A Painter in Penang: A Gripping Story of the Malayan Emergency

by Clare Flynn

  ‘Art school. But I hate London.’

  ‘Who says it has to be London? You could always go to Paris. Of course you’d have to make a lot of effort with your French studies.’ Mary gave her a teasing look. ‘There’s also Glasgow. My best friend at school went there.’

  Jasmine looked horrified. ‘Ooh no. Glasgow’s in Scotland, isn’t it? Far too cold and gloomy up there.’

  Mary shrugged. ‘Yes, and I think it was heavily bombed in the war. That’s the benefit of Paris. The German occupation meant they didn’t bomb it to bits like England.’

  ‘I hadn’t thought of Paris. That might be interesting.’ Jasmine stared towards the horizon. ‘It’s so far away. But it wouldn’t be forever. And apart from the nonsense the nuns spouted in school I’ve never actually been taught art properly.’

  ‘That certainly hasn’t held you back. You are extremely talented, Jasmine, and it’s only right you should nurture that talent. Maybe we could make some enquiries and write off to find out whether you might be accepted as a student.’

  ‘Imagine! Being able to paint in the city of light. Following in the footsteps of the Impressionists.’ Jasmine grinned. ‘And being expected to paint all day long. What joy! I’ve so much to learn.’

  ‘Well, don’t get your hopes up until we have more information. They may not take on international students.’

  * * *

  They walked into the clubhouse, changing quickly before going into the dining room for lunch. Inside there was a buzz of conversation, more than usual. A portly woman passed by their table and stopped to greet Mary, who introduced her to Jasmine as Mrs Crawley.

  ‘So lovely to see you here, dear Mary. You are a rare visitor to the club lately.’

  ‘The baby doesn’t allow me a lot of time.’

  ‘Of course. How is the little thing?’

  ‘Frances is doing very well, thank you.’

  The woman shook her head, a solemn expression on her face. ‘I suppose you’ve heard about the High Commissioner?’

  ‘What about him?’

  Mrs Crawley replied by almost mouthing the words silently. ‘Dead. They called him back to London. Presumably to give him the heave-ho. The aeroplane he was on was in a collision with another as it was coming in to land. Poor Sir Edward was killed.’

  ‘Good gracious!’

  ‘A lot of people said he was absolutely hopeless at dealing with the situation here and had been summoned to Whitehall for the chop, but no one would wish that on the poor chap.’ Mrs Crawley pursed her lips. ‘Let’s hope someone who knows what they’re doing replaces him.’

  Mary nodded but appeared unwilling to be drawn further into conversation, so Mrs Crawley bade them goodbye and returned to join her table.

  ‘Let’s hope they don’t spend too long in London trying to find someone to replace him.’ Mary picked up the menu and glanced at it. ‘Not that having nobody will be a whole lot different from having Gent. But if we don’t want the Emergency to get out of hand or drag on, we need some rapid decisive action.’

  ‘What do you think they should do?’ Jasmine was trying to decide between cheese and onion pie or grilled chicken and the cheese was winning.

  ‘I haven’t a clue. I’ve no idea about military tactics, but I imagine rooting those fighters out of their jungle hideouts is a far from easy task. But it strikes me that anything they do has to put the protection of the Malayan people – Chinese as well as Malays – at its heart. If we lose the goodwill of the population we’ve had it.’

  ‘Most people don’t support the communists, do they?’

  ‘No. But they want to stay alive. The insurgents use threats to force them into helping them. Remember what that awful Ellis said about the Min Yuen? I don’t mean his nasty colour prejudice, but the part about the CTs striking terror into local villagers. They need to see us as their allies and the communists as the bad men.’

  The mention of Ellis brought back the horror of the lieutenant’s behaviour that morning. The prospect of the cheese and onion pie was less enticing. The waiter appeared and Jasmine, like Mary, just chose a salad.

  ‘Why do you think men pick on me, Mary?’ she asked when the waiter disappeared. ‘Do you think I send the wrong signals? Only I’m really not interested in any of that kind of thing.’

