Her Master's Voice Read online

  The professor’s flute looked surprisingly large as it lay dark and half-inflated on his thin thighs. A small tuft of white and grey hair covered its roots. “Oh very nice, Professor. I’m sorry I brought Ingrid now. Let’s get you nearer to the edge of the bed.” Her arm around his hips levered him reluctantly forward. “That’s it, now we’ll open your legs, and it’s Ingrid’s turn.”

  Sherry lowered herself to settle between his knees. The three of them stared at the flaccid beast, willing it to raise its head, but there was no sign of life. Sherry caught Ranji’s eye, and then reached out for it.

  It lay on her palm like a sleeping bird. She trailed her fingertips backwards and forwards along its length. It felt dry and smooth, gentle and harmless. “Oooooh – look! It’s growing,” cooed Ranji, but Sherry felt nothing to support her optimism. She reached underneath to cup her hand around the pendulous balls below. They too felt larger than such a small man should have. Gently she pulled back his sheath, bringing his wrinkled mauve mushroom into the daylight. Dry. This was not going to be easy.

  Sherry lowered her head to suck the soft plum into her mouth. “Oh yes!” whispered Ranji, “That must feel so good.” She gave the professor a squeeze. “Ingrid is so fortunate.”

  What do I do now? Sherry asked herself. It’s like a soft condom half-full of water; I’ll never be able to make this one work. Holding it firmly in her mouth she started to nod her head, pulling on the reluctant stem. It did not have the strength enough to slide in and out of her mouth.

  “Oh, that looks so sweet, Professor,” Ranji enthused. “It must feel wonderful. Ingrid is such a clever girl.”

  Feeling far from clever, Sherry remembered to moan quietly to indicate her enjoyment of the process. The professor gave no help at all and all her tugging and sucking at his root made no difference. She decided on another approach. Taking his plum between finger and thumb, she pushed his foreskin back with her other hand and gripped the shaft so that only the soft head of his sex stuck out of her fist. Now she could attack it. She suckled at it and used her hand to slide it from side to side in her mouth.

  “Oh yes, Ingrid,” encouraged Ranji. “Make love to the Professor’s beautiful cock. You’re making us both so excited. Here, Professor, touch me...”

  From the corner of her eye Sherry could see Ranji unbuttoning her top and sliding her sari from her shoulder. Her full breasts swung free and she offered them to the professor. He reached for her and at last Sherry felt some life in him.

  Ranji teased one dark brown nipple into erection while her other breast filled the professor’s hand to overflowing. “Do you like them, Professor?”

  “They are very beautiful, my dear,” he whispered and suddenly it was all over. The professor shuddered and Sherry’s mouth filled with salty cream. She sucked him in and stopped still. The professor had buried his face in Ranji’s breasts. She had her arm around his shoulders, patting him gently, and looked at him with a condescending smile.

  It did not take long for Ranji and the professor to replace their clothes. “Wait outside for me, Ingrid my dear. I won’t be a moment.” Sherry left as the two others conversed in quiet Hindi.

  Ranji was silent until the elevator doors closed. Then she started to giggle and set Sherry off too. They went arm-in-arm to the coffee shop. Sherry ordered coffee and Black Forest cake for both of them. She felt they deserved it.

  “Stupid old man!” Ranji said. “He said you looked too beautiful. That’s why it wouldn’t stand up. I think he was frightened of you.”

  “Frightened? That’s stupid! I felt terrible. It’s just as well you showed him your breasts or I would still be kneeling there sucking like an idiot.”

  Ranji’s laughter was infectious. “Indian men!” she said. “All wanting to be mothered. You looked so funny down there, sucking and sucking and getting nowhere. Trying to light a fire with wet wood, but you did very well in the end. The old fool finally got there. In the end, after a lot of work.”

  “And with a little help from Mother Ranji.”

  “Never mind. I suppose it is good that you have an experience like today. It can happen to any man, especially if they have had too much to drink. Next time I’ll get you a proper flute to play. One that you have to work at to make soft. I want to see how good you really are now.

  “Tim must be very happy with the way your lessons are going.”

  Sherry looked down at the table. “I haven’t done it with him, I mean, not properly. Not all the way. Never.”

