Leila

by Robin Jenkins

  ‘Does the lady merit so much reflection?’ asked the Sultan, laughing.

  His Highness was in the market for beautiful women. He had a harem full of them. Madam Azaharri would make him a regal wife, but would the prospect of a palace with two thousand rooms, a yacht as big as the Britannia, and dozens of servants, entice her? Sandilands did not think so.

  ‘How does she compare with the ladies of the Shamrock Hotel?’ asked the Sultan, laughing again.

  Sandilands grinned sheepishly. It had been dark when he had visited that haunt of the elegant whores from Hong Kong and Singapore. He had slunk in and out and yet he must have been seen and reported to the Sultan, whose spies were reputed, rightly it seemed, to be everywhere.

  The Sultan was amused. Small and fat himself, he liked to make fun of Sandilands who was tall and spare. ‘In my grandfather’s day,’ he said, ‘when thieves had their hands cut off you can imagine what happened to those caught consorting with ladies of joy.’

  In those pre-oil days, though the mosque had been an ill-kept ramshackle wooden building, Islamic laws had been cruelly enforced. Today, when the great mosque, a magnificence of white marble and blue tiles, was one of the wonders of Islam, a certain amount of Western decadence was permitted. As long as the Sultan said his prayers daily and contributed millions to Islamic causes the imams were appeased.

  The Sultan’s second drive was satisfactory: not very long but straight and safe. In good humour he again teased Sandilands. ‘Is it not the case, Andrew, that democratic governments often pay little heed to the wishes of the people who elected them?’

  Sandilands had to admit that that was the case.

  ‘So it is not really the people who govern but a small clique of men? Perhaps just one man, the Prime Minister or the President?’

  Sandilands was not much interested in politics. ‘Yes, I suppose so.’

  ‘So what is the difference between a democracy like your country, Andrew, and my country where I am that one man?’

  And if that one man was just and benevolent, was not that as good a form of government as any? Didn’t historians say that England, and Scotland too, had never been so well administered as under the dictator Oliver Cromwell? Surely the very forming of political parties, each one representing a section of the community, made division and dissension inevitable. It had begun in Savu itself. Abad’s People’s Party championed the poor and powerless, while the Patriots defended the rights of the rich and powerful.

  When the game ended, with victory as usual going to Sandilands, in spite of the ten-stroke advantage he had given his opponent, the Sultan shook hands and solemnly handed over the stake, one dollar. It always amused him that it was so small.

  His white Rolls Royce was waiting for him. He got into it and was driven off to his palace where he would have his shower in a bathroom where all the taps were of gold.

  His bodyguards followed in a yellow Land Rover.

  Two

  IT WAS now gloaming. In a minute or two darkness would fall. Stars had begun to shine. Creatures of the night were beginning to be heard. The lights would be on in the Old Town. There was a New Town, the Sultan’s pride, with tall, gleaming buildings and wide boulevards with masses of bougainvillea, hibiscus, frangipani, and other flowering shrubs. Government House was there and the offices of many famous firms eager to do business with so rich a country.

  Sandilands preferred the Old Town with its narrow, noisy, spicy streets and alleys, its small dark shops that sold everything from stuffed snakes to French champagne, and its bars where Malays, Chinese, Tamils, Filipinos, and Dusuns drank Tiger beers laced with brandy and discussed the affairs of the day, which, so far as he could tell from eavesdropping, seldom included politics. It had always seemed to him that those simple souls ought not to be bothered by politicians. They did not want power, even the infinitesimal part represented by the casting of a vote every four or five years. They were content to make their modest livelihoods and enjoy the company of friends and neighbours whether or not these were the same colour as themselves. Theirs was a fortunate little country where it was never cold and never too hot either, because of the sea breezes; except of course deep in the interior, but only aboriginal tribes lived there.

