In the Mouth of the Tiger (7 page)

Mother and Tanya returned and the receptionist asked me to follow her back to Mr Mayhew's office. As I got up I glanced at Mother, looking for support or encouragement, but all she did was to straighten her head and tuck
her chin in – gestures telling me to correct my posture.

Mr Mayhew's desk was bare except for a single thick file – so very different to Dr Mahmood's which had groaned with papers and folders. Dr Mahmood had risen to greet me, and had shaken my hand. Mr Mayhew merely gestured to a chair with a tired arm, and then settled back in his own padded leather chair, adjusting his glasses.

I scrutinised his face, looking for kindness, or at least understanding. But his eyes were cold and empty. He was far older than I remembered, his face grey with age, his skin made paper-thin by repeated bouts of fever. Two bright spots of anger glowed on his sunken cheeks.

‘I understand you have seen Lal Mahmood, questioning the way I have administered your stepfather's estate,' he began. ‘I would have thought it a matter of courtesy to speak to
me
about any concerns you had before engaging another firm of solicitors.'

I was taken aback. ‘I'm awfully sorry,' I flustered. ‘But truly, I haven't engaged another firm of solicitors. Dr Mahmood only gave me some advice about . . . wills and things.'

‘Dr Mahmood may be quite a good criminal lawyer,' Mr Mayhew said. ‘But he knows absolutely nothing about probate law or the law of trusts. May I ask precisely what you discussed with him?'

‘I told him I had heard that Robbie – my stepfather – had left the Burnbrae Tea Plantation to me in his will, and that it was to be sold. I hadn't heard anything about that, and so I asked what I should do to find out what was happening.'

‘And what advice did Dr Mahmood give you?'

I cleared my throat. ‘He told me to see you. And to ask you to give me a letter explaining everything.'

Mr Mayhew steepled his fingers. ‘I am quite prepared to
explain
to you the terms of Mr Robert's will, and to tell you how I have administered the trust established under that will. But as far as a letter of account goes, I see absolutely no point. Unless I sought to have myself released from my obligations as trustee – which I hasten to say would not be a matter for you to decide but for the Probate Court.'

I swallowed. This was not at all how things were supposed to proceed. ‘Did Robbie – Mr Roberts – leave me the Burnbrae Tea Plantation?' I asked bluntly.

‘Mr Roberts' affairs at his death were very precarious indeed, Nona. The
Depression had been very unkind to him. His tea business in London – T'eas – was in receivership. Kuala Rau – the gold mine – was worked out, and the concessions it held virtually worthless. His one viable asset, the Burnbrae Tea Plantation, was heavily mortgaged and just about breaking even.'

‘Did Robbie leave me Burnbrae?' I persisted.

Mr Mayhew drummed his fingers angrily on his desk. ‘Ernest Roberts left his entire estate to you in trust, and appointed me his executor and trustee.'

‘Then why wasn't I told?' I asked with spirit. My heart was beating like a sledgehammer in my breast, but I was being true to my resolution to stand up for myself.

Mr Mayhew frowned at me ominously. ‘I don't think you fully appreciate the situation that had occurred,' he said. ‘Your mother was Roberts' wife and naturally expected to be looked after in his will. Instead, Roberts left everything to you, a twelve-year-old girl.'

‘Robbie and I were good friends,' I said. ‘He and Mother had fallen out. But he still loved me.'

‘He must have loved you a great deal,' Mr Mayhew said dryly.

The way he said it made me suddenly blush. ‘What exactly do you mean?' I asked.

‘Roberts became very close to you at the end of his life, to the exclusion of his own wife. He gave you valuable gifts. He left you his entire estate.'

‘We were father and daughter,' I said angrily. ‘How can . . .'

‘You were not his daughter,' Mr Mayhew interrupted. ‘You were a rather pretty pubescent girl living in close proximity to him, alone, in the isolation of Kuala Rau.'

Mr Mayhew's insinuation shocked me, and I stood up angrily. How dare this awful, dried-up insect say such terrible things about Robbie, the kindest, truest, gentlest of men? I decided to walk out, and turned blindly towards the door.

