FROM THE MORNING IT had been overcast and the weather was on the rise, a hood of dark cloud advancing across the sky. It was hoped by everyone that it would not rain at the rally. Walking along the side of Kallang airfield Howard saw that already an enormous crowd had gathered, although it was not yet three o’clock. There was a holiday atmosphere, a few women and even some children could be seen, as if the occasion was a family outing; people carried umbrellas and looked anxiously at the sky. Ice-cream vendors pedalled about on bicycles calling out their wares, lifting the lid of iceboxes to produce mounded strawberry cones. Hawkers of noodles, tea and glutinous rice cakes were everywhere. A large audience surrounded a man with a troupe of performing monkeys in blue jackets with gold epaulettes. A van selling soft drinks and shaved ice frappé did a brisk business, as did a seller of home-made lemonade with a pushcart of earthen-ware jars. Mei Lan had insisted she would meet him at the rally, but surveying the growing crowd Howard was uncertain that this was the right decision, but he had no way now of getting in touch with her.
As he stepped on to the field the excitement of the crowd surrounded him. Lightning flashed suddenly across the sky, followed by a distant roll of thunder. He looked up at the darkening clouds and then towards the stage, where sound engineers were busy setting up microphones, and was surprised to see that a flimsy wayang platform had been erected for the meeting. He had expected a more substantial construction since Marshall was so intent on impressing the visiting British MPs who had been invited to witness the rally. None of the arrangements were Howard’s responsibility but he thought it a pity not to have a structure with more panache, or at least the pomp of bunting.
Howard made his way to the lemonade cart and bought a heavily sugared drink. Near the cart, a group of young men were unfurling a massive banner, having carried the long supporting poles to the field on their shoulders. He stood beside them, sipping his drink, watching with interest as the banner was unrolled to reveal a crude drawing of a barbed wire fence and a hand uprooting a withered tree. Kami Mahu Merdeka. We Want Merdeka was written across it in both English and Malay. Nearby, another huge banner had been unfurled depicting men of the three Singapore races, Indian, Chinese and Malay, in a clenched-fist salute beneath the logo of the People’s Action Party. Written upon it was that one word: Merdeka. Merdeka read another banner being launched into the air on a phalanx of bright balloons. Merdeka. Merdeka. Everywhere Howard looked the word was scrawled again and again. Marshall would be pleased, he thought.
The rally was the culmination of what Marshall called Merdeka Week. Since his first day in office the Chief Minister had hammered away at the things he considered important; a new constitution to give the colony immediate independence and the long-desired merger with the Federation of Malaya without which, economically and politically, Singapore could not survive. Soon after the rally, Marshall planned to take an all-party delegation to London to pressure the British Government to consider the issue of Singapore’s independence.
‘It must be an all-party delegation because this is no longer the game of politics so much as the business of birthing a nation,’ Marshall insisted.
As a preliminary to this visit, an ebullient Chief Minister had invited a parliamentary delegation of six British Members of Parliament to witness first hand the Singapore people’s wish for freedom. The Merdeka rally had been arranged to showcase the nation’s feelings. Howard made his way through the thickening crowd towards the airport building and the stage beyond it, from where the rally would be addressed. Flags of the Federation of Malaya and various political parties hung limply from rickety poles, with no breeze to give them life. Police were in evidence everywhere, their black berets and khaki uniforms dotted amongst the crowd. The days leading up to this meeting had been fuelled by building emotion. During a hectic week, a petition of 167,259 signatures had been obtained demanding Independence. The petition was leather bound, for presentation to the British parliament, and Marshall hoped to return from England with the writ of freedom in his hand.
A cordon of police held back the excited crowd as Howard climbed the steps on to the stage. There appeared to be trouble with the sound system. ‘It will soon be fixed,’ the engineer promised as Howard strode forward to investigate. One of the organising team hurried to tell him it was estimated that a crowd of twenty thousand already covered the great expanse of the airfield.
The rows of chairs on the stage were filling up as VIPs began to arrive. As their cars drew up one after another, the waiting spectators surged forward against the barricade to see who was alighting from the vehicles. Howard searched anxiously amongst the arrivals for Mei Lan. Raj arrived in his new car and looked apprehensively at the rowdy spectators as he made his way up the few rickety steps to the stage. Seeing Howard, he gave a wave and walked towards him. He wore his usual white cotton suit and panama hat.