  He decided to go home through the Old Town. He would call in at Mr Cheng’s bookshop to see if books he had ordered had arrived. After playing golf with the Sultan he liked to sit in a bar among ordinary folk. He was not sure why. Perhaps it was a kind of penance. In spite of that visit to the Shamrock Hotel he was by birth a Calvinist. His grandfather had been a minister of the Free Kirk of Scotland.

  He was pleased to see some of his students in the bookshop. He greeted them and they were, as always, courteous and respectful. They were also that little bit guarded in their attitude towards him. It wasn’t him as a person they distrusted, though perhaps distrust was too strong a word; it was him as a representative of the arrogant and greedy West.

  He looked for Mr Cheng and found that white-haired and white-bearded old Chinese in a corner behind piles of books, talking to a tall black-haired Asian woman in Western dress – white blouse and blue skirt. His heart began to beat faster. There was no sensible reason why it should, for though the woman was Dr Abad’s daughter, ‘the beautiful Leila’, she was a stranger to him and besides, she was coloured.

  In her letters to him his mother kept telling him that if he ever got married it must be to one of his own kind. She meant white. He had replied that she needn’t worry. He knew white men who had married coloured women and had seen, in spite of their efforts to keep it secret, how intolerable they found the burden of resentment, shame, and guilt with which they had saddled themselves. He had felt greatly relieved that he was free of that heartbreaking burden.

  At the side of Leila’s neck was a tiny black mole: it made her skin look quite light. She was wearing a thin gold chain with a crucifix attached. He had heard that Dr Abad was a Christian; so, it seemed, was his daughter. His mother would not have counted that in her favour: being the wrong kind of Christian was worse than not being a Christian at all.

  On her way out of the shop she passed him, so close he could smell her perfume. She gave him a smile that had his heart racing. She was the most beautiful woman he had ever seen and had the most intelligent eyes. His own smile was too late and too timid.

  He wanted to run after her. He wanted to be with her always. He wanted her to be his. Had he fallen in love?

  For a wonder Mr Cheng did not seem to notice any transformation in Sandilands. He gave him his usual friendly chuckle. Sandilands was one of his best customers.

  ‘Good evening, Mr Sandilands,’ he said, in English. ‘I am pleased to tell you your books have arrived.’

  Sandilands was not interested in the books. His mind was on Leila.

  ‘Who was that lady you were talking to, Mr Cheng?’ he asked. His voice was curiously hoarse.

  ‘Are you having a cold, Mr Sandilands? That was Dr Abad’s daughter, Madam Leila Azaharri. She is very beautiful, is she not?’

  Sandilands felt an absurd jealousy. He wanted her beauty, tainted though it was, for himself alone.

  ‘And very clever,’ added Cheng. ‘One day she will be Prime Minister of this country. In ten years when it has become a democracy.’ He chuckled again but behind the steel-rimmed glasses his eyes were earnest.

  Sandilands was not interested in her as a politician.

  ‘She’s a widow, isn’t she?’

  ‘Yes, sad to say. Her husband died in Malaya, a year or so ago. He was young. He was a lawyer like the lady herself. How is your own lady, Mr Sandilands? Miss Hislop, the angel of mercy with the yellow hair and the voice that makes lazy ones tremble.’

  He had been a patient in the hospital where Jean Hislop, the Chief Nurse, had impressed him with her brisk, unsentimental efficiency. She had made sure the bedpans were not only promptly collected and properly emptied, but scoured too.

  She wasn’t really Sandilands’ lady, thou
gh she often spoke and acted as if she was. Soon the post of Principal of the Teachers’ Training College would become vacant. As Vice-Principal Sandilands was favourite to fill it, but there was a snag: the Principal had to be married. It was not a snag in Jean’s eyes. All he had to do was marry her. She spoke enthusiastically of the children they would have: two boys and a girl. She would say it while they were making love. She pointed out that with his salary and pension as Principal and hers as Chief Nurse (though she expected to retire as Matron), they would be able to go home in a few years with money enough to buy a semi-detached villa in Morningside or Fairmilehead and send their children to superior schools. With her his future would be secure but dull. When he woke up in the morning and saw her pale face and fair hair on the pillow beside him he would feel pangs of disappointment. Suppose it was Leila’s darker face and coal-black hair – what would he feel? Shock and dismay perhaps; but also defiant joy.

