In the Mouth of the Tiger

by Lynette Silver

  The more we talked about it, the better the plan sounded. ‘I’ll talk to Bertie Perkins first thing tomorrow,’ Denis decided. Bertie Perkins was the Dunlops manager in KL, and a member of Denis’s Scottish Mafia. ‘At the very least, a separation will buy everyone some time.’

  The next morning I was positively cheerful. I remembered some words of Admiral Nelson’s: ‘Nothing banishes concern so well as the prospect of action’. Well, we were not going to just sit back and worry about Tim and Amai, we were going to take action in their interests. It made me feel good.

  We rode and breakfasted at the club, and after Denis had left for the office I worked in the garden, re-potting some petunias for the back patio. All the time I hummed with happiness. It seemed to me that Denis and I were once again involved in a gay adventure, setting out in secret to save a couple from themselves. It was like the adventure we’d had in saving Nathan all over again. Perhaps not as dangerous, but just as exciting.

  At about ten, the boy brought me out a cup of tea and the morning paper. I took off my gardening gloves, stretched out in a cane chair, and glanced idly at the paper as I sipped my tea. Somehow I missed the item until I was just about to get back to work. I had folded the paper and was placing it on the patio beside my chair when a headline caught my eye: ‘Tamil Terrorist Shot Dead by Police’.

  I picked the paper up again with a sudden feeling of dread, somehow knowing precisely what I would read. ‘A Tamil terrorist was shot dead by police on the outskirts of Seramban yesterday afternoon’, the paper reported. ‘Nathan Srinivasan, wanted by police for over twelve months for terrorist activities in the Tanjong Malim area, was attempting to flee police when shot. He ignored repeated calls to halt before being brought down by a single bullet fired by a Malay constable.’

  I felt as if I had been kicked in the stomach, and let the paper drop by my side. If Denis and I had not intervened when the police had raided his mother’s house a year ago, Nathan would have been tucked up safely in the KL gaol instead of lying stiff and dead in a police morgue. Of course he had refused calls to halt: hadn’t Denis and I taught him how easy it was to get away from the police? He obviously thought it would be just as easy the second time.

  I rang Denis at the office. He had already heard the news and was hoping I wouldn’t hear what had happened until he was home. He had found out the details from Calliper MacPhail. The newspaper report had suggested that the shooting had been the culmination of a smooth police effort, but the truth was very different. It had been a piece of pure bad luck for Nathan. A police patrol had sealed off a street in Seramban as part of an operation to catch an organised gang of bicycle thieves. Apparently Nathan had seen the police vehicles pull up on the road outside his aunt’s home and thinking they were after him had decided to make a break for it over the back fence. Of course men had been stationed behind the row of houses to pick up anyone flushed out by the patrol. Thinking Nathan was one of the bicycle thieves, they had called on him to surrender with every expectation that he would do so. Instead of stopping Nathan had made a bolt for it. There had been confusion and shouting until one of the policemen had fired low, hoping to bring the boy down with a leg wound. As luck would have it Nathan had stumbled at the very moment the shot had been fired and the bullet had hit him in the back of the head, killing him instantly.

  ‘We dropped Nathan off on the Seramban road,’ I reminded Denis. ‘He must have been staying at his aunt’s place since then. I feel awful, Denis. I feel it’s our fault that he’s dead. What on earth must Mrs Srinivasan think of us?’

  There was silence at the other end of the phone, and then Denis cleared his throat. ‘Don’t feel bad, my dear. Always remember that we did our best and that one can’t do more than one’s best.’

  I tried to think of it that way but I simply couldn’t. I kept seeing Nathan’s boyish face, hearing the pride in his voice when he spoke about his brother, seeing the trust in his eyes when we told him how we were going to rescue him.

  When Rajeev had died I had blamed the police, the army, even the whole Colonial system that ultimately relied on force to keep troublemakers quiet. This time there was no one I could blame except Denis and myself.

  It seemed to me, sitting hunched in my chair with the petunias forgotten at my feet, that my pride and arrogance of earlier in the morning had brought swift, divine retribution. I had thought of us as heroes in a cavalier story of secret derring-do, but the reality was that our interference had cost a poor boy his life. I suddenly remembered that we had agreed to separate Tim and Amai. How arrogant it now seemed, deciding what was best for them and interfering in their lives.

