by Boris Hembry
One night, when the Butlers were on leave, Cookie and Amah went down to the village, leaving number one wife in their quarters. When they returned, sometime after midnight, they found that the other woman had hanged herself from a beam in the servery, just behind the dining room. (Jean used to hang her jelly bags from the same beam.) They were at their wits’ end. Everyone knew of the constant quarrelling, so it was most unlikely that the police would believe their story and they would be arrested for murder. So they decided to bury the body in the garden. They carefully removed the flowers from the bed, dug a deep hole in which the body was laid, backfilled, and with equal care replaced all the flowers.
The next day they told everyone that number one wife had left the previous evening to return to China, in compliance with the tuan besar’s orders. The story was, of course, believed without question. But as the weeks went by they became increasingly worried about what would happen if ever the body were discovered. Who would possibly believe their story now? If it were true, why had they not reported it at the time?
The Butlers, too, were worried stiff. If the body was eventually discovered, could they be charged as accessories after the fact? If they informed the police, would a perfectly innocent couple be arrested for murder? They thought about it long and hard, and finally decided to say and do nothing, and the matter remained a secret until revealed to Jean and me in the quiet of a Suffolk garden.
I believe that the cook and amah were innocent. Be that as it may ... the flowerbed under the verandah, outside the bedroom, grew the finest cannas I have ever seen.
The Volunteers training was now taken very seriously. Several of the instructors had seen action in France the previous year and had escaped from Dunkirk. But the training continued to be concerned very much to open warfare, when most of us could see that it bore very little relevance to a campaign in the jungles of Malaya. I remember suggesting at the time that it would be more sensible to train us, at least the planters and miners, for intelligence and liaison work, for attachment to the regular army, where our knowledge of the local languages and the terrain would be of most use. But it was pointed out that it was doubted whether we would be required to fight in Malaya, and that the training would be of great benefit for the reconquest of Europe. The small arms training was, of course, not wasted.
It was sometime in 1940 that I had two adventures with snakes. Snakes were common on Kamuning, as they were throughout Malaya, and one met them daily around the estate. On the whole they were timorous creatures and did their best to get away, as will almost all wild animals.
It was about noon, I was walking along a path in the rubber with my mongrel dog Bill, when some 20 yards ahead he started barking furiously. I recognised the bark; it signified either a snake or a scorpion. He, like other dogs I have owned, seemed to have a sixth sense for danger. I walked forward on my guard when a few yards away I saw a large snake curled up on the path, rearing to a height of about two feet. It looked like a cobra to me – which was dangerous enough – so I picked up a length of fallen branch and shied at it. It hit the snake which immediately reared itself up to about five feet, and, spitting furiously, rapidly advanced towards us. I turned and fled, followed by Bill. The snake was gaining on us, when we came to a fork in the path. I took the right, Bill the left. Thank God the snake followed Bill. I ran on for another 50 yards or so and was joined by an equally frightened dog. The snake was a hamadryad or king cobra, one of the few that would attack without provocation and whose bite is positively deadly.
The second episode occurred one tiffin time. We were just sitting down when Ayah rushed in crying, ‘Tuan, Tuan, there is a big snake at the back. As big as my arm.’ As there was not a slimmer person alive than our ayah Alagamah, a snake the thickness of her arm could easily be despatched. So, grabbing a golf club and, still in my stockinged feet, I ran down the back stairs and caught a glimpse of the snake’s tail disappearing into the long grass beside the hen run. I managed to hit it with my 7-iron. The next second, and given the space, I could have leapt backwards a full 20 yards. The thin little snake had turned and reared itself every bit of six feet high, spitting. Its body was thicker than my thigh let alone Ayah’s arm. It was quite the largest hamadryad that I have ever seen. There were gasps of fright from the two kebuns who had gathered around to watch the fun. From the safety of the verandah, to where we had all retreated in double quick time, we saw the snake lower itself and slide under the chicken wire of the hen run.
