As she leaned on the varnished rail, one of her fingers found a deep scar in the tropical hardwood. It had recently been painted over, but her gaze automatically moved up the planked wall of the bungalow at the end of the verandah. Here were a row of similar marks and she knew that Douglas’s bungalow had even more. They were bullet holes, a legacy of the last terrorist attack on Gunong Besar, earlier that year. Thank God she had been away on a shopping trip in Singapore – at least, that’s what she had told James.
If she had been here and survived, nothing would have stopped her from getting the next Blue Funnel boat home from Penang. As it was, her dear husband had had a tough job persuading her to stay, even though no one had been hurt – apart from a couple of rubber-tappers being killed down in the worker’s lines across the road. A pity that bitch next door hadn’t stopped a bullet, she thought vindictively. If the CTs hadn’t been disturbed by the chance arrival of an armoured patrol on night exercises from Brigade, maybe she would have been. So might James and Douglas, she supposed, but somehow that possibility didn’t tug too much at her heart strings.
As it was, the attackers must have been a pretty small bunch, as they scarpered as soon as the Aussies poured out of their Saracens – she had thanked the good-looking captain personally a week later, in the back of his car behind the club. The two planters had blasted off a few rounds into the darkness just before the troops arrived and certainly James had basked for weeks afterwards in The Dog, as the hero of Gunong Besar – fighting off the Communist hordes like some gunslinger in a Western film. Secretly, when her initial terror had subsided, she rather admired him for a while, until she saw the extra attention that his fame gained him from the women in the club, which soured her back to her normal dislike of her husband.
Downing the last of her tepid drink, she walked barefoot back into the lounge to retrieve her shoes, one from under the settee, the other from near the unused piano, where it had come to rest after bouncing off her husband’s neck.
Going through another door at the rear of the lounge, Diane went into a corridor which led to the dining room, guest bathroom and two spare bedrooms. She turned left to reach their own at the farther end. Like the rest of the rooms, it had no ceiling, the partition walls stopping eight feet up. The high, raftered roof was common to all the rooms, to allow as much circulation of air as possible – though privacy was a problem on the rare occasions when they had visitors staying, especially ones who became vocally amorous in bed.
She dropped her shoes on the floor and walked past the white tent of their mosquito-netted bed to reach the bathroom at the back. Inside there was a white-tiled floor and a washbasin against one wall. Opposite were three doors, one to a toilet, the other to a cubicle with a chipped cast-iron bath and the third a shower. Anxiously, Diane went to the damp-spotted mirror over the basin and stared at her face while she fingered her cheek. No doubt about it, there was faint blue bruising within the reddening – she could even make out two lines where the swine’s fingers had struck her. As the sarcastic bastard had suggested, tomorrow would require some careful adjustment of her make-up, before she went to the club that evening.
With a sigh, she stripped off her dress of cream raw silk and dropped it into the straw laundry basket, along with her white bra and pants, ready for the dhobi-amah to collect. Going to the shower door, she opened it cautiously and stared at the bare cement floor, which sloped down to a drain pipe in the centre, emptying on to the ground beneath the house. Once she had been confronted by a snake which had crawled up the pipe – her screams had brought Siva running, who had been greatly impressed by her nudity, especially the blonde pubic hair, which he could hardly believe. As she dived for a towel to cover herself, the Tamil had calmly picked up the serpent and thrown it through the window.
‘Only wolf snake, Mem. Not poisonous,’ he had said, but ever since she had peered suspiciously around the door before venturing in to stand under the lukewarm spray that came from a tank of rainwater behind the roof.
When she had finished, Diane put on a light dressing gown from one of the wardrobes and went to get another drink. She flopped back on to the settee to sulk and wonder if that bastard would come home in time for dinner that evening.
