be dancing and singing in the jungles tonight, I’m afraid.’
‘Gurney’s wife?’ I said, looking at Magnus.
‘The wireless said the CTs fired at the vehicle in front first. When they started shooting at his Rolls, Gurney got out from the car and walked away from it.’
‘That was reckless of him,’ one of the European women spoke up.
Magnus corrected her immediately. ‘He was drawing fire away from her, Sarah.’
‘Poor woman. . .’ said Emily.
Magnus squeezed his wife’s shoulder. ‘I think it’ll be good for us to look at our security measures again, come up with some suggestions to improve them.’
‘There’s not much more we can do, is there?’ a middle-aged man said. Earlier he had introduced himself to me as Paul Crawford, telling me that he owned a strawberry farm in Tanah Rata, and that he was a childless widower. ‘We’ve put up fences around our homes, trained our workers to be sentries, and formed a Home Guard in the kampongs. But we’re still waiting for the Special Constables we asked for.’
When the war ended, I had hoped I would never have to experience something like that again. But here I was, in the heart of another war.
‘Those few weeks after the Japs surrendered,’ Emily said, ‘we kept hearing about the communists killing the Malays in their kampongs, and the Malays taking their revenge on the Chinese. It was frightening.’
‘The Chinese squatters I’ve spoken to still believe that it was the communists who defeated the Japs,’ Toombs remarked.
‘My first week in Malaya,’ Frederik said, ‘a soldier told me he had been with the first batch of troops coming back to take control of the country. He thought the communists had won the war. Every town his regiment drove through had buntings and posters celebrating the communists’ victory against the Japs.’
‘Malaya, Malaya,’ Hamid grumbled. ‘None of you find it strange that what you English so carelessly named ‘Malaya’ – my tanah-air, my home – didn’t officially exist until only recently?’
‘This is my home too, Enchik Hamid,’ I said.
‘You orang China, you’re all descendants of immigrants,’ Hamid retorted. ‘Your loyalty will always lie with China.’
‘That’s nonsense,’ I replied.
‘Oh, I’m sorry. You’re a Straits Chinese aren’t you? Even worse! The whole lot of you think home is England – a place few of you have ever seen.’ Hamid rapped his chest with his fist. ‘We Malays, we are the true sons of the soil, the bumiputera.’ He looked around at us. ‘Not one of you here can be called that.’
‘Please-lah, Hamid,’ Emily said.
‘Old countries are dying, Hamid,’ I said, keeping a grip on my anger, ‘and new ones are being born. It doesn’t matter where one’s ancestors came from. Can you say – with absolute certainty – that one of your forebears did not sail from Siam, from Java, or Aceh, or from the islands in the Sunda Straits?’
‘What do you mean, that Malaya didn’t exist until recently?’ This was Peter Boyd, the assistant manager of a rubber estate; he had only arrived from London a few weeks before to take over from his predecessor who had been killed by the CTs.
‘It’s always been a convenient name for the rag-tag collection of territories the British had obtained control of,’ I explained before Hamid could reply. ‘First there were the Federated Malay States, each one headed by a governor and situated on the west coast.’ It shocked me that such ignorance among the Europeans sent out to administer Malaya was still common; no wonder the Malays had had enough and wanted the Mat Sallehs out. ‘Then there were the Non-Federated Malay States,’ I continued, ‘ruled by their sultans with assistance from British advisers. And then there were the Straits Settlements – Malacca, Penang and Singapore.’
‘And all stolen from us Malays,’ Hamid said.
‘Who were too lazy to have done anything with it,’ Emily cut in. ‘You know very well, Hamid, that we Chinese built up the tin industry. We established towns, and we brought in commerce. Kuala Lumpur was founded by a Chinese! Don’t pretend you didn’t know.’
‘Hah! We were far too clever to want to spend our days slaving for the Mat Salleh in the tin mines, unlike you orang China.’ Hamid leaned forward with his plate. ‘Eh, Emily, some more of your belachan please.’
The discovery of tin in the Kinta Valley in the eighteenth century had compelled the British to ship indentured coolies from southern China to work the mines, as the Malays preferred to remain in their kampongs and till their own fields. The Chinese immigrants came with the intention of returning to their homeland after making their fortune. Many had stayed on, however, preferring the stability of life in a British colony to the wars and upheavals in China. They established families and fortunes in Penang, Ipoh and Kuala Lumpur, and opened the way for more of their countrymen from the southern ports of China. These immigrants soon became part of Malaya. I never wondered about it, just as I never thought it strange that I should also have been born beneath the monsoon skies of the equator, that with my first breath I would inhale the humid, heated air of the tropics and feel immediately and forever at home.
Magnus rubbed his one good eye with his knuckles. ‘I remember a couple of years ago I was sitting in my study, listening to the evening news,’ he said. ‘What I heard made me despair.’ He turned to Crawford and Toombs. ‘Your Mr Attlee, giving official recognition to that fellow Mao’s government in China, while the communists were killing hundreds of us in Malaya every month.’
‘Don’t forget there’s an election in a couple of weeks,’ Crawford said. ‘We might get Winston back.’ Magnus simply grimaced, looking singularly uninspired by the prospect.
‘If you do,’ said Frederik, ‘he’ll inherit Mao on this side of the world, and Mau Mau in Africa.’
‘You’re terrible-lah,’ said Emily, covering her laugh behind her hand.
‘What Yun Ling mentioned just now, about old countries dying – well, she’s right,’ Magnus said. ‘There isn’t one that’s older than China, and look at it now. A new name, and a new emperor.’
‘Emperor Mao?’ said Frederik.
‘In all but name.’
‘For goodness’ sake,’ Emily cut in. ‘Let’s talk about something else, can we not? Has anyone here read that new book by that Han Suyin? She came here for a visit last year, you know. Eh, Molly, is it true, they’re going to make a film of it? With William Holden?’
Lunch was winding down when one of the servants came out from the house and whispered to Magnus. He got up from his seat and went in through the kitchen, the ridgebacks padding after him. He looked troubled when he returned to join us a few minutes later.
‘That was one of my assistant managers on the telephone, he said, looking around at all of us. ‘CTs torched a squatter village in Tanah Rata an hour ago. Chopped the headman up with a parang. They forced his wife and daughters to watch. I’m not trying to get rid of you lot, but a six o’clock curfew’s been
