Slow Boats to China

by Gavin Young

  Maugham had eyed the creepers from the window of a room very like the one I occupied in Raffles. Now he would see only tourists – mainly American, Australian and Japanese – loaded with electronic gadgets from Hong Kong or Japan. Singapore no longer has cheap hotels to lounge in, and to drink ‘innumerable’ stengahs would be to squander a small fortune. But it is still possible to spend an evening at the pictures and then get into a cycle-rickshaw to finish the night in the Chinese quarter – but only just possible, because the government is rapidly demolishing such parts of old Singapore.

  If Maugham returned he would find another change. No doubt the English accents that assailed his ears in the card rooms of all those clubs he frequented were monotonously upper class, although perhaps the limited social shake-up after the First World War might have intruded an occasional sound of something more regional. I recalled the expressions of dismay he overheard in the bar of an up-country club when the news appeared in the Straits Times that one of its pillars, a Mr Harold ‘Knobby’ Clarke, had died on the ship taking him home on leave:

  ‘I say, have you heard? Poor Knobby Clarke’s dead.’

  ‘No? I say, how awful!’

  ‘Rotten luck, isn’t it?’

  ‘Rotten.’

  ‘Damned good sort.’

  ‘One of the best.’

  ‘It gave me quite a turn when I saw it in the paper just by chance.’

  ‘I don’t wonder.’

  Nowadays in, say, the Singapore Cricket Club, which has long been multi-racial, the British members are more likely to address each other as ‘Squire’, ‘Vicar’ or even ‘mate’ than as ‘old man’ or ‘old boy’. Mr Warburton, the tetchy and snobbish Resident in Maugham’s story ‘The Outstation’, would not be amused. He was the official who had been brought close to apoplexy by the action of his callow and insubordinate assistant, Cooper, when he returned from an up-country tour to find that the young man had torn open and read his most recent batch of newspapers from London:

  ‘I wonder you didn’t open my letters as well.’

  ‘Oh, that’s not quite the same thing. After all, I couldn’t imagine you’d mind my looking at your newspapers. There’s nothing private about them.’

  ‘I think it extremely impertinent of you. They’re all mixed up.’

  Mr Warburton’s newsagent, Maugham tells us, had instructions to write on the outside of the wrapper the date of each paper he dispatched. Mr Warburton then numbered them, and his head boy’s orders were to place one on the table every morning in the veranda with the early cup of tea. This gave Mr Warburton the illusion of living at home. Every Monday morning he read the Monday Times of six weeks back, and so on through the week. On Sunday he read the Observer. Returning to the scene of his lifework, Mr Warburton’s irascible ghost might be interested to find that, while in those days it took him a week in a coaster from Singapore and forty-eight hours lying on the bottom of a native boat to reach his outstation, it would now take him a couple of hours by air and a few more by motor launch. But he might be amused to find that the techniques of newspaper distribution have failed to keep pace with aerodynamic progress. On my last visit the most recent Observer hanging on the newspaper racks in the Singapore Cricket Club was exactly six weeks old, the same time its predecessors sixty years ago used to take to travel by water from London to the back of beyond.

  ‘It wasn’t all beer and skittles being a planter in Malaya, you know,’ Bushey said. ‘In Maugham’s time, there probably wasn’t any ice to cool your drinks, though later some planters had swimming pools. It could be bloody boring. The tuan – the white master – got up at five in the morning for the rollcall of his workers. Then he inspected the estate, a long, tiring walk. Breakfast at nine, then some office work, and he’d be finished by twelve. You have to tap rubber early in the morning; while it’s cool, it runs, but in the heat it congeals like latex.’

  In a setting very like that of the old days we were discussing, I could imagine the planter in his khaki shorts and flannel shirt (a bit thick for the climate), heavy boots and stockings, doing the rounds between the rubber trees in their prim rows, assigning the day’s work to the mostly Tamil workers (‘coolies’ they called them – some to tap, some to weed, some to dig ditches. Then, at noon, relaxation in a sarong and a loose shirt with warm beer and a pipe. Tea at the club, dinner in the bungalow at eight, bed about nine thirty.