Sometime after six o’clock, that particular bastard was sitting on a bar stool in the Sussex Club, drinking his fourth Tiger beer and reading yesterday’s Straits Times. He concentrated on the rubber prices and the reports of CT activity, topics which were studied here as seriously as the football results and weather forecast were in Britain. Turning back a page from the commercial news, he read that two days ago there had been an abortive attack on a train down south in Johore which had been fought off by the escorts, but thankfully there had been no incidents up here in Perak for over a week. Maybe Chin Peng was getting the message, thought James, as the supply lines of the terrorist chief were being progressively strangled by General Sir Gerald Templer’s policy of fencing-in all the villages in the Black Areas, depriving the CTs of food and local aid.
James Robertson folded his paper and stared at his tall glass, the condensation running down the sides on to the polished teak of the bar. He was trying to decide whether or not to stay here all evening and get blind drunk – or to go home and read the Riot Act to that stupid bitch of a wife. Just because she suspected him of getting his leg over another woman, gave her no right to throw things at him – even if her suspicions were correct.
James was not a very intelligent man, using bluster and his powerful physical presence to swagger his way through life. He depended heavily on his manager, Douglas Mackay, to keep the business solvent. After four Tigers, he was feeling rather sorry for himself and the nagging suspicion that Diane was also playing away did nothing to put him in the mood for reconciliation.
He gulped down the ice-cold lager and slid the glass across the wide bar, rapping with his knuckles for service. A short, chubby Eurasian hurried over, wearing a black bow tie on his white shirt.
‘Another beer, Daniel,’ demanded James. ‘Where’s your barman tonight?’
‘His day off, Mister Robertson. The other silly fellow, who should stand in, fell off his bicycle today, so I have to be bloody barman.’
The manager of the Sussex Club was the son of an Indian mother and a British sergeant, who had been posted home in 1922 and had not been heard of since. Though he had mid-brown hair and fairly pale skin, he had been brought up by his mother and had the sing-song accent of that side of the family. He had worked in a large hotel in Penang for some years and had landed the job of running The Dog when it reopened after the war.
After getting his new beer, James swivelled round on the high stool to look around the club. It was early and almost deserted. A fat Education Corps captain was fast asleep in one of the big armchairs that were dotted around the large room like islands in a lake. The doors to the terrace were open and under a Coca-Cola umbrella at one of the white tables outside, a young man was almost nose to nose with a pretty girl. James recognized her as one of the sisters from the military hospital. The only other patrons were a bridge four, playing with grim determination in a distant corner.
‘Damned quiet in here tonight,’ complained the planter, as if it was a personal insult to him not to have company in his hour of need.
‘Thursday always quiet, Mister Robertson. But later, we get more from garrison, after the officers have eaten their makan.’
Daniel spoke good English, but had the habit of throwing in words of Malay, Hindi and even Hakka or Cantonese, which annoyed James – though almost everything annoyed James, apart from alcohol and an attractive woman.
He began to wonder how long he would stick it out here in Malaya. Though in some ways he enjoyed himself, with this superficially superior lifestyle that suited his snobbish upbringing, the place was beginning to pall, especially since his three-year-old marriage was beginning to crumble. He ate well enough, drank plenty and enjoyed a succession of sexual adventures – but he was beginning to m
iss English county society, with its pubs and golf and upper-class gossip.
James had actually been born near Cork into a Protestant ‘planter’ family. His father had been an Anglicized gentleman farmer and horse-breeder, but dislike of the founding of the Irish Free State had made him move in 1923 to Norfolk, where he established a successful stud farm. James was sent off to a minor public school in Cambridgeshire, then to agricultural college, where he finished in 1937 at the age of twenty-one. He worked for his father for a year, but they failed to get along and he began looking for a farm manager’s post. However, with war imminent, James volunteered for the navy in ’39, spent a year at sea, then was posted to Ceylon and spent the rest of the war as an undistinguished lieutenant at HQ Trincomalee. Demobbed in 1946, he got a job as an estate under-manager in Gloucestershire, but became restless and wanted to emigrate and set up on his own somewhere. His father had died a couple of years earlier and when his mother sold up the stud farm, she funded his purchase of Gunong Besar. Though he would have preferred going back to Ceylon, the place was cheap, having been run down during the war and in 1948 he moved in. Advertising for a manager, he was lucky enough to have got Douglas Mackay up from Johore, who had long experience of the rubber trade, of which James knew little apart from what he had picked up in Ceylon.
