ON THEIR way to the town they met the students trudging back to the College. Sandilands stopped the car. They gathered round it. Their mood was very different from that earlier when they had set out. Then they had been joyful and light-footed, now they were frightened and downcast. Their banners were rolled up as if they did not want the inscriptions to be seen; they were no longer demanding justice.
Some of the girls had been crying.
Sandilands was dismayed to find that though they were concerned about Leila they seemed to have lost faith in her. They did not altogether absolve her from blame for the violence they had seen.
They had been talking among themselves as to what was likely to happen to the leaders and to themselves. They asked what he thought.
‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘Are all of you here?’
‘All of us, except Jerome Dusing. He stayed with Albert Lo. Some said they saw him with a gun.’
‘Are you going to bring Leila back, Mr Sandilands?’
‘If I can. When you get back to the College report to Miss Leithbridge.’
‘Will they do anything to us, Mr Sandilands?’
‘I don’t think so.’
Sandilands drove on.
‘I hope you’re right,’ said Baker, ‘in saying nothing will be done to them. Every damned one could be expelled.’
‘The country needs teachers.’
‘They could be brought over from Malaya. One thing’s certain, anyway, you won’t see our students taking to the streets again. Whatever happens from now on they’ll sit at their desks, with their heads down. Ironical, isn’t it? They set out to help establish democracy and freedom, and what have they helped to do? Turn the place into a bloody police state.’
In the town it was as if an earthquake had just taken place and another, even more destructive, was thought to be inevitable.
Sandilands had to drive slowly because of groups of men on the streets, discussing the morning’s events. Few had gone back to work. The bars were full. Women had ventured out to shop. The fruit and fish markets had reopened; as had the banks. Street-sweepers were busy. Traffic policemen were at their posts. Surely signs of sanity and normality.
There was, though, that sense of a calamity about to happen. Both Sandilands and Baker felt it, the former more keenly because of Leila. It was incredible that in an hour or so he might be fleeing from the country, with Leila, he hoped. Suddenly their whole future was altered. Luckily most of his money was invested back in Edinburgh. He could find a teaching job, Leila one in a lawyer’s office, in that city of lawyers. They could build a new life.
There was the problem of Mary. Would she after all be left with the Andaus?
But first Leila had to be rescued from her own folly.
He felt a spasm of anger. Her ambition had gained nothing and ruined everything.
Moments later a surge of self-contempt swept that anger away. She had said his Malay was inadequate; so too, it seemed, was his love. She was in great danger and all he could do was blame her. He was fit to be a nurse’s husband, not a revolutionary’s.
Baker was feeling more and more uneasy. He wasn’t really a friend of Sandilands’, who was too righteous and correct for his taste, but he realised that the big Scotsman was heading straight for tragedy.
He wasn’t sure how to convey his somewhat qualified sympathy.
‘What’ll you do if she refuses to come with you?’ he asked, as they approached Government House.
The Savu flag flew over it.
He was pretty sure that she would refuse. She was the kind of woman who would die, and cause other people to die, for principle. A heroine, some would say. A pain in the arse, Baker himself said. Sandilands, stubborn bugger, would stay on in Savu while she was arrested, tried, and maybe hanged. That was to say, if they let him; which they probably wouldn’t.
Sandilands was no hero but that was the part he had been given.
They left the car and walked the last hundred yards. There was little to show that a short time ago hundreds of angry men had been here. No damage had been done to trees and bushes; no litter dropped; no graffiti scribbled on walls; no beer cans thrown among the flowers. In so orderly and well-behaved a country how could there be public hangings?
On the steps of Government House a number of youths stood guard. They had pistols in their belts. Two had automatic rifles. Most of them were nervously smoking. They looked dedicated and ridiculous: an explosive mixture, thought Baker. He was sorry for Sandilands. Now he became sorry for himself as well. An agitated jerk of a forefinger and he was a dead man.
‘Bloody young fools,’ he muttered. ‘Don’t they know they’re going to be shot to pieces. But for Christ’s sake, don’t step on their tails.’
Among them were Chia and Lo and also Jerome Dusing.
