In the Mouth of the Tiger

by Lynette Silver

  Only then did the violence cease. It felt strange, the sudden normality, almost surreal, as if one had just emerged from a high fever or a nightmare. ‘Damned sorry,’ the policeman said. ‘Someone might have got shot. These fellows go a bit far when their blood’s up.’

  Denis was on his feet, dusting the knees of his white linen trousers. ‘Amok is the word,’ he said harshly. Then he calmed quickly and helped me to my feet and put me in a chair. I was all right for half a second, then shock hit me with almost physical force and I had to lurch to the railing, where I was violently sick.

  An arm was around my shoulder, and I was surprised to see it was Pat. ‘Denis needs some help,’ Patrick hissed urgently. ‘Can you start making a fuss?’

  I thought I was making enough fuss as it was and had no idea what he meant. I glanced backwards to see that Denis had hoisted the young Tamil over his shoulder like a sack of flour and was carrying him back into the house.

  ‘Just a second!’ snapped the officer. ‘That man is under arrest!’

  Denis turned back at the doorway. ‘The boy is bleeding. He needs medical attention and I’m going to see he gets it. Then you can do what you like with him.’

  The power to reason was coming back to me and I suddenly knew precisely what Pat had meant. I ran in between Denis and the policeman. ‘Get out of here, all of you!’ I screamed at the top of my lungs. ‘You have no right to frighten us all like this! Someone might have been killed!’ And then I burst into tears – quite genuine tears – and flung myself against the officer’s chest.

  Looking back on the incident I can hardly believe my self-possession. Or rather, to be quite truthful, my controlled panic. Adrenaline is an extraordinary drug and it does extraordinary things to one. It can make one do things that in cold blood would seem impossible.

  My intervention had the desired effect. While the policeman tried to calm me, confusion reigned. Denis disappeared into the house with the boy, followed by Mrs Srinivasan, looking all the more Roman and imperious amid the chaos of shouting men and weeping women. A tall, swarthy Indian then presented himself. ‘I am Mr Ramaswamy Sharma, LL.B. from Bombay University,’ he told the officer loudly. ‘I am asking you politely but firmly if you have a search warrant which enables you to enter these premises?’

  The officer gaped, then looked uncertainly at Pat and me. The meaning was clear: an Indian lawyer might have the law on his side but it counted for little unless the point he raised was endorsed by Europeans.

  ‘I’d take care, officer,’ Pat warned. ‘Mr Sharma has asked if you have a warrant. I will remember your reply, just in case anything results from this raid of yours.’

  At that moment two more police officers climbed up onto the verandah, the older man clearly in charge. He had a bluff, open face but narrow, calculating eyes and I hated him on sight. He ignored everybody except the Indian lawyer, whom he approached with exaggerated civility. ‘Mr Sharma, I heard you challenge the authority of this raid. Let me tell you that I am acting under emergency powers in a matter of grave concern, and that I will not tolerate any interference from you . . .’

  If he thought a firm hand would shut Sharma up he was wrong. ‘Don’t you dare threaten me, Mr Jocelyn of the Special Branch,’ Sharma retorted spiritedly. ‘There are no emergency powers that I am aware of in the State of Selangor that gives you the right to raid a private home without a warrant. I will be taking up the matter of your attitude with my good friend the Commissioner.’

  The Special Branch man’s face reddened. ‘Don’t you dare speak to me like that . . .’ he began.

  ‘Hold on, Jack.’ Denis emerged onto the verandah, dabbing at spots of blood on his shirt with his handkerchief. ‘I think Mr Sharma has a point. Do you have a warrant or not?’ He walked up to Jocelyn, put his handkerchief away, and then thrust his face to within inches of the policeman’s. ‘If you don’t have a warrant, Jack, and you continue with this raid, I will personally ensure that you are hung, drawn and quartered.’ All three police officers stared at Denis, and even the noise from the crowd around us died away.

  Jocelyn was the first to speak. ‘You shouldn’t have intervened in this business, Elesmere-Elliott,’ he said softly. ‘It’s more serious than you might think. I am after a man we suspect is capable of murder.’ He gave a thin smile. ‘Perhaps you and I should have a quiet word.’

