In the Mouth of the Tiger (36 page)

But I didn't stay. I let Ismail lead me away and I didn't look back. To be perfectly honest, I don't think I wanted reconciliation. At the bottom of my heart I wanted a clean break, and Mother had given me the perfect excuse.

I remember my overriding emotion in the car driving back to Ampang
Road. It was one of unutterable relief. I was free.

Babs Chrystal spent most of the next day with me, helping me to settle in. It was a strange day, exhilarating but exhausting, happy but tinged with melancholy. We sorted out cupboard space for my clothes, arranged my few possessions to their best advantage, met and talked to all the servants, and then spent some time with Teng Swi while he explained the household accounts. Babs was a perfect mentor, helpful but not intrusive, and always sensitive to my still-fragile mood. Denis had gone up to Ipoh for the day so we were alone in the big, cool house.

‘I really do appreciate all you have done for me, Babs,' I said. We had broken for a cup of tea, and were sitting comfortably in the cane chairs under the porch.

‘No thanks are due, Nona,' she said shortly. She was the best kind of Australian, open-hearted and unassuming and always keen to offer a helping hand. ‘When I married Bob I was new to Malaya, and people were just fantastic. When we moved up to the Kamuning Estate, half of KL came up with us to see us settled in. I'm just repaying a little of what I received when I was first married.'

‘We're not actually married yet,' I said carefully. I assumed that Babs knew that, but I wanted to get it out into the open anyway. ‘Denis wants to wait until we can get married in St Andrew's Cathedral in Singapore.'

‘You're married as far as Bob and I are concerned,' Babs said stoutly. ‘St Andrew's will just be the icing on the cake.' She suddenly grinned up at me. ‘They say that St Andrew's is as white as it is because they mixed thousands and thousands of egg whites into the plaster when they were building the place. You might ask the minister if that's true.'

Babs had known Denis for longer than anyone I knew, except perhaps Mac Williamson, and I decided to ask the question that had been on my mind for the past two days. ‘Babs, do you know any reason why Denis might be . . . well, a bit chary of getting married? At times it bothers me that he isn't keen to just rush off and get married in a registry office. I'd do it in a shot. I don't feel the least need for a church wedding.'

Babs looked at me for a moment, then put her cup down carefully. ‘Denis had an experience when he was a very young man, Nona. I think there was a girl, and perhaps a suggestion he should marry her to protect her good name. The whole business affected him quite profoundly. He's often said he hates the thought that anyone would get married just because they are expected to.'
She picked up her cup and took a reflective sip. ‘I'm only speculating, mind, but it may be that Denis doesn't want it to seem that your wedding was forced on you by the baby.'

I thought about that, and it made a kind of sense. If Denis
had
been burnt by a youthful indiscretion it would explain a lot about his attitude to marriage. ‘Gun-shy' was what they laughingly called it at the Club.

That evening I sat down at the desk in Denis's study and wrote to all my friends. I told them the literal truth. I said that we had decided to get married in St Andrew's Cathedral in Singapore, and that in the meantime we had decided to live together as man and wife. I said how happy I was, and that when Denis finally ‘made an honest woman out of me' we would have a big party and invite them all along.

My final letter was to Mother:

It is a shame we had to part on such bad terms. For my part I bear you no ill will. In fact, I will always remember with gratitude the past two years, during which the three of us – you, Tanya and I – lived as a family for the first time in our lives. But all families must finally part as children grow up and find their own partners in life. It is an awful shame that you could not find it in your heart to let Tanya and me leave with your blessing. It would have meant that we could have all remained loving friends, so that the family bonds we once enjoyed would have survived even though we had gone our separate ways. But that cannot be. The terrible anger that you showed me last night – you might have injured me badly, Mother, or even killed me – means that our parting must be final.

It was a cruel letter, and I wish now that I had never sent it. But I was young then, and desperately keen to close the door on that hurly-burly life and begin an exciting new existence. I remember that I didn't cry as I sealed the letter and tossed it on the pile with the others, but sighed with relief. A chore completed.