Lo seemed to be the leader. He wasn’t smoking. That was a weakness he spurned. He confronted Sandilands, with his rifle ready. Did he know how to use it? Sandilands wondered.
‘You should not be here, Mr Sandilands,’ he said, sternly. ‘This is not your business.’
‘I believe my wife is inside,’ said Sandilands. ‘I would like to speak to her.’
‘She is not here as your wife. She is here as the leader of the People’s Revolutionary Party.’
‘When did it change its name? Yesterday it was the People’s Party.’
‘It has not changed its name. For us it has always been the Revolutionary Party. For Madam Azaharri too.’
‘Her name is Mrs Sandilands. Does Dr Abad approve?’
‘Dr Abad has given up the leadership. He is an old man. Madam Azaharri is now our leader.’
‘Will you please let my wife, Mrs Sandilands, know that I am here and wish to speak to her?’
‘You cannot speak to her. She is with the other candidates who won the elections. They are in the Council Chamber, forming the new government of Savu.’
‘You must know this is madness, Albert. Troops will be sent for.’
‘British troops, Mr Sandilands? Scottish troops?’
It was more than likely. Scottish troops had often been used by the English to build up their empire and then defend it.
‘Whoever they are you will stand no chance against them.’
‘If they kill us the whole world will hear of it.’
Baker forgot his own advice not to step on their tails.
‘The whole world won’t give a mosquito’s fart,’ he said. ‘Want some advice, Lo? Throw away those guns and get the hell out of the country. Hijack a boat to take you to the Philippines. If you stay here sure as Christ you’ll either be shot or hanged.’ Or both, he added, to himself. What was to prevent wounded men from being strung up, just to make sure?
‘We are not afraid to die in a noble cause.’
‘Jesus, save us from martyrs. He knew all about it. What were they doing when He got nailed to the Cross? Dicing in the taverns. Fucking in the brothels. The world doesn’t weep, Chia. It yawns.’
‘In Australia, Mr Baker, if the people were cheated as we have been what would they do?’
‘Laugh into their beer. They’d think it a bloody good joke. What they wouldn’t do would be to get killed.’
‘You have a grievance, Albert,’ said Sandilands, ‘but this isn’t the way to set it right.’
‘What is the way, Mr Sandilands?’
Sandilands had no answer ready. ‘Patience,’ he said, at last. ‘If you had waited you would have got your democracy in the end.’
‘How long should we have waited?’
‘As long as was necessary. At least it would have been better than killing or being killed.’
‘Is cowardly submission to tyranny better than being killed?’
‘It would get my vote,’ said Baker.
‘You had better go now,’ said Lo.
Baker thought it a good idea. He didn’t want to get mixed up in this any more than he already was.
‘I won’t go until I’ve seen my wife,’ said Sandilands.
‘She doesn’t want to see you. Do you not understand? She is your wife no longer.’
Baker thought Sandilands was going to grab the insolent young bastard by the throat and strangle him. Instead Sandilands said, quietly: ‘She’ll have to tell me that herself.’
Lo called one of the youths over to him. After a whispered consultation the youth went inside.
‘I heard there was a man shot this morning,’ said Sandilands. ‘Was he badly hurt?’
Lo shook his head. He would have preferred the victim to be dead. It would have made better propaganda.
Sandilands felt a little relieved. If there were no serious casualties it was possible that these amateurish revolutionaries might be amnestied. Surely the British Government would advise clemency. And His Highness wasn’t a blood-thirsty man.
‘It’s bloody serious, I know,’ said Baker, ‘but it’s laughable too. I remember Lo telling me that his favourite character in history was Chairman Mao. I never knew Mao was a democrat. Given the chance this lot would set up a worse tyranny than the Sultan’s.’
Sandilands shook his head. ‘Not Leila,’ he said.
Baker wasn’t so sure. He had caught a glimpse of fanaticism on that lovely face.
Chia’s messenger came out.
Sandilands could hardly breathe. If she refused to see him now he might never see her again.
Lo scowled as he reluctantly passed on the message.
‘Madam Azaharri will see you,’ he said, ‘for five minutes.’
‘Young prick,’ muttered Baker. ‘I’ll wait here. Good luck.’