Ayah said that she had first noticed the snake curled up under a lime tree in the garden near which John had been playing earlier in the morning. There was no doubt, therefore, that it had to be despatched as soon as possible. But how? I was not a shot in those days and did not possess a gun. My service revolver would be useless. But first of all I had to get into the hen run, through the loose piece of wire which was all of two feet high, on my hands and knees. I realised that this did not afford me the easiest means of escape, nevertheless, I crawled into the run, having armed myself and the kebuns with long poles, and surveyed the scene. No snake to be seen. So I crept up to the old tree stump in the middle of the run and saw a hole amongst the roots, peered down and was glared at by two of the most evil-looking eyes imaginable. The snake was curled up, about two feet down. I pondered the problem of how to kill it when I remembered my mother telling me that, when she was very young and living in Johannesburg, the family’s Zulu garden boy had enticed a mamba out by puffing smoke from his pipe down the hole. I certainly had no intention of blowing cigarette smoke down this particular hole, so I called for an old piece of sacking which I wrapped around the end of a pole, doused it in kerosene, set light to it and rammed it down the hole and held it there. There was a furious response from the snake, in addition to much hissing and spitting, and just when I thought that it was gaining the upper hand, the struggles subsided and when they had stopped I withdrew the pole and after a little while the badly burned and stupefied snake slithered out and was quickly despatched. It was over 13 feet long. I felt no remorse, as I had done with the python in Sumatra, because I thought about John playing around the tree stump, within only a yard or so of the brute.
The Chrystals duly returned and it was my turn to make arrangements for our long leave, only the second I was to have in nearly 11 years. As the company had forbidden its European staff to return to Britain because of the war in Europe, we decided to go to Australia. I would go on ahead and look for a flat at Cottesloe, on the coast near Perth, whilst Jean and John would spend a month or so with Charles and Pat Martine in Kuching, Sarawak, before joining me. We took the night mail to Singapore and I put Jean and John aboard the Vyner Brooke, spent the night with John and Gwen Pickering, and early the next morning flew off in a DC3 for Darwin. It was the first time I had flown. Fifty years ago one seldom flew above 4,000 feet so were able to appreciate in the cool the indescribable beauty of the East Indies islands, the Flores Sea, the Celebes, and the wonderful colours of the coral reefs. We landed around midday for lunch, and for the night at Bali for dinner, a swim and a good night’s sleep in a comfortable hotel. Except for the Himalayas I have never seen beauty anywhere in the world to exceed that of the East Indies Archipelago. I have only ever enjoyed one other flight so much as this one – the return journey from Darwin to Singapore, some four months later, in an Empire flying boat. I always regretted not having the chance to fly from England to Singapore by flying boat.
The next evening we reached Darwin. The contrast to the beauty of the Malaya and the Dutch East Indies was total. The airport hotel was modern and clean, but the town was deplorable. Darwin contained many poor whites whose houses were made from flattened kerosene tins and packing cases.
After another comfortable night I had an early start in a McRobertson Miller Airways Lockheed Hudson, piloted by two Australians with the broadest Aussie accents one could imagine. Flying over Carnarvon I overheard ‘Rices ’ere terdye.’ ‘What’s that yer sye?’ ‘Rices ‘ere terdye.’ After a litt
le while I gathered that there was a race meeting at Carnarvon that day.
There was a story going around Calcutta in the war about an English ward sister who had stopped by the bed of a very sick Aussie pilot and said, ‘Sergeant, you know you did not come in here to die.’ ‘No,’ was the reply. ‘I came in yesterdye.’
Two stopovers I remember vividly. The first was on a strip on a sheep station, quite literally 500 miles from anywhere. Just the station homestead, the dormitory shed for the aboriginal drovers, a half million acres of land, and half a million sheep. I have never seen so many flies. The butter was black with them. The twice-weekly arrival of the mail plane and its crew and passengers were the only contacts the sheep farmers had with the outside world.
We then flew on to Port Hedland, where the inhabitants were celebrating the hundredth consecutive day of temperatures above 125 degrees Fahrenheit. Port Hedland was famous in the gold rush days of the last century. I recall seeing Japanese ‘pearl fisher’ boats in the harbour when we departed the next morning. These were to be seen in every port between Singapore and Perth. The Japanese were busy charting every harbour in the region.
