Out in the Midday Sun

by Margaret Shennan

  The new Tanglin School employed Froebel-trained teachers from England and, with a hundred boarding pupils, soon acquired a good reputation, although its single-storeyed wooden buildings were low cost compared with those of the convent. Maureen Fairchild, whose father, the Executive Engineer for Pahang, had been responsible for overseeing the construction of both schools, was one of the first pupils. Tanglin claimed that ‘children are educated up to the age of thirteen and are prepared for common entrance examination, so that they can pass directly into public schools in England. The fees are $300 per term.’47 Music tuition was an extra, and one pupil remembers:

  I used to have riding lessons in a clearing in the jungle; we went down a path with long steps, past trees festooned with orchids and venus fly traps; there were many different brightly coloured butterflies. A similar path led down to an area where we each had a tiny garden; the best gardens were those in the tree roots.48

  The pupils also went on a Sunday-morning walk along jungle trails. The liberal curriculum but traditional Anglican ethos appealed to Protestant parents. Teachers such as Miss Delaney, Miss Furze and Miss Grey were much respected, as was the athletic Miss Raine, whose coaching stimulated William Vowler’s cricket skills: ‘She taught me how to play with a straight bat,’ he recalled. Miss Griff herself was held in universal awe, and ‘always spoken of with respectful affection by my parents’, Gordon Snell remembers.49

  However, going to boarding school, whether in Malaya, Sumatra, Australia or England, could prove traumatic to little ones. Separation from family, friends, servants and beloved pets was hard to bear, underlining the transience and insecurity of colonial life. Susan Malet was only four years old when she was sent to the Cameron Highlands, her sister Jennifer six. Boys as young as five and six were taken back to school in England and Scotland. Some were stoical about it: ‘I suppose I was upset, briefly, when my parents left me at boarding school at the age of seven but I had been brought up always knowing it would happen.’50 Others later in life recognized the emotional damage; at the time they wept repeatedly or stifled the loneliness and learned not to get too close to anyone.

  The development of the hill stations did not eliminate all problems. Health hazards remained, and the Cameron Highlands schools were temporarily closed in 1941 when infantile paralysis struck a number of children. Down on the plains it was still possible to catch malaria or dengue fever from mosquitoes (as Kathleen Price found to her cost). The monsoon rains and fierce ‘sumatra’ storms regularly caused flooding in streets and homes, after which everything – clothes, shoes, books, furnishings – had to be dried and aired. Occasionally, as in the Great Pahang Flood of Christmas 1926 – when large parts of the state were submerged under 163 feet of water and one man remembered how he ‘sailed over Kuantan, sailed over Pahang, sailed over Malaya!’51 – there was serious damage and dislocation. That, however, was exceptional.

  In jungle areas, danger still lurked. In 1934-5, when the Watkins family was stationed at Kuala Lipis, Pahang, they lived on the edge of town. Christopher Watkins recalled how as a four-year-old he

  would often hear tigers in the garden at night and find their spoor the next day. My mother was worried that they would catch the dogs or, worse, chase them into the house. She had strong iron mesh made from quarter inch material, put on all the windows. In those days we often saw tigers in the car headlights when we were driving after dusk.52

  In Malacca, too, sometimes the Barnes family were advised not to visit friends on rubber estates, after some estate workers had been killed by a tiger. Most families had their ‘snake’ stories and tales of lucky escapes from kraits and cobras. Even in the relative safety of Singapore, Christopher Cannell remembered ‘an incident of a huge black spider in the dining room when I was quickly ushered out’ and ‘a lot of fuss because they found a cobra on the driveway’.53 In Malacca the Barnes boys received constant warnings about snakes, but it came as a surprise when ‘One hot, heavily overcast afternoon … a large cobra came into the house. It mounted the coconut matting covered stairs, and coiled itself up outside the door of the bedroom which Ken and I shared.’ The yell of ‘Ular! Ular!’ brought Father on the scene, bearing a niblick: ‘the result was one mangled and very dead cobra and a triumphant pater familias’. When a spot of snake’s blood fell on Geoffrey’s foot, ‘I recall the thrill of doubt: could cobra’s blood poison me?’54

