In the Mouth of the Tiger

by Lynette Silver

  I was happy that Tim had pulled through, and happier still that he was being so positive and looking to the future. It meant that a little bit of the Malaya in which I had grown up still survived, and it also showed that however capricious fate might be, the human spirit could always triumph.

  The Ruys docked at Tilbury on a cold, overcast morning about a week before Christmas 1948. Dirty grey snow was falling on the decks and on the drab wharves alongside, and my excitement at arriving was tempered by the realisation that I was going to have to adjust to a whole new world. I wrapped up warmly in my brand new camel-hair coat, pulled on my brand new fur gloves, wrapped my brand new cashmere shawl about my shoulders and ventured out on deck. The people waiting on the wharf looked pinched and cold and the cars lined up behind them old and battered. There were gaps in the Tilbury skyline where bombed buildings had not yet been replaced. I shivered, gripped by a sudden, powerful yearning for the warmth and colour of Malaya.

  But then I remembered that this was where Elizabeth the First had rallied her troops in the face of the Spanish Armada, and I stuck out my chin determinedly. ‘Not very prepossessing, I grant you,’ Denis said, coming up behind me. ‘But there’s more to England than a set of docks in the snow, I assure you.’

  There was more to England than a set of docks in the snow, and I began to find that other England later in the day. We had booked into one of London’s best hotels and I remember our arrival as if it were yesterday: the taxi dropping us off at the revolving front door, the plush lobby with its warmth and smell of leather and beeswaxed timber, and the uniformed bellboy who escorted us to our rooms. Once we’d unpacked we went for a walk. Snow was falling on the streets, colourful tinsel adorned the lamp posts and and there were Christmas trees in all the shop windows. We went as far as Buckingham Palace, and came back through Green Park, where the ponds were frozen and there were Christmas lights strung amongst the tracery of winter trees. Even the children, cynical little savages though they might have been, were impressed and took in everything around them with wide-eyed wonder. It must have seemed a bit like fairyland to them, I supposed. To them? It was a bit like fairyland to me, too: Robbie had given me A. A. Milne and J. M. Barrie to read as a child, and this was magic territory for me as well.

  We had tea and cakes in the downstairs tearoom at Fortnum & Masons before returning to the warm embrace of our hotel. As we entered the subdued glitter of the lobby I gripped Denis’s hand. ‘I think I’m going to be very happy here.’

  ‘You’d be happy wherever you were,’ Denis drawled. ‘I suspect you’d be perfectly happy in the wastes of Siberia. That’s why I love you so much. You’re so easy to please.’

  We had worked out a rough plan of campaign: spend Christmas in London while the Wolseley was offloaded, then set off for a tour through the countryside while deciding where we were going to settle. Denis favoured somewhere close to the city, perhaps Kent or Surrey, while my preference – no doubt influenced by too much Daphne du Maurier – was for somewhere further west. Devon or Somerset, perhaps even Cornwall. We spent hours during those first few days in the Regents Palace Hotel with maps spread out on our bed and estate agents’ lists on our laps. The whole of England was our oyster, and we were determined to take our time making up our minds.

  We had never spent Christmas in a hotel and I had feared that the children might feel deprived, but in the event we had a perfectly happy day. We unwrapped presents in the children’s room, and walked up to Hyde Park to hear the carols and to watch the buskers – jugglers and acrobats, clowns and magicians – performing under a gentle sprinkling of snow. Then a magnificent Christmas dinner in the dining room, followed by the traditional Christmas message from the King, relayed by loudspeakers in the lounge.

  We began our house-hunting in earnest a few days later. We were almost certain that we didn’t want a house in London itself, but to be completely sure we arranged to see a few properties in the Kensington Park area. A smart young man with Italian shoes picked us up and drove us to the first one, a three-storey townhouse of distinctly Georgian style.

  ‘The owner is only asking eight thousand,’ the young man said, as if eight thousand pounds sterling was a mere bagatelle. ‘That’s very good value in these times. The London market has been rather flat since the war but now it’s beginning to bubble. You would be wise to get in as quickly as you can.’

