HE OFTEN praised his students for their courtesy, patience, diligence (in the case of the Chinese only) and contentment, but there were times when he would gaze at those brown, yellow, or black young faces, lit up by bright smiles, and wish that they would show a spark at least of rebelliousness or a frown of disapproval at the way their country was run. It was one thing for peasants, fishermen, street-sweepers, and shop assistants to be content with their lot; it was another for these students who were, after all, the intelligentsia to accept without demur or protest the rule of an absolute monarch. Surely, in the twentieth century, they ought to be demanding some say in the government of their country; instead of which they let themselves be bribed into acquiescence. This Training College, for instance, was probably the best equipped in the whole of Asia and its graduates were assured of well-paid, secure, unchallenging jobs. Some might have to teach aborigines in kampongs in the interior but they would be compensated with generous bonuses.
The day after his encounter with Leila in the bookshop he found himself scowling with impatience at his students. They ought all to be members of the People’s Party, eager to help her and her father to bring democracy to their country.
He could not keep her out of his mind.
But, of course, if he had accused them of supine conformity they would have smiled and one of the Chinese might have replied, intending no sarcasm, that he, Mr Sandilands, their esteemed teacher, did not refuse when summoned to play golf with the Sultan but went at once, even if it meant cancelling classes. Was not that showing them an example of obedience to authority?
The truth was, though he liked them he did not really understand them. Once, when discussing Pride and Prejudice with them, they had baffled him by not finding Mr Collins the figure of fun that Jane Austen had intended. On the contrary, all of them, Malays and Chinese, males and females, had made it clear they sympathised with the pompous parson. Spurned by Elizabeth he had immediately married Charlotte, thus gaining a submissive wife and at the same time pleasing his patroness Lady de Burgh. That was how a prudent man would act. Elizabeth would not have made him a good wife. She would have ordered him about and worse still would have mocked him. For them meek Mr Collins was really the hero of the novel, not the haughty Darcy.
Their own marriages would be arranged. They would not object. They enjoyed reading about romantic love but did not expect it or indeed want it for themselves. In real life love was sensible and came after marriage, slowly but surely as trust and dependence grew stronger. It was therefore very important to marry one of your own kind. He had once taken Jean Hislop to a students’ dance. She had been a great success with her blue eyes, fair hair, big bosom, and energetic dancing. She was the kind of woman they thought he should marry. His children could then be loved without shame.
If he had taken Leila to the dance the students would have been embarrassed, though they would have tried not to show it. If he was ever to take her to the Golf Club the embarrassment there would not be hidden. It wouldn’t be her political opinions that would bother the members – these they would have sniggered at – it would have been the alien darkness of her skin and her impure blood. The one thing that they would find in her favour was that she had the sense to regard herself as a Malay and not as a white woman.
If he was ever to marry a dark-skinned woman his mother would never forgive him, and his father would pity him as if he had contracted some nasty disease.
These were his thoughts that morning as he stood looking out of the classroom window. The students were engrossed in an exercise he had set them. The College grounds were like a large tropical garden. A dozen gardeners kept it under control. Everywhere one looked there was a luxuriance of bright flowers and shining green leaves. There were many fountains. One could pick orchids off the trees. It was paradisean. Yet, what he was seeing wasn’t there in front of him, but in his mind: that tiny black mole on the side of Leila’s neck.
A red-and-black Land Rover came rattling up the avenue towards the administration building where the Principal’s office was. It was a police vehicle. Beside the driver sat Alec Maitland, in his Deputy Commissioner’s uniform. Since the Commissioner, a Malay who was a kinsman of the Sultan, was a mere figure-head it was Maitland who controlled the police, taking his orders, it was whispered, not from the Commissioner or the Chief Minister or even the Sultan, but from the British Resident. So too did Major Holliday, who commanded the battalion of Gurkhas. Maitland’s policemen, all of them Malays, with an average height of five feet five inches, carried guns but had never been known to use them.
Sandilands knew Maitland well. They were both Scotsmen and had once shared ownership of a sailing dinghy called Caledonia, in which they had won races. Maitland’s wife had gone home to look after the education of their teenage daughters. He had in her absence acquired a pretty young Malay girl as his amah. Whether or not he slept with her was a matter of humorous conjecture, but no one dared ask him. Sandilands thought he didn’t. Maitland had a fetish for cleanliness and took half a dozen showers a day. If he had been a Catholic he would have wearied his priest with frequent confessions.
