A Time for Pirates Read online

  ‘Do we just wait here?’ the blonde asked.

  ‘No. There’s bound to be a back way out. These places are warrens.’

  The proprietor heard me.

  ‘You come,’ he said. ‘I show.’

  The three of us followed the fat man into a long narrow room in which a light burned. The air reeked from what I took to be yesterday’s joss offering to the family gods, then recognized as mosquito-repellent smudge. A single window was shuttered. The place was a kitchen with an electric cooker and a sink. It was bleak, furnished with only a few stools about a scrubbed table. The décor was trade posters gummed on to walls from which a greenish wash was peeling. In one corner, tucked back into shadow, was a raised platform made of cement which looked as though it had been inspired by the north Chinese kang, which is a dung-fired stove with a broad, flat top. Up on that top senior members of the family used to spend a considerable portion of their days warming away rheumatics and the very aged rarely climbed down at all, waiting for death in comfort.

  This adaptation for the tropics was also occupied, no fire beneath, but with an old woman bundled in black up on it, her head pillowed on a padded wooden block. Light glistened from her open eyes but she gave no sign of seeing us. In one ear was a piece of jade, a little trophy from living still retained, but otherwise she was anonymous, and if sentient at all, concerned only with private journeys back down time spent. In Singapore the old lady might well have been doing her waiting in a death house, and by her own request, but apparently the shop-owner was a sentimentalist who believed in keeping the family bones beside him until they were finally ready for internment.

  The geriatric ward is one of the more unpleasant by-products of our time. This arrangement, pathetic as it was, still held a humanity of sorts. They had built the old lady a platform like the ones she remembered from the long-ago China of her youth and on which she had probably seen her grandmother die. A veteran was set to one side, but only just beyond routine bustle, able to hear the sounds of this for as long as she could hear anything. I warmed to the shop-owner.

  He didn’t warm to me. A final door was kept open only long enough to let us through. We stood blinking in sunlight, a noise of violence baffled away by buildings, like a sound track turned low.

  ‘What now?’ the blonde asked.

  ‘We walk. No taxis.’

  The Tamil girl started off on her own, sandals clicking. I ran after her, with two twenty-dollar notes in my hand.

  ‘For your purse,’ I said, holding them out.

  She stared at the notes, then lifted her head. She spat in my face.

  In spite of those wobbling sandals and a flapping bag she ran like an animal whose only defence is the quick get-away.

  Western man does very little walking in Oriental cities, he never has, there was always some form of transport available and back in those days when local labour was really cheap he invented the rickshaw, a human puller being that much more economical to run than a horse. It isn’t generally realized that the rickshaw was a Western idea, but it was, the first one designed by an Englishman in Yokohama.

  In his Shanghai my grandfather never walked. Before he owned his snub-nosed Morris he had a private rickshaw with personal coolie whom he paid about ten per cent more than the man would have averaged free-lancing. My grandmother had her own rickshaw too, plus coolie, which was handy for the shopping and the Mah Jong parties, and she hung on to this means of getting about long after the car was available, much attached to the last of her rickshaw boys who died at the advanced age for his calling of thirty-nine, from the usual occupational complaint: coughing his lungs out.

  Walking had begun to feel like some kind of penance for the sins of my grandparents. My shoes were too thin for hot asphalt. I carried my jacket and was very near to taking off a soaking shirt. The girl wasn’t looking like any ad for anti-perspirant, either. There aren’t any sweat-stoppers for really active people in an equatorial climate.

  The streets were empty, except for cats. Dogs howled in courtyards. Chinese charactered signs and banners in many colours issued invitations cancelled by the shut doors underneath. Locked cars looked as though their owners would never come out of hiding to claim them. Noise was to the north, almost distant, but it still held the threat of thunder that could circle and catch us.

