THE DAY before the elections a public holiday was declared throughout the country. To encourage a carnival atmosphere beer was free in the bars between certain hours: His Highness was meeting the considerable cost. It was not a bribe, no one was to think that, it was simply a gesture of appreciation for the interest that his people had shown in his elections, for he always spoke of them as his. Luckily the alcoholic content of the beer was low, otherwise half the male population might have been drunk, though never quarrelsome, before the fireworks display in the evening.
What most impressed the foreign journalists who had flown in was that, on that day before the first free elections in the history of the country, nobody seemed to be bothering about politics at all. This could have been because the result was known in advance – triumph for the Sultan and annihilation for the People’s Party – but it was obviously also because the people, though a mixture of Malays, Chinese, Indians, Filipinos, Dusuns, and Muruts, were too mild-natured and too well-disposed towards one another. ‘Civilised’ was the word that occurred to the journalist from the Guardian. Nowhere was to be seen a bitter scowling face, or to be heard angry words.
The town was thronged with happy smiling people. Women wore their best clothes, kebaya-sarongs of various bright colours, with necklaces, bangles, anklets, rings (in noses as well as on fingers) and earrings. The older men wore native dress, long white tunics and baggy white trousers, with round tasselled hats. Younger men, more European in their taste, wore white shirts and dark trousers; their oiled black hair shone like helmets and attracted insects. Children, like flowers in their gaudy clothes, delighted the foreign observers with their mannerly behaviour.
Entertainments were put on all day in the padang besar, the great town square. The Gurkha pipe band gave two recitals of Scottish tunes, both stirring and sentimental, one in the morning and one in the evening, just before the mosquitoes came out. Native bands played their gongs, and slim rapt men and women performed native dances, so stately and slow as to be almost somnolent; in great contrast to an exhibition put on, at His Highness’s special request, by the Savu Scottish Country Dance Group, whose hectic performances of the Eightsome Reel and the Duke of Perth amazed the spectators and exhausted the participants.
Some descendants of headhunters were brought from the interior to give an exhibition of shooting darts through blowpipes. Their accuracy seemed to indicate that they still kept their hands in. Taking heads in the old days, the reporters were told, had really been a religious act, to appease the spirits of the jungle. Well, those spirits still lurked in the trees and had to be appeased. Were heads still hunted? Savu was indeed, thought the journalists, a strange country, where a man might one day be out hunting heads and the next queueing to vote in a democratic election.
As one of their nimblest dancers Sandilands was asked to take part in the country dancing, but had to decline because he had promised to take Leila for a sail to one of the off-shore islands. She wanted to get away from the excitement.
Dressed in a red top and white shorts, she attracted the attention of some British journalists who had been invited to the Club by members. Drinks in hand, though it was only ten in the morning, they watched from the verandah as Sandilands and Leila, with the help of some local youths, struggled to launch the G.P.14. As there was no jetty the boat had to be pushed into big breakers that kept pushing it back. It took nerve and skill, as well as determination.
The members discussed them.
‘He can handle a boat. You have to give him that.’
‘He’s a lucky big bugger.’
‘The fellow in the boat, you mean?’ asked one of the reporters.
‘Yes. That’s Sandilands.’
‘In what way is he lucky?’
‘Well, he’s a great golfer. Six times champion of the Club. Holds the course record.’
‘Gets invited by His Highness to play with him.’
‘Principal of the Teachers’ Training College, a cushy job if ever there was one. Hard-working well-behaved students, not like the louts at home.’
‘You should see the house that goes with the job. Huge.’
‘And the grounds are like a tropical garden.’
‘He speaks Malay fluently.’
‘And has some Chinese.’
‘But above everything else he’s got that marvellous woman as his wife.’
The reporters had been taking turns at looking at Leila through binoculars.
‘She’s a beauty all right,’ said one.
‘Who is she?’ asked another.
‘You must have heard of her. She’s Leila, Dr Abad’s daughter, the brains of the People’s Party.’
‘Ah, so that’s who she is. She’s half-Scottish, isn’t she?’
‘Yes. She’s a lawyer. Brilliant, they say.’
‘They say too the Sultan’s offered her a job in his government.’
‘But isn’t she on the opposite side?’
‘Sure, but everybody knows the People’s Party hasn’t a hope. She’s ambitious, our Leila. She could end up as Prime Minister.’
‘And she’d do this country a lot of good.’
‘What she sees in Sandilands is a mystery.’
‘She could have been the Sultan’s missus if she’d wanted.’
‘She’d have had to share him with a dozen others. She would never have stood for that. Can be as haughty as hell.’
‘Be fair. She can also be damned gracious. Remember how decent she was to old Mrs Wilkinson.’
‘In what way was she decent to Mrs Wilkinson?’ asked a reporter.
‘Her kid, a little girl of ten, was killed by a car driven by the old lady. She was married before, you see. Her husband died young. Leila was magnificent.’
‘We’ll all drink to that.’
They drank to it.
‘This Sandilands chap that’s married to her, is he involved in Savu politics?’
‘What politics?’
There was loud laughter.
‘No, he isn’t. Sensible of him, really. The result’s a foregone conclusion.’
‘You all think so?’
‘Damned right we do. It’s just as well.’
‘You want the Sultan to win?’
‘Too bloody true we do.’
‘But he’s an autocrat, the other lot are democrats.’
‘They’d either boot us out or lower our salaries.’
‘And they’d bugger up the country in no time.’
‘Mind you, even His Highness would like to be able to manage without us. He put out a decree a while back. All top jobs were to be filled by native Savuans or Malays. He had to withdraw it of course, but it showed the way his mind is shaping.’
‘I would say we’ve got another five years and then we’ll be booted out.’
‘A golden boot, though.’
Again there was loud laughter.
‘But this fellow Sandilands that’s married to Leila, he’ll not be booted out.’
‘No. He’s here for good.’
The yacht was now far out, well on its way to the islands.
‘He is lucky,’ muttered the journalist who was then looking through the binoculars.