In the Mouth of the Tiger

by Lynette Silver

  ‘Is it going to affect us?’ I asked.

  ‘It is the scenario the Japs have been waiting for,’ Denis said. ‘Britain tied up at home so that they can have a free hand out here in the East. I suspect they’ll start throwing their muscle about in their attempts to get a bigger share of the world’s resources. If they don’t get what they want, there will be all hell to pay.’

  ‘How long before they threaten us?’ I asked.

  Denis spread marmalade on his toast thoughtfully. ‘They’re heavily tied up in China at present,’ he said slowly. ‘And they don’t yet know how things will go in Europe. Gives us a year or so.’

  ‘And then there will be all hell to pay?’ I pursued.

  ‘And then there will be all hell to pay.’

  So our idyll at Whitelawns was to be played out in the shadow of impending apocalypse. But it was to be an idyll nevertheless, largely untroubled by thoughts of the war or the future. The conflict in Europe was half a world away, and the threat from the Japanese was still only a threat after all. So like most others in the Far East, Denis and I chose to bury our heads in the sand and to live each sunny day to the full.

  One of the things we wanted in our life was riding. Whitelawns had a small stable block, four looseboxes around a cobbled yard, and our first priority was to fill it with appropriate horseflesh. Soliloquy had grown too old for a move to Singapore so Denis had retired her to a cool green meadow on Fraser’s Hill, and her replacement was a black thoroughbred stallion named Thor. My own horse was a chestnut we called Dame Fashion, a beautiful, honey-coloured mare. She had only one vice – a tendency to be skittish when the wind blew, and so we gave her the nickname ‘Sumatra’ after the sudden windstorms that whipped in from the Riau Straits and which would make her quite impossible to ride. For Tony, we bought a placid pony called Brown Rascal, a gentle creature with large brown eyes and the nature of a big friendly dog.

  Our next priority was to have the yacht we had bought in Penang – now renamed the Norma – brought closer to Whitelawns so that we could sail her whenever we liked. She had been brought down to Singapore by a professional crew and was lying at the Singapore Yacht Club, an inconvenient twenty-mile drive away. The project gave Chu Lun a chance to show his mettle. His first task was to put down a mooring just off the beach from Whitelawns, and he took on the task with frowning enthusiasm, enlisting half the local village of Mata Ikan in the enterprise.

  I was able to watch the exercise in all its phases from our high terrace above the beach. First a small junk was procured from one of Chu Lun’s relatives and anchored on the spot designated for the mooring. From the junk young men from the kampong dived repeatedly to examine the sea floor, coming up with buckets of sand and pieces of rock. These were examined by Chu Lun himself, sitting at ease under an awning on the junk’s poop-deck, a glass of Tiger beer in his hand. Presumably he pronounced the ground safe, and the project moved to its next stage. Three or four old engine blocks were chained together, then dropped over the side of the junk. The proceedings were accompanied by lots of shouted commands from Chu Lun and screams of mirth from the dozen or so young men who had done the lifting. The chain meant to secure the buoy to the mooring must have been left unshackled in the excitement, so more diving was involved. It was soft pink dusk before the red and yellow buoy was finally bobbing on the placid waters and Chu Lun was climbing up to the house to give Denis his report. ‘We are ready to bring the yacht around, Tuan,’ he said with an elaborate salute. ‘Everything went well, and as you see you now have a mooring.’

  I had already given Denis a blow-by-blow report of proceedings, but he insisted on Chu Lun sitting down and telling him about it all over again. I was astounded at how professional he made the proceedings sound, and even the failure to link the securing chain to the weight when it went overboard was explained as a safety precaution. ‘I have seen men dragged down in such circumstances,’ Chu Lun explained seriously. ‘My way is the better way, I think. I would hate to lose young men in such a way.’

  ‘You don’t mind losing old men?’ I asked mischievously, and though Chu Lun’s face remained impassive I saw an appreciative glint in his eyes.

  After dinner that night Denis called Chu Lun back. ‘You obviously know how to handle boats,’ he said. ‘Would you be able to bring the Norma around from the Yacht Club? I will be busy at the office tomorrow, but it would be nice to see her bobbing at our mooring when I come home. You could run her around on the diesel, perhaps. That way you won’t even need to rig her.’