‘I was not expecting so many people. This is a typical Marshall idea, always wanting drama and attention.’ Raj frowned disapprovingly. Then Mei Lan’s car drew up and Howard hurried forward to help her out. She looked anxiously at the platform rearing above her. They found chairs together at one side of the stage beside Raj.
‘Lots of troublemakers here today; communists and gangsters and the unions are out in full force,’ Raj observed, fiddling with the strap of his new gold watch, which had been a wedding present from Yoshiko. After Krishna’s assassination he had not waited the customary length of time required following a family death, before marrying Yoshiko. He had scaled down the wedding to a simple civil ceremony and a small reception afterwards at a hotel, but Leila had not been pleased and for a while refused to speak to Yoshiko. Raj, with his bride, had moved into the newly built Cluny Road house but Leila stayed on at Waterloo Street, drowning both her grief at Krishna’s death, and her grief at her brother’s marriage, in a further expansion of Manikam’s.
Another deep crack of thunder rumbled through the sky. The crowd, dense and restless, was beginning to feed off its own energy. Already it was nearly four o’clock and so far the rain had held off. Mei Lan wished she had not insisted on coming; women were few and far between. All she saw was a sea of restless men. The constant chant of slogans blew on the wind across the field. Howard had tried to discourage her, but since Ah Siew’s death she found herself seeking ways to demonstrate commitment to him.
‘Too much tension now rising. More delays are no good,’ Raj commented, looking again at his watch.
‘Mr Marshall is late because the police have tightened security. He did not get clearance to set off for the rally, but just now he is arriving at the edge of the field,’ Howard was told when he enquired about the delay.
David Marshall had chosen an open-roofed car to arrive in, and as police cleared a way for it through the crush of people he stood up triumphantly to acknowledge the constant shouts of Merdeka, jubilant at the turnout.
‘Where are the British MPs? Everything is running so late,’ Raj grumbled again, watching Marshall’s slow progress. He had bought machinery for his new factory extension from a British businessman who was one of the MPs’ delegation, and was pleased at the unexpected opportunity to personally consolidate the connection.
The stage was full of local dignitaries. Behind a cordon of police the crowd below swarmed about the structure, threatening at moments to break through. Perched above the multitude, the flimsy platform trembled with every vibration and Mei Lan had the feeling she was floating on a raft in the midst of a wild sea. The field was lost beneath the throng for as far as she could see. A few drops of rain spat down upon them and the black hoods of umbrellas appeared, and then shut again as the rain did not materialise. Carried aloft on a bank of red balloons a streamer with the one word, Merdeka, floated against the thunderous sky, tethered to earth by a slender thread. White banners stuck up everywhere, draped like bunting over the crowd, all proclaiming Merdeka. Death to colonialism. End colonialism NOW.
The lawyer, Lee Kuan Yew, and the union leader, Lim Chin Siong, stood in the back of a loudspeaker truck with the banner of the People’s Action Party, shouting PAP rhetoric to the crowd through a megaphone. Some distance away another huge banner picturing Picasso’s Peace Dove, now an emblem of the communist party, was hoisted above the crowd. Near the stage a large group of Chinese Middle School children were assembling to sing their communist songs and dance the yenko. As they started off, tripping and turning to the wheeze of accordions and harmonicas, people rushed to watch. The dancers’ red scarves waved against a sky that frowned ever more blackly upon them. The lively music, mixed with the PAP’s loud haranguing, was buffeted about the field. In the midst of this cacophony sound technicians conferred anxiously on the stage, tapping the silent, faulty microphones for a reaction and twiddling the knobs on equipment, trying to coax the machines into life. At last an echo of sound was heard, and the engineers fell back in relief.
Finally the Chief Minister’s car arrived and he alighted, clasping his hands yet again in victory, his face ablaze with triumph. Police escorted him as he climbed briskly up the steps and on to the stage, striding towards the microphone to greet the waiting crowd. Head thrown back, his famous eyebrows, so thick they seemed almost to precede him, arched up as his voice boomed out.