  A couple of solitary hikers through a contemporary purgatory didn’t ease the burden of their pilgrimage by getting to know each other. Her name was Jean Hyde, she was married, lived in a suburb unfashionable for Europeans, and had been in Kuala Lumpur for five weeks. I didn’t ask what she thought of our city, contenting myself with the facts that could have come from a credit card. I was seeing her home because someone had to and she hadn’t suggested that this was unnecessary. She was only about five feet two but had a good stride, as though used to hitch-hiking across Europe on a lifted thumb. My impression was that any male trying to rape her in a pup tent would regret the attempt. I had shoved up an earlier estimate of her age from nineteen to twenty-three or four or even more.

  ‘Got a cigarette? My bag was on the Mini’s shelf.’

  ‘I don’t use them.’

  ‘Oh.’

  I was classified, a Mercedes owner who had given up smoking in a bid to enjoy my comforts for as long as possible. Her husband could be a new lecturer at the University, probably in history with a Marxist slant, an academic who didn’t mix with neo-colonialists and hated their clubs.

  We went past a huddle of shops into a street called Bukit Pirdah Road, packed housing in which it wouldn’t be difficult to find cheap rooms shared with cockroaches and from which you really got to know the natives in spite of slight obstacles like the language barrier. It was an area new to me, I hadn’t even driven through it, and was surprised when the tone of the street changed, becoming first Chinese middle class, then Chinese more than that. It was a long road and before we were half-way down it there were villas on both sides set back in gardens, stopping places for pushing young executives on the way up to two acres of ground and a full-time night watchman. Architectural style tended towards that tropic rococo once seen never forgotten, highly coloured in mauves, pinks and yellows. The gates began to be impressive, offering tantalizing glimpses of just how well a considerable proportion of Malaysia’s pushing minority are doing for themselves. I didn’t think too much of the locale as a place in which to ride out the present turbulence, it seemed to offer a positive invitation for a visit from one of the motorized Malay riot units.

  ‘This is where we camp,’ Jean Hyde said.

  The garden was tidily maintained and there was a drive through it leading to a two-storey façade above a formal terrace. There were palm trees sprouting out of urns. The place was bound to have at least ten rooms and in a city with an acute housing shortage was a very desirable property indeed. I knew of at least three families who spent all their spare time looking for something like this to rent or buy. Lucky Hydes with the right connections.

  I shut wooden gates.

  ‘What’s the point of that, Mr Harris?’

  ‘It slightly discourages callers.’

  ‘You think trouble could spread out here?’

  ‘It could spread anywhere today. Call your husband now. I’m staying until he comes back.’

  She smiled.

  ‘We’ll have time to get to know each other. He’s away for at least two weeks. Let’s start with a long drink.’

  We went up steps to the terrace. Her keys had been in the lost bag and she had to ring. The man who opened the door seemed an unlikely member of the local servants’ union which is making things increasingly difficult for employers. He wore the right clothes, but looked burly in them, like an ex-pro boxer pretending to be a barman. If he had heard of the rioting against his race brothers and was worried about it, this didn’t show. Jean treated him with the kind of polite reserve which said at once that there had been a nanny in her nursery despite the socialism that was by then starting to batter Britain, which c
ast doubts on my theory of a Marxist husband.

  ‘I’m having a shower,’ she said. ‘You can have one, too, if you like. We’ve three bathrooms. And I could let you have a shirt of John’s.’

  ‘Can I phone my office first?’

  ‘Certainly, if you can get through. It’s in there. Fung will show you where to go after.’

  The sitting-room was beyond an arch and I went into it feeling the chill of air conditioning on pores that have been opened. The place was lush but I couldn’t name the period. The central arrangement was of chairs and a settee in teak with ventilated rattan bottoms. The big feature was the lamps, all identical, four undesirable nude ladies holding up their arms in a bid to retrieve pink silk crinolines that had somehow got whipped up over their heads. On the walls were views of the country I had seen before, the artist originally commissioned for poster work by Malaysian Railways. A big sidepiece was Chinese creative imagination gone mad over a hunk of black deadwood. There was also a roll-topped desk in one corner with the ridged flap lifted and the telephone was there. I dialled and at once got my secretary.

