by Clare Flynn
The war has altered everything. There is a lack of trust between those left behind on Penang and those of us ordered to flee. In other words, between the locals we British abandoned, and us, their former masters. Even in the schools. My school always prided itself on taking in Malay and Chinese children, as well as those Europeans who, like Penny and her best friend, Evie’s daughter, Jasmine, were not sent away to boarding school. Now the school is entirely for local children. The staff will still welcome me back, but I would no longer feel comfortable there. And even though I’ve suffered so much myself – perhaps more than they did – I can’t help feeling guilty that they were abandoned when the Europeans were evacuated.
Some of those ‘left-behind’ local teachers had a terrible war too, remaining in George Town. I know of two of them who were forcibly used as comfort women by the Japanese, even though it is never spoken of. And there was the male Malayan teacher who used to teach physical education and was beheaded as a spy after being tortured soon after the island was invaded.
We have all in our different ways witnessed the horrors of war. That is why my future will always be here in Malaya – but it will be a future of increasing self-imposed isolation. I am neither native nor European. I am dispossessed, searching for something I will never find. So here I am, rattling around an empty house, alone with my memories, my disillusionment and my despair.
I have to eat of course. My appetite might have been suppressed by the years of short rations and an almost exclusively rice diet, but I do recognise the need to buy food.
And that’s how I happen to run into Reggie Hyde-Underwood outside the Cold Storage shop, where everyone in George Town buys imported food and meat.
I haven’t seen Reggie since Singapore, when he’d arrived with my father, after driving him and others down from Penang – that day when I’d told him the news was confirmed that Frank was dead.
I am carrying shopping and almost knock into him in the street as I emerge from the store. I don’t realise it is Reggie at first, so I mumble apologies and begin to walk away.
He calls my name. His voice is so like his brother’s that for an instant I almost believe it is Frank. My disappointment must be evident in my face.
‘I didn’t know you were back in Penang,’ he says. ‘To be honest, I presumed you must be in England or Australia… or that maybe you hadn’t made it.’
‘I was in a camp.’
‘Me too.’
He looks at me intently, searchingly. ‘Was it bloody for you?’
I nod. ‘You?’
He nods too. Then we are silent. Three and a half years of abject misery, starvation and degradation summed up in a simple word and a nod. The silence of those who know. Who have seen more than they ever want to talk about. We both start to speak at once.
I concede to him.
‘Look, I’m in town for some business.’ He seems nervous. ‘Don’t suppose you’d care to join me for a bite of supper at the E&O?’
I’m about to make an excuse. I rarely leave the house and the prospect of sitting down for a meal in a hotel doesn’t appeal.
But anticipating my objections, Reggie speaks again. ‘It’s not like the old days. The place is looking a bit scruffy. The Japanese officers used it as their private club. The new management have only just got hold of some glasses and tableware. There was none left after all the bombing we did before the blighters surrendered. But the place is still mostly intact.’ His eyes send out a silent appeal. ‘It gets very lonely dining on my own, so I’d be terribly grateful if you could see your way to joining me.’
Reminding myself that he is Frank’s brother, I reluctantly agree.
We don’t linger talking. I am worried enough about whether I’ll manage to sustain an evening’s conversation with him, and I don’t want to exhaust the potential topics by using them now.
On the way home, I make a diversion to buy something to wear. Miraculously, our bungalow in George Town came through the war unscathed, our faithful servants having remained to protect the place against looters – and it had not been requisitioned by the Japanese. My clothes were all waiting in the wardrobe but, months after my liberation, they still hang off me like a child dressing up in her mother’s old frocks. Even if they fitted, it would feel wrong to wear them again. They represent the old me, the one who still had hope and purpose and had known happiness and love.
In the shop, I make a decision. I will no longer wear European dress. No more cotton frocks. Malaya will always be my home so I will dress like a Malayan, not like the over-privileged white woman I had been before the war. I choose instead a simple cheongsam and a baju kurong – a shirt worn over a sarong.
