State of Emergency

by Jeremy Tiang

  It felt good, all of it. Everything about this felt urgent, something that would burst into the world with the force of truth. She didn’t need to plead this case, just lay the facts out clearly, and allow the British public’s sense of justice to do the rest.

  On her last night, Mr Leng picked her up at the hotel and took her to dinner. She tried afterwards to remember the name of the place but never could. It was hard to tell how posh it was, rickety tables beneath trees with fairy lights threaded through their branches, stray cats gnawing at discarded bones in the ditch. Revathi slapped at mosquitoes and ate delicious things tasting of coconut and shrimp, flavoured with spices she couldn’t identify. She asked what each dish was called, intending to ask her parents about it afterwards, but by the time she got back to London, she’d forgotten all the names.

  This isn’t real, she thought, this is a respite. Heavy air prickled against her skin as she smiled at Mr Leng. He was so pleased she’d found what she needed, he told her, a voice of the Malaysian people on the other side, someone who could tell the British what really happened in their name, not just here but all over the world.

  There were too many strands, all the threads of history, everything that ever happened, more than a single person could grasp. The settled story was only one version. She’d seen how the game played out, the Herald did it sometimes, deciding to support Tollingforth in Tollingforth vs. Conswith, just because the Times was supporting Conswith, Lars arguing that the public deserved to hear the other side.

  She allowed herself to daydream a little. Perhaps she could ask to stay out here for a while, maybe even write a book. So many compelling stories here, had anyone done a history of the region? One step at a time. Get this done first.

  There would be more work to do over the next few days, facts to check and more sources to pursue, but with Mrs Wong she knew she had dynamite, a compelling voice to put at the centre of her story. A human face for the tragedy. The dead husband, the missing son. It would be hard to mess this one up. Whatever else might have gone wrong with her career, Revathi had a newswoman’s instincts, and she knew this was absolutely red hot. She smiled and clinked her glass against Mr Leng’s, scribbling sentences in her head, each one pinging off every bell in her mind.

  •

  As she’d known would happen, the article caused a sensation. They had to run a special reprint, and more than one MP raised it in parliament, calling for an enquiry. She was giddy with it, allowing herself the pleasure of having it framed over her desk, so she could look up at it when she should be working. Her parents bought every copy at the newsagent’s and spent the next month distributing them amongst friends and relatives. Her mother stopped suggesting she might look for a more respectable profession in order to attract a husband.

  Something strange happened, in the weeks after Revathi’s success. People took her seriously, a novel sensation. Such an important story, they told her, so grateful for the part she’d played in uncovering it. To start with, she’d given credit to Lars and his leap of faith in sending her—but they weren’t interested in that, and so she fell back on an enigmatic nod, a modest smile. This was exactly right, and gained her even more respect. So humble, they whispered, that’s how you know she’s the real thing.

  It felt unearned, and she had to tell herself this was hers, she deserved it. The idea had been hers. Spender would have squandered the opportunity somehow, blundered in at the wrong angle. She felt a fraud for not having had to dig particularly hard. She’d simply turned up and listened—they’d been so eager for their stories to be heard. And yet, no one had done even that. No one had thought of going, till she’d pushed.

  She allowed this to become her cause. Why not? It was an obvious injustice, and no one in Britain was doing anything about it. Her voice would be harder to ignore than the ones from that part of the world. Why not do what she could? To start with, she lay awake some nights worrying that she was doing this for self-gain, but finally decided that motivations are always murky, even to yourself, and as long as good is done then it doesn’t matter. You should always get on the horse that’s running, her father said. She was moving now. She wanted to keep moving.

  There was nothing hollow about what she was doing. She marvelled that she could feel this, absolute rage and pity for the people she wanted to help, in whatever small ways she was able to, but also pleasure at ordinary things, the smoothness of an orderly life proceeding on its tracks. A promotion and a raise, grudging praise from Lars, a desk in a better part of the office. A bedsit in a slightly nicer part of Earl’s Court.

  When the election came round, she wrote a series of columns predicting a Conservative victory, which were widely regarded as a stunt. It had seemed certain that Wilson was going to stay in Number Ten, and hers was the only prominent voice pulling the other way. Cassandra of the Herald. When asked how she’d known, she would only say it was a lucky guess, and then if pressed, that she’d listened to people. That was all. Enough of them were uncertain, and with every other paper assuring Labour voters they needn’t worry, who would bother to turn out?

  In the meantime, she kept an eye on the Batang Kali survivors, exchanging the odd letter with Mr Leng to see if there was the need for a second piece. There wasn’t going to be another enquiry at the moment, but Scotland Yard was talking about the possibility of a prosecution. Between her piece and so many of the Scots Guards confessing, it was hard to see how they could do otherwise. She had her opening paragraph planned, something about how justice long delayed must taste the sweetest. Or words to that effect. She’d come up with something better.

