In the Mouth of the Tiger (58 page)

‘I tried to join up,' Eugene put in quietly. ‘The Territorials. Just as a lowly private. But they wouldn't have me. They said I had flat feet, of all things! I told them I didn't want to fight with my feet but it didn't do any good.' Despite the lightness of his tone the rejection had clearly hurt him badly, and he helped himself to a long drink of Bollinger.

‘They also serve who stand and wait,' Alec said helpfully, but Eugene shook his head.

‘I don't want to stand and wait,' he said forcefully. ‘I'm as much a man as the next fellow, and I'd just like a chance to prove it. It is humiliating to walk around town in civvies when all the decent chaps are in uniforms.' I saw Tanya looking at him, her eyes sharp with concern.

Ivan Lyon saved the day. He leaned over towards Eugene and punched him gently on the shoulder. ‘Good for you, old man. I like your spirit. We need chaps like you with fire in their bellies. If you'll give me your telephone number in Penang I'll make sure someone contacts you about some work my people are doing. Can't promise you a uniform but I can promise you a mansize job if the Japs do attack.'

Eugene squared his shoulders, visibly happier. ‘You can count on me, old man.' I saw the quick exchange of glances with Tanya, the flash of pride in her eyes.

Tanya is falling in love, I thought to myself. Despite herself, she is falling in love.

The main course arrived and we all tucked in. The Raffles' chef had outdone himself. There was seafood cocktail entree, then a choice between curried fish soup or crab salad
printanier
. The main course was lobster mornay, so fresh and cooked so delicately that it melted in the mouth.

After coffee, we put on the gramophone and danced under the combined glow of the lanterns and a quarter moon. Catherine was clearly the star. She danced with indescribable grace, flickering across the tiny rattan dance space with the ease of a spirit. There was something about her that night that impressed us all, an inner radiance, a sense of boundless joy. She surprised even Robert, because I saw him looking at her more than once

with puzzled wonder as well as tenderness in his eyes.

She whispered her secret to me as we took a quick breather by the rail. ‘I'm going to have a baby in December,' she said. ‘I thought I was pregnant, and the doctor confirmed it this afternoon. I'm going to tell Robert tonight.' And then she was gone, racing back into Robert's arms, her face alive with happiness.

Denis and Alec put on an impromptu floorshow. It was a sketch, allegedly written for the English comedy duo Flanagan and Allen, involving two Spaniards. Two wide-brimmed Chinese fishermen's hats had been requisitioned to add colour to the performance, and both men looked so absurd in their hats, and fluffed their lines so badly, that we were all in stitches in no time.

‘Oh where is my poor senorita?' Alec kept bellowing. ‘She has left you for a better man', Denis was supposed to reply, with a knowing wink towards the audience. But each time he tried to say his line his ridiculous hat would flop over his face and we'd again stop the show with our laughter. Eventually Catherine, who had been trying to photograph proceedings, stalked up to Denis and grabbed his shirtfront. ‘For heaven's sake give the man his senorita back,' she demanded. ‘And keep still for a second. I can't change the shutter speed.' More laughter, and then Ivan got into the act and was chasing Denis around the dance floor for no earthly reason anyone could work out. I was laughing so hard my sides ached.

All too soon Chu Lun started the engine on the sampan, the signal that it was time to go home. There was a last round of toasts, photographs taken under the lanterns, and we were all trooping down the stairs to the little jetty. I don't quite know how it happened, but suddenly four of us had decided to eschew the sampan and paddle back by canoe. ‘Anything to get away from the racket of Chu Lun's diesel,' Denis said, helping me into the smaller of the two canoes available. ‘But stay close,' he called to Catherine and Robert. ‘We don't want you running into that German submarine of Ivan's.' Within seconds both canoes had pushed off from the kalang and were sliding through the glossy black sea towards the shore.

The kalang was not much more than a mile offshore, and of course Denis and I had done the trip several times before. It was an easy fifteen- or twenty-minute paddle, an interlude of peace and tranquillity made even more pleasant by the sense of adventure as one sped across a black void towards the welcoming lights of Whitelawns. But in retrospect I suppose it was a rather
harebrained thing to do, unprepared as we were and after so many glasses of Bollinger.

