The Heart Radical

by Boyd Anderson

  About the Book

  Esteemed human rights lawyer Su-Lin Tan barely recognizes Professor Paris Thumboo when he delivers a history lecture in London. For the last time she saw him was in a crowded Malayan courtroom more than half a century ago, during the trial that would change her life …

  It’s 1951 and Malaya is in the grip of ‘The Emergency’ between government forces and communist rebels. Yet eight-year-old Su-Lin lives in relative ignorance of the chaos raging around her.

  That is until she shadows her beloved father, defence barrister K. C. Tan, as he embarks on a sensational new case – and into Su-Lin’s life walks war hero Dr Anna Thumboo, her son, Paris, and her lover, Toh Kei, the enigmatic leader of the jungle rebels. For Anna and Toh Kei, the trial is a matter of life and death.

  For Su-Lin it’s the start of a journey of discovery – about love and sacrifice, about truth and lies, and about fighting for what you believe in, whatever the cost …

  Told primarily through the captivating voice of a young girl awakening to the world, The Heart Radical is the stunning new novel from the author of the bestselling Amber Road.

  Contents

  Cover

  About the Book

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  Map

  Author’s Note

  Part 1: Disclosure

  1: Su-Lin

  2: Paris

  3: Su-Lin

  4: Paris

  5: Who I Am

  6: Su-Lin

  7

  8: Su-Lin

  9: Paris

  10

  11: Su-Lin

  12

  13: Paris

  14: Su-Lin

  15

  16: Paris

  17: Su-Lin

  18

  19: Paris

  20: Su-Lin

  21

  22: Su-Lin

  23: Paris

  24: Su-Lin

  25

  26: Paris

  27: Su-Lin

  28

  29: Paris

  30: Su-Lin

  31

  32: Su-Lin

  33: Paris

  34: Su-Lin

  35

  36: Su-Lin

  37: Paris

  38

  Part 2: Trial

  39: Day One

  40: Day Two

  41: Day Three

  42: Day Four: Morning

  43: Day Four: Afternoon

  44: The Day After

  Part 3: Findings

  45: Su-Lin

  46

  47: Su-Lin

  48: Paris

  Acknowledgements

  About the Author

  Also by Boyd Anderson

  Copyright Notice

  Loved the book?

  To Ong Hock Thye,

  and for his descendants.

  ‘Grow old with me!

  The best is yet to be,

  The last of life, for which the first was made’

  Robert Browning

  Rabbi Ben Ezra

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  The Malayan Emergency was a vicious guerrilla war fought between Commonwealth armed forces and the military arm of the Communist Party of Malaya for twelve years, beginning in 1948.

  The guerrillas, predominantly Chinese, were an extension of the Malayan People’s Anti-Japanese Army, a resistance force during World War Two originally trained and armed by Britain.

  Commonwealth forces consisted of police, army, navy and air force units from Malaya, Britain, Australia, New Zealand, Rhodesia and Fiji, as well as Gurkha detachments.

  The Emergency was first declared in the state of Perak, soon spreading the length and breadth of the Malay Peninsula, including Singapore. The height of the conflict was 1951, and it delayed plans for Malayan independence from Britain for several years.

  During the Malayan Emergency many of the counter-insurgency strategies widely employed today were first formulated, including the foundation principle that people and not territory are the prime objective. ‘Winning the hearts and minds’ of the population was a theme first heard in Malaya, and picked up in Vietnam a decade later, although with less success.

  PART 1

  DISCLOSURE

  1

  SU-LIN

  It’s not that my sixty-one years have been uneventful; they have had their share. There has been a marriage, a divorce, too many regrettable affairs, countless instances of unlawful assembly, affray, slavery and servitude, terrorism, and the odd matter involving the deprivation of liberty in breach of Article 5. Such are the events of a career in human rights law. Or perhaps I should say life in said law, as that has been the essence of it.

  However, one year continually returns to my thoughts – 1951, the year I turned eight. The year of the one-eyed girl, as I have often referred to it, although I don’t fully understand why. That particular incident, while a truly shocking murder, was not one I witnessed myself, and the one that I did witness weighed far more heavily on my fate and my fortunes. It seems to me sometimes that not a day goes by when I don’t find that year, and its farrago of experiences both distressing and exhilarating, bubbling up into my presence of mind. For one thing, it was the year I determined that the essence of my life would indeed be the law. Now, as a consequence of crossing paths with Paris Thumboo after so long, I don’t expect such thoughts to be retreating any time soon, as it was also the year I first laid eyes on him, and the last until now.

  I came across his name recently in an email from Gresham College advising of their upcoming public lectures. Associate Professor Paris Thumboo of the University of Malaya’s department of history would be delivering a talk entitled ‘1421: the year history sailed over the edge of the world’. It promised to be controversial, but it was the name of the presenter himself that caused my interest to be piqued. Paris Thumboo is not a name easily forgotten, even when there has not been a face to put to it for fifty-three years.

