In the Mouth of the Tiger

by Lynette Silver

  ‘That’s rather perceptive of you,’ Molly said seriously. She looked around the table. The conversation had gone off on a tangent, chasing after some cheerful sally from Fiona. ‘I’m only an ignorant Colonial, Nona, but I think there’s more to the Scottish Mafia than meets the eye.’ She leaned close to me. ‘I think there is a Scottish conspiracy at the very heart of the British Secret Service.’

  ‘What on earth do you mean?’ I asked.

  ‘Look around this table. Every man here is a Scot or claims to be a Scot, most of them with connections to Deeside. And every last one of them happens to be in British Intelligence.’

  I cocked what I hoped looked like a knowing eye at Molly. ‘How on earth could you know that?’

  She waved my question away with an impatient hand. ‘I know that for a fact. Now, who runs British Intelligence? I’ll tell you, Nona. It’s a man called Stewart Menzies. He may not yet be the formal head but he pulls all the strings, even out here in Malaya. He’s a Scot of course, and his family – the Caledonian Whisky millionaires – come from Deeside.’

  I couldn’t take what Molly was saying very seriously. ‘So that’s why Denis has a Menzies tartan in his cupboard. I was beginning to think he liked frocks.’

  Molly ignored the remark. ‘The Kuomintang were being used by MI6 as their eyes and ears in the Far East until recently,’ she said earnestly. ‘My brother Paul was involved. He went to Aberdeen for his final year in 1929, and met Menzies.’ She sighed. ‘Of course, since then the Kuomintang have been dropped by the British. My guess is that they are now using the Communists as their eyes and ears. I can’t prove it, of course, but that’s what I’d do.’

  ‘Why are Menzies’ people all Scots?’ I asked, interested despite myself.

  ‘I think they’re Scots because Menzies is a Scot. They are also rich people like him who don’t depend on a salary, or need the favour of a boss to get on in life. And those sorts of people – the people who run the Scottish business houses like Guthries, Swires, Coats, Dunlops and the like – are perfectly placed around the world to feed him the information he wants. The Scottish Mafia.’

  I looked up to see Mac staring at us, his face a mask of surprise. ‘Good God, you’re talking about the Linlithgow Hunt!’ he said. And then he clapped his hand over his mouth in the classic gesture of a man who has said something he shouldn’t. ‘Oops, I shouldn’t have said that!’

  It was at this point I suddenly realised that what Molly had been saying had been immensely important to Mac. His comic gesture and his ‘Oops!’ had been a desperate attempt to disguise the fact that his reference to the Linlithgow Hunt had been wrung from him by sheer surprise. Mac was a fine and intelligent man, but he was an absolutely rotten actor.

  My intuition was confirmed when I looked across at Denis. He had obviously heard the reference to the Linlithgow Hunt and looked distinctly displeased. But Denis was a good actor, and a half-second later he had turned to Fiona with a smile and quick quip that set his end of the table laughing.

  What was the significance of the Linlithgow Hunt? I filed away the question to raise with Denis when everyone had left.

  We took coffee out on the patio, and the chatter and laughter continued. It was a glorious starry night, now pleasantly cool so that it was a pleasure to wear my imported Italian silk wrap. I sat there, looking at the handsome men and the lovely women around me, and counted my blessings. Unaccountably, my mind turned to Mother. Not the capricious, often bitter mother of the real world, but the mother of whom every daughter dreams. Wise, tolerant, supportive and loving. In the midst of my happiness I felt a tear in my eye.

  ‘Didn’t you see their reaction when they heard what I said?’ Molly was leaning across towards me, her eyes alive with a kind of exultation. At first, I didn’t have a clue what she was talking about.

  ‘Oh, the Scottish business,’ I said rather flatly. ‘Yes, I did notice that Mac looked a bit surprised at what you said.’

  ‘A bit surprised? He was rattled. I didn’t quite catch what he said – something about a hunt. Did you hear what he said?’

  I looked Molly squarely in the eye. ‘No,’ I said. I don’t know why I said that. Perhaps I was unconsciously learning the first principles of intelligence work. That knowledge is power, and you don’t give power away unless you have to.

