by Susan Barker
‘How is he?’ Frances asked.
‘He’s OK.’
‘Is he out on bail?’
‘I don’t know – he didn’t say.’
‘He can’t be, if he’s in hiding,’ Frances decided. ‘I can’t believe he was waiting for me outside the school gates like that – it’s so risky!’
Frances was pleased, the risk a proof of love.
‘He wasn’t right by the gates. He was a few streets away.’
‘You said he was outside the school gates.’
The taste of tinned sardines from Delilah’s picnic rose in Sally’s mouth; metallic and acrid, the lick of a rusty blade.
‘Oh, did I?’
Frances stopped in her tracks.
‘You’re lying to me! Henry isn’t out of prison! You’re making it up, aren’t you?’
What better time to admit the truth? To get them both out of this awful mess? But as Sally stared into Frances’s blazing eyes, she flared as though wrongfully accused.
‘Yes, that’s right. I’ve come out when the city’s on fire, risking my neck and getting shot at, just for kicks. What do you take me for? I’m doing this so you have a chance to speak to Mr Leung. Because he wants to see you … though now I don’t know why I bothered!’
Had Delilah been within earshot she’d have given the performance a standing ovation. Where had it come from, this outrage and indignation? This talent for lies? There was a fleeting stand-off, the girls livid and glaring hard. Then Frances backed down. She slumped as if her angry convictions had propped her up.
‘Sorry,’ she said. The vanished guilt returned to Sally with vehemence. ‘I’m sorry I lost my temper the other day. I know now it wasn’t your fault. It was my father. Someone fed him a pack of lies about Henry. Lies that linked him to political extremists and made out he’d been taking advantage of me. None of it is true. He hasn’t touched me; works only for the DAP. But my father went to the police. They arrested Henry, said he was dangerous. But there’s no evidence! Nothing!’
‘Henry’s in prison because of your father?’
Frances nodded wearily and Sally saw the weals of tiredness under her eyes.
‘My father betrayed my mother, and now he’s betrayed me. He hates me because I remind him of her. He wants to ruin my life. He thinks he’s won, but he hasn’t. Now Henry’s back we’ll go away and I’ll never see him again.’
‘Is that why you haven’t been to school?’
‘What’s the point of school any more? I haven’t left my room for days. I haven’t been able to eat or sleep or think … I’ve been waiting for them to let him out. Oh, Sally, I was so afraid Henry would blame me for what my father did, that he wouldn’t want to see me again. But now he’s back. I’m so glad!’
Sally was going to be sick.
‘You should have called me.’
The teahouse was over the road. Tell her, tell her, tell her – the syllables had replaced the beat of her heart. But part of her still didn’t want to. Part of her was still jilted, writhing with rejection, and wanting to punish Frances for loving the maths teacher. She lifted her arm and pointed to the building of corrugated iron and ramshackle walls.
Tongue numb with dread, she said: ‘He’s in there.’
Frances hugged Sally, her thin arms encircling her neck. Then she bounded across the road to the teahouse.
Sally stared as the door slammed, disbelieving what she’d just done. She heard Delilah’s blasé drawl: ‘My God! She’s so gullible it’s embarrassing!’
‘Delilah! I thought you were going to wait in there for her.’
Delilah was by one of the pillars supporting the stone walkway roof. She strolled over to Sally, staring at the derelict shophouse with a grimace of satisfaction.
‘Wait in there for her? Are you mad! I wouldn’t stay in there a moment longer than necessary.’
‘Why? What’s wrong with that place?’
Delilah snorted. ‘I can’t believe you’re so naive!’
‘What is that place?’
‘It’s where poor girls from the countryside are sold and where city girls with no job prospects end up.’
Sally grabbed Delilah’s arm and squeezed with all the strength in her fingers.
‘We must go and get her!’
Delilah wrinkled her nose, pulled her arm free.
‘Don’t get upset. I had a word with them. They’re expecting her. I asked them to give her a little scare.’
‘A scare?’
‘Nothing less than she deserves.’
Sally lunged at Delilah and shook her with an aggression that startled them both.
‘Help me get her back. Please!’
