Towards the end of the meal I sat back in my chair and looked across the table as Ah Khow collected the dessert dishes. It was because of this man – our Talisman – that we could enjoy such pleasure in the heart of darkness that was Malaya in 1948. I lifted my wineglass to him in a silent toast and he allowed himself a small, tight smile in return.
But no man is an island, entire unto himself. We could not forever remain untouched by the terror and the suffering that was all around us.
Chapter Thirty-Five
I remember once stroking a sleepy cat, my mind elsewhere, when it unexpectedly lashed out. It was a casual, almost an accidental blow, delivered with a languid feline yawn. But it drew blood, and I remember the feeling of shock and unreality to this day. Our first encounter with the violence of the Malayan Emergency engendered exactly the same kind of feeling. It came without rhyme or reason from a clear blue sky, so quick and so capricious that the senses reeled.
Frances came home from school unusually quiet, and didn’t join the boys in their usual harum-scarum games on the wide sloping lawns. She was usually the most rumbustious of them all, and I watched her for a while, then sat down beside her as she doodled with her crayons on the floor. ‘What happened at school today, darling?’ I asked. ‘Something has upset you, hasn’t it?’
Frances turned a pale face towards me, her blue eyes suspiciously bright. ‘Megan got shot,’ she said. ‘She won’t be coming back to school. She’s gone to heaven.’
The phone rang just then, but I couldn’t move. All I could do was sit there looking at my little girl, my mind a blank. I could hear Denis talking on the phone, but what he was saying didn’t make sense.
And then he was sitting down on the floor with us, an arm around each of us, holding us tight. ‘Megan is safe with Jesus,’ he said softly. ‘And I think it’s time our little girl was tucked up in bed.’
Megan’s death had been almost an accident. The children had been holding a teddy bears’ picnic on the lawns outside their classroom when one of the Gurkha guards had spotted men moving in the jungle beyond the barbed-wire palisade. He had fired a brief burst at them from his Sten gun, more to warn the school than anything else. Someone said that the bandits fired back, but that was by no means certain. Other Gurkhas also fired into the jungle, but without visible targets it was all over in a moment. Meanwhile, in accordance with the approved drill, the teacher had led the children quickly back into the sandbagged classroom. It was perhaps fifteen minutes before someone noticed that Megan was missing. Full of dread, her teacher, Miss Dowell, went looking for her.
Megan’s body was curled up amongst the scattered teddy bears, her own bear still clutched in her arms. It was clear from her position in relation to the gunfire that the bullet that killed her had been a ricochet. Probably a Gurkha ricochet.
It was all so stupid, senseless, and cruel.
Later that evening I rang Tanya at the Argyle Rubber Estate. I rang most evenings, to assure myself that she was all right, and to keep her spirits up. I didn’t mention Megan’s death of course: we talked about positive things – her coming baby, and about the need for Andrei to attend a kindergarten the next year. Her mood was calm, almost cheerful, and I felt glad.
‘The Emergency will be over by Christmas,’ I said, and I remember hearing Tanya laugh.
‘You always were an outrageous optimist, Nona,’ she had said. ‘But I hope that this time you are right. I don’t want my baby born into a world full of violence.’
But the violence Tanya feared was about to engulf her. About an hour after I had phoned, a Tamil ran up to the Argyle homestead, panting with fear. ‘Tuan, Tuan,’ he had called urgently, and Eugene had sighed, and then pulled on his boots and come out to the verandah to see what was wrong.
The man had a desperate message. Someone had warned one of the estate coolies that the Communists were going to attack that night. The coolies were taking the warning seriously, and even as Eugene talked to the man he could see torches amongst the trees as the Tamils fled into the rubber from their lines. There was a section of Gurkhas stationed on the estate, but it was at less than half strength, several of the men having been ordered away to reinforce a tin mine near Kampong Dong which had been attacked the previous night.
Eugene stood on the verandah chewing his lip as he tried to decide what to do. Stay and fight, with almost inevitable casualties, or evacuate his family to somewhere safer? He couldn’t decide, and went back into the bedroom and sat down beside Tanya. Thunder was rumbling in the distance, harbinger of a storm that had been threatening all afternoon.