  At Fraser’s Hill, Christopher Watkins had a close shave with a potentially poisonous Mata Hari or Sealingwax Snake. ‘I remember running down the path one day and nearly stepping on a very bright, beautiful snake … For most of its length it was a bright metallic blue but about nine inches at each end were vermilion.’55 It was also called the Twoheaded Snake, because ‘when alarmed it raised its head about 3” high and also its tail, and so to an enemy presented a puzzle: which end was its head? which way would it go?’56 It was customary to pickle snakes in samsu (rice spirit) – the Chinese believed in the medicinal properties of cobras, for instance – and for Christopher Watkins the pharmacy at Fraser’s Hill ‘was a fascinating place … It had shelves full of specimens in jars of methylated spirits or formaldehyde. I remember a human embryo about six inches long, a huge bullfrog and any number of snakes.’57

  Parents usually took care to shield their children from undesirable or lurid sights (such as cases of latah or scenes of self-immolation associated with the religious festival Thaipusam). Surrounded as they were by exotica, the European children of Malaya faced surreal situations with a mixture of awe, fear and phlegm. A former boarder in the Cameron Highlands, Anthony Pybus, remembered ‘the whole school going to look at a tiger in a wheelbarrow after it had been shot for marauding livestock’.58 At Tengkil, in the wilds of Johore, four-year-old John Edington saw the body of one of my father’s horses lying on its side with its tongue hanging out’, and ‘a large black boar lying in its own blood which was being licked up by the local pie-dogs’. More horrendous was the sight at Lingui tin mine of’ a Chinese man carrying the head of his wife by the hair which he had cut off and was reporting … to my father together with the gruesome exhibit. Anyway, the poor fellow was duly convicted and hanged.’59 For another child, an incident at a fair on Fraser’s Hill struck a deep chord.

  One of the acts was a wandering magician; an Indian, perhaps a Tamil. He was fully dressed. He called another Indian, almost certainly his henchman, out of the crowd. This one was wearing only a loincloth. The magician took out a small doll and broke it. Inside was a ball of string about the size of a golf ball which he made his henchman swallow. The string was multicoloured with the colours continually changing along its length. The henchman disappeared into the crowd but was hauled back some time later. He put on a great show of terror when he saw that the magician was holding a dramatically large, sharp pointed knife, but eventually he had to submit to having the skin of his stomach nicked in the area of the appendix. You could see everything that happened very easily because he was wearing so little. The magician then proceeded to pull out yards of string through the wall of the man’s stomach as he stood there. I remember vividly the colour of the string changing as it emerged, and the way the man’s skin was drawn outwards as it resisted the passage of the string. It may have been a case of hypnosis but it was the most dramatic conjuring trick I have ever seen.60

  It was not unknown for small children to feel frightened by this kind of situation. Many years before, Lillian Newton had been terrified by the tricks of an Indian juggler and snake charmer, and five-year-old Margaret Price always avoided looking at the Tamil kebun because his mouth glowed red with betel nut.

  The relationship between the servants and the children was inevitably quite different from that of the servants with Mem or Tuan. A boy was referred to by the servants as either TuanKechil or KechilTuan, literally Little Lord, but the word Kechil was frequently corrupted into ‘Kechy’ or ‘Kichy’. A girl was called simply Missee – little miss. Young children generally admired and looked up to a kind ser
vant. ‘Cookie was my favourite,’ one recalled. ‘He was a small, spare man with cropped hair, all pepper and salt, and sinewy arms’ and ‘a gummy toothless grin’, and when he rested in the hammock ‘there was a look on his face as peaceful as a lotus pool’.61 He also made excellent battered ikan merah (fish) and crisp prawn fritters and potato straws for Missee. The Watkins’s Chinese cook produced models out of mashed potato to please Christopher. ‘The snake curled round a rock was a relatively tame example but the motor car was a piece de resistance.’62 Geoffrey Barnes relished Ah Fong’s special sherry trifle, fish cakes and ‘delicious bacon and onion omelettes’.63 William Vowler remembers to this day the names of the family servants: his amah was Ah Sui, Josephine was the wash amah, ‘Lightning’ the ‘boy’, Ah Cheng the cook and Ismael the syce. Occasional bouts of domestic discord in the servants’ quarters (as between cook and amah, husband and wife) puzzled these children, who felt loyalty to both. ‘I remember nothing but kindness from [the servants] but Amah and Syce were the only ones I was at all close to,’ admitted Gordon Snell. Syce’s special attraction was as driver of their Vauxhall car – ‘which had those whitewalled tyres and a “dicky seat” and the registration number 4187’.64 Margaret Price also remembered the Malay syce who taught her to count in Malay.

