In the Mouth of the Tiger

by Lynette Silver

  Margaret and Alec wandered around for afternoon tea, bringing Mark and Rory with them – a blessing as all four boys found renewed energy in each other’s company and took off for the nursery to play their interminable war games.

  ‘They are playing Ivor Novello tunes down at the Sea View tonight,’ Margaret said, holding up her copy of the Straits Times. ‘Why don’t we have dinner down there? We could sit outside and catch the sea breeze.’

  I even remember what we had for dinner. It was chicken Maryland, a popular new American dish then sweeping Singapore. The sea breeze rose at last and we sat on the waterfront looking out at the spidery row of kalangs offshore, speckled with lights, and with the dark loom of islands beyond them. We were all tired by the heat and went home quite early, Denis and I tiptoeing in to kiss the boys goodnight before flopping down under the mosquito net.

  I awoke a bit before four o’clock in the morning to a dull, heavy sound that seemed to fill the night air, rising and falling in a strange way, unfamiliar and threatening. I know it was just before four because I rose on one elbow and looked across at the illuminated clock on Denis’s side table. He was wide awake, listening intently.

  ‘Those are Japanese planes,’ he said, suddenly swinging out of bed. ‘Unsynchronised twin engines. Probably bombers.’

  I followed him out onto the lawn. It was a little cooler, the grass wet with dew, and the stars glowed dimly through thin, high cloud. ‘What’s happening?’ I asked, but Denis just gripped my hand, staring towards the loom of light from the city of Singapore a dozen miles to the west.

  I saw the flashes well before I heard the dull ‘crump’ of the bombs. Pinpricks of light low on the horizon, dancing in little patterns, pausing, then dancing again. The sound was almost continuous, a low, deep rumble that sounded for all the world like a thunderstorm far out to sea.

  ‘They are bombing Singapore,’ I said flatly. At that moment there was no other feeling, just empty acceptance. We had been expecting this for so long that now it was actually upon us it seemed quite unreal.

  ‘Why don’t they turn the blasted lights off?’ Denis breathed. ‘They’ve got the whole place lit up like a fairground!’ The city lights of Singapore remained on throughout the raid, outlining the streets, the docks, the public places like an illuminated map. It was one of the scandals of that night that the man whose job it was to turn off the city lights in case of a raid had gone to a late-night cinema and not bothered to nominate a substitute.

  The raid seemed to go on for hours. At one stage I went into the boys’ room and knelt in the dark, praying for all those I loved, and for the poor people caught in the city. Eventually, the sound of aircraft and the crump of bombs ceased, replaced by an unnatural quiet, a stillness belied by flickering on the horizon that told of fires raging in the city centre. I couldn’t believe it when I looked at my watch and saw that it was just after four-thirty. The raid had taken no longer than twenty minutes.

  Even before the raid ended our telephone had rung, the Naval Base recalling Denis to his ship. There were standing orders to round up all Japanese vessels as soon as hostilities broke out, and Penghulu’s job was to help seize Japanese fishing boats stationed in Singapore. Denis climbed into his uniform in the dark as I sat on the bed, trying to collect my thoughts, work out some order of priorities for the coming day.

  ‘Will the planes come back?’ I asked stupidly.

  Denis sat down on the bed beside me. ‘Nobody knows, darling. But if they do, just keep everybody together and under cover. That’s all you can do. Before I go I’ll ask Chu Lun to start digging an air-raid shelter for us. I’m a chump for not having thought of it before.’

  I went out to the car with him, hanging onto his arm like a child reluctant to see a parent leave. ‘When will you be back?’ I asked. I could feel panic surging within me at the thought of coping alone and fought to hide it. ‘Don’t answer that – I know you don’t know.’

  Denis gently disentangled my hand from his arm and gave me a peck on the cheek. ‘Be brave,’ he said, tossing his cap onto the back seat and climbing into the little Fiat Marvellette he had bought to commute to the Naval Base. ‘And keep dinner for me – it’s mah mi night, isn’t it?’ And then he was gone, and I was all alone watching the smoky sky above Singapore dancing with reflections from the fires.

