In the Mouth of the Tiger

by Lynette Silver

  ‘What about Chin Peng?’ I asked. I was not too shocked to hear that Loi Tak was a traitor to his people, but for some reason I didn’t want to learn the same thing about Chin Peng. He had seemed to me such an honest man. And an idealist to boot.

  ‘Chin Peng is a very different kettle of fish,’ Denis said. ‘Bob Chrystal recruited him back in 1936, when he was at the Chinese school on Bob’s estate. He was a very bright young chap, full of ability but getting nowhere in the MCP because the Party is full of uneducated thugs. So we offered to put him under Loi Tak’s wing and have him groomed as a future Secretary-General. He jumped at the chance and he’s been Loi Tak’s deputy virtually ever since. Of course, we took a risk with him because he could have blown Loi Tak out of the water, but he’s not let us down.’

  ‘So he’s a loyal British agent, is he?’ I asked.

  ‘That’s a very good question. To be perfectly frank I’m not sure if we’re running him, or he’s running us. Probably a little bit of both.’

  I lay back on my pillows. One of the issues the Communists had fought for at yesterday’s meeting had been their status in Malaya after the war. Loi Tak had articulated their demand for civil rights but he was no more than a mouthpiece. It had been Chin Peng who had really pushed the issue, and it had been Chin Peng who had secured the promise from Colin McKenzie.

  I thought of Rajeev Srinivasan’s comment: The Malays, the Chinese and the Indians. Each of these races is even now positioning itself, through its more far-sighted leaders, to take its place in the new Malaya.

  Perhaps Chin Peng was on nobody’s side but the Chinese. Perhaps he was simply positioning his people to take their place in the new Malaya.

  I had another question. ‘Who knows that Loi Tak and Chin Peng are working with British Intelligence?’

  ‘Everybody who was at the meeting here yesterday. Onraet and one or two of his people. And Stewart Menzies. I told him when we were in England – it’s not something one would ever put in writing. Nobody else knows. Except you.’

  ‘Not even John Morton?’ I asked. ‘I thought he was the head of British Intelligence in Malaya.’

  Denis shook his head. ‘The last people we’d want to have in on something like this are the career Intelligence people.’

  So it was a project for the Linlithgow Hunt, I thought.

  January 1942 went down in the history of Singapore as ‘the month of the bombs’. The Japanese had by now secured sufficient airfields in Malaya to be able to launch continuous raids against the island. The attacks, almost always in daylight, followed a pattern. The bombers came in neat, tight formations, composed of flights of 27, 54 or 81 planes. The lead plane would find an appropriate target and then all the bombs would fall together so that the earth rocked under the blast and flames and smoke rolled up into the hot blue sky. Fighters came too, busy, snarling little Zeros, but they were hardly needed as escorts as most of our own planes had been destroyed. Instead, they looked for ‘targets of opportunity’: trucks and cars on the roads, boats in the harbour, individual buildings, even groups of people caught out in the open.

  We civilians became quite cunning. For example, we would set off for our shopping trips immediately after one raid had finished, knowing we had an hour or two before the next was due. We knew the safer places to shop, and the places to stay away from. The centre of the city – Raffles Place and the Robinsons building – were safe because the substantial granite of the structures stood up well against bomb blasts and there were good public shelters. A favourite meeting place was the basement of Robinsons, which had been converted into a temporary coffee-shop-cum-air-raid-shelter. Docklands, and the area around Collier Quay, were dangerous places as they were the focus for raids against any newly arrived supply ships. But the most dangerous of all was the Chinese quarter, where the cheaply built multi-storey shops and residences collapsed under the bombs like houses of cards, spilling bricks and rubble into the streets and burying people in their hundreds. No official count has ever been made of all the casualties suffered during the raids on Singapore, but during January there must have been hundreds – sometimes thousands – every day. The ARP people, mainly grim-faced, dedicated young Chinese, would drag as many bodies from the rubble as they could after each raid and lay them along the streets for relatives to recognise and to take away for burial. Many hundreds of bodies were of course never claimed, probably because entire families had been wiped out, and these bodies would eventually be collected by sanitary workers to be dumped in lime-pits like so much rotting garbage.