Delilah’s expression was pure disgust, but instead of struggling she went slack. She tilted her head back, lips puckered as if to kiss her schoolgirl assailant. Then she spat at Sally, a leap of snake’s venom in her eye. Sally let her go and stepped back, rubbing the spittle choking her vision.
‘Go and rescue her yourself,’ said Delilah. ‘You’re certainly big enough and ugly enough. Silly Sally! Didn’t take much for you to screw Frances over, did it? Makes me wonder if you’re worth having as a friend.’ She began to walk away.
‘Don’t go!’
Delilah glanced over her shoulder with a toss of chestnut hair.
‘He shouldn’t have treated me the way he did. He really shouldn’t have. Now let’s see how he likes it if someone does to his precious daughter what he did to me.’
The shophouse door swung open when Sally was halfway across the road. Frances, she thought and her heart swam with relief. Let her hate me and hate me and never forgive me, but let her be OK. But it wasn’t Frances. It was a man. He leant casually against the door frame, eclipsing the light that shone some way behind him. Sally froze. She couldn’t see his face. Darkness crawled over him like insects. Like a beekeeper covered from head to toe in black bees.
‘Hey, English,’ he called gruffly. ‘Looking for your friend?’
‘Yes. Can you get her for me?’
‘Don’t worry about her,’ he said. ‘We’re looking after her.’
Looking after her? Sally imagined several burly men gathered round Frances, offering tea and sympathy. It wouldn’t happen. She had to be in there against her will.
‘Please, mister,’ Sally called, ‘will you let her out?’
‘She’s fine. Come and see for yourself.’
‘Please let her out.’
‘Come here, come here. You girls shouldn’t be out tonight. Don’t you know about the fighting? Come here …’
The voice seemed detached from the man in his purdah of darkness. Come here, come here … He said the words again and again, soft and lulling, as if to hush a frightened child. Sally’s feet were bound to the spot. Her eyes dropped from his shadowy face to where his hands were fumbling at his waist. There was an unbuckling, an unbuttoning, a burrowing of his hand inside his trousers as it seized what it sought. The dark shifted, his arm moving in rhythmic unhurried strokes. He talked to Sally as he groped, encouraging her to go to him, sick and cloying, menacing and hypnotic. Perhaps Sally was hypnotized because she could only stare and stare. Then the man stepped out of the doorway and the trance was broken. Sally was off, satchel thudding her side as she tore away, the man’s laughter chasing her up the street.
Sally ran through the empty streets of Chinatown. She ran counter to logic, a moth fluttering to the flickering heat of arson and the din of emergency alarms. She’d never run so far and so fast in her life, the piston surge of blood in her heart, legs pumping as she pounded the living daylights out of the pavement. She saw a gang of men carrying goods out through the smashed-up window of an electrical appliances store. A couple of the men were loading a stolen fridge on to a pick-up, and another guffawed laughter as he staggered down the road, bow-legged under the weight of an enormous TV. She didn’t stop to ask them for help. She ran on and on, hands clamped over her nose and mouth as she passed a car rolled on its back,
dense smoke and coppery flames pouring out of its underbelly.
China Keluar! China Keluar! A Malay in a black bandanna stood on a fire hydrant, shouting and slashing arabesques with his machete, as though the air were rife with invisible assassins. Beneath him lay a slain man in a bloody shirt, his arms spread in a V and his forehead touching the ground as if in obeisance to the fire hydrant god. The slain man didn’t move and Sally cringed in terror as the black bandanna man yodelled his battle-cry at her and twirled his knife. Sally saw some more bandanna men up ahead and ducked into a cabbage-stinking alleyway, wading through heaps of rubbish bags to the haze of street light at the other end. She tripped on a crate of bottles and skinned her elbow against the wall. She got up and limped onwards, halting mid-hobble as a reverberation came up through the soles of her shoes, the ground rumbling as though in ferocious hunger. The light at the far end of the alley was obscured as a tank of the Royal Malay Regiment thundered by. The alley walls shook with artillery fire as the city came under martial law, and Sally staggered back the way she’d come. The men in the black bandannas were gone and the street was a lawn of shattered glass and broken wood, smashed bicycles and furniture looted then discarded as it was too heavy to carry. Every shophouse was in darkness, all harbouring families in whispering huddles, suitcases packed, passports in pockets, ready to escape the country at the break of day.