  Strong bonds of affection and familiarity were formed in babyhood. Gordon Snell’s amah in Singapore was ‘a Malayan woman of whom I was very fond and I remember tearful tantrums when we were leaving and I would be separated from her’.65 The Cullen family felt much affection for their amah, who was ‘very loving and close’. ‘There was an annual giving of presents’, which Derick Cullen remembered, ‘usually money from us, awful ties from her, but my mother was very attached to her.’66 Geoffrey Barnes’s experience was shared by many born in Malaya:

  From birth I was put in the care of our Chinese amah whom I knew simply as ‘Amah’ … She was probably in her thirties at the time. She had a plain, kindly face, long shining black hair, which she always fastened decorously in a bun at the back of her head, and wore the traditional amah’s uniform of white tunic and black trousers. Amah was our frequent companion, nurse and mentor. She bathed and dressed us, supervised our meals at the small separate table … in the dining room, took us for walks in the garden and along the dusty, red, laterite roads … She often accompanied us to birthday parties or on outings with our parents.67

  Many amahs prided themselves on their sewing and laundering skills, and spent hours pressing out creases and making shantung or lawn dresses for Missee, with deep bands of coloured embroidery across the bodice. Relationships were forged in the many hours a child spent in Amah’s company. The Sopers’ Chinese amah, Ah Chat, a friendly soul, often took Ray and her younger brother John in their rompers and topees to paddle on Butterworth shore. They dug up siputs (tiny molluscs), which Amah boiled for her dinner. A minority of children might have sensed that they were privileged compared with these servants: ‘I remember thinking how different our lives were and wondered how it would be to live in their one room dwelling,’ said Ray Soper.68 But more common was Gordon Snell’s attitude: ‘I suppose as a child I simply accepted (as the adults did) that we had a retinue of people to see to our needs.’69 Parents did worry about the danger of a child ‘becoming selfish, spoiled and generally objectionable’. The worst, according to Leslie Froggatt, were ‘those babies who learn to shout “Boy!” during their first two years’.70

  Childhood diets and routines were devised by the mem but largely implemented by Amah. Fresh milk could be a problem away from the towns, where supplies from government dairy farms or the Cold Storage were available. Upcountry, families used condensed milk or one of the powdered-milk preparations, such as KUM, which came in tall brown tins with yellow writing. Breakfast, consisting of fresh fruit, was often eaten with parents; other meals were taken separately in the nursery tradition. ‘We had a paw-paw tree in the garden, and luscious papayas were a fruit I recall with mouth-watering delight,’ wrote Gordon Snell; other family favourites included pineapples, mangosteens, rambutans, mangoes, custard apples, passion fruit and bananas.71 ‘The durian’, on the other hand, ‘you either liked or hated; as a child I hated it,’ observed Roger Barrett.72 (He was not alone; the smell, a mixture of onions and rotten eggs, was enough to make many a European retch.) The other family meal was curry tiffin on Sundays – ‘generally a lavish affair’, in Norman Price’s recollection.73 ‘Loved it and still do,’ wrote Roger Barrett, and ‘I still like a good curry,’ agreed Christopher Cannell.74 According to hallowed tradition, curry makan was followed by gula malacca, a sweet tapioca goo, served with coconut milk and palm sugar – altogether an unforgettable experience.

  The lack of relatives in Malaya enhanced the importance of friends and neighbours, who became in many ways as close, or closer, than blood relations. This gave rise to the convention whereby children called all adult friends ‘Uncle’ or ‘Auntie’. Household pets helped to ward off boredom and filled the role of an extended family. ‘My father was known as St Francis as he collected strays almost daily,’ said Susan Malet.75 Dogs and cats abounded in European homes – scruffy kampong creatures and mongrels of every size and colour, cherished equally with Siamese, tabbies, terriers, Dalmatians, setters, Alsatians and cocker spaniels, not to mention chicks and ducklings, budgerigars, rabbits, goldfish, and the occasional monkey, baby owl, tortoise, terrapin and mongoose. In Butterworth, Dr Low kept snakes as pets to the apprehension of the Soper family. Recollections of the interwar years had a special place for Tufty, Sooty, Titi, Billy, Sammy, Bonzo, Ginger, Peter, Sandy, Chips, Jock, Paddy, Budu, Rufus, Buster and countless other adored companions.