  ‘Mr Harris! We’ve been worried stiff about you.’

  ‘That’s nice to hear, Maria. I’ve been worried stiff about myself.’

  ‘Did the rioting stop you from getting here? You weren’t caught in it?’

  ‘Well, more or less. I’ll tell you later. Is Bahadur about?’

  ‘Yes. You want me to get him?’

  ‘In a minute. How are things with you?’

  ‘There’s been nothing near us. But there is a fire just down from Batu Road.’

  ‘Not much evidence of the police yet?’

  ‘I really don’t know. We’ve just been sitting here waiting to hear from you.’

  ‘Listen, Maria, get your husband to collect you and go home. Have you heard from him?’

  ‘Yes. There’s nothing out our way yet. You’re not coming to the office?’

  ‘I may, but I won’t need you. What I want now is Bahadur to get a car somewhere and come to collect me.’

  ‘What’s happened to the Mercedes?’

  ‘Out of service. I’m at 127 Bukit Pirdah Road. Get Bahadur on to that, will you?’

  ‘All right, Mr Harris, You look after yourself.’

  I put the receiver back on its hooks. At one corner of the desk, neatly strapped with a rubber band, was a pile of unopened mail, mostly airletters, the top one made exotic with a Middle Eastern stamp. The address was:

  ‘John Hyde, Esq.,

  c/o The Min Kow Lin Corporation,

  27-35 Itang Road,

  Kuala Lumpur,

  Malaysia.’

  The Corporation were big in tin mining, very big, and a number of other things as well.

  Fung was waiting in the hall. He took me up to a bedroom. I had the feeling he resented an order to put out one of John’s shirts.

  Jean Hyde had legs tucked up on to her chair. She was smoking, with one hand around a well fortified orange juice. It seemed unlikely that recent experience would have any traumatic effect on her personality. She was wearing black tights and another white shirt, her hair sleeked down on both sides of her face. She was a pretty girl, small nose, nice teeth, but if her eyes had been brown, or a utility blue, she’d have earned a moment’s pause before you looked on for something more interesting. It was those eyes that could stop traffic and she knew this well, accenting them heavily with a boot-black surround.

  ‘Like the pad in which I play memsahib? Unique isn’t it? The owners had me expecting something rather different.’

  This was conversational bait. I rose to it.

  ‘Who are they?’

  ‘A pair called Kwan and Mary Lee. We met them in Beirut. They got our flat and we got this.’

  ‘You’re on holiday?’

  She nodded.

  ‘Choose our times and places well, don’t we? John has flair. Last time it was a peasant uprising in Peru.’

  ‘As the wife of a geologist you get about.’

  ‘Oh, clever Mr Harris. How did you guess geologist?’

  ‘From a pile of professional journals in what I took to be your husband’s bedroom.’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘You don’t stay together on holiday?’

  ‘Hell, no. Or it wouldn’t be. John has this thing about jungles, South America, Africa. He hadn’t been in an Asian jungle at all. Just leaped at the chance. So we got on a plane. He’s also a flora man. Botany is his second love. To me it’s death. So I stay at base camp, which is this.’

  ‘I’d have thought lonely for you. Why not get temporary cards for the clubs?’

  Those almost purple eyes widened.

  ‘Daddy believes in God and his clubs. That didn’t rub off. I’m more interested in the living. What’s behind the rioting?’

  ‘Malay resentment of Chinese.’

  ‘Is that the big thing?’

  ‘Yes. And getting bigger.’

  ‘I adore the Chinese. So civilized. Except when it comes to furnishing a house. Why don’t the Malays like them?’

  ‘They work too hard and make money. The Malays hate work and have no money. It creates a situation.’

  ‘Chinese flash their rolls?’

  ‘Somewhat. With things like this house. And Mercedes their favourite transport.’