  I thought of the wives in their cool, fresh, simple frocks, with not nearly enough to do, working at their pillow lace to keep busy. Maugham had noted it all. ‘Pretty dull for the memsahibs,’ Bushey admitted. ‘But worse for their opposite numbers, the Dutch wives, over in Sumatra. A general manager of an estate there might order a young married assistant to take his plain old wife to the club film, and himself invite the assistant’s young wife up to his bungalow for you-know-what. The assistant wouldn’t refuse; it guaranteed his job with the company.’

  We stood up and walked to the doorway looking down to the trees. Mynah birds whistled and cursed one another, stalking stiff-legged on the lawn, and a pair of golden orioles flew past the veranda.

  I said, ‘Maugham’s story “The Letter” revolves around the disgracing of an unmarried Englishman because he kept a Chinese mistress.’

  ‘It has never been a disgrace here in Sarawak,’ Bushey said. ‘A mistress might not go to the club, but her English boyfriend, her tuan, certainly could – no stigma there. In fact, the Rajahs encouraged their young whites to have local birds to keep them happy on the long five-year tour. Sarawak came to feel like home, so they stayed on. Good policy.

  ‘Talking like this brings back so many stories. I’ll tell you one or two if you like. They’re not libellous, and they may interest you.’

  Oi Fah said, ‘Bushey adores telling stories. You’d be doing him a favour by listening.’

  Bushey said, ‘In 1953 there was a young English chap named George out here, working in timber like I was. He must have lived in Kuching for about a year before being sent to Miri in east Sarawak, and he formed a liaison with a Malay girl there who moved in with him. She used to play him up a bit by going off now and again with someone else, but he’d have her back again. He would never be harsh to the opposite sex. I know it sounds odd to say it, but – well, he was a natural gentleman.

  ‘Anyway, his company rented him a wooden bungalow two miles out of Miri, and she went with him. It was a pleasant area on the edge of the town opposite a cantonment where the Borneo Company Europeans lived. Now, being a Malay, the girlfriend was very fond of golden ornaments, and had purchased on credit a lot of ornaments from an old Malay woman who used to go around the houses selling them. Finally she owed this woman a hundred dollars.

  ‘At last the old woman demanded that she pay up what she owed. According to the evidence in court later, the girl said, “All right. My tuan has given me the money, so come round tomorrow when he’s at the office and I’ll pay you what I owe. I may even buy more, so bring your entire stock with you.”

  ‘Well, in the late afternoon of that day, George’s office boy went off to the house to cut the grass, and he noticed that all the windows of the house were closed, and that the place looked desolate. But all of a sudden a window swung open and the girlfriend leaned out and said, “Look, you don’t have to cut the grass today. Go away. Come back tomorrow.” The Malay noticed that there was blood on her arms, so he dashed back to the office and reported this to George, who immediately drove home.

  ‘Unfortunately – or perhaps fortunately – he had a puncture, and didn’t arrive at the house until well after six o’clock. By that time, whatever had transpired in the bungalow had been sorted out. The windows were open again, and his girlfriend seemed calm. With her in the house there was also her brother and her brother’s boyfriend – among the young Malays, homosexuality is not rare.

  ‘Anyway, George asked what all the trouble was, and what was all this about blood on her arms. She claimed that she’d had a miscarriage that afternoon, alt
hough George noticed there were also bloodstains on the wall of the lounge. He said, “All right, you’d better go and see a doctor,” but she said, “I’m all right now. I’d like to go to the pictures.” So he had his bath and then took her off to the Palace cinema.

