In the Mouth of the Tiger

by Lynette Silver

  ‘Don’t be an idiot, Malcolm,’ Denis snapped. ‘You’ll frighten the ladies.’ Then he turned to me with a reassuring grin. ‘You’d need a typhoon to knock a boat of this size over.’

  Suddenly I knew that what he said was true. Evelyn II was now scudding along beautifully, her rigging humming in the strong wind, the whole boat vibrating like something alive as she cut through the green seas. Roger looked unperturbed at the wheel and the two Malay crewmen were methodically stowing loose equipment into the cockpit lockers.

  I let out a long sigh, and then began to grin at the sheer magic of it all. Away to port the white beaches and coconut palms of Malaya were slipping past like stage scenery on well-oiled castors. Within minutes, Berserah came into sight, first the straggling kampong, then the manicured lawns of the Hornungs’ home.

  The wind blew hard all afternoon, and then abated sharply as evening approached. By the time the sun was setting behind the Pahang hills we were just ghosting along, the sails barely filling and the water chuckling softly under the bow. The crew had set up deck chairs, and the whole party sat on deck in companionable silence as our anchorage came into sight. We were to anchor in a sheltered bay on the lee of Pulau Orang Laut, a deserted island off the jungle-covered coast of northern Pahang.

  ‘Pulau Orang Laut – Island of the Sea People – was once a pirate hide-out,’ Roger told us. ‘There are supposed to be ruins on the island, and they do say there is buried treasure.’ Roger’s personality had changed since coming aboard. His diffidence had become quiet assurance, and I noticed that even Evelyn was treating him with respect.

  ‘Treasure? What sort of treasure?’ asked Dorothy. ‘And how did it get here?’

  ‘The Orang Laut lived by plundering coastal trade in this part of the world,’ Roger said. ‘A hundred years ago, praus from Siam used to pass this way servicing the small kingdoms to the south. Pirates would relieve the praus of their cargo and hide the stuff on deserted islands such as this. Very much as our own Caribbean pirates used to do.’

  ‘Has anyone ever looked for the treasure?’ Mac asked.

  ‘Often. But while it’s a small island there’s an awful lot of ground to dig up if you don’t have a treasure map. And besides, the locals say the treasure is protected by ghosts. The ghosts of the dead pirates, I suppose, or perhaps their victims.’

  ‘It would be an interesting project,’ Denis mused. ‘I mean, to do a proper search. Using metal detectors and so on.’

  ‘We don’t have any metal detectors on board,’ Mac said reasonably.

  The subject of treasure came up again when we were on shore. We’d helped the crew to set up a campsite under a stand of casuarinas behind the beach, and then wandered off for a walk in the gloaming, ostensibly looking for the ruins that were supposed to be on the island. We hadn’t found any ruins but I was lucky enough to recognise a thick clump of wild lemon grass. Lemon grass is a herb essential to Thai and Malayan cooking, and its presence proved that people had lived on the island at some stage.

  ‘So it’s quite likely this was a pirate island,’ Mac said. ‘The story about treasure might be true. Damned shame we can’t do anything about it.’

  ‘I’ve been thinking about that,’ Denis said. ‘We might not have metal detectors, but we could use dowsing wands instead. We could cut the wands from the local casuarinas.’

  Mac guffawed. ‘You use dowsing to find water, not gold. And dowsing wands are made of hazel twigs, not lumps of casuarina.’

  ‘Fat lot you know, Mac,’ Denis rejoined. ‘Dowsing is all about mental energy, not what you’re looking for, or the implement you use. The trick is to let your subconscious mind soak up all the information around you and process it at a subliminal level. Your subconscious then makes you move the dowsing wand. You only think the thing is moving by itself.’

  We talked more about the proposal as we strolled back to our campsite, finally convincing ourselves that it would be quite good fun to scour the island in the morning. It was dark by now, but the Malay seamen had rigged oil lanterns in the coconut trees and set a fire crackling under a spitted joint of beef. Evelyn II loomed big and white and reassuring only thirty yards off shore.

  While we were eating our barbecue dinner, something extraordinary happened. I was sitting in a canvas chair facing the sea, and glanced behind me to see a hundred points of light begin to glow mysteriously amongst the trees. The points of light grew as I watched them and within moments had coalesced to light up the whole interior of the island like a lantern. Roger was the first to realise what was happening and leapt to his feet. ‘The moon is rising,’ he said. ‘We really must see this. If we can get around to the other side of the island quickly enough we’ll be able to watch it emerge from the sea.’

  We hurried around the shore to see the most beautiful of sights: a huge moon hanging just above the horizon, so magnified by the soft tropical air that it looked like a vast artefact hanging improbably in the sky. In front of the moon was the black silhouette of a tiny islet draped with coconut palms.

  ‘If this were a stage setting, I’d sack the artistic director on the spot,’ Denis said quietly. ‘It’s every cliché you have ever heard all rolled into one.’

  We returned to the campsite for ice-cream and coffee, and then someone got a record player going. It wasn’t a brilliant idea, the scratchy tones and the hectic rhythm seeming out of place in this natural wonderland. But it appealed to some of us: Evelyn had obviously set her sights on Malcolm, and the two of them began to dance on the hard, flat sand below the tide mark.

  For myself, I couldn’t get the image of the little coconut-clad islet out of my mind and I tugged at Denis’s sleeve. ‘Let’s give that artistic director of yours one last chance,’ I said.

  We wandered back along the beach arm in arm. The moon had risen now, so that the little islet was no longer a black silhouette but a miniature fairyland, dappled in silver and gold. It was separated from us by a ribbon of water only twenty yards across, and I suddenly took a deep breath. ‘If we’d only brought our bathers we could have swum over and had a look,’ I said with desperate longing.

  Denis looked at me, his eyes shining in the moonlight. ‘Haven’t you heard the old rhyme –

  Let us take off all our clothes

  And plunge into the sea,

  And wave goodbye

  To the petit-bourgeoisie.’

  We took off all our clothes and plunged into the sea, and struck out for the islet. It was a glorious feeling, like sliding through silk. The water was so clear and the light so bright that we could see the sandy bottom covered with pebbles and pretty shells, and the schools of little fish that darted away from us as we approached.

  We reached the island in a dozen strokes and climbed out of the water to stroll hand in hand through the dappled moonlight, like pale ivory gods inspecting an enchanted kingdom. The sense of freedom was so powerful that I felt as if I had been drinking champagne and that anything and everything was possible.

  Of course we made love. We made love on the squeaky white sand of the beach, with tiny wavelets splashing at our feet and the fronds of baby coconut palms rustling just above our heads.

  It is conventional wisdom that most people are disappointed the first time they make love. Well, I pity most people. For me, the first time was beautiful and tender, and wild and sad. Sad because I knew that the feeling of complete togetherness that we felt was so fragile, threatened at every moment by our own mortality. I remembered Denis’s comment in my dream when I had asked him to promise never to die: ‘That’s something nobody on earth can promise,’ he had said.

  I pressed wet eyelids into Denis’s cheek, and he hugged me back, understanding completely. ‘We’ll always be together, darling,’ he said into my ear. ‘Whatever happens, we will always be together.’ It was so close to what he had promised in my dream that I felt goosebumps.

  Just before we swam back I took Denis’s hand. ‘Promise me we will come back here?’ I asked.


  ‘We’ll never come back,’ Denis said. ‘But we’ll take this place with us wherever we go.’ And then we plunged into the transparent emerald sea and swam back to the strictures of clothes, and shoes, and other people, and the silly reality of life.

  We slept ashore, each in our own little mosquito-net tent, and just on dawn Denis woke me and took me down to the water’s edge. Across the narrow strait a tiger had wandered out of the Pahang jungle and stood on the beach, sniffing the air and staring across at our campsite. It was the first tiger I had ever seen and I felt the hairs rise on the back of my neck even though it was a good half mile away.

  ‘He couldn’t swim over to this island, could he?’ I asked, and Denis chuckled.

  ‘Of course he could. I bet he’s deciding right now whether it would be worth his while to come over tonight and see what we’ve left behind.’

  Denis went back to the camp to see about a cup of tea but I remained, staring across at the lithe creature as it picked its way with fastidious care along the tide-mark. At one point it stopped and raised its head to look at us again. For a second, a heartbeat, our gazes seemed to lock.

  We began our hunt for buried treasure immediately after breakfast. Denis cut Y-shaped dowsing wands from a stand of dwarf casuarinas and showed us how to use them, holding one prong firmly but comfortably in each hand. Then we set off, criss-crossing the island in a grid pattern. The heavy undergrowth made the task hot and scratchy, and more than once we broke off to refresh ourselves in the sea. There was a lot of laughter and some cursing: as luck would have it, Malcolm fell awkwardly trying to jump the trunk of a fallen coconut palm and had to retire to the yacht to have his scratches bathed by Dorothy in antiseptic lotion. He and Dorothy didn’t return, and someone said they were probably doing the sensible thing and enjoying a gin and tonic while we made idiots of ourselves.

  After a couple of hours the rest of us were also in the mood to give up, but Evelyn suddenly screamed out that her dowsing wand had gone haywire and we all dashed towards her. She was standing in a shallow, almost imperceptible depression in the very centre of the island, a thunderstruck look on her face and her dowsing wand pointing to her feet. ‘It happened by itself,’ she shouted again. ‘It had nothing to do with me! It was as if someone else had grabbed the stick from me and forced it downwards.’

  Denis took the wand from her gently. ‘That’s exactly what is supposed to happen,’ he said. ‘Now, if someone could go and get the shovels we’ll have a crack at digging up whatever is buried here.’

  His confidence that something was there gave me a thrill of excitement. The area certainly looked promising, smack in the middle of the island and with the gentle depression becoming more and more obvious as we got on our hands and knees and cleared the undergrowth.

  Soon we were digging with gusto, shovelling the excavated earth into a heap on one side of the area we had marked. The digging was easy, a thin layer of tilth and leaf-mould and then soft coral sand. After about fifteen minutes, with the men taking turns, we had a hole a couple of metres round and a metre deep.

  And then Roger’s shovel struck something with a sharp crack, and he paused before readjusting the angle of the blade and heaving something round and brown out of the hole.

  It was a human skull and it rolled almost to my feet.

  We all stood peering at the object as it lay on the ground, the empty eyesockets staring up at us accusingly. ‘God Almighty!’ Mac said finally. ‘I think we might have blundered into a grave.’

  ‘On the contrary,’ Roger said calmly, ‘I suspect we might very well have stumbled onto a pirate cache. The pirates traditionally tossed a few human bones in on top of any treasure they buried in order to frighten off curious Malays. Digging up a skull would have put them off no end.’

  Digging up a human skull had something of the same effect on our party. ‘I don’t think we should disturb human remains,’ Fiona said, and I was inclined to agree with her. Even Denis seemed concerned, standing back and looking thoughtful. But male testosterone prevailed, and Roger and Mac got back to work. Almost immediately they unearthed more skulls and several other bones.

  ‘These are obviously very old skeletons,’ Roger said, prodding at a fragile piece of backbone with his shovel. ‘Probably stripped from some existing grave by the pirates for just this purpose. You know, I really do think we might be on to something.’

  It was Mac who uncovered the box. His shovel hit something hollow, and reaching down into the hole he heaved out a long, oblong box about a yard long and a foot square. What struck me immediately was how new the box looked. It had been painted with tar but where the shovel had glanced off there was a star of fresh new wood.

  We gathered round, fascinated, as Mac jammed the point of his shovel into the box and levered back sharply. There was a loud cracking sound and the top of the box splintered open. It was full of rifles, the barrels and working parts tightly sheathed in oiled paper but the butts and barrels clearly visible.

  Mac looked up at Denis and Denis looked at Mac. ‘You know what we’ve done,’ Denis said.

  ‘I know precisely what we’ve done,’ Mac said. ‘We’ve blundered into one of Hayley Bell’s little secrets.’

  ‘More likely one of John Dalley’s little secrets,’ Denis said. ‘John treats this part of Pahang as his private patch. So we had better very quietly unblunder ourselves. Thank God the Malays weren’t here or the news would be up and down the coast before one could say Jack Robinson.’

  Roger wagged his finger in Denis’s face. ‘By rights I should report this little find of ours and have these guns put under lock and key,’ he said. ‘I’m damned sure that’s the course Malcolm would want me to take.’

  ‘Malcolm isn’t here,’ Denis said. He gave Roger a level look. ‘You’ll do the right thing and let things be, won’t you?’ he asked. ‘You know the score.’

  ‘I know the score,’ Roger said. ‘And I also know the flak I’d take if I disturbed the Intelligence chaps in their arcane little games. But I don’t have to pretend I like it. I think it’s damned risky, burying guns and ammunition up and down the country.’

  We reburied the box of guns and the old bones as quickly and reverently as we could, and then Roger assembled the girls. ‘I’m going to have to ask you all to keep completely mum about this,’ he said seriously. ‘Our Secret Intelligence Service has become rather concerned about Japan’s expansionist ideas and its occupation of Manchuria. Unfortunately, we’ve dug up a cache of arms deliberately hidden here for use by stay-behind parties if Malaya is ever overrun by the Japanese. I know of these arms dumps but few others do. Not even the police – so you will have to keep mum even to dear old Malcolm.’

  ‘How do we know they are our guns,’ Evelyn asked. ‘Couldn’t they just as easily belong to some bandit gang?’

  ‘British Lee Enfield .303s,’ Denis said quietly. ‘Brand new. And this is precisely the sort of place they’d put them. Out of the way but easy to find. I should have guessed what it was we were stumbling on much earlier. I’m sorry.’

  Later, when Denis and I were alone, I asked him what Roger had meant by stay-behind parties, and about Malaya being overrun by the Japanese. Denis hesitated for half a second, then put his finger to his lip in a ‘shhh’ sign. ‘A lot of people think it’s inevitable that the Japs will come south to Malaya for rubber and tin after they’ve swallowed up the rest of China,’ he said. ‘If they do invade, some chaps don’t believe that we could resist them this far north. The plan is to retreat down to Singapore and buy time until a naval fleet can come out from England. So we are preparing for people to remain behind the Japanese lines and play havoc with their communications until the counter-attack. The arms dumps are to keep them resupplied. But as Roger said, it is all very hush-hush.’

  Remember that this was well over five years before the Imperial Japanese Army invaded Malaya. Even then, there were people who knew precisely what was going to happen and were making what preparations they could.
And yet when the Japanese attack did come, the politicians and the brass hats, those in charge of grand strategy, still professed that they had been caught completely by surprise.

  There was virtually no wind on our return trip to Kuantan, just a sullen swell under a hot, leaden sky, so we motored all the way, arriving about six o’clock. Malcolm and Dorothy set off immediately for KL, but Denis, Mac, Fiona and I decided we’d go in the morning. I was glad: it gave me another night with Denis under the Berserah moon.

  That night, I saw a different side to Evelyn. She had obviously decided that her catty games had got her nowhere, and resolved to be the charming hostess that she could be. She came up to my room and talked after dinner, sitting with me on my little balcony. ‘I’ve not behaved too well,’ she said contritely. ‘You see, I didn’t know how far it had gone between you and Denis, and I still had some hopes. You know of course that I’ve loved the man since I came out to Malaya as a bride three years ago?’

  I didn’t say anything and she lit a cigarette and drew deeply. ‘It was rather funny, really. I arrived in Malaya the toast of the Colony, a new bride for the Civil Service’s brightest star. Even the Governor sent me a welcoming telegram. I met Denis on our first night in KL, and fell for him hook, line and sinker, and I’ve not really been a good wife to Roger ever since.’

  ‘I don’t think you should be telling me all this,’ I said.

  ‘On the contrary, I want you to know everything. I want you to understand. Because now I realise that you have taken Denis from me irrevocably, and if I’m to keep in touch with him at all, I’m going to have to be your friend.’

  Then she sighed, and got up to stand at the parapet, staring out at her beautiful garden. ‘I have given Denis up,’ she said. ‘I really have. Or rather, I’ve given up my dream that one day Denis would be mine. In a way, it’s almost a relief. From now on I can concentrate on being a good wife to Roger.’ She paused, looking very small and vulnerable. ‘It would be awfully nice to see you two sometimes. Not straight away of course, but in the future, when things have settled down.’