  The party broke up at about one, and when the last car crunched down our driveway I turned to Denis and hugged him. ‘It was lovely night, don’t you think?’

  He hugged me back but without his usual warmth. The smile had faded from his face and he looked serious in the glow of light from our front porch.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ I asked quickly, but he turned away.

  ‘It’s almost cold out here, Nona,’ he said rather absently. ‘Come inside.’

  He was distinctly in one of his ‘displeased’ moods. I felt a spurt of anger. Not a word about what a superb hostess I had been. Not a word of appreciation for the hard work that Teng Swi and I had put into the evening. I stalked in ahead of him, preparing some small, cutting remark, but he took the wind out of my sails.

  ‘What on earth was Molly rattling on about?’ he asked. ‘That woman’s tongue is completely out of control.’

  I laughed. I simply couldn’t help it. Denis was peeved about Molly spouting her theory of a Scottish conspiracy!

  ‘Oh, darling, it was all a lot of nonsense. Molly thinks the Scots of the world have lined up behind a chap called Menzies and are about to take over the British Empire.’

  Denis’ frown faded a little. ‘She is a very intelligent woman, Nona, but she has never had any proper sense of discretion. I wouldn’t pass on that talk of hers to anyone else. People might think you take it seriously.’

  We had a quiet gin and tonic amidst the left-over clutter of the dinner party, and Denis finally said all the correct and proper things about my success as a hostess. But the serious way he had treated Molly’s comments stuck in my mind and when we were in bed I shook his shoulder.

  ‘Who is this chap Stewart Menzies anyway?’ I asked. ‘Do you know him?’

  Denis pretended to take time waking up. ‘Colonel Menzies is a fine chap. I met him once or twice at my aunt’s place in France. Now do be a good girl and go to sleep.’

  I lay in the darkness, thinking. ‘What aunt, Denis?’ I asked. ‘I didn’t know you had an aunt in France.’

  Denis snorted as if I had roused him from sleep again. ‘Aunt Maxine,’ he grunted. ‘She’s a courtesy aunt. I’ll tell you all about her tomorrow. Now really, darling, let’s get some sleep before the blasted birds start their racket.’ We had a lot of birds in our garden at Rifle Range Lane, and they began their dawn chorus soon after five o’clock.

  I had one more question, and I was determined not to be put off asking it. ‘What is the Linlithgow Hunt?’

  I could tell by Denis’s stillness that this question disturbed him. After a second or two he rolled over to face me. ‘The Linlithgow Hunt is one of best fox hunts in Scotland,’ he said. ‘Stewart Menzies is a member. There is a bit of local silliness to the effect that those of us who work for Stewart are honorary members too. But I really would forget you ever heard the story. And please don’t ever repeat it.’

  I didn’t take Denis’s advice and forget the story. In fact, ten years later I was to remember it as I stood in front of ‘C’, the head of British Intelligence, in the billiard room of White’s. And thank God I did. It is quite astonishing on what small, apparently insignificant factors one’s whole life can turn.

  Chapter Fifteen

  My baby was born in the second week of November, a healthy, bouncing boy. At Dr Lowe’s insistence I had been admitted to the KL General Hospital for the birth, but stayed for only a couple of days before prevailing on Denis to take me home. I hated hospitals, and those two days spoilt what should have been a magic time. I detested the smell of antiseptic, the long faces of the interns and the visiting specialists, and the patronising attitude of the senior ward
sister who insisted on treating me as if I was not only unwell but intellectually handicapped. But everything changed as soon as I was back at Rifle Range Lane. It felt healthy and natural to be at home with my child, and I remember how Denis and I stood in the doorway of the bright new nursery, and thought ourselves the cleverest people on earth as Tony’s ayah crooned our baby to sleep in his crib.

  I named him Anthony after Lord Anthony Dewhurst, one of the Scarlet Pimpernel’s most trusted lieutenants. As a schoolgirl I had loved Tony Dewhurst for his courage, initiative, loyalty and charm, and I dreamed that my Tony might one day fill such a role beside his father. Of course, Denis knew nothing of this romantic nonsense: as far as he was concerned we called him Tony because it was a straightforward, sensible name, and apparently a family name to boot.