Mother never replied, of course. Her fierce Russian soul would have prevented her doing so, no matter how much much it cost to remain aloof and seemingly indifferent. She closed down Salon Tanya almost immediately and moved to Singapore. I heard months later that she had opened a rather up-market shop for children's and babies' wear in Orchard Road, presumably with Denis's money.

Surprisingly, it was Tanya who kept me informed. Tanya, the last person
I would have expected, became Mother's warm and loving surrogate daughter. Life can be so strange.

It took about a month to get used to the idea that living with Denis was going to be a permanent affair. At first, try as I might, I couldn't shake off the feeling that life was just too good to be true. I was frightened – literally scared to death – that my happy world would one day burst like a bubble and leave me alone and miserable. So I tried to imprint every detail of every moment in my mind, so that I would at least have memories to revisit in the lonely years I feared ahead.

Some of those images are with me still. Sitting on our verandah on a Sunday morning reading airmail copies of the
Times
, the tissue-thin pages lifting with every movement of the morning air. Walking in the garden at dusk, laughing and talking nonsense while Java sparrows fluttered in the flame trees and the sky turned indigo and pink. Denis picking a sprig of frangipani and twisting it into my hair as the Indian women did. And Denis catching me at the piano as I played
Peter and the Wolf
with tears streaming down my face, and how he didn't laugh but sat silently beside me, understanding.

But one day I was doing something quite routine, like discussing the next day's menus with Teng Swi, when I suddenly realised that the nature of my happiness had changed. It was no longer the fragile happiness of a moment stolen from the jaws of time, but the long-term happiness of someone who expects tomorrow to be just as happy as today, and the day after that as well.

It took me a month to get used to being Mrs Elesmere-Elliott, but I never really got used to living at Ampang Road. It was a beautiful home, a mansion really, but I suppose that was part of the problem. I had been overawed the first few times I had visited the house, and that sense of awe lingered, preventing me from even thinking about making any changes. It was a bit like living in an art gallery, or a museum: I dared not move a single painting on the walls, nor adjust the angle of a single chair. And I was treated by the large staff – there were fourteen of them, all on the Guthries payroll – as a cherished and honoured guest. But as a guest, not as the mistress.

I mentioned this to Denis one morning as we were eating breakfast. He gave me a long, level look, trying to assess the depth of my feelings, and I frowned back to make it more difficult for him. I didn't want to press my concerns out loud, because I knew Denis loved Ampang Road, both for its convenience and the comfort of its well-trained staff.

Denis must have divined my thoughts, because when I saw him off in
the Ford he looked back at the house and shook his head. ‘I'm getting a bit tired of this old pile, you know. We should be thinking of a change.'

Later in the morning Ismail brought the Ford back with a squeal of brakes and ran up to me with a piece of paper in his hand. ‘Tuan has asked that you look at these houses, Mem,' he said importantly, handing me the paper. ‘Very good if you can see them today. I will drive wherever you want to go.' I looked down at a list of four properties available for rent from Messrs Smith & Co., Estate Agents and Valuers, of Batu Road.

I didn't have to look any further than the first house on the list. It was a small bungalow in Rifle Range Lane and the moment Ismail pulled into the circular gravel driveway, edged by bright cannas and shaded by casuarinas, I had a feeling that this would be our next home. The house was empty but the agent had provided keys so I was able to a take a long, leisurely look around. It needed painting here and there, but the rooms were spacious and cool and conveniently laid out. There was a wide central breezeway with a good-sized lounge opening off to the right and a snug dining room to the left. There was a big study for Denis, a sewing room for me, and three bedrooms.

But it was when I reached the back of the house that I knew for certain this was where I wanted to live. A broad patio shaded by a creeper-clad pergola overlooked a swimming pool, and I caught my breath at the sheer beauty of the scene. It was like something out of a Hollywood magazine, with the limpid blue water reflecting the flowers, trees and feathery bamboo of a carefully arranged tropical garden. I literally ran back to the car, calling for Ismail as I ran, concerned that a gem of a house like this wouldn't last five minutes on the market. Don't forget that I was an impressionable girl of eighteen, and this was 1937, when swimming pools were strictly the provenance of film stars and multi-millionaires.

