A Painter in Penang: A Gripping Story of the Malayan Emergency

by Clare Flynn

  ‘So, who else was killed? You said three men are dead.’ Mary sounded impatient.

  ‘Round about the same time, a gang of about a dozen men turned up at the Phin Soon estate down the road from Ephil’s. John Allison and his assistant, a young chap called Ian Christian, had their hands tied behind their backs and marched at gunpoint to Allison’s bungalow. They wanted his gun which was in the house. Then they took them back to the office and onto the veranda. They tied them to chairs and shot them both dead with tommy guns.’

  Mary and Jasmine gasped.

  ‘Then they torched the drying sheds and the rubber stores.’

  ‘You think the two attacks were coordinated?’

  ‘Must have been. You know how much trouble there’s been over at Sungei Siput among the Chinese tappers. They’d been on strike. Only been back at work two days. Posters all over the place about killing the “running dogs”. According to the police there was a big meeting of all the communist leaders in the town a few weeks ago. Must have been plotting this then.’

  ‘If they knew they were all in town why on earth didn’t the police round them all up?’ asked Mary.

  Reggie shook his head. ‘Not allowed to. The police reckon every top communist in Malaya was there that night and they couldn’t do a damn thing about it. It was only a matter of time until something like this happened. Bloody useless government.’

  ‘Did something specific trigger it?’

  Reggie shrugged. ‘The endless demands for higher wages. Allison took a hard line with them. Always was a difficult bugger.’ He pursed his lips. ‘But it looks like standing up to them cost him his life, poor bastard.’ Reggie shook his head.

  Jinjiang was hovering in the doorway, waiting to announce lunch. ‘Bring me another stengah, JJ, and make it a stiff one.’

  This time Mary didn’t object.

  Jasmine was struggling to take in the import of this news. ‘Where is Sungei Siput?’ She couldn’t help wondering how close it was to Batu Lembah.

  ‘In Perak. North of Ipoh.’

  ‘Is it near Batu Lembah?’

  ‘About an hour’s drive.’ Reggie polished off his second whisky and Mary coaxed him into the dining room and made him eat something.

  Jasmine didn’t feel hungry and picked at her food. The cold-blooded murder of three planters was much too close to home for her to absorb. That assistant could have been Howard.

  ‘I need to call Verna Walker and pass on our condolences,’ said Mary. ‘Was Allison’s assistant married?’

  Jasmine marvelled at the teacher’s calm.

  ‘Christian? No. He was just a lad. Twenty-one apparently. Been out here less than a year. He’d been due to start his first manager’s job in a couple of days, poor devil.’

  Jasmine felt as though a shard of ice had been plunged into her. Only four or five years older than her. She tried to imagine how she’d feel if it had been Howard. A wave of nausea washed over her and she made it to the bathroom just in time to throw up. After splashing cold water over her face, she returned to join the others. ‘Excuse me.’ She slipped back into her seat, but couldn’t eat another morsel.

  ‘Are you all right, Jasmine?’ Mary’s eyes were full of concern.

  ‘Absolutely.’

  ‘I need to go over to Perak.’ Reggie’s face was still contorted with suppressed anger. They’ll be burying the men tonight. It’s only right I show up. And there’s a meeting of the planters. We can’t let the bastards get away with this.’ He gave a groan and shook his head. ‘Walker was imprisoned in Changi with me. He survived that only to be butchered in his own office.

  Mary placed her hand on his arm. ‘I think you should leave it to those on the peninsula. Things are different over here. You don’t need to be involved.’

  ‘We’re all involved. We planters stand together. This is war, Mary.’

  ‘It might not come to that. It could have been a couple of isolated incidents.’

  ‘Why in God’s name would it be isolated incidents? They got away with it. Those devils will have disappeared back to their jungle camps to start planning the next attack. If we don’t crush this now they could come after all of us.’

  ‘Stop it, Reggie, you’re scaring Jasmine.’

  ‘I’m not scared,’ she lied.

  ‘But you planters shouldn’t be playing soldiers.’ Mary was still the voice of calm. ‘It’s up to the government. They’ll have to act now. Three British planters dead. They have no alternative.’