  I was nineteen years old and tremendously fit. Within a fortnight I was back in the saddle, galloping through the Malayan dawn, then swimming all afternoon in our pool as the ayah sat on the patio, holding Tony up each time I looked their way so that I could admire my child.

  Life became indescribably sweet.

  In these frantic modern times I see young mothers barely able to cope with their babies, worn out by sleepless nights and burdened by the need to earn money to help pay the mortgage. I feel sorry for them, knowing the joy that they are missing. There was a great deal wrong with the Colonial world of the 1930s, but for a young mother in my position there was also a few things right. For a start I had Tony’s ayah, a pretty Malay girl who helped look after him from dawn to dusk and even slept beside his cot. And the pace of life was so much slower than it is now, with every day a small eternity. The thought of having to find ‘quality time’ for one’s child would never have entered my head: time was mine to spend as I liked – and I rather liked to spend it with my happy, gurgling boy.

  December 1937 and January 1938 were hot and humid months, and though Tony tolerated the heat quite well we fell into the habit of taking him out for an evening drive to settle him for the night. Denis and I would change into pyjamas, climb into the Alvis and spin through the darkened city with Tony on my lap, chatting about everything on earth or singing our favourite songs. Tony would be asleep within minutes, but we would cruise on through the night, happy for the three of us to be together and alone. If the weather were fine we would have the hood down so that the fragrant tropical air ruffled our hair and plucked coolly at our nightclothes. We used to drive quite far, to Batang Kali or to Kajang, twenty miles away, once going all the way to Kuala Selangor on the coast, arriving home well past midnight.

  We had one or two awkward moments on those nocturnal forays. There was the time the Alvis inexplicably rolled to a stop in the middle of KL with Denis staring uncomprehendingly at the empty fuel gauge. We laughed all the way home, an hour’s walk through busy city streets and darkened lanes in our pyjamas, Tony gurgling with pleasure at the novelty of it all. More seriously, we once had engine trouble on a long, lonely stretch of road between KL and Bentong. The car rolled to a stop with the jungle pressing close on either side, and we were stuck for half an hour while Denis fiddled with the carburettor in the darkness. I’ve never been so relieved as when the engine burst into a pale semblance of its usual roar and we spluttered home, this time laughing rather shakily at the imagined headlines: ‘Tiger Eats KL Couple and Babe. Garish Pyjamas Found at Scene’.

  The advent of a baby transforms the landscape of one’s life. Friends, social habits, even the way one thinks are changed. For Denis and me the changes occurred imperceptibly and unnoticed – we just woke up one day to find ourselves in another universe. A universe where the important things were not cricket matches, tea dances at the club or tiger hunts in the ulu, but our baby’s health, the need to decide on his schooling, and the need to seek security in a troubled, changing world.

  Bob and Babs Chrystal were mentors in our education as parents. Their first child had been born some ten years earlier, so they had already faced and dealt with many of the issues that surrounded us. They had been tempted to buy a home in Singapore with its better schools and better health facilities, but had gone down another track, remaining in KL but buying a home in Western Australia as their investment in a secure future. They spent every leave in Perth, and young Gerald was already boarding at one of the city’s English-style private schools. It wasn’t our cup of tea, but it did show us that there were a range of options available.

  Babs was also invaluable as a guide in the little but important things associated with having a baby in the tropics. It was to Babs that I made those panicky late-night telephone calls that I am sure all new parents make when their baby develops its first temperature, experiences its first fall or has its first nosebleed. It was on Babs’ advice that I breastfed Tony for his first six months as a precaution against the sudden fevers that carried off so many babies in the tropics. It was also on Babs’ advice that we took Tony up to the cool-weather resort of Fraser’s Hill at every opportunity. ‘Cold mornings will put roses in his cheeks,’ Babs had said. ‘And whoever saw a rosy-cheeked baby sick?’

