In the Mouth of the Tiger

by Lynette Silver

  Miss Griff lifted her glass. ‘To Somerset College,’ she said. ‘And a start next year. I have to say I love the name!’

  The dinner was an outstanding success. We laughed and talked until the wee small hours, and when the evening finally ended Mark Morrison was able to tuck sealed Minutes of Understanding with the Tanglin School Pty Ltd into his briefcase. I was able to tuck something equally important into my handbag – approved enrolment applications for all three children to attend the Tanglin School in Cameron Highlands.

  We were getting ready for bed when Denis came up and put his arms around me. ‘So the next chapter of our life is about to begin,’ he said. ‘Things are going to be very different from now on, darling. First in Cameron Highlands, then in England. Are you happy?’

  I thought about that for a moment or two. Denis had caught me by surprise to begin with, but on the whole I was now rather looking forward to the adventure. I was particularly warming to the idea of England. I could see us in my mind’s eye already: strolling arm in arm through the gardens of our English estate while the children chased each other, gleeful and rosy cheeked, through the rhododendrons. ‘I think I am happy with what we’re doing,’ I said finally. ‘Now take your hands off me and pass that copy of Country Life.’

  Winding up his interest in Elesmere-Elliott & Co. took Denis longer than he had expected. He had decided to hand the business over to the staff, but before he could do so he had to dispose of his interests in War Reparations Commission goods still stored in godowns all over the Far East. John Galvin got the bulk of the stuff, becoming a multi-millionaire on paper many times over in a single night. Cheng Swee got some too, becoming the first non-European to be brought within the highest circle of the Intelligence ring.

  But eventually, abruptly, everything was settled and it was time to leave Singapore. Saying goodbye proved far harder than I had expected. We had settled money on Chu Lun and Amah, but that wasn’t enough and for days I moved around the house, seeing how beautifully they had kept things for us, and feeling a profound sense of loss. They had become part of our lives, those two, and the thought that we might never see them again appalled me. I had implored them to come up to Cameron Highlands with us but of course their lives were interwoven with the fabric of Mata Ikun. Their youth with all its memories had been spent there, their family lived there or thereabouts, and ultimately they looked forward to old age under the atap roofs of the pretty little kampong.

  We held a farewell dinner at the Swimming Club for our friends on the night before we left. They had hung coloured lights on the upstairs terrace and we gathered there for drinks before the meal. Malcolm Bryant clinked glasses with me, his face sombre. ‘I wish you weren’t going up to Cameron Highlands,’ he said. ‘It’s so bloody isolated. I don’t know why Denis is letting you go with him. He must know there is going to be trouble.’

  ‘It is so sweet of you to be worried,’ I said taking his arm and squeezing it. ‘We’ll be quite safe up there. But I will miss my big brother.’

  ‘Is that how you see me?’ Malcolm said quickly. ‘As a brother? I don’t think of you as a sister, Norma, I assure you.’

  Dinner was Old English style, a roast of some sort that was a specialty of the house. I can’t say I enjoyed it much because Malcolm became embroiled in an argument across the table with John Dalley. The argument was about the big issue of the day – the security position in Malaya. Dalley had just delivered his security report to the Government, which had promptly leaked selected parts to calm people down. John’s assessment had been that the Chinese in general, and the MCP in particular, posed no threat whatever to the future security of Malaya.

  ‘It was downright wrong of you to dismiss the Communist threat,’ Malcolm said bluntly. ‘I can’t understand how you could do it. You’ve seen the shootings and the killings, for Christ’s sake. Your exculpation of the MCP will give the Government precisely the excuse it needs to do absolutely nothing.’

  ‘The only violence has been by bandits,’ John retorted. ‘Malaya’s always had bandits. There is not a shred of evidence to link any of the violence to the Communists.’

  Malcolm gave an exasperated sigh. ‘So their battalions haven’t yet been involved! Can’t you see it’s only a matter of time? All they’re waiting for is a signal. A signal that the Russians, or the Chinese, or even a top British traitor – anyone able to secure their lines of communication – are on their side. As soon as they get that signal Chin Peng will take his men into the jungle and blow Malaya apart.’