  It may have been a very fashionable townhouse in a very fashionable area, but we found it dark and the bedrooms poky, and when we emerged Denis gave me a small, wry grin. ‘We’ll look at one more place,’ he said, ‘then I vote we write London off.’

  The next place was rather nice. It had an unassuming front to Victoria Road, but behind its modest exterior there was space, and light, and a pleasant air of subdued opulence. It had a large garden out the back, with mature elm trees impressive even in winter, and plenty of lawn for the children to play rambunctious games. But easily its best feature was the staircase, which swept up from the marble hall to serve two spacious landings. Ancestral portraits in ornate gilt frames lined the staircase, proud emblems of an old and noble house.

  ‘I know it’s traditional to have one’s home lined with portraits,’ I said to the young man flippantly. ‘But the best Denis and I could do would be to hang up a couple of snaps from the Box Brownie.’ It was perhaps a silly thing to say, but I didn’t realise then that there is a particular type of English snob against whom one can never afford to let down one’s guard.

  The young man eyed me with contempt. ‘My people have family portraits on the walls of our place in Norfolk just like these. I thought most people did.’ He suddenly looked resentful, almost sullen. ‘It’s all wrong. Why the Hell am I showing you around?’

  This was so breathtakingly rude that I was speechless for a second. Denis had gone on ahead and hadn’t heard, which left things up to me. So I reached out and took hold of the young man’s collar, forcing him to face me. ‘In a hundred years’ time some silly young man in foreign shoes will be looking up at paintings just like these, but they will be of my husband and me. I think it’s better to be the founders of a great house rather than the degenerate product of one, don’t you?’

  We didn’t look at any more places in London. London was not for us. We wanted the open countryside where the air was fresh and one could keep a horse or two, and walk muddy lanes with a dog. That afternoon our county maps were out again and we began to plan our trip in earnest.

  I’d been ringing promising bed-and-breakfast places in Kent when Denis came back from a visit to the bank. He had taken longer than I had expected, and came into our room looking grim. ‘Something has gone wrong,’ I said immediately, but I couldn’t think what it could possibly be. The children were playing happily in their room next door, and Denis and I were together: what could possibly have gone wrong?

  ‘You’d better prepare yourself for a shock,’ Denis said seriously. He gestured me to one of the armchairs and we sat down facing each other.

  ‘The bank has frozen our accounts,’ Denis told me. ‘Yours and mine. Malcolm Bryant has made an allegation that I fiddled the till, and the Registrar of Companies in Singapore has begun proceedings to recover the missing funds. The allegation is that I took War Reparations Commission money that wasn’t mine to take.’

  ‘What do you mean, frozen our accounts?’ I asked blankly. ‘What about money to live on?’

  Denis spread his hands. ‘Frozen means exactly that, I’m afraid. I went in to cash a cheque but the bank wouldn’t allow it. I spoke to the manager, who told me that an injunction had been served on the bank’s Singapore office two days ago. The injunction is to be argued before the court next week, but unless and until the court makes another order the bank can’t give us anything.’

  The full enormity of what had happened was beginning to sink in. ‘Have we any money at all?’ I asked in a very small voice.

  Denis opened his wallet. ‘I’ve got about fifty pounds in travellers’ cheques, a
nd about ten pounds in loose change. Not a lot to live on. We’re paid up here until tomorrow, then we’ll have to take ourselves somewhere cheaper.’

  I sat perfectly still for a moment, collecting my thoughts. This was awful, but it was not going to hurt any of us. Certainly not in the long term. We’d live through it, and probably laugh about it all one day. It bore absolutely no comparison to the trials and dangers we’d already survived. None at all. So I smiled at Denis and shrugged my shoulders. ‘So we are paupers. Who cares a jot about that?’

  We dug out the Yellow Pages and phoned a few of the cheaper hotels, but the prices were absurdly high for a family with only sixty pounds to its name. On an impulse I phoned a couple of caravan parks on the outskirts of London, and struck gold. Not a lot of people were keen to stay in a caravan in the depths of winter, and I was able to book a five-berth van at a park in Amersham, heating provided, for eight pounds a week. ‘Bedding and towels are not included,’ the woman said, ‘but if you are in need you can get very warm ex-army blankets from a disposal store just up the road.’

