In the Mouth of the Tiger (20 page)

I decided that it was lovely to see them together. They could make a perfect, complementary couple.

I walked across to them, still holding my drink, and stood before them smiling warmly. ‘A secret assignation?' I asked, trying to sound sly.

You would have thought that I had dropped a hand-grenade on the table. They sprang apart, Eugene knocking over his drink in clumsy haste and Tanya flaring a blush that turned her face quite red.

‘What's wrong?' I asked, completely at sea.

Tanya recovered quickest. ‘Nona, please don't tell your mother that you saw us here today,' she begged. ‘We were supposed to go to the Turf Club with her this afternoon. It would break Julia's heart if she found out we had ditched her to be together. But Eugene and I really had to talk. Nona, can we talk about this later? Not now?'

‘Of course,' I said. ‘And of course I won't tell Mother.'

Eugene had regained his sangfroid, and stood up to greet me with a
formal lift of his hat. ‘We would be awfully grateful if you could keep our meeting quiet,' he said. ‘It is nothing underhand, I assure you. To the contrary' – he shot a glance at Tanya – ‘we are discussing something important to us both, and quite delightful.'

‘Not now, Eugene,' Tanya interrupted. She looked at me pleadingly. ‘We'll talk later?'

Impulsively I grabbed her hand. ‘It's lovely to see you here together. I'm sure Mother wouldn't mind.'

But as I walked back to our table I knew that Mother would mind dreadfully. She had lost Robbie, Dr Macleod had walked out on her, her incipient campaign for Denis had been rudely interrupted by her own daughter. Now – if what my eyes told me was true – she was about to lose both Tanya and Eugene in a single blow.

A selfish thought struck me: if Tanya left Parry Drive, it was going to make it even more difficult for me to leave when the time came for me to join Denis.

I was preoccupied for the rest of the afternoon, enjoying the company and the conversation but principally focused on what Tanya was going to tell me. The look on both their faces as they had talked quietly to each other, heads almost touching, had been unmistakable.

I have to admit that the cricket again failed to engage my attention, except when Denis was centrally involved. Unfortunately he was out cheaply when he batted, and though I was told he bowled well, he didn't get any wickets. He was in a sombre mood when he joined us after the game, and seemed keen to get away.

‘You aren't at your normal sunny best,' I chided him gently when we drove out of the Club car park. ‘I didn't know you took your cricket so seriously.'

He grinned suddenly and ran his hand through his hair. ‘Oh, I take cricket very seriously indeed,' he said. ‘But it's not cricket that's on my mind. I had a chat with one of our fellows who's in the police force. Apparently, they intend to take this Srinivasan business rather seriously. There were papers on Rajeev that suggest he was one of a gang, so they're going to crack down on Tamils throughout Selangor in the next few days. It'll make it unpleasant for everybody concerned.'

I felt a twinge of guilt that I had temporarily put Rajeev out of my mind. ‘Is there anything we can do?' I asked.

Denis didn't answer my question directly. ‘I detest the way the police tend to get bees in their bonnet,' he said. ‘They lose all sense of proportion. There will be raids and arrests up and down the State, and a lot of poor innocent Tamils will be forced into the arms of the extremists on their own side. I'd do exactly the same if I were picked on, and I'm sure you would too. So the cycle will start all over again.'

‘Is there anything we can actually do?' I persisted.

This time Denis turned and gave me an odd look. ‘There probably is,' he said cryptically. ‘But let's not go into that just yet.'

We called on Mrs Srinivasan the next morning. Denis had been quite right and there were a lot of people at her home, a large, green-painted timber bungalow set in a well-kept compound.

Mrs Srinivasan was as impressive as her home, a tall, grey-haired woman with the features of a Roman matriarch. She met us at her front door, flanked by half a dozen venerable Tamils with cautious, unsmiling faces. I gave her the copy of Rajeev's letter, and she put on her glasses and studied it intently. There was the throbbing of drums from the back garden and somewhere in the house bells were tinkling.

Mrs Srinivasan took a good ten minutes to read the letter, her face impassive. When she had finished, she stood for a moment looking into my eyes. And then slowly, with infinite grace, she enveloped me in a gentle hug.

