by Susan Barker
Julia thrust the money into her pocket, afraid the sight of her counting it would tempt her brother to ask for it back.
‘I’ll pay you back soon as I can.’
‘Don’t worry about it,’ he said. ‘If you come back tomorrow, I’ll give you some more. I get in from work about six. What’s the address of the hostel you’re staying at?’
She told him and Adam jotted it down. ‘You’ll go straight there, won’t you? And if it’s shit you can come back here. It doesn’t matter how late it is. Please don’t go back to Rob, whatever you do.’
‘I won’t.’
Julia stood up, eye on the door, impatient to leave. She buttoned her jacket, the denim dirty and thin.
‘Do you want to borrow a jumper? It’s freezing out there.’
She let him give her a jumper, which she draped over her arm. She said goodbye and went. Adam listened to her footsteps receding down the hall.
Alone in his flat, empty wallet hanging open in his hand, Adam was motionless. The city devours people, secretes them in its darkest crevices, thousands missing every year. There was much worse out there than Rob.
21
FRANCES’S LIE ABOUT the cancelled maths lesson confused Sally. Frances hated maths. She hated Mr Leung too. So why leave Sally out, like a child too selfish to share her toys? The next morning the girls had swimming first lesson, for which Sally had forged a note from Mr Hargreaves saying that she had her period (in reality the thought of her father knowing her menstrual cycle was too horrific to contemplate). As Miss Van der Cruisen scanned the note with a snort of disbelief (Your third period this month, Hargreaves! What fertile ovaries you have!), Frances scuffled up alongside her with a similar forgery to submit for ridicule.
The fraudsters sat on the shady poolside bench as their classmates, anonymous in goggles and slick red caps, swam warm-up lengths, limbs churning up the water like a spate of shark attacks. The poolside air drizzled humidity, settling on their skin like silt. ‘Bless you,’ said Frances, when the chlorine fumes tickled Sally’s sinuses into a sneeze. Frances gnawed her fingernails. Sally opened her biology textbook and pretended to read.
‘Are you really on the rag?’ asked Frances.
‘No,’ replied Sally, without looking up from the frog’s digestive system on page 92.
‘Me neither. I just wasn’t in the mood for swimming today.’
‘Hmmm.’
For a good ten minutes neither girl said a word. The fifth form queued to practise diving, one by one climbing the ladder, the board arching as they strode to the end and, in a flash of thighs and ballerina toes, plunged head first into the pool. They struggled to the surface, doggy-paddled to the side and heaved themselves out; then, waddling and plucking the clinging fabric of their navy one-pieces from their buttocks, they joined the queue again.
The silent treatment worked. Frances blurted that she was sorry. She knew it was wrong of her to have lied about the lesson being cancelled, but it was very important that she was alone with Mr Leung. She and Mr Leung had become friends while Sally had been ill with stomach flu. Mr Leung was teaching her about politics. Frances had become very passionate about politics, and if Sally had been there she’d have had to forfeit her ad hoc politics lesson for a normal algebra lesson instead.
Sally was dubious. ‘Do you fancy Mr Leung?’ she asked.
Frances didn’t flare defensively as she’d expected, but remained calm. ‘You don’t understand,’ she said. ‘In the last few days Henry has taught me so much! I feel as though a switch has been flipped in my brain and I finally see things the way they are. The situation in this country is awful. Really awful.’
‘Henry?’ Sally gawped. ‘Mr Leung lets you call him Henry?’
‘I told you. Henry and I are friends now. He has been educating me. He has helped me to realize how tough things are for the Chinese; how we are denied jobs, access to higher education and land, and treated as second-class citizens …’
‘You’re not a second-class citizen, though,’ said Sally. ‘Your father is very rich and a member of the Royal Selangor Club.’
‘Just because we are better off than most doesn’t mean I’m not aware of the suffering of the Chinese community. Henry has helped me to realize lots of things about my own life too. Like how my father wants to turn me against my Chinese heritage by sending me to an English school.’
‘But you live in Chinatown,’ said Sally, ‘and you live with Madame Tay. She teaches you about Chinese heritage, doesn’t she?’