‘Merdeka.’ The word left his lips in a trumpet of sound, projected to the far corners of the field. He raised his arm to punch the air. Merdeka, the crowd replied, the roar bursting from them like the release of a pent-up river.
The Chief Minister began his speech: his lips moved but no sound carried to the waiting crowd. The microphone refused to function again, and technicians darted forward. Below the stage the crowd, effervescing with excitement, saw the hitch as an open door. No longer willing to be contained, they charged suddenly forward, overwhelming the police and surging on to the flimsy platform. They flooded up the steps to surround the Chief Minister, raising jubilant fists, shouting Merdeka in his face.
The Chief Minister’s smile died as the stage trembled and swayed beneath the deluge. He tottered unsteadily and reached out for support. With a shudder and a loud creak of breaking wood, the dais collapsed, its supports buckling beneath the impossible weight, tipping everyone forward. Those watching from afar saw the stage disappear, like a great ship sinking from view beneath the ocean. The Chief Minister too vanished from sight, as the stage folded upon itself. VIPs, pressmen and volunteer ushers slid helplessly across the platform and came to rest one upon another in an undignified muddle. Howard was thrown to the ground with Mei Lan, Raj tumbling beside them.
‘I’m all right,’ Mei Lan told Howard as he scrambled up and turned to pull her to her feet. No one seemed to be hurt, although the stage was dangerously lopsided. The Chief Minister was also getting to his feet, reaching again for a microphone to calm the crowd. The machine still refused to work, and all that could be seen by spectators was Marshall once more soundlessly mouthing his words. Instead, in the distance, from the People’s Action Party loudspeaker, came the voice of the lawyer Lee, calling for order. His voice rang out authoritatively and the crowd drew back, obedient. Then, once more, shouts of Merdeka were heard.
Eventually, it was decided to move everyone from the collapsed rostrum to the main airport terminal. Escorted by police, Marshall led the way, walking the short distance to the new location with all the occupants of the stage trailing behind him. Thousands followed in their wake, the excited crowd shifting its focus from the wrecked stage to the airport building. The Chief Minister and his party entered and proceeded upstairs to the first floor, and then out on to a large balcony where Marshall stood high above the crowd, his arms raised in triumph again. Holding Mei Lan by the hand, Howard accompanied the rest of the evacuees from the beleaguered stage. He wished there was a way to send Mei Lan home, but they were swept along by events and the massive crowd.
The terminal building had the streamlined appearance of a ship, with long balconies running around each floor. Above the main entrance, a semicircular gallery protruded from the building like the prow of a boat. Howard and Mei Lan followed Raj to the rail, and together they looked down on the multitude of white shirts, white banners and dark heads stretching endlessly out below them. Mei Lan stepped back in fear. It seemed she stood again upon the deck of that gaudy junk and the sea below her, although now of a vastly different kind, appeared just as voracious as the one that had taken Ah Siew. It seethed restlessly, and in her mind she saw again the churning marble in the wake of the ship and Ah Siew tossed about within it. The roar of the crowd rose up, restive and impatient. Beside her Howard stared at the mob.
‘Where did such a sudden swell of political consciousness come from? How did they tuck so much passion away for so long?’ he wondered, pulling Mei Lan back to a less exposed vantage point.
At last the British parliamentary delegation arrived, and was escorted up through the terminal building to where Marshall waited for them on the open balcony. At this elevation the frightening density of the assemblage below was clear. The British visitors peered down, assessing the crowd with visible apprehension. Earlier Marshall had assured the politicians there was no need to fear but now, like everyone else, he too was filled with uncertainty.
Over a now impeccable sound system, the Chief Minister introduced the British parliamentarians to the waiting crowd. One by one, they stepped forward to the edge of the balcony to be acknowledged by the cheering mob. After exactly fifteen minutes, anxious that there be no incidents, the Chief Minister suggested discreetly to the visitors that they now leave, and this they did with alacrity. Escorted back to their cars, they departed as they had come and Marshall saw them go with visible relief.
The Chief Minister then stepped up to the microphone to give at last the great speech he had prepared for the rally, about a car with two steering wheels. Mr Boss was as ever driving the colony with a master switch, Marshall said, while the junior driver, the local people of Singapore, sat obediently at his side.