  ‘No we should not have a quiet word,’ Denis said shortly. ‘Now, if you don’t have a warrant, and I suspect you don’t, I want you and your people off Mrs Srinivasan’s property immediately. Not in half an hour’s time. Not in ten minutes’ time. Right now.’

  Jack Jocelyn sighed, then spoke quietly to the two officers with him, who in turn began shouting orders. By now there were Malay policemen scattered throughout the garden and they began backing away, their rifles raised to the sky. Denis gestured to Pat, Mr Sharma and me to follow him inside.

  The rattan blinds had been lowered, and we gathered in the cool darkness of the sitting room. The young Tamil who had tried to make a break for it was sitting on a cane lounge while Mrs Srinivasan and another elderly Indian lady sat on either side holding his hands. He had a plaster under his chin where he had smashed into the verandah decking, and there was blood splattered down his shirt. He looked desperately young and desperately scared.

  ‘We have a little problem,’ Denis said quietly. ‘This young man is Nathan Srinivasan, Rajeev’s brother. There are warrants out for his arrest on attempted murder charges. Nathan was involved in the fracas the other day up at Tanjong Malim. We’ve got the police out of our hair for the time being, but they’ve got this place surrounded and they’ll be back pretty soon with a warrant. So we’ve got to smuggle young Nathan out of the place.’

  I felt a surge of panic. What on earth were we getting mixed up with? Helping an attempted murderer to escape the police was surely a criminal offence. I could see us all ending up in jail, and looked at Denis helplessly.

  He saw my look and smiled. ‘You asked yesterday if there was anything we could do, Nona. There is. We’re just about to do it.’ Then he turned to Pat Noone. ‘Have a spot of dinner with us tonight, Pat? Cook is putting together something French. It would be nice if you could join us.’

  It was pure theatre, of course, but it worked. The tension dissipated like air from a pricked balloon. The redoubtable Mr Ramaswamy Sharma, LL.B. from Bombay University, quickly followed our lead. ‘Suit yourself, Mr Noone, but for myself I will be treating myself to a vindaloo. A vindaloo is the only meal fit to eat after a day like today.’ Then his face became serious. ‘We are very grateful to you for what you are doing. It gladdens my heart that there are people about prepared to stand up for the rights we won at Runnymede.’

  Denis had wandered over to the window and was staring out, obviously thinking. Then he turned to Pat. ‘I’ve an idea which might just work,’ he said quietly. ‘Cut up to my car and get Ismail down here, will you? Tell him to bring his off-duty jacket with him. Bundled up so that nobody will see it.’

  Pat obeyed without question, and was back a moment later with Denis’s syce, his spare white jacket folded under his arm.

  ‘Ismail,’ Denis said, speaking in Malay, ‘I want your help in an important matter that may have some risks for you.’

  ‘Tuan, risks can be footsteps to Paradise,’ Ismail replied simply.

  Denis gestured towards Nathan. ‘This young man has done nothing dishonourable, but he is wanted by the policemen who are waiting outside. We need to smuggle him away. My plan is for him to wear your spare coat and your fez, and to accompany me to the car as if he was my syce.’

  Ismail shook his head. ‘I would do anything you ask, Tuan, except to give up my fez to an unbeliever. I earned my fez only by undertaking a long and dangerous pilgrimage to Mecca, and to lend it would cheapen the price I paid.’

  Mr Sharma sighed audibly at this unexpected hitch, but Denis seemed unperturbed. ‘Ismail,’ he said quietly, ‘would I ask you to do anything unworthy of a fo
llower of the Prophet? I believe that it was the Prophet himself who said: “A man who gives up his hard-won fez to save the life of another will recline beside me in Paradise”. If Nathan is taken by the police today, he will surely be killed.’

  Ismail pondered for a moment, and then a smile spread over his face. ‘We must talk more about these interesting words of the Prophet, Tuan,’ he said. ‘You must point out to this ignorant follower of the True One exactly where these words are written down. But as your Christian Prophet said: “Actions speak louder than words”. So I will do what you wish.’ He took off his small black fez and handed it to Nathan.

  ‘I take it you can drive?’ Denis asked Nathan as we moved towards the door.

  ‘I have no licence, Tuan. But I shared the driving with my brother on many occasions.’