  I was suddenly frightened. What if our meddling in Tim and Amai’s lives ended up just as badly as had our attempts to help Nathan? I phoned Denis again.

  ‘I’m afraid it’s a bit late for second thoughts,’ Denis said gently. ‘I spoke to Bertie first thing this morning, and he saw a lot of value in the idea of a trial separation. Tim’s been on holiday down here in KL, staying at the Dunlops chummery, so Bertie went straight round and told him he’d been posted to London as a departmental manager for six months. They do that occasionally to their brightest people, so that they can learn about the commercial side of things.’

  ‘How did Tim take it?’ I asked.

  Denis paused. ‘Tim didn’t like the fact he’d have to leave for Singapore almost immediately to catch the next boat home. He’d have to leave by the weekend, in fact. He smelt a rat, I’m afraid. In fact he refused to go.’

  I felt my heart sink. ‘So what’s happening now?’

  I heard Denis sigh deeply. ‘Bertie has told Tim that if he doesn’t go, he’ll be fired. I’m going over to talk to Tim this afternoon.’

  I was worried sick all day. Just as I had feared, our interference into Tim and Amai’s lives was coming badly unstuck. Just as our interference into Nathan’s life had come unstuck. When I heard the crunch of tyres on our drive I hurried outside. One glance at Denis’s face told me things had been tough. He looked almost haggard with concern.

  I clapped for the boy. ‘Two stengahs on the patio, please,’ I asked. I had been so preoccupied with my own worries all day that I had not given any heed to how Denis must be feeling. After all, he had been the one who had actually got Nathan away from the police, and he was also the one dealing with Tim.

  He looked a bit better after a drink, and gave me a long, lugubrious look. ‘It’s not been our best day,’ he said wryly. ‘And it’s not over yet.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ I asked.

  Denis took another long pull at his stengah, and put down the empty glass. ‘Tim refused point-blank to go to London. I had a quiet word with him, and the upshot is that he’s agreed to join Dunlops shipping office in Batavia for six months. The agreement is that if he still wants to marry Amai after six months, Dunlops won’t put anything in his way.’

  ‘Do you think things will be all right?’ I asked.

  Denis didn’t answer immediately. ‘Tim still has to explain things to Amai. He was going to do that tonight. I won’t rest easy until Amai is squared away. She struck me as a very intense young lady.’

  We ate dinner in unaccustomed silence, each of us preoccupied with our own thoughts. Denis had told me that he had dropped in on Mrs Srinivasan during the afternoon, and that she had been quite devastated. My instinct was to go around and see her straight away, but from what Denis had said I thought perhaps that might not be appropriate. She might need time to get her grief under control.

  We turned in early and I fell asleep almost at once. It must have been several hours later when I awoke, muddled with sleep. There was someone shouting outside the house. Denis had got out of bed and drawn aside the curtain, and I joined him at the window.

  It was Tim, and he was very drunk and sounded very angry. He was standing beside his green Triumph under the street lamp, shaking his fists in the air and yelling the most awful threats at Denis. I couldn’t quite make out what he was saying
– his speech was so distorted by alcohol and emotion as to be almost incoherent – but I did hear the word ‘murderer’ and the blood chilled in my veins.

  ‘What do you think has happened?’ I asked tremulously. Denis didn’t answer but pulled on his dressing gown and headed outside. I didn’t feel it appropriate to follow him, but I couldn’t just stay in bed and so I occupied myself by getting dressed.

  Something dreadful must have happened to change Tim from the amiable man who had courted me so gallantly into a raving lunatic. There was a particularly wild burst of shouting and I wondered if I should call the police.

  Then Denis was back for his cigarettes, and I followed him out into the lounge where he also collected a whisky bottle and two glasses. ‘What’s happening?’ I pleaded desperately, clinging to his arm.

  ‘Amai Rais is dead,’ Denis said shortly. ‘I’ll tell you about it later. In the meantime Tim thinks of me as her murderer and won’t come into the house. I’m going to try and calm him down.’

