Saint Jack by Paul Theroux Read Free Book Online Page B

have saved it if I had gone down the fire stairs, which was what I usually did. But seven flights of dusty-smelling unpainted cement was more than a man my age should tolerate. A little arithmetic satisfied me that I could afford one drink; in the Belvedere lounge-bar the
hors d’oeuvres
were free.
    Avoiding the lobby, I nipped into the lounge, found a cool leather armchair, and sat very happily for a few minutes reading
What’s On
and looking up every so often to admire the decor. Yardley and the rest did not think much of the new Singapore hotels—too shiny and tacky, they said, no character at all. Character was weevils in your food, metal folding chairs, and a grouchy barman who insulted you as he overcharged you; it was a monsoon drain that hadn’t been cleared for months and a toilet—like the one in the Bandung—located in the middle of the kitchen. Someday, I thought, I’m going to reserve a room at the Belvedere and burrow in the blankets of a wide bed—the air conditioner on full—and sleep for a week. The ground floor of the Belvedere was Italian marble and there was a chandelier hanging in the lobby that must have taken years to make. I was enjoying myself in the solid comfort, sipping my gin, looking at a seashell mural on the lounge wall, periwinkles spilling out of conches, gilded sea urchins and fingers of coral; but I became anxious.
    It was not my habitual worry about Gunstone’s engine failing. It was the annoying suspicion that the seven or eight tourists there in the lounge were staring in my direction. They had seen me come in with Gunstone and Djamila and like Tony they had guessed what I was up to. The ones who weren’t laughing at me despised me. If I had been younger they would have said, “Ah, what a sharp lad, a real operator—you’ve got to hand it to him”; but a middle-aged man doing the same thing was a dull dirty procurer. I tried to look unruffled, crossing my legs and flicking through the little pamphlet. Recrossing my legs I felt an uncommon breeze against my ankles: I wasn’t wearing any socks.
    How could I be so stupid? There I was in the lounge of an expensive hotel, wearing my black Ah Chum worsted, a dark tie and white shirt and shoes my
amah
had buffed to a high gloss—and sockless! That was how they knew my trade, by my nude ankles. I wanted to leave, but I couldn’t without calling attention to myself. So I sat in the chair in a way which made it possible for me to push at the knees of my pants and lower my cuffs over my ankles. I tried to convince myself that these staring tourists didn’t matter—they’d all be on the morning flight to Bangkok.
    I lifted my drink and caught a lady’s eye. She looked away. Returning to my reading, I sensed her eyes drift over to me again. You never knew with these American ladies; they made faces at each other in public, sometimes hilarious ones, a sisterly foolishness. The other people began staring. They were making me miserable, ruining the only drink I could afford. The embarrassment was Leigh’s doing; the stranger had called my vocation “poncing.”
    â€œ
Telephone call for Bishop Bradley
. . .
Bishop Bradley
. . .” The slow demanding announcement came over the loud-speaker in the lounge, a cloth-faced box on the wall above a slender palm in a copper pot. No one got up. Two ladies looked at the loud-speaker.
    It stopped, the voice and the hum behind it; there was and expectant pause in the lounge, everyone holding his breath, knowing the announcement would start again in a moment, which it did, monotonously.
    â€œ
Bishop Bradley . . . Telephone call for Bishop Bradley
. . .”
    Now no one was looking at the loud-speaker.
    I had fastened all the buttons on my black suit jacket. I stood up and turned an impatient face to the repeated command coming from the cloth-faced box. I swigged the last of my gin and with