  I listened to the BBC news over breakfast. The raid on Singapore had been only one aspect of a massive all-out Japanese offensive against Britain and America. That night, Japan had also attacked the American fleet at Pearl Harbor, attacked Hong Kong, Manila, Guam and Wake Island, and landed troops at Singora and Patani in Siam and at Kota Bharu in northeastern Malaya. The world was waking up to find the Western Pacific and the whole of South-East Asia ablaze with war, and Japanese warriors successful everywhere.

  ‘How long before we win, Mem?’ Amah asked placidly as she brought me my chilled papaya, and I shook my head.

  ‘I really don’t know, Amah. But I hope we win before my baby is born. I wouldn’t like it to be born in the middle of a battle.’ The doctor had confirmed my pregnancy only the previous week and I was still getting used to the idea of another child. I looked at Tony and Bobby, their blond heads together as they sat on the floor playing with toy cars. We often speak about wanting a peaceful world for our children. Well, they were not empty words to me that morning. I cringed at the thought that the life I was bringing into the world might be greeted with guns and bombs, and the awful sound of bombers overhead.

  Alec Dean had been called up to his unit of the Malay Volunteers guarding Seletar Airfield, and it seemed sensible for Margaret and her boys to join us for the day. We sat on the verandah, the children oblivious to what had happened, Margaret and I sitting close together without talking much, trying to make sense of a world that had suddenly turned upside down.

  The Governor came on the radio at noon and we crouched over the set like two old women crouched around a fire on a cold day. ‘As you know, we have been attacked by the Japanese,’ Sir Shenton Thomas said. ‘Imperial Japanese bombers have raided Singapore and a number of our air fields in Malaya. Casualties have been light but there has been some property damage. I am glad to be able to tell you that the Japanese troops who landed on the far north-east coast of Malaya are being mopped up as I speak, and that the ships from which they landed are retreating at full speed.’

  Margaret and I looked at each other, smiling with relief. We didn’t know, in those early days, just how much the authorities were prepared to twist the facts in order to maintain civilian morale. In fact Kota Bharu – the town where the Japanese had landed – had already fallen and tough, self-sufficient Japanese soldiers were pushing across the Malay Peninsula to reach the modern road systems on the west coast.

  ‘There is more good news,’ Sir Shenton continued. ‘America, with all its resources and all its military might, is now on our side in this war. The attack on Pearl Harbor may have given the Japanese the appearance of a victory but I am sure that in the long run it will be seen as the final nail in the coffin of Japan’s militaristic dreams.’

  Again Margaret and I exchanged happy glances. We were of a generation brought up by Hollywood to believe that Americans were akin to gods – invincible and inevitably triumphant. To have them on our side, even if their Pacific Fleet had just received a mauling, surely guaranteed us victory.

  The Governor had some final words. ‘Stay calm,’ he said. ‘Go about your usual tasks and duties as if the activities of the Japanese are of no more than nuisance value. Let our watchword be “business as usual”, as it was for the heroic people of London during the German blitz.’

  It was a comforting talk, and I know that half of Malaya heaved a huge sigh of relief. Margaret and I immediately decided to keep to our usual program for the day. It was Monday, and on Mondays we usually went into town for shopping and afternoon tea at the new air-conditioned restaurant in Robinsons. It seemed almost disloyal to contemplate doing anything else.

 
Before we set off in the new black Singer that had replaced the ageing Alvis, I saw a sight that will remain with me until the day I die. There had been showers out to sea but they were clearing and two huge ships loomed through the mist, touched by shafts of watery sunshine. They were the battleship HMAS Prince of Wales and the battlecruiser HMAS Repulse, their grey bulks towering above their attendant escort of four destroyers. These were the two most powerful ships in the British Fleet and they were on their way north to deal with the impudent Japanese who had dared take on the might of the British Empire

  For me they represented the very essence of power. The material reality behind the mythical battleships Malcolm Bryant talked about. I felt my pulse race and my heart swell with pride. Who could doubt a quick victory after seeing them pass in majestic procession, their huge guns pointing to the horizon, signal lamps flickering importantly from their bridges?

