On Far Malayan Shores

by Tara Haigh

  ‘Does she sense it too?’

  ‘Hard to say.’ Ella hadn’t even considered the question. ‘She’s strange . . . and yet it feels like we’re already good friends.’

  ‘And how are you getting on with Mrs Foster?’

  Ella hadn’t really thought about that, and she did so as she took a sip from her teacup.

  ‘It’s peculiar. Sometimes she’s very kind and thoughtful, and other times she can be standoffish and dismissive . . .’ she said, almost to herself.

  ‘It sounds like you’ve got the measure of her.’

  Ella had to grin at that.

  ‘I was afraid you would be staying in the main house with the Fosters, and that I wouldn’t be able to visit you without attracting attention.’

  ‘That’s what Heather wanted. She doesn’t seem to like this guest house very much.’

  ‘People say it’s cursed,’ said Amar.

  ‘Raj told me the same thing. But I like it here.’

  Amar laughed, and then regarded her for a moment. Unlike Compton, Amar’s eyes rested on her face, not her décolletage. He was caring, affectionate and warm, and Ella felt no discomfort as she held his gaze.

  ‘I actually had plans to ride into town tonight for the puppet show, but I needed to know whether you were all right,’ said Amar.

  ‘A puppet show? Isn’t that for children?’

  He gave another refreshingly unaffected laugh. ‘A shadow play from Sumatra. It’s like a theatre performance. The puppeteers tell stories from their homeland – ancient legends,’ Amar explained.

  ‘I would love to see that,’ said Ella.

  ‘They’re only here for one night.’

  ‘I could drive us into town.’ Ella was amazed at herself. It was a crazy idea, but what could she do here other than write a letter that would spend weeks in the post anyway? Yet if she was honest, she knew that her reasoning was spurious. Being close to Amar not only felt good, but also gave her a pleasant thrill – a sensation that only intensified when he beamed with joy.

  ‘Won’t people notice if we take the carriage?’ he asked astutely.

  ‘I can also ride tolerably well,’ said Ella.

  ‘Too dangerous. It’s dark, and the road through the plantation is uneven,’ he replied.

  ‘If only I had wings.’

  ‘I have a sturdy horse that can carry us both. He’s as fast as the wind and could follow the route blindfolded.’

  Ella would have turned down the invitation had it come from Compton. But more than anything else, it was the way Amar said it that led her to believe he had only good intentions, and no lewd ulterior motives. Perhaps it was naïve to trust a man she barely knew, but Ella felt she was a good judge of character; it was a skill she had acquired over many years of working as a nurse. As soon as she made her decision, she set all other thoughts to one side and simply looked forward to the shadow play.

  There was something quite magical about riding through the night in this part of the world. A glass of champagne couldn’t have provided a more effervescent thrill. Yet it wasn’t the eerie dance of flickering light and shadow cast over the plantation by the moon that left her body trembling; rather, it was the opportunity to nestle against Amar’s back – to feel him closer than ever before. He was muscular; Ella could sense that just as clearly as she felt the thud of his heart through her hand. It seemed to beat in time with her own.

  She was sorry that the ride was so brief, but also excited about what she was about to see. The show was obviously about to start, for among the rapt audience, only two young Malays took notice of them and began to whisper to each other. They evidently found it strange to see a Malayan man attending a theatre performance in the company of a European woman. Yet all other eyes were already fixed on the stage.

  ‘Those two probably think you’ve kidnapped me,’ remarked Ella.

  ‘But that’s exactly what I’ve done,’ declared Amar with a mischievous glint in his eye.

  Ella hopped off the back of the horse and landed on the dusty ground. ‘I’m sure they’ll ask me in the morning where on earth I’ve been,’ she said, as she skipped out of the dust cloud and tried to brush the dirt from her clothes.

  Amar laughed, then dismounted and fastened his horse to a fence alongside several others. To judge by the number of stalls around them, he must have brought her to the market square. She could see the back of the sultan’s palace from here, which meant that Lee’s boarding house must be behind it.