Sally spotted two men in police uniform straddling motorbikes, walkie-talkies held to their mouths. Broken glass crunching under her shoes, she ran over to them, wailing and waving her arms lest they vroom away. When she reached the policemen she wanted to scream about Frances, but could only pant and gasp. The Malay policemen stared at the white girl, wheezing and flapping like a pigeon in the throes of an asthma attack. Sally arched her back, hands on her knees, lungs wrestling for air. Between each lurch of breath opened narrow windows of opportunity for speech.
‘Please,’ she gasped. ‘Frances …’
‘There’s a curfew!’ one of the policemen shouted. ‘Do you want to get killed? Go home!’
‘Please help me,’ Sally cried. ‘My friend’s trapped in a building near by …’
Sally looked around. Was she still in Chinatown? Which direction was the shophouse? She’d completely lost her bearings.
‘Your friend is lucky to be indoors.’
‘Please. We must help her. I think there were men in there. I think they’re hurting her …’
‘Where do you live?’
‘Delilah was supposed to wait inside. But she didn’t. She lied! She tricked me! If you come with me to Sultan Road I can show you the way from there. It’s …’
‘Where do you live?’ The eyes of the policeman bulged in frustration.
‘Jalan Perdana, Petaling Jaya.’
The policemen had a quick consultation in Malay. The policeman who’d shouted at Sally spoke into his radio transmitter, before speaking again to his colleague. Sally wanted to scream and beat her fists on the ground. They were wasting time. They had to help Frances.
‘You,’ said the policeman, ‘stop crying and get on the back of my bike.’
‘But Frances—’
‘Shut up about your friend. C’mon!’
‘Please!’ Sally was screaming now. ‘I can’t leave her!’
‘Do you want to be left here to die?’
The policeman’s eyes bulged and a blood vessel protruded in his temple. He yelled so hard that the word die came out ragged and hoarse. It was no good. The policemen wouldn’t help her. Sobbing, she climbed astride the back of the bike. She clung to the policeman, her eyes squeezed tight as they swerved off around the rubble in the road. She sobbed so hard that when he dropped her off in Petaling Jaya fifteen minutes later, the back of his uniform was soaking wet. Sally toppled off the bike, pulling down her hoicked-up skirt. She ignored the policeman as he warned her to stay indoors, and stumbled away from the motorbike without thanking him. The police bike revved up and sped back to the rioting city.
In the silence of the yard Sally’s ears buzzed in memory of gunfire. Trixie and Tinkerbell trotted up to her, tails wagging, sniffing furiously at the mysterious odours of civil unrest clinging to her clothes. Trixie licked her knee and the rough caress of her tongue set off a fresh wave of tears. But mid-sob Sally had a flash revelation. She’d make her father drive her back to Kuala Lumpur! Yes, that was it! Her father always did what was decent and right. He’d help her rescue Frances.
Sally dashed into the house, the door banging behind her.
‘Father! Father!’ she hollered.
No lights were on downstairs. Odd, thought Sally. Why has Father given Safiah and Yok Ling the night off? Spring-heeled, she bounded up the stairs, knocking her shin in a misstep in the dark. On the landing she held the banister, pausing to regain her breath as blood drooled to her ankle. As she stood there, Sally heard a low-pitched moaning coming from the master bedroom. She recognized the sound. Her father had made those same terrible groans of pain when he’d slipped a disc five years ago. Father had injured himself! Or worse, some men in black bandannas had broken into the house and attacked him. Damn those useless dogs! Sally flew to the bedroom and threw open the door.
‘Father!’ she cried.
Mr Hargreaves was not flat out on the bed as she’d expected. On the churned-up sheets was a creature of two heads, its eight limbs tangled up in a fierce, writhing knot of pleasure. The room stank like a rabbit hutch, though the windows were wide open. Two dark shapes sprang apart – one of them substantially larger than the other. Sally realized the larger one was her father.
‘Oh!’
She backed out of the room, trying to make sense of what she’d seen. The light clicked on and moments later Mr Hargreaves appeared in the bedroom doorway, tying the cord of his dressing gown. He was as puffed out as an out-of-practice trumpeter, a high colour in his cheeks. His sparse hair was like a halo of feathers that had drifted down upon his balding pate.