  The trip into Singapore was a dreadful mistake. The Governor had spoken of ‘light casualties and some property damage’, but when we crossed Lavender Street and entered the city proper we saw that the reality was quite different. The dock area around Telok Ayer Basin had been half demolished, and fires were still burning. Chinatown was strangely silent, with occasional piles of rubble spilling onto the streets and groups of people sitting around in shock. There were ambulances everywhere, and a crying Malay policeman told us that many people had been killed.

  And then we saw them. Row upon row of bodies laid out on the footpath of New Bridge Road, arms and legs at unnatural angles, children and even babies mixed up with the adults.

  We fled into the centre of the city, looking for anything normal or orderly to reassure us that the world was still sane. But even Raffles Place, the fashionable granite heart of white Singapore, had bomb damage and bodies laid out for collection. When we tried to enter Robinsons, pushed on by Shenton Thomas’s call for ‘business as usual’, we were told that it was ‘early closing’. A rough hand-lettered sign told us that the Robinsons restaurant, the spiritual centre of Singapore for a thousand mems, had received a direct hit and been destroyed.

  We drove home without speaking, even Hamid, Denis’s usually talkative new syce, shocked into silence. I felt a flash of anger towards Shenton Thomas. How dare he treat us as idiots, feed us platitudes when the truth was all around us? And how much else of what he had said was equally untrue?

  Denis arrived home as dusk was falling, looking spry and confident, and I fell into his arms. ‘We drove into Singapore,’ I said, ‘Margaret and I. It was horrible. I think things are much worse than they are letting on. Will we be all right, darling?’ I looked up into his face, searching for reassurance.

  ‘Of course we will,’ Denis said. He smiled. ‘There might be a bit of a bump or two coming our way, but we’ll stick together and see things through.’

  Of course we would stick together and see things through. I made a conscious effort to lift my mood. ‘I saw the Prince of Wales and the Repulse out in the Straits,’ I said. ‘They looked absolutely beautiful. I suppose they were going north to knock the Japanese to kingdom come.’

  Denis grimaced. ‘I saw them myself. Closed up for action and with their battle standards flying. I damned nearly cried. I’d give my right arm to have been aboard.’

  ‘They will hit the Japs for six, won’t they?’ I asked hopefully, and Denis squeezed my arm.

  We had dinner and put the children to bed, and then sat out under the loggia with our coffee as the sky cleared and the stars came out. Denis had had a frustrating day, rounding up Japanese fishing boats and towing them to an internment pen for safekeeping. Housekeeping work, he called it, and it had been particularly frustrating because all day he’d had the image of the great battleships in his mind, and he couldn’t help longing to be part of their brave adventure.

  We spent the rest of the evening doing what people were doing all over Malaya, phoning friends and relatives to see how they were coping. I rang Tanya first because whatever I might have told myself about excluding Mother from my life, I was concerned and Tanya was in touch with her. Tanya sounded strained, and dropped into Russian which meant she had something important to say. I thought at first she was going to give me some bad news about Mother but it was Eugene she was concerned about. ‘He’s very ill,’ she said. ‘It’s blackwater fever and he’s had a temperature of a hundred and four for over twenty-four hours. The doctors have told me to be prepared for him not getting better.’ Her voice cracked as she spoke, and I thought how much she had changed from the iceberg who had been Madam Tanya.

  ‘Is he in hospital?’ I asked. Of course he would be in hospital. Blackwater fever was perhaps the most feared of all diseases in Malaya. It had carried off half the Europeans who died in the tropics in the old days, a virulent form of malaria that could literally burn its victims to death within a few days.

  We spoke some more – the normal, useless stuff one talks about in the face of such a situation – and then I asked Tanya if she had heard from Mother.

  Tanya paused before replying. ‘Now that you ask, she did ring me this morning. I don’t know why. She sounded fine.’ Clearly, Tanya was so involved with Eugene’s illness that everything else, including the Japanese attack on Malaya, were matters of small moment. I got her to promise to ring me if there was any change in Eugene’s condition, then rang off. My next call was to Molly Tan.