‘We might have a bit of bother on our hands,’ he said gently. ‘One of the Tamils has told me that they’ve had a warning the Communists intend to attack us tonight. Probably nothing in it, but I think we need to take some precautions.’
Tanya sat up in bed quickly. ‘What can we do, Eugene?’ she asked. She was pale but composed. An attack on the Estate had been on the cards for weeks, and she had rehearsed this moment over and over in her mind. She knew she had to be calm and not add to Eugene’s worries. He had enough to worry about as it was.
‘If we had more men I think we’d sit tight, but with only six Gurkhas on hand I’m inclined to run you and Andrei into KL. Better to be safe than sorry.’
‘I’m not going anywhere without you,’ Tanya had said firmly. ‘We’ve talked about this, Eugene, and I’m not going to change my mind.’
Eugene went over to the Gurkha lines and spoke to the corporal in charge of the small detachment. He was a short, nuggetty man with steady black eyes who seemed completely untroubled. ‘We will stay on guard all night,’ he said. ‘Don’t worry, sir – there are enough of us to handle a few monkeys from the jungle.’
‘I’ll ring the police station at Kuala Lipis,’ Eugene decided. ‘Perhaps they may have some men they can afford to send out here.’
When he got back to the bungalow he found the phone was dead and swore quietly to himself. Cutting the phone line was a typical Communist tactic, and it was usually done within half an hour of an attack to prevent giving too much warning. There was a storm in the area and the line might have come down accidentally, but Eugene didn’t think so.
‘I am going to take you and the boy into Bentong,’ he told Tanya decisively. ‘That’ll also give me a chance to tell the police there what’s happening.’ It was about a half-hour run to Bentong, and his idea was to leave Tanya and Andrei with Tim and Jan at the Dunlop estate, and to return with as many special constables from the Bentong police station as they could spare.
By the time Tanya had gathered clothing and a few essentials and the three of them had tumbled into the car the rain was pouring down, the thunder rolling almost continuously, and the sky repeatedly split apart by lightning.
‘Are you sure we’re doing the right thing?’ Tanya asked as the car bumped and slithered down the long laterite driveway to the Kuala Lipis–Bentong road.
Eugene was by no means sure that he was, but the die had been cast. ‘Of course we are,’ he said firmly. ‘In half an hour you’ll be having a hot mug of coffee with Tim and Jan.’ Then a terrible thought struck him: what if the Communists had set up a roadblock to isolate the estate? He quietly slipped his pistol from his pocket, disengaged the safety-catch, and tucked it into the leather map pouch by his side.
They came out onto the highway and swung right towards Bentong just as a truck emerged out of the rain, its headlights glaring. Eugene twisted the wheel desperately. He avoided the truck but the road surface was as slippery as ice and the car spun out of control, finally toppling, almost slowly, into the deep stormwater drain on the side of the road. It ended up on its right-hand side in a fast-running river of muddy water, the headlights cutting a swathe through the raindrops.
At first, it seemed that they had survived unscratched. Tanya pushed the passenger door open and clambered out, helping Andrei to safety on the muddy bank. But when she went back to the car to help Eugene he gave an embarrassed grin. ‘Sorry, dar
ling. Damned leg’s jammed. You’ll have to give me a hand.’
Tanya clambered in through the open door and reached under the muddy water, trying to free Eugene’s leg. But it was no use: the bench front seat seemed to have been dislodged from its mounting and was pinning him securely against the side of the car.
‘I’ll get help from the truck,’ she shouted above the increasing sound of the pouring yellow water, and he nodded vigorously.
The rain teamed down. Two men had climbed out of truck, both Tamils in the brown uniforms of the Department of Public Works, and one of them had draped a raincoat over Andrei’s shoulders. ‘My husband is stuck in the car,’ Tanya said. ‘Could you help me free him? There is water coming through the window so it’s difficult to get to him.’
One of the Tamils climbed down into the car while Tanya crouched on the bank above him, her arm now around a trembling Andrei. ‘Can you get him free?’ she called. ‘I don’t want him stuck in that awful water too long. He’ll catch his death of cold.’