During the flight I teamed up with fellow passengers Jock and Isobel Campbell who were also going on leave from Malaya. Our families were to see a lot of each other during our three months’ stay at Cottesloe. In March 1942 Jock and another 20-odd Malayans made an extraordinary escape from Padang, in Sumatra, to Ceylon in a prahu. He was later sent to Australia by SOE to organise and command the equivalent there of Force 136. At one time he shared ownership of a racehorse with Bob Chrystal and all us friends were pleased when the poor animal had to be put down. In loyalty to Bob and Jock we always backed their horse, but it never finished in the first three. Jock was eventually to become managing director of SOCFIN, but, alas, did not live long in retirement to enjoy his well-earned wealth.
We had three most enjoyable months in Cottesloe doing all the usual things of a seaside family holiday, but all the time conscious of the events taking place in Europe. Although the Battle of Britain had been won and the danger of invasion had been lifted for the immediate future, the news from the Middle East was depressing. We seemed to be on the retreat everywhere. Luckily we were ignorant that far worse was to come. Jock and I called in at the Royal Australian Air Force recruiting office to offer our services, but were turned down as soon as we said we came from Malaya. They did not recruit from the colonies. Our feeble joke concerning colonies and convicts was not well received.
We took a trip down to Albany, the southernmost tip of Western Australia, with nothing between us and the South Pole, and stood on the cliffs, several hundred high, and saw and heard the famous blowholes. On the way home in the dark, we were travelling along the main road, with forest on both sides, when suddenly a massive body descended from the sky to land on top of the bonnet. A kangaroo had decided to leap the road and had obviously misjudged the distance. He immediately leapt off and disappeared into the bush on the other side of the road, leaving a large dent.
One of the outstanding memories of our stay at Cottesloe must be the morning we looked out of the window and saw about a dozen of the largest liners afloat steaming into Fremantle harbour, amongst them was the Queen Mary, the Queen Elizabeth, the Mauritania and the Ile de France. They had been sent to Australia to be converted into troop ships, out of harm’s way.
Our stay in Cottesloe came to an end and we flew to Melbourne, stopping en route at Adelaide after having flown over the Nullarbor Plain, once again miles and miles of nothingness, except the railway line which went, quite literally, dead straight for hundreds of miles. After a night at the Menzies Hotel in Melbourne we took the flight to Hobart.
Tasmania was a total delight. Years behind the rest of Australia and still very British, with many county, town and lake names the same as in England. We stayed the first week at the Wrest Point Hotel, one of the most luxurious hotels in one of the most beautiful sites I have ever seen. Unfortunately the cost was way beyond my means so, after a week, we moved into a comfortable pub in Browns River, about 20 miles outside Hobart.
It was winter in Tasmania and there was usually frost on the ground when I played golf in the mornings. By lunch the frost had thawed and we would play with John on the beach in the warmth of a good English summer day. We met and made friends with two Malayan couples and a couple from Burma, the Fairleighs. I met them again in Calcutta in 1943 after they had made the terrible trek out of Burma during which many hundreds died of starvation and disease. They had carried their little girl on their backs.
Whilst we were at Browns River I received from home a cutting from The Times, setting out the whole of Sir John Hay’s chairman’s report on Kamuning Estate for the year 1940/41.I was particularly pleased to read: ‘Your manager, Mr Robert Chrystal, was unfortunately taken ill some months ago and was compelled to go to Australia for treatment. During his absence Mr Boris Hembry, the Senior Assistant, took over the management of the Estate, and I would like to say a special word of appreciation on the manner in which he has acquitted himself in this very important charge.’ More important, the Board voted me a special bonus of £150. The report went on to say ‘As to the condition of your estate, it is only necessary once more for me to assure you that it is upkept in first-class condition and that the yields we continue to obtain from them are on a generous scale.’ As I had been both senior assistant and acting manager throughout the year under review I found it most gratifying that my efforts had been publicly acknowledged. My father pointed out that it was most unusual for individual staff names to be mentioned by chairmen in annual reports.