  ‘You’re also competing, Mr Harris?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I thought you looked that kind of bastard, if you’ll forgive me saying so. Those boys in that mob … I’d have got away without you.’

  ‘Pity I waited. It cost me a car.’

  She did the eye widening act again.

  ‘Tell me about those rioting boys.’

  ‘They’re a problem. They’ve poured into the cities from the villages. And with only a bad primary school education, if that. Our new democracy wasn’t ready for them in such numbers.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘They’re hungry. And now they’re being organized.’

  ‘We always reach the Red menace sooner or later. I’ve been living with it in Arabia. Every camel belongs to Moscow. Mix me another of these, will you?’

  At the carved cabinet I said:

  ‘You oughtn’t to stay in this house alone tonight.’

  ‘But I’m not alone. I’ve got Cook and Fung.’

  ‘Chinese servants can just disappear in times of stress.’

  ‘I don’t think these ones will. But even if they do, I’ve got a little gun that shoots real bullets. And my hand doesn’t wobble when I aim.’

  I could believe that.

  The phone rang. Jean Hyde went to the desk. She stood making approving noises into the instrument, then hung up and turned.

  ‘The riots must be over. That was the police. They found my car and returned it to the hire company. The back window seems to be all that’s wrong. My handbag was still in the tray. Apparently the money wasn’t touched.’

  She was a lucky girl.

  CHAPTER II

  I STAYED at my office until nearly eight, waiting for a phone call from London which finally came through. I walked home, taking two or three detours to avoid areas that sounded as though they were seeing action. I was near road blocks twice, but kept clear of them, getting out of a built-up area without being challenged. The suburb where the real money rests was cool and quiet, undulations of ground putting up earthwork insulation against any flare-ups of riot noise.

  It was a long time since I had walked up my drive. The gradient is steep, an asphalt razor cut on a slope packed with jungle hardwoods that have the constant ministrations of tree surgeons, stethescoped for white ant nests and cleared of parasitic growths, even the little pale orchids which make themselves wells of rottenness in which to feed. Snakes which reach my antiseptic woods are killed and there isn’t a stagnant pool anywhere in which mosquitoes can breed. Sometimes monkeys come on excursions from the adjacent public gardens to try out the long drops from high branches, but they never seem to stay long, as though th
e surrounding intense hygiene is too much for them. I wish they would set up a colony near me; I like them, they are a continuing and salutary rebuke to our pretensions. A dozen or so monkeys on a sunset lawn form an excellent diversion for a drinks party. Guests tend to go home early, feeling vaguely affronted.

  My house is really a museum piece, a planter’s bungalow from the late nineteenth century, an anachronism and becoming more so every year with the high rise buildings shooting up, not to mention the University’s new glittering semi-Islamic domes on the horizon. I bought it as a near ruin and was at once plunged into an affair of the heart. Contractors have been after me for the site ever since, there is room for four blocks of luxury flats with penthouses.

  I moved to Kuala Lumpur when it became the capital of a new federation that was to include Singapore, and on the principle that where the politicians are concentrated is where the really strong trade winds blow. Now that Singapore has opted to go it alone I ought to live down there again but can’t bring myself to do it even though trying to operate half my business within Lee Kwan Yew’s new little empire from a base outside it offers some sharp obstacles. Not the least of these is the increasing bitterness between Chinese and Malays. A man attempting to keep a shoe in both camps finds it slippery underfoot.

  Russell Menzies had put on all the lights. He doesn’t contribute towards the housekeeping so doesn’t mind the bills. He got into the habit of keeping bright light all around him when he was head of undercover British Intelligence in Singapore, considering it a prophylactic against surprise assassination. Even in retirement as my guest he takes no unnecessary risks and wears a Colt in bed, uncomfortably, tucked into the breast pocket of his pyjama jacket.

  I couldn’t see the city from the drive, just a red glow in the sky and I didn’t look at that. I went up on to the verandah outside the sitting-room and tried one of the glazed french windows which were fitted when air conditioning was installed. It was locked. I knocked.