In the Mouth of the Tiger

by Lynette Silver

  Sokolov’s face fell. ‘A very fine drink indeed,’ he said. ‘Ideal for the English. But – excuse me – I had in mind something a little more Russian. You don’t have any vodka on hand by any chance?’

  I did, but I certainly wasn’t going to bring it out now and end up with a tipsy Political Commissar on my hands. We settled for a bottle of French champagne, and sat toasting each other as the usual afternoon sea breeze came in and rattled the rattan blinds.

  ‘I really am indebted to you,’ I said as sincerely as I could, trying to atone for my earlier lack of appreciation.

  Sokolov downed his second glass. ‘It is not me that you should thank,’ he said. ‘It was the wish of Comrade Stalin himself. He has a personal interest in what you did for us during the war.’ He looked at the medal, dangling rather awkwardly over my left breast. ‘The need for discretion is very much appreciated in Moscow,’ he said. ‘Your name is not on the formal list of recipients of the order, and of course there is no obligation on you to wear it openly. The Roman Catholic Pope sometimes makes a Cardinal secretly, “in the breast”, as they say. You are the recipient of an Order of Lenin “in the breast”. There are others of you in the West. One day – perhaps, here in Malaya, one day very soon – you will be able to wear it openly and with pride.’

  After they had gone I sat down and looked at my little medal. It was a pretty thing if you didn’t look too closely at its symbolism. A circle of golden rye sheaves draped with a red banner and bearing a profile of Lenin. I balanced the tiny bauble in my hand, half inclined to chuck it far out into the sea. But I had got over my earlier shock, and saw it for what it was. A bit of tin on the end of a red and gold ribbon, signifying only that Denis and I had duped everyone and probably shortened the war. Perhaps, I thought idly, I will keep it in my jewellery box, and show it to my grandchildren one day, and tell them the story with a small wry smile.

  The last few months of 1947 saw an escalation in the violence that was breaking out all over Malaya. Towards the end of September, the Wessyngton Rubber Estate in central Johore was taken over. It was almost a copybook military operation, with armed and uniformed men appearing out of the jungle and rounding up the estate workers as they were eating their evening meal. The raiders had cut the telephone line into the estate so that when Bob Pratt, the manager, tried to phone for help all he got was a guttural voice telling him to stay in his house or he would be killed. The bandits methodically ransacked the homes of the Tamil workforce, taking money and any useful items that caught their attention. Two headmen who had been unwise enough to protest were beaten, but nobody was killed or even badly hurt. The attack on Mr and Mrs Archibald Nicholson less than a week later did not end so happily. Archie and Laura were driving home to the Gunong Pulai Estate in South Johore after a weekend in Singapore when they were ambushed on a lonely corner of the Pulai Road. A bullet punctured a tyre and the car overturned, Archie being knocked unconscious when he was thrown through the driver’s door. Laura was crouching beside him in the lallang when armed Chinese emerged from the jungle. She pleaded for help but one of the raiders simply walked over and clubbed her insensible with a blow from his rifle butt. When she came to she found Archie dead from a bullet in the side of his head and the car a burnt-out wreck.

  It was the increasingly organised nature of the violence that concerned people. These were not the random acts of ‘bandits’, capricious and unplanned. Investigation of the raid on Wessyngton Estate clearly revealed that the raiders had watched the estate carefully from a camp in the jungle for several days before attacking. Even more worryingly, a notebook was found in the jungle near the Nicholson attack that contained details of the Nicholsons’ movements, including the exact time they had left the Tanglin Club for the drive home.

  ‘Time to Crack Down!’ thundered the editorial in the Straits Times. ‘The perpetrators of these attacks are well trained and well organised. We can all guess who they are, so why are our soldiers and police turning a blind eye?’ The implication was clear: it was time to stop treating the Malayan Communist Party as a legitimate political party and return to the days when it had been an illegal organisation.