  His talk was on a Thursday evening that happened to be unseasonably warm. Something about a kink in the jet stream, according to the newspapers. Although it was not particularly far from my chambers at King’s Bench Walk to the hall in Holborn, it was just five minutes in the cool and comfortable seat of a taxi. The cabbie had the weary air of the day about him, and I could see why when I scanned the Evening Standard. The damning conclusions of the Butler Review into Saddam Hussein’s mythical weapons of mass destruction were all over the front page. I sighed and distracted myself with other news, and found that President Bush was attempting to assist me – he had taken the opportunity to declare that the US would soon be back on the moon, even Mars, not that he had any apparent program to announce. Now, with 2004 proving to be even more disappointing than 2003, I was really looking forward to spending an hour or so in 1421. How uncomplicated is the past, I thought. Of course, I was being ridiculous. I was quite aware what personal ‘past’ this encounter might provoke, and I should have been prepared.

  The hall at Barnard’s Inn was well attended, and I took a seat at the back. I felt more comfortable this way, separating work from play, active from passive. At work my position was always at the front, necessarily active. ‘Upfront’, as one of my learned friends once described me. Although ‘Fearless and Committed’ is what I prefer, hence its appearance at the head of my page on the chambers website. Unlike one of Her Majesty’s courts there was a buzz in this room that echoed off the oak panelling and the stained glass and drifted around the cathedral ceiling. A projector screen was in position above the fireplace, which was always a good sign that we were indeed to be ‘talked’ to rather than ‘lectured’. You never quite knew with the college’s eclectic agenda.

  I didn’t see Professor Th
umboo enter, nor when he was being introduced, as there was a spotlight directed at the lectern and leaving all else in dark obscurity. When he stepped out of the shadows I craned my neck to see what had become of the shy seven-year-old I had last seen in the public gallery of a courtroom on the other side of the world so long ago. To be precise, in the court of the formidable Edward Owen Pretheroe, esq., MC, Senior Puisne Judge, Malaya, at the Ipoh Assizes in October 1951. How could I ever forget that degree of precise detail?

  I had already formed a picture of the man I expected to see. From a withdrawn young boy to a professor of history in a country that seemed to care little these days for its past, and the son of a back-country schoolmaster to boot, I anticipated a diffident middle-aged man, perhaps one of those eccentric types who are never aware of what is going on at the back of the class; quite possibly mismatched socks. I remember his mother vividly. Everyone of my age and from my part of the world remembers the tragedy that was his mother. I also knew that both his parents had died when he was young and I had no idea of the circumstances of his life after the early trials. An orphanage? An insecure place among cousins in an alien home?

  What emerged was something quite different to any of my prejudiced expectations.

  Standing next to his introducer I could see he was quite tall, a legacy no doubt from his Dutch grandfather, with swarthy Indian complexion and a flop of unruly hair from under which brooding eyes fixed us assertively. Sixty years old? He could have been much younger. Dark skin and dark hair can conceal many years in a man, and grey temples appeared to be his one concession to them. When he began his talk a rich baritone filled every recess of the hall – just my kind of voice. I imagined him in class at the University of Malaya, expounding a theory on the lessons of history and sending the young female undergraduates (if there were any females in a history class these days) into a quiet tizz. He appeared to fit the romance of Paris better than the peculiarity of Thumboo. I, however, was far too mature in years for a tizz, quiet or otherwise, although I noticed a couple of women in front lean forward in their seats.

  I wondered if he still found solace in the pages of an atlas, as he had as a seven-year-old, and soon received my answer when the first slide he displayed was a map of the world. He proceeded to detail in resonant tones the known voyages of Admiral Zheng He, comparing them with what he called the ‘fanciful imaginings’ of a recently published book in which it was claimed the Chinese imperial fleet had discovered virtually all of the unknown world, including America, in 1421 – before Columbus, before Magellan, before Cook. I was aware of the controversy the book had stirred, and took quiet delight in the degree of provocation he managed to invoke as ripples of mutterings were matched in the audience by chuckles of assent. However, while it was interesting to hear yet another half-baked thesis debunked so methodically for an hour, it was not the reason I had given up my Thursday evening.

  At the end of the hour I waited until Professor Thumboo was free before approaching him. I am certainly no shrinking violet, as I am too often reminded, but I had no intention of imposing myself on a small throng of donnish college handlers and eager enthusiasts. I could see he had not the first idea who I was, of course, and I introduced myself merely by saying that I knew his mother. His expression changed immediately, the courteous smile dissolving into a frown, and it seemed he was unable to stop himself retreating half a step.

  ‘Ah,’ he said with the downward inflection of discouragement. ‘Many people tell me that. But they are usually a good deal older than you.’

  ‘I was just a child,’ I said.