‘My father wants me to be English. He wants me to graduate from an English university and marry an Englishman, like all these girls here.’
‘And what’s wrong with your father wanting the best for you?’
Frances sighed. A spray of chlorinated water splashed up from a nearby swimmer, douching their shins.
‘But it’s not what I want. I want to stay here, in Malaysia. But this country has to change. We need a proper democracy. The Alliance have dominated since Independence and right now Malaysia is run by the Malays, for the Malays.’
‘You’ve got Chinese in government,’ interrupted Sally. ‘I’ve seen them on TV.’
‘The Alliance is a party of privilege and the Chinese politicians in it know nothing about the everyday working-class Chinese. They represent the rich middle classes, who accept the Malays’ constitutional special status to keep the peace. Meanwhile the poor suffer, are denied jobs, land, education … That’s why the Democratic Action Party is so important. They represent Chinese from every walk of life. They stand for a Malaysian Malaysia. They are campaigning for the eradication of exploitation of man by man, class by class, race by race.’
Exploitation? Eradication? Constitutional special status? Sally was speechless, mystified by rhetoric. Frances, meanwhile, was radiant, exhilarated by her recent discovery that she belonged to an oppressed minority. Her eyes shone black as liquorice. Sally had never seen her so thrilled.
‘But won’t the Chinese being in charge, and thinking the Chinese are better, be just as bad as the Malays being in charge and thinking they are better?’ asked Sally.
‘You haven’t been listening! We don’t think we’re better. We only want equal rights and an end to discrimination. The DAP is not anti-Malay. They are campaigning to end rural Malay poverty too – an end to poverty for everyone!’
‘Like the Communists?’
‘Henry says it’s Humanism, not Communism.’
‘Mr Leung’s in the DAP?’
‘Henry’s very committed. Now that the elections are only a few weeks away he is at the campaign office seven nights a week. He says that I can go down there and help.’
‘But you can’t, Frances. You’re grounded until the O levels are over.’
‘I don’t care. This is more important. We’ve to stop the persecution of the Chinese.’
‘Persecution?’
‘Henry says the Chinese are the Jews of Asia.’
Sally let out a loud gasp. She generally slept during history lessons, but she knew sacrilege when she heard it.
‘You can’t say that! Millions of Jews were killed in the Holocaust.’
‘And millions of Chinese were killed during the war too. Henry says—’
‘Henry says, Henry says … Don’t you think for yourself any more?’
‘I was wrong to think you’d understand.’
Frances shook her head in sadness and frustration, and Sally bit her lip so hard she tasted blood. She understood all right! Mr Leung had brainwashed Frances! Frances had never cared about any of this stuff before, but now she was carrying on like the DAP’s number-one activist. The fifth form were treading water in the deep end, pink scrubbed faces lifted to receive Miss Van der Cruisen’s wisdom on backstroke technique. Laughter tinkled as Miss Van der Cruisen mimicked the clumsy stroke of a weaker student.
‘I have never fitted in at this school,’ Frances murmured, as if her new political awakening had shed light on the reason why.
> ‘Well, that’s ’cos you never talk to anyone,’ said Sally, ‘and you’re very rude. It’s not because you’re Chinese. Cynthia Wong in the third year has loads of friends.’
‘I never wanted to come to this school. My father made me come here.’
‘Well, I doubt that any of us wanted to come here …’
‘He’s disgusting. He knows the situation in this country is unfair, but thinks the Malays should keep their special privileges. He says all hell will break loose if the other races have equal rights. It’s cowardly to know things are wrong, but to be afraid to change them.’
And on Frances went, ranting about the unfair quotas for government jobs and university places, the National Language Act of 1967 and land reservations for Malays. Sally knew she was perfect for a trial run of Frances’s new political opinions, none the wiser if she fluffed her lines or got her facts wrong. The bell chimed for the end of the lesson and the swimmers hoisted their pale gleaming bodies up on to the poolside tiles, biceps and triceps flexed against the gravity of the water. Red plastic caps were snapped off heads, and wet ropes of hair wrung out. And as Frances lectured her ignorant friend, for the first time in her games-skiving career Sally wished she’d endured the humiliation of a swimming costume and spent the hour in the pool.