I rang Denis at his office, and my words tumbled over each other as I tried to explain just how fantastic the house was. Denis didn't quite share my enthusiasm. In fact, I could hear him trying to disguise his ‘responsible' voice with false enthusiasm so as not to hurt my feelings. ‘It sounds terrific and if you are absolutely sure it's suitable, of course we will take it,' he said. ‘But please, darling, go back and have another look. See what sort of storage space there is available. Is there a covered garage big enough for both of the cars? And what size are the servants' quarters?'

‘We'll need to hurry if we want to take the place,' I said desperately. ‘It won't last five minutes.'

‘It'll last long enough for you to go back and have another look,' Denis said firmly.

I gulped with anxious exasperation. ‘Truly, darling, I don't need to see it again to know it's absolutely perfect. And I am worried that if we dither we'll lose it. You know the old saying – he who hesitates is lost.'

Denis sighed. ‘I'll ring the agents and tell them we'll take it. But please go back and have another look. If you change your mind, do give me ring. Don't forget we're not committed until we've paid some rent and signed the lease.'

There
were
a few things wrong with No. 4 Rifle Range Lane. For a start, there was no garaging at all, so the two cars had to stay out in the open, which did not please Ismail one bit. For another, the servants' quarters were small and old and needed serious refurbishment. And then there were signs of white ants in the pergola, signs which I tried to dismiss with a careless wave of my hand: ‘There are serpents in every paradise, aren't there?' I asked. ‘And these are such
tiny
serpents.'

‘Tiny or not, we'll only take the place if they spray for white ants,' Denis said a little grumpily, and I hugged him with relief.

The two weeks before we moved in passed in a blur of activity and excitement. We filled the house with blondewood furniture, replaced the heavy brocade curtains with brightly-coloured chintzes, and carpeted the bedrooms wall to wall in the American style. On the evening before we moved in, Denis and I walked through our home hand in hand, happy with what we had achieved. It was the first moment I really felt married. I had chosen this house to be our home, I had pressed for the light, airy look of Scandinavian pine and brightly printed cottons, and I had chosen to have soft carpet throughout. I was no longer the indulged mistress but an equal partner in a team.

Our first week in Rifle Range Lane coincided with the wettest, windiest July in KL for over fifty years. The rain ruined our pretty garden, and the galeforce winds brought down branches into my beloved swimming pool, and the roof leaked. To add to our problems Teng Swi (whom we had recruited from Guthries) had difficulties with the new-fangled electric stove and had to resort to cooking on Chinese barbecues (clay-lined buckets) in the covered walkway between the house and the servants' quarters. But we were sublimely happy. Denis took a week off, and we read a lot, laughed a lot, and made occasional exploratory forays into our large, wind-tossed garden. On one of these forays we came across a little secret orchard running down the overgrown left-hand
side of the garden. There was a huge old lime tree covered in bright green fruit, half a dozen papayas, a dozen banana trees (blown to tatters by the wind), a few healthy young mangoes, and even a stand of sugar cane. We stood in the shelter of the lime tree contemplating our good fortune. ‘A couple of
kenganis
will knock this into shape in a few hours,' Denis said with satisfaction. ‘And then we'll try multi-cropping – plant vegetables in between the trees. It's all the rage these days. Saves labour and reduces water evaporation. What do you think we might plant as our first under-crop?'

Back in the house he took a sheet of paper and sketched out his new project while I hung over his shoulder and pretended to be fascinated. My own mind was playing around with plans for my nursery.

‘Cabbages,' he said. ‘Just think about unlimited cabbages! We could even pickle some and have them with German sausage. But does cabbage grow well in KL, I wonder? Perhaps it's too hot down here.'

‘Oh, cabbages will grow anywhere,' I said absently. ‘Darling, do you think the nursery should be all white, or is that a bit too clinical for a child?'