A Different Sky (64 page)

‘I will restore Belvedere and you can help me by supervising the running of things here again. I have set up a foundation, the Bougainvillaea Trust. I was able to do it with the money I got from the sale of Grandfather's jade; Howard has helped me set it up. I have enough money to buy Belvedere and to run both homes as a shelter.' Mei Lan grew animated as she explained, then broke off again before Rose's silence. For a moment they observed each other apprehensively. Rose pressed a hand to her chest as if to control another flutter of palpitations.

‘It's the answer to a prayer,' she whispered at last, tears of relief filling her eyes.

David Marshall's problems with the Governor continued. Discussions concerning the formation of a government were fraught and complicated. As the Governor was delighted to remind him, Marshall did not have an overall majority in the Assembly. Besides the elected members and the handful of colonial officials who still sat in the Assembly, Marshall had to rely upon the Governor's extra British nominees to shore up support for the Labour Front. Beside this, the new Assembly had to deal with the pugnacity of the newly elected People's Action Party members, Lee Kuan Yew and union chief, Lim Chin Siong. Although Lim might struggle with his English, Lee was a man of fluent and razor-sharp words. In his maiden speech he lost no time in pouring scorn on the archaic proceedings of the Assembly and the ‘phoney constitution' it stood for.

Yet, adhering to his election promises, Marshall was already chipping determinedly away at the colonial administration's Emergency Regulations that, even after so long, remained in place. But just as he had the first tentative agreement to some minor dismantling of these regulations, such as the curfew that inconvenienced so many, a darker cloud was blowing up on the horizon. The management of the Hock Lee Amalgamated Bus Company in Alexander Road were on a collision course with Lim Chin Siong whose powerful Singapore Factory and Shop Workers' Union had attempted to take over the Hock Lee Employers' Union with its two hundred bus drivers and force a strike. At Hock Lee troubles escalated quickly, much to Chief Minister Marshall's distress.

‘Two suspected reds in the People's Action Party who are now honourable Assemblymen have the power to stop this if they wish,' Marshall fumed, seeing the storm ahead.

Since the early morning, pickets had manned the gates of the Hock Lee Bus depot shouting defiance with clenched fists. Hundreds of agitated Middle School students lined Alexander Road in support of the striking bus drivers at the depot. Eventually, police with water jets cleared a way past the pickets and militant schoolchildren and some buses, whose drivers were loyal to the company and wanted to work, left the depot. As they turned out into Alexander Road, they were pelted with stones by jeering students. The battle had raged all day between police, strikers and schoolchildren, and although it was evening it still showed no sign of abating.

Marshall's office had been in an uproar all day with the Chief of Police on the phone to the Chief Minister, the Governor on the phone to the Chief Minister, members of the Legislative Assembly making enquiries of the Chief Minister. Howard was on the phone to the Police Commissioner's secretary when Mei Lan telephoned him at his desk, a thing she had never done before.

‘It's Greta. I told you she refuses to come home and has been living with a school friend. Now, we've heard she's at Alexander Road and there's rioting there. I have to find her.' He could hear the desperation in her voice, and the sound of Little Sparrow sobbing beside her.

‘Cynthia was here just now, and she says your mother has not come home either. She went to visit your Cousin Lionel who has moved to
a new house somewhere near Alexander Road. Can you come with me? I'm going there.' Mei Lan's voice sounded far away.

‘You cannot go alone,' Howard replied in alarm, already putting the top on his fountain pen and moving papers to one side on his desk. She had never asked anything of him before.

T
HE 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.