In the Mouth of the Tiger (40 page)

Our friendship with the Deans grew until the four of us were inseparable, spending even our KL weekends in each other's company. Trips to the Selangor Club and the Turf Club gave way to joint family weekends at home. We would drop in on the Deans or they on us, and the day would generally end with an invitation to stay on to dinner. Our conversations seemed fresh and exciting at the time but I think that on the whole they must have been
incredibly banal. We talked non-stop about calamine lotion as a cure for heat rash, or about the best way to keep nappies soft in the hard KL water, or about the effectiveness of various brands of gripe water.

Sometimes we talked in broader terms, about what sort of world we'd like our children to inherit, or what they might do in life, or how we could best equip them to face the challenges of the future. And of course occasionally we talked about the impending war.

Not about
whether
there would be a war, but
when
it would happen and how we would cope. German bombers flying for General Franco had already bombed the civilian population of Madrid, so we had no illusions about civilians being exempt from the coming carnage. To the north, the Japanese were killing Chinese with great thoroughness and efficiency, and getting closer to Malaya every day. Maps of Japan's proposed ‘Greater Co-Prosperity Sphere', showing Malaya within the Sphere, had been published in the
Malay Mail
so we also had no illusions that Malaya would be spared the coming conflict.

‘Should we run away, or stay and fight?' I remember Alec saying those words one lazy afternoon as the four of us sat beside the pool in Rifle Range Lane.

‘I'm afraid Malaya will fall,' Denis said quietly. ‘There's no point in denying the inevitable. Japan won't attack until Britain is well and truly occupied fighting the Germans, so there won't be enough troops spare to meet them head on. But I think – I hope – we will be able to hang on to Singapore. Singapore is the key to the whole of the Far East, so it simply has to be kept. If Singapore fell, not even Australia would be safe.'

Margaret looked up from knitting bootees for Mark. ‘Alec, if Singapore is safe, why on earth aren't we living Singapore?'

There was a long silence. Denis and I had discussed the possibility of moving to Singapore. It had a healthier climate than KL, it had better hospitals and schools, and it was protected by the invincible Royal Navy.

‘Yes,' I said finally. ‘Why on earth
aren't
we living in Singapore?'

That conversation was the spark that set things alight. Every time we met the Deans after that one or another of us was bound to ask: ‘Well, what have you done about moving to Singapore?' I began to buy the
Straits Times
and look at the real estate pages. On Saturday mornings I would be sitting up in bed, the papers around me, and I would dig Denis in the ribs. ‘Just look at that! Less than six thousand dollars, and what a lovely home!' Denis
would roll over and turn a bleary eye to the smudged little photograph in the classifieds. ‘Six thousand dollars for that old pile?' he would grunt. ‘Too much at half the price.' But the fact he looked was significant. Singapore was well and truly on our agenda.

In the meantime, Tony was growing up. His black baby hair disappeared to be replaced with a shock of blond curls. He grew sturdy and straight, with clear blue-grey eyes like his father. Just after his eighth month he said his first words, lying in his crib in the garden and staring up into the blue vault of heaven. ‘Balu sakai,' he said quite distinctly, pointing upwards with a pudgy fist. At first neither Denis nor I realised what he had said, but he repeated the words and suddenly we both leapt forward to hug him for his cleverness. He had said ‘blue sky', the English words disguised by the fractured accent he had picked up from his ayah.

At eleven months he was walking and by Christmas 1938 he was running around our garden, his arms spread like wings, emulating the aeroplanes that he used to watch crawling across the KL sky. By Christmas 1938 he was far too precious for us to risk in a Malaya we knew would be overrun, so we decided finally and irrevocably to move to Singapore.

The first people we told were the Deans, who were spending Christmas down in Singapore at the Sea View Hotel. But when Denis spoke to Alec on the phone he couldn't get a word in edgeways. He cupped his hand over the receiver. ‘The man is raving about some house they're thinking of buying outside Changi,' he grinned. ‘I think the blighters might have beaten us to the punch.'

