In the Mouth of the Tiger (45 page)

‘Only in the season,' I said, poker-faced.

‘Good for you!' Freddie grinned back. ‘The hunting season, I hope.' He had a matinee-idol face beneath his shock of ginger hair and a quite disarming smile. His wife, Sarah, was a gamine little thing with a cap of dark curls and a deceptive flapper look that disguised a keen intelligence. We were to discover that they had been heavily involved in amateur theatricals in India, and I was often to wonder during the voyage just how much they
were acting out their favourite roles.

After dinner Denis and I took a stroll on the boat deck. The ship was now deep into the Straits of Malacca, with the west coast of Malaya a long black shape off to starboard. A gentle swell made the ship move and creak just enough to seem alive, and I could feel the soft thump of the engines deep in the bowels of the vessel.

‘Happy?' Denis asked as we paused by the rail to light our cigarettes.

‘Deliciously,' I replied. I drew on my cigarette and watched the tip glow in the darkness. ‘I think I'm going to enjoy this voyage. I feel as if I have become a different person over the last few days, and I rather like the new me.'

I saw Denis looking at me quizzically. ‘I'm not quite sure I know what you mean.'

I wanted him to know what I meant, and considered my reply carefully. ‘I feel more confident than I ever used to in the past. I suppose it's got something to do with having a new name. But it's deeper than that. At dinner tonight I felt that people were looking at me in a different way. As if I was one of them. You see, I'd got used to people looking at me as if I was almost a curiosity. A little Russian stray who has been picked up by a nice man and given a home.'

Denis laughed. ‘That's a lot of rot, darling,' he said gently. ‘There has never been anything in the least stray-like about you, I can assure you.'

‘Nevertheless, I feel different,' I insisted. ‘You know, Molly once said that you were trying to change me into an Englishwoman. I think you might have succeeded. Do you feel at all like Professor Higgins?'

‘The chap in
Pygmalion
?' Denis shook his head firmly. ‘If you
have
changed, you have changed because you wanted to.'

It way my turn to shake my head. ‘I think you're to blame. I'm Eliza Doolittle, and you are my Henry Higgins. I rather like the thought.'

I saw Denis frowning in the glow of his cigarette. ‘I really don't believe that it is in anyone's power to change another human being,' he said seriously. ‘Professor Higgins didn't change Eliza into a lady at all. The point of the story is that he
thought
he had but he was wrong. Eliza became a lady because she wanted to become a lady. In your case you've always been a lady, and now you have decided to become an English lady.'

I thought about that. I supposed it was true as far as it went. I
had
wanted to be English ever since Robbie had put the idea into my head. It was just that Denis had made the move practicable. But I rather thought that
love might also have had something to do with the process. Eliza's love for Professor Higgins, and mine for Denis.

We turned to lighter things. ‘What do you think of the Burtons?' I asked.

Denis paused before replying. ‘She's lovely. And far more intelligent than she likes you to imagine. As for Freddie, he's the sort of chap I'd trust with my life, but not necessarily with my wife.'

I laughed. ‘He is a bit of a flirt, but I think he might be harmless.'

Denis grinned in the darkness. ‘Harmless? Don't you dare try and find out.'

Down in our cabin with the lights out, I lay in my bunk with Denis asleep beside me. The motion of the ship had increased as we had entered the open waters of the Andaman Sea. I could hear Tony's regular breathing from the cot next to me, and the rush and occasional splash of the sea outside the open portholes.

I was sublimely happy. With each turn of the screw, I thought, I am leaving behind the frightened Nona of Kuala Rau and Argyll Road. Leaving behind the shibboleths and ambiguities of the past. No longer a ‘perhaps Orlov'. No longer wearing the tag of an alien. No longer an outsider.

And getting closer to the new me that I wanted to be – the confident young Englishwoman Norma Felice, a ‘body of England's, breathing English air, Washed by the rivers, blest by suns of home'. I could hear Robbie's voice in the words and my skin prickled.

It took four days to cross the Bay of Bengal, four days of azure skies and flaring, flamingo sunsets. Four days of flat blue seas, of flying fish, and of dolphins playing in our bow wave.

The days fell into a comfortable pattern. We would be woken by the arrival of tea and biscuits at six thirty, and then we would change into bathers and hand in hand pad down the broad, silent corridors to the swimming pool on the wide stern deck. This was one of my favourite times of day, with the air still cool, the decks almost deserted, and the three of us at ease together under a clean, eggshell-blue sky.

After breakfast, Denis would play deck sports, or swim, while Tony and I went down to the kindergarten for the painting sessions that he loved. Lunch could be either in the dining room or a smorgasbord laid out on the promenade deck, after which we usually rested in the cabin, reading, talking or dozing until the tea bell. There was a well-stocked library on board that
was open between four and six, and it was from this library that I borrowed Daphne du Maurier's
Rebecca.
The background to the story, the minutiae of life in a great English household and the details of English country life were to permanently colour my perception of England. I was fascinated to discover that Manderley also had its Happy Valley, a valley not unlike my own on Burnbrae.