  John Dalley put his napkin down with ominous deliberation. ‘The trouble with you, Malcolm, is that you’ve always been one-eyed when it comes to the Chinese. And right now we need both eyes wide open if we are going to avoid a bloodbath. The Chinese have a lot to be angry about. They are the only ones in Malaya who stood up against the Japs, and now the British are cheerfully prepared to hand the country over to the Malays. For Christ’s sake, man – now is the time for a bit of understanding, not for blind bigotry.’

  ‘Can’t we agree to disagree?’ I asked rather weakly, but Malcolm cut across me.

  ‘I’m not talking about bigotry,’ he said, his voice tense with emotion. ‘I’m talking about taking precautions. If we don’t take precautions right now, a lot of innocent people are going to die.’ He turned to me. ‘And Norma’s going to be in the thick of it, don’t you see? Smack bang in the middle of the jungle.’

  Denis saw what was going on and came around the table to me. ‘There is music playing, darling. Beautiful music. Don’t you think we should set an example to our guests and show them what fun it is to dance?’

  We danced, at first alone but gradually other couples joined us. It was the Blue Danube Waltz, and I leaned back against Denis’s arm and let him lead me across the floor, my heart suddenly filled with the purest joy. It is so easy when someone loves you. You are in the thick of something awful, and worried sick where it will all end, and he can take you out of the mire and into another world with a single snap of his fingers.

  We were driving home when something that Malcolm had said struck me as strange, and I turned to Denis. ‘Malcolm said that the Communists were just waiting for a signal before they attack,’ I said. ‘And that it might come from a British traitor. Who do you think he had in mind?’

  Denis didn’t answer and I peered at him in the darkness, trying to read his expression. But he was concentrating on the road, his face closed to me.

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  We arrived at Cameron Highlands late in the afternoon. The twisting road came suddenly around a corner and there it was before us, the emerald green golf course, the English-style cottages in their pretty gardens, the jungle-clad hillsides that give the place its unique character. The sun was setting through banks of evening mist so that everything was bathed in a soft gold light.

  It really was indescribably beautiful, and I turned impulsively to the children in the back of the car. ‘Don’t you think this is beautiful? Don’t you think it’s just like fairyland?’ Their wide-eyed silence was answer enough.

  The Smoke House Inn had been well treated by the years, its beams and plaster mellowed by the seasons and its gardens grown to majestic maturity. We parked the hired car and crunched across the car park, just as Denis and I had done nearly thirteen years before. So much had happened since then, so much had changed. I looked back at the children skipping along behind us and had the strangest feeling. I felt suddenly as if I was in a dream, a lovely, fragile dream that could end in an instant, leaving me the girl I had once been. A clumsy apprentice hairdresser yearning for the stars.

  I shivered, and Denis immediately took off his linen jacket and slipped it over my shoulders. ‘One forgets how cool it can become,’ he said.

  We sat in the cosy Den as we had before, while a log fire crackled in the grate and they brought us tea and scones with strawberry jam and cream. It was already quite dark outside, made darker by a ‘Scottish mist’, but the children stared through
the mullioned window at the inviting expanse of the golf course with longing eyes. ‘Can we explore after tea?’ Tony asked, and I laughed, remembering that I had wanted to do the same all those years before. ‘No you cannot,’ I said firmly. ‘If you go out on the golf course in this fog you might be eaten by a tiger.’

  The children’s huge, wide eyes were a picture, and I had to laugh again and ruffle all their heads.

  The estate agent called first thing next morning to show us the house we had rented. Or rather, the houses we had rented because Denis had taken both of Fraser & Co.’s two rest houses as a sort of job-lot. It was probably an expensive way to acquire a suitable place, but the idea was that we would choose one and make the other available to any staff from Elesmere-Elliott & Co. who wanted a holiday.

  Choosing between the two bungalows proved quite difficult. They were the only dwellings on a short private road that ran up from the golf course into a jungle hillside, and while perhaps a little isolated they were both unusually attractive. Moonlight, the bungalow at the top of the road, was perhaps the prettier of the two, mock-Tudor in style and set in a half acre of beautifully laid-out rose gardens. Starlight, just a hundred yards lower down, was the larger. It had been built in a rugged Alpine chalet style, with lots of exposed granite and white stucco and with broad stone balconies jutting out over the jungle.