  The ‘Terror’, as it began to be called, became worse as Christmas approached. Two tin mines in Pahang were attacked, the Tamil workforce beaten up and the huge floating dredges set on fire. In both cases the European managers escaped by the skin of their teeth. The tension that began to affect us all was like the tension one experiences before an electrical storm. We knew violence was on its way, and we almost wished the storm would break so that we would know exactly how bad things were going to be.

  Denis was working incredibly long hours, sometimes remaining at his office all night. In fact, he was too busy for us to take our planned visit to Melbourne, and we had to arrange for the two boys to come up to Singapore for the Christmas holidays by themselves, travelling under the purser’s supervision on the Denbyshire. I had looked forward all year to the Melbourne visit, and its cancellation was a blow. I had even bought myself a hat, an absurd creation with a cascade of peacock feathers, just in case Culver King won a Group One race and I could wear it in the winners’ enclosure.

  I never wore that hat, but I have kept the plumes, wrapped up in a piece of silk in Denis’s blue suitcase. They haven’t seen the light of day for over fifty years, and they never will while I’m alive. I keep them just for the sake of keeping them, just as Eloise kept her beloved pigeon feather. Tokens of our dreams.

  In February 1948, the USSR sponsored a meeting of Asian and Australian Communists in Calcutta. The meeting was chaired by Ivan Sokolov, the Russian ambassador to ‘fraternal’ Communist parties in the region. Every day for a week the world’s newspapers were full of reports about the meeting. The fact that the talks were open to the public disarmed everybody. The fact that resolution after resolution called on the ‘peoples of Asia and Oceania to rise up in arms against the return of colonialism and capitalism’ was seen as no more than colourful rhetoric. Some American papers even went so far as to support the conference resolutions. ‘It is time for a fresh new breeze to blow through Asia,’ pontificated the Christian Science Monitor. ‘The days of the Colonial Governor are over.’ In Malaya, closer to the reality of Communist power, we were not so sanguine. There was a thoughtful piece in the Straits Times warning that with China now a major Communist nation, the balance of power in the area had tilted irrevocably against the democracies. ‘We have been served notice by the Communists in Calcutta that China is just a first step in a push by international Communism to turn the whole of Asia red,’ the article said. ‘The first steps will be industrial strife. The second step will probably be insurrection.’

  The industrial strife was not long in coming. A new round of major strikes broke out almost on cue, paralysing the tin and rubber industries. Up and down Malaya, the Min Yeun, the civilian wing of the MCP’s jungle fighters, took to the streets in support of the strikers, so that at times it looked almost as if the revolution had already arrived.

  ‘What is going to happen?’ I asked Denis one morning. We were listening to the radio as we ate breakfast in the sunlit breakfast room. The children were playing out on the lawn, the casuarinas were sighing gently in the morning breeze, and the whole world looked absolutely delightful. It was hard to equate this peace and beauty with the dreadful news on Radio Malaya.

  ‘I would only be guessing,’ Denis said. ‘And it’s no good guessing.’

  ‘Why don’t we leave Malaya?’ I said suddenly, putting my knife and fork down to emphasise the point. ‘We have enough resources to settle anywhere we like, surely? Melbourne would be rather nice.’

  Denis also put down his knife and fork and stretched his arms up into the air. ‘We have to stay a little bit longer, darling. Perhaps to the end of the year. But then I do think I might retire from this rotten game. Retire properly, and go home.’

  ‘Home? You mean to England?’

  Denis nodded. ‘You liked England, didn’t you?�
��

  ‘But what about the boys?’ I asked, confused. ‘They’re due to go up to Geelong in a year or two. They know the curriculum. They’ve made friends. We couldn’t leave Aunt Batten.’

  Denis stretched again, this time cracking his knuckles, a clear sign of tension. ‘Actually, I thought we might keep the boys with us this year,’ he said. ‘Take them with us up to Cameron Highlands. There’s a rattling good school up there. The Tanglin School, run by the rather famous Miss Griff. Malaya’s answer to Miss McComas. She prepares boys for the English public schools. So if we do go back to England they’ll be prepared.’

  I was so astounded that I just sat there, my coffee cup stranded in mid-air. ‘Why in heaven’s name would we go to Cameron Highlands?’ I asked.

