"Let's drink to the spirit of gallantry and courage that made a strange Heaven out of unbelievable Hell, and let's drink to the hope that one day this country of ours, which we love so much, will find dignity and greatness and peace again." - Noel Coward
On September 11, 2001 everyone in America needed to speak to the person they loved and I was no different. I had left Greg a year before and every day was difficult. Every night I worried about Greg even though I knew I could not help him and if I tried to go back then, I thought, I would be beyond help.
On that tragic day, as I saw each of the towers of the World Trade Centre fall and fall repeatedly over and over again on every television channel, as the horror mounted I wanted to talk to Greg and be with Greg. The terrible events of that day in New York and Washington made those that had split us up seem diminished and relatively unimportant. I thanked God that Greg was still alive and was sure now he must feel the same. I dialled his number.
"This is Dr Gregory House if you think your message is of genuine importance leave it with the date and your contact details after the tone. If I consider your message is of genuine importance I will return your call. Goodbye." His voice seemed to be edged with pain and anger. He had changed the recording on the voice-mail, When I left, my welcoming and friendly message had remained, a friend in Princeton said Greg left it there for months. What I heard in Greg's recorded voice frightened me and I hung up without leaving a message.
The moment I hung up the phone rang. I picked it up. "Hello."
"Stacy. It's Mark Warner. Are you okay?"
"I guess. Oh Mark. This is so horrible." When Mark and I had met about two months before I hadn't been ready for a new relationship but on the night of September 11, 2001 I didn't want to be alone. Less than six months later we were married. I knew I was not in love but for the next few years I thought I was happy.
Then Mark changed. He was ill but the doctors unable to find anything wrong washed their hands of him and regarded me as nothing more than a nuisance. As Mark's mood changes became more worrying and his nausea and fainting spells more frequent I realised there was only one answer. Greg House was my husband's only hope.
I told myself it would be alright, that enough time had passed, that seeing Greg again would be easy but it wasn't. With two words Greg made me realise not one thing had changed between us in five years. The two words were heartbreaking and simple.
Greg just said "Hi. Stacy." and he had said everything.
I hadn't been out of the shower long when Mark lay down on the bed and fell asleep. Sleep often followed a burst of anger and sometimes was a relief. Leaving a note for Mark explaining I had gone shopping and to call my cell if he was worried, I went to meet Wilson who was waiting for me in the lobby.
Wilson took me to a quiet restaurant where he had booked a discreet corner table. First we ordered and then he told me about the lecture Greg had given the day before. "Stacy. Only the most naive student would have failed to realise that case history was his story. At the end everyone was there even Cuddy. The lecture went twenty minutes over."
"Surely everyone knows what happened."
"They see his limp. Sometimes he cannot hide the fact he's in pain but everyone knows better than to ask about his condition. Yesterday was the first time he had talked about it. He talked about things he has never told me."
"How did they react? The people at the lecture?" I asked
"If a pin had dropped it would have sounded like a thunder clap."
"Oh my God. Is he alright?"
"I think so. He phoned you right afterwards to say he would take your husband's case."
"Yes but he didn't stay on the line long enough for us to speak. Then Mark refused to see him this morning."
"I worked that out. You must re-schedule." he adamant.
"I will if I can get past the gatekeeper."
"He has no feelings for Dr Cameron. I was lying"
"I know. I knew that yesterday."
"You can use me as an intermediary, Stacy" said Wilson putting his hand over mine. Then I realised what had happened.
"He talked about me in the lecture didn't he?"
Wilson nodded. "He didn't name you. But he remembered you saying you were sorry as he went into the coma."
"What else did he remember?" As Wilson told me I realised that despite the agony and the drugs Greg had remembered everything we had said to each other just as I remembered. He remembered me asking if he would give up his leg to save my life and the way he answered 'Of course I would.' When I begged him to let them cut off the leg I never forgot the way he said 'I can't ... I can't. I'm sorry' even though he knew the pain could kill him. When he asked me to talk to the doctor he trusted me to represent his feelings. He did not expect to wake from the coma. When he told me he loved me he thought he was saying goodbye.
Wilson handed me a freshly laundered crisply ironed white handkerchief from his pocket.
"You should have brought me somewhere cheaper where they have paper napkins?" I said wiping my eyes.
"I suppose he told them all about the health proxy? How I'd betrayed him and how much he hates me?"
"He doesn't hate you. Stacy. He loves you. He has never stopped loving you"
"Please don't say that. You cannot say that."
"What do you want me to say?" he said. I looked at him in astonishment.
"Jim. This is not a case of what I want you to say. Don't you get it? I'm married."
"I know that Stacy. I know what it is to be married."
"Really."
"Alright I am pre-divorce. Again."
"Well I'm not pre-divorce. I didn't come here to ruin my life or my marriage. I came here so my husband can get a proper diagnosis."
"And of all the gin-joints in all the world ... it's all a bit Casablanca, Stacy."
"No it isn't ... and it's not Girl's Gone Wild' either"
I could have kissed the waiter for arriving with the meal at that moment. Our wineglasses were replenished we had smiled our approval of the presentation of the food and alone again fell into an awkward silence.
"So are you going to tell me about the Orang Utan?" Wilson asked.
"It's not really my story to tell" I replied.
Wilson looked hurt, shut out, but not by me, by Greg.
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It was Greg's story as much as it was mine and it was Phillipa's story and it was Audrey's story too.
I thought at first it must have been the influence of Raffles Hotel but instead of phoning Phillipa at the Mandarin he sat down opened Noel Coward's writing desk and took a single sheet of letterhead and wrote.