  The bad news came from her own newspaper, buried in the back pages. She stared for a long time at the small item, a few lines stating that the Scots Guards had no case to answer, their reputation was intact, and therefore the government’s conduct during the Malayan Emergency was once more above reproach. She went upstairs to speak to the court reporter but he didn’t have much to add. There was a new Attorney-General with the new government, and it was perfectly natural that he’d want to start with a clean slate. “It’s for the best. Why give our boys a hard time?” he called after her as she trotted away.

  She looked it up in Hansard, and it was as he said. The Attorney-General announced he was taking the advice of the Director of Public Prosecutions, who believed there was insufficient evidence to warrant criminal proceedings.

  And there was Marcus Lipton, Labour MP for Brixton. “Does the Attorney-General nevertheless agree that, in view of sworn statements by four ex-guardsmen claiming to be present at the scene, which were published in the People, it was necessary to have the inquiry even though after all these years it is generally accepted that it is impossible to collect sufficient evidence for a prosecution?”

  And the reply. “I do not wish to make any comment about the necessity of this inquiry.”

  She let the sentence run over and over in her head. That was all there was. He did not wish it, and therefore it would not happen. Of course, that’s how it had always been. She understood this at one level, but at another felt horribly naïve at having allowed herself to believe in the possibility of justice. There had been no further discussion. A token show of resistance, and the chamber moved on to

  other business.

  “What’s wrong?” said Ian Spender, stopping by her desk. The men, she noted, were treating her better now, as if she’d needed to accomplish all she had merely in order to be taken as an equal.

  “Nothing. Some bad news.”

  “Not too serious, I hope?” His pallid face was actually mildly concerned, as if he really did care.

  “I’ll survive, thanks.” And she would. She would be fine. How had this come to mean so much to her? Her life would continue just the same, she knew that.

  “We’ll be down the pub, if you’re coming.”

  “I’ll be there.” She waited for him to go, and rubbed the heels of her hands into her eyes, trying to ease away the incipient headache. Something heavy wa
s settling onto her, an unpleasant awareness that the world was aslant and she was at the higher end. What could she do?

  She looked at the article, at the shadowy picture of Mrs Wong. Keep going. The world would always be unfair, and mostly unknowable, but she had the leverage to make a little more truth come to light, and that would have to be enough. One step, then another. She carefully put the cover on her typewriter, and walked out into the summer’s evening.

  5

  Stella

  They were waiting for her at the airport. She noticed them as she got off the plane, right after the corridor of smiling stewardesses in silly tight uniforms, thanking you for flying Singapore Airlines. There were two of them, men, not in uniform but you could tell from the way they stood awkwardly in their badly-ironed shirts, unsmiling, that they were waiting for someone. One of them whispered something to the other, and they approached.

  “Stella Remedios?”

  “Yes?”

  “Please come with us.”

  One of them flashed an ID, too quickly for her to read. It looked official enough that she followed them, one on either side of her, as if she could be thinking of running away, down this narrow passage full of tired, jetlagged people trying to ignore them.

  “I didn’t get your names,” she said, trying to be friendly, but they said nothing, like actors who’ve spoken all their lines and just want to get to the end of the scene. Both were in their thirties, she guessed. Bad haircuts and thuggish faces. She wondered who they worked for, the police or something else.

  At customs, they were met by a man in uniform who escorted them through a side gate. Stella thought, Well, this looks official, at least that means I’m not being kidnapped. Then, irrelevantly: I won’t get a stamp in my passport. They waited patiently as she picked her suitcase off the carousel, and one of the men even carried it to the boot of the car they ushered her into.

  “What’s this about?”

  Instead of answering, one of them said, almost apologetically, “You’ll have to put these on.” He removed her cat’s-eye glasses and stuck on plastic ones with something, maybe foam rubber, where the lenses should be. Was she being arrested? They were supposed to read out her rights. Had she done anything?

  “Where are you taking me?” She was ignored. What was the point of the goggles? Singapore was too small for

  secret prisons.

  The car thrummed along the road. She tried to work out where they were. There was only one road from the airport. She normally enjoyed it, straight and wide with blossoming shrubs on either side. For the tourists, of course, but that didn’t make it any less pretty. They turned, and then again, until she lost all sense of direction.

  To calm herself, she thought about the things she would do when she got home. First, call her father, he would be expecting her. Unpack, put winter clothes into storage, sort through the mail that had arrived while she was away. But first, food. She’d slept through all the meal services on the plane and was now ravenous.

  The journey seemed extraordinarily long, but then she had no sense of time any more. There was just the motion of the car, the loud breathing of the men beside her, and occasionally a garbled sound from the relay radio mounted on the dashboard. We could be underwater, she thought, we could be driving into the past. She was woozy from the long flight, and this seemed like a waking dream.

  She’d dozed off when the car braked, and one of the men grabbed her elbow to get her out. She was walked across what felt like grass, and then—“Steps,” said the man in warning—into a building. This was ridiculous, she felt like ripping the opaque glasses off to see where she was going, but didn’t want to make them angry.