During her months in Kuala Lumpur, Sally had turned a blind eye to newspaper headlines and slogan graffiti on walls; turned a deaf ear to political rallies and electioneering; turned off the TV at the spectacle of debating politicians. Though Chinatown was Sally’s after-school haunt, she didn’t prefer the Chinese to the Malays, or the Malays to the Chinese. Both races were equally ‘other’ to her, thought of in terms of stereotypes: the Malays cheerful, indolent and work-shy; the Chinese industrious, money-grubbing and sly. Though Sally knew of the separateness of the communities, any interracial tension had escaped her notice. She asked her father’s opinion (Mr Hargreaves was a champion of equal rights after all, employing both Chinese and Malay servants and paying them equal wages). Mr Hargreaves frowned, scratching his bald pate as if to facilitate thought.
‘Well, dear, the Malays are very much the dominant race, aren’t they? And they’re not very fair to the Chinese and the Sikhs, are they? But we mustn’t poke our noses in. We left Malaysia to manage her own affairs in 1957 and they’ve been getting on quite nicely without us. We must let these people sort it out among themselves. And as for Frances, we all go through funny phases. Believe it or not I was a Trotskyite at Oxford, barking on about Communism every chance I got! Don’t worry, silly old Frances will come round. In the meantime, it’s tremendous fun to be young and fired up …’
Frances begged Sally to be her alibi when she volunteered at the Democratic Action Party campaign office (since her grades had improved Mr Milnar allowed Frances to have dinner at Sally’s once a week), and Sally agreed – a decision she sorely regretted when Mr Milnar called the Hargreaves’ residence, putting her through the heart-clenching ordeal of imitating her friend on the telephone. The DAP voluntary work indoctrinated Frances in the opposition party ethos until she could rattle off the election manifesto verbatim (detonating in Sally a thousand and one yawns). Nonetheless, not wanting to be left out of things, Sally asked if she could volunteer at the DAP campaign office too.
‘You can’t,’ Frances said.
‘Why not?’ asked Sally.
‘Because you’re English.’
‘So are you! You’re dual nationality! Besides, I thought the DAP weren’t a racist party.’
‘They’re not. But it’s inappropriate for an English person to volunteer. The message of the DAP is freedom and equality, and Malaysia has been freed from the shackles of colonialism for years now.’
During maths lessons Sally fumed at Henry Leung. She hated him so much she had to break her hatred of the maths teacher down, loathing one segment at a time: the mad professor’s crest of hair; the yucky pimples on his chin; the buniony wrists and trouser turn-ups flapping above his weakling ankles. Twice Mr Leung was so flustered by the glaring student in the third row, second desk from the left, he had to stop teaching mid-sentence. Chalk hovering over quadratic equation, he asked Sally if anything was troubling her. Sally narrowed her eyes, letting the evil Svengali know she saw through his nerdy maths teacher disguise. Slowly, she shook her head. And Mr Leung nervously resumed teaching, though the girl’s stare was enough to turn a man to stone.
One Saturday in April Frances telephoned Sally and invited her to sleep over.
‘My father is away,’ she said. ‘Come over and we can drink whisky and mess about like old times.’
Flattered, Sally wheedled permission from her father. But once in Frances’s bedroom she wished Mr Hargreaves had been stricter. Sally had been tricked into attending a DAP rally where the sole speaker was Frances Milnar (in her new activist’s get-up of vest, dungarees and militant red bandanna). Sally swigged from a hip flask stolen from Mr Milnar’s study and sulked.
‘The Chinese have been abused by every ruling power in Malaysia. Exploited by the British. Tortured by the Japanese. Accused of Communism and locked up in detention camps by the British again. And now trampled on by the Malays. Henry says we are just beginning to fight back. To realize that suffering is not the fate of the Chinese. To take power into our own hands and create a new multiracial nation.’