Dear Phillipa,
If you would not consider it an intrusion Stacy and I would be honored to accompany you and Audrey to Changi tomorrow. We can either pick you up at the Mandarin or arrange for our car to collect you for breakfast at Raffles before setting out. If you need to do this alone please at least take the car.
I enclose the photographs of you and Audrey with Ah Meng and the baby, you and I together festooned with pythons and a shot of Stacy and myself dancing the night away on the verandah here.
Please call me when you decide what you want to do.
Affectionately,
Greg.
He rang for the butler and within minutes the sealed letter and photographs together with flowers from the Raffles florist were on their way to Orchard Road.
"Don't look so amazed, darling"
"But I am. Where did all this come from? Little notes, flowers?"
"It's no fun breaking the rules if you don't know what they are. I did etiquette 101 here in Singapore" He pulled me down to the piano stool beside him. "I was only a kid seven or something. My father was on his first tour of duty in Nam and had a week R&R and was meeting up with Mom and I here."
"Raffles?"
"No. Out at HMS Terror the British Navy Shore Base that used to be near the Causeway. We were staying in quarters with a RN Commander and his wife. Dad knew them somehow. Anyhow Mom went out to get her hair done and didn't realise it was scrub day. The Amah had soap suds from one end of the quarter to the other. In came Mom all excited, with her arms full of shopping, stepped out onto the soapy tiled floor slipped and wham. Her shoulder was shattered. She was in hospital for over three weeks I hardly saw Dad."
"What happened to you?"
"I stayed with the Commander's wife and her husband went to sea."
"That's terrible"
"No it wasn't. She was just like Phillipa, you know a genuine bonefide lady. She treated me more like a friend than a kid. She had no kids of her own but used to say she could remember being a child herself ... couldn't get a thing past her."
"You had no kids around your own age?"
"Yeah I used to swim with them at the Officers Club. Stuck up little brats. I learnt to dive. Played soccer, all that kid stuff. But it was my hostess who taught me that life should be fun which was in direct opposition to my Dad's opinion."
"She took me all over the island. We ate satay at little Makan stalls which were like a bicycle with a kitchen up front. We visited all sorts of people in their houses, some were like palaces, some were squalid hovels but everyone liked her. When we got home in the evening the first thing she would do was sit down and write 'thank you notes' to everyone we had met. At first I just licked the envelopes and then she taught me how to write my own."
"Did she teach you to dance."
"No ... not really. My mother beat her to that. My father was in the military. Dancing comes with the territory for a career officer."
"And your parents expected you to go into the Military?"
"Yes of course. It was a lost cause. Six weeks here had changed me forever. My imagination and curiosity had come alive. Imagination and curiousity are not highly prized by people who expect you to follow orders without question."
I laughed I knew how Greg regarded orders.
"What else did you learn here?" I asked.
"I learnt that some of the glamorous women I saw around the streets were sometimes boys and they were called Catamites. I learnt that the Brits knew the Raj was over and that we Americans would think we should be the next Raj. And I learnt how the Brits could laugh at their own idiocy."
He opened the piano placed his hands on the keys and played a familiar introduction
"I learnt this song here. Our hostess gave me the sheet music signed by Noel Coward himself as a parting gift. I never wanted to go home." Sitting beside him I watched his hands dance across the keys and felt his body move as he sang. I was surprised he sang with a British accent but realised it was how he was taught the song as a small child.
MAD DOGS AND ENGLISHMEN
by Noel Coward
In tropical climes there are certain times of day
When all the citizens retire to tear their clothes off and perspire.
It's one of the rules that the greatest fools obey,
Because the sun is much too sultry
And one must avoid its ultry-violet ray.
The natives grieve when the white men leave their huts,
Because they're obviously, definitely nuts!
Mad dogs and Englishmen go out in the midday sun,
The Japanese don´t care to, the Chinese wouldn´t dare to,
Hindus and Argentines sleep firmly from twelve to one
But Englishmen detest-a siesta.
In the Philippines they have lovely screens to protect you from the glare.
In the Malay States, there are hats like plates which the Britishers won't wear.
At twelve noon the natives swoon and no further work is done,
But mad dogs and Englishmen go out in the midday sun.
It's such a surprise for the Eastern eyes to see,
that though the English are effete, they're quite impervious to heat,
When the white man rides every native hides in glee,
Because the simple creatures hope he will impale his solar topee on a tree.
It seems such a shame when the English claim the earth,
They give rise to such hilarity and mirth.
Ha ha ha ha hoo hoo hoo hoo hee hee hee hee ...
Mad dogs and Englishmen go out in the midday sun.
The toughest Burmese bandit can never understand it.
In Rangoon the heat of noon is just what the natives shun,
They put their Scotch or Rye down, and lie down.
In a jungle town where the sun beats down to the rage of man and beast
The English garb of the English sahib merely gets a bit more creased.
In Bangkok at twelve o'clock they foam at the mouth and run,
But mad dogs and Englishmen go out in the midday sun.
Mad dogs and Englishmen go out in the midday sun.
The smallest Malay rabbit deplores this foolish habit.
In Hong Kong they strike a gong and fire off a noonday gun,
To reprimand each inmate who's in late.
In the mangrove swamps where the python romps
there is peace from twelve till two.
Even caribous lie around and snooze, for there's nothing else to do.
In Bengal to move at all is seldom ever done,
But mad dogs and Englishmen go out in the midday sun.
I laughed and he laughed.
"You must have been a very strange child?" I said.
He nodded.
"Was this where you decided to become a doctor?"
"Yes."
Then Greg took me shopping and that was when he bought me the ring.