In the Mouth of the Tiger (19 page)

I shook my head. ‘You're not talking about policing a people, Malcolm. You're talking about repressing a people. And for whose gain? To use your analogy, is the flea guiding the elephant for the elephant's benefit, or for the flea's benefit? If it's for the good of the flea, I only hope the elephant lies down one day and has a decent roll in the dust!'

I could tell that Malcolm was furious by the way the tip of his nose turned white. He didn't answer for some time, sorting out his thoughts, getting his anger under better control. ‘Nona,' he said finally, getting to his feet, ‘you are talking just like a Communist, do you know that? Just how much under Denis's influence are you? No – don't answer that question. I don't want us to part as enemies, but I do want you to think about some of the things I told you down in Kuantan.'

I had a sudden suspicion. ‘Did you arrange to have Denis lured out to Ipoh, so that you could talk to me without him being present? You must have known he's been picking me up every day. I bet you didn't want him around when you tackled me tonight.'

Malcolm's sudden stiffness told me that I was right, and I turned away in disgust.

‘Look,' he said suddenly, grabbing my shoulders and turning me back to face him. ‘I
had
to interview you, Nona. You must know how tense things are in Malaya at the moment, and you've been linked to a man who was killed
trying to stir up an insurrection. If Special Branch put you in their bad books, your right of residence in Malaya would be in jeopardy. So I decided to handle things myself. I've gone out on a limb for you, Nona, and you've no right to treat me like a common cur.'

I was in no mood for rational argument and wrenched myself free from him. ‘I'm awfully touched by your concern, Malcolm,' I said sarcastically. ‘But now you've satisfied yourself that I'm no firebrand revolutionary, why don't you push yourself off home?'

He seemed about to say more but thought better of it. ‘Goodnight, Miss Roberts,' he said formally.

I heard his footsteps retreating down our tiled hallway, then his voice in conversation with Mother at the front door. I suddenly remembered Rajeev's letter to me and hurried to catch up with him.

‘You said you had a letter to me,' I said a little breathlessly. ‘I want that letter, Malcolm.'

Malcolm looked at me with surprise. I thought at first that he was going to refuse my request, but he opened his briefcase and took out a couple of sheets of paper. ‘This is a copy of the letter,' he said quietly, handing it to me. ‘You will get the original just as soon as the coroner has completed his inquiries.'

After he had left, Mother stood in front of me, hands on her hips. ‘What have you been up to, Nona? I never thought the day would come when a policeman would invade my house demanding to talk to my daughter.'

I knew Mother would throw a fit if I told her that I'd been linked with a revolutionary who had just been gunned down (‘A Communist! My daughter hobnobbing with a Communist!') so I invented a bureaucratic problem about my residency permit. I was pretty sure that Malcolm would not have told her the real purpose of his visit.

‘Your permit is not in order so they are going to throw you out?' she wailed. ‘I knew it would happen one day! What about me? What about Tanya? Are we going to be thrown out of Malaya too?'

‘Nobody said anything about
anyone
being thrown out, Mother,' I said firmly. ‘I just forgot to sign my name on the form when I re-registered last year. I'll go down and do it tomorrow.'

‘For why didn't you do it just now?' Mother demanded. ‘When Mr Bryant was here?'

Oh what a web we weave, when once we set out to deceive . . .

‘And what was all the talk about a letter, and about a colonel's inquiry?' she continued. ‘Tell your mother, Nona. Don't lie to me.'

‘Colonel's inquiry' threw me for a moment until I realised that she had misheard the reference to a coronial inquiry. ‘The Colonel at the Kuantan Club is holding an inquiry into why woman have to pay full subscriptions to join the club,' I lied blithely. ‘And the letter is from Denis.' I was feeling quite light-headed at this stage, and was just about to say something even more absurd to garnish my story when common sense intervened. ‘Mother,' I said firmly. ‘I've been working hard and I have a dreadful headache, so I'm going to go to bed.'

I read Rajeev's letter sitting on my bed. It was beautifully written and covered both pages.

