In the Mouth of the Tiger

by Lynette Silver

  ‘I am not selling arms to the MCP,’ Denis said flatly. ‘For heaven’s sake, Norma, what do you take me for? The whole point of what I’m doing is to save Malaya from any more bloodshed.’ Denis sounded so offended that I couldn’t help but feel contrite.

  ‘I’m sorry, darling. It’s just that . . . Well, we are in the business of selling guns . . .’

  ‘All war surplus, and all sold quite legitimately with export clearances. And by the by, remember that the Communists don’t need any more guns. They were given all the weapons they could ever possibly need by the British. By Force 136.’

  I breathed a sigh of relief. ‘Of course. What an idiot I can be. You and Ivan set up all those arms dumps before the war.’

  We had curried chicken for lunch, and as I tucked into a rather splendid meal I debated with myself whether I should ask Denis about the photographs. It seemed to me that their presence could only mean he was dealing with the MCP on a much broader basis than I had imagined, because he obviously needed to recognise members of the party on sight. But in the end I decided not to. We were involved in a complex game, Denis and I, and I was suddenly quite ashamed at how quickly I had doubted him over the guns.

  So instead I asked after Loi Tak.

  ‘Oh, we shot him off to Siam,’ Denis said airily. ‘He’s going to be very well off, and should be pretty happy. MI6 have also kept their word and given him a brand new identity. And we’ve pushed out the usual story about him being bumped off by jealous rivals.’

  ‘What about Chin Peng?’ I asked. ‘Is he in charge of the MCP yet?’

  Denis’s left eye closed fractionally in a tiny wink. ‘Chin Peng has convinced the Central Committee not to appoint a new Secretary-General until everyone on the Committee has been investigated for links with Loi Tak. They’re all so frightened that they’re fawning over him as if he were a demigod. No doubt, when the investigation is complete, all Chin’s enemies will have been exposed as traitors and Chin himself will be appointed to head the purified party.’

  ‘He’s basically a good egg, though, isn’t he?’ I asked, perhaps a little wistfully. ‘If he does take over the helm, surely he won’t take the MCP into the jungle to fight against us?’

  Denis didn’t answer directly. ‘Chin Peng is a good egg. But exactly where he is going to take the MCP is anyone’s guess.’

  The Aubreys duly bought their rubber plantation, and held a farewell dinner at the Sea View Hotel towards the end of June 1947. It was a bittersweet occasion. I hated the thought of losing Tanya, but I was happy for her that all of her dreams were coming true. Tanya had just found out that she was expecting another baby, and I had never seen her so beautiful or so full of life. It seemed inconceivable to me that this smiling, blue-eyed woman with cornflowers plaited into her hair had once been the dreaded Madam Tanya of my childhood.

  There were a lot of people at the dinner whom Denis and I had never met, but we did run into several familiar faces. One of them brought a lump to my throat. Tim Featherstone was leaning nonchalantly against the cocktail bar when I spotted him, his red hair thinner and his eyes older and wiser, but the smile he turned on me was quite unchanged. It took me back instantly to my earliest days in KL. Films at the Plaza and the Colosseum. Plays at the Princes Theatre. Spinning through the night in Tim’s green Triumph, the hood down and the balmy evening breeze in my hair. I gave him a hug, and then he put me at arm’s length. ‘Meet Mrs Featherstone,’ he said almost shyly. ‘Jan, this is Nona, the girl I fell in love with when I first came out to Malaya.’

  Jan came up and linked her arm possessively with Tim’s. She was lovely. She looked about seventeen, with a pretty, freckled face, honey-blonde hair, and a smile made quite fetching by a small gap between her two front teeth. ‘I feel I almost know you, Nona,’ she said, her candid blue eyes on mine. ‘I’ve heard so much about you. To think that you’ve actually lived in the jungle with the forest people! Weren’t you scared out of your wits? Snakes and spiders and things, and even tigers according to Tim.’

  ‘We did meet a tiger,’ I smiled. ‘But he was the nicest animal you can imagine. He had white fur around his muzzle, and the softest eyes.’ For some unaccountable reason there were tears on my cheeks and I dashed them away, hiding the action with a laugh.