  Reggie harrumphed. ‘I wish I shared your confidence, darling, but the High Commissioner couldn’t run a piss up in a brewery. Pardon my language, Jasmine.’ He got to his feet. ‘I’ve no idea when I’ll be back. Don’t wait up for me. I need to get moving.’

  Mary tried to stay him with a hand on his arm. ‘Are you taking Ronny and Kevin?’ She was referring to the Assistant Manager and the junior.

  ‘No. I’m going on my own. They need to keep things going here. And I’m not leaving you girls and Frances unprotected.’

  ‘Then you’ll have Bintang drive you?’

  ‘No. I want to leave as many men here as possible. I’ll be fine. Main roads all the way. Those bandits rely on stealth and being able to melt back into the jungle. They won’t risk the main roads. Anyway, there’ll be police crawling about everywhere.’

  Jinjiang came in to clear away the lunch. ‘Tiffin not good?’

  ‘It’s perfect, Jinjiang. But none of us has much of an appetite today. Has Frances had hers?’

  The amah nodded solemnly. ‘She very hungry. Good baby.’

  ‘I’ll come and get her in a moment. We can sit in the shade on the veranda.’ As Jinjiang left the room, Mary turned to her husband again. ‘You’re determined to go alone?’

  He nodded. ‘I’ll take the jeep.’

  ‘Then I won’t try to stop you. But be very careful. No silly risks. And stay overnight. Better than driving in the dark. Promise me.’ She held onto his arm.

  Reggie bent down and kissed the top of his wife’s head. ‘I’ll be back as soon as I can tomorrow. I’ll get a room in Ipoh. Or stay with the Hembrys at Kamuning. He runs his estate like Fort Knox. I’ll be safe there.’ Then with a wave to both of them, he bounded down the steps and strode away.

  It was only once he was gone that Mary showed any emotion. Then it was only a small sob that she managed to choke off before it turned to tears. ‘What’s going to happen? I should have been stronger in what I told your mother, Jasmine. I should have told her that civil war here was inevitable.’ Her expression was wretched. ‘We’ll have to arrange to send you home.’

  ‘No!’ Jasmine was surprised at her own vehemence. ‘I don’t want to go back to Kenya. Not yet.’ She actually hoped never to have to go back. ‘Anyway, as you said, this might be an isolated incident. And we’re safe here on Penang. If there’s trouble, it’s going to be on the peninsula.’ She folded her arms. ‘I don’t want you to tell Mummy what’s happened.’

  ‘Oh, darling, it’s going to be all over the news everywhere. Three British men murdered in one morning. Evie’s going to find out. She may know by now anyway with Arthur being in the Colonial Office. It will have come through on the wires.’

  Jasmine frowned. ‘Then we need to reassure her if she’s worried. It’s going to be fine here. I know it is. Why on earth would the communists come across here to Penang on the ferry? Bella Vista is small in comparison with most of the other estates across the water. As Howard Baxter was all too keen to point out when he was boring me to death about his job.’ She felt a twinge of guilt at speaking ill of Howard when she had felt genuine fear for him when Reggie brought them the news. She brushed the thought aside. ‘That’s why Daddy bought Batu Lembah in the first place when he wanted to expand.’

  Mary said, ‘You’re probably right, but it’s not up to me to make that decision. I’m not your mother and imagine how I’d feel if something happened to you. How could I face Evie?’

  Jasmine gave her a wry smile.
‘If something happened to me it would probably happen to you too, so you wouldn’t be around to worry about it.’

  Mary narrowed her eyes. ‘You’re too clever for your own good, young lady.’

  But Jasmine knew she’d won the argument. She wasn’t going to raise the subject of Frances but Mary wouldn’t put her own baby at risk. And Mary would never leave Reggie’s side. If they were staying here then so would she.

  ‘You didn’t eat any lunch. Maybe you should ask Jinjiang to make you a sandwich.’

  ‘I’m not hungry. I’m going over to the studio. I’ll take some fruit with me.’ It was the first time she’d called the wooden shed by that name and she liked the sound of it.