  Denis turned around to face me. ‘I’m involved in a bit of a project up there,’ he said in the casual tone I was beginning to dread. ‘I’ll need to be on the spot up there for six months or so. I thought perhaps we might all move up. Give the place a trial.’

  ‘You aren’t making very much sense,’ I said desperately. ‘Why do you need to go to Cameron Highlands for six months? What are you going to be doing up there?’

  ‘I’m going to establish a school,’ Denis said. ‘A good school. Good enough so that European children don’t have to track back and forth to England or Australia to get a decent education. It’s something we’ve long needed in this part of the world.’

  I just sat staring at the man. ‘But you just said there already was a good school up there. The Tanglin School.’

  Denis sighed. ‘The Tanglin School is only a primary school. A good starting point, but we need a place where children can study right through to university entrance.’

  ‘And so you have suddenly decided – out of the blue – to do something about it?’ I asked acidly. Then I looked him straight in the eye. ‘You’re not telling me the whole truth, are you? There’s something behind this “school in Cameron Highlands” idea of yours that you’re not telling me. Please come clean with me, Denis. I don’t like being kept in the dark.’

  Denis returned my gaze steadily. ‘I promise you that that’s all there is to it. I think a school up there would be a rattling good idea. I haven’t mentioned it before because I wasn’t sure the idea was feasible. But now I think it really is a goer.’

  We talked some more, and Denis dug out some papers from his briefcase which made it clear that a lot of work had already been done on the project. The proposed school was to be near Tanah Rata, on land to be provided by the Government at a peppercorn rental. The school buildings themselves were to be quite substantial, and there were architect’s concept drawings of a large, two-storey structure with a chapel and sports hall attached. A full business plan had also been prepared, with projected student enrolment figures, fee structure, even the cost of establishing a teachers’ training facility as part of the project.

  There was also a draft pamphlet explaining the concept and setting out the advantages of the school’s location. Ideal climate for growing children. A good place to attract and keep good quality teachers. And a demonstrated need: expats in Malaya had grumbled for years at the cost, inconvenience and family agony involved in sending children halfway around the world to get a decent education.

  I thought about the project all day, warming to the idea more and more. It would be rather fine, I thought, to create something worthwhile, something that we could leave behind to mark our time in Malaya. And the thought of six months in Cameron Highlands was an attractive one. I loved the place, with its misty mornings, its cool sunny days, and its air of an English village transported into the depths of the jungle. I also owned a tea plantation up there. George Fortin had made Burnbrae productive and profitable, sending me regular reports with my monthly profit cheques. He had experienced absolutely no labour troubles, no doubt due to the fact that he and his family were well-respected Communists.

  And we would have the boys with us all year. I sounded them out on the idea, and they were ecstatic. ‘You mean we would live at home all the time like normal people, and go to school as day-boys?’ Tony asked. ‘Yippee!’

  Denis came home with more material about the proposed school, and half a dozen recent copies of the English magazine Country Life . I had of course already drooled over the lovely homes for sale. But leafing through the magazines in bed that night, it was different. We would soon be buying one of those homes, and living among the picturesque hills, woods and dales depicted in its glossy pages. I noticed one home in particular, for which they seemed to be asking an absurdly low price. It had a stable-block in mellow brick, with a clocktower above the cobbled mounting yard, and I could just picture Denis and me clattering out through the arched gateway onto rolling parkland.

  ‘When do you think we will be in England?’ I asked.

  ‘Oh, I’d imagine about next Christmas,’ Denis yawned, tossing his book onto the bedside table and rolling onto his side. I was bursting with questions and looked at the proffered shoulder angrily, then gave it a good shake.

  ‘Not good enough,’ I said. ‘You’ve turned our future upside down and got me all aflutter. I want some commitments, Denis. “About Christmas time” simply isn’t good enough.’

  Denis rolled back towards me. ‘I’m sorry, darling, but what we’re involved in isn’t an exact science,’ he said. He scratched his head thoughtfully. ‘But how’s this as a rough timetable? It’ll take a month or so to wind up Elesmere-Elliott & Co. We’ll spend about six months in Cameron Highlands, and then sail for England. If you want a date, I think I can promise you we’ll be in London for Christmas.’