The man’s head suddenly popped out of the car, and he was screaming at his companion in Tamil, and then at her in English. ‘He is under the water!’ he shouted. ‘He is drowning!’
Tanya flung herself down the bank and onto the roof of the car for a second time. As soon as she looked in through the open door she saw how much higher the water had become. It now seemed to fill the car, a surging, angry torrent. There was no sign of Eugene. ‘No!’ she shouted. ‘Don’t let him drown! Please don’t let him drown.’
But there was nothing anyone could do. Within moments the car was a plaything of the water, moving and then suddenly rolling completely upside down. The Tamil dragged Tanya clear and up the bank, forcibly holding her back as she tried to return to the car. ‘You will drown yourself,’ he shouted, ‘and then who will look after your little boy?’
The reference to Andrei brought her to her senses and she took the child into her arms and sat on the bank above the floodwater, hugging him tight and rocking on her heels. She felt at once numb and at the same time full of a great, paralysing pain, a pain so sharp that she could hardly breathe.
By the time the police and an ambulance arrived from Kuala Lipis the rain had stopped, the water level in the storm drain had fallen, and the Tamil who had stayed with her had dragged Eugene’s body free from the car and up onto the road. The English police officer was kind but matter of fact. He took names and other details down in his little blue book, then asked where she would like to be taken. ‘Do you have family anywhere near, Madam?’ he asked. ‘Or friends who might look after you?’
She remembered the reason they had been on the road, and told the inspector about the threat of a Communist attack, and about the telephone line being down. The inspector went to his armoured car to use the two-way radio, and then came back shaking his head. ‘The telephone line to the Argyle Estate is working,’ he said. ‘It was down for an hour earlier tonight due to storm damage. No attacks have been reported anywhere in the area, so I think things will be quite normal if we get you back home.’
Tanya saw with sudden awful clarity that things back at home would never be normal again. She pictured walking into the sitting room with Eugene’s book on his chair and the cane he always carried to muster propped by the door. His empty whisky glass still on the small table. She pictured going into their bedroom, and seeing his blue dressing gown thrown carelessly over the chair, his pyjamas on the bed awaiting his return.
She couldn’t face Argyle just yet, and turned to the inspector. ‘Could you take us to the Dunlop Estate at Bentong?’ she asked. ‘That’s where we were going when we had the accident.’
Tanya had her mug of coffee with Tim and Jan, just as Eugene had promised her she would. She sat silently between them on the couch, the hot liquid burning her mouth as she took it in great gulps. Tim and Jan said the things one says in such circumstances, aware how inadequate they were but aware also that Tanya wasn’t listening. And then they gave her the sedative the dresser had prepared and put her to bed.
Tanya lay with Andrei in bed beside her, staring up into the darkness with her eyes wide open. It was so unfair. She and Eugene had had so much ahead of them, and then the Communists had come and destroyed everything. Hatred poured through her veins like liquid fire so that she had to clench her fists to keep herself from screaming.
It was a relief when she heard the whistles shrilling. She knew immediately what they meant – the Communists were attacking. They blew their whistles to synchronise their movements. The practice had been described often in press reports of attacks on isolated police posts, or on rubber estates, or on tin mines deep in the jungle.
She rolled out of bed glad that they were attacking. The estate was well defended. There were special constables patrolling the barbed-wire perimeter, and there was a full platoon of Gurkhas camped in the garden. There would be dead Communists by morning, blood-soaked corpses littering the Featherstones’ tidy garden. Eugene’s death needed paying for and tonight the paying would begin.
She crouched by the window staring out, and was surprised but not shocked by how close the gun-flashes were. Men were running towards the house, shooting as they came, their Sten guns ripping the air with long bursts of noise. When the bullets started banging through the timber walls she realised with a jolt that she was hoping to be hit. She tried to push the thought away, to think of Andrei on the bed behind her, and of the new life growing inside her. But the thought, the wish, came back stronger than ever. She wanted to die in these frantic, thoughtless moments, to be saved from the pain of tomorrow and from the long lonely years ahead bringing up Eugene’s children without him.
