The Cult of Following

The Cult of Following

Part 1.1 WHEN THE BLANKET IS LONG ENOUGH

He was not sure what would happen once he had travelled the many thousands of miles stretching between here and there. Sal had told him about the perks and privileges, flights home, bonuses, but Percy had not been listening, aware only of the sudden sense that a huge net was about to drop on top of him. But if things carried on as they were, with her travelling so much, or if she moved to Singapore alone, their marriage would end. The thought of it sat like an uncomfortable slop in his stomach and so did his lack of choice.

He took a breath, a deliberate drawing in of the thick atmosphere, needing to remember the sour smell of old beer. And there was the brown furniture with a smell of its own, flocked red wallpaper, split shabby rug taped over ancient floorboards, heavy curtains gone extinct in modern pubs. Sal hated it here. It wasn’t good enough for her. These days she preferred the finer things in life and, from what Percy had heard, Singapore was overflowing with them.

The pub’s very existence was an astonishing feat at a time when pubs were closing left, right and centre. How could she not care about it, about the people, Old Bert, Flapjack, the bloke whose name no one could remember, who always sat next to the fruit machine even though he never played it, people who brought a sense of security when home was filled with unease. And what about Art?

Percy caught his eye as he returned from the bar with a large packet of cheese and onion crisps wedged under his arm. He placed two brimming pints on the table, before tearing the crisp packet into a makeshift platter.

‘Got a big head on it,’ Percy remarked, picking up the nearest beer.

Crunching a crisp, Art offered the name of this latest sample, ‘Dogg’s End.’

‘Tastes like it.’ Percy wiped the foam from his lips and held out his glass, inspecting the colour, then thrust it towards his friend, ‘A toast.’

‘A toast,’ Art raised his, only half smiling. They both knew he did not want Percy to leave. ‘You checked how far away it is yet?’

He had, and then nearly fallen off his stool. ‘Just short of seven thousand miles. It’s gonna be weird.’

‘You’ll be all right, Fieldy.’ The statement was a bold step. So far, Art had been feeble in his efforts to appear supportive.

‘It’s an opportunity,’ Percy said, ‘the only way to look at it.’

He had thought a lot about what he was leaving behind, which amounted to only two things, his job and Art. Maybe it was just as well he was moving. He was sorry to be leaving England, but it was worth trying something new when something old was staggering dangerously close to death.

Art crunched and sipped, and for few moments the men sat in companionable silence. ‘When d’you leave again?’ he asked eventually, wiping up tiny fragments of crisp with a fingertip.

‘Fortnight.’
‘What about your stuff?’
‘Some in storage, some will follow us out.’

‘It’s so quick. What about a house?’
‘Sal’s sorted it.’

‘And work? For you?’

Percy’s pint hovered between the table and his mouth. Living most of his adult life in a state of homogeny had made picturing difference hard; a small town near Bristol, he had not expected to be anywhere else. ‘I don’t think I can do my job out there.’

‘So what will you do?’
‘What would you do?’
Art shook his head, ‘Dunno, never been, what is there to do?’
‘A bit of cycling.’

‘Hot for that.’

Percy downed his Dogg’s End and pointed at Art’s, still a quarter full. ‘Want another in there?’

Light and warmth poured from the sitting room into the chilly night. Percy did his best to enter the house like he had not just enjoyed five pints and a

nightcap. She wouldn’t care about it, she never cared, but he felt like an idiot. It was what twenty-year-olds did, not forty-something’s about to move to the other side of the world, forty-something’s who could no longer hold their drink. He preferred forty-something to forty-five.

‘You and Art had a good evening then.’ Sal looked tired, the line of her mouth curving down where it always used to curve up.

‘Not bad.’ His tongue felt sluggish. ‘You?’ Piles of stuff covered the floor. ‘What’s this?’ He emptied his favourite armchair of bags, dumping them on the floor before sitting down, coat still on.

Sal stared at him in silence before lowering herself into the chaos. ‘We don’t have long before the packers come. I don’t want to store a load of crap any more than I want to take it with us.’ She tossed him a tee-shirt. ‘Take, store, or charity?’

Percy picked it off his chest and held it up. ‘I love this one! Where did you find it?’

‘Back of a drawer, with the programme.’

‘Brilliant concert, what a man!’

‘So?
‘Huh?’

‘Take, store or charity?’
‘Keep it.’
‘Percy! Take it or store it?’
‘Uh. Take. I’ll need a tee shirt.’
‘Why don’t you go to bed–’
‘You don’t want a hand?’ He clutched the shirt as if it might throw itself into the black bin liner Sal was filling.

‘It’s late,’ she wrestled away a pissed-off smile, ‘I’ve had enough of this for tonight. You go up. I’ll be up in a mo. By the way, I’ve put the Christmas stuff for storage. We can get new.’

‘I wondered where it was.’ It was always up for too long and he hadn’t noticed it was gone. ‘Sorry I’m crap. It doesn’t seem fair you having to do all the sorting.’