‘Petal!’ he exclaimed. ‘I thought you were spending the night at Delilah Jones’s.’
Sally frowned at her shoes.
‘Oh, Petal, don’t get upset! I’m sorry that you had to find out this way, but it isn’t as sordid as it seems. Safiah and I are very much in love. In fact, we plan to marry. I know it must be upsetting for you, but Agnes has been dead for over sixteen years now and it’s about time I moved on. I want you to know that you’re still number one, Sally dearest. Do you hear me? You’re still number one! Oh, don’t cry, sweetie, don’t cry. You’ll be grown up soon and off to university. You don’t want me to be lonely, do you?’
Sally stared at her father’s hairy troll’s feet. The toenails were overgrown and needed clipping. He was very neglectful about things like that.
‘Petal? Are you OK? You’ve scraped your knee! And your elbow is bleeding. Shall I get Safiah to fetch some antiseptic to clean it up?’
At the sound of her name the servant girl appeared. She wore a bedsheet wrapped around her like a strapless evening gown, her tresses back-combed by Mr Hargreaves’s lust-crazed fingers into a wild lioness’s mane. Daughter’s and servant girl’s eyes met over Mr Hargreaves’s shoulder and Safiah smiled. If her stepmother-to-be had poked her tongue out, then Sally wouldn’t have been surprised. Safiah’s bedsheet slid down her breasts showing the nut-brown aureolae of her nipples. Sally glanced at her father and saw that his robe had come undone, the flabby mound of his belly mercifully overhanging the pubic thicket. Sally remembered the man in the doorway – the way he’d groped himself, eyes leering in the dark.
‘She can’t even speak English,’ Sally muttered.
‘Oh … darling.’
Mr Hargreaves reached out to stroke his daughter’s cheek. She shut her eyes.
‘I think I’m going to bed now.’
Sally went into her room and slammed the door.
During the days of rioting the city was consumed by pyromania. Hundreds of houses were fire-bombed, the streets becoming graveyards of charre
d chassis and exploded engines, carbonized seat springs and steering wheels. Army jeeps crashed through the defence barricades of Chinese neighbourhoods, soldiers shooting indiscriminately into the windows of shops and homes. The wounded lay in the streets, often yards from their families hiding indoors, listening to the cries of pain, too terrified to go and help. Every incarnation of blade flashed through the air, hacking human flesh and bone, the city an abattoir, the gutters flowing with blood. Men were beheaded, dismembered, and women raped, breasts crudely amputated, broken bottles thrust between their legs. In Kuala Lumpur General Hospital every basic necessity was exhausted: beds, surgical dressing, doctors, blood. The hospital morgue was so crowded that corpses dangled from ceiling hooks in plastic bags; were piled three deep on the floor – dead Malays on top of dead Sikhs, dead Chinese on dead Malays. Corpses in the street were doused in petrol and set alight. Corpses were dumped in shallow graves dug in gardens and public parks. Corpses thrown into the muddy Klang River drifted out of the city, a silent flotilla of the dead.
The phone line was engaged when Sally telephoned the Milnars, the switchboards jammed by an avalanche of calls. She crawled on to her bed in her shoes and smoky school uniform and lay shivering, her eyes wide open, for every time she closed them she saw her father and his teenage mistress, or the flames of a city plunged into hell. Later in the night she went downstairs to call Frances again, but got the engaged tone for every number she dialled. When she replaced the receiver she heard Safiah’s ceiling-muffled giggling and her father’s effeminate whinny of submission. She switched the television on and turned the volume up high. From the flickering dots of monochrome an apparition emerged. The Tengku. Thickly spectacled, black songkok on his silver hair. The Prime Minister (who was not to be Prime Minister for very much longer) was addressing the nation live on air, wiping away tears as he poured out his feelings. Democracy in Malaysia had failed. The Opposition parties were to blame. It was the fault of the Communists.
‘In this hour of need I pray to Allah to secure you against all dangers. At the same time you must look after yourselves. I will do all I can without fear to maintain peace in this country. God bless you all.’