The Oddfits (The Oddfits Series Book 1) Read online

“I’m sorry, we really didn’t know. We do things a bit differently in England, you see,” his father had explained to the principal in a charming drawl.

  “We do things a bit differently in England” had always been a winning excuse for the Floyds. So when the charming, lanky Mr. Floyd flashed his charming, lanky British smile and explained the misunderstanding in his charming, lanky British accent, what could the principal do but shake her head at these clueless British expatriates and make an allowance?

  “Okay, lah. We’ll make an exception this time.” Privately, the principal of Da Qiao Primary had her doubts about whether the Floyds’ decision to enrol their child in a local Singaporean school was a wise decision, even though the child was technically a citizen. But who was she to meddle in others’ affairs?

  Not only had Murgatroyd’s parents decided that their son should enter school seven weeks into the school year, but they had also decided that he should make his first appearance at school well into the school day. It was half an hour before lunch break when the principal strode into the classroom, ushering in a blonde-haired, blue-eyed boy—an ang moh—who looked older than all of them by at least two years. He had a funny haircut. He wore pink lace.

  The principal, remembering the instructions she had received from Mr. and Mrs. Floyd (“Don’t give him any special treatment.”) announced to the class, “This is a new student. His name is . . .” And here, she paused not so much for dramatic effect as to concentrate on the pronunciation of his name.

  “Murgatoy Froy.”

  This pronouncement sealed little Murgatroyd’s fate. For the twenty-five children staring at him from their desks, Murgatroyd, taken as a whole, was simply unforgiveable.

  Needless to say, Murgatroyd’s first day went very badly. The worst of the bad events of the day were as follows:

  - Three attempts to pull down his trousers. All three of which were successful.

  - The bestowal of several derogatory nicknames. Among them: “girly-girl,” “big nose,” “xiaojie” (which means “Miss” in Mandarin), and of course “little ang moh.”

  - The hurling of his shoes high into the big tree behind the school.

  - The dunking of his head into a toilet bowl.

  - The physical beating of his person, including a kick to the face, resulting in a bloody nose.

  Murgatroyd’s mother returned home from the office that day and found her son curled up into a ball on the living room sofa, his face stained with dried blood and tears. She was, of course, thoroughly outraged—so outraged, in fact, that she apparently lost all control of her facial muscles. Strangely enough, her expression involuntarily contorted into a broad grin suggestive of mirth or amusement.

  “Oh no!” she exclaimed, thoroughly outraged with a big smile on her face. “Poor dear, what in heaven’s name did they do to you?”

  Murgatroyd burst into tears and ran into his mother’s arms. And as any loving mother would do, Mrs. Floyd patted her son on the head, sat him at the dining table, and went into the kitchen to fix him a hot cup of Milo. So distressed was she over Murgatroyd’s predicament that instead of sugar, she absentmindedly added two heaping spoonfuls of salt to the chocolate malt drink. Such mistakes were not uncommon for Mrs. Floyd. She was always making silly mistakes when it came to preparing her son’s food—mistakes that anybody could have made, really. Like sprinkling chilli powder instead of cinnamon into his birthday cake batter every year, or accidentally spreading crushed cockroaches instead of tuna onto his tuna sandwiches.

  “Now,” she began tenderly, sitting next to him at the dining table. “Why do you suppose they were so nasty to you?”

  Murgatroyd sniffled and thought hard before finally arriving at an answer. “Because I’m different. I’m not like them and so they think it gives them the right to bully me.”

  The innocent and childish truth of his answer hung in the air above their heads for one brief, shining moment before Mrs. Floyd shot it down with a metaphorical rifle.

  “Wrong. They wouldn’t be so nasty to you if they didn’t have a very good reason. It must be because there is something wrong with you.”

  Murgatroyd stared into his mug of salty, hot Milo and felt thoroughly ashamed of himself.

  His mother continued. “Now you must try very hard tomorrow to be a better boy and get them to like you. Try to make yourself more agreeable, all right? There’s my brave boy!”