  ‘I like Moonlight,’ I said, staking my claim by sitting down on a timber seat in the rose garden and folding my arms. ‘Move me if you dare.’

  ‘I like Moonlight too,’ Denis said sitting down equally firmly beside me. ‘And since we are the only two with voting rights, this is where we’ll stay!’

  Tony had liked Starlight, and he kicked disconsolately at the pebble pathway in his disappointment. ‘But it’s so awfully tame,’ he said. ‘Starlight looks like a castle. It’s got atmosphere. It might even have a household ghost.’

  ‘All the more reason to stay precisely where we are,’ Denis said. ‘There is enough mystery in the world already without going out looking for it.’ He looked up at the agent, Mrs Prakesh. ‘We’d like to move in here as soon as the heavy luggage arrives,’ he said. ‘Could you cable my people in Singapore and tell them that they can use Starlight? I think a few of them are planning to roll up by the weekend.’

  The decision made, we went through Moonlight allocating bedrooms and generally getting to know the place. The house was in beautiful order but Mrs Prakesh insisted on making up a list of ‘adjustments’ as she called them. ‘You will need new carpet in the hall,’ she said noting it down. ‘And I suggest you need all the front curtains replaced. You see,’ she explained, seeing my quizzical look, ‘Fraser & Co. is a wealthy company but they hardly ever let these bungalows out. In fact they’ve been empty since the end of the war, so we thought we’d take advantage of your lease to have a few things done.’

  ‘Why aren’t they more popular?’ I asked, and Mrs Prakesh shrugged.

  ‘It is the isolation,’ she said. ‘It’s close enough to walk down to Tanah Rata, but the jungle is so thick you can sometimes feel rather cut off up here. I suppose some people don’t like that.’

  The sense of isolation didn’t worry me in the least. I leaned out of an upstairs bedroom window and looked out across the rose garden to the rolling jungle-clad hills. It was so pretty and so peaceful that I couldn’t imagine anyone not immediately falling in love with the place. The Tanah Rata Valley was screened from us by the jungle, but I could still hear the faint sounds of civilisation. The distant honk of a horn. A lorry coming up a gradient. Even the faintest sound of someone shouting on the golf links. This is exactly how it should be, I told myself. Five minutes from civilisation, a million miles from the crowd.

  That night Nora Warin, the wife of the Smoke House Inn’s proprietor, came over to our table during dinner and introduced herself. ‘I understand you have taken one of the Fraser & Co. bungalows?’ she asked with a smile.

  ‘We have,’ I said. ‘We think they are both lovely, but we’ve decided to move into Moonlight.’

  ‘You know you will be very isolated up there?’ Nora asked, pulling a spare chair across to our table and sitting down. ‘I don’t like to intrude but I do feel I should say something. Some people think those bungalows are just a bit too isolated for Europeans in these troubled times.’

  Denis had not risen when Nora had joined us. It was quite unlike him, and now he seemed to go out of his way to be unwelcoming. ‘How very unfortunate for some people,’ he said unsmilingly. ‘We happen to think Moonlight is ideal.’

  ‘Of course you don’t know the circumstances up here,’ Nora persisted. ‘There has been the odd incident, you know. Not at the Fraser & Co. bungalows, but quite close to Tanah Rata. Those bungalows are very cut off, Mr Elesmere-Elliott. There is only the one road in, and once you’re up there, you’re quite cut off and out of touch.’

  I could see that Denis was suddenly furious, and laid a restraining hand on his arm. ‘While I appreciate your concern, Mrs Warin,’ he said coldly. ‘I can assure you I do know perfectly well how to look after my family.’

  Nora opened her mouth to say something further but Denis stood up, forestalling her. ‘Now, I know you will let us get on with our meal,’ he said firmly, his hand on the back of her chair. Nora hesitated, but then accepted the inevitable and also rose to her feet.