‘What kind of a crazy future can this crazy contraption lead to? We want control of our own government,’ Marshall shouted into a microphone as he leaned against the balcony railing, his words now undulating over the field in just the manner he had anticipated. The crowd responded with further cries of Merdeka, drunk now upon the word. A streak of lightning lit the sky and in a moment thunder crashed, sharp as the crack of a gun.
Howard and Mei Lan stood to one side of the congested balcony. They had only a partial view of Marshall, whose voice rose powerfully with operatic control, accompanied by sweeping gestures and blazing eyes. This prima donna performance no longer impressed Howard in quite the way it had previously done. In office, Marshall appeared to him to have become histrionic and displayed political naivety, even if his courtroom tactics and rabid eye for opportunity sometimes carried the day. Howard could not put his finger on what was wrong, but he was disillusioned. For all Marshall’s love of the limelight he was not adept at treading the corridors of power. Disdaining compromise, wearing his heart on his sleeve, he was impetuous, impatient and quick tempered. Thunder cracked loudly again, drowning Marshall’s words for a moment before the rain began to drizzle.
‘People are already saying that the collapse of stage and failure of the microphones is the dirty work of communists in the People’s Action Party, intent on disrupting the rally.’ Raj leaned forward behind Howard to murmur into his ear.
‘It is going to rain heavily – they should end the meeting,’ Howard said, looking down on the overheated crowd. Here and there he could see that scuffles had already broken out with police.
There was only one entrance on to the balcony and they moved forward, ready to follow Marshall from the building. Before the Chief Minister could leave, a group of People’s Action Party members spilt through it, amongst them Lee and Lim Chin Siong. Lee pushed his way straight to Marshall and demanded to address the crowd. Marshall frowned, his shaggy eyebrows drawing together in a thick and disapproving line.
‘The meeting is over. Everyone is now going home. You have already said your piece earlier over the loudspeakers on your truck,’ Marshall told Lee curtly. Even as he spoke police were clearing a way. They ushered the Chief Minister through the door, down the stairs and out of the building, where he was driven away in his car. At Marshall’s exit a further large group of People’s Action Party members crowded out on to the balcony, preventing Mei Lan, Howard and Raj from following Marshall. From the field below loud roars were continuously heard. In spite of the rain now coming down, the crowd appeared in no mood to go home.
Lee Kuan Yew had now taken the microphone and was angrily chastising the crowd, anxious to refute the rumours circulating about the broken stage. ‘There are devils here today who have tried to spoil this rally. They are the ones who put the microphone out of order and collapsed the stage,’ Lee shouted, furious at the accusations that were being flung at his party. Cheers and shouts erupted from the crowd as he spoke.
After a few minutes Lim Chin Siong, waiting impatiently beside the lawyer, began to argue with Lee who at last, reluctantly, gave him the microphone. The pulse of the crowd seemed to quicken as Lim stepped forward. Wild cheers were heard as the union leader’s voice flowed out across the field. Lim was a small man, but his personality grew large with oratory and his rhetoric soon had the crowd dangerously effervescent. As he finished speaking, he held up his hand in a gesture of forbearance and his tone dropped to that of a stern schoolteacher.
‘It is time to go home. When you leave this place, keep calm. Don’t beat up the police,’ Lim ordered, stepping back from the balcony rail. The crowd, now aroused, were unwilling to disband as advised; banners were tossed into the air and Merdeka was yelled with increasing abandon. The wildness was growing, infectious.
‘I have to stop this meeting turning into a bloody riot,’ Lee said, suddenly sounding anxious.
‘They always like singing patriotic songs; if they sing they’ll calm down,’ someone suggested.
Soon, a honey-throated volunteer was found who began to sing, ‘We love Malaya’, and then ‘Unity is Strength’ over a loudspeaker. The shouting lessened and with a low growl the crowd joined in, the sound gathering in momentum for some moments before a loud retort of thunder brought the rain pouring down. Abruptly, the singing stopped and on the open balcony everyone rushed for the stairs. Howard took hold of Mei Lan’s hand and pulled her along beside him. On the field, umbrellas went up in the crowd, and those without them sheltered beneath bedraggled banners or stoically stood their ground drenched, but still loudly demanding more speeches from their leaders.