  A daily walk was de rigueur in many households (supplemented at about seven years by the bike), and exploring, climbing and playing on swings and seesaws filled many a happy hour in the garden or at the club. Swimming was especially popular. Geoffrey Barnes recounted, ‘Ken and I learnt to swim [at Tanjong Kling] when we were only two or three years old.’76 Gordon Snell confirmed, ‘We children learned to swim at the earliest possible age – in fact I can’t even remember learning.’77 He and his friend Christopher Cannell from Singapore’s Adam Park went regularly to Singapore Swimming Club, where Christopher had swimming and diving lessons, and even as a young child had no fear of the top board. Christopher Watkins learnt to swim in the reservoir at Kuala Lipis at four or five. Norman Price lived close enough to frequent Penang Swimming Club at Tanjong Bungah, where children’s treats included ‘Eskimo Pies’ – chocolate-coated ice cream – and fizzy Fraser & Neave orangeade costing twenty cents a bottle in 1939. For less fortunate children who lived inland, an excursion to the beach was an occasional treat, as was a weekend up Penang Hill or at one of the main hill stations.

  Fun for Missee and TuanKechil was a mirror image of their parents’ social life. Birthdays, Christmas, Empire Day were all opportunities for children’s parties and dressing up in fancy dress as favourite nursery-rhyme or fairy-tale characters. Amah would be there as escort; sometimes mothers were invited for afternoon tea in time to watch the party games or the conjuror’s performance. ‘One of our exciting entertainments was home movies,’ Gordon Snell recalled. ‘My father had an eight-millimetre camera so we could see films of ourselves running, jumping, clowning – and also cartoons: the black-and-white image of Felix the Cat is still a laughing memory from those drawing room shows.’78 Snow White and Shirley Temple were the favourite images of the girls. The coronation on Empire Day, I2 May, 1937 was an unforgettable occasion, with hundreds of celebrations and children’s parties. ‘I remember the … parades for King George VI and Queen Elizabeth, and troops and police in white uniforms parading on the Malacca waterfront,’ said Geoffrey Barnes. ‘We were given various Coronation mementoes, mugs, handkerchiefs and medals with red, white and blue ribbons.’79 ‘The roundabout at Fraser’s Hill was a mass of flowers,’ Jette Rawcliffe remembered.80 For Margaret Price the coronation meant a new white frilly organdie dress with a red, w
hite and blue sash. ‘I remember going over to Penang to see the fireworks, the decorations: lots of Chinese lanterns, and the bands,’ said Ray Soper.81 ‘We celebrated the Coronation at the Runneymede Hotel,’ Susan Malet recalled. ‘We children were allowed to stay up late, which made it a very special occasion.’82

  In reality, however, imperialism was outside a child’s comprehension. As one ex-Malayan said, ‘In our small lives there was little to cause us to question our role or presence’ in the scheme of things.83 In some cases, colonial privilege had no meaning until the children returned to Britain and felt the drab contrast with Malaya. ‘Childhood in Singapore was very happy,’ was Gordon Snell’s recollection.84 Another of that interwar generation recalled ‘the general experience of a happy, indulged childhood, really – how lucky!’85 ‘Pre-war, children had an idyllic life,’ echoed a third.86 ‘A wonderful childhood!’ This, for the British, was the irreversible blessing of Malaya. ‘From my youth, the wonderful carefree life on estates, the happiness of my childhood … Sunshine, servants, wonderful memories.’87

  The Long Retreat 1940-1960

  11

  The Unprepared Society

  Despite the façade of peace and plenty in Malaya, the 1930s were a period of increasing international tension. ‘Reading about war … was one of the daily occupations of mankind. Talking about war and about the imminence or the chances of a general war was another,’ declared The Times’s review of the year 1937.1 In the East, Japanese forces had occupied Manchuria in 1931 before turning on Mongolia and China’s northern frontier, while in the West in 1936 Spain had dissolved into civil strife. The Barretts, rubber planters in Kedah, left Malaya in 1936 on home leave aboard the German luxury liner Potsdam, calling at Barcelona, the centre of Catalan separatism, as the Spanish Civil War erupted: a curious odyssey mapping the approaching global conflict. Their six-year-old son Roger noticed and long remembered how ‘this German ship already had mountings ready for guns in the event of war’.2 That year Japan joined Germany in an Anti-Comintern Pact. In 1937, after alleged ‘Red’ attacks on Japanese property were blown up into a full-scale ‘Incident’, Japanese troops poured into China’s eastern provinces, launching the Sino-Japanese War on 7 July 1937.