Within a fortnight the Deans had left KL, leaving an empty space in our lives. They told us that they felt the emptiness too, but for them the parting would have been much easier because they were busy adjusting to their bright new lives. Alec was enjoying his new job with Shell Oil, and Margaret was pregnant again. I think she felt a little guilty at being so happy, and sent me long letters and photographs of her new home overlooking the beach. I read and re-read the letters, and pored over the photographs, my imagination colouring the black-and-white pictures with green lawns and bright flowers, my memory adding the sound of Margaret and Alec's happy chatter and Mark's delighted gurgling. The home was one of several built as a commercial enterprise by a Chinese developer called Win Lung, a business friend of Denis. There were four houses on the estate, each one set on an oceanfront block of several acres. Of course we inquired immediately whether any of
the other homes were for sale, but they had long since been snapped up. The Tanah Mera Besar Estate, as it was called, had been highly sought after from the moment its plans had been approved, and the Deans had secured their property only because its original purchaser had been unexpectedly posted back to England.

In February 1939 I too was pregnant again, and feeling the loss of Margaret even more keenly. I wanted so much to talk with her that I would compose whole conversations in my mind, complete with questions and answers, quips and extempore observations, then ring her in the evening and try them out. But our real conversations never kept to the script: something exciting would always have occurred that took precedence, or the comments I had prepared would seem suddenly banal.

‘I wish we were closer,' I said one day. ‘The world would be a perfect place if only the old team was together again.'

‘Come to Singapore!' Margaret pleaded. ‘The place is filling up, you know. People are trooping down the peninsula in droves. The price of houses is going up in leaps and bounds.'

I thought about Margaret's comment all night, and in the morning scanned the
Straits Times
with something like desperation.

‘We could just take pot luck,' Denis said, sitting up beside me in bed. ‘Simply arrive on the island and rent some place until something turns up.'

I looked up at him thoughtfully. ‘Could we do that? Could you just toss in your job with Guthries and take off?'

Denis chuckled. ‘Of course I could. We've got quite a nice lot of loot stashed away against a rainy day, you know.'

I had long been curious about our financial position, and now seemed as good a time as any to ask about it. ‘How well off are we, Denis?' I asked. ‘And how do you actually make your money? Do you need to work for Guthries at all?'

Denis didn't answer but rolled off the bed and went over to the wardrobe, taking an envelope from the inside pocket of his white cotton jacket. ‘I'm glad you asked about money, my dear,' he said, ‘because there are one or two things we need to discuss. And with baby number two on the way, the sooner the better.'

‘What on earth are you talking about?' I asked.

‘I think you need your own money,' Denis said. ‘For all sorts of reasons. For example, we might get separated. If the war should spring on us we might
be apart for years. That sort of thing does happen in a war.'

Separated. For some reason my heart was suddenly beating fast and I didn't want to know what Denis was going to tell me. He saw my sudden concern and laid a hand on my arm. ‘Come on, darling, I'm just being practical. I think we should set up an account in your name so that you are financially secure whatever the future might bring.'

‘That's . . . thoughtful of you,' I said quietly. ‘But I don't want any future if you're not in it. And if you
are
in it I won't need an account of my own.'

Denis turned my face towards him with his fingers and smiled into my eyes. ‘Why so morbid?' he asked gently. ‘I fully intend to be in your future, Mrs Elesmere-Elliott. But I still think you need your own funds.'

We sat on the patio and Denis spread out some papers on our rattan breakfast table. There were some legal papers and a bank statement from the Hong Kong and Shanghai Banking Corporation. The statement was in my name and it showed a credit balance of over seventy thousand Straits dollars. That was an absolute fortune in those days: with it I could have bought any house I liked in Singapore ten times over.

‘This is an awful lot of money,' I said weakly.

‘It's enough to get by with at a pinch,' Denis said. ‘But that's not the point. It will give you the sense of freedom you deserve.'

I took a long, deep breath. ‘It'll let me make a real mark at Robinsons,' I said, trying hard to lighten the moment. ‘And leave me a bit over for lunch.'

Denis laughed. ‘Bargain with them hard enough and they might let you
buy
Robinsons.'