Now he sat turning his beer glass around in his fingers, ruminating about the future and wondering if he should pack up and go back to Britain or try Kenya or New Zealand – but whether with or without Diane was the question?
It was beginning to get dusk outside and the manager switched on the lights in the club-room – large, rather dim glass globes hanging from the beams high up in the ceiling, from which also dangled the half-dozen big fans that turned endlessly above them. The nearness of the equator, just south of Singapore, meant that it got dark at about seven o’clock all year round – just as there were no noticeable seasons, as the long, thin peninsula got monsoons from both sides, so it rained at some time on almost every day of the year.
As the lights came on and the darkness deepened outside, so members began to drift into the club, chattering in a variety of accents, from a Home Counties drawl to the abrasive rasp of Alice Springs. Soon the line of stools filled up and Daniel was scurrying back and forth with gin and tonics, stengahs and the ubiquitous Tiger and Anchor beers. Robertson’s mood lightened, as he knew almost everyone and nodded and exchanged greetings in his usual loud and hearty style, concealing his aggrieved chagrin beneath his habitual bonhomie.
Les Arnold, an Australian planter from the next estate beyond Gunong Besar, plumped himself down on one side, giving James a playful punch on the arm in greeting, as he yelled for his beer. A lean, wiry fellow, he was unmarried, as far as anyone knew, and was the ultimate extrovert. Sometimes the suspicious James wondered if his habitual flirting with Diane was a cover for more serious lechery with her, but Les behaved like that with everything in a skirt.
On the other side, an older man with a toothbrush moustache and a bald patch sat himself down more decorously. Alfred Morris, a major in the Medical Corps, was the Administrative Officer from BMH. He was a trim, erect man, who had come up through the ranks and been commissioned from Warrant Officer during the war. A popular figure in TT, he seemed like everyone’s uncle, with his calm, amiable manner and his ability to pour oil on the frequently troubled waters in both the hospital and the club. James knew that this was his last tour before retiring to grow roses at his cottage in Kent. After making signs to the harassed manager for beer, Alfred turned to Robertson.
‘James, let me introduce you to a prospective new member. Just out from home, only arrived today.’
He leaned back to reveal Tom Howden on the next stool and allow the ritual of exchanging of names and handshakes. However surly and objectionable Robertson could be to his family and employees, his public school education and snobbish upbringing had given him an almost exaggerated sense of good manners where new acquaintances of an acceptable social standing were concerned and he greeted the medical man almost effusively.
‘Tom’s our new pathologist,’ explained Alfred Morris. ‘About time, too, as Dickie Freeman was RHE a month ago. Went home on the Empire Fowey.’
Although technically a guest of Major Morris, Tom’s application to join was a formality, the club committee accepting any officer on the nod. A few others gathered around with their drinks to inspect the new member. Though officers came and went fairly frequently, it was always a novelty to meet someone new, especially one fresh from home, who may have actually seen a recent International or who had perhaps been to the races at Kempton Park. Tom could oblige them on the first count, as he was a keen rugby fan, though he had never seen a horse race in his life.
He felt much better this evening, as his earlier bout of acute homesickness had passed. Standing here with a glass of beer amid convivial company in this bizarre kind of pub, he decided that he was going to enjoy his time in Malaya. An ardent devotee of Somerset Maugham, he felt as if he was reliving some of his favourite stories. At the moment, it was an all-male gathering at the bar. Although everyone was in civilian clothes, they were in virtually another kind of uniform. All stood in trousers and white shirts and all wore ties, as it was a club regulation that no shorts were allowed after six o’clock and that ties would be displayed. In fact, Daniel kept a few spares behind the bar for members who turned up without one. Long-sleeved shirts were required – the Army demanded this everywhere after seven o’clock, the rationale being to reduce the area available for malarious mosquitoes to feed on! The only exception to these rules was on Sundays and when there was a fancy-dress dance. Who had made these peculiar demands, no one remembered, just as the origin of the Sussex Club’s nickname was shrouded in mystery. Tom raised this question after a few more beers and James, whose browbeating personality usually monopolized the conversation, delivered his opinion in his loud, plummy voice.