I don't know why, but I immediately burst into tears. We clung together, me sobbing like some silly schoolgirl while Mrs Srinivasan, the grieving mother, held me and patted my back as if comforting a child.

‘You were Rajeev's friend, so you and your friends are always welcome in my house,' she said, finally unclasping me and stepping back.

We were led through the darkened house to the verandah that ran across the back. It was crowded with people sitting on cane chairs or cross-legged on the floor, eating sweetmeats and talking, sipping tea, chewing betel-nut, even laughing. On the lawns below a group of gaily-dressed drummers were playing, using the palms of their hands to produce a low, throbbing, hypnotic beat. It didn't look or feel anything like a funeral and Denis read the question in my eyes. ‘It isn't a funeral,' he said. ‘Rajeev was cremated last Thursday, and this is the Tamil way of putting his death behind them. For Hindus, death is merely a stage in the circle of life, and today they are reminding themselves of that.'

There was another European amongst the dark faces on the verandah,
and he came over and shook Denis by the hand. ‘The Tiger of Selangor,' he said with a cheerful grin. ‘Read all about your seven wickets against Perak. Jolly good show.'

‘This is Nona,' Denis said. ‘Robbie's little girl. Darling, meet Pat Noone.'

The man smiled at me and gripped my hand. He was tall, with a handsome, sensitive face and expressive eyes. ‘I met your father only once or twice but we got on awfully well,' he said quietly. ‘He was interested in my work, and helped me a bit. I was sorry to hear that he had died.'

‘What is your work?' I asked.

Pat smiled. ‘If I really got going, I'd bend your ear all day,' he said. ‘Suffice to say I'm studying the original culture of Malaya. The ways of the Sakai and the Temiar.'

I would have loved to pursue the subject but it didn't seem appropriate in the circumstances. ‘Did you know Rajeev?' I asked.

‘I know the family,' Patrick replied, smiling across at Mrs Srinivasan. ‘I once courted Rajeev's sister. They've had to put up with me ever since.'

‘I can't believe you didn't win her heart,' I said, and there was a slightly awkward silence.

‘He did win her heart,' Mrs Srinivasan said, speaking with complete dispassion. ‘But Lakshmi died of fever.' Then she turned to Patrick. ‘We do not “put up” with you on account of Lakshmi, Tuan Pat,' she said. ‘We love and respect you because you are a good man who has helped us on many occasions.'

Pat actually blushed and I warmed to him instantly. It took a brave European to court an Indian girl in KL in those days, and a sensitive man to blush when complimented.

A group of young women had made their way to the centre of the compound, and now they began to sing. They were dressed alike in green saris edged in dark blue and black, and while their words were unintelligible to me, the lilt of the music and the slow, expressive movements of their hands was indescribably beautiful. ‘They are performing the Hindu grieving songs,' Pat whispered. ‘The
Upishalla
. The words are hundreds of years old. Perhaps thousands. But they are still completely relevant today.' Silence had fallen on the crowded verandah, with everyone's eyes and ears only for the singers on the vivid green grass below us.

And then I became aware of other sounds. The squeal of brakes, the
discordant sound of doors slamming, and then of heavy boots running. A door in the house behind us crashed open and someone screamed.

Denis had grasped my hand. ‘It's a police raid,' he said to me, his mouth at my ear. ‘Don't for heaven's sake make a move or utter a sound. These fellows will have loaded weapons in their hands.'

What happened next occurred so quickly that it was a blur to me then and remains a blur to me even now. A kaleidoscope of vivid pictures and sudden violence. A young Tamil, no more than a boy, was abruptly sprinting along the verandah in front of us, clearly intending to vault the railing and make a break for a thick, leafy hedge that ran down the left side of the compound. At the same instant a Malay policeman appeared around the corner of the house, his rifle levelled. The youngster ran straight at him, his eyes wide with fear and his mouth open in a soundless scream.

‘Halt!' the policeman shouted but still the boy kept coming, gathering himself to leap the low railing. I don't think he even saw the policeman. I screamed, knowing precisely what was going to happen: the Tamil would leap, the policeman would fire, and the boy would fall dead at our feet.

Then, inexplicably, Denis was diving forward, catching the boy about the knees and bringing him crashing to the floor.