My dear young lady,

I knew when we talked in Lal Mahmood's rooms that you were an understanding and compassionate person. Your offer to help me was most kind and I greatly appreciated your generous gesture. It was not, however, necessary that you provide any money as I am very well supported by my friends in the Hindu community. Friends who approve my work.

My work, to which I have dedicated my life, is to help fellow Hindus who have become oppressed by those in charge here in Malaya.

I am a Tamil of the Brahmin caste, and my family is one of the Wellala families who traditionally lead our community. In other times I would have gone up to University and become a doctor or a lawyer, and been able to make a difference to the world. But my father died of fever when I was a baby, and my education at the Free School in Penang ceased when I was twelve.

But I have kept up my studies in my own way, reading everything
I can and talking to those about me who have wisdom. You see me as perhaps a feckless youth, running around Malaya pursued by arrest warrants and sleeping under the stars. But I have dreams, dear lady, and many people share my dreams. Let me tell you a little of these dreams.

The English will not always rule Malaya. They have done both good and bad, and judgment cannot be made about them in our generation because we are too close to the pain as well as the glory of their achievements.

After the English have gone, there will be three races left here to share our beautiful country: the Malays, the Chinese, and the Indians. Each of these races is even now positioning itself, through its more far-sighted leaders, to take its place in the new Malaya.

My role is not yet that of a leader, except in the most local sense.
I am a warrior of Shiva, our God of conflict and change. I am ‘earning my spurs' as the English say, in countless little affrays in the villages and on the estates.

I am unburdening my heart to you, dear lady, because you impressed me greatly that day in Lal Mahmood's rooms. You had your own worries but you put them aside to think of me and of my worries. You put on no airs and graces, but tried to help a fellow human being who you saw was in trouble. You and your kind are the future of Malaya.

I have thought about you a lot in the past few months. We may one day meet again but I think perhaps not. In this Malaya of ours we are just too far apart.

What I do can be dangerous. I may die one day in some silly accident. If I do, please know that I would have died gladly, able to look Lord Shiva in the face, warrior-to-warrior. I will have earned my spurs.

With affection, I remain dear lady,

Rajeev Srinivasan.

The address at the top of the letter was in KL, and in a postscript Rajeev explained that it was his mother's house, and that she would forward any mail on to him. It was an incredibly mature letter for a man whose formal education had ceased at the age of twelve, but when I pictured him in my mind it was without doubt Rajeev talking to me through the written words. I remembered how impressed I'd been in Penang at the clarity of his thoughts and the skill with which he used the English language.

He had been a thoughtful, gentle, educated man. A Brahmin rather than a warrior. It made it harder to accept that he had been shot down like a rabid dog, his body photographed not to memorialise a decent young man but to help the police track down more of his kind.

The letter was dated almost a year ago, and I wondered why he had not posted it. I think perhaps I understood. He wanted to say the things he had
said, but knew that there was no point in my reading them. As he had said, in this Malaya of ours we were just too far apart.

But I decided, as I lay in my bed with strange, angry thoughts tumbling through my mind, that I owed it to Rajeev to visit his mother and to share his letter with her.

Chapter Eight

I
told Denis about Rajeev's death the next morning as we sat on the terrace of the Riding Club, eating the club's special breakfast of waffles and maple syrup. Fans circulated the already warm morning air and turbaned waiters hurried softly to and fro. Below us, beautifully proportioned thoroughbreds clip-clopped to and from the mounting yards.

‘I read about it, of course,' Denis said. ‘It was a rotten business and I've got nothing but contempt for Jan Boetcher. He's a pig of a man. It must have been awful for you to learn about it the way you did.'

‘I'd like to visit Rajeev's mother,' I said. ‘Would you come with me?'

Denis didn't answer immediately. He took out a cigarette and tapped it thoughtfully on the back of his hand before lighting up. ‘There will be people there,' he said. ‘A lot of people. The Tamils have a way of dealing with grief that is a bit different from ours. There will probably be a band too, and there will certainly be singing.'