  They brought her into a small room, and finally removed her blindfold. It was ping pong balls, she realised, cut in half and stuck over each lens. Her own glasses were still with them, so everything was blurry. As far as she could tell, this was a government building of some kind, the walls that institutional green you only see in schools and hospitals. A woman came in with some forms for her to fill in, but she couldn’t see to write, and had to dictate her answers. It was just things like her address, and which schools she’d attended, surely information they already had. She wondered where they’d taken her luggage.

  A little later, they brought her to a dimmer room. There were some people standing about, she wasn’t sure how many. They seemed to have been waiting for her. Someone said her name again, with a harsh emphasis, and when she answered yes, the interrogation began.

  •

  Stella’s childhood was unexceptional. The journalists who tried to find some kind of flaw in her upbringing were disappointed—she was mixed-race, of course, but you weren’t allowed to point at that as a defect. Her mother’s early death was a point of interest, but as she was under a year old at the time, and her father remarried not long afterwards, it again seemed unlikely this was to blame.

  Her cousins Henry and Janet also lost their mother early, and she grew up very close to them. She’d drifted apart from Janet, who became more and more like her scary father, Stella’s Uncle Jason, as she moved into adulthood. Henry was still one of her best friends, one of the few people who understood why so many things about this place made her dissatisfied.

  Like nine-tenths of the population, Stella grew up in a government-provided HDB flat. She went to a primary school within walking distance of her home, and did well enough at the age of twelve to win a place at Methodist Girls’ School. She was from a religious family, and later on there would be many pictures of her friends praying for her, saying they knew she was innocent, asking God to bring the truth to light.

  She was only twenty-three at the time of her detention, not long out of university. Much as she admired her cousin Henry for winning his place at Oxford—indeed, she had just returned from visiting him in England when she was taken—she did not have the courage to uproot herself and move to a cold country of unfriendly people and bland food. Her father was a man of decided tastes, and she had grown up with the distinctively-spiced Eurasian curries that are so hard to find anywhere else.

  So she ended up at NUS, the National University of Singapore (formerly Malaya, but a new name had to be found after Separation), doing something with history, and sociology. Afterwards, she found herself drifting towards teaching. Many of her classmates ended up there too—there were not many career paths open to those trained in the arts, especially those not overburdened with ambition.

  It was easy for her to find a place at her old school, teaching keen Methodist girls the history found in their textbooks. She didn’t fully agree with the narrative of benevolent colonialism giving way to a thrusting, vibrant city state, but that was the syllabus, and it made a pretty story. It helped that her cousin Janet was teaching at the same school and was able to show her the ropes.

  Stella herself was not a Methodist, but Catholic like her father. She enjoyed the ritual and order of Mass, which gave her a great sense of peace. It was as if things had been this way since the beginning of time, and even though she knew that at some point, men had devised these ceremonies, she persuaded herself they must be inspired by God, and in any case, anything that brings you closer to divinity can only be positive.

  She was a shy girl, less than a decade older than her students, whom she found near-impossible to control, even these well-behaved Christian girls, and as a consequence felt herself constantly judged by her colleagues. More than once a fellow teacher had come to investigate a commotion, and found Stella cowering behind her desk, ineffectually raising her voice against a boisterous, hormone-driven racket. In the staffroom, she sat and ate her sandwiches in a corner on her own, unless Janet happened to be free.

  It was in church that she made her friends. They were equal before God, she felt it exhilarating that a young person like her, so broken and unpractised in the faith, was considered worthy of saving. She joined the small groups, and did volunteer work. It felt good, like she was making a difference to the lives of others.
She became aware they all lived on a small island, and it was necessary to pull together and help each other out, rather than competing all the time. She wished everyone in the world would learn this lesson.

  She could remember pockets of poverty when she was growing up, homeless people one tried not to see on the way to school. Nowadays, so many people had government flats, great featureless blocks springing up all over the island. People had money now, there were shopping centres along Orchard Road and the MRT, which she found that terribly exciting, trains moving at great speeds beneath the feet of a city going about its business. That was one of her reasons for wanting to visit London, to see for herself the monstrous, wormlike tube network, the very one ridden by Mrs Dalloway.

  But there were people left out of Singapore’s headlong rush towards prosperity. She saw them in the streets, lying on park benches like they’d been there all night. Thousands more came in from other countries, Indonesia and the Philippines, working in people’s homes for insultingly low wages. Her own family employed a domestic helper called Veronica, a devout Catholic girl. When she protested, her stepmother said: Do you want to do all the housework yourself? I’ve never seen you so much as lift a broom. Should we send Veronica back to Cebu? She was unemployed for almost a year before this.

  Stella found it hard to meet Veronica’s eye. She tried to clean up after herself, but Veronica was always there first with her broom and dustpan, trying to make herself indispensable. She slept on a mattress in the kitchen floor. Stella asked her to come to church, but she said she preferred to spend her rare days off with her fellow countrywomen. When Gregory at church asked Stella to serve on the maid welfare committee, she answered yes immediately. It felt like the least she could do.