ON THE eighth green, among the casuarina pines, with the South China Sea shining beyond, the Sultan, about to putt, asked, unexpectedly: ‘What do you know of Dr Abad, Andrew?’
Taken aback, Sandilands had to be cautious as well as deferential. What did the all-powerful despot want him to say about the meek idealist? ‘Not much, Your Highness. I’ve seen him about the town, that’s all. I’ve never met him.’
The Sultan nodded and then concentrated on his putting. With utmost care he tapped the ball. It rolled timidly towards the hole and stopped well short of it. It hadn’t helped that the head of his putter was solid gold. Like golfers everywhere he was very cross with himself.
It was then Sandilands’ turn. When he had first been invited or rather summoned to play golf with the Sultan it had been hinted, though to be fair not by the great man himself, that it would be politic to let His Highness win more often than not, but Sandilands had never been able to bring himself to do it. It would have been insulting to the Sultan. No matter how he hates losing no golfer likes to be let win.
Sandilands’ ball rolled smoothly into the hole.
The Sultan sighed. ‘I’d give a million dollars to be able to putt like you, Andrew.’
Such things were said on golf courses all over the world, but only here was the claim not extravagant. A million dollars was a trifle to the Sultan.
Suppose, thought Sandilands, such an exchange was possible, would he agree to it? Would so large a sum, enabling him to travel throughout the Far East, staying in five-star hotels and entertaining fabulous beauties, compensate for the loss of a gift that had given him so much pleasure and satisfaction?
They were followed to the next and final tee by their caddies, two in the Sultan’s case and one in Sandilands’, and also, at a discreet distance, by His Highness’s bodyguard, six soldiers in red-and-white uniforms carrying automatic guns at the ready. The nine-hole course in the palace grounds was strictly private. Trespassers were warned that they would be shot on sight. Not that the Sultan feared assassination. He was confident that his benevolence towards his subjects caused them to love him. Did not even Dr Abad, that earnest democrat, praise him in his speeches?
‘And what was your impression of the good doctor?’
Again, Sandilands had to be careful. ‘To tell the truth, Your Highness, I thought him an insignificant wee man.’
The Sultan laughed. As a young man he had spent some months in Edinburgh and liked Sandilands to use Scottish words.
‘Harmless, would you say?’
‘Very much so.’
The Sultan kept some peculiar pets: a cheetah, a cageful of snakes, hawks, and a couple of orang-utans. Dr Abad could be included among them. He had been given royal permission to form his People’s Party and make speeches in favour of democracy, provided of course there was no criticism of the Sultan. It was believed that the British Resident had not approved.
Sandilands placed his ball on a tee and got ready to drive.
‘Yet I am being persuaded to get rid of him, to scotch the snake before it grows too big.’
Sandilands wondered just what getting rid of someone meant nowadays. In the Sultan’s father’s time it could have meant a public hanging or a private garrotting. Thanks to the wealth from oil the country nowadays could afford to be more civilised. Sir Hugo, a suave Etonian, the present British Resident, would hardly connive at judicial murder, but he might well suggest having Abad packed off to practise medicine among the tribes in the interior where, if malaria or heartbreak did not dispose of him, recidivist head hunters might.
The Sultan wiped sweat from his brow with a handkerchief handed him by a caddy but he was silent, as every golfer must be when his opponent is about to play.
As usual Sandilands’ ball soared high and far and landed safely on the fairway.
‘Good shot,’ said His Highness, enviously.
His own, alas, was not good. In spite of his determination not to, he swung his club much too fast so that his ball shot sideways into a green swamp where snakes lurked whose bite could mean instant death.
He groaned with disappointment and self-disgust. His clubs were the best money could buy, he had been coached by famous professionals, he had studied books on the techniques of the game, and yet he still hit duff shots.