  She gave Murgatroyd a light squeeze on the arm and lovingly stirred more salt into his drink. Murgatroyd supposed that he felt a little less miserable, but he also felt a little guilty, for he hadn’t told his mother the other reason for his misery: the mysterious closure of the Tutti-Frutti and the disappearance of Uncle Yusuf. In fact, Mum and Dad knew nothing about his home away from home. He hadn’t spoken a word to them about Uncle Yusuf, the ice cream, and certainly not about his recent visit to that glorious Great Freezer or what Uncle Yusuf told him about things being underway. Some inexplicable child’s instinct had always prevented him from telling them, and not telling them had been made easier by their never asking him how he had spent each day.

  That night, before Murgatroyd went to bed, he stepped out onto the balcony of their flat and stared long and hard up at the heavens above. They lived in a well-to-do neighbourhood flanking a large nature reserve, and it was as quiet as anywhere in the rapidly developing city could be. But even at that distance and that height, the collective illumination from faraway high rises and shopping hubs tinted the dark sky purple and lessened the radiance of any visible stars. By squinting very hard, Murgatroyd could make out a few of them scattered here and there in the great expanse of the universe. Stars—Uncle Yusuf’s favourite flavour. So powerful was the memory that he could still taste the fiery explosion of that twinkling shard on his tongue, and felt—as he had at that moment in the Great Freezer—the magnificence of the universe unfurled before him, fluttering proudly on the mast of the great night sky.

  For a moment, he imagined himself up there wandering among the stars, and he had the strange sense that the far, unknown reaches of space were where he truly belonged and where he would feel at home. This feeling came as a surprise to young Murgatroyd: his home was here, with Mum and Dad, wasn’t it? He reflected on this new feeling and whether it had any connection with the recent and strange developments of his life. Uncle Yusuf had said that there was more to come, that things were underway. What things? What was there to come? And what had happened to Uncle Yusuf? Would he ever see him again? What would life be like now that there was no ice cream shop, no Uncle? Now that he had to go to school? What was to become of him? Things are underway! The echo of Uncle Yusuf’s words still reverberated within Murgatroyd’s person. It made his heart tremble with joy.

  Something was underway, it would seem. Or at least that’s what Uncle had said. Murgatroyd wasn’t sure what it was, but he felt sure that it was something very extraordinary. Something extraordinarily stupendous. Standing in the humid night air, eleven storeys above the hustle and bustle of the city, timid little Murgatroyd dared to take all of the emotions and feelings swimming around inside him and form them into a single, very bold thought: Something extraordinarily stupendous is waiting for me. This sudden and stubborn conviction first planted itself, then snuggled itself in the depths of his nine-year-old heart. There it would remain until some day in the future when Murgatroyd’s prediction eventually came true. What Murgatroyd didn’t know, and had no way of knowing, was that the extraordinarily stupendous Something had been interrupted with Yusuf’s death. It was not until much later in his life, long after the visit to the Great Freezer had been swept underneath the rug of memory, remembered only dimly as a strange childhood dream long past, that the Something would finally find him.

  CHAPTER 4

  “Mr. and Mrs. Froy, it has come to my attention,” said the principal of Da Qiao Primary School, “that your son does not fit in so well here.” The principal had a reputation for being extremely straightforward. And for having
perfectly manicured fingernails. Resting her elbows on her desk and folding her hands in front of her, she appraised her nails with a barely noticeable downward glance and smiled to herself before turning her attention once again to what she privately called “the ang moh problem.”

  “Really?” said Mr. Floyd with an astonished look on his face. “I had no idea. He’s never told us!”

  It was the principal’s turn to be astonished. “Hah? He never said anything?”

  “No,” Mrs. Floyd confirmed. “When we ask him how school is, he tells us that he absolutely adores it. He seems as happy as the proverbial clam. When he came home after that first day of school, I’d never seen such a wide grin.”

  The principal sighed. “I am terribly sorry to be saying this, but I think he has been lying to you.”

  The Floyds looked aghast. Mr. Floyd even gasped.

  “Murgatroyd? Lie to us?”

  “Why would he lie about such a thing?”

  “Oh, dear me. If only we had known.”