  Mrs Srinivasan embraced her son, and then Denis, Pat and me in turn. ‘May you win your spurs, my son,’ she said, quoting from Rajeev’s letter. ‘But I hope at a lesser cost than Rajeev had to pay.’

  We walked up to the car in a tight bunch, with Nathan a pace behind us as would be appropriate for a syce. He looked reasonably appropriate in his fez and white jacket and his head held high, but his Indian darkness told against him because virtually all syces in Malaya were Malays. There were two police trucks parked behind our car, and a group of policemen lounged in our way, their rifles carried casually in the crooks of their arms.

  I don’t think we would have got away with it except for a fortuitous set of circumstances. Some of the young Tamils who had seen Denis crash-tackle Nathan had got it into their heads that he had done so to capture the young man, and they had gathered up on the road to jeer him on his departure. As soon as we appeared they surged forward, shouting abuse. One or two spat their blood-red wads of betel-nut in our direction and I saw one man carrying a house-brick. The police responded by forming up and clearing a way for us, threatening the crowd with the raised butts of their rifles.

  We climbed into the car and then another next hitch arose. Nathan stared at the controls with complete bafflement. ‘It is so different,’ he said desperately. ‘I am sorry. I do not even know how to start the engine.’

  It was the small crowd of demonstrators who again saved the day. Several of them had fought their way onto the road and proceeded to lie down in front of our wheels. Denis got out of the passenger side and strode angrily over to the European officers. From his gestures it was clear that he was berating them for letting the Tamils hold things up.

  The police swooped on the demonstrators with renewed vigour, dragging them off the road with brute force. Denis stalked back to the car, impatiently waved Nathan to move over and took over the driver’s seat himself. Seconds later we were on our way, and I slumped back into my seat with a huge sigh of relief.

  ‘Piece of cake,’ I heard Patrick say, and I had to laugh. My laughter was no doubt tinged with hysteria.

  Dinner that night was pure, undiluted magic. We ate in an upstairs room that Denis had turned into his dining room, a long room with a wall of French doors opening onto a balcony overlooking the tennis court. The Chrystals were there, with Pat Noone, and the young couple we had met in Bentong. His name was Sandy Burns, and he was a trainee manager with Patterson Simon, one of the leading Scots trading firms in KL. His wife, Jane, was a pretty little thing with dark curly hair who hugged me when they arrived under the porch. ‘We’ve found out all about Denis,’ she whispered. ‘He’s quite a celebrity around KL, isn’t he? Terrific rider and sportsman and so on. Are you engaged yet?’

  I just smiled. I couldn’t take offence because her ingenuousness was so natural. She simply said what came into her mind, and it was never malicious.

  We had drinks and makan kechil in the downstairs lounge, then went up to dinner. Barbara Chrystal, who insisted I call her Babs, had brought over her table linen and some silver candlesticks from their house next door, and the table looked delightful. To set off the dark blue tablecloth, Babs had cut and arranged a huge bowl of purple water hyacinths on the sideboard.

  ‘This is an awful lot better than the prison fare we probably deserve,’ Pat observed with a grin, and when Jane asked what he meant he gave her an impish wink. ‘We had some outrageous fun today’ was all he said.

  Actually, it had been an awful day for me. I had never before done anything even remotely illegal, and now here I was involved in one of the most serious offences in the FMS penal code – conspiracy to defeat the course of justice. All day I had jumped from shadows, expecting to hear the squeal of police tyres or the thunderous knock of official knuckles on Denis’s front door. The fact that absolutely nothing happened seemed to make the tension worse. I almost felt that we should go around to the police and made a clean breast of things because there was no way we were going to get away with making Special Branch look foolish. They were, after all, omnipotent, weren’t they? Or so I had always believed.

  But Denis seemed to treat it as a normal day. We had dropped Nathan off at a relative’s home on the Seremban road, then gone back to Ampang Road for a light lunch, a short rest in steamer chairs with the newspapers spread out around us on the verandah floor, and then a game of tennis. Bob and Babs Chrystal joined us towards the end of the afternoon, and I was astounded to hear Denis relating our adventures to them quite openly and without any hint of concern, as if they had been humorous but inconsequential events that happened every day. Ismail had turned up smiling mischievously, to receive a mock cuff for taking so long to get back to duty. Denis gave him his fez back half-full of silver Straits dollars.