  In need. The words reminded me just how dramatically things had changed since the morning, when we had been cheerfully looking to buy a London mansion.

  That night we both tossed and turned, finally giving up any idea of sleep to make ourselves a cup of tea. We sat at the window looking over a sleeping London, with the dome of St Paul’s silvered by the moon amidst a field of empty bombsites. ‘What’s going to happen, Denis?’ I asked. ‘I’m not really worried, but I suppose I’d like to know the worst.’

  Denis looked at me over the rim of his cup. ‘Courts can be pretty unpredictable animals, so one can’t be dogmatic. But for what it’s worth, my own view is that they’ll have to chuck out the injunction when the matter comes on next week. At least in respect of your money if not mine, because Malcolm couldn’t have anything on you. I’ve cabled Mark Morrison, and he’ll be briefing counsel for the hearing. Mark will know precisely what has to be said.’

  ‘Can’t we simply tell the court what the money was really used for?’

  Denis shook his head. ‘You know we can’t,’ he said. ‘But Mark will have some appropriate words.’

  I shrugged irritably. ‘Why was Malcolm allowed to poke around into our accounts anyway? They know perfectly well he has it in for you.’

  ‘Morton should have shot Malcolm straight back to England after the last business, but he didn’t,’ Denis said. ‘He kept him on in his security officer job, which was damned silly given that they’d just quashed his bill against me.’ Denis dug out a cigarette and lit it, taking a long draw. ‘Morton apparently told Malcolm that the bill against me had been dismissed for lack of evidence, which quite naturally spurred Malcolm on no end because of course there was plenty of evidence.’ He took a second long draw on his cigarette, and then stubbed it out less than half smoked. ‘It wasn’t Malcolm’s fault he found out about the money. He was only doing his job.’

  ‘Does Stewart Menzies know what’s going on?’

  ‘I did pop into Broadway, but Menzies is still up in Scotland on Christmas leave. But it’s up to me to sort this business out myself, anyway. We’re none of us children any more who need Daddy to tuck us into bed at night.’

  Fortunately, the Wolseley had by now been offloaded and serviced and was available to us when we left the hotel the next day. It was a cold, grey morning, and I recall shivering as I waited for Denis to bring the car around, partly from the cold, partly I suppose from some form of delayed shock. Things were happening just a bit too fast for me. I looked back into the opulence of the foyer, full of well-dressed people and hurrying bellboys, and wondered whether we would ever move in such circles again.

  The caravan in Amersham was incredibly small, and the ‘heating provided’ came in the form of two smelly kerosene heaters that made the walls drip with condensation. After agreeing to take it, we had a busy day buying army surplus blankets and a larder of tinned food before taking the children for a long walk through our new neighbourhood (‘Amersham: hidden jewel of Old London Town’). The plan was to tire them out before bedtime: arguments had already broken out about how hard and narrow the beds were, and how awful it was going to be to sleep with blankets and no sheets.

  It was midwinter and dark before four o’clock, after which we were stuck in the van with the smells of kerosene and the greasy fish and chips we’d had for dinner. We played draughts and checkers, and then ‘I Spy’, postponing the inevitable as long as possible. But eventually it was lights out and the torture of a night adjusting to scratchy blankets and lumpy pillows made of folded towels. To add to our woes a storm swept in, with the hail so loud against the tin sides of the van that sleep was quite impossible.

  I began to laugh silently in the darkness, and Denis reached across, no doubt afraid that it was sobbing that caused our rickety bed to shake like a kalang in a hurricane.

  ‘I was just thinking,’ I explained. ‘Yesterday I thought we’d end up as ancestral portraits on a castle wall. Today I’d settle for Kodak snaps above a cottage sink.’