It took some time for the many occupants of the balcony to negotiate their way to the ground floor. Outside, angry shouts were heard as the crowd, in spite of the downpour, still called out raucously. Crammed together in the stairwell, the occupants of the balcony were forced to move slowly, shuffling one behind the other, sweating in the close atmosphere. Rain drummed on the many windows about them as shouts from outside reverberated with a new level of anger. Howard turned to look through a window, and saw with alarm that police cordons had been broken. Instinctively he drew Mei Lan closer. The mob was now pressing in on the terminal building. Groups of police were trying to control the riot without success, and under a vicious barrage of missiles were forced helplessly back. The locked and metal-barred doors of the terminal were rattled and kicked from outside. The first of the balcony’s occupants had reached the ground floor. Confronted with the mob waiting outside, faces pressed up against the glass, they were hesitant to proceed any further.
Unexpectedly, a brick was hurled at a ground floor window. It crashed through: splintering glass flew everywhere. There were startled shouts as another brick followed the first, and then another. On the stairs everyone turned and began to push their way back to the second floor against the flow of people descending from above. The mob outside watched their terror with accompanying jeers. Howard, with Mei Lan and Raj, was pushed against the metal banisters by the weight of people trying to return upstairs.
‘Don’t look out of the windows. If they see you looking there’ll be more trouble,’ someone shouted.
‘Clear the building!’ An order was yelled as a side door was opened and ringed with police.
To the baying of demonstrators and in danger of further flying missiles, the captives began to make their way down the stairs, arms over their heads for protection. One by one they reached the ground floor and disappeared along a corridor towards where police were successfully holding off the rioters. At the main entrance the mob were now making efforts to force the bolts with a crowbar. To protect Mei Lan, Howard had hung back but found they were amongst the last people descending the stairs.
The chaos outside was frighteningly clear, the mob out of control and locked viciously with police. A truck with crates of aerated water had been stopped, and the bottles commandeered as missiles. A St John’s ambulance was stoned while the injured were being treated inside. Glass was everywhere. The lemonade man had been attacked and his earthenware jars lay smashed, pools of yellow liquid spilling over the ground. Police tried uselessly to shield themselves from the constant pitching of bottles with their waterproof capes. The rain had begun again and pelted down on the muddy pitch. People slipped and fell. The man with the monkeys in blue jackets ran for his life, the creatures screaming and chattering, pulling on their chains.
As Howard and Mei Lan reached the ground floor Raj, breathing heavily behind them, suddenly stumbled and clung to the stair rail. At that moment another brick was hurled in through the smashed windows. Hitting Raj on the temple, it knocked him sideways. Howard turned in alarm to see blood gushing from Raj’s head. Outside, the police had withdrawn again, giving up all attempts to control the mob. As Howard pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and gave it to Raj to staunch his wound, the locked doors below were suddenly forced and the rioters swarmed into the building.
Pulling the wounded Raj to his feet, Howard pushed him back up the stairs with Mei Lan. At the top they sprinted along the upstairs corridor, Raj huffing and puffing behind. At the end was a fire exit and beyond it a stair that led to a flat roof below the control tower. The sound of shouts and running feet could already be heard behind them.
‘Here,’ Howard ordered, pulling first Mei Lan and then Raj with him through the door, bolting it shut behind him. On the open terrace, the rain spat down upon them. Unused to such exertion, Raj panted heavily, sinking down against a water tank. The handkerchief he held to his head was wet with blood, the collar of his white suit stained a frightening crimson. They heard shouts and then a pounding on the door for some moments before the rioters lost interest and ran on.
‘Keep down low,’ Howard instructed as he crawled to the edge of the parapet to view the field below. The mayhem continued as the rain eased again.
‘What do we do now?’ Mei Lan asked nervously.
‘We wait. Eventually it will be over, even if it takes until morning,’ Howard surmised, trying unsuccessfully to find shelter from the drizzle for Mei Lan. His wet clothes stuck to him uncomfortably.
‘How did you get through the war, trapped in the jungle with those vicious communists?’ Raj mumbled in a low, aggrieved voice, listening to the wild shouts still coming up from below.
‘They tried to execute me once. When you come back from death, life looks different. Things change you,’ said Howard, and Raj nodded agreement.
