In the Mouth of the Tiger (92 page)

Malcolm joined us, standing between me and the blackness. ‘Damned Chinese Communists,' he said bitterly. ‘I've seen this coming for a long time.'

‘I doubt it would have been a Communist,' Denis said quietly. ‘They're much too disciplined for something like this. Much more likely to have been the Malayan Overseas Chinese Self-Defence Army. They're a vicious bunch and all they want is bloodshed for the sake of bloodshed.'

‘Aren't they all the same thing?' Tanya asked, white-faced but composed.

‘MOCSDA is
anti
-Communist,' Denis said shortly.

‘They are all Chinese, for heaven's sake,' Malcolm retorted. ‘And the Chinese spell trouble, whatever their political persuasion.' Malcolm had become quite renowned for his anti-Chinese sentiments. He was the direct opposite of John Dalley, for whom the Chinese could do no wrong. It is one of the ironies of history that during 1947 Dalley was writing the Malayan Security Service assessment of the MCP as a potential threat. His assessment would be that they posed no threat at all, which is one of the reasons the Government was caught so flat-footed when the real violence broke out.

We were told nobody was to leave the Sea View until the area around the hotel had been thoroughly searched so we gathered by the cocktail bar, drinking complimentary coffee and talking in subdued tones. The party spirit had been well and truly dispelled, and we speculated morbidly on whom it might be lying under a sheet. About two o'clock they told us that the dead man was Rob King, an executive with Royal Dutch Shell. Most of us knew Rob, even if only slightly. I remembered him from the Swimming Club, where I had often seen him supervising his children in the wading pool.

It all seemed so tragic and futile. What on earth had the bad hat intended to gain by shooting a complete stranger?

The killing sent a thrill of fear through European society in Malaya. Talking to Tanya on the phone the next morning I tried to be positive and enthusiastic about her move up country, but inside I felt chilled that she was going to such a lonely area in these troubled times. The Argyle Rubber Plantation was in new country for rubber, and would not have the interlocking support of neighbouring estates to take away the feeling of isolation. And
Tanya was a city girl. I remembered how she had hated Kuala Rau. I had a picture in my mind of her peering fearfully into the shadows of the jungle from our verandah. ‘I hate it here,' she had hissed. ‘I hate there not being anyone about. Just
emptiness
.'

I promised that Denis and I would visit soon as they were settled. ‘Please do,' Tanya said almost desperately. ‘Please come and stay. As soon as you can.'

‘You're going to be only half an hour from the Featherstones,' I said. ‘I'm sure it will be fun.'

‘Yes, I'm sure it will be fun,' Tanya said, but her tone was forced.

The Aubreys' departure depressed me, and then something happened that deepened the gloom at Casuarinas even further. Denis came home one day looking pale and upset, chucked his briefcase into his study, kissed Frances and me perfunctorily, then took off for a walk by himself. Evening fell, it began to rain, and I took a chair out onto the verandah and sat there watching for his return.

Dinner time came and went, but I told Amah to hold the meal. I put Frances to bed, read her a goodnight story, and resumed my vigil.

Denis came back about ten, soaked and fatigued. ‘Please, darling,' I implored. ‘I know something has upset you. Tell me what it is. A burden shared is a burden halved.'

At first I thought he would refuse, but he suddenly took me in his arms. ‘I honestly don't know if it's worth the candle,' he said, shaking his head slowly, his arms firmly around me. ‘At times I really wonder.'

I assumed that he was talking about intelligence work, and realised that this must be serious. ‘Tell me all about it,' I said. ‘From the beginning. But under the shower, or you will catch your death of cold.'

I sat on a chair in the bathroom as Denis showered, talking to me as the hot water splashed over him. ‘We had a message from London today,' he said. ‘About a chap called Igor Skripkin. A lieutenant in the Russian Navy, who worked in their Naval Intelligence area. He had a wife and a couple of children whom he cared for a great deal. He wanted to join us – to defect. He went back to Moscow while we were arranging to get his family out. But the Russians caught on. A couple of KGB people approached him, pretending to be MI6, and he gave himself away.'

Denis came out of the shower and towelled himself vigorously. ‘What happened to him?' I asked.

‘What do you think happened to him?' Denis snapped. ‘They shot him of course.'