  ‘We had a raid here too,’ she said in her cheerful, no-nonsense way. ‘Paul was out with the Air Raid Patrol all day and told me quite a lot of people were killed. Don’t believe a word they say on the radio, Nona. They said that Butterworth came though unscathed, but my houseboy has family on the edge of the airstrip and he says a whole lot of planes were destroyed on the ground.’

  I told Molly about my trip into Singapore and she clicked her tongue. ‘Stay away from targets, Nona. And Singapore must be high on the Japanese list because that’s where most of the war material is coming in.’

  Then I rang Babs Chrystal. ‘Get packed and get yourself booked on a ship as quickly as you can,’ she said trenchantly. ‘Bob was on the phone first thing this morning and I’m leaving on the Gorgon the day after tomorrow. Malaya is in for a pasting and there is absolutely nothing we women can do staying here.’

  I said something noncommittal and rang off. There was no way on earth I was going to be parted from Denis. I also had a feeling that it wasn’t quite right to run away. Malaya was my home as much as it was to any Malay, Chinese or Indian, and none of them were running away.

  My last call was to Catherine Koh. I had kept her for last because her house was in an area that had been bombed and I had shrunk from making the call. I had feared hearing the phone ring out, or worse still, hearing the outof-order signal. But she answered immediately, sounding cool and collected, and I breathed a sigh of relief. ‘It’s all so silly,’ she said. ‘Why can’t we just give the Japanese access to the resources that they need? I know they have done terrible things in China, but every nation has it bad people. But every nation also has its good people too. Couldn’t we talk to them?’

  ‘I don’t think it’s quite that simple,’ I said rather lamely. ‘And we’re not attacking them, they’re attacking us. They don’t want to buy our tin and rubber anymore, they just want to take it from us.’

  I heard Catherine sigh. ‘I’m just about to have my baby, Norma. It is due any day, in fact. I hate the thought that my little child is going to be born into a world full of fear and violence.’ It was a sentiment so close to my own thoughts of earlier in the day that I could only nod in silent agreement.

  ‘I have a Japanese hairdresser,’ I said thoughtfully. ‘Her name is Akiko. She is sweet and gentle and could harm nobody. I just don’t understand how she could be so nice while her fellow Japanese can be so cruel and aggressive.’

  I heard Catherine sigh again. ‘I am so afraid, Norma,’ she said. ‘Robert is over at Holland Road right now. The Government has decided to give Dalforce the guns they have been asking fo
r. It means Robert will be fighting the Japanese. I am so frightened he will be killed. If he is killed, what does anything at all matter?’

  I couldn’t answer, and we both sat there, the line buzzing emptily between us but understanding each other perfectly.

  Late that night an Army dispatch rider arrived on a motor cycle, a closefaced young man who insisted on handing his buckled leather pouch to Denis personally. It was the first of many such visits. Always late at night, always the same taciturn young man, the pouch always passed over in the shadows of our back porch, with the engine of the cycle left running. I once asked the young man what was in the pouch but he just looked at me without deigning to answer. Denis was not much more forthcoming and I didn’t press him. But it made me aware that Denis was involved in more than just his naval work. There were other things going on and he was part of them.

  The next day Denis again left for Penghulu before dawn, speeding away up Tanah Merah Besar Road in the little Fiat. Tony had come out to wave goodbye, and stood with me as the stars paled and a cool breeze blew in from the sea. ‘You’ve been cutting onions again, Mummy,’ he said mischievously. I simply couldn’t help it: every time Denis left for his ship some Pavlovian reaction squeezed tears from my eyes.

  ‘Cutting onions indeed,’ I said chasing him back to the house. ‘Let’s see if a smack on the bottom makes your eyes water!’

  That day, the second day of war, was a strange one for me, and perhaps for many others throughout Malaya. The anaesthetic effects of shock, which had kept reality at bay the day before, had worn off so that one saw things for the first time as they really were. We faced a powerful and savage enemy, and that enemy had already proved that the pre-war vaunts of the Malayan bureaucrats were false and hollow. It was true that America had joined the war on our side, but America was a long way away and was herself reeling from the shock of Pearl Harbor. The American cavalry might one day come our way, but even the blindest optimist would realise that they would come far too late.