  And with that I had to be satisfied.

  A few days later ‘Miss Griff’, the principal of Tanglin School, came to dinner. She brought with her the school bursar, a tall, grey-haired retired colonel named Bob Stone. The purpose of the dinner was to discuss how our proposed senior school might fit in with the existing Tanglin junior schools in Singapore and Cameron Highlands. Mark Morrison was also there, with a sheaf of legal documents in his bulging briefcase.

  Anne Griffith-Jones – ‘Miss Griff’ to a generation of pupils and their parents – was a charming woman. She had come out to Singapore in the 1920s to stay with her brother, a local stockbroker. She failed in her principal intention, which she said quite openly was to snare a husband from the ranks of eligible planters. But she did establish a school that turned into a Malayan legend. She started it in the grounds of the Tanglin Club mainly for something to do, but it became her life’s work. Commencing with a handful of children from families who hated the partings involved with English schooling, the Tanglin School grew into a substantial institution with several hundred pupils. By the mid 1930s she had started another Tanglin School, this one situated in Cameron Highlands to take advantage of the healthy climate. The schools had of course been abandoned during the Japanese occupation, with most of the teachers, including the redoubtable Miss Griff herself, spending the war in Japanese internment camps.

  ‘There is something tremendously satisfying about running a school,’ Miss Griff said through a mouthful of tapioca pudding. ‘It’s like having a huge loving family around you. You worry about some of them, you feel proud about some of them, and occasionally – just occasionally – you come across someone who you know is going to contribute to the good of mankind.’

  ‘What about the financial side?’ Mark Morrison asked. ‘Is there any tension between your obligations as an educator, and the need to run the show at some sort of profit? Or at least to break even?’

  ‘No tension whatsoever!’ Miss Griff said emphatically. ‘Anyone who is in teaching for money should be shot! I don’t know how much money Tanglin has lost over the years, but somehow we’ve always found enough to carry on. There are donations, and supporting grants from the various levels of government and so on.’

  Denis and Mark Morrison exchanged glances. ‘We are not investing in this business purely for altruistic reasons,’ Denis said. ‘We would
like to see the standard of education in Malaya improved, but we would also want the school to pay its way.’

  Miss Griff gestured helplessly. ‘Then don’t look to me for guidance. But Bob is a dollars-and-cents man, and he’s making Tanglin pay these days. Tell them how you do it, Bob.’

  ‘I think there can be a sensible middle way,’ Bob Stone said quietly. ‘As long as educational aims are your first priority, I see no reason why a responsible school shouldn’t aim to balance its books.’

  The conversation turned to technical matters – subsidies, sponsorships, the need to structure the fees so that a school could provide scholarships for deserving cases. Both Denis and Mark had done their homework and by the time Denis brought out the port it was clear that the project was a viable one.

  ‘We’re going to need to be accredited,’ Denis said. ‘How does one go about that?’

  Bob Stone spread his hands expansively. ‘If you can establish a good school up in the highlands and attract some good teachers, we’ll back you to the hilt. With the Tanglin School behind you, I’d say accreditation would be a piece of cake. But we’ll need to know that you are in this for the long haul. It would be desperately unfair if you took in students and then left them in the lurch.’

  Mark Morrison spread some papers on the dining table. ‘We haven’t been sitting on our hands,’ he said. ‘We’ve registered a proprietary company with an appropriate Memorandum of Association, and established a board. Denis and I are the only two directors at present, but I can assure you we will have an appropriate and responsible board by the time we open our doors. The school is to be called Somerset College, and it’s already got a paid-up share capital of fifty thousand Straits dollars.’

  ‘When are you planning on opening your doors?’ Bob asked.

  ‘We’re hoping to start next year,’ Denis said. ‘Using rented premises until we can build. There are some decent places up in the Highlands that might be ideal. Norma and I are going up there as soon as we can to scout out the ground.’