THE AFTERNOON SUN TURNED the reservoir to burnished bronze. A small boat had pushed out from a jetty and a child with a dog ran along the water’s edge. The dog’s sharp bark was drowned in the rumble of engines as the trucks started up one after another. Moon, whose plump face generated this nickname, pulled Greta down beside him, but she landed instead on Snakehead’s lap and laughed. The lorry moved off with a sudden jerk, and Greta was finally thrown upon Moon. She lay against him inhaling his masculine smell, all the deeper for the hour of dancing with which the picnic had ended. Games had been played and rousing songs sung, leaving them buoyed up with emotion. She could hear his heart beating against her ear, and knew by the tenseness of his muscles the effect she had upon him. The other girls in the crowded lorry had linked arms and were singing again, unwilling to surrender the afternoon. Boys and girls sat easily together, and although they were aware that Love was the Enemy of the People and romantic involvement was frowned on, it was impossible for eyes not to meet or hands not to touch.
Moon was on the committee of the Middle School Students’ Union, and had helped to arrange the picnic. Snakehead was older than the others, already at the university, but he always returned to school to accompany them on excursions. Both Greta and Moon took their orders from him for he was cell leader, and had recruited them. The week before she had been assigned her first courier job, delivering a communication to the manageress of a hairdressers’. This directive had been concealed in the tissue wrappings of a box of perfumed soap and she had given it to the woman as she sat under a hairdryer. Another directive had been packed in a roll of fruit drops and this she had delivered to a man waiting at a bus stop with a small child. Party communications were often written in an invisible ink made of sago powder that was later developed with a solution of iodine.
The sun was still hot, and the wooden planks on which they sat had absorbed the heat of the truck engine. Greta shifted and Moon pulled himself up, daring to put his arms loosely about her. She did not move as he bent forward to rest his chin on her shoulder. The ragged heads of coconut palms swept by, a flock of green parrots rose from the trees in an emerald cloud as the truck sped along. She noticed that Snakehead was watching them. He was nicknamed Snakehead because of his bullet-shaped skull and glittery eyes. Even when he smiled his eyes were assessing; without Moon she was frightened of him. Later, Greta was sure he would lecture them on dissolute behaviour, but for the moment she did not care. Shutting her eyes she relaxed against Moon, feeling the growing intensity between them.
The truck had stopped and she opened her eyes to see Snakehead standing up, towering above them. In the distance there was a confusion of noise; a crowd of angry men could be seen, shouting and gesticulating. She sat up in surprise: she had thought they were returning to school. Snakehead began to shout instructions.
‘We are needed here at Alexander Road. You know all about the bus strike and the troubles here; I don’t have to explain. Students have been here in shifts since last night, fighting with the police. Now the strikers need your encouragement. Raise their spirits with your dancing and singing.’ As Snakehead spoke there were cheers. The back flap of the truck was let down and they jumped out, a short distance from the bus depot. Greta looked nervously over the side of the truck at the crowd of angry men at the top of the road. There had been trouble at the Hock Lee bus depot since early in the year, and it was now mid-May. She had already been to several strikes in support of the workers and participated enthusiastically, but now she was apprehensive. Other trucks were drawing up to deposit further loads of students. Greta stood up but hesitated to jump down. Further along the road, strikers could be seen before the depot; a man was standing on a table shouting propaganda before the closed grilles of the bus sheds. Inside the sheds, Greta could see several stationary Number Eight buses. Then Moon was helping her down, almost lifting her so that he had a chance to draw her body close to him; his warm breath filled her ear. Once he had touched her breasts lightly, as if brushing against her; once he had reached out boldly to cup them in his hands and she had stood before him, unmoving. Then he had leaned forward and taken her lower lip between his own, pushing the tip of his tongue into her mouth. Snakehead knew nothing of this. She caught a further look of disapproval from Snakehead before he turned away, lifting up a megaphone, shouting instructions to the students.
‘You know the drill. If you are caught in the middle of anything, whether it’s police batons or tear gas, cover your eyes and your ears, put your head in your hands. Do not split up. If you’re forced to spread out, regroup quickly – the pickets will do their best to hold you together.’
In an area beside the bus depot, wives of the striking men had set out food and were serving tea and noodle soup with the help of a continuous shift of Middle School students. The girls from the trucks trooped into the refreshment area, while the boys turned as one into the street, already shouting excitedly, waving clenched fists in the air. Snakehead continued yelling into the megaphone, his voice blaring out in a hollow way. Keep left. Move into the centre. Back up behind the group ahead. Greta tried to keep track of Moon but he had vanished into the mass of workers and hooligans, all intent on mayhem. Once, she had a brief glimpse of him, his face transfigured by a strange exultant expression before she lost sight of him again.