  ‘I expect it’s because you’re uncommonly pretty, dear girl. Although why on earth a man like Ellis should entertain the possibility you might return his interest I can’t imagine.’

  Jasmine stared through the window. Beyond the lawns and the swimming pool the water in the Strait was shimmering in the sunlight. She wished they hadn’t bothered with lunch but had stayed down on the beach.

  ‘Sometimes I think there must be something wrong with me.’

  ‘Wrong?’ Mary jerked her head back in surprise. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Other girls… when I was at school… you know…the only thing they ever thought about was boys. But I’m not interested in boys at all.’ She fiddled with her napkin. ‘Does that mean I’m abnormal?’

  Mary didn’t laugh at her. She looked sad and gave her a thoughtful smile. ‘You’re sixteen. I’m pretty sure I didn’t think about boys at all until I was about eighteen. And I didn’t actually have a boyfriend until I was in my twenties.’

  Jasmine tightened her lips. ‘Mummy said the same thing. But why then can’t they understand that and leave me alone?’ She stopped talking for a few moments while the waiter brought their salads. ‘I just don’t have feelings that way. Why can’t they get that?’

  ‘They?’

  ‘Not only Slimeball. I mean Howard too. Although he’s completely different from Ellis, I don’t want to think of him in that way. I want to be left alone.’ She toyed with a lettuce leaf. ‘It’s what scares me about going to art school. What if there are lots of boys there and they expect me to go out with them?’

  ‘If you like them and want to see them then you say yes. If you don’t you say no.’

  ‘Oh, Mary, you make it sound so simple.’

  ‘At art school the other students will be a similar age to you and that may make it more relaxed. I know when I was a student we used to go around together in large groups. Most of us were just friends. Of course, there were one or two who had serious relationships, but the vast majority merely wanted to have a jolly good time.’ Mary wriggled her brow. ‘Your problem is that you’re deprived of friends your own age. You spend all your time with me and Reggie. Two old crocks.’

  Jasmine shook her head fiercely. ‘No. Don’t say that. I love spending time with you both. You talk about more interesting things and you don’t treat me as a child.’

  23

  Over the coming months, the Emergency continued, with constant attacks on rubber estates, police stations, tin mines and other colonial outposts. The communist insurgents derailed trains and torched buildings and buses, as well as whole villages where the population was unwilling to support them with supplies or where they believed villagers to be collaborating with the colonial powers. The colonial government responded with curfews and detention without trial of suspected CTs – or bandits as they were commonly known. The planters and their families became accustomed to living under siege conditions, walking their estates with pistols in their belts and going to bed at night with armed guards posted outside.

  At Bella Vista there was now a permanently manned gate, and a barbed wire fence surrounded the property. Reggie kept a loaded pistol on his person, but otherwise life on the estate continued much as before.

  September 1948 brought a new High Commissioner to Malaya to replace Sir Edward Gent. The new man, Sir Henry Gurney, had been Chief Secretary in Palestine, dealing with the Jewish insurgency there. Gurney’s approach was immediately more effective than his predecessor’s, recognising the vital importance of close collaboration with the military and the need to cut off the supply chain to the communist insurgents – very different from the more cerebral Gent, who had doggedly focused on long term p
lans for independence, even as such plans were rendered unactionable while the insurgency was happening.

  That month, Jasmine took her school certificate. She was required to sit the exams in George Town in an invigilated examination room in the Town Hall. In the month leading up to this ordeal, reluctantly forsaking her little wooden studio, she had knuckled down and spent hours on the bungalow veranda bent over Latin and French grammar books, doing tedious mathematical exercises and reading set texts. This was not a Damascene conversion to the importance of study, but was out of duty and gratitude to her hosts and a desire not to disappoint.

  On exam days, Bintang was to drive her into George Town, returning at the appointed hour to transport her back to Bella Vista. Since the incident with Lieutenant Ellis, the driver had withdrawn from Jasmine’s company, and had not returned to the studio to sit again for his portrait. The only time she saw him now was on the walk to the school in the kampong, when Mary was also present and Bintang maintained a respectful distance behind them on the narrow pathway. So, when the day loomed for the exams to start, Jasmine’s nerves about the tests were intensified, or indeed overshadowed, by her nervousness about finally being alone with the driver whom she longed to call her friend.