‘Krishna’s death changed me. He saved my life in a different way and I repaid him poorly.’ Raj spoke quietly without his usual bombast, pressing the bloody handkerchief to his head, his plump face solemn. He remembered the dying Krishna staring up at him as he lay on Raj’s doorstep, and knew he must live for ever with the knowledge that he had cruelly dismissed the one man he could call a brother. In that moment he had seen the full gamut of his own arrogance, and was chastened and ashamed. He found it was like this all the time now: images from the past kept returning to him to be viewed from discomforting angles. He remembered again the scent of the garland maker’s jasmine where Krishna used to sit with his writing board and it seemed to encompass an innocent time, before learning gave him opportunity and changed the direction of his life. So many doors had opened to him and always, as he passed through one, another appeared. Yet he wondered if his determination to prosper had robbed him of sensitivities others understood more easily.
‘Death is death, but sometimes it allows those of us that are left behind to make a new beginning,’ Raj murmured almost to himself, continuing to press the bloody handkerchief to his temple.
Howard put an arm about Mei Lan and drew her close, feeling the warmth of their wet bodies pressed together. Mei Lan was silent, staring at the suffering Raj, whose strange mumbled words resonated with her. She remembered the gaudy Chinese junk that had taken Ah Siew home in style, and how she had flown like a bird above the water. Time and time again in her life, she saw that death had released her for existence to claim her.
Howard’s arm grew tighter about her. ‘Marry me,’ he whispered in her ear, too low for Raj to hear.
‘We’re not the people we were,’ she replied, her head against his shoulder.
‘Burned forests regenerate,’ he told her quietly. In answer she nodded and he gripped her tighter.
At last it grew quieter on the field below; the shouting lessened. Crawling to the edge of the roof once more Howard saw that additional ambulances were arriving, and that police reinforcements had already chased the crowd away from the terminal building, back on to the muddy airport field. The rain had stopped. Howard stood up and for a moment felt he balanced on a mountaintop, the panorama of the field stretching away beneath him in a vast plain. After a day of rain the grey sky was suddenly cracking open in runnels of molten light. A cool breeze brushed his face, and was gone. At last the field was reluctantly clearing and the mob near the airport building, deterred by the increase of riot police, had begun to disperse.
In exactly a month Howard would accompany Marshall’s All-Party delegation to London to make a plea to the British parliament for independence. After the chaotic fiasco of the day, unfortunately witnessed by the British MPs, it seemed unlikely such a wish would now be granted. As he looked out over the field of dispersing men he thought of Marshall’s genial, impetuous face, his reluctance to take stern measures of control, his passionate belief in the rights of the individual and the underdog, and knew his fire was not the caustic flame needed to burn a way to freedom. The twenty thousand who had earlier filled the field had not come there for David Marshall; they were there to support the union leader Lim Chin Siong and Lee, the union’s astute and calculating lawyer, men whose life centred ruthlessly only on politics. Marshall had stood at the failing microphone, his mouth had moved but no words were heard across the field, then the stage had collapsed beneath him. As he sank from sight it was Lee Kuan Yew who had taken the megaphone, called firmly for order and been obeyed. The image was there in Howard’s mind and would not go away. He wondered if perhaps the mayhem at this riot, and that of so many others behind it, was not the mindless chaos it appeared but the early stages of a long and painful labour that would give birth to a world no one could as yet foresee.
At last the sun was thrusting out fingers of brilliance through the grey clouds. Howard raised his eyes and saw, high above, a bank of red balloons drifting against the endless arc of the sky. The huge banner they carried still hung intact beneath, still carrying that one solitary word for all to see: Merdeka. The balloons had broken free of the thread that held them tethered to the ground, and now floated independently, soaring higher and higher on currents of air. Howard saw that below him police were entering the building and soon voices were heard on the second floor.
‘Up here,’ Howard shouted, unbolting the door and helping the injured Raj to his feet as police burst on to the roof.
Keeping an arm about Mei Lan, he guided her back into the building and down the stairs. As they came out of the terminal, Raj was directed to an ambulance where a nurse waited with first aid. The field was emptying fast. Howard stopped, his arm still about Mei Lan, and looked up again at the sky. The huge bunch of balloons was now at a great height, the word Merdeka on its white banner still clearly discernible as it drifted away into a different sky.