  ‘Well, in the back of this house was a large kitchen, or dapor, with a Chinese type of stove made of concrete, rather like a table with two holes in it through which the heat of the charcoal is forced up. Underneath this sort of table very large pieces of charcoal were stored. When the old Malay woman had come to the house, she had been attacked by the girlfriend, her brother, and her brother’s boyfriend. Apparently they had strangled her with the cable from the electric iron. They hid the body under the charcoal in the dapor when George returned. While George was out at the cinema, these two characters got the old woman’s body out of the back window after dark and carried it down to the jungle at the back of the house with the intention of burying her in a grave they had dug in the morning before she visited the house. This was probably fatal to their case, since the digging of the grave showed premeditation. At the same time it was also their undoing because Miri is subject to floods, with the river rising and falling fifteen feet every six hours or so. The grave was now a pond full of water, and quite useless for their purpose. So they stuck the body in a hedge, covered it over with jungle, came back and went to bed.

  ‘In the Malay kampong [village] where the old lady lived there was a hue and cry. Next day, more hue and cry, the police also joining the hunt, and eventually, of course, their inquiries led to George’s house. The arrest of his girlfriend and brother and boyfriend followed. George was questioned closely, a search of the area produced the body, and the game was up.’

  Bushey broke off. ‘You can’t listen to this without a glass in your hand. Brandy? Beer?’ Even under the fan, the afternoon temperature felt like 120 degrees, and the lizards on the walls were panting even harder. ‘Beer,’ I said. He poured two mugs, and went on.

  ‘Now, in Sibu at that particular time – bear in mind that Sarawak was still a colony – the head of the police was a very able European called Roy Henry, who later on became commissioner of police, and today is the number one of the police in Hong Kong. Roy was the investigating officer because it was a very serious crime, particularly since a European seemed to be at least partly involved. Anyway, in the course of the questioning, the girlfriend changed her evidence and said that the blood on the wall was not human blood but animal blood from a chicken she had slaughtered. Roy decided that in order to check her evidence she should have a medical examination, so he sent her up to the hospital. The examination showed that she had not had a miscarriage.

  ‘Eventually the trial was held, and the three of them were accused of murder. It lasted about ten days. There were amusing incidents during the trial. The boyfriend turned out to have a rather low intellect and, when questioned as to where he was on that night when George and his girlfriend were at the cinema, he claimed that he had not slept in the house that night, but was sleeping with a European. “What was her name?” His answer was that it was a he, a young European of the Borneo Company across the road. This evidence was not produced in court.

  ‘The girlfriend’s appearance in court was that of a nun or saint. She had no make-up on, wore a drab, grey, full-length dress, and had her hair done up in plaits. Questions were asked about this: “Would it be fair to say that normally you would not dress up as you are today?”

  ‘She replied, “Normally I would not dress like this, but it is in respect for the court I’m dressed like this today.”

  ‘“Do you normally wear European-type clothes?”

  ‘“Yes.”

  ‘“Would it be true to say that normally you would wear lipstick?”

  ‘“Yes.”

  ‘“And nail varnish?”

  ‘“Yes.”

  ‘“In fact, would it be truthful to say that you look after your appearance very well?”

  ‘But the Malay translator made a mistake, and asked, “Would it be fair to state that you look after Europeans very well?”

  ‘And, before the translation could be corrected, she answered, “I look after Europeans very well!”

  ‘This produced a great deal of laughter from the court, including the judge himself, who, being an old Rajah hand, could also speak fluent Malay.

  ‘Anyway, judgement was given, the brother and sister were both found guilty, and the judge felt that he could not recommend mercy for either of them, mainly because the grave had been dug. The boyfriend was found not guilty – largely because he was of such low intelligence.