  ‘I’m very sorry if you thought I was interfering,’ she said stiffly. ‘But I felt I it was my duty to say something.’

  ‘That wasn’t like you at all,’ I said to Denis when Nora had left. ‘You were almost rude to the woman. She was only trying to be helpful.’

  ‘She was being a blasted interfering old biddy!’ Denis said, but his good humour had returned. ‘I don’t know about you, but I’m rather looking forward to our house in the jungle.’ He turned to the children, grinning. ‘Who else is looking forward to Moonlight? Our House in the Jungle?’

  George Fortin called around that night, arriving quite late so that we sat in an empty Den, the fire low in the grate. George looked much older, his hair white and his face lined and grey. He had survived the Japanese occupation by living with his wife’s family amongst the Chinese market gardeners, only occasionally having to move down the Sakai trails into the Telom Valley when Japanese activity became too intense.

  ‘Your investment is thriving, Nona,’ he said after we had shaken hands. ‘I am planting another five acres this year – there is a growing demand for tea, and it doesn’t do any harm to have new plants coming on. Buyers are always keen for the younger leaf.’

  ‘How is Happy Valley?’ I asked, and George smiled. He knew about my love for the valley.

  ‘Untouched. It’s not suitable for tea, of course. And I know how sentimentally attached you are to the place. But you could get ten acres of vegetables in there. It would give you a tidy return in the present market.’

  I shook my head. ‘Let’s leave Happy Valley as it is. I like to think of it as I saw it as a child. Untouched and beautiful.’

  Denis brought a bottle of whisky and three glasses down from our room, and we sat around the embers, talking rather desultorily about this and that. George seemed a little distracted, as if he had something on his mind, and I noticed that he often glanced at Denis before saying anything, as if chary of treading on sensitive ground.

  ‘How are your sons?’ I asked, and George ran his fingers through his thinning silver hair.

  ‘Typical Young Turks, Nona. Got their fingers in every pie that promises change or adventure.’ He seemed about to say something more, but glanced at Denis and checked himself.

  Denis responded to the glance by raising his glass of whisky. ‘To all Young Turks. The world would be a pretty stifling place without them.’

  I told George what Nora had said about the Fraser & Co. bungalows. ‘Do you think of them as isolated?’ I asked.

  ‘Oh, not really.’ George shot another glance at Denis. ‘I’d stay in the lower one, if I were you. Starlight, isn’t it?
That way you could give Moonlight warning of anyone coming up the road.’

  ‘Why would we want to do that?’ Denis almost snapped, and George held up his hands apologetically.

  ‘Instinctive reaction,’ he said turning to me. ‘I spent four years staying one jump ahead of the Japs. I’ve got into the habit of seeing things from a fugitive’s point of view.’ He laughed rather unconvincingly.

  I smiled but couldn’t help thinking that what he’d just said was nonsense. He’d talked about protecting someone else, not himself. Someone living in Moonlight.

  George didn’t stay long. He made a rather vague arrangement for us to dine at Burnbrae, and then bade us farewell.

  ‘He seems . . . distracted,’ I said as we wandered up to bed. Denis didn’t answer but raised a finger to his lips. We were outside the children’s room, and he opened the door gently. The fire was low in the grate (every bedroom had a fireplace at the Smoke House Inn) and the children were draped on cushions around it in their dressing gowns, all fast asleep. Half-eaten chocolate bars, sweet packets and the remains of a cake – no doubt snaffled from the afternoon tea table – attested to a midnight feast.

  ‘We should get them back to bed,’ I said but Denis shook his head.

  ‘It would spoil everything. The whole fun of a midnight feast is that it’s secret. Let’s not let them know we caught them out.’

  Early the next morning, Denis said something that astounded me. I had been woken by the dawn chorus of the birds and was drifting back to sleep, my mind playing idly with details of our move into Moonlight, when Denis joggled me with his elbow.

  ‘Are you awake?’

  ‘I am now,’ I said, pretending to be slightly peeved.

  ‘I’ve been thinking about what Nora said last night,’ Denis said. ‘I think she might have a point after all. Perhaps we should move into Starlight rather than Moonlight. It’s just that little bit closer to civilisation.’