‘No, it doesn’t seem fair, Percy, does it.’ Sitting cross-legged on the rug they had bought on holiday to celebrate their tenth anniversary, she pushed away a rolling tear.

‘Sal?’

She shook her head, waving him away as if he had been about to come over and comfort her. ‘It’s a fresh start. It’s what we need. We agreed.’

Percy stared. She so often looked hard these days, like she could not allow joy to permeate a single molecule. When they had met, she had been a student, biology, psychology, something like that, young and passionate about everything, especially him, loving him for the man he was. She said his grumpy face was endearing, his privateness worth treasuring. His passion had been wood, and though young, he was a little older, besotted, wondering how a woman like her could love a man like him.

‘I still want it,’ he said, ‘want us.’

‘I know.’
He waited.
‘Me too.’

Pushing himself out of the armchair, Percy made for the stairs. One thousand miles or seven, it made no difference. It would be fine. Singapore would offer a different kind of space where he wasn’t in danger of bumping into neighbours expecting him to stop and chat, a foreign city, a place to be by himself and people-watch while not actually being alone.

Solitary activities suited him, though these days being at home alone was less enjoyable than it had been. The house crept with an emptiness he could almost hear. It was to do with the abysmal state of his marriage, he knew, and as Percy switched on the bathroom light, he brightened at the thought of having this chance to fix it.

1.2

Leaving the cool of Changi airport had been like being smacked in the face by a hot wet flannel. The taxi had been cold, walking from the taxi to the house boiling, the house itself a perfect temperature until Sal decided they would never acclimatise and switched off the aircon. And now, after six weeks of doing almost nothing, Percy Field understood he was not cut out to be the thing he had signed up to be, this free spirit of a househusband, or whatever Sal reckoned he was. If they’d had kids then he might have seen the point, but thank god small humans had never been on the cards.

Sitting outside his favourite café, The Bean, he knew he was, in some ways, better off than he had been. All those mornings travelling through the grey misery of rush hour. Why had he done that? Why not build a workshop in the garden? Because he would never leave it, Sal had told him, never see another face, and he would not be the only one suffering because of it.

Percy sipped a cappuccino and watched a student inside setting up an array of devices. He planned to email Art at some point, and no doubt Art would email back, but it wasn’t the same as talking over a pint. Sal said call, Facetime, anything other than mope about, but Percy wasn’t sure what they would talk about, because what had he done? Drunk coffee alone, sunk beers alone, visited temples, museums, shopping malls alone, no foil for his observations which meant they were soon forgotten. Sal referred to them as cynical remarks, which was rather cynical of her, he thought.

The whooping call of the resident koel cut though the gentle hum of Sixth Avenue traffic. Acclimatise, she had said, well he hadn’t. He felt sticky all the time, even now. But at least it gave him something to think about, which, in a way, brought a little happiness because right now, his usual, more generalised, irritation was proving impossible to direct. Sal was working longer hours than expected, his quiet days often drifting into quieter evenings and increasingly lonely nights, and he didn’t want to risk moaning.

Despite his best efforts not to like it, the coffee was good. He came to The Bean every morning, a safe space with the same faces coming day after day, a daytime version of his old life. Back home had been thick with white middle-aged men, not a choice, just how things had been, and here could not be more different. Here, he was the different one, different yet unseen, and that, he was beginning to think, suited him.

The same faces at The Bean meant an Indian woman of indefinable age, with short straight hair, always here by nine, piercings, tattoos, sitting, reading, drinking latte, leaving without a word. Two white Aussie women, nine-fifteen meet, loud, wearing what appeared to be evening attire with sunglasses arranged like tiaras. Three Chinese- Singaporeans, one woman, two men, sharing breakfast and a joke. Eavesdropping on them had been hard, Percy sure it was English, but Sal reckoned it might something the locals called Singlish. Neither knew if the term was derogatory so Sal said she would ask at work.

Less frequent regulars included a worn-out English woman dragging in her sweaty pink toddler and stringy baby for a cold drink. He’d told Sal about her, and as ever she had conjured a narrative based on a chat with a friend: the woman was a reluctant expat resisting employing domestic help. Sal had many work friends feeding her appetite for local knowledge, and the consensus was that Brits suffered from colonial shame; give the woman time and she’ll look like the two Aussies, her brats nowhere to be seen.

The student inside The Bean was focussed, small NO STUDYING sign pushed to the side of the table. When Percy first saw one of these signs he had smiled at the irony of it. Around the table, and therefore around the sign, a sea of students had gathered with their laptops. He imagined putting the same sign in a British café and could not decide what would happen. A second student settled next to her. It appeared the safe autocracy of Singapore was not housing compliance but rebellion. Percy wished he could talk it over with Art. Maybe this could be the reason for a Facetime call? No. He would stick with telling Sal later, because what would he and Art actually say when it came down to it.