‘I'm making no judgement, Nona,' Mr Mayhew said to my back. ‘I'm simply telling you what the public perception would have been if it had been widely known that your mother had been excluded from Roberts' will, and that you had inherited everything. Think of it from your mother's viewpoint.'

I paused. I had not given any thought to how Mother must have felt. She had been distraught after Robbie's death, even though she had left him, walking out of our small, isolated bungalow at Kuala Rau after weeks of rows
about money. The Depression had hit hard, and Mother had been unable to cope with the sudden plunge into penury. One day, Dr Macleod had driven up from Ipoh to see Robbie, who was down with one of his recurrent bouts of malaria. Dr Macleod had once been a suitor of Mother's, and she had left with him in his big black American car and not come back, leaving me to look after Robbie on my own.

I returned to my chair and sat down. ‘Wasn't it . . . illegal . . . not to tell me that I had inherited Robbie's estate?' I asked.

‘Your mother was tempted to fight the will, partly as a matter of pride. As a dependent wife, she would quite likely have won such a fight. But it would have eroded what little value there was in the estate. So I made an arrangement with her. Part of that arrangement was that you not be told, until your majority, that you had inherited the whole of Roberts' estate. Your mother felt that such knowledge would have ruined her relationship with you. No, Nona, it was not illegal of me to keep the terms of Roberts' will from you.'

I took a deep breath. ‘I have heard that Burnbrae is up for sale,' I said. ‘Burnbrae is mine, and I don't want it sold. I forbid the sale.'

Mr Mayhew sighed. ‘Burnbrae is not for sale. It has already been sold. That is why I have asked you here today, to explain what I intend to do with the proceeds of that sale.'

I stamped my foot. ‘How can you sell what isn't yours?' I asked. ‘I will complain to . . . to the Probate Court about what you have done!' Tears of frustration and disappointment started in my eyes and I fought desperately to keep them contained.

‘The terms of the trust empower me to call in and convert – that is, to sell – any property subject to the trust. It is my judgement that the sale of Burnbrae at this time is in your interests, whatever your thoughts on the matter may be.'

So the dream was over. The game was lost. I was so shocked that I felt literally winded, and sat gulping air while the tears that I had fought to contain rolled down my face. Mr Mayhew sat unmoved for a minute, then took a handkerchief from his breast pocket and tossed it across to me.

‘May I ask how you got your black eye?' he asked.

I don't know why I told him the story of Captain Ulrich and of our confrontation over breakfast. If I thought it might soften his attitude to me I was badly mistaken.

‘You certainly do attract the wrong sort of attention,' he said, shaking his head. ‘Your mother told me about your flaunting yourself at the Palm Court last night in a school-girl uniform. You are mature for your age, Nona, and it behoves you to start acting like a lady.'

This attack was so unfair that I passed beyond anger and upset into ice-cold rage. I took a deep breath and leaned back in my chair. ‘Your preoccupation with everything seamy and underhand tells me more about you than you realise,' I said coolly. It was a line straight out of a novel I had read and memorised for use in the Convent schoolyard, but Mr Mayhew wouldn't know that.

‘That's as may be,' he replied equally coolly, but I saw that the shaft had gone home by the sudden appearance of dull red spots on his cheeks.

There was a short silence.

‘How much money do I get from the sale of Burnbrae, and what is going to happen to it?' I asked.

Mr Mayhew sat up abruptly and opened the file in front of him. ‘The sale price is thirteen thousand nine hundred and fifty Straits dollars,' he said. ‘From that figure there are a number of legal disbursements to be made, including this firm's fee on the conveyance. These disbursements will total just over a thousand dollars. From the balance, approximately eight thousand dollars is required to pay off the existing mortgage to the Hong Kong & Shanghai Banking Corporation. That will leave us with a little less than five thousand dollars on settlement.'

‘Then I want that money paid into an account in my name,' I said. ‘As soon as possible. And then I never, ever want to see you again.'

Mr Mayhew actually chuckled. ‘It doesn't quite work that way, Nona. You are only fourteen and still under age. Those moneys are trust moneys, for me to use in your best interests. I need to pay out an overdraft account that has been used to pay for your schooling over the past few years. I also need to pay for your accommodation with the Ulrichs, and for piano lessons and so on. Those amounts total about a thousand dollars. The balance – about four thousand Straits dollars – I might have invested in trust securities, to be released to you on your twenty-first birthday. But that would have meant that you would have virtually no income whatever for the next seven years or so. I have been asked to give my approval to a more reasonable use for those funds, and I intend to give that approval.'