  ‘Has she any children?’ he asked.

  ‘One little girl, now eight years of age.’

  ‘Oh.’ In spite of this complication Sandilands’ interest was not diminished.

  ‘I think she would like to meet you, Mr Sandilands.’

  ‘Oh. Why do you think that?’

  ‘She asked who was the tall man with the curly hair.’

  ‘Did she?’ Sandilands could not keep joy out of his voice.

  ‘When I said you were Mr Sandilands of the Training College she said she had heard of you from your students. She said they all spoke highly of you.’

  Then Mr Cheng, still chuckling, went off to fetch the books.

  Three

  SAIDEE, HIS Malay amah, small, fat, flat-nosed, and fifty-five years of age, had long since given up her pretence that she was Tuan’s lover and now adopted a motherly attitude. When he came home late she would scold him fondly: it never sounded impertinent in Malay; and when he was silent and moody, as this evening, she would try to cheer him up. She didn’t wait till he’d had his shower, but poked her head between the curtains, to tell him there had been two telephone calls, both from the woman with the big feet; by which she meant Jean. He was to telephone her at the hospital as soon as he got home.

  He wasn’t pleased. Jean was capable of inviting herself to spend the night and he wanted to be alone, to brood about Leila. His house being isolated, at the edge of the sea with jungle behind, most of his women friends would not visit him at night. Jean, though, was not afraid to drive in the dark. She had once hit a water buffalo asleep on the road. Her radiator had been burst but her nerve hadn’t been shaken. Luckily the animal hadn’t been badly hurt. If it had been, her friends jested, she would have had it carted to the hospital and put to bed. Jean got things done.

  She would soon rid him of his obsession with Leila.

  Did he want to be rid of it?

  One minute he did, and his heart sank with relief; the next minute he did not, and his heart leapt at the prospect of seeing her again.

  As he was eating, the telephone rang. He let it ring and would have gone on letting it ring, but Saidee lost patience and answered it for him. She then informed him that it was the woman ‘with the loud voice’.

  ‘Where the hell have you been?’ asked that voice. ‘This is the third time I’ve called.’

  ‘I’ve just got home. I was playing golf with the Sultan.’

  ‘Oh. Picture me bowing my humble head. I’m phoning from the hospital. A bigwig, the Minister of Something or Other, has just been brought in, with acute appendicitis. So I’ll not be able to go with you to Jack and Mary’s. You haven’t forgotten, have you, that the country dancing’s at their place tonight? God, I believe you have forgotten.’

  Yes, he had, completely. But he was in no mood for a boozy boisterous Eightsome Reel.

  ‘I might be able to look in later,’ said Jean, ‘but I doubt it. If you go on your own watch out for that cow Madge. Three whiskies and she’s got her fingers in your flies.’

  She guffawed but he winced. He could never imagine Leila being so coarse.

  ‘I don’t think I’ll go,’ he said. ‘I’m a bit tired after the golf.’

  ‘How was His Fatness?’

  ‘All right.’

  ‘Did you get a chance to drop a hint about the Principal’s job?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Well, it’s time you did. I can’t afford to wait much longer, you know. I’m twenty-eight.’ Another guffaw.

  She was thirty-four.

  ‘Mention it next time, just after he’s sunk a long putt. But I’ll have to go. Duty calls. Selamat jalan.’

  He went back to his curry. What, he wondered, still wincing, would Jean have said if he had told her he’d fallen in love with Leila Azaharri?

  She’d laugh. She wouldn’t be jealous. She’d remind him how conventional and cautious he was in his views. If, she would say, he got himself entangled with a black-arsed woman he’d mess his breeks with fright. She’d press his face against her own fat white breasts for a cure.