Sandilands went into the building. The officials and clerks who worked there had been sent away. It was now in the hands of the People’s Revolutionary Party. They stood about in the vast entrance hall, about thirty of them, most of them unarmed. They were silent, not knowing what to say to one another. They were not zealots like Lo or visionaries like Leila. They had made their gesture. They wanted to be given permission to go home. They stared at Sandilands with what struck him as envy. He was free to come and go as he pleased. They did not know why he was there. He was part of their confusion.
Leila was waiting for him at the top of the magnificent marble staircase. She looked tired and impatient. She was wearing the same kebaya and sarong in which she had left the house just a few hours ago. He thought he saw blood on it. Was it hers, or Maitland’s, or Major Simbin’s, or the wounded man’s?
‘You should not have come,’ she said.
She looked at him as if, he thought, she was Madam Azaharri and not Mrs Sandilands. He was a stranger to this woman.
There was a guard outside the Council Chamber door. He had a pistol in his belt. A quick dash, a snatch, a blow, and the gun would be in Sandilands’ hand. With it he could fight his way down the stairs and into the street. He would shoot anyone who tried to stop them.
There were two flaws in that plan: he was no cinema hero and Leila would not have come with him.
‘I’ve come to take you away, Leila,’ he said. Even to himself it sounded feeble.
‘Do you know what we are doing here?’ she asked. ‘We are forming a new government for Savu. Already we have passed a law abolishing the death penalty.’
It was, as Baker had said, laughable. Did she think that such a law would safeguard their lives? On the contrary, it made their executions for treason all the more likely.
‘The people will see what we would have done for them.’
‘The people won’t know anything about it, Leila. They won’t want to know.’
‘They’ll remember us.’
So they would but as what? Martyrs? Heroes? Fools?
‘There’s still time, Leila. We could find a boat that would take us to the Philippines. Your father could come with us.’
‘My father will never desert his people. Neither will I.’
She turned then and walked away.
‘What about Mary?’ he cried.
She hesitated and then walked on. The man at the door saluted her and opened it for her.
Sandilands watched her disappear behind the big leather-padded silver-studded door, the person he loved most in the world. Yes, but what did that amount to? Whether it was his upbringing to blame, or his nature, or a selfishness that he had all his life jealously cultivated, he had never been able to love with all his heart. In spite of his teasing of the students he had something of Mr Collins in him. To love Leila as she deserved called for qualities he did not have. He would have been happier, safer, and duller, with Jean Hislop. Leila had shown him how limited and timorous he was; Jean had made it her purpose to praise and flatter him. With his hands grasping the onyx balustrade, as if to prevent him from being dragged away, he was not hoping that Leila would come back to him, for he knew she would not, but he was wishing that he still had Jean to give him courage.
Baker had got into the building and was looking up at Sandilands. He wasn’t in time to see Leila but he saw Sandilands and ran up the stairs to him.
‘Where is she?’ he cried. ‘Did you see her? What did she say? She’s not coming, is she? Then for fuck’s sake let’s get out of here.’
He caught Sandilands by the arm and pulled him away. They stumbled together down the stairs.
One of the revolutionaries, a grey-haired man with unhappy eyes, came forward and patted Sandilands on the shoulder. ‘It is God’s will,’ he said, in Malay. ‘We must all die sometime.’
Outside Lo marched up to Sandilands. He wasn’t gloating. He was too high-minded for that. ‘She has not come with you, Mr Sandilands. Go home. Go home to Scotland. Forget Savu.’
Shall I, thought Sandilands, as he went along the street towards his car, with Baker still holding him by the arm, ever forget Savu? Yes, he might in time forget the cheerful students, the splendid College, the golf matches with the Sultan, the sails to the islands, and the trips into the jungle in search of orchids, but he would surely never forget Leila. No, but when he was an old man, would he boast to his grandchildren that he had known her?
‘Don’t blame yourself,’ said Baker. ‘You’ve done all you could. Let’s get back to the College.’
That was what he himself wanted. A shower, a change of clothes, a cold beer, with Mona his amah seated on his lap.
‘No, I want to speak to Maitland,’ said Sandilands.