  “What is wrong, exactly?”

  The principal elaborated. Murgatroyd had been attending Da Qiao Primary for one month now, and while he was doing passably in his classes, he had no friends and kept getting picked on by the other children, even when he finally started showing up in a white and green school uniform instead of girls’ clothes, and even when his hair started growing back. During recess, he would hide in the toilet stalls or hang around the teachers who had to pry him off their persons before they could retreat to the safety of the teachers’ lounge.

  The principal spared no grim detail, pulled no punches. And after she had given her frank account of the situation, the principal leaned back in her chair, quickly admired her fingernails again, and waited for the Floyds’ response, which she hoped would involve taking the poor little ang moh boy out of Da Qiao Primary and putting him in a school where he might stand a better chance of being happy—perhaps one of the well-funded, well-maintained private schools where foreigners usually enrolled their children.

  The news of their son’s extreme unhappiness had evidently come as a shock to them. The father appeared to even be clutching his chest as if he were experiencing a heart attack.

  “Are you . . . feeling all right, Mr. Froy?” the principal asked, leaning forward in her chair.

  He didn’t appear to have heard her. “That’s terrible. Absolutely terrible,” he muttered. The principal nodded gravely in assent. James Floyd took a deep breath. He took three more deep breaths, placing his hands on his knees as if to steady himself. He looked at his wife, who had been sobbing silently all the while into several tissues, which now lay crumpled in a soggy heap on her lap. He looked at the principal. He opened his mouth to speak.

  “So, what can we do to help him fit in at Da Qiao Primary?”

  Flabbergasted, the principal peered at him through her wire-rimmed spectacles. She had heard wrongly. She inclined her head towards him and cupped one hand over her ear. “Excuse me?”

  Mr. Floyd repeated himself. “How can we help him fit in?”

  “Say again?”

  Mr. Floyd said again, “How can we help him fit in?”

  She stared in disbelief at the British couple sitting in front of her, looking so pathetically earnest.

  “Maybe I’m not making myself clear.” The principal of Da Qiao Primary cleared her throat and addressed the Floyds in a very slow, very loud voice. “Mr. and Mrs. Froy, your son does not belong here.”

  The words seemed to have no effect on the Floyds’ blinking, expectant gaze. She decided to try pleading with them. “Please, for his sake, find another school for him. There are many other places where you can send him. How about the British school or American school where he can be with other children like him?”

  At the suggestion of a British or American school, Mr. Floyd’s naturally good-natured brow furrowed. “Other children like him?” he repeated coldly. “You mean other ang moh like him?”

  The principal grew quiet.

  “That is precisely what I would detest the most!” he thundered. “Madam, we are not aliens, nor are we foreigners. As you well know from all those forms we had to fill out, I am a naturalized Singaporean citizen, and my son is a citizen by birth. The farthest out of the country he has ever been is Malaysia. He has never been to England, and I dare-say he would not recognize a picture of the Queen if it came to life, bit him in the buttocks, and introduced itself. His skin may be white and pasty and prone to redness if overexposed to the sun, and it is entirely possible that one of his distant relatives might have helped undertake the colonization of this island. Nevertheless, he has just as much of a right to attend a local school as your own son or daughter. I will not take my son out of this school just because he does not fit in.”

  The principal accepted the reprimand and sighed. “You’re right, Mr. Froy, I misspoke. But please, for the sake of your son, be practical. Murgatoy is very unhappy here. This is the fact of the matter.”

  “Give him time,” Mrs. Floyd said. “They’ll learn to accept him eventually. He’ll learn to fit in.”

  The principal gave one last desperate try, “Half of them cannot even pronounce his name correctly.” She paused. “I cannot even pronounce his name correctly.”

  “Then we’ll give him another name,” Mr. Floyd promptly replied. “We’ll give him a Chinese name to help him fit in, see?”

  “Oh, I see,” the principal said sarcastically. “What will his name be?” she asked with a challenging smirk.

  There was silence. Then, all of a sudden, Mrs. Floyd decided to stop sobbing long enough to offer a suggestion. “His name will be Shwet Foo.”