I realised that there was something wrong when we were about a third of the way back. There seemed to be a lot of water sloshing around in the bilge, and when I put an exploratory foot down I realised that we had about six inches of water on board.

‘We seem to be making a bit of water,' I said quietly. Denis didn't answer for a moment, then I heard him feeling around beneath us. ‘We are not making a
bit
of water,' he said. ‘We're making a thundering lot of water.'

We increased our rate of paddling, but it quickly became apparent that water was pouring in from somewhere, making the canoe more and more sluggish by the second.

‘This won't do,' Denis said, putting his paddle down. He sounded suddenly serious. ‘Feel the hull under your feet, darling. Let's see if we can discover where the water's coming from.'

My hand closed over something bobbing in the bilge and I held it up. It was a cork. ‘I think one of the drainage corks has come out,' I said, trying to keep my voice calm. ‘Is that bad?'

‘Not if we can find the drainage hole,' Denis sounded almost relieved. ‘Then we can just stuff the cork back in. For heaven's sake don't tell anyone what chumps we've been, will you? The damned bung must have been out when we put the boat in the water.'

‘
If
we get to shore,' I said rather sharply. ‘We've got to find that hole first!'

We couldn't find the bung-hole at all. It sounds funny in retrospect, because there we were, an apparently sane, respectable couple, thrashing around in a sinking canoe in the middle of the Singapore Strait in our evening clothes. In the midst of the confusion I saw a huge sea snake, glowing with phosphorescence, writhing in the water so close alongside that Denis smacked at it with his paddle. We also knew there were sharks about – they caught one or two daily from the kalang.

Abruptly it was quite clear to me that we were going to sink and I felt tears in my eyes. There was a very real risk that we were going to die. It seemed absurd. There in front of us were the lights of Whitelawns, always kept burning by Amah when we were out at the kalang. Behind us we could see the lanterns on the kalang, festive pinks, and greens and gold. And yet here we were, alone in the blackness, about to die and leave our babies alone in the world. I fought
a huge sob, choking it down, trying to think of something light and funny to say, as was our creed.

‘You know this dress is going to shrink,' I scolded. ‘So you had better promise to buy me a new one . . .'

The water was up to our waists, surprisingly cold, infinitely threatening. ‘I'm sorry, Nona,' Denis said quietly. ‘I've rather put us in the stew, I'm afraid. Perhaps it's not quite as bad as it seems. The canoe shouldn't sink because it's made of wood. When we go down we'll hang on and swim the damned thing to the beach.'

It was then that I heard the tinkle of Catherine's laughter close by, and Robert calling out: ‘What's keeping you two? We were almost at the beach!'

The sense of relief was palpable, a warm, glowing globe in my chest that made me want to laugh. ‘Denis has sunk our canoe!' I called back. ‘The idiot left the bung out! Any chance of a lift?'

We clambered carefully into the other canoe, and then the men started fussing with painters, tying the sinking canoe behind us while all I wanted to do was to get my feet on dry land. ‘You're shaking,' Catherine said, wrapping her stole around me. ‘You need a big hot cup of tea.'

In retrospect, our adventure did not spoil the evening at all. The whole party sat around on the veranda while Amah fussed with tea and coffee, and talked and talked until what had seemed a nightmare such a short time before began to seem like a dream. A happy, funny dream. My comment about my dress shrinking was embroidered and turned into the wittiest sally imaginable. The sea snake took on titanic proportions, with Denis standing up and fending it off like Captain Nemo fending off the giant squid. The last car didn't crunch away up our driveway until ‘dawn's left hand was in the sky', as Denis quoted.

And Alec finished for him, also quoting from the first quatrain of the Rubaiyat of Omar Kayyam: ‘And lo, the hunter of the East has cast the stone that sets the stars to flight, and caught the Sultan's turret in a noose of light.'

The Sultan's turret was the west tower of Whitelawns, touched by gold and framed by coconut trees.

Chapter Twenty-Two

B
y the end of 1941, it had become quite apparent to anyone in Malaya who read the papers that Japan was planning to attack British possessions in the Far East, and merely waiting for the right moment. Every morning the
Straits Times
and the
Malay Mail
were full of strident calls by the Japanese Government for access to the world's oil, tin and rubber, and scarcely veiled threats about what it would do if such access was not forthcoming. ‘The people of Japan cannot for ever be prevented by the Imperialists in London and the Capitalists in Washington from taking our rightful place in the world,' Admiral Tojo was reported as saying. ‘Some day our people will realise that the time for talking has passed and that it is time for action.'