Back home, as evening comes, I put on the silk cheongsam. It is pale jade. Very plain and unadorned. Neat enough to be respectful of my dinner companion, but not over-dressy or in any way fashionable. I stand in my bedroom and look at my reflection. I like the anonymity the garment gives me, indistinguishable from the Chinese and Malay women and quite unlike anything the mems would wear.
Reggie picks me up in his motorcar. It obviously isn’t the one he’d had before the war. He tells me he had to dispose of that one before the invading enemy could seize it, like the car Veronica and I had seen being pushed off the dockside in Singapore. Reggie destroyed his by dowsing it in petrol and setting it on fire at the side of the Bukit Timah Road.
I’m glad he makes no comment about my dress. Reggie strikes me as not the kind of man who notices that sort of thing. He is not at all flirtatious or full of insincere charm, like so many white men. Not that anyone would give me a second glance with my straggly thin hair, rough hands and too-thin body. He probably barely notices me, and I am happy about that. On the way to the Eastern & Oriental we don’t speak. It’s only a ten-minute journey and I stare out of the window, grateful that he isn’t trying to fill the silence.
Once we are seated at our table, Reggie with a cold beer, while I sip a fruit juice, we study the menu, both trying to prolong the period before an effort at conversation will be inevitable. That doesn’t take long. It is not like the days before the war came to Penang, when the E&O served up an extensive menu of fine foods and the patrons sipped Veuve Cliquot, shipped in from France. Tonight, there are just one or two basic choices.
Eventually I ask him when he’d got back to Penang.
‘Soon after we were liberated. I went back to England first. My wife, Susan, and our son, Stanford, had returned there from Australia after V.E. Day.’ He lowers his eyes and scratches with a fingernail at the cheap cotton tablecloth that has replaced the pre-war fine linen. ‘My plan had been for some R&R over there for a few months, then the three of us would head back here together. But as soon as I got to England, Susan told me she wasn’t coming back to Penang.’
I listen but say nothing, waiting for him to tell me as much or as little as he wants.
‘It’s not even that anything bad happened to her here. She and the boy left with Evie Barrington and her two kids immediately after they got to Singapore.’
‘I know. I was with them as far as Singapore.’
‘Of course, you were. Sorry, I forgot that.’ He smiles an apology.
‘Why didn’t she want to come back?’
‘Susan always disliked Malaya. She’s very much a home bird.’ He gives a dry chuckle. ‘Even Scotland’s pushing it a bit for her – too many midges. She hates the climate here, the lack of seasons, the insects, everything really.’
The waiter arrives and serves us with the starters, and we begin to eat.
After a few minutes, Reggie looks up. ‘When Evie’s Doug died, it made matters worse. The idea that you could break your leg from a fall and die because the wound got infected in the jungle horrified her. She thought this place was savage. The Japs dropping bombs on us and forcing us to flee like thieves in the night was the last straw. She didn’t like the idea of Stanford growing up here.’
‘I’m sorry. Do you think she’ll eventually change her
mind?’
He shakes his head. ‘I doubt it. She wanted me to move back there. But how could I possibly give up this life? What would I do in England? All I know about is growing rubber. I think Susan would have liked me to get a job in an office and live in a little suburban house somewhere.’ He meets my eyes. ‘Honestly, Mary, could you see a man like me doing that?’
I couldn’t, but instead of saying so, I say, ‘But didn’t you both say, “for better or worse”?’ As soon as I blurt the words out, I regret them. ‘I’m sorry. That was uncalled for.’
‘No, you’re right. We did. And I certainly meant it.’ He gives a long sigh and leans back in his chair. ‘But war changes everything doesn’t it? We’d grown up together and thought we knew each other so well but we didn’t. At least it seems that way now.’
‘But you have a child. Doesn’t that make a difference?’