  “What?” Ranji looked shocked. “How can you not do it for your husband? But you must do it, it’s your duty.”

  Something inside Sherry hurt that anyone should think she was not a good wife. “Oh yes, and I suppose you’ll do it every day when you get married.”

  “Of course, if that’s what my husband wants. I know my mother does it to my father very often. Not just when she has her period or is too busy to have love properly. Sometimes she does it first, and then he takes her bent over the back of his bedroom chair. She says she likes that because he lasts so long and she can take her time and enjoy it properly.”

  Now it was Sherry’s turn to be shocked. “Your mother told you that?”

  “Why not? We hear things from their bedroom, and we know that the house is a happy house. My room is next door and sometimes the chair bangs against the wall. It makes me hot and I have to do it to myself!” Ranji chuckled at herself.

  Is it really as simple as that? thought Sherry as she rode the taxi home. Making love is the important ingredient of a happy home? Wistfully, she wished it to be so.

  Chapter 5

  Another day and Tim again hurried along the swamp path to Darti’s house. An unreasonable amount of work had kept him away. One of the rigs had been completing a well in a soft sandstone reservoir. Sea Sprite IV moored beside the swamp barge to prepare and pump the carefully crafted sand slurry that would surround the well screens and keep the reservoir rock from collapsing.

  Tim preferred not to work with the rigs. True, it made a change to have other foreigners around, and to visit the French tool pusher for a chat and a pastis at sundown. It was good to have the mess serving meals every six hours, and coffee and ice cream whenever you wanted it, but the fact remained that drilling rigs run twenty-four hour operations. Moored alongside the swamp barge, as close to the rig floor as possible, Tim’s raised cabin lay beside the big Cats that provided all the rig power. At least two of the three massive diesels thundered all the time. He had grown used to continuous noise and vibration, even the loud, shuddering bursts as the rig pulled out of the hole stand by stand. He could sleep through it, but he missed the tranquillity of mooring at an isolated well far from the nearest human.

  When Sea Sprite worked away from the rigs and shut her generator down for the night, Tim and his crew were alone in the swamp. Late at night, when the mosquitoes had gone, Tim often sat on his verandah and just stared over the swamp, listening to the frogs, the insects, and the muddy Mahakam flowing past. The dark velvet of the night sky wrapped around the islands, damaged only by the glow of the gathering station gas flare beyond the trees. In contrast the noisy, brutal, mechanical intrusion of the drilling rig into the swamp drowned the surroundings and the glaring arc lights drove even the night away.

  Added to the noise and the bustle, sleep yielded to the need for long, delicate and precise pumping operations. The last well had completed three screened zones, in a continuous program that made no provision for undisturbed sleep. Tim and the crew slept in short naps of two or three hours whenever they could. It left them all feeling drained, and relieved when the tug finally arrived to push them off to an operating well that would need stimulating in a day or two. They could catch up with sleep, cleaning and maintenance, and Tim could visit Darti again.

  A shock awaited him as he emerged from the swamp. Sitting on Darti’s verandah was Captain Rais from Security. His immaculate uniform with its rigidly pressed grey shirt, insignia and gleaming shoulder l
anyard looked grotesque against the clapboard house behind him. His pencil moustache and oiled black hair, his expressionless face, all made Tim suddenly unsure of himself.

  “Ah, Mr. Armstrong, it is very good to see you. Darti promised me you would come soon. Come and sit down.”

  Feeling like a fish out of water, Tim slipped off his boots and climbed up to sit beside Captain Rais.

  “Hello Timmee,” came Dart’s voice from inside the house. “You like teh air juruk?”

  “Teh air juruk?” asked Captain Rais in surprise.

  “I like tea with lemon,” said Tim. “It’s refreshing.”

  “With lemon? I have never tried tea like that. Then I shall join you.” He called to Darti and soon she appeared with two small glasses on a tin tray, and left them alone. They sipped their tea.

  “This ... interesting,” said Captain Rais. “Is it a common thing in England?”

  “No, not common. We normally have tea with milk there, but I’m sure you’ve tried that.”

  “Yes, but I did not like it. This is better. I shall introduce this to my wife.” He sipped again.

