patting his shirt pocket to check his ticket, passport and wallet, he quietly unlocked the door. He took his bag out into the dawn twilight to wait for his taxi.

  The taxi hurried him north across the island, past lines of cluttered Chinese shop-houses and patches of near jungle, to Seletar and his Indopet plane. He supposed the big bosses in Indopet had managed to put together some sort of bent deal that allowed them to fly their charters into the military field at Seletar rather than the main airport at Paya Lebar. Tim regretted it. On mornings like these he would have liked to start the day with a cooked breakfast at the airport. Seletar could only offer coffee and Danish.

  The check-in was basic, only old fashioned scales with a huge dial and a baggage trolley behind. An efficient but distant Chinese man checking tickets and issuing boarding passes. Two bored Immigration officers collecting visa slips and cursorily stamping passports. In the institutional lounge, passengers had begun to gather; all men in working clothes with little or no hand baggage. They sat silent and morose, preparing themselves for another stint in the oilfields of Kalimantan. Tim did not recognise anyone and made for the coffee table.

  He sat and dozed until an Indonesian stewardess in severe uniform appeared at the exit doors and, without checking boarding passes, ushered them out to the tarmac and the waiting plane. He stayed awake long enough to eat the cold fried rice that Indopet substituted for breakfast and then slept his way across the Java Sea and the island of Borneo.

  BalikpapanAirport always came as a shock to arriving passengers. Not so much the heat. That was similar to Singapore, but the total lack of concern from the Indonesian authorities for creature comforts. Tim shuffled across the tarmac to the corrugated iron shed called Arrivals. Inside, the air was stifling and the passengers stood sweating in line while immaculately uniformed Immigration officers carefully studied each passport. The harsh, spicy reek of kretek cigarettes filled the air and this more than anything else reminded Tim he had come back to his second home.

  He pushed his way out of the Arrivals shed through a clamour of taxi drivers and looked for someone else in a Krumbein Oilfield Services uniform. At the back of the crowd stood Alfred, the office driver. He had a large envelope in his hand and a bottle of Pernod, and he smiled happily.

  “Hello, Mr. Tim. Mr. Lefevre say you go taxi to Camp Dua, OK?”

  Oh shit, Tim thought. Pierre strikes again. Now instead of a comfortable half hour in a chopper or the old Grumman Goose, he was stuck with three hot and tedious hours in a local taxi, winding around the potholes in the narrow strip of asphalt that passed for a highway in this part of Indonesia. He tore open the envelope in disgust and found, along with the job programs and invoices for signing, a hand-written note from Pierre. Sorry but I could not get a seat on the chopper today. You must go by taxi. The head is for CB4. Please give it to Max. See you, Pierre. Well, bless him. Pierre had known for at least the last two weeks that Tim was scheduled back today, and he could not get a seat? Tim did not believe it.

  “What head is this, Alfred?”

  “In taxi already,” said Alfred, leading him off to the car park. The taxi looked no older than Tim but in much worse shape. Two Indonesian rig hands waited next to it, along with the driver. In the boot the cylinder head of a GM Detroit diesel lay half hidden by small boxes of spares, all firmly sealed with blue Krumbein tape. Pierre obviously wanted an escort for the cargo and had volunteered Tim. Probably, the rig hands were just a little private enterprise by the taxi driver. Or by Alfred.

  The taxi crawled slowly through the crowds on the road out of town, picking its way around pedestrians and animals and being passed continuously by suicidal riders on small Honda motorcycles. As the ramshackle shops turned into houses and then died away altogether, the traffic became lighter but the potholes that exposed the red-yellow clay of the road foundations dictated how fast traffic could move. Tim settled down to watch the passing villages and their rice paddies, clusters of small wooden huts shaded by coconut palms.

  It was already late afternoon when the taxi lurched up to the gate of CampDua. Tim wen
t to persuade the Indopet security guards to allow the taxi to deliver the cylinder head right to the jetty. Raymond waited for him in the shade by the river.

  Raymond was his crew captain. Big for an Indonesian and fleshy, Raymond kept the crew working and the barge running. His straggly moustache was always ready to smile, but just as ready to stare with disapproval at any crewman who slacked. A stare would fix the problem and, following Indonesian culture, compliance with Raymond’s wishes brought the reward of respect. The crew recognised Raymond not only because of his position as captain, but more importantly because he had the disposal of all the empty plastic containers from Sea Sprite IV. After a substantial acid job he might have five hundred or more plastic jerry cans to sell.