  About six o’clock Ismail had run me over to Parry Drive for a shower and change. I decided to wear the beautiful white empire-line dress I had been making since I had been sick, and I think that things changed for me the moment I put it on.

  It looked and felt beautiful. I pirouetted in front of my mirror and smiled at my reflection: By George, we were going to get away with it after all.

  I sat now sipping some rather nice white wine from California, and looked around the candle-lit table at the handsome and beautiful company. My heart suddenly felt as if it would burst with pride. Denis and I really had done something rather splendid. Something dangerous but worthwhile. We had intervened to save a young man from jail, and made the clumsy, arrogant policemen who had sought to break up a private ceremony of remembrance look like idiots.

  It was as if we were living a passage straight out of a Baroness Orczy novel. Denis was Sir Percy Blakeney, Pat one of his faithful lieutenants, and I was of course Sir Percy’s lovely wife, Marguerite.

  Denis suddenly tapped his glass for attention, then raised it solemnly. ‘To the memory of a warrior of Shiva,’ he said, looking across the table into my eyes, ‘and to the woman in whom he placed his trust.’

  Everything went well that night. The food was delicious, the wine superb, and the conversation erudite and stimulating.

  I discovered that Pat Noone was a rather famous anthropologist, who had just published a book about the Temiar. It is fair to say that Pat ‘discovered’ the Temiar: until he made contact with them during an expedition into the high-level jungles of central Malaya some five years before, they had been unknown to the world at large.

  Pat loved the Temiar and their jungle home. I sat entranced as he talked about a Shangri-la beyond the reach of civilisation, a place of mist-shrouded peaks and beautiful valleys full of meadowland and flowers. Where there were rivers full of fish and the tall trees were alive with exotic, unnamed birds.

  ‘It sounds almost too good to be true,’ I said. ‘How on earth did you manage to drag yourself away?’

  ‘I haven’t really left,’ Pat said. ‘I married a Temiar, a lovely girl called Anjang, and my home is in the Telom Valley. I’m only a visitor to your Malaya of cities and roads and paddy fields.’

  ‘Oh, how romantic,’ Jane said, her eyes sparkling. She sighed. ‘Where is Anjang now? I would have loved to have met her.’

  ‘I couldn’t bring Anjang into KL,
’ Pat said. ‘A city would be death to her. She needs to be with the jungle spirits or she can’t dream. And the Temiar need to dream as we need to breathe.’

  I sat sipping my wine, picturing the high ranges of the ulu, with their valleys full of flowers and the tall jungle trees full of birds, and of the dreamers who lived amongst them. ‘I’d love to go up into the mountains and visit the Temiar,’ I said, with a little prickle of fear adding savour to the thought.

  Denis and Patrick exchanged glances, and then Denis turned to me. ‘If you really would like to visit the Temiar, Nona, you could come out with Pat and me when we next go up the Telom. We were only talking about another jaunt this afternoon. The seladang have been playing up and the local headman has asked for a few of them to be culled.’

  I felt my breath catch in my throat, but Jane was watching me with open admiration so I affected a nonchalance I certainly didn’t feel. ‘Just give me a few days’ notice so that I can get some decent walking shoes . . .’

  They say that the flux of time is an illusion, and that every moment that has ever been continues to exist in some dimension beyond our reach, trapped and immutable like a butterfly trapped in amber. I hope that is true, because if it is, one of the happiest moments of my life is still being played out, unaffected by all that has happened since. In that dimension I still preside at our lovely dinner table, rich with the glint of silver and soft in the candlelight. Denis still smiles at me across the rim of his raised wineglass. Bob Chrystal still chats on in his soft Scots burr, Jane still looks at me admiringly beneath her mop of black curls, and Pat’s sensitive scholar’s face still glows with love for his dreaming Temiar.

  The first opportunity I had to speak privately with Tanya was when we arrived at work on Monday morning. It was usual for us to go into work together by taxi, arriving at the Tamarind Building about seven o’clock. That gave us a good hour to prepare for the busy day ahead.