  I sat at the bedroom window in the dark, watching the two men under the street lamp. At one stage Tim dashed a glass Denis was offering him to the ground. A moment later he was weeping, his shoulders heaving desperately as Denis tried to comfort him. As I watched, my soul writhed in agony. Little Amai, the pretty, serious little girl who had drunk tea with us just two days before, lay dead somewhere, and it had been an idea of mine that was to blame.

  I couldn’t stand the agony any longer, and walked up our driveway towards Denis and Tim. On the way I saw faithful Ismail standing in the garden shadows, a changkul in his hand.

  ‘Hullo, Nona,’ Tim said flatly. His face was dead white, his hair plastered to his brow by sweat. Denis came over and stood beside me, his arm around my shoulder. ‘Please go back inside,’ he said softly into my ear. ‘Please. This isn’t doing you any good, and you can’t do anything to help.’

  ‘What has happened to Amai?’ I asked. My voice sounded harsh and unnatural in my own ears, and I found myself trembling so much that one of my shoes made a tapping sound on the macadamised surface of the road.

  ‘She’s dead, Nona,’ Tim said, his eyes holding mine. ‘And your husband killed her.’

  ‘Tim tells me Amai was killed this evening by a car on the Ampang Road,’ Denis said gently. ‘She was crossing the road to visit him at the chummery and must have been dazzled by the lights. Apparently she was very distressed but it was obviously an accident.’

  ‘She threw herself under the car,’ Tim said harshly. ‘She promised me she’d do it, and she’s never broken a promise to me in her life.’ Suddenly he was crying again, and this time I tried to comfort him. I took him into my arms and hugged him as tightly as I could, trying to squeeze out the pain we both felt so keenly.

  Tim stayed with us that night. Denis called in a local doctor, who gave him a sedative, and we put him to bed in one of the half-decorated guest bedrooms. In our own bed, Denis and I lay stiffly like effigies carved on a sarcophagus, wrapped in our individual shrouds of guilt and pain.

  We didn’t talk about that awful day for a long, long time. Then it all bubbled out, the pain we felt, the guilt, the sense of loss. We were on a picnic at the Sungei Serendah waterfalls, in a glade in the jungle north of KL. It was the quiet serenity of the place that made it easy to talk. We were alone, the rest of our party frolicking further down river, when I’d suddenly burst into tears and Denis had hugged me, knowing precisely why I was crying.

  ‘Amai and Nathan,’ Denis said. ‘Two very special people. The cream of this country’s youth. We mustn’t spoil their memories by feeling guilty. We tried our very best to help them, but their fates were written in the stars.’

  ‘I have this feeling I could never, ever interfere in someone’s life again,’ I said against his shoulder. ‘One takes on such an awful responsibility if one tries to help another human being. I don’t think I could bear that responsibility again. I’d die if things went wrong.’

  ‘Don’t ever let yourself think like that,’ Denis said fiercely. ‘It’s far better to try and fail than to stand by wringing your hands while a fellow human being goes down the drain.’

  I thought about that and nodded slowly. Despite everything, I believed that what Denis said was true.

  It became part of our credo. When someone was in trouble or needed help, we’d look at each other and know precisely what the other was thinking: this could be Nathan or Amai all over again. But then, however difficult the circumstances, or however sensible it would be to turn away, we’d wade in and do our best, banners flying.

  The coroner found that Amai Rais died of injuries incurred in a motor vehicle accident when she stepped in front of a speeding car in the Ampang Road. There had been a lot of traffic at the time, the street had been wet from a shower, and the coroner felt that Amai may have been dazzled by the lights as she tried to cross the road. Tim was not required to give evidence and in fact he was not in Malaya at the time. Dunlops had given him early home leave and he was back in England when the coronial inquiry completed its work. He’d asked me to send him a letter telling him what the coroner said and I did so. Just a line or two, giving him the bald facts. But in the same letter I quoted some words from a Malay love quatrain that Amai would have known:

  If I must die, and I understand that I must die,

  Let me die near you. At least let me die near you.

  Amai died at a point on the Ampang Road where you can look up and see the lights of the upstairs lounge of the Dunlops chummery. She died as close to Tim as she decently could.