Men were picketing around the clock. Momentum had built up, from the first band of strikers squatting outside the bus depot’s gates defying the gangsters hired to move them, to the thousands who were now inflamed. Agitators yelled through loudspeakers day after day while mobs of fist-shaking workers were supported by fist-shaking students. The mood had grown progressively ugly.
In the open space before the food tables, the Middle School girls took up positions for dancing. The striking busmen, sucking at bowls of noodles or drinking tea, looked up expectantly. A few Middle School boys, not physically up to the rough atmosphere on the street, had remained with the contingent of girls and they now whipped out harmonicas. As the first tinny wheeze of notes was heard the dancers began, tripping one behind the other, waving thin red handkerchiefs in the rhythm of the yangko, the dance of the new People’s Republic of China. As they danced they sang to the resting strikers, some of whom knew their catchy songs and attempted to join in.
‘The years of the Japanese took its toll! But now we suffer more! After the Japanese dogs have gone, the Imperialist monkeys returned.’
As each verse of the song ended, the audience cheered and clapped. The harmonicas rose and fell along the peaks and valleys of gusty melody. Greta held on to the waist of the girl in front, angled her head and kicked out her heels as they twirled about, waving their red scarves.
At the end of the dance they were panting and laughing, sweat streaming off their faces. Finishing their tea and noodles, the strikers returned to the more pressing business of the road. The afternoon was fading fast, darkness already casting its net over the sky. Now that the music had stopped, the sound of the strike grew louder. Shouts and yelled orders from megaphones and the rush of police water hoses upon the rioters were more clearly heard. Greta could think only of Moon, and the exultant look she had seen on his face as he turned away from her.
It was nearly dark and the lights of the bus depot were on, shining into the road. Greta left the other students who were busy taking refreshments themselves and, keeping close to the wall, made her way towards the depot. Climbing on to a low plinth and clinging to a drainpipe for support, she had a better view of the road beyond. In the dying light the mass of agitating men packed into the narrow street appeared like an army of ants swarming about an anthill. A crescendo of renewed shouting was heard and then the abrasive odour of tear gas drifted to her, her eyes began to water. Unable to hold on to the drainpipe, coughing and gasping with the fumes of gas, she half fell, half jumped back into the road. Behind her at the refreshment stalls, she heard the harmonicas begin again in a rush of hoarse notes as the dancing re-started. In the distance there was the baying of men’s voices, the wail of police cars and the thud of hurled rocks and stones.
The odour of gas still stung in her nose and in the growing darkness she could see nothing of Moon or Snakehead or any of the boys from the picnic. The lights shone out, revealing passing groups of rioters, their faces distorted by anger and the same transcendent expression she had seen on Moon’s face, as if he were freed into an unknown part of himself. Besides the strikers and the students, there were Secret Society gangsters elbowing in on the action, gangs of rough men carrying shovels and hoes and iron piping. There was a sudden great flare in the darkness as a car was set on fire, and she caught a glimpse of water jets arching over the flames and the crowd. Riot police, lined up in battalions, basket shields before them, were pushing forward into the jeering throng; a group of Gurkhas rushed past her with guns. Soon, above the noise, she heard the crack of shots ring out.
It seemed she waited for ever before, at last, she saw him. He came towards her borne aloft on the shoulders of others, slipping and sliding on a bed of hands. At first she thought there was some cause for jubilation, that he was carried victoriously, just as she had seen pictures of politicians riding aloft upon the shoulders of supporters, their faces split by a smile. But Moon was stretched out unmoving as if asleep on the bed of hands and she caught her breath, knowing suddenly that something was wrong. A long procession of excited strikers followed Moon. She grew desperate then and ran out into the crowd, trying to force her way through to him. The men jogged on ignoring her, chanting hackneyed slogans, moving like a many-legged centipede carrying Moon on its back, triumphantly parading him through the streets, as if he was a hero. Greta began to cry, fighting her way into the mass of men, reaching up to grip Moon’s hand as it hung limply down over the shoulders of his pall-bearers, screaming his name. He turned his head weakly and she sobbed with relief that he was not dead. Then, as he passed under a street light, she saw blood leaking from his chest.
Clinging to Moon’s dangling arm, she was pulled along beside him. She saw then that, from everywhere, men stepped forward as Moon passed to join the cortège, all chanting the same refrain. Victory. Victory. Death to Imperialists. The words drummed in her ears, and still she held on, feeling the pull of his fingers intertwined with her own as he was jolted forward. At last, even that slight pressure was gone. His hand became limp and his fingers slipped from her, and she was forced to step back. The procession continued up the road until Moon was lost from sight, his dying already of greater use to the mob than his life.