Singapore had long been earmarked as the linchpin of Britain's defence against Japan, and every day now we saw fresh evidence that it was being built up for its coming role. British and Indian soldiers were everywhere, their officers made members of the Swimming Club and the Tanglin Club while other ranks had to make do with commercial bars and dance halls. The Signals Intelligence Unit run by Captain Eric Nave and Rob Draper arrived, setting up its sophisticated radio equipment at the Port War Signal Station and establishing its secret decoding rooms deep in the Fort Canning complex. John Galvin's Far East Mission arrived from Hong Kong, a likeable, thirsty bunch of rascals who immediately began pumping out propaganda from their offices in the Cathay Mansions. I liked John Galvin in particular. He was a chunky, dark-haired ex-Sydneysider who was mad keen on horses and often rode with us at Whitelawns. It is strange how the world works: John Galvin was to play a huge role in our lives but when we first met him I used to think that the only thing we had in common was a love of riding. And perhaps a sense of humour, because John was always laughing.

The stay-behind parties went into training, being shown the ropes by tough soldiers seconded to Singapore from Colin McKenzie's people in India. Bob Chrystal was attached to one of them and he dropped in on us after a week-long stint in the jungles of Borneo, his usual easy good humour worn thin by exhaustion and the recurrence of a stomach ulcer he was hiding from the authorities. ‘This is getting serious,' he said, sipping from a glass of Milk of Magnesia. ‘At this rate there is a risk they'll find out what an old crock I am before the Japanese even get here.'

And Denis received his first posting to a ship. To be truthful, His Majesty's Malay Ship
Penghulu
wasn't very much of a ship. She was a makedo minesweeper, a converted trawler that still looked like a trawler because of the untidy tangle of sweeping gear on her decks. Denis's appointment was as First Officer, which was not quite as impressive as it sounded because he was the only officer on board apart from the skipper. But ‘Jimmy the One' is a good appointment in naval terms. He has full responsibility for running the ship: a tight ship means a good exec, and a good exec is marked for eventual command.

The skipper was George Fortesque, a Royal Naval Reserve Lieutenant-Commander. George had been an up-and-coming young sub-lieutenant at the end of the First World War, but naval economies in the nineteen-twenties, and an unfortunate facial tic, had stalled his career. He had been ‘bowler hatted' and had come out to Malaya with the FMS Police ten years before. I met him when I took Denis over to the Naval Base to join
Penghulu
for his first patrol. We sat in the tiny wardroom, Denis incredibly smart in his white tropical uniform, George looking rather tired and faded, reclining in his chair with a pink gin in his hand. But I liked George. He had no side to him whatever: for him, being skipper was a responsibility, not a ticket to privilege. That became clear when he gave up his larger cabin to Denis so that he could have a decent desk to work on the ship's codebooks and papers. ‘Been doing the work myself,' he said. ‘My previous Number One spent half his time under the table. You don't look that sort, Denis.' He glanced at me and held up his small glass of gin. ‘Have no fear, Norma. I never drink at sea. Seen too many good men found out because the gin on board is too damned cheap.' Then his face gave one of its queer spasms, spoiling the image. I felt sorry for him. What a curse and what a handicap that tic must have been, all his life.

The
Penghulu
's work was to keep the approaches to Singapore and Penang clear of drifting mines. Her patrols usually took a couple of days, and she went
out two or three times a month. It was not a strenuous program, and apart from an engine-room artificer and seaman who lived permanently aboard and kept her in trim,
Penghulu
's crew were stood down between patrols.

We may have been in the middle of a World War, and the Japanese storm clouds may have been building on the northern horizon, but Malaya in 1941 was still a pretty peaceful place to be. It was only when the
Penghulu
was at sea that my stomach churned and I would lie awake at night imagining the worst. A minesweeper's work might not have been particularly dangerous, but it wasn't quite the picnic Denis had painted it. There was always the risk of running into a ‘friendly' mine, and it was known that German surface raiders prowled the Indian Ocean.