  But they hadn’t escaped Tim. ‘Come on, Jan,’ he said quickly, putting his arm around her and turning her away. ‘I want to introduce you to another old chum of mine.’ As they moved off Tim looked back. ‘Don’t go too far away, Nona. We’ll be back to hear what you and Denis have been up to since KL. I’ve heard all sorts of stories.’

  Tanya was suddenly beside me. ‘I should have told you,’ she said, clearly annoyed with herself. ‘But I wanted to give you a surprise. I’m sorry, Nona. It must have been a shock running into Tim like that.’ But by then I had completely recovered myself and gave Tanya a brilliant smile.

  ‘I’m glad you didn’t tell me he’d be here,’ I said. ‘It would have made our meeting awkward. We parted under rather strained circumstances, you know.’ I couldn’t remember whether I had told Tanya about Amai Rais or not.

  After dinner there was dancing. Eugene had brought in a band and reserved the beachfront ballroom, so we sat around drinking champagne and taking turns on the floor while a huge tropic moon rose over the sea. Tim and Jan danced superbly together, far better than Tim and I had ever danced, and I felt a little stab of jealousy. It puzzled me, as the hint of tears had puzzled me earlier in the evening. I think it is that every girl likes to have a special friend, someone waiting in the wings in case he’s needed, who loves her from afar but will never intrude. Tim had been that special man for me, but now he belonged to someone else. I realised I was being quite absurd. I liked Tim a lot, but I didn’t love him. I really was being a dog in the manger, begrudging Jan her happiness. And Tim his chance of fulfilment.

  It must have been after eleven when Malcolm Bryant breezed into the party, looking absolutely devastating in his bum-freezer and black tie. He was making his number to Eugene and Tanya when he spotted me over the scrum of dancers and made his way across to our table.

  ‘I might have missed dinner but clearly I haven’t missed the best part of the evening. You will dance with me, won’t you, Norma?’

  I responded to his gallantry by rising and giving him a curtsey.

  We danced magnificently. I felt as I had felt on the Cathay the night before Marseilles, as light and filmy as a cloud, as lithe and beautiful as Isadora Duncan. We waltzed past Tim and Jan and of course I picked that precise moment to give Malcolm a sudden girlish hug and to trill with girlish laughter.

  ‘You are an absolute goddess tonight,’ Malcolm said. ‘I love you in that dress, with your hair all bound up, and your neck so smooth. I’d give you the world if you would only let me kiss you.’

  His words brought me to myself. It wasn’t only the words but the way he said them, his mouth close to my ear, his breath warm on the side of my face. I could have flirted with Tim and been quite safe but Malcolm was a different kettle of fish. There was something intense and dangerous in his affection, something I knew I could not control. I know I must have stiffened in his arms, and I took him back to our table as soon as the waltz was over. I lifted my eyebrows to Denis. ‘Shouldn’t we go over and see Tim?’ I asked. ‘You haven’t met Jan yet. She is absolutely adorable.’

  They made room for us at Tim’s crowded table, and I saw Tim flash me a look of gratitude. ‘How did you manage to meet up with Eugene and Tanya?’ I asked.

  ‘That’s what’s so wonderful,’ Tim said. ‘We are going to be neighbours! Well, almost. I’m managing the Dunlops Estate at Bentong and Eugene will be half an hour up the Kuala Lipis road. Jan and I ran into them lunching at the Bentong Club on the day they decided to buy the Argyle Rubber Estate.’

  ‘We’re going to see an awful lot of each other,’ Jan said. ‘The twins are the same age as Andrei so we’ll have a lot in common. And Tim has offered to teach Eugene the ropes. You
know he’s never run a rubber estate before?’

  ‘You’ve got twins?’ I asked. ‘You look so young. I thought you were about seventeen!’

  ‘I’m twenty-eight,’ Jan said. ‘I suppose one day I’ll appreciate looking younger than I am, but at the moment it’s quite a nuisance. Nobody takes me seriously.’

  ‘There were some labour troubles up your way earlier in the year,’ Denis said to Tim. ‘Did they affect you at all?’

  Tim grimaced. ‘It was bloody terrible. We had a big strike in February which disrupted the tapping program no end. The Communists were behind it, of course. They’ve taken control of all the unions, and all they want to do is cause trouble.’