  Bintang held the rear door of the car open for her. Jasmine obediently climbed into the back as Mary stood on the veranda to wish her luck and wave goodbye. After the car had passed through the estate gates and was proceeding downhill, Jasmine leaned forward. ‘I’d like to ride in the front with you, Bintang. Can you stop the car?’

  He gave his head a little shake and kept his eyes fixed on the road ahead. ‘Not good for white lady to drive in front with syce.’

  She flung herself back in her seat and gave a long sigh. ‘That’s ridiculous. Anyway, I don’t think of you as the syce but as my friend.’

  He continued to stare ahead and said nothing.

  ‘Are you angry with me, Bintang?’

  ‘Not angry, Missee Barrington.’

  Jasmine was perplexed. Why had he reverted to such formality? ‘Is this anything to do with Lieutenant Ellis? Has he threatened you?’

  She thought at first he wasn’t going to answer then he said, ‘Bad man. You stay away from him.’

  ‘I have every intention of staying as far away as possible from him. And I didn’t thank you properly for rescuing me from him.’

  ‘I do my job.’

  His tone was curt, clipped. Jasmine leaned back against the leather upholstery and wondered what she could say to restore things to how they had been before. Bintang had never been an easy conversationalist, although he had opened up to her on several occasions. But a trap door had slammed shut and she was stuck on the other side.

  When they reached George Town he drove straight to the town hall, a grand palace-like structure next to the municipal offices, opposite Fort Cornwallis. As Jasmine got out of the motorcar, her nerves returned. Today she faced two exams, back to back. Looking up at the white Palladian building her stomach flipped.

  ‘How long, Missee?’

  ‘I have two two-hour papers today with an hour’s break in the middle.’

  ‘I be outside when you finish. Three o’clock.’

  Clutching her leather pencil case, she stepped under the elegant arched portico and into the building. Her first exam was her hated Latin. She hoped the translations would not be too taxing. At least after today she could say goodbye to Latin forever. With relish, she imagined a ritual textbook burning.

  Jasmine looked around her and hesitated on the threshold of the designated room. Two neat rows of three desks each were placed wide distances apart to prevent any possibility of cheating. At the end of the room on a raised dais, a stern looking woman was sorting through papers. A few people were already seated at desks. Jasmine was relieved to see she was not the only person taking the examination outside of school.

  Another girl approached as she stood on the threshold. The girl had a halo of blonde curls and was tall and leggy. ‘Hello. Is this your first exam?’

  ‘Yes. I have six more to come.’

  ‘Me too. But I’ve a mind to bunk off some of them.’

  ‘Bunk off?’ Jasmine had never heard the expression but guessed what the girl meant.

  ‘What’s the point of the stupid old school certificate? Mummy and Daddy plan for me to be presented next year and I plan to bag a husband, so who needs a school leaving certificate?’

  ‘Presented?’

  ‘At court, silly. I’m to be a debutante. And we all know so long as you don’t look like the back of a bus it’s a jolly sure way to get married off.’ She winked at Jasmine. ‘I’m rather hoping to land myself someone with a big fat castle.’ She gave a little giggle. ‘A duke or a fabulously rich landowner. Or even an American. Now that would be exciting! How come you’re not doing this at school?’

  ‘I left.’

  The girl laughed. ‘Me too. Well, got expelled actually.’

  ‘Expelled?’

  ‘Are you an echo or something?’ The girl rolled her eyes but went on. ‘I was caught smoking on three separate occasions and then the last straw was when they found a copy of Lady Chatterley’s Lover under my pillow.’

  ‘You mean a book?’ Jasmine had never heard of it.

  ‘It’s banned in England. So, it is here too. But I have a cousin who lives in France and she sent me a copy from there. I’d let you read it only they confiscated it. It’s incredibly boring actually, apart from the rude bits but they’re absolutely filthy!’ She gave Jasmine a nudge with her elbow.