‘I'd still like to drop in,' I said, ‘even if it is only for a moment or two. I feel I owe it to Rajeev. In a way I'm obligated to him. He made me his confidant.'

‘Then of course we will go,' Denis said. ‘I'll send the syce around with a chit asking if we can call around tomorrow morning. I do think it best if we gave some notice.'

Denis was playing cricket at the Selangor Club that afternoon, and he had arranged for us to meet some of his friends for an early lunch before the game. Mac and Fiona were already there when we arrived at about eleven, sipping iced champagne on the terrace with four people I didn't know. ‘Bob and Babs Chrystal, and Alec and Margaret Dean,' Denis introduced briefly, and I went around the little circle shaking hands as everyone smiled and nodded politely.
Bob Chrystal was a colleague of Denis's at Guthries, and he and his cheerful Australian wife lived next door to him in the Guthries compound in Ampang Road. Alec Dean was one of Denis's oldest friends in Malaya, while his wife Margaret was a ‘new chum' to the colony whom he had met and married on his last leave in England.

The Deans were destined to become our closest friends in the Golden Age that was to come for the four of us, and to be the first to die in the storms that ended our idyll. But I had no premonitions on that sunny morning in KL: all I recall is that we chatted happily on the sunlit terrace, perhaps just a little subdued as groups tend to be when several of the party have only just met.

‘The Singapore contingent!' Denis said, getting to his feet as the last two of our party arrived. ‘Brave souls. Came all this way, and all they'll see is the Singapore Cricket Club being ground into very little pieces.' He introduced them, a youngster called Ivan Lyon and an older man with the bearing of a soldier, Hayley Bell.

I remembered that Bell had been mentioned as someone who might have buried the guns on Pulau Orang Laut, and inspected him curiously. He seemed quite an ordinary individual, good-looking in a conventional way and pleasant in his manner, but distinctly forgettable. Hardly the potential hero of clandestine operations deep behind enemy lines, or the masterful spymaster in an Oppenheim thriller.

But Ivan Lyon was quite a different kettle of fish. Lithe and handsome and with brooding Celtic features, he was every schoolgirl's dream of what a romantic spy should look like. In fact, as soon as he sat down beside me I couldn't help turning his way. ‘Are you really here for the match?' I asked. ‘You don't look the sort who would be happy simply watching other people play cricket.'

‘I'm here under orders,' Ivan said. ‘A very new boy being shown the ropes. Colonel Bell thinks that a visit to the Selangor Club essential education for a newcomer. Meet the right people, all that sort of thing.'

‘How boring,' I said. I looked at him provocatively. ‘What would you prefer to be doing?'

‘Sailing,' Ivan said promptly. ‘I know it's an unfashionably selfish sport, but then I'm an unfashionably selfish person.'

‘We've just sailed the East Coast,' Fiona put in, leaning across the table. ‘My first time on a yacht and I loved it. So I must be unfashionably selfish too.'

I saw Ivan's tawny eyes sparkle. ‘They're pretty interesting waters on the East Coast. I've seen the charts. Lots of islands and plenty of reefs, so one would have to be on one's toes.'

So as the houseboys circulated with curry puffs and trays laden with fresh drinks, we talked about sailing, and the lonely jungle shores of Pahang, and the prospects of high adventure in the wild backblocks of Malaya. As we spoke I saw Ivan's interest quicken, the energy gather behind his eyes. He was a subaltern in the Gordon Highlanders, but it was quickly apparent to me that the regimented life of a conventional soldier would not be for him. And in fact at one stage I saw Denis tap Hayley Bell on the arm. ‘Someone you should use,' he said quietly.

‘Working for me already,' Bell replied.

We lunched early so that Denis could have something to eat before the game, and then moved from the dining room back up to the terrace to watch the cricket.

And that's when I spotted Tanya and Eugene Aubrey sitting close together, their heads almost touching. For a second or two I couldn't believe my eyes – Mother had marked out Eugene as her own territory – but then it made sense. They were both aliens in an extremely, if unconsciously, inclusive society. They were both reserved, complex creatures and both, it seemed to me, were crying out for the support of a caring relationship.