  By the end of September I was feeling big, slow and awkward. I had given up my morning ride and the days were beginning to be long and tiresome. One morning Denis put down the Malay Mail and smiled at me across the breakfast table. ‘What do you say to a dinner party?’ he asked. ‘I happen to know that Molly Tan is in KL at the moment. Why don’t we rattle up a few friends and tell Teng Swi to do his worst?’

  I thought it was a lovely idea. We hadn’t had a house-warming – our hearts had just not been in it after Amai’s death – and so this would be my first chance to show off what sort of hostess I could be. And it would probably be my last before the baby.

  Teng Swi was marvellous. He let me think I was doing all the organising but kept an unobtrusive professional hand on things so that there was never the tiniest strain placed on me. The evening of the dinner arrived with everything impeccably in order. The best cutlery and crockery had been set out, our best glasses burnished until they sparkled, the table linen starched and ironed, and masses of candles arranged to give the dining room a special look.

  Molly was the first to arrive and I stood with her under the porch briefing her on our other guests. As well as Denis, Molly and me, the party comprised Mac and Fiona, Bob and Babs Chrystal, and Ivan Lyon. Ivan had a beautiful girl on his arm, but she wasn’t Gabrielle so her memory has faded with the years. Gabrielle – the lovely French girl whom he was destined to marry – was still in the fastness of her father’s island, a thousand miles away.

  Surprisingly, Molly knew them all except for Ivan’s partner.

  ‘It’s certainly a small world,’ I commented.

  ‘Smaller than you could ever guess,’ Molly said with a curious little smile. I hadn’t a clue what she meant.

  The party was a tremendous success. It was a cooler evening than we’d been having, and that put everyone into a good mood to start with. Then Teng Swi’s cooking proved a smash hit. He usually cooked Nonya style meals, which I had always liked and which Denis was learning to appreciate, but that night he prepared a banquet that would not have been out of place at Maxim’s. We started with escargot (imported from France and sold at the Cold Storage), followed by the silkiest vichyssoise soup imaginable. The main course was veal cordon bleu with all the trimmings. We had sorbet between each course, and finished off with the lightest crêpes suzette I have ever eaten.

  The fine food was complemented by the finest wines available in Malaya (w
e could thank Guthries for that) and by the time the coffee came along we were all laughing in easy, happy camaraderie.

  Ivan and Mac were telling Fiona rather farfetched fishing stories. ‘Of course,’ Mac said, ‘the best kind of fishing is salmon fishing. You can’t beat salmon for sport. It’s a million miles from your tame English coddling. Rod fishing in the wild burns of Scotland. And the very best salmon fishing of all is found in the Dee and its tributaries, just outside Aberdeen.’

  ‘I’ve heard how beautiful Deeside can be,’ Fiona said. ‘Have you fished the Dee yourself?’

  Mac chuckled. ‘Have I fished the Dee? Lassie, that’s like asking a Scotsman if he’s ever worn a kilt! Of course I’ve fished the Dee. Many a time, and taken some fine fish the while. I was a student at Aberdeen, don’t forget.’

  Fiona turned to Denis. ‘You took out a degree at Aberdeen, didn’t you, Denis?’

  ‘Oh, I don’t think I went to quite those lengths,’ Denis said. ‘But I did hang around the place for a term or two. Long enough to play rugger for Marischal College and have a good go at fishing the Dee. Mac is quite right – the Dee’s got some of the finest wild fishing in Scotland.’

  ‘Something has always puzzled me, Denis,’ Molly chipped in. ‘You’re a member of the Scottish Mafia, but from all accounts you’re an Englishman. Certainly you sound very English. Are you a Scot?’

  Denis tapped his chest. ‘I’m sure if you searched hard enough you’d find a drop or two of the finest Scots blood in there somewhere,’ he said.

  ‘The laddie is as Scottish as the best of them,’ Mac burst out loyally. ‘Damn it, he’s played for London Scottish! The man could have played for Scotland itself if he’d put his mind to it.’

  I caught Molly’s eye. ‘I think the Scots in Malaya tend to select their own,’ I said. ‘I’ve noticed that it’s more to do with one’s attitude to life than one’s actual origins. Many of the keenest at the St Andrew’s Day Games have never even seen the country.’