  ‘Stay in your studio then. Don’t go wandering off around the estate. Not until Reggie gets back and we know exactly what’s going on.’

  * * *

  Bintang must have seen her going into the studio, as he appeared on the threshold moments later.

  Jasmine was pleased and relieved to see him. She had worried their last conversation may have marked the end of their understanding. ‘Have you come to sit for me again?’

  ‘You say not finished.’ He shrugged. ‘But if you doing something else–’ He turned to leave.

  ‘No! Now is perfect. If you don’t mind. And if you aren’t busy?’

  ‘Tuan tell me to stay near house. Watch you and Mem and baby.’

  She placed the unfinished portrait on the easel, and he took up his seat again in the centre of the room.

  ‘You heard what happened, then? Three planters murdered.’

  ‘Yes.’

  She looked up at him, surprised at the monosyllabic response. ‘Don’t you find it shocking?’

  ‘No.’

  At a loss for words, Jasmine’s hand trembled as she unscrewed the tube of paint and squeezed some onto her palette. ‘Three innocent men, shot in cold blood.’

  ‘Innocent?’

  ‘Of course they were innocent. And defenceless. Mr Hyde-Underwood said two of them were tied to a chair. That’s an execution.’

  ‘And you think British people don’t do executions too? You have death penalty.’

  ‘Only when someone has been tried in court and found guilty.’

  ‘Maybe these men try in court too. Not your British court.’

  She put down the brush and moved round from behind the easel to look at him. He continued to stare ahead, maintaining his pose. ‘You think those communists were right, don’t you? Why?’

  ‘After war we work to rebuild our country when Japanese try to destroy it. Now tin and rubber production up but wages stay low. British are greedy. It’s our rubber, our tin, our timber, our land, but British steal it and send rubber and tin to America and England. Better we drive them out and run our country ourselves.’

  Jasmine’s mouth was wide open, but she couldn’t help but follow the logic of his argument. ‘Those men who killed the planters aren’t even workers. They’re bandits who live in the jungle. Chinese communists. Not Malayans. They don’t even have Malayan citizenship.’ She hoped she was correct in what she was saying, trying to remember past conversations between the Hyde-Underwoods on the subject.

  ‘They promised citizenship to Chinese but British and sultans betray them.’

  ‘But the sultans are Malay. You are Malay, Bintang. Why do you care so much about the Chinese Malayans?’

  He looked at her with cold, hard eyes. ‘Chinese people are in Malaya because British bring them here to work in tin mines. Like Indian people in rubber estates. British want us work to make money for them. Nothing for us.’

  She shivered involuntarily. Yet she wasn’t afraid. Rather, she was fascinated. His perspective was so different from any other she’d heard. Jasmine had always believed there were two sides to most arguments. Yet to hear the British spoken of this way was deeply shocking to her. Bintang was brazen. Fearless. She felt a surge of admiration.

  ‘Does the tuan know you feel this way?’

  Bintang gave a sardonic laugh. ‘Tuan know nothing. I not say these things to Tuan. Only to you because you schoolfriend of Siti.’

  Jasmine was shocked, but strangely touched. She had liked Siti at school but barely knew her and didn’t feel she had ever regarded her as a proper friend.

  Hiding herself behind her easel, out of his view, she thought about what Bintang had said. She realised it was not because Siti was an unlikeable girl. It was simply because she was Malay. While they had been friendly enough in class and on the playground, the idea of inviting Siti to her home would never have entered her head. Inside the four walls of the school they were all equals but that equality never extended beyond. Jasmine thought of all the friends she had visited, all the parties she had attended. Siti and the handful of other Malay girls had never been included. A sense of shame filled her.

  ‘Siti speak often of you. She like you best. You had other friend, Penny.’

  ‘Yes. Penny lived next door to Mrs Hyde-Underwood before the war.’ She was about to add that Penny had been her best friend, but then decided it was better not to. Instead she said, ‘She was a prisoner of the Japanese with Mrs Hyde-Underwood. She lives in Australia now.’