We then took a train to Sydney. The first part of the journey to Albury, on the border of Victoria and New South Wales, was aboard the luxury Spirit of Progress, but because the gauges of the rail tracks were different in the two states, we had to change trains and continue on the second stage of the journey in far less comfort. My brother Gordon, by now living in Sydney, had booked us into a hotel in the King’s Cross district. To our dismay we discovered that it was a temperance hotel. However, it was very comfortable, the food was excellent, and we could drink in our bedroom.
Gordon had come out to Australia in 1937, and I had succeeded in tracking him down through Alfa Laval’s Sydney office. He was in great form, and was living in a hostel. He was something of a Lothario and boasted that of the 15 girls at the hostel he had bedded 14. (The 15th, Mary, he had first to marry.) Gordon was shortly to join up and was to become the sergeant-at-arms on the Queen Mary, very definitely a case of poacher turned gamekeeper. We spent several enjoyable days in a hired launch exploring Sydney Harbour and all its beautiful inlets. We went aboard the Queen Elizabeth, at that time the biggest ship in the world, which had come round from Fremantle for its refit. The famous Bondi Beach we found disappointing, much preferring Manly.
The evening before our departure for Singapore, Gordon and Mary joined us for dinner, followed by a small party in our hotel room. We had smuggled bottles of beer into the hotel in suitcases, and when these ran out Gordon went out with the case for replenishments. Apart from the beer fumes, we all smoked, so that in no time at all the bedroom smelt like a public bar, despite the open window. Sometime after midnight Gordon and Mary decided it was time to go home. We staggered along the corridor. I was following Gordon and I knew instinctively what was going to happen. Sure enough, he lurched on to a bedroom door, which immediately flew open, and we were greeted with female screams and dire threats that the police would be called.
Having seen our guests off the premises I returned to our bedroom where there were still a dozen or so empty bottles in evidence. It was far too late to do anything about these so I stuffed them into the wardrobe in the hope that we would be off the premises by the time the chambermaid got around to the room, and went to sleep. The chambermaid duly appeared with our tea in the morning, sniffed, slapped the tray down, said that she would report us to the manager, sniffed again and departed. I was not unduly wo
rried, and when paying the bill I explained that I had found a long lost brother and that we had enjoyed a mild celebration. All the manager said was ‘Good on yer, mate. Wish you’d asked me.’
I was not to meet Gordon for another 21 years.
We flew from Sydney in a flying boat, the Canopus, quite the most pleasant way of travelling by air. We sat in wicker armchairs, had plenty of room to stroll around, to look out of the windows or to go down to the bar on the lower deck. We flew at about 150 miles an hour at a height of only five or six thousand feet, so there was always much to see. We put down at Brisbane, Townsville and Cairns, having flown low over the Great Barrier Reef and seen quite the largest shark I have ever seen, swimming lazily among the coral reefs. Even from a 1,000 feet it seemed huge.
The next day we left soon after dawn, landed at Dili, on the Portuguese island of Timor, where we saw the usual Japanese ‘fishing’ boat, and then on over the breathtakingly beautiful islands south of Java, stopping the night at Surabaya. The following day we flew on over Java and, having some time to spare, the pilot took us over the Krakatoa volcano and the Sunda Strait which separates Java from Sumatra. Luckily I was blissfully unaware that I would be sailing through the Strait, in desperate circumstances, only a few months later.
Having reached Singapore in time to catch the mail train north, we stayed the night at the Station Hotel in KL. I called in at the Guthrie’s office to catch up on all the news, before taking the train to Sungei Siput where we were met by Bob and Babs Chrystal and driven back to our bungalow and home.
So ended a most memorable leave. It had cost less than £250.
We soon settled back into life’s usual routine, except for mounting anxiety about Japanese intentions. The news from the other side of the world was brightened somewhat by the reports of our victories in North Africa, and the realisation that Britain had apparently survived the worst of the Blitz. Changes had been made to the high command in Singapore, Air Chief Marshal Robert Brooke-Popham taking over as commander-in-chief Far East, with a command extending over Singapore, Malaya, Borneo and Hong Kong. Duff Cooper had arrived as cabinet minister in residence. The ‘impregnable fortress’ of Singapore was being reinforced by troops almost on a daily basis, and the Royal Navy, so we understood, had a formidable presence in the area. So the Government in England evidently took the defence of Malaya very seriously.