Rose Burns had chosen the day of the Hock Lee bus riots to visit Cousin Lionel’s new home off Alexander Road. He had had to move from the sandy estate by the sea as a wealthy man had purchased it, and was building new houses upon it. The strike had been in place for weeks, causing buses to be infrequent and frazzling nerves; people returned home late for dinner and were late the next morning for work. The strikers themselves elicited little sympathy from the public. Taxis were hard pressed to cope with the need for transport and old trishaws, discarded and rusting for years in garages, were resurrected again for service.
It was in one of these battered trishaws that Rose was attempting to locate Cousin Lionel’s new home. She had been unable to find a proper taxi; time had been getting on and the decrepit trishaw had come pedalling past Belvedere, moving at no more than five miles an hour. Stuffing protruded from a rip in the passenger seat and the driver gave off a strong acrid odour that only faded as they drove along and a breeze blew across the vehicle.
The man was an Indian in a blue checked shirt over a worn striped dhoti. He bent forward, pedalling hard and breathing hard, staring fixedly ahead. He had advised Rose to take a wide detour around the Hock Lee bus depot, but as they progressed she began to fear he was taking an unnecessarily roundabout route and would charge an exorbitant fare. She was already an hour late, and there was still some distance to go.
‘That road looks quiet enough. It will lead us in the right direction, clear of the bus depot and save us precious time.’ She pointed out a road she was sure would take them directly to Lionel’s new address.
The man seemed about to argue, but then nodded and turned the trishaw as Rose directed. A few tumbledown houses stood on small allotments growing bok choi, Chinese cabbage and aubergine. There was a strong smell of human manure. A mangy bitch with a brood of puppies lay in the middle of the road, and rose lazily as the trishaw driver tooted his ancient horn. The sun shone its last mellow rays and darkness was hovering at the edge of the sky; the sound of the rioters’ shouting was far away. A fish farm bordered the road, and Rose saw a carp jump clear of the water, a mercurial flash in the setting sun. Then, unexpectedly, a small car appeared around a bend, with a band of angry men running behind it. The car was forced to slow down to avoid colliding with the trishaw and the men, who were stragglers cut off from the main crowd of rioters at Hock Lee, surged forward with a shout. Rose’s heart flew into her throat and thudded in her ears.
‘Turn back!’ she shouted to the trishaw driver.
The whites of the driver’s eyes grew so round they reminded her of boiled eggs, his breath came quickly, and he released a loud sulphurous trumpet of air from beneath his soiled dhoti. He began pedalling backwards as fast as he could, pulling into the side of the road to allow the car to pass. The vehicle sped by at breakneck speed. In alarm, the trishaw driver pedalled further on to the verge, wedging his contraption precariously over a ditch of filthy water. The car swerved dangerously and with a screech of brakes veered off the bumpy road into a bank of weeds and came to a sudden stop.
The strikers, rough men who looked more like hooligans than bus drivers, although what the difference might be Rose was not sure, ran past the trishaw in pursuit of the car. Swinging sharp-edged hoes and spades, they filled the road. The trishaw rider gave a terrified scream and jumped off his vehicle, his dhoti pulled loose from his waist to reveal a pair of green boxer shorts. Clutching the yards of unravelling cloth, he vaulted over a fence bordering the fish farm, and ran off beside a pond.
The stalled car had now been overpowered and two struggling men were pulled out. One managed to escape his attackers, jumped into the ditch and sprinted towards the trishaw. The other went down, lost beneath the mob. Rose saw the picks and hoes rise and fall upon the victim, who was mercifully hidden from her sight. She sat frozen with fear in the trishaw, clutching her handbag to her breast. The man in the ditch laboured towards her, a well-dressed Chinese in his early forties, wearing an open-necked shirt and a trilby hat in a pale shade of grey. A brown snakeskin belt encircled his waist, a gold watch moved loosely on his wrist. Rose glimpsed his desperate eyes and crooked teeth. He came level with the trishaw and it rocked dangerously as, reaching up, he tried to grip the handlebar and pull himself out of the ditch. She had time only to notice the mud on his trousers and the fearful roll of his eyes beneath the brim of his hat before the strikers were upon him. A crowd of angry men now splashed about in the muddy dyke below her, their yells beating the air like a gong.
Stop, she wanted to scream. Stop! Instead, as she watched, the man was pushed into the filthy water and the hat was knocked off his head. The picks and hoes with which the men were armed flailed savagely about. Rose looked down helplessly from her precarious perch at the violence being done below her. One of the hoes came down on the man’s head and slipped to slice off his face. Rose stared in horror as his wild eyes pleaded with her for help. Then a hatchet was lifted to finish the job, and the victim fell to his knees. The strikers drew back and suddenly quietened, seeing their work was done. In the lull a small splash was heard as a fish jumped again in the pond. A dog barked and a koel called with sudden urgency, over and over again.