  Chu Lun hesitated for the barest half second. ‘I have handled many vessels before now, Tuan,’ he said a little stiffly, as if offended that his sea-dog status had not been taken for granted. ‘I am sure I could handle a thirty-fivefoot ketch.’

  To give Chu Lun his due, he managed the task without a hitch. The same team of vigorous young men were employed, and the same junk accompanied the Norma when she sailed – fully rigged – up to her new mooring in the late afternoon of the next day. Amah and I were waiting on the beach. ‘He is a good sailor, Amah,’ I said appreciatively as the Norma crept up on the mooring with men scampering about on her foredeck with boat hooks and Chu Lun shouting from the cockpit. Amah clicked her tongue. ‘Chu Lun has a big mouth,’ she said, shaking her head. ‘He has never sailed a yacht in his life before.’

  No doubt the blood of his Bugis forebears had come to his aid.

  Chu Lun was officially our head gardener, but the title was a misnomer because he was involved in many tasks and projects but very little gardening. In fact he hated gardening with a passion. The actual gardening was done by two young Tamils, hard-working, unassuming men who were perpetually scything the lawns, chipping the grassy banks of the terraces with chipping sticks, or weeding the numerous garden beds. I managed the garden on a dayby-day basis – a labour of love – while a real gardener from Changi came in every week or so to do the serious work of planting and transplanting, topdressing the lawns, and maintaining our vegetable patch.

  Chu Lun’s contribution was broad indeed. He became a kind of major-domo, in general charge of the household and of Denis’s various local projects. He loved tinkering with machinery so he also maintained the Alvis and the marine diesel on the yacht. He became cook, general hand and sometimes ‘sailing master’ on the Norma. He did have an instinctive feel for the sea and quickly became an accomplished steersman and navigator. Later on, when we would take off for two or three days knocking around the islands of the Riau Archipelago, Chu Lun would come with us, a vital and valued member of the party. We invited Amah of course, but she would throw up her hands in horror: ‘Not if that man has anything to do with it!’, she would cry.

  But it was as a key member of the Three Man Kongsi that Chu Lun made his greatest contribution. The Three Man Kongsi comprised Denis, Chu Lun, and the entire kampong of Mata Ikan, and it was established quite soon after we came to Whitelawns as the result of a minor crisis that had struck the village.

  A ruthless towkey had established a local monopoly in the purchase of sea-shells, traditionally collected by members of the kampong from the beaches and reefs around Mata Ikan and sold to the cement industry for processing into calcium. Chu Lun had come up to the house early one evening and put the problem to Denis, sitting cross-legged on the steps of our verandah. ‘There is great worry in the kampong, Tuan,’ he had said after the normal pleasantries.

  ‘Tell me about their worry, Chu Lun.’

  Chu Lun sipped his Tiger beer. ‘Tuan, for many years it has been traditional for our unemployed people, our young people, and our afflicted people to collected shell from the sea,’ he said. ‘It was stockpiled in the kampong, and bought by reputable men who would collect the product of perhaps half a dozen kampongs to sell to the cement factories. Now, a certain towkey has bought out the reputable men, and he deals individually with each kampong, bargaining with them to achieve the lowest price. All the kampongs are suffering, but the smaller ones suffer the most. Mata Ikan is one o
f the smallest of all, and it has suffered the worst. We cannot sell our shell at all, because the price offered is so low that it is an insult to our people. Without the money from the sale of shell, the kampong is suffering. We are finding it difficult to feed and clothe those in the kampong who cannot feed and clothe themselves.’

  Denis drew on his cigarette thoughtfully. ‘It is a very old story, Chu Lun. Because the cement factory cannot be bothered buying shell in small amounts, the middlemen have the kampongs over a barrel. It would be different if the kampongs agreed to club together and insist on a fair price for them all.’

  Chu Lun shook his head. ‘That will never happen. The penghulus in each village are too keen to make sure that their shell is sold. They don’t care about anyone else. They would never abide by an agreement to bargain together.’