I signed the various papers and shoved them all back to him. ‘Now, can we get back to looking for a decent house in Singapore?' I asked. The fact that I was a wealthy woman meant nothing to me, but the fact that we could move to Singapore with the snap of a finger made my head spin.

Later in the morning I realised that of course Denis had not answered either of my original questions. I still had no idea how rich he was, nor why he bothered to work for Guthries.

In February we spent a weekend with Tanya and Eugene in Penang. Tanya had often pressed us to visit them but I had hesitated, wondering if it would be wise to parade our lovely baby before poor Eugene. I thought it might upset him to see what he was missing, living as he was with a wife who could not even contemplate children. On the other hand, I thought, Tony might have a
beneficial effect on Tanya. Perhaps ignite her maternal instincts.

In the end, Denis decided for me. ‘You can't go on treating the two of them as cot cases,' he said after we had received yet another invitation and I had explained my reservations. ‘For heaven's sake, Tanya is the closest thing in the world you have to family. You must make the effort.'

Once the decision was made, I found myself quite looking forward to the visit. If I had roots anywhere they were in Penang, and I was curious to see how I would react to going back there. So far, the island had occupied a very ambivalent place in my heart. At times I thought I hated it, remembering the bad times. Being left at the Convent after Robbie's death, feeling for all the world like a piece of unwanted baggage abandoned in a boxroom. The loneliness and fear I had felt while living with the Ulrichs. The feelings of desperation whenever I had thought of the future because there had seemed nowhere to go, no future I could depend on.

But sometimes I found myself thinking about good times. Running barefoot on a rain-wet beach as a child. Discovering Sister Felice and her magic world. Sitting with my friends in the shady Convent garden and its elusive scent of frangipani. The dream of Denis, and how it had transformed my life.

Yes, it would be good to go back to Penang and confront all my ghosts, both the good ones and the bad.

We drove up in the Alvis, taking the ayah to look after Tony. It had been a long drive through hot, humid weather and we arrived in a thunderstorm, Tony crying fretfully, Denis in a bad mood because the recently-repaired canvas hood had leaked, and even the ayah sulky and out of sorts. I remember laughing to myself as our bedraggled, wailing little party decamped under the shelter of the porch: this was not exactly a brilliant advertisement for the joys of parenthood!

Eugene was the Eugene I remembered – a little pompous, a little overdressed, but solicitous and friendly – but Tanya looked extraordinarily different. She had grown her hair and wore it in a loose ponytail, making her look young and carefree. She embraced me affectionately, and then swooped on Tony, scooping him to her breast to the manner born. I just stood there, boggling. The tight-faced ice maiden had disappeared completely, replaced by a charming, natural woman at perfect peace with herself. Even Tony stopped his whimpering and began playing with her hair, tugging the ponytail experimentally, then peering into her laughing face with curiosity.

I was dying to find out what had happened to bring about such a dramatic change and got my chance after dinner. We had dined in some state, with the houseboys dressed in a uniform of white coat over dark blue trousers and serving us from ornate, monogrammed silver. After coffee, Eugene suggested that the ladies might wish to withdraw for coffee while the men had port and cigars. I was startled by the Edwardian formality of the suggestion, but Denis gave me a quiet wink and I fell in with the charade, offering Tanya my arm as we retired to the drawing room.

Once in the sanctuary of the drawing room, I could not resist a mild fit of the giggles and was pleased to see that Tanya was also amused. ‘He so likes the old European formality,' she explained tolerantly. ‘And it does no harm.'

‘It also gives us a chance to talk,' I said frankly. ‘Tanya, you are looking so relaxed, so much at ease. Obviously married life agrees with you.'

Tanya was immediately serious. ‘I am still . . . frigid,' she said bluntly. ‘I can't bear the thought of sex. But it isn't a problem between Eugene and me anymore. We talk about it quite openly, which helps. And Nona – we are now such good friends!'

Tanya's frankness, and her obvious happiness, affected me deeply and I couldn't help but reach out and squeeze her hand. ‘I didn't want to pry,' I said. ‘But of course I have been worried.'