NEXT MORNING the people spontaneously awarded themselves a holiday. In their best clothes they flocked onto the streets and greeted one another with the old affection but also with a new respect. They had brought democracy to their country and so had become the equals of the Americans and British. They could be seen happily getting their fingers blackened by the huge headlines in the Savu Times and the slightly smaller ones in the Savu Record, whose Editor was not quite so reckless. Policemen were offered flowers and accepted them sheepishly. Children danced hand-in-hand in the streets and let off fire-crackers. It was said that in the interior the shrivelled heads had been taken down and reverently dusted, with spiders scuttling out of the eye sockets. In the Yacht Club and the Golf Club there could hardly be rejoicing for it was feared that Shangri La had come to an end. The boys who helped to launch the yachts or who caddied on the golf course, now citizens of a democracy, priced themselves higher accordingly. They demanded and got an increase in pay. In their homes white memsahibs were taken aback to find that their amahs, cooks, and gardeners had overnight acquired a dignity that should have looked impertinent or even comic, but did not. On the telephone those white ladies cautiously praised Mrs Sandilands. If it hadn’t been for her the People’s Party would never have persevered. Well done, Leila, was their verdict. She might be a half-caste, she might be dark-skinned, she might have become a bit too uppity, but in a country where for generations men had been contemptuous of women she had shown herself superior to the lot of them. They could have named another country where women were still not given their due.
The students congregated outside the Principal’s house, playing guitars and singing songs in homage to the Principal’s wife. But it wasn’t as the Principal’s wife that they were honouring her, it was as the future Prime Minister of their country. When she appeared on the verandah they gave a cheer that was heard in the teachers’ flats a good three hundred yards away.
In those flats, which had a good view of the scene at the Principal’s house, Mr Srinavasan was paying one of his sneaky visits to Miss Leithbridge who lived next door.
Miss Leithbridge’s verandah was small. Mr Srinavasan had to stand close to her. She was looking through binoculars.
Mr Srinavasan prophesied doom for the lady at present being exalted. ‘You will see she will come a cropper.’
‘Why do you think that, Mr Srinavasan?’ Miss Leithbridge asked, aware that he was closer than he needed to be but not yet prepared to push him off. She liked to play a game of waiting to see how far the ‘sneaky black prick’ would go. The description was not hers, but Baker the Australian’s. She thought it apt.
She rather liked the spicy smell of Mr Srinavasan’s breath. It was quite sexy.
‘She is too big for her boots.’
‘She never wears boots.’
‘I speak metaphorically. Does she think in her foolishness that the Sultan will abide by those ridiculous results?’
It hadn’t occurred to her that the Sultan would not abide by the results. She was sure it had occurred to no one but Mr Srinavasan. ‘Why shouldn’t she think that?’ she asked. ‘He gave a solemn promise to accept the people’s verdict.’
‘That was before he knew he had lost. Is he not a mighty man? Is this not his kingdom? Can he not, with Allah’s consent, break any promise?’
‘But what reason could he give?’
Miss Leithbridge was genuinely curious, though there was the distraction that Mr Srinavasan was now not so much nudging as thrusting, and he was not using his hand. Her bottom too was thinly protected with only a cotton dress and skimpy panties.
‘He will say they cheated.’
‘Cheated? How could they cheat? There were impartial observers.’
‘He will say that though women were given the legal right to vote they ought not to have voted. They should have stayed at home, like decent Muslim women.’
Miss Leithbridge was still interested, but he really had to be deterred. His thrusting had become too obvious and too urgent. He was panting as if he had just run up a flight of stairs.
As if casually, with no particular intent, she swung the heavy binoculars behind her with some force, and hit him where she had hoped to hit him. He gasped, squealed, withdrew, clutched himself, and, as she saw from a quick glance round, turned greenish, which was odd considering how black he was.
Using the binoculars now for their proper purpose, she saw, with surprise, that Sandilands had brought out a little girl, a native from the look of her. Who could she be?
Mr Srinavasan, usually a source of information, was not yet fit to be consulted. Besides, tears of pain were blurring his vision.
‘He’s holding a little girl in his arms,’ she said. ‘Who can she be? She’s not white. She can’t surely be the daughter of a servant? That would be ridiculous. Look, Mr Srinavasan. Have you any idea who she can be?’
With shaky hands he took the binoculars and looked through them. ‘Perhaps she is Mrs Sandilands’ daughter.’
‘But Mrs Sandilands’ daughter was killed in the car accident.’
‘This could be another daughter, hitherto concealed.’
She thought his mind was deranged. ‘Why on earth should she be concealed?’
‘Perhaps her father is the Sultan.’
Now that was worth considering. ‘Do you think so?’
‘It is said he wished to add her to his harem of wives.’
Miss Leithbridge took the binoculars and looked through them, concentrating on the child in Sandilands’ arms.
‘No, she can’t be,’ she said. ‘Too common-looking. Too shy. If the Sultan was her father she’d be unbearably proud.’
‘Perhaps she is the bastard of our esteemed Principal. I have been told he consorted with loose women. This child could be a consequence.’
Miss Leithbridge had sometimes wished she was one of those loose women Sandilands had consorted with. ‘You are being silly, Mr Srinavasan.’
Mr Srinavasan groaned.
‘I think you should go and see if Mrs Srinavasan is awake now and waiting for you to bring her tea.’
He crept away, as if, she thought crudely, he had wet his pants. Perhaps he had. She had read once in a women’s magazine that that was the most tender part of a man’s anatomy. If a woman was being raped, the writer had said, she should seize the villain by the testicles and squeeze them hard.
She wasn’t angry with him, though. She had got some of her own back, not just on silly Mr Srinavasan, but on all men, especially conceited Andrew Sandilands.