Percy enjoyed watching Sal when she was sitting with him in their marble clad house, laptop fizzing with work. He wondered if she still loved him. He loved her, but they seemed to have passed the point of saying it.

He slugged the last of his coffee and got up. He might come back later, or maybe take the bike to Buket Timah. Apparently, there was a good route there. What he did depended on whether Mila was around. Mila was the big feather duster of domestic help, which accounted for why someone else was always cleaning while she barely moved. He was sure these were other people’s help earning cash on the side, which was illegal, and no one wanted illegal things going on in their life in Singapore. Sal had even been forced to give up her vapes.

While walking past the final few tables, one of the men from the Chinese-Singaporean breakfast trio spoke to him, ‘Good morning.’

Percy had not spoken to anyone other than Sal in such a long time that his vocal cords froze. And it was a shock to feel seen, not having appreciated just how unnoticed he would be here. Breakfast finished, the three were leaving, but by the time Percy’s plain face had folded into something close to a smile, myna birds were already picking over the empty table. He felt ashamed of himself, and as he began the slow walk home, knew there had to be more to him than this.

When Sal heard Percy’s proposal at dinner the following night she laughed. ‘Join a club!’ She shook her blonde hair away from her face in a way that irritated him. ‘You?’ She frowned, ‘You’re feeling okay, right?’

They were on the back balcony, dinner always outside when it wasn’t raining because it was like sitting in a room with the heating on. The strange smell of burning mosquito coils made Percy feel sick so he was slick with repellent instead.

He forked enough spicy fried prawns to make one huge mouthful and stuffed it straight in, ‘Not a club,’ he chomped, ‘just some kind of–’

‘–club. Don’t eat like that, Percy.’ Sal lifted a prawn with chopsticks, ‘You would never have joined a club back home.’

‘I’m not joining a club.’ He gathered more prawns, scowling at her chopsticks. “Back home” she always ate Asian food with a fork.

‘You can’t be in a club without joining one.’

‘Forget I said anything.’ He knew he should have kept it to himself.

She softened, ‘There must be something.’

‘I saw an ad for a men’s cycling group.’

‘You in lycra?’

‘What? Why do you think I brought my bike? I enjoy cycling.’

‘To the pub.’

‘You don’t know what it’s like.’

‘What, a bored househusband, a poor man wandering around with only himself to please.’

‘I am not a househusband.’

She lay down her chopsticks. ‘Oh right, so it’s fine for women to be called housewives but not for men to be called househusbands. And how do you propose finding this club?’

‘Fuck’s sake!’

‘It’s not my fault you described a club, Percy. What about the notice board in Chilled Cupboard?’

‘Chilled Cupboard?’

‘The supermarket.’

‘Oh. That’s where the cycling flyer was.’

‘Sounds like you need a strategy. It’s not like any one is going to knock on the door asking if Percy can come out to play, is it.’

He sipped the white wine she had agreed to open, expensive only because it was Singapore. It was already warming. ‘I’m not a project.’

‘The idea is.’

‘Meaning?’

‘You want to be in a club you don’t want to join.’ She picked up her chopsticks and pushed a few prawns around her plate before choosing one. ‘You could always get a job.’

He dropped his fork. ‘Train to give museum tours to other expats. That’s it. That’s all there is.’

‘It can’t be it.’

‘Fine. I’ll look again on Monday.’

Picking up her glass, she offered a toast, ‘To Monday. One of your favourite days, along with January, sorting socks, and anything else other people find depressing.’ Her eyes followed a gecko as it scurried across the wall. ‘Do whatever you want. I’m glad you want to meet people. I don’t know how you bear being alone all the time. I couldn’t do it.’

‘I walk. I cycle. I want to meet people. People like me. Like Art.’

‘A more widely used description of this phenomenon is friends, Percy. I’ve made lots, and I’m sure you might too, if you let yourself.’

It wasn’t the word ‘might’ that bothered him. It was the way she said ‘let yourself’. A stranger wouldn’t have spotted it, but he had. He tested the water, ‘But I won’t be meeting any of your friends, will I.’ Her hesitation dipped his heart into the bellyful of crustaceans.

She began clearing even though her food was barely touched, ‘I wanted to talk to you about that.’

‘No.’
‘It won’t kill you.’
‘I might kill them.’
‘One evening and not at someone’s house. We’re eating out. You just said you need to start meeting people.’

‘Not what I said or what I meant, and you know it, which is why you have only just brought it up.’

‘I need you to come, Percy. It’s a fantastic restaurant. Best behaviour, no sarky remarks, that’s all I ask. Do it for me. They’re a good bunch, everyone is bringing their other half, and we’re obliged to do these things.’

‘When?’
‘Tomorrow.’
‘Sal! Sunday!’

‘What, have you got church or something?’

‘I like being in on Sunday evenings, you know that.’
‘You don’t even work! It won’t be a late one. You can still have your bedtime story.’