I had seen violence – lots of violence – on the cinema screen: Ronald Coleman knocking out the baddie with a crisp uppercut, Douglas Fairbanks Junior cutting down the pirate leader with his flashing sword. But none of that had prepared me for violence in the real world. In films, violence is choreographed, predictable, contained, sometimes almost beautiful. In the real world it is none of those things. It is discordant, capricious, uncontained and immensely ugly. I heard the vicious exhalation of breath as the two bodies collided in mid-air, saw the Tamil's face slam bloodily into the timber decking, felt the concussion through the soles of my shoes. But even then the violence continued. People screamed. Someone, misinterpreting Denis's action, kicked at his unprotected back. And then the policeman was amongst us too, trying wild-eyed to get a clear shot at the boy with his rifle but foiled by the press of bodies.

‘That's enough! That's enough!' A European police officer had appeared from nowhere, his face as white as a sheet. He had to literally wrestle the gun from the policeman's hands. ‘Go back to the truck, Hamid!' he shouted. ‘Back to the truck!'

Only then did the violence cease. It felt strange, the sudden normality,
almost surreal, as if one had just emerged from a high fever or a nightmare. ‘Damned sorry,' the policeman said. ‘Someone might have got shot. These fellows go a bit far when their blood's up.'

Denis was on his feet, dusting the knees of his white linen trousers. ‘Amok is the word,' he said harshly. Then he calmed quickly and helped me to my feet and put me in a chair. I was all right for half a second, then shock hit me with almost physical force and I had to lurch to the railing, where I was violently sick.

An arm was around my shoulder, and I was surprised to see it was Pat. ‘Denis needs some help,' Patrick hissed urgently. ‘Can you start making a fuss?'

I thought I was making enough fuss as it was and had no idea what he meant. I glanced backwards to see that Denis had hoisted the young Tamil over his shoulder like a sack of flour and was carrying him back into the house.

‘Just a second!' snapped the officer. ‘That man is under arrest!'

Denis turned back at the doorway. ‘The boy is bleeding. He needs medical attention and I'm going to see he gets it. Then you can do what you like with him.'

The power to reason was coming back to me and I suddenly knew precisely what Pat had meant. I ran in between Denis and the policeman. ‘Get out of here, all of you!' I screamed at the top of my lungs. ‘You have no right to frighten us all like this! Someone might have been killed!' And then I burst into tears – quite genuine tears – and flung myself against the officer's chest.

Looking back on the incident I can hardly believe my self-possession. Or rather, to be quite truthful, my controlled panic. Adrenaline is an extraordinary drug and it does extraordinary things to one. It can make one do things that in cold blood would seem impossible.

My intervention had the desired effect. While the policeman tried to calm me, confusion reigned. Denis disappeared into the house with the boy, followed by Mrs Srinivasan, looking all the more Roman and imperious amid the chaos of shouting men and weeping women. A tall, swarthy Indian then presented himself. ‘I am Mr Ramaswamy Sharma, LL.B. from Bombay University,' he told the officer loudly. ‘I am asking you politely but firmly if you have a search warrant which enables you to enter these premises?'

The officer gaped, then looked uncertainly at Pat and me. The meaning was clear: an Indian lawyer might have the law on his side but it counted for
little unless the point he raised was endorsed by Europeans.

‘I'd take care, officer,' Pat warned. ‘Mr Sharma has asked if you have a warrant. I will remember your reply, just in case anything results from this raid of yours.'

At that moment two more police officers climbed up onto the verandah, the older man clearly in charge. He had a bluff, open face but narrow, calculating eyes and I hated him on sight. He ignored everybody except the Indian lawyer, whom he approached with exaggerated civility. ‘Mr Sharma, I heard you challenge the authority of this raid. Let me tell you that I am acting under emergency powers in a matter of grave concern, and that I will not tolerate any interference from you . . .'

If he thought a firm hand would shut Sharma up he was wrong. ‘Don't you dare threaten me, Mr Jocelyn of the Special Branch,' Sharma retorted spiritedly. ‘There are no emergency powers that I am aware of in the State of Selangor that gives you the right to raid a private home without a warrant. I will be taking up the matter of your attitude with my good friend the Commissioner.'