  It was at Fraser’s Hill that we developed our close friendship with Margaret and Alec Dean. Margaret’s first child, Mark, was born a week or so after Tony, and we often found ourselves the only two mothers with babies at the Highland Lodge resort, a complex of cottages set in a paradise of lawns and flower beds. We would arrive about lunchtime on a Friday and, while the men played golf and the ayahs took the babies perambulating in the gardens, Margaret and I would go shopping in the native market. We had kitchens in our little cottages and it was part of the fun to buy and feed our families with fresh highland fruits and vegetables – strawberries, blackberries, quinces, pears, huge red tree tomatoes, chat potatoes, leeks, and the biggest cauliflowers I’ve seen anywhere on earth.

  Our friendship with the Deans grew until the four of us were inseparable, spending even our KL weekends in each other’s company. Trips to the Selangor Club and the Turf Club gave way to joint family weekends at home. We would drop in on the Deans or they on us, and the day would generally end with an invitation to stay on to dinner. Our conversations seemed fresh and exciting at the time but I think that on the whole they must have been incredibly banal. We talked non-stop about calamine lotion as a cure for heat rash, or about the best way to keep nappies soft in the hard KL water, or about the effectiveness of various brands of gripe water.

  Sometimes we talked in broader terms, about what sort of world we’d like our children to inherit, or what they might do in life, or how we could best equip them to face the challenges of the future. And of course occasionally we talked about the impending war.

  Not about whether there would be a war, but when it would happen and how we would cope. German bombers flying for General Franco had already bombed the civilian population of Madrid, so we had no illusions about civilians being exempt from the coming carnage. To the north, the Japanese were killing Chinese with great thoroughness and efficiency, and getting closer to Malaya every day. Maps of Japan’s proposed ‘Greater Co-Prosperity Sphere’, showing Malaya within the Sphere, had been published in the Malay Mail so we also had no illusions that Malaya would be spared the coming conflict.

  ‘Should we run away, or stay and fight?’ I remember Alec saying those words one lazy afternoon as the four of us sat beside the pool in Rifle Range Lane.

  ‘I’m afraid Malaya will fall,’ Denis said quietly. ‘There’s no point in denying the inevitable. Japan won’t attack until Britain is well and truly occupied fighting the Germans, so there won’t be enough troops spare to meet them head on. But I think – I hope – we will be able to hang on to Singapore. Singapore is the key to the whole of the Far East, so it simply has to be kept. If Singapore fell, not even Australia would be safe.’

  Margaret looked up from knitting bootees for Mark. ‘Alec, if Singapore is safe, why on earth aren’t we living Singapore?’

  There was a long silence. Denis and I had discussed the possibility of moving to Sing
apore. It had a healthier climate than KL, it had better hospitals and schools, and it was protected by the invincible Royal Navy.

  ‘Yes,’ I said finally. ‘Why on earth aren’t we living in Singapore?’

  That conversation was the spark that set things alight. Every time we met the Deans after that one or another of us was bound to ask: ‘Well, what have you done about moving to Singapore?’ I began to buy the Straits Times and look at the real estate pages. On Saturday mornings I would be sitting up in bed, the papers around me, and I would dig Denis in the ribs. ‘Just look at that! Less than six thousand dollars, and what a lovely home!’ Denis would roll over and turn a bleary eye to the smudged little photograph in the classifieds. ‘Six thousand dollars for that old pile?’ he would grunt. ‘Too much at half the price.’ But the fact he looked was significant. Singapore was well and truly on our agenda.

  In the meantime, Tony was growing up. His black baby hair disappeared to be replaced with a shock of blond curls. He grew sturdy and straight, with clear blue-grey eyes like his father. Just after his eighth month he said his first words, lying in his crib in the garden and staring up into the blue vault of heaven. ‘Balu sakai,’ he said quite distinctly, pointing upwards with a pudgy fist. At first neither Denis nor I realised what he had said, but he repeated the words and suddenly we both leapt forward to hug him for his cleverness. He had said ‘blue sky’, the English words disguised by the fractured accent he had picked up from his ayah.

  At eleven months he was walking and by Christmas 1938 he was running around our garden, his arms spread like wings, emulating the aeroplanes that he used to watch crawling across the KL sky. By Christmas 1938 he was far too precious for us to risk in a Malaya we knew would be overrun, so we decided finally and irrevocably to move to Singapore.