  “Do you know Darti well, Captain Rais?”

  “Ah, you are a gentleman, Mr. Armstrong. I’m sorry I do not know her as well as you do. She is my cousin. I come here to visit sometimes, it is very peaceful here. Darti sometimes reads my future for me, and sometimes she will give me medicine if my health is not good. Does this make your mind rest?”

  Tim felt himself blushing. “Darti is a very nice lady.”

  “She is very much more than a nice lady, Mr. Armstrong. She is very, very wise. I always listen to her advice, and she likes you. That is why I wait for you here.”

  Something gripped at Tim’s stomach. Oh dear, he thought, does he want something for Darti? Does he know I’m married?

  Captain Rais continued. “I have a great want for help from a person living in Singapore. Will you help me, Mr. Armstrong?”

  Now he felt relieved and shocked. Relieved because he was not in trouble, and shocked that someone as important as Captain Rais should ask for help. “Of course,” he mumbled. “Anything I can do.”

  “Very good. I was afraid you can say no, and that is a problem. Good. Now I tell you about my problem, but this is just for us. You will not talk to anyone about this. You can talk with Darti but no one else.

  “You know, I am not from here. Not from Balikpapan or Kalimantan. They send me here from Jakarta because Indopet is very strong and rich, and we do not want for them to become also political. So my manager is in Balikpapan and I speak with him every day, but I also speak with my department in Jakarta. I must look to see the money from Indopet goes only to Jakarta. The Kalimantan people want money from the oil here, but they must not have it. Their money comes from Jakarta, only Jakarta.

  “Before, everything was easy. Sometimes bad people are trying to fill barges with oil and send them to Singapore privately. Or they are trying to sell a little land to Indopet for so much money… These are easy things, but now the world is changing. The terrorist people are becoming very strong and they want money. They want money to do bad things; to make bombs and to buy guns. Very, very bad people. These terrorist people make too much trouble for me.”

  “Why don’t you tell the Army?”

  Captain Rais did not meet his eye. Tim had lived long enough in Indonesia to recognise his embarrassment. “It is not so easy, Mr. Armstrong. The Army is different. I cannot speak with the Army. Not even my manager in Balikpapan can speak with the Army. Only in Jakarta will my department sit down with the Army.” He sipped his tea and looked out over the pond.

  “Foreigners never hear about these things,” said Tim. That was true. An outsider could work in the oilfields for a lifetime and still not see past the surface. The people were polite and reserved. The whole country was polite and reserved. Tim knew how to live in Indonesia, how to shop, visit restaurants, negotiate with girls, but those things a foreign worker could learn easily. What actually happened in the society around him remained hidden.

  “Bad people, Mr. Armstrong, very bad people. They are taking my religion. Yes, they say that only they are Muslim and the rest of the people are not good Muslims. They are stupid people, not educated. Stupid but also dangerous. Do you know them?”

  “Me? Only what I read in the newspapers. About Syria, Afghanistan and Iran and so on. And Saudi Arabia, of course.”

  “That’s it! Arab people, but only the stupidest ones. All shouting and lying about the Koran. Always blood and killing. The Prophet never wanted that. He was a man of peace, not blood, and these people, you know when they come to Indonesia, always it is alcohol and women. Always women, and after their night with the women, the next day they are in the masjid and saying that Indonesian men are bad Muslims and shouting again about killing and blood.

  “These are very bad men. You know, the people from Afghanistan and Iran, where they get their money? Drugs! Yes, holy Muslims selling drugs. Opium, heroin. Very, very bad men.” Captain Rais sounded almost rude in his denunciations, uncharacteristic for Indonesians talking to foreigners.

  “You don’t have people like that here, do you?” asked Tim.

  “We have stupid Indonesian people who listen to them! Yes, that’s true. There are madrasah everywhere, good schools with good teachers. But also there are bad madrasah with bad teachers. Always kill, kill, and jihad everywhere. Even in Balikpapan where are the foreigners and the Army. And to make a bomb it is only necessary one stupid bad man.

  “Now it is coming worse. I think my department in Jakarta has some of these men. I listen, I hear some things, Darti hears some things, and I write reports to Jakarta, but nothing is happening! They tell me to make the Security for the Mahakam delta only and not to think of the terrorists. So now you must help me.”