The rain had increased, beating on the tiled roof and gurgling in our downpipes. In the distance the sea had got up so that we could hear waves thumping on the beach. Denis was staring at me, his eyes huge and vividly blue. He looked, just for a second, like an angry stranger, and then his face crumpled, his lips clamping into a downturned line as he struggled not to weep.

‘You can cry,' I said softly. ‘You can cry.'

But the moment was over. Denis chucked the towel into the rattan dhobi basket and pulled on his pyjamas. ‘Fat lot of good crying would do. Get Amah to rustle up some dinner, will you darling? I don't know about you but I could eat a horse.'

The death of Lieutenant Skripkin darkened our lives for weeks. At first I thought I understood Denis's agony. It had been too easy for him to identify with the unfortunate Russian. Skripkin had been in charge of Russia's commercial intelligence operations in the Far East since the end of the war, and thus in many ways had been Denis's opposite number. He had also played the double-edged game we had pretended to play in Melbourne. But he had played the game for real, and paid the ultimate price.

But as the weeks passed without any change in Denis's mood, I understood his agony less and less. There seemed to be almost a degree of guilt in his grief, a personal element that made no sense at all. ‘You couldn't have done anything to help him, could you?' I asked on one occasion.

Denis hadn't answered me, but his smile had been bitter and enigmatic.

We visited the Aubreys at the end of August, and I welcomed the opportunity for Denis to have something to think about other than Lieutenant Skripkin. We took the overnight train to KL and then a car out to the plantation. Frances had been tired and irritable on the drive, but settled down the moment we drew up before the bungalow and little Andrei ran out to meet us, his blond hair glowing under the porch lights.

‘Mummy said Frances can sleep in my room,' he shouted, getting the ground rules straight before any other grown-ups could interfere, and Frances accepted the invitation with an imperious nod.

The manager's bungalow on the Argyle Rubber Estate was rather smaller
than I had expected, but Tanya had done a magnificent job of turning it into a home. There were colourful chintz curtains, vivid Indian rugs scattered on the polished timber floor, and comfortable cane furniture full of richly embroidered Chinese cushions.

‘We have worked like navvies,' Tanya said, showing off the main bedroom. ‘Eugene stripped and sanded every inch, and I painted until my arms felt like falling off.' It was a delightful room, all white and pink, and with a white enamelled four-poster facing a wall of widows. A Russian icon hung on the wall above the bed head, a lovely thing that I recognised, full of colours and with a heavy gold-leaf frame.

Tanya saw me looking at it. ‘Your mother gave it to me,' she said, blushing slightly. ‘She should have given it to you, I think. I am sorry, Nona.'

‘Don't be sorry,' I said sincerely. ‘You have been more of a daughter to my mother than I have. I am glad that she appreciates you. Have you heard from her at all?'

‘Only a card, last May. She only sends cards, because she is ashamed of her English and she will not write anything in Russian. She is happy and well. I had told her in my previous letter that I was in touch with you, but she did not respond. She is as stubborn as you in that regard.'

The manager's work on a rubber plantation begins before dawn, and Denis was up with Eugene at four thirty to help get the tappers started and to set the weeding gangs to work. They'd be back by ten, and after cold showers would join us for a late breakfast on the broad verandah. As I had hoped, the change did Denis a power of good.

‘By Jove, this takes me back,' he said one morning as he tucked into a typical planter's breakfast of eggs, bacon, sausages, tomatoes and bubble-andsqueak. ‘You know, Norma, I lived this life for two years when I first came out to Malaya. I had forgotten just how much I relished it.'

‘Oh, go on,' Tanya said. ‘I know it's got to be done, but surely nobody could actually
like
getting up at the crack of dawn six days a week.'

Denis put his knife and fork down. ‘It's pitch black when one arrives at the coolie lines, but there's already smoke in the darkness and the smell of cooking. Then the Tamils appear, long lines of ghostly figures in the gloom. You can only half see their faces, but you've got to know every name, all their strength and all their weaknesses.

‘Malik – you will lead the tappers on the Experimental Plot. Make sure every man makes his cut straight and true. Raja – tell your men to be more
careful when they hammer in their collecting cups. Nathan, your men will weed the hillside pathways. There are banded kraits in those thickets, so tell them to be careful. Then the sun comes up. It's like a great red ball at first, filling the aisles between the trees with a weird orange light. But all too soon it's a golden hammer, beating you into the ground. It's a hard life, but by God you feel you're doing something useful.'