  There were around a hundred spectators, all of whom had already taken their seats – although ‘seats’ wasn’t quite the right word, for the people were sitting on woven mats scattered across the ground. The audience looked up at a raised stage with a white curtain hanging from a horizontal beam. The set-up reminded Ella of a Punch and Judy show.

  Ella and Amar approached the side of the stage, where she could see a table with holes in the top that held the puppets. They looked as though they had been impaled on wooden skewers, and their arms dangled lifelessly at their sides.

  ‘How are the puppets controlled?’ asked Ella.

  ‘The puppeteer – the dalang – stands underneath the stage. Do you see those thin sticks attached to the limbs? They’re used to move the arms, and sometimes the head too,’ Amar explained. He seemed to be just as fascinated by the grotesque, grimacing faces as Ella was. A few of them had round heads and looked very comical. There were even animal puppets too.

  Ella followed Amar to a spot fairly close to the side of the stage, and barely a minute later a light came on. Now anybody who stood behind the curtain or moved anything behind it would cast a shadow on it.

  A fine tinkling of miniature bells began, followed by the voice of a narrator. Naturally, she couldn’t understand a word, but she had Amar to help with that – though right then, his whispering in her ear and the delicate tickling of his breath against her cheek was far more interesting to Ella than the plot he was broadly outlining for her.

  ‘Princess Candra has fallen in love with the crown prince of Jenggala. She is the incarnation of the goddess of love, and he is the avatar of the god of love. The story is about the flames of passion,’ he breathed. Ella looked him in the eye, and he gave a shy smile. She felt so overwhelmed that she couldn’t return it, and simply savoured being so close to him.

  ‘After many adventures, they find their way to each other in the end and have a child, whom they call Raja Putra,’ he whispered.

  How beautifully the torchlight glittered in his eyes. Don’t look away! But he did, and Ella followed his gaze back to the illuminated screen, across which birds were flapping – or rather, their black outlines. The puppeteer worked the rods so skilfully that the shadows could easily be mistaken for living creatures. A puppet resembling a young girl pranced on from the left, stopping by a flower. That had to be the princess. She caressed the blossom with her delicate hands. Although the staging lacked colour and the figure could only be identified by its silhouette, it still seemed real. The music and the narrator’s sonorous voice had a hypnotic effect, drawing the audience into this golden, glittering world – and by Amar’s side, Ella was only too happy to succumb.

  The market square remained crowded after the performance, and although Ella had already dined with the Fosters, the smell of grilled meat wafting towards her nose was irresistible. Now was the perfect opportunity to become acquainted with the local cuisine, and why not eat from a palm leaf too? It was a totally novel experience to knead slices of crispy grilled chicken, seasoned with spicy curry sauce, into balls before devouring them with pleasure – a feast for the senses that she certainly wouldn’t forget any time soon. All the same, Ella wondered how she would ever manage to get the yellow stains off her fingers.

  ‘Use only your right hand,’ Amar had instructed her when she had tried to tackle her curry with both hands. She now understood why: the left hand was reserved for more intimate uses in the lavatory, and was therefore considered unclean. But that wasn’t all she lear
ned from Amar that night. Ella had noticed that she was the only person who sat with her back against one of the posts holding up the stage, with her legs outstretched – a posture that revealed the soles of her shoes to other people. That was considered rude, and a gesture of contempt, so she was now sitting properly in accordance with local etiquette – or rather kneeling, with her feet tucked beneath her and her palm leaf resting on her lap. Admittedly, it took a while to get used to sitting like this while eating; but everybody was doing it, and without slouching either. It seemed that one developed the necessary abdominal strength over time. Amar had, at any rate – he was sitting upright, but he looked relaxed, and his white linen shirt was partly unbuttoned, allowing Ella to peek beneath the fabric. He also had beautiful hands, which showed scarcely any signs of manual labour in the fields. Although they were powerful and much larger than her own, he handled his food far more adroitly than Ella could.