  Margaret and I tried to maintain our routine, if for no other reason than to sustain our own morale. Hamid would take us into the city about ten (‘after the morning raid’, we used to say) and drop us off near Raffles Place. We’d do any essential shopping, have our hair done, pick up the dress or hat we had ordered, or just window-shop until midday, and then meet at the ‘Robinsons’ Underground’ for coffee. Coffee generally coincided with the lunchtime raid, so we would sit quietly as the ground reverberated to the sound of bombs, and then emerge into the smoky sunlight in time for Hamid to take us home.

  I think about those forays into town these days and my hair stands on end. Why on earth did we do it? How on earth did we do it? I think the answer lies in an instinct we humans have which helps us through extraordinary times by making us stick like glue to the most ordinary of our routines.

  In the middle of January the little Penghulu got caught up in the destruction going on all around us and was sent to the bottom. I learned about the sinking in the most casual way. I was doing a little therapeutic gardening in our vegetable plot – tying up the ladyfinger bushes, I think – when Denis’s little Marvelette turned into the driveway. It was only mid-afternoon, so I walked over, curious to hear why he had come home so early. Denis got out dressed, quite extraordinarily, in a blue boiler suit and carrying a large, bulky paper bag.

  ‘What on earth happened?’ I asked, inclined to laugh at his curious appearance.

  ‘We ran into a spot of bother,’ he said lightly. ‘Nobody hurt, but I’m afraid poor old Penghulu has gone to the bottom.’

  They had been sweeping off Pangarang Point when bombers returning from a raid on the city changed direction towards them. ‘Oh, oh,’ George had said quietly. ‘Looks like those fellows have some bombs to get rid of.’

  George ordered full speed and turned towards the planes, which was the approved drill in such circumstances. Warrant Officer Farthing, the gunner, began firing the popgun on the foredeck and Denis had a crack with a tommy-gun kept on the bridge for just such an eventuality. Nothing stopped the bombers, of course, but in that first pass all the bombs fell well clear.

  ‘Piece of cake,’ George said, and then saw the straggler – a single Betty flying straight towards them, bombs already tumbling from its belly. Again they seemed to escape, with only one bomb falling anywhere near, and that one detonating deep under water several yards in front of them. There was no shrapnel but the force of the underwater explosion hit the ship’s hull with a dull metallic thud.

  ‘Quite right, George,’ Denis said. ‘Piece of cake.’ But the underwater explosion had opened all the forward seams in the tired old trawler hull and HMMS Penghulu tilted gently downwards. The forward momentum of the vessel forced more and more water in through the gaping holes and the angle of descent increased inexorably. They did everything possible – reversed engines, started the pumps, closed the watertight doors, deployed the collision mats – but it was all quite hopeless. Within ten minutes George quietly ordered them to prepare to abandon ship. Denis collected the ship’s codebooks and papers and threw them into the sea in the regulation weighted bag. George assembled and counted his crew on the tiny stern deck. And then, rather like a schoolmaster at a swimming carnival, George ordered them all to jump together and swim for the bobbing Carley float. An RAF crash boat picked them up and they were drying out at the Naval Base within an hour.

  ‘The worst aspect of the whole busines
s,’ Denis said, ‘was the defeatism we ran into in the Base wardroom. It was the first time George or I had spoken to brass hats since the shooting started, and we simply couldn’t believe the way they spoke. As far as they are concerned, the whole shooting match is already over. All they are interested in is getting their families out of Singapore.’

  ‘How did poor old George take it?’ I asked.

  ‘Like a brick.’ Denis was thoughtful for a moment. ‘You know, from the moment the bombers appeared on the scene until we met our first brass hat, George didn’t experience a single facial tic. But as soon as he knew his people were safe, he was grimacing as badly as ever. Tells one something, I’m sure.’

  Denis wasn’t long ‘on the beach’, as they say in the Navy. That night we had a call from Captain Mulock, giving him command of a Harbour Defence Vessel. She didn’t have a name, just a number – HDML 24. ‘She’s a tight little craft,’ Mulock said. ‘Crew of nine, couple of Oerlikons to bang away at the Japs with, and she has a couple of depth charges on the stern. Decent top speed, though – over eighteen knots.’

  ‘I’d prefer to stay with George, sir,’ Denis said. ‘I think we make a good team.’

