A Different Sky (70 page)

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.

I
WOULD PARTICULARLY LIKE
to thank President S. R. Nathan of Singapore for planting the seeds of this book in my mind, and for his continuous support and interest during its writing and his reading of the manuscript.

The research for this book was long and varied and I wish to acknowledge my appreciation of the many people who helped me along the way, sharing their memories, lending or directing me to a book, searching out papers and documents for me. I am particularly grateful to Chew Gek Khim for the generous loan of books from the library of her grandfather, Tan Chin Tuan. I am also much indebted to the staff and research assistants of the National Library and the Oral History Department of the National Archives, especially Lily Tan, for their unstinting assistance in my research.

I would also like to thank Professor Edwin Thumboo for reading the manuscript and making some important suggestions.

My thanks go also to Gretchen Liu. Her unfailing encouragement throughout the writing of the book, her patient and repeated reading of a long and complicated manuscript, and her critical comments, have all been invaluable.

I would like to express my gratitude to James Gurbutt who first championed this book at Harvill Secker, and to David Parrish at Random House who has stood by it. My thanks also go to Georgina Capel at Capel and Land for never giving up. And lastly, my deep appreciation to Rebecca Carter at Harvill Secker.

I
WISH TO CLARIFY
that although
A Different Sky
is a work of fiction, the backdrop of events that the characters live through is based upon hard historical fact. The Singapore of the time covered by this novel was, to a good degree, lawless, dangerous and poverty stricken. The first communist-inspired riot at Kreta Ayer in 1927 with which the book begins is a documented event, as are the happenings of the
Merdeka
Rally with which the book ends. In between, young men did run off into the jungle to become guerrilla fighters, people did risk their lives to oppose the brutal Japanese occupation, schoolchildren did riot with striking workers, and the activities of the Anti-British League and the Malayan Communist Party did result in numerous casual assassinations. Although I have attempted to bring to life an important swathe of Singapore history, the interpretation of events and the patterns of importance they form in the novel are my own understanding of that time, and it is an outsider's overview.

I would also like to say that, in writing historical fiction, I in no way presume to share the ground of academics and historians. Academic record and scholarly investigation construct the shape of the past as accurately as it can be done. Historical fiction attempts to create a sense of experience of that past, to bring it alive in the present and show its enduring relevance.

Most of the characters in
A Different Sky
are fictional, composite creations and bear no relation to living people. However, the character of Mamoru Shinozaki is based upon the real man of that name. The transcript of his interview,
My Wartime Experience
, for the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies Oral History Programme, was of great
help to me. The characters of David Marshall, Lim Chin Siong and Lee Kuan Yew are also based upon the real people of this name. I wish to state that I have been careful to ensure that, like those of Mamoru Shinozaki, their actions and dialogue in
A Different Sky
are taken only from recorded or documented sources.

Besides listening to many hours of recorded interviews in the Oral History Department of the National Archives, I read an extensive range of books. Three particular books were a constant reference for me:
Singapore: Struggle for Success
by John Drysdale (1996, Times Books International: Singapore),
The Tiger and the Trojan Horse
by Dennis Bloodworth (1986, Times International Books: Singapore) and
A History of Singapore 1819–1988
by C.M. Turnbull (1989, Oxford University Press: Singapore).