  James Floyd turned to his wife, his face radiant with adoration. “Olivia, darling, you’re a genius.”

  “Murgatroyd Floyd Shwet Foo.” Olivia Floyd uttered the entirety of their son’s new name for full effect.

  The principal of Da Qiao Primary reacted somewhat curiously to Mrs. Floyd’s solemn pronouncement. Torn between profound pity for the little ang moh boy and the uncontrollable urge to giggle at his nonsensical new “Chinese” name, she did both. As snorts of laughter shook her small frame, the edges of her mouth also curved downwards in a sympathetic grimace for the fate of Murgatroyd Floyd Shwet Foo.

  Poor little Murgatroyd Floyd Shwet Foo.

  Having made “the ang moh problem” a little bit worse instead of solving it, the principal concluded the meeting, and resigned herself and little Shwet Foo to the unhappy circumstances at hand. After Mr. and Mrs. Floyd had left, she pulled out a nail file from her desk and began doing what she did whenever she needed to decompress. Why would they do such a terrible thing? she asked herself, working furiously at an irregularity in the curve of her left thumbnail.

  Why indeed would Mr. and Mrs. Floyd do such a terrible thing? Of course, the Floyds’ behaviour towards their son had always been slightly peculiar. Those who could call themselves friends of the Floyd family had always noticed as much, but could never quite place their finger on it.

  Despite James and Olivia’s supposed best intentions in Chinese-ifying their son, the children’s behaviour towards their ang moh classmate remained much the same: abusive, with a slight swelling of even more abuse when they found out about Murgatroyd’s ridiculous-sounding “Chinese” name. The newly christened Shwet Foo never did assimilate into life at Da Qiao Primary. In fact, he never really assimilated into life in general. Part of it had to do with his initial ostracism at Da Qiao Primary, which set the pattern for the rest of his student life: fearful of his schoolmates, he avoided their company, and they in turn continued to ignore him, or occasionally, to torment and tease him. Part of it had to do with his personality, which was naturally quiet and withdrawn. Part of it, sadly, did have to do with his blonde hair and blue eyes, which were a superficial difference, yes, but inalterable nonetheless. And despite Murgatroyd’s increasingly Singaporean accent and his growing familiarity with local life, his unhappy days continued. A large part of it ha
d to do with something else entirely—something that was not only imperceptible to the overwhelming majority of the population, but to their knowledge, simply didn’t exist. Murgatroyd would discover what that something was much later in his life, and to his surprise, it would be intimately connected with the hope for the extraordinarily stupendous Something that would, every now and then for the next sixteen years, drift momentarily to the surface of his consciousness before submerging itself once more.

  Murgatroyd’s life did not turn out to be an entirely solitary one, though. In fact, he emerged from his otherwise painful six years at Da Qiao Primary with a friend by the name of Seng Kay Huat—a boy older than him by two years who was to remain Murgatroyd’s closest companion for many years to come, even after their lives had diverged to follow very separate paths. Even at a very young age, it was clear that Kay Huat was destined for great things. Endowed with great intelligence, clean-cut good looks, and an affable personality, Kay Huat’s natural abilities paved over the rockiness of life’s path, turning it into a veritable freeway of easy success down which he could cruise in a silver Porsche. His high examination marks upon leaving Da Qiao Primary earned him a scholarship to attend the elite Raffles Institution, where he completed his secondary and pre-university education. After serving his mandatory two years’ national service in the Singaporean army, Kay Huat won a full scholarship from Stanford University in the United States. He graduated summa cum laude with a BA in economics and philosophy, and a minor in art history. He had then returned home to take his place in Singaporean society as a highly paid, highly ambitious, and highly successful private banker.

  In contrast, it was clear from a very early age that Murgatroyd Floyd Shwet Foo was not destined for anything involving high pay, ambition, or success. Murgatroyd had never been very good at studying, and chose to end his education after graduating from a low-ranking secondary school. After scraping through his two years of national service, he went through a number of odd jobs, all of which he was fired from, until he found employment as the top waiter of a wildly successful restaurant. Surprisingly enough, Murgatroyd was very good at this job.