‘I didn't know you could be so poetic,' Tanya said. ‘But now get on with your breakfast, Denis. Tim and Jan are due in half an hour, and then we're going into Kuala Lipis for tennis and a swim.'

It was a delightful few days, and I watched Denis return almost to normal. He thrived on the hard work and the exercise, and at night he sat down with Eugene and went through the paperwork associated with running a rubber plantation. The price of rubber was high, but there were problems moving the latex down to the KL railhead due to strikes and mechanical problems. Strikes because of the Communists, and breakdowns because the Pahang transport industry was ageing and under-maintained.

‘I think you'll make a go of it,' Denis pronounced on our final evening. ‘Well done, Eugene – we'll make a planter of you yet.' Eugene had blushed like a schoolboy.

It was an overcast evening, hot and muggy, and after dinner we sat drinking stengahs until nearly midnight. I think perhaps Tanya drank a little more than she had intended, because suddenly and unaccountably she began to weep. It was the strangest thing. We had been sitting there in companionable silence when suddenly we heard her sobbing. Eugene was on his knee beside her in an instant, his arms around her shoulders. ‘What is wrong, my dear? Why are you crying?'

I got up too and knelt on Tanya's other side. ‘Is it the loneliness?' I asked intuitively. ‘Is it that when we're gone you'll feel isolated out here at Argyle?'

Tanya turned to me and nodded. ‘I am frightened,' she said. ‘I'm very frightened, Nona. Just those awful grey rubber trees for miles and miles and miles. And there are Communists all round us. I know there are. They are biding their time, just waiting to pounce on us when we least expect it. I've been listening to the radio. The Communists are going to take over the world, and Malaya is where they will strike first.'

‘Are you really frightened here at Argyle?' Eugene sounded astounded. ‘You've never said anything before, darling. I thought you liked it here.'

Tanya swung round and put her arms around Eugene neck. ‘I'm so sorry,
my darling,' she said into his shoulder. ‘I'm letting you down, aren't I? Just when you need me most.'

Denis had poured a cup of coffee from the pot left by the boy and brought it across. ‘Knock this back, Tanya,' he ordered. ‘It's a bit lukewarm but the caffeine will do you good.'

It took a while but we calmed Tanya down, and then Eugene took both her hands in his. ‘I think you might not be seeing things very straight just now,' he said softly. ‘You are tired, and a coming baby can play merry hell with a woman's emotions. But if the isolation out here really is getting you down, you are going back to Singapore. At least until things settle down.'

‘Will you come with me?' Tanya asked in a small voice, and I could see the pain on Eugene's face.

‘You know I can't, my dear. We have everything we own in the world tied up here in the estate.'

I didn't sleep at all that night, and in the morning when I went out on the verandah I saw the place through Tanya's eyes. The garden bright with cannas but somehow crushed by the serried ranks of rubber trees that surrounded it like a dismal wall. Everywhere you looked there were rubber trees, rubber trees, and more rubber trees. Cutting the bungalow off from the rest of the world, stifling thought, stifling imagination.

Tanya joined me, looking pale and tired. ‘It's not just the rubber,' she said, shaking her head. ‘All those trees are depressing, but what I'm really frightened of are the Communists. You were too young to know how evil they are, and how determined they are to take over the world. Winston Churchill has said that there is an iron curtain cutting the world in half. On one side there are people like us. On the other side there are monsters. If the Communists take over in Malaya, and we're caught on the wrong side of the curtain, people like you and I will be killed out of hand. Remember what your mother used to say? The Communists never forget. And you and I were born their enemies.'

We left Argyle for the drive back to KL just after lunch. There was a painful moment when Andrei refused to let Frances out of his arms. He had been cheerfully bossed around by the little lady all week, and clearly dreaded the return to the life of an only child in the middle of nowhere. It was almost as hard for me to disentangle myself from Tanya. The chilly iceberg of my youth was long gone, replaced by a passionate and vulnerable woman. ‘Take care of her,' I said to Eugene, my eyes not as dry as they should have been.