What could have brought him to the College? No place was more law-abiding. Perhaps he had come to arrange English lessons for members of his force. He had once mentioned such an intention to Sandilands.
A few minutes later a servant came to say that the Principal wished to see Tuan Sandilands in his office.
He left the students to get on with their work. They would do it quietly and honestly. There would be no cribbing. The Malays, who were the majority, did not mind having low marks while the Chinese were too proud to be beholden to anyone. When the bell rang they would dismiss themselves and leave in orderly fashion. They were the kind of students that teachers in obstreperous Scotland dreamed of.
Sandilands was smiling as he made his way to the Principal’s office, with butterflies the size of his hand fluttering about his head. There was a serpent in this Eden. After a number of years – some said ten, some five – in the hot and steamy tropics a white man’s mind began to rust. He became slack and inefficient, without really knowing it; after all, everybody, except newcomers who didn’t count, was in the same plight. The Malays, of course, were born indolent. Blunders and deficiencies didn’t bother them, largely because they never noticed them, and if they were pointed out to them they just smiled with charming self-tolerance. The Chinese were exceptions, but then no Chinese was ever appointed to a top job. Indeed, most of the fifty thousand Chinese in the country, emigrants from Singapore or Hong Kong, had not been granted citizenship. Mr Cheng of the bookshop was an example. Their sons and daughters, though, born in the country, were legally Savuans.
Sandilands was smiling because one man who strove ceaselessly to keep the rust at bay was Alec Maitland. Once, when slightly drunk, he had explained to Sandilands that it was all very well for a teacher to let his sense of morality become blurred and lazy; a policeman, especially the top policeman, must not. He spoke Malay well and worked hard at improving it, for how could he keep the dignity necessary to his position if he spoke to malefactors in the language of the bazaar? He had an obsessive distrust of Communists, having fought them in Malaya.
* * *
In the Principal’s office he sat upright, as stiff as if on parade. His hat and swagger-stick were on his lap. His hair, cut short, was reddish, like his eyelashes. His face and knees were freckled. He had the kind of skin that didn’t tan but turned ruddy and sore-looking.
The Principal, David Anderson, was scowling; he always appeared to be because his left eye was missing and that side of his face was contorted: the result of a blow with a rifle butt in a Japanese prisoner-of-war camp. White-haired and elderly – he was due to retire in a few months – he was amiable and forgiving and much liked by staff and students. He had intended to spend his retirement in the coolness of the Cameron Highlands in Malaya, but his wife had died and now, as he had confessed to Sandilands, he looked forward to nothing.
He was scowling, though. ‘Sit down, Andrew,’ he said. ‘It seems we have a little problem.’
‘I wouldn’t call it little,’ said the Deputy Commissioner, dourly.
Sandilands was amused. ‘What kind of problem?’
‘The Deputy Commissioner has accused three of our students of taking part in subversive activities.’
Sandilands couldn’t help laughing. ‘What bloody nonsense!’
‘That’s what I think too,’ said the Principal.
‘Whatever you gentlemen think,’ said the Deputy Commissioner, ‘it happens to be true.’
‘Our students wouldn’t know what a subversive activity meant,’ said Sandilands. ‘I’m not sure myself.’
‘You can’t know your students very well then, Mr Sandilands.’
That ‘Mr’ nettled Sandilands. ‘What exactly are they accused of?’
‘I am under no obligation to tell you.’
Sandilands got angrier. ‘Is this a police state?’
Well, was it? The Sultan ruled by decree. Those decrees were enforced by the police. There was no appeal against them. Wasn’t that how it was done in a police state? Savu happened not to be a particularly harsh one: that was, up till now it hadn’t been.
‘You know Cheng’s bookshop in the Old Town?’ asked the Deputy Commissioner.
Sandilands nodded. He almost said it was a shop he was in often, unlike the Deputy Commissioner who listened to music but seldom read books.
‘There is a back room.’
‘Used as a store, I suppose.’
‘Used as a meeting-place for would-be revolutionaries, like your students.’
Sandilands was incredulous. ‘Revolutionaries? Good God!’
Then he remembered Leila Azaharri talking to Cheng in the corner behind piles of books. Had they been conspiring? No, that was too ridiculous.
‘They have been using it as a secret meeting-place for some time,’ said the Deputy Commissioner. ‘We suspect there are similar cells throughout the country.’
