A Different Sky (65 page)

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.

W
ORK WITH
M
ARSHALL WAS
never dull. From the first day in office the problems of government were overwhelming for a man without political experience, but Marshall was full of determined resolution. Almost at once, Howard was involved in conducting a survey on education in preparation for a White Paper. As Chief Minister, Marshall was immediately forced to examine the situation in the Chinese-medium schools and to produce a new education policy; rioting schoolchildren in gymslips and shorts was an indigestible phenomenon.

‘Chinese education is of the utmost importance. Any government in the future aspiring to rule this country must integrate the Chinese-medium education system into mainstream English vernacular education. We are a multiracial society, and cannot think of Independence without also thinking of building a multicultural, multiracial nation. This can only be done through a common education system,' Marshall prophesied, wiping his brow as, hard and fast, the problems of government showered upon him. His sincerity fell on deaf ears, and the continuing strikes and riots wrought havoc upon his best efforts.

‘We must find the middle road between communism and colonialism,' Marshall insisted, but however heartfelt his honesty, he was unable to read the mood of the predominantly Chinese community upon whom the future rode.

The riots at the Hock Lee bus depot ended in a triumph for the Singapore Bus Workers' Union and Lim Chin Siong's Singapore Factory and Shop Workers' Union who had backed the strike, but it had repercussions for the students. Arrests were made and schools were threatened with closure unless the ringleaders were expelled and discipline restored. In their usual manner of protest, two thousand students then barricaded themselves yet again into Chung Cheng High School demanding the release of those arrested, and the Singapore Factory and Shop Workers' Union prepared to call a general strike in
support of the students. Soon, Marshall backed down, schools reopened and the students paraded about in victory.

All these events, falling one upon another in quick succession, were a constant anxiety to the parents of politically active students. Little Sparrow wished she had not opposed Greta so vehemently in the first school protests, for she might now know where she was. Day after day she sat slackly in a chair, and even the clack of mah-jong tiles could not distract her for long as she waited for Greta to return. Weeks had now gone by, and Little Sparrow could neither eat nor sleep.

‘You know so many union people. Can't you ask if anyone knows anything?' Mei Lan begged Howard. Greta had been missing so long she had begun to share Little Sparrow's fear that the girl might be dead; she had disappeared the night of the Hock Lee bus riot and had not made contact with them since.

‘I am her mother. If she is alive she would contact me.' Little Sparrow sat forward in her chair as Mei Lan spoke to Howard, and the words became a sob.