Free World of Suzie Wong : A Novel (9781101572399) by Richard Mason Page B

excited.
    â€œMy girl friend’s back,” she said. “You know—Suzie. She’s back.”
    â€œYes, over there—I’ve seen her,” I said.
    â€œYou haven’t spoken to her yet?” She looked anxious.
    â€œOh, no.”
    She smiled in relief: she had so looked forward to introducing us, to showing us off to each other. “What do you think of her? Don’t you think she is pretty?”
    I looked across at the girl again. The American had been seized by sudden violent passion and was thrusting her back into the corner to kiss her and the girl was struggling, though only half-heartedly as if she found it no more than tiresome. There was not much to be seen of her but her kicking legs and her thigh through the split skirt. I laughed. “Well, she’s got beautiful legs, anyhow.”
    â€œBut don’t you think she is the prettiest girl in the bar?”
    â€œWell, I don’t know . . .”
    â€œOh, she is! She is lovely! You will see when I introduce you!”
    The black-suited manager limped hurriedly toward them. In the bar the decencies had to be preserved—they were sailing close enough to the wind without this kind of thing. He tapped the sailor on the shoulder, nervously grinning: he knew how easily sailors turned nasty. He reserved the scolding for Suzie, shook an admonishing finger at her. Suzie expostulated. The sailor waved a big weary hand and cocked his head at the ceiling, as if saying, “Oh, beat it—we’re going upstairs in a minute anyhow.” The manager retired, satisfied. Suzie looked fed up, snapped open her bag, began to dab at her face. The sailor leaned to kiss the side of her neck. She brushed him off irritably.
    â€œShe has a temper,” Gwenny said proudly. And she giggled, “Once she threw a beer bottle at a sailor. He was a terrible brute—it was very brave of her.”
    â€œDid she miss?”
    â€œOh no, she hit him. Here, on the forehead. He was knocked out for ten minutes.”
    â€œWhat did he say when he came round?”
    â€œHe made the manager telephone to the police. The manager pretended to telephone, but put his finger somewhere so that the telephone did not work, because he likes Suzie very much.”
    â€œIs she sad that her boy friend’s gone?”
    â€œOh, yes, of course. She said he was not particularly nice—but she was very sad.”
    â€œWhy, if he wasn’t nice?”
    â€œWell, it is much better to have only one boy friend, even if he is not very nice. She hated coming back to the bar. You know what she said to me this morning? She said, ‘Gwenny, you don’t know how I hate short-times—I wish there was a law against them!’”
    â€œPerhaps that’s why she looked so fed up when I saw her going upstairs this afternoon,” I said. I watched Suzie and the American approaching. She looked more like Mee-ling again when she was standing up, and I had another momentary start of uncertainty. Then I saw she was taller. Of course—much taller. She led the way between the tables. She looked very bored and as though oblivious of the American following behind.
    â€œBut you didn’t speak to her this afternoon?” Gwenny said.
    â€œNot really,” I said. “Only a word—I’d thought for a moment she was a girl I’d met on the ferry.”
    â€œBut she wasn’t?”
    â€œNo, not by a long chalk,” I laughed. “The girl on the ferry was a very diff—”
    I suddenly broke off. Because at that moment Suzie, passing the table at which Typhoo was irrepressibly holding forth, had picked a drinking-straw from a bunch on the service table and flippantly planted it, unnoticed, in Typhoo’s hair—and then turned away with a mischievous giggle.
    And it was Mee-ling giggling as she watched me crack melon seeds. Mee-ling giggling as she said good-by on the quay.
    It was