  I won’t pretend that our week in that grimy caravan park was a memorable holiday, but in the end it proved by no means as bad as we had feared. The storm that had greeted our arrival cleared to bracing winter sunshine, and we fell into a routine that made the days pass almost pleasantly. We got up at the crack of dawn (it was always a relief to climb out of our damp, heavy army blankets), then took a brisk walk to collect the milk and papers from the local store. Then, while Denis organised breakfast – baked beans or spaghetti on toast – I’d take the opportunity of an empty laundry to wash the clothes and hang them out in the thin winter sunshine.

  Mid-morning we designated our ‘exercise’ period. We’d take a long ramble along a riverbank that ran behind the caravan park, or hold sprint races for the children on the lank yellow grass of the local park. We’d arrive back at the van with the children hungry and rosy-cheeked, and I’d cook a filling lunch of sausages and mash followed by fresh-squeezed orange juice. Then Denis would kiss me for luck and head off into the city to haunt the Malaya desk at MI6, hoping for news from Singapore.

  And then evening would be drawing in and we would gather around the cosy dinette to paint and draw on butcher’s paper, or to cut out figures from old magazines. Or – most favoured of all –settle down to exciting games of checkers and snakes-and-ladders, or Monopoly. These games often took on unique rules and identities of their own, and the van would rock with cheerful shouts and laughter and I’d wonder if perhaps we might not have missed out on something in our previous, more gracious life.

  There was a woman in the van next to ours who adopted us from our first day. I think she thought we had a shady past – the contrast between the polished Wolseley and our straitened circumstances must have suggested people on the run – and she went out of her way to make us feel accepted. Her first name was Happy, and she was the happiest person I have ever known. She was Scots, very large and blonde, her double chins always quivering with mirth. She would tap on our door in the middle of the afternoon while Denis was away in town, always bearing something she had cooked to share with us.

  ‘Is there no’ room for a jolly wee Scots lassie?’ she would call in her thick Glaswegian accent, and the children would run to draw her inside, trying desperately hard not to seem interested in the offering she bore. A bowl piled high with shortbread, or a thick black chocolate cake sprinkled with hundreds and thousands, or scones so big and light they threatened to lift off the plate of their own accord. I’d brew tea, the children would munch to their hearts’ content, and Happy and I would yarn, and laugh, and tell absurd stories until the Wolseley pulled up outside. ‘Well, the Laird is back and so I’d best be awa’,’ she’d say. She always had one last present for the children, a sweet, or a marble each, or just a small drawing she would have made for each of them before she came – of flowers, or deer, or coloured birds in flight.

  I once remonstrated with her at her ge
nerosity. ‘You really shouldn’t waste your coupons on us,’ I said. ‘What about your own family?’

  Happy laughed so hard that her double chins had threatened to shake themselves loose. ‘Oh, you poor, thoughtful bairrn!’ she cooed. ‘I’ve no family to worry about – you see, my own wee bairrns are all long grown and moved awa’. One of them’s the mayor of San Francisco, one of them’s an actress with the BBC – and poor wee Jock is spending twenty years in Dartmoor.’ She wasn’t joking about Jock, either – Mrs McNally, who ran the caravan park, confirmed every word with relish. She also told me that of Happy’s three children only Jock had communicated with her since she’d arrived five years ago, sending a blue prison-stamped envelope every month. Her husband had deserted her twenty years beforehand, running off with a skinny girl who I’m sure had not a spark of happiness in her, so that she was utterly alone.

  ‘Mrs Happy Deighton should by rights be a very bitter old woman,’ Mrs McNally said. ‘But instead she’s the blithest spirit I’ve ever known. Never stops laughing, and a friendly word and a kind deed for every soul that crosses her path.’ Happy Deighton was happy in the profoundest sense. With her, happiness wasn’t the result of things that happened to her, but an innate quality of her soul. That made her invincible to the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, and for that I envied her.

  Denis came home one afternoon later than usual, and stood in the doorway of the caravan, his eyes seeking mine. My heart leapt into my mouth but then I saw him smile and I knew that everything was all right. I remember that I took a long, deep breath, and then turned to Mrs Deighton. ‘We have something to celebrate, Happy,’ I said. ‘I would regard it as an honour if you would celebrate it with us.’