A flame of whisky shot down Sally’s throat and the warmth of the stolen liquor spread across her chest. Absinthe makes the heart grow fonder – C. Dulwich, 1948. Sally traced the etching in the flask’s silver with her fingertip, wondering who C. Dulwich was and what ‘absinthe’ meant. As she sprawled on the bed, Frances paced like a caged animal, from wardrobe to door, door to wardrobe, ranting, frustrated by the rules that governed her seventeen-year-old life, preventing her from giving one hundred per cent of her heart, body and soul to the campaign.
Sally was sleepy and bored. Though the ceiling fan spun like mad, rattling and threatening to tear loose from its bracket, the breeze was negligible and she felt as if a great dog were panting its muggy breath over her. Sally threw back her head and yodelled a massive yawn. When she finished her yawn she was amazed to see Frances still pacing and talking to herself, oblivious to her boredom. Enough! thought Sally.
‘You’re in love with Mr Leung, aren’t you?’ she said.
Frances blushed. For the first time in days the wind dropped from behind her sails. There were no lines in the DAP election manifesto to counter such an allegation.
‘I don’t know,’ she admitted.
‘What about him? Is he in love with you?’
‘I think he likes me, yes.’
Frances smiled self-consciously at her toes. Sally smiled too, hoping the non-participation of her eyes wasn’t too obvious.
‘Wow,’ she said, trying to inject her flat tone with enthusiasm. ‘Has he said anything to you? Kissed you or anything?’
‘No,’ said Frances, shaking her head a touch too ruefully for Sally’s liking, ‘He would never … not yet anyway. Not while I’m still his student. But he says he’s leaving Amethyst at the end of term. And so am I. He wants to be a candidate for the DAP and I’m going to help him … I … I don’t know how I know he likes me. I just do. You know when you just know?’
Sally nodded, though she had no idea.
‘Anyway,’ Frances blinked the sun spots of adoration from her eyes, ‘the elections come first. We must focus on making Malaysia an equal society for all. And once that has been accomplished, we’ll see what happens.’
‘But …’ Sally flailed for grounds to object to the romance, ‘isn’t he really old?’
‘He’s not that old! He’s only twenty-nine. That’s only twelve years older than I am. My mother was thirteen years older than my father.’
‘Yes, and look at what a success they made of that.’
Frances flinched at this wasp-sting of sarcasm. ‘That’s not funny,’ she said.
But she forgave Sally in a heartbeat, inoculated against sni
deness by the chemicals of infatuation. Frances bounced on the bed, hugging her knees to her chest, untying and retying her red bandanna as she analysed every possible sign of the maths teacher’s attraction to her. Every look, gesture and word. Sally’s jealousy was an acid haze, sharpening with every breath. Why did she feel so jilted?
The adult Sally Hargreaves understands the mechanics of jealousy better than her teenage self. She can now put up her hand and own up to her only-child selfishness, the deleterious effects of an adolescence spent in the wilderness of solitude. Sally was an emotional infant, not happy that Frances was happy, only seething at the loss of her friend. Her confidante’s hostility didn’t escape Frances’s notice and before long the mutual resentment was stifling, each girl withdrawing into her own silence.
They stood back to back as they changed for bed, as if preparing for a midnight duel. The darkness of the bedroom was usually a whispering darkness, tactile with messages traced on each other’s backs. But after the light blinked out nothing more was said. They lay apart on the mattress, bodies suffocated by heavy, slow-moving tides of heat. Sally listened to Frances’s shallow wide-awake breathing. She didn’t blame her for not wanting to talk.
Much later they were woken by the clattering of stones, a fistful of gravel pitched up against the fortress of sleep. The mattress springs creaked as Frances sat up.
‘What was that?’
‘What was what?’ mumbled Sally.
The slats of the window shutters rattled again, as if the sky were raining scree.
‘That – there!’
Sally yawned, groggy and incurious. Let whoever was throwing stones throw stones. They’d get bored eventually and go away. Frances had a more confrontational attitude. She leapt energetically out of bed and sprang across the room. She threw open the shutters, as if to catch the person unawares.
‘You!’ Frances cried. ‘What do you want!’