  ‘Have you spoken to the union people themselves?’ Denis asked. ‘One would think they’d have the interests of their people at heart, even if the Communists have a different agenda.’

  ‘The union officials are Communists. Or at least they are on the surface. But I dare say a lot of them are scared stiff of the Commies, and have joined the party only to protect their own skins.’

  ‘So what do you intend to do?’

  Tim smiled quietly. ‘I’ve got a bit of a plan, actually. I’m going to be as good to my people as I possibly can. See if I can disarm the Communists by taking away the biggest plank in their platform – that we are big, bad capitalists exploiting the masses.’

  About midnight someone suggested a walk along the beach in the moonlight, and we trooped through the hotel gardens to the strip of silver sand. There was a lot of laughter and giggling, and some ribald talk, and Denis and I and Tim and Jan linked our arms as we walked along, appreciating the coolness of a late-night sea breeze.

  ‘You really can’t beat the tropics,’ Tim said. ‘One simply couldn’t do this at home, could one? It would be freezing, even in summer. And where in England could one find such beauty?’ He gestured to the graceful coconut trees to our right, the moonlit sea to our left, and the dark outline of islands on the horizon. We came upon a concrete bunker, one of the many pillboxes built along the South Coast during the war. In the forgiving moonlight it looked for all the world like a miniature castle rising out of the sand. Someone suggested we go inside. ‘The first to spot the Castle Ghost wins a bottle of Bollinger!’ Eugene called.

  It was pitch black inside, and smelt of seaweed and urine, and Denis and I escaped as soon as we could. When we came out the world had changed. The moon had gone behind a cloud and the night was black as pitch. In my memory, that moment has taken on a curious significance. I see it as the point in time that divided the good times we had in Malaya after the war from the bad times. The moment the moonlight turned to shadows.

  We groped our way back along the beach almost in silence, conversation muted and the odd laugh seeming strained and insincere. As we came closer to the hotel we realised something was wrong. There was shouting, indistinct but shrill, and then the sound of police sirens.

  Someone had been shot on the front porch. A European, waiting for his taxi, had been hit by two bullets fired out of the darkness, and his sprawled body lay covered with a sheet on the footpath. Police were everywhere, blowing their whistles and pushing people back inside the hotel. ‘For your own good,’ a Malay constable said to us, gesturing Denis and me peremptorily inside. ‘There are bad hats out in the darkness. They will shoot at you because you are white.’

  Malcolm joined us, standing between me and the blackness. ‘Damned Chinese Communists,’ he said bitterly. ‘I’ve seen this coming for a long time.’

  ‘I doubt it would have been a Communist,’ Denis said quietly. ‘They’re much too disciplined for something like this. Much more likely to have been the Malayan Overseas Chinese Self-Defence Army. They’re a vicious bunch and all they want is bloodshed for the sake of bloodshed.’

  ‘Aren’t they all the same thing?’ Tanya asked, white-faced but composed.

  ‘MOCSDA is anti-Communist,’ Denis said shortly.

  ‘They are all Chinese, for heaven’s sake,’ Malcolm retorted. ‘And the Chinese spell trouble, whatever their political persuasion.’ Malcolm had become quite renowned for his anti-Chinese sentiments. He was the direct opposite of John Dalley, for whom the Chinese could do no wrong. It is one of the ironies of history that during 1947 Dalley was writing the Malayan Security Service assessment of the MCP as a potential threat. His assessment would be that they posed no threat at all, which is one of the reasons the Government was caught so flat-footed when the real violence broke out.

  We were told nobody was to leave the Sea View until the area around the hotel had been thoroughly searched so we gathered by the cocktail bar, drinking complimentary coffee and talking in subdued tones. The party spirit had been well and truly dispelled, and we speculated morbidly on whom it might be lying under a sheet. About two o’clock they told us that the dead man was Rob King, an executive with Royal Dutch Shell. Most of us knew Rob, even if only slightly. I remembered him from the Swimming Club, where I had often seen him supervising his children in the wading pool.

  It all seemed so tragic and futile. What on earth had the bad hat intended to gain by shooting a complete stranger?