  There was a thoughtful silence (these sorts of discussions always had their gentle rhythm), and then Denis stubbed out his cigarette. ‘Do you have any idea how the problem might be fixed?’ he asked.

  ‘It did seem to me,’ Chu Lun said modestly, ‘that if a man could be found with enough money to buy up all the shell on the south coast, he could bargain with the cement company directly. He would bargain from a position of strength, because more than half of Singapore’s shell comes from the south coast. If he sold the shell directly to the cement company, he would make the profit that the towkey would have made.’

  ‘And what would stop this man taking the same advantage as the towkey?’ Denis asked. ‘No doubt he would be a businessman as well. It is in the nature of businessmen to make as much profit as they can, and it would be good business to bargain separately with the kampongs.’

  Chu Lun allowed himself a smile. ‘Because the businessman would be a man of honour. He would be you, Tuan.’

  Discussion had gone on as the sun had sunk into the sea to the west, and the clouds had turned gold and red. I thought such deep matters deserved a second round of Tiger beer and brought it out myself, remaining to hear how things would conclude. They concluded well. It was agreed that a three-man partnership would be formed and formally registered, comprising Denis, Chu Lun, and the penghulu from Mata Ikan representing the people of his kampong. Under the partnership agreement, Denis would provide the funds, Chu Lun the administration, and the kampong the transport and labour needed to collect all the shell and transport it to the cement factory in Bukit Timah.

  The breaking of the sea-shell monopoly was the Three Man Kongsi’s first success but by no means its last. After a while the Kongsi began to play quite a significant role in the economy of our little part of rural Singapore, with meetings held regularly on the lawns in front of our verandah. These meetings were invariably held at sunset, with the Three Men – the penghulu, Chu Lun and Denis – sitting in easy chairs while a crowd of villagers sat around them on the grass in their best bajus and sarongs, listening intently as issues of great moment were discussed before them in polite Malay.

  Our first formal dinner party at Whitelawns was held just before Christmas 1939. The excuse for the occasion was to celebrate the downfall of one of Malaya’s most confirmed bachelors. Ivan Lyon, who had romanced every pretty girl in country without once losing his heart, had finally met his match – the beautiful dark-haired French girl Gabrielle. The Deans were there of course, with the Lyons, Bob and Babs Chrystal, and Roger and Evelyn Hornung. Denis had also invited John Dalley, a man much in the news in Singapore at that time because of his plan to recruit a local militia battalion from within the Chinese community.

  The fact that the Hornungs were coming worried me a little. We hadn’t seen them for a couple of years, and I was worried that Evelyn might be in one of her moods. In the event she was charming and much more mature than I remembered her, and I wondered how much my earlier perception of her might have been the result of my own insecurity. She had after all known Denis a lot longer than I had.

  Gabrielle was of course the centre of attention when we gathered for pre-dinner drinks on the verandah, and I admit to being curious to meet her myself. The story of her meeting with Ivan, and her taming of our famous Celtic bachelor, was the talk of the town. Apparently Ivan had heard of a beautiful French girl on the island of Pulau Condore in the Gulf of Thailand and – as was his way – he had chased up there on his yacht Vinette, fully intending to add her to his list of conquests. At first, things went perfectly according to plan. The girl’s father, the governor of the island, was impressed by his gallantry and bearing and invited him to stay while Ivan pretended to repair a hatch on his yacht, giving him plenty of opportunity to deploy his charm. But from then on things went wrong. Rather than swooning into his arms, Gabrielle had stood back and tossed her dark Gallic curls in disapproval at his wildness. ‘You drink too much,’ she said frankly. ‘And you act too often without thinking.’

  The result was of course that Ivan fell hopelessly in love. It was even rumoured that in order to convince this awkward girl to marry him he had promised to curb his drinking, and to act with more responsibility. Quel accomplissement!

  I liked Gabrielle from the moment I met her. She was a gamine thing with long dark hair and the most soulful eyes you ever saw, but she also had a determined little chin and a no-nonsense glint in her eyes. ‘I’m sure you and Ivan will be happy,’ I said when we shook hands. I meant what I said – Ivan needed someone to keep his feet on the ground and I suspected that he had found her in Gabrielle.