  After they had eaten, he helped her to her feet and led her over to a musician on the other side of the square. There they found a stand selling rice wine, which Ella much preferred to any English brandy or sherry. It washed away the spicy flavours of the curry, and left her feeling pleasantly exhilarated. Or was it the exotic sounds that made her feel so intoxicated?

  ‘What a beautiful song.’ Ella was enchanted by the voice of a young man playing a kind of bulbous guitar, which was decorated around the middle with multicoloured inlays. Its tones were flatter than the guitars she knew, but it seemed able to produce a much wider range of notes.

  ‘What instrument is that?’ she asked.

  ‘It’s called a gambus,’ Amar explained.

  ‘It must be very difficult to play,’ mused Ella, admiring the skill of the musician who was able to coax such extraordinarily delicate sounds from its strings.

  ‘Not in the least. We learn it at school.’

  ‘You play it too, then?’ she asked.

  Amar nodded, and made eye contact with the gambus player. He spoke to him in the local language, and before Ella knew it, he was holding the instrument. By this point, he had attracted the attention of around a dozen onlookers. Amar closed his eyes, his hands gliding over the strings as though he had done nothing but play the instrument his whole life long, and then he began to sing. The song seemed to be a well-known one, judging by the delight on the faces of the spectators – especially the women. Amar’s voice was a little higher than she had expected, and soulful, with a note of melancholy. While his eyes were closed, Ella had the opportunity to study him without the fear that he might catch her looking at him the way a woman looks at a man whom she finds deeply attractive; from his glossy hair, even features and prominent chin to his full lips. Her eyes lingered on the latter, and she caught herself wondering how it would feel if he kissed her – how he would taste. His heartfelt song stole her senses away. If only he would never stop! But her wish wasn’t granted, for the final notes rang out on the gambus and Amar opened his eyes once more.

  Ella didn’t stop gazing at him. The way he looked back at her set her body ablaze. She could feel herself getting lost in his eyes. They communicated a desire to be near to her, without embarrassment or shame. Then he smiled a relaxed smile that was a simple expression of how happy he was just then. The world around them seemed to fall away. The formerly distinct voices in the background merged into a vague sing-song, and the outlines of the people she had seen so clearly only moments before coalesced into a colourful blur, with Amar glowing like a beacon at its heart.

  ‘Did you like it?’ he asked.

  Ella was unable to reply. She gave a gentle smile – but just then, the sound of loud, aggressive voices brutally shattered her reverie. They seemed to be coming from the other side of the square, from one of the houses overlooking the market. The shrieks of a man’s voice pierced the babble and hubbub around them and the crowd abruptly fell silent. A door flew open and a young man ran out of the house, followed by two British soldiers, whom Ella recognised from their uniforms and pith helmets.

  ‘Stop!’ one of the soldiers shouted at the young man. Only now did Ella recognise him. It was Mohan, the young worker from the Foster plantation.

  Amar stood up and pushed his way through the crowd. Three other young men had leapt to their feet too.

  ‘Mohan!’ he called.

  A warning shot rang out, but still Mohan refused to stop. Then came the crack of a second shot, just as Mohan was turning a corner to escape down a side street. He hit the ground like a felled tree, but Ella could see he was still moving. The paralysing shock that had overwhelmed her fell away. She scrambled to her feet and broke into a run.

  By now, the first of the men had confronted the soldiers, hurling insults at them, and Ella saw Amar join them at the front of the crowd as she made her way towards the injured man.

  ‘Stand aside!’ yelled one of the soldiers.

  ‘Let us through!’ bellowed the other, but the human wall refused to move, allowing only Ella to pass.

  She reached the victim, and saw at a glance that the bullet had hit him in the leg. The wound was bleeding heavily, and the young man’s face was twisted in agony.

  The soldiers fired a warning shot in the air.

  Ella flinched. Although her whole body was now trembling in fear, she needed to tend to the injured man. A piece of her skirt served as a makeshift tourniquet, which she used to stop the bleeding by tying it tightly around his leg just above the wound.

  Two young women hurried over to help – a Malay woman and an Indian.

  ‘Fetch some cloth for a bandage. Hurry,’ Ella instructed them.