  ‘Late in the afternoon of the last day of the trial, the two accused in handcuffs were led outside the court, where a tremendous crowd of relatives of the old woman was gathered, and were taken away in a Black Maria to the prison. They would be taken down to Kuching the following day on the steamer anchored at the wharf about a hundred yards away. Roy Henry, whose office was immediately above the court, instructed the boyfriend to be brought to his office immediately after the case ended. Roy explained to the boy in Malay that, but for the grace of God, he, too, would have been sentenced to be hanged. The law being the law, he was free, but for the boyfriend’s own safety, Roy said, he was going to keep him in the jail that night. “See all those Malays outside? If I let you loose tonight they’ll kill you. For your own protection I’m going to take you into custody, and tomorrow you’ll go down to Kuching. If I ever see you in my division again, I’ll make sure that you’re arrested.” To which the boy said, “Tuan, before I go I would like to ask one favour.” And Roy said, “Yes, what is it?” “Tuan, could you lend me five dollars?”

  ‘Two or three months later the appeal for clemency failed, and it was the last night before they were to be hanged. George was down in Kuching, and went to the jail to say farewell. He always maintained that, had she been found not guilty, he would have taken her back to his house, despite all that had happened. I think it was pretty plucky for George to say that. That’s the end of the story. She was the only woman ever hanged in Sarawak.’

  The yellow bird had returned to the veranda rail, this time bringing a mate. They were beautiful creatures perched there, beaks open, breathing with difficulty in the heat. They flew off when the Webbs’ cat sidled around a shaded corner.

  ‘What about George?’ I asked. ‘Did people steer clear of him once it came out about his Malay girlfriend?’

  Bushey looked shocked. ‘Good God, no. He stayed on to be a very successful and popular member of the community. As I told you, he was a natural gentleman.’ He put a big red arm around Oi Fah. ‘Sometimes, though, there are difficulties the other way, but I think your family have finally accepted that I’m a reasonable barbarian husband, haven’t they?’

  She laughed fondly. ‘It’s lucky you’re a Buddhist, or they might not have.’

  Later, when I reached Hong Kong, I met Roy Henry, the policeman who had investigated the case. He remembered it well, particularly the girlfriend. ‘She was a very haughty woman. Very brave, her head high – unlike her brother, who had to be carried to the gallows. It was widely believed by Malays that she could cast spells and work magic with incantations and herbs. Even my Malay officers believed it. I think she thought that because she was with a tuan she might get off. But she was very brave.’

  *

  In the evening coolness, Bushey walked with me to Kuching’s museum, famous in the region. It contained a reconstruction of a Dayak longhouse, Dayak weapons and tools and artifacts, cases of local fish, birds, animals and old Chinese porcelain. We looked at the ancient embossed cannons, the paintings of James Brooke and his dashing sailing ship, the Royalist, the scourge of marauding sea rovers from Sulu. We stared into the angry glass eyes of stuffed orang-utans, red and shaggy, half the size of a man, their huge arms draped over reconstructed branches, and gazed in awe at the long, red, glowing nose of the proboscis monkey, another large creature. The Malays call it orang blanda (Dutchma
n), showing what they thought about their overlords in the East Indies.

  We paused before a case of birds of paradise, perhaps the most wonderful of tropical creatures, and, a few paces further on, looked at the grotesque hornbills with their unwieldy-looking bills and the long tail feathers that the superstitious Dayaks like to wear as headdresses. Then we saw that the custodians were closing the museum.

  As we walked slowly down the hill to the Aurora, Bushey said, ‘I ended the war in Burma, you know. Place called Prome. Now at Prome there was as queer a coot as you’ll ever find. The local province engineer said to me one day, “Would you like to meet a real prewar British type?” This odd chap had been in the Burmese police, right up on the Burmese–Chinese border. He’d been left alone by the Japs because even then I suppose they thought he was too old to do any harm.

  ‘We drove up in a jeep to his pleasant timber bungalow, thatched roof, raised off the ground. The old boy had very little hair, and must have been eighty. He wore a lungi, the Burmese sarong, and a collarless Burmese shirt with no buttons but with studs joined by a golden chain – the usual formal dress of Burmese males. He gave us pink gins – no choice, take it or leave it. His friends were there, some Burmese, some Brits who had come back to restart their timber concessions, and we sat on teak cane-bottom chairs with extendable arms and slots in them for the glasses.