‘I don’t even know him, Mary. He was little more than a baby when we were separated.’ He closes his eyes for a moment. ‘When I was back in England, I tried, but it was hard. Being just out of the camp, I looked half-dead and the poor kid was scared of me. He didn’t know me, and he didn’t like the idea of this jumpy, skeletal stranger being his dad.’ Reggie shakes his head again. ‘Susan and I talked about Stanford coming here during the school summer break, but I could tell she wasn’t keen on the idea. He wants to go to boarding school, so she’d like to have him at home with her in the holidays.’ His eyes reflect his sadness. ‘You probably think I’m a bad father.’
‘No. I don’t. Absolutely I don’t. They say a child needs his father but there are countless children in the world who have lost a parent, often both of them. Once he grows up, he’ll make his own decisions and before you know it, he’ll be leaving home anyway and if you’ve given up everything, what will you have left?’
These words are more numerous than I have said to anyone since leaving the camp. It feels odd actually having a conversation. But it is odd in a good way.
We finish our starters and the waiter returns with the main course. I’ve only ordered a small salad with cold chicken, but this is the first meal I have actually been able to eat without pushing half of it aside.
‘Maybe it’s just me,’ I say at last. ‘But I don’t like being with people who don’t know what it was like for us.’
He looks up, surprised. ‘Not only you. I think that was the root of the problem with Susan.’ He picks up his fork then puts it down again. ‘Everything she’s concerned about seems to be petty and trivial.’ He hesitates before blurting, ‘And she didn’t like the nightmares.’
‘You have them too?’
He nods. ‘I live it again every night. I doubt I’ll ever be free of it. They liberated us physically but I’m still there mentally. Is it like that for you?’
Relief washes over me. This is the first time I have been with someone who understands, since leaving the camp. ‘It’s exactly like that.’
‘Apparently I wake in the night screaming. Susan kept telling me to pull myself together and get a grip, as it was scaring Stanford. Back here it’s not so bad.’ He frowns. Something has just occurred to him. ‘Perhaps it’s because here feels like there. The sounds from the jungle, the birds, the cicadas. I go to sleep and my mind and body think I’m still in the camp. In England there was none of that, so I kept going back there in my dreams.’ He shakes his head. ‘Does that sound crazy?’
It doesn’t sound at all crazy and I tell him that.
We eat for a while in silence, but there is nothing awkward about it. I don’t know Reggie well. I’d barely known him at all before I met his brother, and after that, Frank and I hadn’t spent much time with him and Susan – just the odd occasion when they invited us up to Bella Vista or we met for dinner at Evie and Doug’s place. We were all gathered at Evie’s the night we got the phone call to say that the reason Doug was late was that he had fallen down a mineshaft and was seriously injured. Just a few days later he was dead and Evie a widow. After that, I’d spent time with her – and, whenever he could get away from the airfield, with Frank.
I like Reggie. He is very different from Frank in appearance, but they share many qualities. He seems kind, thoughtful, interested and courteous. There is a gentleness about him even though he is like a large bear. Although these days he appears a rather underfed bear – all the rather too-generous fleshiness of the old Reggie is gone, as a result of his incarceration with its physical drudgery and malnutrition. He’s also lost the florid colour of his countenance. He has deep wrinkles where there was once a rotund, slightly puffy face. Anyone looking at him would recognise that he has suffered whereas in the past they would have thought he was rather too fond of his food and his stengahs – the ubiquitous whisky and sodas that all the ex-pat men seemed to drink.
‘Are you able to talk about what happened to you?’ he asks. ‘Or is it too painful?’
‘I’ve never talked to anyone and I doubt I ever will.’
He nods, his expression solemn. ‘Me too.’
‘They told us when they freed us from the camp that talking might help, but I can’t bear the thought of sharing what I went through with anyone else.’
‘I had the opposite problem. A wife whose favourite expression had become “Oh, do buck up!”’
We lapse into silence again and I look around the dining room for the first time. The once-elegant and impressive room needs repainting – re-plastering too as there are cracks in the walls and holes where the plaster is missing. The chandelier above us has only one or two functioning lightbulbs and the signature giant floral arrangements, that once stood on a marble table in the middle of the room, are gone. Some efforts have been made to brighten the place up and reclaim its reputation as the pre-eminent hotel in George Town: each table has a small posy of flowers, but the glory days of the Eastern & Oriental are long gone – perhaps forever.