  Tim turned a blind eye to the enterprise and did not accept a cut of the proceeds. Under the unwritten rules of Indonesian black business, he should automatically receive half, the boss’s share. Raymond would then take half of the remainder and divide the balance equally amongst the crew. By foregoing his share, Tim had the undying support of all of them and they presented him with a carton of beer as a gesture after each big sale.

  While Raymond got the rig hands to manhandle the cylinder head onto the Sea Sprite IV whaler, Tim went to the radio room to sign in with PetroFrance. That done, he took a seat in the bow of the boat, and Raymond guided them out into the muddy waters of the Mahakam Delta. Low in the water, the whaler found the current difficult. It took some time and skill to cross the wide stretch of river in front of CampDua and reach the nipa swamp that made up the delta itself. Raymond eased them into a narrow channel with branches hanging well over the water, a short cut the larger crew boats could not take.

  Lurid dragonflies flitted in the dappled light and the dark water lay still as they wove slowly on into the swamp. The mangroves and nipa palms blanketed the view until they burst back into the sunshine of a main channel. The Siak swamp barge, the rig hands’ destination, had buried itself in the opposite bank, but Raymond swept on down the channel. He wanted extra muscle to help with the cylinder head. CB4 was a converted crane barge and now supported a light land rig instead of its crane. The quiet of the swamp shook with the noise of labouring Cats as the rig struggled to pull out of hole.

  They nosed up to the muddy tyre fenders lining the barge. Tim left Raymond to get the head on board and went in search of Max. He found him working beside the Krumbein pump unit, surrounded by dismantled pipe work and tools. He looked hot, tired and greasy. Tim handed over the bottle of Pernod, intended as a sweetener for the toolpusher, and stopped to chat. Max was a Cajun from Louisiana and had plenty to say about the ‘real’ Frenchmen who worked for PetroFrance and Krumbein. Tim listened with sympathy but followed Raymond back to the whaler as soon as he could. He wanted to get back to his own barge. They dropped the Siak rig hands and headed off to the far side of the delta where Sea Sprite IV sat tied to a wellhead, waiting for its next operation.

  The crew lined the railing, smiling as Tim clambered over the fenders and through the pipe work. It felt good to come back and shake their hands. He slung his bag over his shoulder and climbed the steps up to his portable building, perched in splendour across the stern of the barge. He stood for a moment on the verandah and looked around. The barge stretched in front of him. The generator shack with its noisy GM giving them electricity. The old twin pump unit, the heart of the barge. The storage and mixing tanks beyond. To one side he could look out over a branch of the Mahakam. On the other, he could see over the tops of the nipa palms lining the river’s edge to the tall swamp jungle a short way beyond. It all looked good.

  Soon Raymond would run Tim and the others to CampDua to eat their evening meal in the mess. Then they would come back and he would turn in for an early night with one of the books he had brought from Singapore. TomorrowSea Sprite IV would still be on standby for the next acid job. After breakfast he would do a check of the pump unit and then he would leave Raymond to get on with the continual round of maintenance and painting. He would make an excuse and go ashore, leaving the wellhead platform by walking along the cable tray. Ashore, the swamp islands had a network of pipelines on trestles two or three metres above the swamp surface. Beside the pipes lay the cable tray, carrying power and telemetry cables and closed over by galvanized mesh. The cable trays served as pathways in the sky, above the mud of the swamp, and gave access into most of the islands. He would follow the swamp edge around, solitary, watching the birds and monkeys, raised comfortably above the jungle floor. On the other side of the island, perhaps only a kilometre away as the sea eagle flies but at least three along the cable tray, he would come to a primitive landing stage and a duck-walk of split logs leading into the jungle. This led to Darti’s house. He had not seen her for over a week, and he missed her.

  Chapter 2

  Sherry hated the alarm clock as much as Tim did, but she did not let it disturb her. She slept on, only vaguely aware of him moving around downstairs and finally clicking the door closed behind him.