  They disappeared towards the neighbouring houses.

  The first cracks had appeared in the human wall in front of the soldiers.

  ‘Out of the way!’ one of the officers shouted.

  After a third warning shot, nobody dared to oppose the soldiers any longer. Women pulled their husbands back, and children wept and wailed.

  One of the British soldiers grabbed Ella’s shoulder from behind and spun her round roughly. Only then did he seem to realise that the woman standing protectively in front of the injured man was a European.

  ‘Who are you?’ he asked brusquely.

  ‘I could ask you the same question! Are British soldiers murderers now?’ retorted Ella, with the courage of pure desperation. ‘What has this man even done?’

  ‘He’s a rebel. We found weapons in his home,’ he explained, though in a less imperious tone than before.

  ‘Whether rebel or otherwise, he needs to be taken to hospital or he’ll die. The bullet has severed his femoral artery.’

  The soldier briefly bent down to examine Mohan.

  ‘Are you a doctor?’ he asked her.

  ‘I’m a nurse. St Thomas’s Hospital, London.’ Ella knew that the hospital was famous in Britain – the most prestigious in England. It worked. The officer nodded with respect.

  ‘Will you go with him?’ he asked.

  Before Ella could answer, Amar appeared. He stood behind the officer and shook his head, as if to say: ‘Don’t do it.’ Ella ignored him.

  ‘Of course I’ll go with him.’

  ‘I need to take down your details. Do you have any identification?’ the officer demanded.

  ‘No, not with me.’

  ‘With the greatest respect for your courage, madam . . . your name!’ he demanded impatiently.

  ‘Ella van Veen.’

  ‘Are you Dutch?’ he asked, and Ella nodded.

  Two Malayan men were hurrying towards them with a stretcher. Ella could see a wagon drawing near too.

  ‘Can we take the man to hospital now?’ asked Ella urgently.

  The officer thought for a moment, then nodded.

  She helped the two attendants lift Mohan onto the stretcher.

  ‘I’ll meet you at the hospital,’ Amar whispered to her.

  ‘Make room there!’ shouted the officer, before forcing Amar and two other men back onto the market square.

  Three w
omen appeared at once with clean cloth for Ella to bandage the wound.

  One of the Malayan helpers gave Ella his hand to help her up onto the seat of the wagon, but she refused and climbed into the back to stay close to the victim. Mohan’s eyes were filled with gratitude, and despite the pain he must be suffering, he managed to smile at her.

  ‘Don’t be afraid. You’re going to live,’ she told him, smiling back at him encouragingly.

  She saw the same gratitude in Amar’s eyes when she took a final look back at the market square just before the wagon departed. As well as the dust and the curry sauce, her blouse was now spattered with Mohan’s blood. Perhaps she ought never to wash it again, as a souvenir of the most extraordinary night of her life.

  It was only now, though, that Ella fully realised the danger she had put herself in. The British probably wouldn’t normally let a native off so leniently, and they could easily have fired at her too. It seemed that the colonial occupiers were quick to reach for their guns – especially if it meant an opportunity to shoot at the Orang Asli. Edward Compton’s contemptuous words rang in her ears. A man with such inhuman views could well pass them on to his subordinates, and that might even mean she would be in trouble for having helped a ‘criminal’ – yet no true nurse would have behaved any differently, whatever the danger. There would doubtless be anger towards the British too, and she could already sense it among the attendants who took charge of the wounded young man and rushed him into the two-storey, palm-fronted local hospital. Ella didn’t understand the first two vehement curses that she heard, but the third was clear enough, as she heard the word ‘British’.

  ‘They bring nothing but misery, the English,’ remarked another nurse when Ella briefly summarised what had happened. An Indian doctor, who Ella guessed was in his mid-fifties, joined them.

  ‘He hasn’t lost too much blood, but the bullet is still inside his leg. The wound must be cleaned, and then a herbal poultice placed on top,’ she instructed the staff, as though she were the doctor on duty. It would have been absurd to observe the usual hierarchy, given the situation, and the staff knew that too.