  ‘I see. Yes, there have been fewer in recent years. The generation that remembers her is dwindling, a natural attrition for which I find myself sometimes grateful.’

  It was quite apparent that he was still trying to determine if I was friend or foe, so I thought it only civil to reassure him. ‘I am Su-Lin Tan,’ I said. Now I could see his eyes clearly, what I had taken for a brooding aspect at a distance was a more haunted look up close. They were green, as I remember were his mother’s, and strikingly pale against his dark skin. There was no sign of recognition in them. ‘My father was K. C. Tan. We met when …’

  Suddenly the eyes widened and he reached again for my hand. ‘K. C. Tan,’ he said with wondrous exclamation. ‘Judge Tan.’ Now he shook my hand vigorously. ‘Of course, you are Tan Su Lin. How wonderful.’

  As he released my hand his shoulders, which had been vaguely slumped, now opened out as his back straightened and head lifted. It wasn’t just that a metaphorical weight seemed to have been lifted, he really appeared to shrug off a burden.

  He managed to excuse himself from his handlers and we sat down at the end of the front row in the emptying hall. He sat stiff-backed, his head tilted slightly at an inquiring angle, his hands resting on his knees. I had the impression he was sitting ‘at attention’. I asked him if he had travelled all the way from Malaysia to deliver the talk, which I knew could not have been the case, but was as good a way as any to break the ice. He said that the main purpose of his visit was to conduct some research, but he never missed an opportunity to expose the ‘junk history’ of the Chinese imperial fleet.

  I laughed at the pun, but he offered no reaction. He asked about me. Where does one start with the unravelling of half a century? I simply told him I followed my father’s footsteps, although I had stayed in London. He nodded but remained at attention.

  ‘My mother died nearly fifty years ago,’ he said. ‘You would think the controversy would abate, but some grudges never do, it would appear.’

  ‘Perhaps because she had risen so high and her supposed fall was so far,’ I said. ‘The establishment does not like to see its heroes fall from grace.’

  ‘Yes. Although whether she actually fell is the moot point.’ He sighed wearily without relaxing his spine. Fifty years he must have spent in this discussion. ‘She never had the opportunity to explain herself. After all the headlines, no one was interested in her side of the story.’

  ‘My father would have helped her,’ I said, although I could not possibly know if that was true. I cannot remember my father ever mentioning Dr Thumboo again after the initial uproar following the trial had subsided. But I was eight years old at the time, so what could I really know?

  Finally he smiled at me. ‘Do you think so?’

  ‘Oh, I’m certain of it.’ And I was, despite the apparent facts of the matter, because I knew my father.

  The smile became indulgent. ‘She died only five years after all that business, you know. It’s what killed her, of course. Oh yes, I’m no doctor, but it’s quite obvious there was more to it than the merely physiological. Yes, only five years. Your father was not yet in a position of influence then. If he had taken up her cause he may never have reached a position of any sort. Unfortunately, the outside world was not as easy for him to … shall we say, influence, as the court.’

  ‘It’s a shame,’ I said. ‘I’ve often wondered …’

  He touched my hand to stop me. ‘No point now. All water so long passed under the bridge. A very old bridge, too, don’t you think?’

  His head tilted a little further, one eyebrow arched slightly, and his sad eyes locked on to mine. It appeared that what sounded like a polite rhetorical question might actually be searching for an answer.

  I shrugged. ‘Sometimes water just gets recycled, doesn’t it.’

  He smiled and nodded and held his gaze for a moment longer than necessary, just sufficient to have me feeling a touch self-conscious. As I had a preconceived picture of the man I expected to see, was he now considering me in the same fashion? Was he pondering what had happened to the spirited eight-year-old he had last met, the little girl with dark complexion and bright-eyed wonder? The eyes may have seen too many disappointments, but at least the skin was fairer for the years under leaden English skies. What was he making of this middle-aged woman with greying hair and laugh lines advancing beyond a joke? His own hair was far too long and it appeared
he had not changed its style since some time in the seventies, but even so I found myself concerned about my own. It had taken me years of trial and error to find a West End stylist who could give me a simple but elegant cut that sits well under a barrister’s wig and is not left crushed when the wig is removed. Years of perfectionist pursuit on my part, decades of neglect on his. So why was I the one now feeling ill at ease?

  The handlers were soon back at his shoulder, anxiously examining their watches and curtailing any further contemplation about such gender inequalities.

  The professor got to his feet. ‘I have to go now, unfortunately,’ he said. ‘But can we stay in touch? I will be here for a few weeks.’

  ‘Of course,’ I said, and found one of my cards for him.

  He examined it for a moment, nodding. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Recycling is good.’

  The following day an envelope was hand delivered to my chambers by courier. I opened it to find a sheaf of papers with a note attached.

  ‘Recycled water,’ it said, and was signed simply ‘Thumboo’.

  The papers were photocopies of a hand-written manuscript, nearly a hundred pages. At the top of the first page was a title: