‘We are going to visit Hollywood?’ I asked. ‘You did promise.’
‘Hollywood if you must,’ Denis said tolerantly. ‘But I do think you will be disappointed. The place is riddled with loud-mouthed Yanks and ruthless Armenian Jews who buy up human beings for the fun of it.’
It was unusual for Denis to generalise an entire people. ‘Eugene is an Armenian Jew,’ I reminded him. ‘And he is one of the most decent men I know.’
Denis was immediately contrite. ‘A friend of mine once had a bad experience in Hollywood,’ he said thoughtfully. ‘It rather stuck with me. She was very badly let down by a wealthy Armenian Jew, and she never lets me forget it. But you are quite right, Nona. It’s quite wrong to condemn a whole people because there’s one bad apple in the barrel.’
‘Was your friend called Maxine Elliott?’ I asked innocently. It was a shot in the dark but Malcolm had described Maxine as a ‘tarty American film star’ and I didn’t think Denis would have known anyone else who might have been in Hollywood.
Denis paused, a sheaf of luggage labels suspended in mid-air. ‘Where on earth did you get that name from?’ he asked.
‘And is that why we’re getting off the Cathay in Marseilles?’, I followed up, my voice tightening just a little. ‘So that you can visit her?’
Denis put the luggage labels down carefully. ‘I was talking about Maxine,’ he said evenly. ‘She had a horrid experience during one of her last films. Her producer cheated her of nearly half a million American dollars.’
‘And are you going to visit her in the South of France?’
‘Probably.’
I took a deep breath. ‘Malcolm said some pretty rotten things about Maxine Elliott. He said she was a tarty American film star and he implied you were her gigolo.’
Denis laughed. It was a healthy, honest laugh and I felt my heart lifting at the sound of it. ‘When I last saw Maxine – it would have been ten years ago – she was a very respectable and rather substantial middle-aged lady. Tarty American film star with a gigolo, indeed! I’m not sure whether Maxine would have slapped Malcolm’s face for his impertinence or thanked him for his flattery.’
‘Tell me about her, Denis,’ I pleaded. ‘How did you meet her?’
‘I met Maxine some time in 1927,’ he said. ‘I was sculling around the Côte d’Azur with some fellows in a sports car – my brother Laurie and a chap called Joe Schilling. We’d come for the Monte Carlo rally and stayed on to do some sailing for the English Yacht Club in Cannes. Maxine was nice enough to sponsor us, and to cut a long story short I ended up as a houseguest. One amongst many, I assure you. I like to think that she was kind to me because she thought of me as the son she never had. She helped me get out to Malaya, and made sure I landed a decent job. She likes helping people, you know.’
I went over and put my arm around him. ‘She sounds like a very nice person,’ I said, sitting on the arm of his chair. ‘And it was good of you to arrange to see her.’
We left KL for Singapore and our great adventure on a dull, overcast morning spotting with rain. I remember we loaded up the Alvis under the porch, and then I had a last look around the house that had been my first real home. Our lease had another six months to run, so that although we would not be coming back we had been able to leave most of our things behind. As a consequence the house did not look desolate and empty, but almost as if it were waiting cheerfully for our return. The impression was reinforced by little things: an unread copy of the Malay Mail propped on the sideboard, a half bottle of whisky and a soda siphon on the drinks trolley, my gardening gloves still in their place beside the back door. This is the best way to leave a house that has been your home, I thought. While it is still a living entity. It is awful to have to see somewhere you have been happy reduced to its bare bones, empty and forlorn.
I stood for a while by the nursery door and blew a kiss at the Bobbie Shafto wallpaper, then went out on the patio to farewell my beloved pool. I thought I might have been sad, but a stray memory made me laugh instead. We’d been having a swimming party and one of our guests had begun diving into the pool and staying down, swimming around the bottom like an agitated eel. The afternoon cooled into evening but he kept up his diving routine, causing more than a few raised eyebrows at his persistence. The rest of us drifted inside but our guest had kept on diving manfully into the darkening waters, occasionally flashing a grin towards the house to show us he was enjoying himself. Finally, as darkness made his behaviour downright dangerous, Denis went out and dragged him out of the water by main force. Seated in the bright lights of the lounge, our guest had no option but to own up: he had lost his false teeth early in the day and had been desperately trying to find them without giving the game away.
The teeth had never been found, and as I stood on the pool’s edge I looked down, my eyes searching the bottom out of habit, a smile still on my face. ‘Come on, Little Mermaid,’ Denis chuckled, grabbing me from behind and frogmarching me to the car. ‘Drag yourself away, can’t you? I promise I will find you a better pool in Singapore.’
We spent four days in Singapore before the Cathay sailed, staying at the Sea View Hotel. It gave us a chance to catch up with the Deans and for Denis to show me the island that would soon be our home. Singapore was quite an eye-opener. The city centre was much bigger than George Town in Penang, and much more sophisticated. It was crowded and cosmopolitan, and boasting a forest of tall, modern buildings including the Cathay Building, the only true skyscraper in Malaya. But it was the older buildings that gave the city its character, particularly the gracious older buildings around Raffles Place: the Law Courts, the Stock Exchange, and of course the superb cathedrals . . . including St Andrew’s, which I saw on our first afternoon, glowing creamy-white on the vivid green of the esplanade, and which I had to look away from quickly before Denis caught the wistfulness in my eyes.
The Sea View Hotel had a well-regarded formal dining room, but its most famous contribution to Singapore’s culinary landscape was the Chicken Grill, a casual, modern-style bistro overlooking the dappled waters of the Singapore Straits. We always dined there, not only for its simple, tasty food but also because of the incomparable view at night. The Singapore Straits were thickly dotted with kalangs, native-built fishing platforms where they hang out lanterns to attract the fish, so that after sunset the flat black sea turns into a galaxy of flickering, ephemeral light.
We were finishing our coffee there one evening, talking idly and looking out at the view, when Denis suddenly paused as if remembering something and then dug a flat brown envelope from the inside pocket of his jacket. ‘By the way, I picked up your passport this afternoon,’ he said casually. ‘Have a look and see if you approve.’
I picked up the envelope curiously and took out the dark blue passport, embossed in gold with the lion and unicorn coat of arms. ‘I’m not entitled to a British passport, am I?’ I asked, surprised.
‘You are now,’ Denis said. I opened the passport to see a photograph of myself staring up at me, and underneath it the name ‘Norma Felice Elesmere-Elliott’. My eyes flicked to the other details: ‘Born in Taunton, Somerset, 8th August 1919. British Subject by Birth’.
I looked up at Denis, my eyes wide with surprise. ‘Where did you get Felice from?’ It was the only thought that came into my head.
‘You’ve always said how important Sister Felice was to you,’ Denis said quietly. ‘You should have a middle name and I thought you’d like that one. I suppose I should have discussed it with you but I wanted to give you a surprise.’
‘I love the name,’ I said. ‘All of it.’ As I smiled at Denis my eyes filled with tears. I don’t know why, except that I felt that I had somehow crossed a watershed and reached the goal promised to me in my dream so many years before. I was no longer the unwanted little Russian girl living a hurly-burly life in an indifferent and foreign land. I was precisely who I wanted to be.
‘Is it . . . legal?’ I asked, a sudden doubt making my voice dry.
/> ‘It was issued by the British Passport Control Officer,’ Denis said. ‘At the express request of the British Government. Oh yes, it is quite legal.’
‘How on earth did you manage it?’ I asked. ‘No, don’t tell me. It might spoil the magic.’
The Deans gave us a farewell dinner at Raffles, but I was far too excited to appreciate the evening. We were boarding the Cathay at ten the next morning, and all I could think about was the ship, whose lights we had seen in Keppel Harbour earlier in the evening, and of Europe, and England, and America. I would be visiting places that I had known all my life but had never dreamed I would actually see: the Roman Forum, the white cliffs of Dover, the Tower of London, the skyscrapers of New York. Even tacky, tinselly Hollywood, the place they called the dream factory. Margaret saw the state I was in and didn’t prolong the evening. Quite early she lifted her champagne glass. ‘To our dear friends Norma and Denis,’ she smiled. ‘May you have a lovely time, but come back soon to Singapore, where the friends who love you most will be waiting.’
We sailed precisely on time, the deep rumble of the Cathay’s siren echoing off the tall buildings behind Collier Quay. Denis, Tony and I stood together at the rail as the coloured streamers linking us to the Deans parted one by one. As the last one parted and floated gently into the sea, Tony buried his face in his chubby hands. I knew precisely the feelings he was experiencing. The mingled sorrow and joy of departure, and a voyage started.
Chapter Seventeen
The Cathay was one of the older P&O liners – a gracious vessel with a high, straight bow and two tall funnels towering into the sky. Passenger accommodation was lavish, with a minstrel’s gallery above the dining room and ornate marble pillars in the lounge. Our cabin was on ‘B’ deck – a three-berth cabin with two large portholes and plenty of space for Tony to play. After exploring the ship we arranged for a stewardess to look after Tony and went down arm in arm to dinner.
We were not on the Captain’s Table – that privilege was reserved for passengers in the luxury suites – but we did have a happy and diverse collection of dining companions. One was a mild-looking, pink-cheeked clergyman who told extraordinary stories of his efforts to convert the hill tribes of Indo-China. Another was an ex-District Commissioner from Borneo, a dried-up little man with twinkling blue eyes who was for me the very reincarnation of Sanders of the River. The final two at our table were an Indian Army couple on a post-retirement world cruise.
‘Do you come here often?’ Colonel Freddie Burton asked me with a confidential wink while the others at the table were busy ordering. He had challenging blue eyes, and not yet being used to his irreverent style I was momentarily nonplussed. But I recovered quickly.
‘Only in the season,’ I said, poker-faced.
‘Good for you!’ Freddie grinned back. ‘The hunting season, I hope.’ He had a matinee-idol face beneath his shock of ginger hair and a quite disarming smile. His wife, Sarah, was a gamine little thing with a cap of dark curls and a deceptive flapper look that disguised a keen intelligence. We were to discover that they had been heavily involved in amateur theatricals in India, and I was often to wonder during the voyage just how much they were acting out their favourite roles.
After dinner Denis and I took a stroll on the boat deck. The ship was now deep into the Straits of Malacca, with the west coast of Malaya a long black shape off to starboard. A gentle swell made the ship move and creak just enough to seem alive, and I could feel the soft thump of the engines deep in the bowels of the vessel.
‘Happy?’ Denis asked as we paused by the rail to light our cigarettes.
‘Deliciously,’ I replied. I drew on my cigarette and watched the tip glow in the darkness. ‘I think I’m going to enjoy this voyage. I feel as if I have become a different person over the last few days, and I rather like the new me.’
I saw Denis looking at me quizzically. ‘I’m not quite sure I know what you mean.’
I wanted him to know what I meant, and considered my reply carefully. ‘I feel more confident than I ever used to in the past. I suppose it’s got something to do with having a new name. But it’s deeper than that. At dinner tonight I felt that people were looking at me in a different way. As if I was one of them. You see, I’d got used to people looking at me as if I was almost a curiosity. A little Russian stray who has been picked up by a nice man and given a home.’
Denis laughed. ‘That’s a lot of rot, darling,’ he said gently. ‘There has never been anything in the least stray-like about you, I can assure you.’
‘Nevertheless, I feel different,’ I insisted. ‘You know, Molly once said that you were trying to change me into an Englishwoman. I think you might have succeeded. Do you feel at all like Professor Higgins?’
‘The chap in Pygmalion?’ Denis shook his head firmly. ‘If you have changed, you have changed because you wanted to.’
It way my turn to shake my head. ‘I think you’re to blame. I’m Eliza Doolittle, and you are my Henry Higgins. I rather like the thought.’
I saw Denis frowning in the glow of his cigarette. ‘I really don’t believe that it is in anyone’s power to change another human being,’ he said seriously. ‘Professor Higgins didn’t change Eliza into a lady at all. The point of the story is that he thought he had but he was wrong. Eliza became a lady because she wanted to become a lady. In your case you’ve always been a lady, and now you have decided to become an English lady.’
I thought about that. I supposed it was true as far as it went. I had wanted to be English ever since Robbie had put the idea into my head. It was just that Denis had made the move practicable. But I rather thought that love might also have had something to do with the process. Eliza’s love for Professor Higgins, and mine for Denis.
We turned to lighter things. ‘What do you think of the Burtons?’ I asked.
Denis paused before replying. ‘She’s lovely. And far more intelligent than she likes you to imagine. As for Freddie, he’s the sort of chap I’d trust with my life, but not necessarily with my wife.’
I laughed. ‘He is a bit of a flirt, but I think he might be harmless.’
Denis grinned in the darkness. ‘Harmless? Don’t you dare try and find out.’
Down in our cabin with the lights out, I lay in my bunk with Denis asleep beside me. The motion of the ship had increased as we had entered the open waters of the Andaman Sea. I could hear Tony’s regular breathing from the cot next to me, and the rush and occasional splash of the sea outside the open portholes.
I was sublimely happy. With each turn of the screw, I thought, I am leaving behind the frightened Nona of Kuala Rau and Argyll Road. Leaving behind the shibboleths and ambiguities of the past. No longer a ‘perhaps Orlov’. No longer wearing the tag of an alien. No longer an outsider.
And getting closer to the new me that I wanted to be – the confident young Englishwoman Norma Felice, a ‘body of England’s, breathing English air, Washed by the rivers, blest by suns of home’. I could hear Robbie’s voice in the words and my skin prickled.
It took four days to cross the Bay of Bengal, four days of azure skies and flaring, flamingo sunsets. Four days of flat blue seas, of flying fish, and of dolphins playing in our bow wave.
The days fell into a comfortable pattern. We would be woken by the arrival of tea and biscuits at six thirty, and then we would change into bathers and hand in hand pad down the broad, silent corridors to the swimming pool on the wide stern deck. This was one of my favourite times of day, with the air still cool, the decks almost deserted, and the three of us at ease together under a clean, eggshell-blue sky.
After breakfast, Denis would play deck sports, or swim, while Tony and I went down to the kindergarten for the painting sessions that he loved. Lunch could be either in the dining room or a smorgasbord laid out on the promenade deck, after which we usually rested in the cabin, reading, talking or dozing until the tea bell. There was a well-stocked library on board that was open between four and six, and it was from this library
that I borrowed Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca. The background to the story, the minutiae of life in a great English household and the details of English country life were to permanently colour my perception of England. I was fascinated to discover that Manderley also had its Happy Valley, a valley not unlike my own on Burnbrae.
I stole that book and have kept it down the years. It is beside me now, with the faded yellow sticker inside the cover: ‘MV Cathay. Property of P&O Steamship Lines Pty Ltd’. The Cathay was destined to be sunk carrying troops in the war that loomed ahead so I have no qualms about my peccadillo. It saved a piece of sunshine from the perpetual half-light of the ocean depths.
Dinner was the highlight of the day. I would begin dressing about six thirty, starting with a leisurely bath in the huge old-fashioned bathroom just down the corridor from our cabin. Bathrooms on the Cathay were very grand affairs, quite different from the tiny plastic ensuites of today. For a start, one had to order a bath through the cabin steward, and it would be drawn with appropriate pomp and circumstance. The bathtub itself was twice the size of a modern one, and it would take the steward half an hour to fill it with salt water warmed to the temperature you desired. Then he would produce two vast copper cauldrons of fresh water, one hot, one cold, each with its wooden ladle: the idea was to soak in the bath, then mix the hot and cold fresh water and lather yourself before standing and rinsing off. When everything was ready, the soap and the shampoo laid out on their little timber tray and the bathroom full of steam, the steward would tap politely on your cabin door with a bundle of fluffy white towels under his arm: ‘Your bath is ready, Madam.’
The babysitter would arrive just before seven thirty, and Denis and I would drift up the grand staircase to the saloon to join our table companions for a pre-dinner drink. I wore a new dress every night, the highest fashions that Robinsons had been able to produce, while Denis escorted me looking a picture of elegance in his white tie and tails.
In the Mouth of the Tiger Page 34