There are only about a dozen other diners, scattered about the vast room. I don’t recognise anyone and several of them are locals. In the heyday of the place, it had been mainly whites and one or two wealthy Chinese merchants.
Seeing me looking around, Reggie asks, ‘Do you ever go to the Penang Club these days?’
‘No. I never liked it and now… well, I don’t actually go anywhere. Tonight’s a first for me.’
Reggie smiles. ‘Then I’m honoured, Mary.’
As he speaks, the band strikes up. Though depleted in numbers, they are playing the same old dance tunes from before the war.
‘I didn’t expect that,’ he says. Impulsively, he adds, ‘I say, would you like to dance?’
I am taken aback, but before I can say anything he is on his feet, pulling me onto mine. I resist the instinct to refuse and let him steer me onto the wooden dance floor, pock-marked from bomb damage or gunfire.
‘I’m not a great dancer,’ I say, as he begins to lead me in a waltz. ‘I’m relying on you to cover up my mistakes.’
But dancing with Reggie is surprisingly relaxing and undemanding. None of the other diners have joined us, nor do they appear to show any interest in our efforts. It is strange to be dancing in a man’s arms, surreal almost, after what we have both been through, yet it is oddly comforting.
The last time I had danced had been here in this very room, with Frank, the night we got engaged. It was the last time I saw him before he was killed.
The spell is broken and I drop Reggie’s hold, stepping away. ‘I’m sorry. I can’t do this. I think I’d like to go home.’
Reggie’s mouth stretches into a regretful smile. ‘It’s I who should be apologising. It was stupid of me. Tactless. Forgive me, Mary.’
Back at the table, he calls for the bill and we leave the restaurant. In the dark interior of his car, I feel I owe him an explanation.
‘It’s because of Frank. We danced together at the E&O the last time I saw him. The night he asked me to marry him.’
We are driving along the waterfront and he pulls over beside a stretch of beach and switc
hes off the engine. ‘I should have realised. That was stupid of me. Thoughtless.’
‘No, it wasn’t. How could you possibly have known?’
‘I should have guessed that the last time you danced it would have been with him.’ His head bends over the steering wheel and I sense he might be trying to hide his emotions. ‘I miss him every day, Mary. He was my only brother. We had no sisters. And we got on so well, even though we were completely different. I can’t even imagine what courage it must have taken to fly in those planes. He would have hated running a rubber estate with a passion. He was my little brother. Used to follow me about when he was small. I can’t help thinking it’s my fault he died. I was the one who encouraged him to take the posting out here rather than one in England. I thought it would be safe here. I thought it would be an adventure. I never dreamt what would happen to us all.’
‘Stop!’ I say. ‘Never ever say such a thing again. Frank would probably have died in the summer of 1940 – I read in the paper the other day that the average life expectancy of a Spitfire pilot was four weeks. By coming to Penang he lived another eighteen months and if he hadn’t come out here I’d never have met him. And of all the bloody awful, terrible things that have happened in my life, meeting Frank was not one of them.’ I can hear the anger in my voice. ‘I loved him and he loved me and he was and will always be the only love of my life, so don’t you dare say you wish you’d never persuaded him to come here.’ Tears come and they are a relief. Feeling Reggie’s arms around me is a relief too.
He holds me against him, twisted around in the front seat of his car as my tears soak into his shirt. He strokes my back as I sob. When the big jerky sobs stop, I accept his starched linen handkerchief and dry my eyes.
Sniffing back the tears I say, ‘That’s the first time I’ve managed to cry properly since I left the camp. I couldn’t even cry when I heard that my dad hadn’t made it. So, thank you, Reggie. I feel much better already. You’re the only one who understands about Frank. And I don’t need to explain to you why I can’t talk about what happened with the Japs, as you can’t either.’