Kuala Lumpur. It all fitted into place now. Mother's attempts to charm
me yesterday, the talk of my working in the proposed salon, Mr Aubrey's references to my need to discuss the proposal with my advisers. Even the suggestion that I would have an interest in the salon.

‘You want to give the money to Mother so that she can buy a hairdressing salon in KL,' I said abruptly. ‘I think that's . . . that's . . . terribly wrong of you. How can you possibly say that giving my money to my mother is in my interests?'

‘It will not be a gift to your mother. It will be a business investment aimed at keeping your family together and giving your mother the means to earn a living for you both. At the end of the day, you will part own the business – if it survives and prospers. And that will be a matter partly in your own hands, as I understand that you will be working in the salon.'

I felt my shoulders slump in defeat. Nothing I said, or did, or refused to do, would change anything.

‘So what happens next?' I asked. Even my anger was seeping away, leaving behind an almost comfortable feeling of resignation and self-pity.

‘I am going to insist that you go and see your Dr Mahmood at two o'clock this afternoon. My secretary has already made the appointment. You will discuss what I have told you this morning with Dr Mahmood, and then you will come back and see me at' – he glanced at the papers in front of him – ‘at three thirty. At that time I would like you to sign a memorandum of our talk today. The memorandum will make it quite clear that after talking over all aspects of your affairs with an independent legal adviser, you are happy that the balance of the moneys due to you after the sale of Burnbrae will be reinvested in the hairdressing business in KL.' He fished around in the file before him and drew out a thin bundle of papers. ‘This is a copy of the trust deed. Please give it to Dr Mahmood with my compliments.'

I said nothing. There was nothing to say.

‘All right, Nona. That is all. Until three thirty.'

I cannot remember much of what happened next. I think I was in shock. Mother and Tanya were going to the Penang Club for a ‘celebratory lunch', as Tanya put it, and expected me to accompany them. But I simply couldn't. There must have been some sort of argument between us about lunch because I recall Mother's stony face as she climbed into the taxi in Beach Street. But I also recall Tanya getting back out of the taxi and running up to me to press some money into my hand. ‘Get some lunch,' she said almost conspiratorially. ‘You look as if you need it.'
She was a strange girl, Tanya. So hard and bitter most of the time, but so sweet when she was victorious. It must have been the Russian in her. We Russians tend to cry if we win, probably because we can so closely identify with those we have beaten.

I had two hours to kill, and walked aimlessly through the crowded George Town streets. It was a still, overcast morning, spotting with rain, and cool enough to make walking pleasurable. I found myself on Weld Quay, looking out at the ships moored in the Roads. There was the
Gorgon
, easily identifiable by the distinctive blue funnel of Alfred Holt & Co. Several P&O ships were also discharging into lighters: I recognised the
Chitral
and the
China
, both big ships on the Southampton to Singapore run. I looked for the distinctive green and white livery of the American cruise ship
Lurline
, but of course she was not there. Her program rarely took her to this part of the world, her usual haunts being the placid seas of the Mediterranean or the Caribbean.

I had sailed to Melbourne on the
Lurline
with Mother and Robbie just after their marriage in 1927. I could recall almost every detail of that trip, probably because I have revisited those happy days so often in my mind. We had a big three-berth cabin and I slept on the top bunk, with my own little reading light and a brown Bakelite punkah (fan) outlet by my head that blew cool air on my cheek as I slept, giving me dreams of misty mountaintops and bubbling streams. Robbie and Mother were very close in those days, and more than once I woke up to hear them making love in the bunk below me. When I told Sister Felice about those occasions, she was concerned that the experience might have upset me. I didn't tell her that to the contrary I had been enthralled by the realisation of what was happening in the semi-darkness beneath me. I knew what lovemaking was in theory, but of course I had no real idea what happened and I would have loved to peep over the edge of the bunk to satisfy my curiosity. But I was a good girl in those days and resisted the urge. Either that or I was too frightened of what Mother would do if she caught me peeking.