‘Damned club’s been here since the ’twenties! Started by a few chaps most of whom happened to come from Sussex.’
‘But why “The Dog”?’ asked the doctor.
‘I think a couple of the fellows came up from KL and had been members of the Selangor Club on the padang there. Everyone in the bloody world knows that that’s nicknamed “The Dog”, so they borrowed the name to make them feel more at home in this God-forsaken hole.’
No one volunteered any reason why the Kuala Lumpur club should have carried the odd name, but the conversation careered off in a different direction and Tom went with it, enjoying himself more with every glass of cold lager. He was introduced to a dozen more people and promptly forgot every name, though there seemed to be twice as many military as civilians.
The faces along the bar came and went, as some left for their evening meal at home or in the various messes in the Garrison – and others arrived to eat in the club dining room, which lay through a door at the end of the room. At seven thirty, Major Morris tapped his arm and pointed to the big clock above the bar.
‘Time to get back to the Mess, lad. Number One will give us the evil eye if we’re late for his soup.’
Tom had learned a lot in his first few hours at BMH Tanah Timah. ‘Number One’ was the title of the Officers’ Mess Steward – an emaciated Chinese of indeterminate age whose real name was Lim Ah Sok, and who ruled the inmates with a rod of iron concealed behind a deferential manner. He was assisted by his ferocious, if diminutive wife Meng, who wielded her iron rod without any pretence of deference.
The two officers climbed into Morris’s 1939 Hillman Minx and drove the mile back to the hospital. As they crossed the little bridge and came to the junction with the main road, Tom asked about drinking and driving regulations.
‘Good God, lad, the way the locals drive here, the coppers could never spot a drunk driver, unless they noticed he was doing better than the others!’
As the old car ground its way past the ghostly bulk of the old tin dredge, the major offered some further advice.
‘When you get a car – and you can’t get anywhere without one – take my tip. If you hit anyone, for God’s sake don’t stop or the locals will beat you half to death! Just drive like hell to the next village with a police station and report it.’
As Tom silently digested this new variation on the Highway Code, the Hillman turned in through the gates of BMH, the driver getting a ragged salute from the sentry, who sprang erect from his habitual slouch when he saw his Admin Officer behind the wheel.
They drew up outside the Mess and as he walked in, the new doctor had another look at the place in the light of the bare bulbs hanging under the verandahs. The left-hand hut was given over to the dining room and beyond it the lounge, rather grandly called the ‘anteroom’. The kitchen was this side of the dining room and the ablutions were at the far end. The other hut opposite contained about ten small rooms for the resident officers, their row of slatted doors reminding Tom of the changing cubicles in a swimming pool. His room was near the middle, a plywood cell with a single bed inside a sagging mosquito net, a clothes locker, a washbasin, a desk and a ‘chair, easy, officers for the use of, one’, as it was described in the inventory.
For fear of incurring the steward’s displeasure, they went straight to the dining room and sat at the long table just as Number One came in from a door at the other end, where the cooking was being done by his tiny wife. He bore a tureen of soup which he put down between the place settings, then padded out, his flip-flops slapping on the linoleum.
‘Bit thin on the ground tonight, aren’t we?’ said Alf Morris, looking across at the other pair of diners. One of them was Percy Loosemore, a major who specialized in skin and venereal diseases. He was a bony man of about forty, with sparse fair hair, a long nose and a waspish nature.
‘Some panic in theatre, apparently. The sawbones and the gasman are dealing with some MT accident – a REME squaddie who stuck his hand in the fan of a Saracen’s engine.’ He ladled some tomato soup into a bowl and slid the tureen towards Alfred.
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