  Four

  HE OFTEN praised his students for their courtesy, patience, diligence (in the case of the Chinese only) and contentment, but there were times when he would gaze at those brown, yellow, or black young faces, lit up by bright smiles, and wish that they would show a spark at least of rebelliousness or a frown of disapproval at the way their country was run. It was one thing for peasants, fishermen, street-sweepers, and shop assistants to be content with their lot; it was another for these students who were, after all, the intelligentsia to accept without demur or protest the rule of an absolute monarch. Surely, in the twentieth century, they ought to be demanding some say in the government of their country; instead of which they let themselves be bribed into acquiescence. This Training College, for instance, was probably the best equipped in the whole of Asia and its graduates were assured of well-paid, secure, unchallenging jobs. Some might have to teach aborigines in kampongs in the interior but they would be compensated with generous bonuses.

  The day after his encounter with Leila in the bookshop he found himself scowling with impatience at his students. They ought all to be members of the People’s Party, eager to help her and her father to bring democracy to their country.

  He could not keep her out of his mind.

  But, of course, if he had accused them of supine conformity they would have smiled and one of the Chinese might have replied, intending no sarcasm, that he, Mr Sandilands, their esteemed teacher, did not refuse when summoned to play golf with the Sultan but went at once, even if it meant cancelling classes. Was not that showing them an example of obedience to authority?

  The truth was, though he liked them he did not really understand them. Once, when discussing Pride and Prejudice with them, they had baffled him by not finding Mr Collins the figure of fun that Jane Austen had intended. On the contrary, all of them, Malays and Chinese, males and females, had made it clear they sympathised with the pompous parson. Spurned by Elizabeth he had immediately married Charlotte, thus gaining a submissive wife and at the same time pleasing his patroness Lady de Burgh. That was how a prudent man would act. Elizabeth would not have made him a good wife. She would have ordered him about and worse still would have mocked him. For them meek Mr Collins was really the hero of the novel, not the haughty Darcy.

  Their own marriages would be arranged. They would not object. They enjoyed reading about romantic love but did not expect it or indeed want it for themselves. In real life love was sensible and came after marriage, slowly but surely as trust and dependence grew stronger. It was therefore very important to marry one of your own kind. He had once taken Jean Hislop to a students’ dance. She had been a great success with her blue eyes, fair hair, big bosom, and energetic dancing. She was the kind of woman they thought he should marry. His children could then be loved without shame.

  If he had taken Leila to the dance the students would have been embarrassed, though they would have tried not to show it. If he was ever to take her to the Golf Club the embarrassment ther
e would not be hidden. It wouldn’t be her political opinions that would bother the members – these they would have sniggered at – it would have been the alien darkness of her skin and her impure blood. The one thing that they would find in her favour was that she had the sense to regard herself as a Malay and not as a white woman.

  If he was ever to marry a dark-skinned woman his mother would never forgive him, and his father would pity him as if he had contracted some nasty disease.

  These were his thoughts that morning as he stood looking out of the classroom window. The students were engrossed in an exercise he had set them. The College grounds were like a large tropical garden. A dozen gardeners kept it under control. Everywhere one looked there was a luxuriance of bright flowers and shining green leaves. There were many fountains. One could pick orchids off the trees. It was paradisean. Yet, what he was seeing wasn’t there in front of him, but in his mind: that tiny black mole on the side of Leila’s neck.

  A red-and-black Land Rover came rattling up the avenue towards the administration building where the Principal’s office was. It was a police vehicle. Beside the driver sat Alec Maitland, in his Deputy Commissioner’s uniform. Since the Commissioner, a Malay who was a kinsman of the Sultan, was a mere figure-head it was Maitland who controlled the police, taking his orders, it was whispered, not from the Commissioner or the Chief Minister or even the Sultan, but from the British Resident. So too did Major Holliday, who commanded the battalion of Gurkhas. Maitland’s policemen, all of them Malays, with an average height of five feet five inches, carried guns but had never been known to use them.