  ‘Sorry,’ Mulock said gruffly. ‘I’m afraid George has bought it. His car turned turtle when he was driving home from the Base. Simplest accident imaginable, but the poor blighter struck his head on a fence post beside the road. He was killed instantly.’

  George Fortesque’s death affected Denis and me far more than the sinking. The casual, almost comical nature of the accident seemed to mock every concept of human dignity. A man survives the rage of war and the sinking of his ship only to be wiped from the face of the earth as he potters home in his car. I hugged Denis tight and wept for George, and for all of us poor mortals trapped in a cruel and capricious world.

  Catherine’s baby came two or three weeks late, in the first week of January, and one wet, windy afternoon Margaret and I decided on the spur of the moment to drive over and visit her. The heavy cloud would keep the bombers away, we told ourselves, and so we cut flowers and wrapped presents, and set off dressed in bright cotton sundresses for Catherine’s home in Chamberlain Road just north of the city.

  Catherine was radiant. She met us at the front door of her modern concrete bungalow, her baby in her arms. ‘We have called her April,’ she said a little uncertainly. ‘Do you think it’s a silly name? It seems so pretty to me. It makes me think of blossom, and spring flowers, and fresh new life. Even though we don’t have seasons here in Singapore.’

  ‘I think it’s a lovely name,’ I said honestly. She was a beautiful baby, with all Catherine’s delicacy, and I took her and held her gently against my cheek. She opened her eyes and seemed to stare at me, with that all-knowing stare that some babies have. ‘I’m going to have a baby, too,’ I whispered to her. ‘It’s going to be born in April, so you two already have something in common. I hope you will grow up as friends, and see a better Singapore than this tired and awful one we live in now.’

  We drank tea in Catherine’s impeccable lounge room, and for a while talked about babies, and schools, and everything on earth except the war. But in the end the war was pressing too close upon us to be ignored.

  ‘Do you think Singapore will fall?’ Catherine asked, and both Margaret and I shook our heads. ‘They are bringing in reinforcements every day,’ Margaret said. ‘British, Indian and Australian troops, with shiploads of equipment. Poor old Johnny Jap will soon be running back up the peninsula as fast as his fat little legs will carry him.’

  ‘If they land on Singapore, Robert will be in the front line,’ Catherine said. ‘He’s training every day now, and can talk of nothing but Dalforce and how well it will fight.’ Suddenly there were tears in her eyes. ‘But he’s not really a soldier, even if he thinks he is. He’s an architect. He thinks that when he goes into battle it’s going to be just like playing soldiers. I’m sure he won’t take care.’ She was becoming upset so I reached across and squeezed her hand.

  ‘I sometimes think I should do something,’ she said. ‘You know, bribe a couple of tough guys to kidnap Robert and bundle him into a junk. We could sail away to somewhere, and stay there until the war is over. Robert would hate me but he would still be alive.’

  The thought was curiously seductive. Escape with those we love while we still could. Tanya had done just that with Eugene, and they were now safe and sound in South Africa. But I shook my head. ‘If we all stick together we will pull through,’ I said firmly. ‘I don’t trust Duff Cooper but I do trust Shenton Thomas.’

  But Catherine was not to be consoled. ‘Death is so final,’ she said softly. ‘When I was a little girl I boarded at a school next door to a big Chinese cemetery. I used to hear people crying there after a funeral had been held, and then they would go away, and leave the one they loved behind. I’d look out of my dormitory window night after night and see the gravestones, and I’d think: people cry for a while, and then they go away. But the dead stay dead. Day after day, night after night, they stay dead. Dead for ever and ever.’

  Margaret and I drove home in silence. All around us people were being killed. There was a risk, a very real risk, that we too might soon be dead. Our husbands might be dead already, Denis in his HDML, Alec with his ack-ack gun down at Seletar Airfield. Even the children we had brought into the world might be dead, our homes in ruins around them. But some instinct, some primal compulsion towards what we call our duty, made us blind to the rank absurdity of the situation. We felt it right and proper to ignore reality, to maintain a stiff upper lip, to talk resolutely about ‘sticking it out’.