  But Bintang was staring into the middle distance again, uninterested in hearing about Penny.

  19

  The following day, Jasmine and Mary remained in the bungalow, waiting for Reggie’s return. It poured all morning in a heavy deluge and Jasmine felt like a caged tiger, pacing up and down the veranda, unable to concentrate on her schoolwork, wishing she could escape to her studio but conscious she’d promised Mary to work on her Latin vocabulary for a test. She held the primer open in front of her but the words swam out of focus and she looked past the book to the downpour. She was supposed to be revising prepositions and conjunctions and couldn’t remember which prepositions went with the accusative and which with the ablative. In fact she couldn’t even understand the difference between these. And as for the ablative absolute – she’d been close to tears trying to master that one and still hadn’t managed.

  Translation was just about bearable when it was Ovid. The Metamorphoses were actually quite interesting with all those stories of killing serpents, burying the teeth and warriors springing up out of the soil. But when it came to endless Gallic and Punic wars, she was bored to death. It was patently clear she was going to fail the exam, so she felt a rising resentment at having to waste time swotting for it. Even those ghastly French irregular verbs were preferable.

  What was the point of it all? Latin was a dead language for dead people. It existed now for the sole purpose of driving living people round the bend. Back in Nairobi she’d begged to be allowed to give it up but Arthur had convinced Mummy that an education was incomplete without mastery of the Classics. The one concession Jasmine had managed to win was giving up Ancient Greek. All her efforts to convince her parents that the only reason to study Latin was to meet the entrance requirements for university, and she didn’t want to go anyway, fell on fallow ground.

  Jinjiang brought in the post and newspaper and handed the bundle to Mary, who set aside the mail and pored over The Straits Times. The headlines were stark: ‘Five estate murders in one day. Three Europeans killed: Gurkhas rushed to scene.’

  Jasmine, looking over Mary’s shoulder, asked, ‘Five?’

  Mary looked up from the paper. ‘Two Chinese killed as well. A contractor in Taiping and a Kuomintang member down in Johore. The Kuomintang chap was ambushed, apparently. There was a strike on the estate where he worked which had just ended. She folded the paper. ‘Here, you can read it. I need to check on Frances.’

  Jasmine, grateful for the reprieve from Latin, pulled the newspaper towards her and started to read. She’d never bothered with it before but she was determined that from now on she’d read the news every day. It was important to keep pace with what was going on. It would lessen the chance of making an utter fool of herself in future in front of obnoxious Howard Baxter.

  The pape
r was full of the estate killings and the consequent announcement of a state of emergency in parts of Perak and Johore. Jasmine couldn’t help noticing that while the report of the deaths of Allison, Christian and Walker dominated the front page, the details of the other killings were scanty. She pointed this out to Mary, who had come back to join her.

  ‘That’s because, alas, the murder of Chinese has become all too common. A daily occurrence. Since the end of the war the communists have been exacting revenge on anyone suspected of collaborating with the Japanese. During the war they allied with the Kuomintang but as soon as the Japs were defeated they turned on the Chinese nationalists. Now they include anyone they see as strike breakers. And not only the individuals concerned, but their families too – and the local villagers. The communists work on striking terror into people so they’ll have no choice but to support them and withdraw their labour from the tin mines and rubber estates.’

  Jasmine debated whether to ask the question that was on her mind. She felt so ill-informed. But Mary was no supercilious Howard. ‘I know I ought to know…’ she said, hesitantly, ‘but what’s the Kuomintang?’

  There was no implied criticism in Mary’s response. ‘It’s the Chinese nationalist party, under Chiang Kai Shek. Sworn enemies of the communists.’

  A sudden high-pitched wailing. ‘Her ladyship has woken up.’ Mary rolled her eyes. ‘Teething has turned my little angel into a howling devil, poor wee soul.’ She went to attend to her daughter.

  * * *

  Jasmine and Mary had just sat down to tiffin when they heard the sound of Reggie’s motorcar. As soon as he entered the dining room he went straight to the cabinet and poured himself a scotch.