Indeed all the way home in the car, Tee Ngiam ranted and raged against the one person who had spoilt it all for him -- Julie’s best friend, Pek Yin, only eight months a widow but already laughing and flirting with the men.

It was a violation of tradition’s strictures on proper widowhood.

If Julie were brave enough, she would have said: “This is modern-day Singapore, you know,” or “It’s really none of your business, Ngiam.”

But she was never brave with her husband.  Before his judgment, she retreated inwardly into the privacy of her own thoughts and feelings.

“That ridiculous dress,”  he said.  She felt obliged to say something in agreement.

“Perhaps the bright colour didn’t suit her,”  she ventured, and was instantly aware of a massive hypocrisy.  For it was she who had persuaded Julie to buy that dress that day when they were shopping in Grace Boutique. 

Morever,  she had herself bought a similar one, in an even brighter shade of red.  Of course she could never show it to him now; it would have to remain hidden in a corner of her closet.

“That ridiculous dress,”  Tee Ngiam repeated.  It was worse than improper widowhood; it was a desecration of the sanctity of marriage. 

“Half her breasts were showing.”  Julie suppressed a laugh at the thought of her husband, prim, stern, censorious, watching Pek Yin’s decolletage.

Julie made a mental note to give away her dress to her sister, Annie.

It must have been loyalty to his dead colleague, Patrick Chang, that was causing all this resentment towards his widow.  Patrick had died of cancer.

At his funeral, Tee Ngiam who delivered the eulogy, spoke feelingly about the dead man’s sterling qualities.  He was a filial son, a loving husband, a devoted father.  And now his widow was defiling his memory. 

Again, if Julie were brave, she would say,  “But Pek Yin was just having fun.  She’s by nature a fun-loving person.”

“Did you hear her referring to her old flame?”

So Julie, the indefatigable party animal, the unstoppable chatterbox, had offended on another point.  Tee Ngiam said that when his father died, his mother who was only 34 then, was so loyal to his memory that she turned down several advantageous offers of marriage.

“Your father was a womaniser.  You yourself told me how much your mother suffered.  Who would have blamed her for having a life of her own after his death?” 

It was amazing how she could carry on these silent conversations in her head.  In these silent conversations, she was actually impressed by her own clear logic and frank eloquence.

“To this day,”  said Tee Ngiam,  “I hold my mother in the highest respect for that.  Old flame indeed.” 

His disgust with the frivolous widow had not yet worked itself out. 

And Julie made a second mental note  -   to throw away the postcard that she had received the day before from someone she had met while in college in England, so many years ago.  

By virtue of their two or three dates, Ron Whitten was, in her husband’s eyes, in that category of the obnoxious interloper called the “old flame”. 

She would destroy the postcard straightaway, which was a pity, as she had been so pleasantly surprised by it and would have liked to send one to him in return.

Her husband turned to her and said,  “If I died, would you behave like this?”

Husbands and wives tease each other about what they wish or do not wish their spouses to do or not to do, after their deaths, the magnanimous spouse urging quick remarriage to avoid loneliness, the possessive spouse threatening to come back as a ghost to haunt the remarried one, to use all its ghostly power to put an end to the shameful coupling with the new partner on the marital bed. 

Such playful bantering was not possible with Tee Ngiam.

He said again,  “I’m asking you a serious question, Julie.  Would you behave like Pek Yin so soon after my death?”

She was not sure what was at issue    -   the insensitivity of the timing or the necessity for a permanent show of propriety by bereaved wives. 

She said immediately:  “Of course not, Ngiam,”  having learnt to respond quickly, since hesitation only provoked the suspicion that she was hiding something.

He said,  “My mother wore deep mourning black for my father for three years.”

In modern day Singapore, no wife was expected to wear deep mourning black beyond the funeral.  But as usual, the answer stayed locked in her throat. She sensed what he was going to say next.

“My  reputation is important, Julie.  Promise me  that you will not behave like Pek Yin after my death.”

He measured loyalty in definite spans of mourning time.  She was going to ask,  “Eight months or three years?”  but stopped.  She felt a rising tide of irritation, but was able to say, without a hint of it,  “Whatever you wish, Ngiam.”

“Is a year, two years, three years, too much for a man to ask his wife in return for  -   ?”

He could claim an even greater devotion than Patrick Chang.  Through the 25 years of their marriage, despite the childlessness, he had remained faithful, loyal and generous to her, extending his generosity to her family. 

Without Tee Ngiam, her brother would not have got a job, her sister, Annie, would not have gone to the university. 

Her mother had told her many times,  “You have a good husband.  Never do anything to displease him.”

“Do I understand, Ngiam,”  she said, surprised at her own boldness,  “that you don’t wish me to remarry after your death?”

“Why would you need to?  You’ll be the most amply provided for widow in Singapore.” 

So it was not just a question of eight months or a year or three years.  The man, from his grave, demanded life-time loyalty.

“Wait a minute,”  she said.  “Why are we talking like this?  Suppose I die before you?”

“If Patrick Chang could have foreseen his wife’s behaviour tonight,”  said Tee Ngiam angrily, unable to let go of the subject of the widow’s levity,  “he would have turned in his coffin.  His eyes would not have closed, but remained wide and staring.”

The image was horrible; that night she had a dream in which she saw herself going to pay respects to the dead Patrick Chang in his coffin and retreating in horror at the sight of his large, open, staring eyes.

“Look, Ngiam,”  said Julie wearily.  “Let’s stop all this weird talk.  I could die before you.  And you needn’t mourn.  You have my full permission to remarry as soon as you wish.  You are a very good husband and provider; I shouldn’t deny any woman my good luck.” 