She stood up in front of the window, careless and glad, and a burst of fire caught her in the chest. Lying on the floor with her mouth full of blood, she tried to say sorry to Andrei, tried to reach out and protect him with her mind, but it was no good. All she could really think about was Eugene, and how good it would be to be in his arms again.
And at the end, just for a moment or so, she was in his arms again, and happy.
According to the press reports we read later, the attack that killed Tanya and Andrei was beaten off with heavy Communist casualties. But there was a second attack, this time directed at the front of the house. A suicide squad which had been hiding in the estate school house stormed across the tennis court and into the bungalow through the front door. Tim faced them in the hallway, firing his service revolver at point-blank range. Tim was a good shot and three Communists went down, but not before one of them had lobbed a grenade into the room behind him where Jan and the girls were crouching. Tim must have known that the savage blast would have killed his family because he came storming out of the smoke and the bloody wreckage, his eyes wild, firing at everything that moved. When his pistol ran out of bullets he calmly re-loaded, then kept shooting, walking up to the dead and dying Communists and shooting them where they lay.
And then he put the pistol to his head and pulled the trigger.
‘Women and Children Die in Savage Attack,’ the Malay Mail reported. It was not even on the front page: that was given over to the appointment of Sir Henry Gurney as the new High Commissioner of Malaya. I read of the attack while sitting on our balcony having breakfast, and when I came to the names of those killed, the bile rose suddenly in my throat and I was violently sick. Denis was beside me in a second, catching me as I tried to rise and nearly fell.
‘It’s Tanya,’ I said. ‘She’s dead. And so is Jan. And all the children. Tim’s in a coma and they don’t think he’ll live.’
Denis took the paper from me, and I remember thinking that I might have got it wrong. Please, Denis, tell me that I have got it wrong.
But of course I hadn’t. I sat out on the balcony for some time, trying to come to terms with the awful reality. I began to tremble, and Denis slipped my dressing gown over my shoulders. ‘I’m going to ring the police station at Bentong,’ he said. ‘See if there is anything we can do. Poor Eugene must
feel desperately alone.’ Of course we didn’t know then that Eugene was also dead.
The line to Bentong was busy, and it was nearly half an hour before Denis finally spoke to someone. He came back out on the balcony and sat in front of me, taking both of my hands in his. ‘I’m awfully sorry, darling,’ he said. ‘Eugene is also dead. He was killed in a motor car accident just before the attack. They’d been trying to get away from a raid on Argyle Estate which didn’t eventuate.’
‘So the Aubreys and the Featherstones are no more,’ I said. ‘They’ve been wiped off the face of the earth just like that,’ and I snapped my fingers in the air.
I spent that day in a daze. It seemed impossible to me that two entire families could simply wink out of existence in a moment, and I raged against everybody, including God, that it had been allowed to happen. But my special rage was reserved for Chin Peng, the smiling, polite young man who had become a bloody murderer.
At first, wild anger kept grief at bay, but after dinner, when the children had gone to bed and we were sitting in front of the open fire, I could no longer resist the memories that crowded into my mind. Tanya’s face as she had told me about the new baby, cornflowers in her flaxen hair. Tim in our KL days, showing off his dark green Triumph. Eugene with his stiff, artificial Englishness that was somehow finer than the real thing. Jan, shaking her head with happy annoyance because she looked too young. And, of course, the children. Andrei running out to the car to tell us that Frances was sleeping in his room, and beaming when Frances nodded her solemn imprimatur. The twins on the lawns at Bentong, their red hair flying as they chased each other through the lilac bushes.
I sat there, tears streaming down my cheeks, staring helplessly at Denis. Pleading for help. What sort of help I had no idea. ‘It’s Chin Peng’s fault,’ I said suddenly, grasping hold of my anger once again and sitting up straight and furious in my chair. ‘I thought he was a decent man but he is a monster. Can’t we do something to stop him? He was once a British agent, after all. If you let the papers print that, his friends in the jungle will give him short shrift. They won’t want a traitor in their midst.’
In the Mouth of the Tiger Page 76