  It was seven thirty before she woke and lay staring at the ceiling, thinking of her plans for the day. Tim had gone away for two weeks at least and she had a prick of guilt at the feeling of relaxation creeping over her. She had come to positively enjoy being left alone in Singapore. Not that she did not enjoy sharing her life with Tim during the hectic six-day rest periods he had at home. In fact she loved visiting new places, following his short-lived enthusiasms and sharing unfamiliar food in strange food stalls. She supposed it helped for her to be taken out of herself sometimes.

  The trouble was the feeling of sadness she sensed in him. She had noticed it ever since she had put her foot down and insisted on twin beds. He did not seem to appreciate her need for companionship rather than closeness, but having him wake close beside her in the mornings always seemed to lead to hints of sex. Sex that she could do without. She would have demanded separate bedrooms as well but she knew that would have pushed Tim too far.

  She showered and went down to breakfast on fruit and cold water. She would clean the house, put Tim’s bed sheets in the washing machine and put away his magazines and the model boat he was building as a hobby. Then she could go to meet Ranji and on for her Whole Life class with Papi Bombar. Afterwards she would take Ranji for lunch, and in return Ranji would probably take her for another flute playing lesson.

  Sherry locked the door but left the windows open behind their grilles. She never closed the windows. In such a gentle climate the whole idea of having a house to live in seemed an extravagance. Holland Road was its usual nose-to-tail rush but she had become a Singapore girl now. She stepped out into the smallest of gaps and the traffic slowed to let her through to the central reservation. Another deadly step out and she reached the bus stop. The Holland Road buses came as frequently as the taxis, but she had to wait for a number 106 to take her down into Bukit Timah valley and onto the Indian part of the town centre. The bus was old and crowded with chattering schoolgirls in white blouses and pleated navy skirts. They offered Sherry a seat but she felt too embarrassed to accept. The bus rattled and lurched its way down Bukit Timah Road towards the city.

  She left the bus at the beginning of Serangoon Road, forced her way across the crowded pavement and went looking for Ranji. She waited deep in the Zhujiao Centre, at her father’s textile stall. Today being a Whole Life day she wore Western clothes, hiding her Lycra leotard with jeans and a loose shirt. Her luxuriant black hair hung between her shoulders in a heavy plait, garnished at her neck with a jasmine posy. They touched hands and Ranji led her quickly out through the busy aisles of the shopping centre.

  “So, Tim has gone? That’s good. Now we can enjoy ourselves again.” They wove slowly along the pavement of Serangoon Road, sometimes on the narrow strip next to the road and sometimes in the pillared shade next to the shops. “You know, it always seems so long that we don’t see each other when Tim’s here. I think I miss you, and I think you forget your Whole Life mantras also.”

  “No, I don’t,
” Sherry contradicted her. “I don’t know the mantras anyway. I might be able to remember something if they were in English, but… I just sit there and open and close my lips.”

  Ranji laughed happily. “Never mind. It is your inner peace that’s the important thing. Papi Bombar knows it is hard for you. Don’t worry.” Ranji’s belief in Papi Bombar and his Whole Life movement was complete and Sherry envied her. Not for her the weekly struggle with unfamiliar concepts in the work sheets that Papi Bombar distributed. She just soaked them up, as if she had learnt them at school. She probably had. Sherry bought her own inner peace at the cost of hard study and confusion but if her ordained path led that way, then she would follow it, no matter what.

  Ranji suddenly turned and disappeared up a steep wooden stairway. Sherry followed her tightly jeaned hips upwards. Ranji had a comfortable shape, rich and rounded. When she wore a sari she showed off prominent breasts and a soft round tummy. She had a loud and happy nature, and filled rooms with laughter given half a chance. She also had a very sexy aura about her, and attracted both men and women to stand in her light. Sherry used to think of herself as elegant, but beside Ranji she faded to just dull and bony.

  They came to a landing with a bookcase full of shoes. They added their own and stepped through the door into a bare room with three large arched windows looking out over the bustle of the street below. At the far end sat a low dais. The room was gently air-conditioned and the double glazed windows kept out most of the traffic noise. Facing the windows, gaudy posters of gods and mythological figures covered the wall, all explained in heavy Hindi slogans. More women stood waiting under the posters, talking quietly in small groups. Most were Indian or Sri Lankan. A couple looked like Malays. As usual, Sherry saw no Chinese girls and no other Europeans.