‘“They”?’ said Sandilands. ‘Who are they?’ Was Leila one of them, he wondered. ‘What do they do in the back room? Make bombs?’
‘They discuss ways of subverting the State.’
‘How do you know this? From spies?’
‘We have our means.’
‘What language do these conspirators use?’
‘English. They read and discuss books that advocate revolution and sedition.’
‘Name one.’ Sandilands could not help being sarcastic. This accusation was preposterous.
Then he remembered something. Just a few weeks ago it had been reported in the Savu Times that Red China had exploded a nuclear bomb. He had remarked, to his senior class, that it was a pity, for the fewer nations that had those bombs the safer all humanity would be. To his astonishment he had been immediately contradicted by the Chinese in the class. Albert Lo, Captain of the class and most likely recipient of this year’s gold medal for the best student, had stood up and said, politely but proudly, that China had as much right to possess nuclear bombs as America and Great Britain.
The Deputy Commissioner was not prepared to name a book.
‘Well, surely you’re going to tell us the names of the students? And what’s going to happen to them? Are you here to arrest them?’
‘They are not to be arrested, but they are not going to be allowed to continue with their studies. It has been decided they are not fit to become teachers.’
Who had decided? Was it the Sultan? The Council of Ministers? The British Resident? The Deputy Commissioner himself?
‘Their careers will be ruined,’ said Sandilands. ‘I hope you realise that.’
‘I hope you realise, Mr Sandilands, and you too, sir, that if it is found that this canker has spread among your students the College may have to be shut down. In the meantime it will be sufficient if these ringleaders are sent away.’
‘Can we have their names?’ asked the Principal.
The Deputy Commissioner took a sheet of paper from his breast pocket. He had to put on spectacles to read what was written on it.
‘Albert Lo.’
Sandilands was startled and could not help showing it. Had he got it wrong? Was it possible that Lo was a crypto-Communist? Come to think of it, with his eager smile and zealous eyes he was very like the youths depicted in Red China propaganda films, brandishing flags and bawling patriotic songs. But wasn’t he a Christian? Didn’t he go to church every Sunday?
‘I don’t believe it,’ cried the Principal. ‘Albert is one of our best students.’
Sandilands was waiting for the next name. Would it be Richard Chia? He and Lo were close friends. Chia drew satirical cartoons for the College magazine.
‘Richard Chia,’ said the Deputy Commissioner.
‘But this is nonsense,’ cried the Principal. ‘What do you think, Andrew? Can you see Albert and Richard as revolutionaries?’
‘Hardly.’ But Sandilands had no difficulty in imagining Richard too among those young Chinese in the propaganda films.
The Deputy Commissioner read out the third name. ‘Abdul Salim.’
Now that really was absurd. Salim, a Malay, was plump, good-natured, indolent, and dim. His English was below standard. He was one of those for whom the entrance qualifications had had to be lowered. He would be allowed to graduate because there had to be more Malay teachers than Chinese. The idea of his being able to take part in political discussions was laughable. A revolution would be too much like hard work for him; as indeed it would be for the majority of his countrymen.
‘Abdul Salim?’ said the Principal. ‘That is a mistake surely.’
The Deputy Commissioner looked again at his little list. ‘No mistake,’ he said.
‘I assure you that when you meet these students face to face you will see how mistaken you are, especially in Salim’s case.’
The Deputy Commissioner picked up his hat and stick, and rose. ‘I do not intend to meet them. There would be no point. The decision has been made. It will not be changed.’
‘This is most unfair,’ said the Principal. ‘What are we to tell them?’
‘Simply that they are to be expelled. They will know why.’
‘When have they to go?’
‘Today.’
‘What has happened to Mr Cheng?’ asked Sandilands.
‘He has been deported to Singapore where he came from.’
‘More than thirty years ago.’
The Deputy Commissioner put on his hat. ‘Good day, gentlemen. Thank you for your co-operation.’
Sandilands and the Principal sat staring at each other, listening to the Land Rover drive away.
‘When I was in Malaya, Andrew,’ whispered the Principal, ‘I saw some young Communists who had been captured. They were as young as Albert and Richard. They looked so dedicated. Can there possibly be any truth in this, Andrew? Under the surface is there discontent?’
‘Shall we send for them? They’ll have to be told.’
‘I suppose so.’