  I didn’t have Teng Swi to help me with the dinner, but Amah proved more than up to the challenge. With the help of her two daughters she had prepared a delicious Nonya meal. The main course was pulau ayam, a chicken dish cooked in coconut, followed by gula malacca, a pudding made of chilled sago, palm sugar and coconut milk. Not cordon bleu, but all of us present had been in the East long enough to appreciate local cooking, and the best local fare by far was Nonya.

  Conversation during dinner was about the war in Europe. This was the period of the phoney war, when Poland had been swallowed up but nothing else seemed to be happening. ‘It’ll be all over in six months,’ Bob Chrystal said confidently. ‘Almost a shame, really. We’ve all been so keyed up waiting for the Japanese to attack that I feel rather let down that there won’t be a scrap after all. The Japanese will hardly attack if the German and Italians are wiped off the face of the earth in a couple of weeks.’

  Ivan Lyon shook his head doubtfully. ‘I wish you were right,’ he said. ‘But I can’t see the Germans and Italians giving in that easily. Hitler and Mussolini have invested too much national pride to back down now. The real war will start pretty soon, mark my words, and it won’t be pretty.’

  I turned to John Dalley. ‘Do you think your Chinese will be needed after all?’ I asked.

  ‘I hope not, but I fear so,’ Dalley said quietly.

  ‘How good will they be?’ Ivan asked. ‘Are they getting any useful training?’

  Dalley grimaced. ‘That’s precisely the problem,’ he said. ‘The Government hasn’t given us any arms. The only training I can give them is parade drill and some basic fire-and-movement exercises. Bloody terrible situation – grown men charging about with wooden rifles like a pack of kids. What’s absolutely dreadful to contemplate is that if we are called on it will be because Malaya is in extremis. My fellows will then be chucked into the thick of it without any real preparation whatever.’

  ‘Why won’t the Government give you any arms?’ I asked.

  ‘Because they don’t trust the Chinese. Consider them all Communists who will turn their guns on the white man as soon as we hand them out.’

  ‘What rubbish!’ I said hotly. ‘The Chinese – particularly the Peranakans – would die for Malaya! Some of my closest friends at school were Peranakans, and they would put the English to shame when it comes to patriotism!’

  ‘I couldn’t agree with you more, Norma,’ Dalley said seriously. ‘But the blasted administrators out here are besotted with the Malays, contemptuous of the Tamils, and downright scared of the Chinese.
Most of them need a serious boot up the backside.’ John Dalley had a reputation in the FMS Police as something of a firebrand, and I could see why.

  Dalley came back to the subject of Dalforce (as the Straits Times had christened his Chinese battalion) over pudding. ‘You said you grew up with a lot of Peranakan families when you were at school,’ he asked turning to me. ‘Do you still keep in touch?’

  ‘I have lost touch a bit,’ I confessed. ‘But some of my closest friends are still Peranakan. Molly Tan for one – and she’s probably the best-connected woman in Penang. Why do you ask?’

  Dalley finished pouring melted brown sugar over his sago pudding, and put the silver sauce dish down carefully. ‘We need someone with your background in our office,’ he said. ‘We’re getting a flood of applications to join Dalforce and we need someone to vet them. You know, give us an idea of a chap’s standing in the Chinese community. You couldn’t spare a day or so a week helping us out, could you?’

  I laughed. ‘I don’t pretend to know all the Chinese in Malaya,’ I said. ‘But I’d be delighted to do whatever I can to help you get your battalion together.’

  ‘Capital!’ Dalley rubbed his hands together. ‘I’ve set up a battalion HQ in Holland Road. Abandoned school, actually. I’ll send you a chit with all the details later, but please consider yourself appointed to the staff of Dalforce as of right now.’

  I saw Margaret’s eyes on me, shining with excitement. ‘Isn’t this grand?’ she said. ‘We really are playing a part in this war. It’s like being characters in a novel.’ It was still early days, of course. The casualty lists had not yet commenced in the Straits Times. We did think we were playing roles in some wartime epic. How shocked we were to be when the real war began. When friends died and we saw bombs falling and fires raging, and dead children drifting on the oily surface of the sea.