  Before they could continue, the woman on the raised dais rang a bell. ‘Take your seats. The examination will begin in three minutes. Complete silence now, please.’

  Jasmine read through the questions. The prose translation was a tedious description by Livy of some ancient battle. With relief she recognised it as one she had revised a few days ago. The poetry was from Ovid but she didn’t know it. Meanings were given for two of the more obscure words. Whilst she recognised most of the other words, she struggled to put them together in any logical way. Taking several deep breaths, she read it through again and decided it was about a woman pining for her lover, so she cobbled together the words she knew with guesses at the rest and moved on to the next question, which was to scan and mark the stresses and caesuras in the first four lines of the poem. As she wrestled with this task, the time flew by and she had to race to finish the paper in time. Fortunately, the last two questions involved describing the lives of notable Greek and Roman figures in English and writing a brief description of a Roman villa and she was able to dash them off without too much trouble.

  The bell jingled and they all put down their pens and waited for the papers to be collected. Jasmine hoped she had done enough to scrape a pass.

  ‘Quick lunch at the E&O? My treat. I’m Barbara Appleton by the way.’ Before Jasmine could respond, Barbara linked an arm through hers. ‘Don’t worry, Daddy’s stinking rich and has an account at the E&O so we’ll put lunch on that.’ She patted Jasmine’s arm. ‘He’s such a sweetie. Mummy can be a bit of a dragon, but Daddy can’t deny me anything. Besides, we have to celebrate. One down and six to go.’ She propelled Jasmine along the road towards the hotel, keeping up a constant flow of words that left Jasmine exhausted. ‘Wasn’t that paper quite the most hideous bore?’

  ‘I thought it was rather hard. Especially the Ovid.’

  ‘Goodness. You didn’t actually try to answer the questions, did you?’

  ‘Of course. Didn’t you?’

  ‘I did the short ones at the end in English but I couldn’t remember whether Jason was the one with the Argonauts or the one who was tied to the rock. So I took a guess and made the rest up.’

  Jasmine looked at her in awe. ‘But won’t you get into trouble if you completely flunk the exam?’

  ‘Who cares? Not me.’ Barbara steered Jasmine into the hotel, and towards a table. All the waiters appeared to know her. ‘Don’t tell me you’re a swot! You’re f
ar too pretty to be one of them.’

  ‘I’m certainly not a swot, but I don’t want to disappoint my parents.’

  Barbara made a derisive pout. ‘You have to live your own life. They’ve already lived theirs. We’re young and need to make the most of it.’ She looked up at the waiter, ‘Bring me the Welsh rarebit, Walter.’ Turning to Jasmine she said, ‘It’s my absolute favourite thing.’

  ‘I’ll have that too then.’

  ‘Now, I want to know everything about you. And you’d better start with your name as we didn’t actually get to that did we?’

  ‘It’s Jasmine Barrington.’

  ‘Jasmine! What a wondrously exotic name. I hate being Barbara. In fact I’m thinking of acting like an American and calling myself Barb or Barbie. What do you think?’ Without waiting for an answer, she ploughed on. ‘But then that extremely rich Woolworth’s heiress is called Barbara and she was a deb too. You know. The one who was married to Cary Grant then married that Russian prince this year. Her fourth husband. I see her as someone to aspire to. I love the idea of casting off husbands like last season’s coat and getting yourself a new one.’ She called to the waiter. ‘Do tell the kitchen to hurry up as we are sitting an exam and have to be back at the Town Hall at one. How old are you, Jasmine?’

  ‘Sixteen. Nearly seventeen.’

  ‘A mere babe. I’m already eighteen but I’m a complete dunce. And bone idle apparently. Daddy had to pay for all kinds of tutors for me after I got booted out of school and they kept saying I wasn’t ready.’

  The waiter returned a minute later bearing the plates.

  ‘Bring us each a glass of champagne will you, Walter.’

  ‘Not for me!’ Jasmine was shocked. They had the English paper this afternoon.

  ‘Miss Appleton, your father has left us strict instructions that you are not to be served with alcohol if he is not present.’

  ‘Oh, come on, Walter! He’ll never find out. You could put it down on the bill as something else.’