  “Me?” said Tim in surprise. “What can I do to help you?” Becoming involved with Islamic terrorists in Kalimantan was the last thing he wanted.

  “I will write a letter without my name,” said the Captain, “and you must take it to the police in Singapore.”

  Captain Rais left soon after he had made his demand. He had taken out his walkie-talkie to call for his boat, and set off into the swamp with a smile and a wave. Tim remained on the verandah, shocked and silent.

  Darti came to sit beside him. “Is a problem for you?”

  “No, I guess not,” he said. “As long as he just wants me to deliver a letter, I suppose nothing will happen to me. I hope.”

  “He is correct, Timmee. These people are very bad and big problem for Indonesia. The President does not know what he is doing, and some politicians are like snakes. They do not like the crazy men, but they talk with them, and they take their money. The money goes from the people to the masjid, from the masjid to the terrorists and then from the terrorists to the politicians. Always too much money.”

  “What will he write in the letter? Did he tell you?”

  “One man is carrying money to Singapore. Not next week but after next week. Captain Rais says this money is for guns and bombs. He is not permitted to stop the man here, but maybe the Singapore police will stop him. The letter will say his name and the day he is coming to Singapore.”

  Chapter 6

  Tim arrived back in Singapore with the dusk. Efficient and predictable, Immigration and Customs ushered the passengers through, past the baggage carousels loaded with the passengers’ tattered hold-alls, and straight to the line for taxis. Within fifteen minutes of touchdown, he was riding the crowded evening streets south into town. The tropical night closed in quickly and lights shone on in the old shop-houses. The taxi wound its way through the rush hour to Holland Road and modern Singapore.

  Sherry seemed happy to see him and, despite feeling as tired as a wet rag, he took her out to dinner.

  Next day, he needed to go into the Krumbein office in Orchard Road and, without telling Sherry, he took a taxi from there to New Bridge Road and the police CID building at Eu Tong Sen.


  The old colonial building looked permanently official, cold, tiled, inhuman. He gave his name and asked for a detective. He took a seat expecting a long wait, but they called him after only a few minutes. His detective was Hing, an unsmiling young man with spots and a military haircut. He wore plain clothes, uniformly wearing the same as everyone else Tim saw in the building, black trousers and a white, open-necked shirt. He led Tim to a sparse interview room and gestured him to a chair on one side of the small table. He laid a writing pad on the table, sat down and started to interrogate.

  “Name?” he demanded, as his first question. Then address, in Singapore and overseas. Nationality. Date of birth. Passport number, visa number, driving licence. He wrote quickly, in English, ignoring Tim’s frustration until finally he laid his pen on the table and asked, “Now, why are you here?”

  “I have a letter for you. It’s from Indonesia and it’s about terrorists.” He handed the letter over and Hing put it next to the writing pad unopened. He started to write again.

  “And who is the letter from?”

  “I can’t tell you that.”

  Hing’s manner sharpened. “Why not?”

  “Perhaps when you read the letter, it will be clear,” said Tim.

  “Have you read the letter?”

  “No.”

  “Do you know who sent it?”

  “Look, I’m not going to discuss it. Just read the letter. I’m only the delivery boy.”

  “Mr. Armstrong, you must cooperate with me and answer my questions. You are a guest in Singapore and if you do not cooperate with me, I shall expel you.” Hing looked agitated.

  “Oh, for goodness sake. Read the letter. It should tell you all you need to know.”

  “Where is the letter from, Mr. Armstrong?” demanded Hing again.

  Suddenly Tim boiled over. “Look, I’ve had enough of this. I came to deliver a letter and you’ve been extremely rude to me. I’ve given all the answers you’re going to get. I’m going!”

  He stood up, took two steps and opened the door. Behind him he heard Hing jump up and knock his chair onto the concrete floor with a clatter. “Mr. Armstrong—” he called but he was too late. Tim walked down the corridor and out of the building. Damn the little creep! He half expected Hing to chase him out onto the street but no one followed. Good, he could get on with life. He wanted to spend his break on Pulau Kelapa so he stopped at a payphone to call and persuade Sherry, and to make a booking with the car rental company.