She was not being sarcastic; she meant it.

“You haven’t yet given me an answer,”  he said.

Their strange conversation that evening after the Chandras’ party came back in all the uncanniness of its prescience when, a week later, she received an urgent call from her husband’s office:  he had collapsed and had been taken by ambulance to hospital. 

She rushed over, but he was already dead of a massive heart attack. 

She sat down stunned, recollecting the conversation in its every detail. 

The sudden death, soon after the attempt to extract a promise from her, now shook the vaguely given-promise into a firm commitment.  The living man had asked; his corpse would receive a solemn undertaking from her. 

It would not be too late, for it is said that the newly dead see and hear everything that is going on.

Julie sat beside the corpse lying in the satin-lined, flower-bedecked coffin and spoke gently to it.  “I’m sorry, Ngiam, if I gave you the impression  that I wasn’t grateful for all that you’d done for me and my family, that I was unwilling to grant your request.” 

She made her commitment slowly, carefully, in the hearing of the family members.  “Ngiam, I will be in mourning black for you for three years.” 

If the dead man needed that solace so badly, she would give it wholeheartedly. 

If his eyes opened now and his lips moved to say,  “Not three years, but a life time,”  she would have said,  “Anything you wish.” 

No wife could go against the wishes of a dead husband who had been good to her.

At the wake, clad in deep black shirt and pants, she received visitors who came in a continuous stream, for her husband had been one of the most respected civil servants in Singapore. 

There was one visitor who puzzled her, for the woman who was in her late thirties, was not only a total stranger, but wore full mourning black and was accompanied by five young children, also in mourning black. 

Ignoring everyone, the woman immediately went about the task of organising an orderly movement of the five children, beginning with the eldest, towards the corpse in the coffin, to pay their respects. 

When she looked up and saw Julie staring at her, she said matter-of-factly,  “They’re his children,”  and continued to supervise the exercise, carrying up the youngest child, a toddler, to look upon the dead man’s face and blow him a kiss.

Julie was aware of something strange happening to her.  She had split into two, one part observing the scene with the fascination of the calm onlooker and the other screaming in silent anguish and about to destroy itself in an explosion of shock, shame, rage and pure lust for revenge. 

The calm half, remembering that not once in the 25years of their marriage had they been a day apart, went up to the woman and asked, almost politely,  “Just how did he do it?” 

And the woman, as if expecting the question, replied, just as politely,  “Every Monday and Thursday afternoon.” 

It came rushing in upon Julie with the impact of a hurricane or an earthquake, so that she stumbled and had to steady herself:  the massive lie about having to have lunch with the boss twice weekly, maintained over so many years. 

The shock of the lie destroyed all calmness;  now she was pure fury, screaming so loudly that her sister and a friend rushed up to hold her. 

She heard herself screaming,  “Liar!  Liar!”  and the woman, still carrying her toddler and not at all comprehending, said curtly,  “I can give you all the proof you want.” 

She had actually brought with her the proof  -   five photographs, one of each child, taken at birth, with the father proudly smiling.  He was a good provider for that family too.

“Julie, please," said Annie holding her tightly, for she was still screaming.  She broke free, ran into her room and locked herself in.

A hush fell upon everyone in the room; the shock had not fully sunk in. 

Later, for days, weeks, everyone would be talking, in hushed voices, of the secret life of Yeo Tee Ngiam, top civil servant, exemplary husband, who fathered a brood of children during his lunch breaks. 

But now, all awe and titillation had to be suspended in deference to the poor widow. 

Nobody looked at the dead man, everybody looked at the door behind which the living widow had locked herself in.

After about half an hour, Annie knocked gently and called,  “Julie, Julie, are you all right?  Julie, please come out.” 

They heard odd sounds coming from inside the room, of cupboards and drawers being opened and slammed shut.

Then the door opened.  The alarms of the day surely culminated with this one, of the sight of Julie standing at the doorway in a red, slinky dress. 

She stood with studied insouciance, challenging everybody with her eyes. 

There was a ridiculous-looking red flower in her hair.  The defiance of red was also in her high-heeled shoes, an evening purse, and in the lipstick and rouge, applied with such maniacal energy as to create a carnival caricature, a character right out of a burlesque. 

In a sea of the decorous mourning colours of black, white, grey and blue, Julie’s red stood out in shrieking revolt.

Somebody gasped audibly; otherwise there was perfect stillness and silence. 

Everyone watched intently as Julie briskly strode up to the corpse in the coffin and began talking to it.  It was still newly dead, and should be able to hear her. 

“I was going to throw it away,”  she said, her voice trembling in a dangerously rising fever of savage triumph,  “but I’m glad I didn’t, Ngiam.  And I was going to throw this away, too,”  she continued, waving a postcard bearing a U.K. stamp, in front of the corpse’s face,  “but I think now I’ll give Ron a reply!”

She adjusted the sequinned straps of the red dress, looked again at the corpse and suddenly began shouting in jubilation,  “That’s right, Ngiam!  That’s exactly what I want!  Now you can look all you want!  Go ahead, look all you want!”

The mistress rushed up, crying,  “Let me!  Let me!”,  meaning that she too had seen the dead man’s eyes suddenly open, and wanted to be the one to stroke the eyelids gently and lovingly, as that is the only way to close a dead man’s staring eyes.

Some of the visitors had also witnessed the happening; they would later confirm with one another, and talk about it endlessly, in hushed tones.

“You get out of my husband’s way,” said Julie fiercely, pushing the mistress away roughly.  “He wants to look at me like this; you leave him to do it.”