  Perhaps it was all part of some vast, celestial confidence trick, some giant joke by a bored and indifferent god to make poor mortals look stupider than they really were. If that were so then the real heroes were those who called a halt to the charade, who refused to play by rules that had no meaning.

  I had a brilliant idea that night. I woke about two o’clock with the idea fully developed in my mind. We had replaced the Norma with a new, Uffa Fox-designed sixty-foot ketch. The Norma II lay bobbing at her mooring not half a mile from where I lay. We would provision her in the morning – her water tanks and diesel tanks were always full – and then sail away that evening for the Riau Straits. We’d take Chu Lun and Amah, and the Deans, and Catherine and her family, and simply fade away from all the bombs and all the fear and all the death. Denis and I knew the area like the backs of our hands. The pretty little islands, the secure anchorages, the freshwater creeks, and all the short-cut channels through the reefs. We would be in Batavia within a week, and then have Australia or Ceylon within easy cruising range.

  I woke Denis and told him my plan. We turned on the lights, and looked at maps, and calculated distances, and I wrote a list of what we’d have to do first thing. ‘If we ran all night under the diesel we would be well clear of the bombers by daylight,’ Denis said.

  My spirits rose by the minute, and I realised just how heavy had been the burden of the bombing and the knowledge that, inevitably, Japanese soldiers would come to Singapore Island. ‘We really will do it, won’t we?’ I asked Denis. ‘It’s not just a pipedream?’ Denis smiled and teased the curls from my forehead.

  When I fell asleep I had the most wonderful dream. I was flying. I only had to kick my feet and I rose effortlessly into the air. To turn, I merely leaned the way I wanted to go and I would swoop like a bird, the air cool and slippery against my skin. Denis and the children were flying too, and we were so high one could hardly see the island of Singapore beneath us at all. It was just a long dark stain on the sea, and then that too was lost in the all-pervading blue.

  We never spoke about our plan again. We just woke up the next morning to the real world, and carried on. Denis took off in the Marvelette for the Naval Base and I went shopping in Changi, where they had built a new air-raid shelter close to the Cold Storage. In the afternoon I did some gardening, helped by the boys who loved harvesting the long, pale green ladyf
ingers and the small tropical tomatoes. We made up baskets of vegetables, one for the Deans, one for Amah, and the boys ran off on their delivery errands. I caught myself staring out at the Norma II, her long, graceful shape like a white swan at rest on the water. In some other realm of existence, I suppose, we might have gone through with our escape plan and sailed off in her for the lovely, peaceful world just over the horizon. But somehow I don’t really think so.

  Inexorably, the tough, self-sufficient soldiers of the Imperial Japanese Army pushed their way down the Malayan Peninsula. One by one the big towns fell to their Banzai! charges: Alor Star, Kuantan, Ipoh, Kuala Lumpur, Mersing. As each town fell our familiar world shrank further and the shadows crowded in upon us. Finally, at the end of January, Japanese troops were pouring into Johore Bahru, just across the narrow strip of water that separates Malaya from the island of Singapore.

  The speed of the Japanese advance through Malaya caught the world by surprise. It was the first time that a modern European army had been clearly outfought by Asians, and all sorts of theories were put forward to explain the phenomenon. It was said that the British had been at a disadvantage against ‘jungle soldiers’ who were at home in the wet, tangled forests. But the truth was that, while the Japanese were masters at infiltration, the main fighting had not been in the jungles at all, but on the roads and open paddy fields of ‘civilised’ Malaya. It was also said that a cunning and treacherous Fifth Column had been to blame, with ‘natives’ siding with the Japanese and betraying British positions to their gunners and airmen and sabotaging British communications.

  I think that the simple reality was that the Japanese planned and executed their campaign better than the British, and took advantage of a whole parade of monumental British mistakes. For example, the British had no tanks in Malaya. They had no tanks because some hidebound oaf had said before the war that tanks could not operate in Malaya because it was mostly jungle and ‘tanks can’t operate in the jungle’. The Japanese on the other hand had hundreds of medium and light tanks, which they used with stunning effect in the way tanks are always used – on the roads and in the open fields. Another mistake had been to underestimate the Japanese air force. I remember an RAF officer telling me quite seriously in 1939 that short-sightedness was a national Japanese characteristic which made them incapable of matching keen-eyed Europeans in aerial combat.