  The killing sent a thrill of fear through European society in Malaya. Talking to Tanya on the phone the next morning I tried to be positive and enthusiastic about her move up country, but inside I felt chilled that she was going to such a lonely area in these troubled times. The Argyle Rubber Plantation was in new country for rubber, and would not have the interlocking support of neighbouring estates to take away the feeling of isolation. And Tanya was a city girl. I remembered how she had hated Kuala Rau. I had a picture in my mind of her peering fearfully into the shadows of the jungle from our verandah. ‘I hate it here,’ she had hissed. ‘I hate there not being anyone about. Just emptiness.’

  I promised that Denis and I would visit soon as they were settled. ‘Please do,’ Tanya said almost desperately. ‘Please come and stay. As soon as you can.’

  ‘You’re going to be only half an hour from the Featherstones,’ I said. ‘I’m sure it will be fun.’

  ‘Yes, I’m sure it will be fun,’ Tanya said, but her tone was forced.

  The Aubreys’ departure depressed me, and then something happened that deepened the gloom at Casuarinas even further. Denis came home one day looking pale and upset, chucked his briefcase into his study, kissed Frances and me perfunctorily, then took off for a walk by himself. Evening fell, it began to rain, and I took a chair out onto the verandah and sat there watching for his return.

  Dinner time came and went, but I told Amah to hold the meal. I put Frances to bed, read her a goodnight story, and resumed my vigil.

  Denis came back about ten, soaked and fatigued. ‘Please, darling,’ I implored. ‘I know something has upset you. Tell me what it is. A burden shared is a burden halved.’

  At first I thought he would refuse, but he suddenly took me in his arms. ‘I honestly don’t know if it’s worth the candle,’ he said, shaking his head slowly, his arms firmly around me. ‘At times I really wonder.’

  I assumed that he was talking about intelligence work, and realised that this must be serious. ‘Tell me all about it,’ I said. ‘From the beginning. But under the shower, or you will catch your death of cold.’

  I sat on a chair in the bathroom as Denis showered, talking to me as the hot water splashed over him. ‘We had a message from London today,’ he said. ‘About a chap called Igor Skripkin. A lieutenant in the Russian Navy, who worked in their Naval Intelligence area. He had a wife and a couple of children whom he cared for a great deal. He wanted to join us – to defect. He went back to Moscow while we were arranging to get his family out. But the Russians caught on. A couple of KGB people approached him, pretending to be MI6, and he gave himself away.’

  Denis came out of the shower and towelled himself vigorously. ‘What happened to him?’ I asked.

  ‘What do you think happened to him?’ Denis snapped. ‘They shot him of course.’

  The rain
had increased, beating on the tiled roof and gurgling in our downpipes. In the distance the sea had got up so that we could hear waves thumping on the beach. Denis was staring at me, his eyes huge and vividly blue. He looked, just for a second, like an angry stranger, and then his face crumpled, his lips clamping into a downturned line as he struggled not to weep.

  ‘You can cry,’ I said softly. ‘You can cry.’

  But the moment was over. Denis chucked the towel into the rattan dhobi basket and pulled on his pyjamas. ‘Fat lot of good crying would do. Get Amah to rustle up some dinner, will you darling? I don’t know about you but I could eat a horse.’

  The death of Lieutenant Skripkin darkened our lives for weeks. At first I thought I understood Denis’s agony. It had been too easy for him to identify with the unfortunate Russian. Skripkin had been in charge of Russia’s commercial intelligence operations in the Far East since the end of the war, and thus in many ways had been Denis’s opposite number. He had also played the double-edged game we had pretended to play in Melbourne. But he had played the game for real, and paid the ultimate price.

  But as the weeks passed without any change in Denis’s mood, I understood his agony less and less. There seemed to be almost a degree of guilt in his grief, a personal element that made no sense at all. ‘You couldn’t have done anything to help him, could you?’ I asked on one occasion.

  Denis hadn’t answered me, but his smile had been bitter and enigmatic.

  We visited the Aubreys at the end of August, and I welcomed the opportunity for Denis to have something to think about other than Lieutenant Skripkin. We took the overnight train to KL and then a car out to the plantation. Frances had been tired and irritable on the drive, but settled down the moment we drew up before the bungalow and little Andrei ran out to meet us, his blond hair glowing under the porch lights.