His caddies were aghast. Would they be ordered to wade in waist deep to make a token but futile search? Their eyes appealed to Sandilands. They knew he was only a teacher but they thought he must be a man of great importance to be allowed to play with His Highness. Also they had watched him outshine the Sultan at hole after hole and yet he hadn’t been dragged off to have his arms broken.
‘Not much chance of finding it in there, Your Highness,’ said Sandilands.
‘No.’ The Sultan indicated that he needed a new ball.
Greatly relieved, his caddy placed one on a tee, as delicately as if it was an egg. The other caddy looked up at the sky, appealing to Allah to make His Highness’s second attempt have better fortune. There were thickets with poisonous thorns as well as ponds with venomous snakes.
One of His Highness’s weaknesses as a golfer was that he did not keep his mind on the game.
‘I’m told his daughter’s keener on politics than he is,’ he said. ‘Quite fanatical, they tell me. Have you seen her too about the town? The beautiful Leila?’
Impressive would have been Sandilands’ word for Madam Azaharri. She had struck him as too stern, too austere, too dedicated to be called beautiful; but then her husband, a lawyer like herself, had died a year or so ago in Malaya. No doubt she was still grieving. Sandilands had once got a good look at her in the Gardenia Restaurant. Half-Scottish, for her mother long since dead had been born in a village near Edinburgh, she was tall for an Asian woman and carried herself as straight as a peasant with a basketful of durians on her head. She had been wearing a blue-and-white kebaya-sarong and had made every other woman in the restaurant look dull and dowdy.
‘Does the lady merit so much reflection?’ asked the Sultan, laughing.
His Highness was in the market for beautiful women. He had a harem full of them. Madam Azaharri would make him a regal wife, but would the prospect of a palace with two thousand rooms, a yacht as big as the Britannia, and dozens of servants, entice her? Sandilands did not think so.
‘How does she compare with the ladies of the Shamrock Hotel?’ asked the Sultan, laughing again.
Sandilands grinned sheepishly. It had been dark when he had visited that haunt of the elegant whores from Hong Kong and Singapore. He had slunk in and out and yet he must have been seen and reported to the Sultan, whose spies were reputed, rightly it seemed, to be everywhere.
The Sultan was amused. Small and fat himself, he liked to make fun of Sandilands who was tall and spare. ‘In my grandfather’s day,’ he said, ‘when thieves had their hands cut off you can imagine what happened to those caught consorting with ladies of joy.’
In those pre-oil days, though the mosque had been an ill-kept ramshackle wooden building, Islamic laws had been cruelly enforced. Today, when the great mosque, a magnificence of white marble and blue tiles, was one of the wonders of Islam, a certain amount of Western decadence was permitted. As long as the Sultan said his prayers daily and contributed millions to Islamic causes the imams were appeased.
The Sultan’s second drive was satisfactory: not very long but straight and safe. In good humour he again teased Sandilands. ‘Is it not the case, Andrew, that democratic governments often pay little heed to the wishes of the people who elected them?’
Sandilands had to admit that that was the case.
‘So it is not really the people who govern but a small clique of men? Perhaps just one man, the Prime Minister or the President?’
Sandilands was not much interested in politics. ‘Yes, I suppose so.’
‘So what is the difference between a democracy like your country, Andrew, and my country where I am that one man?’
And if that one man was just and benevolent, was not that as good a form of government as any? Didn’t historians say that England, and Scotland too, had never been so well administered as under the dictator Oliver Cromwell? Surely the very forming of political parties, each one representing a section of the community, made division and dissension inevitable. It had begun in Savu itself. Abad’s People’s Party championed the poor and powerless, while the Patriots defended the rights of the rich and powerful.
When the game ended, with victory as usual going to Sandilands, in spite of the ten-stroke advantage he had given his opponent, the Sultan shook hands and solemnly handed over the stake, one dollar. It always amused him that it was so small.
His white Rolls Royce was waiting for him. He got into it and was driven off to his palace where he would have his shower in a bathroom where all the taps were of gold.
His bodyguards followed in a yellow Land Rover.