Mumbling sociably now amongst themselves, the strikers climbed out of the ditch. One peered into the trishaw at Rose, and nodded apologetically. Then they were gone; the distant rioting at the Hock Lee depot claiming them once again.
Rose began to shiver, her teeth chattering unstoppably. She stared at the dead man lying face down in the water that was now red with his blood. Trapped in the weeds beside him was the dove grey trilby hat. Rose remembered the long-ago riot at Kreta Ayer. She remembered the Chief Inspector’s bloodied sun helmet, rolling in the road. She gave a loud sob as the crushing pain of angina swept through her, and bent forward on the seat. The trishaw, unsettled by the movement, tipped slowly forward, rolling over the edge of the bank into the ditch and throwing Rose into the mud beside the dead Chinese.
Howard left the car some distance away and walked towards the sound of shouting. The odour of tear gas floated to him and his eyes begun to sting. He had told Mei Lan to stay in the car, but found she was beside him, as she gripped his arm.
‘This is no place for a woman,’ he told her savagely, wishing he had never agreed to her accompanying him.
‘It’s just as dangerous to leave me alone there,’ she answered, cupping her hand over her mouth against the fumes of gas as he steered her along beside him.
The dark road was potholed and uneven, street lamps were infrequent. A stray dog slunk past as they emerged from the alley and saw the crowd. Flames spurted up ahead of them, illuminating the confusion.
‘A car has been set on fire,’ Howard said, gripping Mei Lan as they approached the scene. The vehicle lay on its side, wheels in the air, acrid black smoke belching from it. A driver struggled out and was set upon by the rioters. In the light of the fire students were seen running wildly about, identifiable by their white uniforms, throwing stones or bottles at the police. The road was wet, full of muddy puddles; hoses trained on the flaming car could not control the conflagration. Choking fumes blew everywhere, and the road was strewn with glass.
Following the directions of a policeman, they eventually found the bus depot where they were told some girl students had earlier been seen. It was quieter here; ambulances were parked in this area and wounded police were being attended to.
‘There are no girls here now, they’ve all gone home,’ an ambulance man told them as he bandaged the arm of an exhausted policeman.
They made their way back in the direction of their car keeping to the shadows, skirting the fiery mayhem. Mei Lan clung silently to Howard’s hand, her fingers stiff with fear. They drove for what seemed hours searching for Lionel’s new address, but at last they found it.
‘We waited for Rose but she did not come,’ Lionel said, annoyed at having been woken from sleep just after he had gone to bed. Beside him, Ava anxiously clutched a faded housecoat about her breast.
On the way back they stopped at a police station. There a Malay officer, half asleep, was disinclined to take down details.
‘Everyone here has been drafted to Alexander Road. Even though it is midnight, the rioters are still going strong. Maybe your mother and the young girl are already at home.’
When at last Howard stopped the car before Bougainvillaea House, Mei Lan was half asleep on the seat beside him, her head thrown back, her eyes shut, her hands linked together in her lap. He stared at her for some time, wondering at her struggle in the black ocean of sleep. He wondered about the world she found there, the secret rooms she entered filled with hungry ghosts. She had told him little of her experiences, and he asked no questions even after all this time. He woke her gently and watched her surface to see his face above her, before he took her in his arms. For some time she lay quietly against him and he brushed the taut skin of her cheek with his lips and cursed the violence that seemed to circumscribe their lives without end. He remembered the crumbling shack near Lionel’s house, the heavy voluptuousness of it all, and in the distance the sound of the waves folding and unfolding. It seemed to him now that the expectation of love might hold only sorrow for them both.
Only afterwards, as he parked the car and entered Belvedere’s garden, did he realise with a pang of horror that in those few moments he had forgotten about his mother. The lights were on in Belvedere and he found Rose in bed, her hair damp, her face flushed and pinched, with Cynthia hovering beside her.
‘She may have had a mild heart attack. She saw a man killed right in front of her. The police brought her home. The doctor has been to see her.’
‘Will she be all right?’ Howard asked, stricken with guilt.
‘She needs to sleep now. It has been a terrible shock,’ Cynthia replied as calmly as she could, although he saw the anxiety in her face.
Alerted by the fleeing trishaw driver, the owners of the fish farm had found Rose in the ditch pinned beneath the fallen vehicle, with a dead man beside her. She had been carried to the farmer’s shack and eventually the police had come and driven her home.