I stole that book and have kept it down the years. It is beside me now, with the faded yellow sticker inside the cover: ‘MV
Cathay
. Property of P&O Steamship Lines Pty Ltd'. The
Cathay
was destined to be sunk carrying troops in the war that loomed ahead so I have no qualms about my peccadillo. It saved a piece of sunshine from the perpetual half-light of the ocean depths.

Dinner was the highlight of the day. I would begin dressing about six thirty, starting with a leisurely bath in the huge old-fashioned bathroom just down the corridor from our cabin. Bathrooms on the
Cathay
were very grand affairs, quite different from the tiny plastic ensuites of today. For a start, one had to order a bath through the cabin steward, and it would be drawn with appropriate pomp and circumstance. The bathtub itself was twice the size of a modern one, and it would take the steward half an hour to fill it with salt water warmed to the temperature you desired. Then he would produce two vast copper cauldrons of fresh water, one hot, one cold, each with its wooden ladle: the idea was to soak in the bath, then mix the hot and cold fresh water and lather yourself before standing and rinsing off. When everything was ready, the soap and the shampoo laid out on their little timber tray and the bathroom full of steam, the steward would tap politely on your cabin door with a bundle of fluffy white towels under his arm: ‘Your bath is ready, Madam.'

The babysitter would arrive just before seven thirty, and Denis and I would drift up the grand staircase to the saloon to join our table companions for a pre-dinner drink. I wore a new dress every night, the highest fashions that Robinsons had been able to produce, while Denis escorted me looking a picture of elegance in his white tie and tails.

The dinner menus were fantastic, the wines first class, and the laughter good-natured and infectious. After dinner, I would slip down to check on Tony, then join the group for coffee in the saloon.

It was at one of these gatherings that Maxine Elliott's name came up. I was sitting by the saloon's open windows, daydreaming and watching moonbeams glitter on the velvet sea, when I heard the name and pricked up
my ears. ‘She was a superb self-publicist,' Sarah Burton was saying trenchantly. ‘But she was a rotten actress.'

‘That's not quite fair,' Freddie said. ‘She must have had something. After all, she made a fortune in live theatre before movies came along. I think it's just that her style didn't come across on the silver screen.'

‘Maxine Elliott was a lot more than an actress,' George Macdonald, my Sanders of the River man, broke in. ‘You know of course that she won a medal for valour during the Great War?'

‘What on earth did she do to deserve that?' Freddie asked, interested.

‘She toured the canals of Flanders during the worst of the fighting, bringing food and medical supplies to civilians cut off by the Western Front. She converted a barge into a mobile supply depot and took it everywhere, dodging shells and even sniper fire. She had a ton of guts, and lashings of style.'

‘You do surprise me, George,' Sarah said. ‘I thought she was an American lightweight who only got on because she'd slept with the King of England.'

I looked at Denis and raised my eyebrow, but he didn't respond.

Sarah warmed to her theme. ‘She ended up an insufferable snob, you know. And died a pauper.'

At that Denis stirred in his chair. ‘Maxine is still alive, and a long way from being a pauper,' he said quietly. ‘And far from being a snob, you might be surprised to know that some of her closest friends are the poor people of Provence. The unemployed and the Communists.'

‘Do you actually know her?' Sarah asked.

There was a moment's silence and then Denis smiled. ‘Who doesn't know her?' He was being deliberately obtuse and I could have kicked him.

‘Denis and I are going to have tea with her when we get to Marseilles,' I broke in. ‘She . . .'

‘She lives just outside of Cannes,' Denis interrupted quickly, giving me an unfathomable look. ‘Now, who's keen on a stroll around the decks? I'm told that if we are lucky we might see the lights of the Nicobar Islands.'

I asked Denis later why he had changed the subject so abruptly. ‘Surely there's nothing wrong in admitting to knowing the woman?' I said, a little annoyed. ‘You cut right across what I was saying. Why be so secretive? After all, you did mention Maxine yourself.'

Denis gave a wry grin. ‘Sarah stung me with that silly jibe about Maxine dying a pauper. But I shouldn't have jumped in.' Then he frowned
thoughtfully. ‘Why did I change the subject? I suppose I changed the subject because I didn't want to go into all the business about how I'd met Maxine. It's nobody's business.'

We were smoking our last cigarette on deck before retiring, and I peered at Denis's face in the moonlight. He stared back blandly, but he didn't fool me in the least. There was a tightness about his lips that told me that the subject of Maxine somehow disturbed him.

We entered Colombo Harbour in the early morning of the fifth day, and I dashed up to the promenade deck with Tony on my hip to take in the sights. It was worth the effort. The harbour looked a picture, covered in filmy patches of sea mist through which one could see glimpses of the shore with its jumble of white buildings, bright red roofs and coconut palms. Despite the early hour the surface of the water was covered in small racing yachts, most of them becalmed in the still morning air, their sails reflected in the vivid blue.

We went ashore after breakfast, hiring a taxi for the day and setting off to see the sights. We visited the bazaar, had lunch at the Galle Face Hotel, and then went out to Mount Lavinia for a swim. We met an old friend of Denis's on the verandah of the Mount Lavinia Hotel, a tall, kind-faced man with an artificial leg and a soft Scots accent called Colin McKenzie. Denis and Colin talked for hours while I took Tony for a second swim, and then Colin accompanied us back on board for dinner. The ship wasn't due to sail until eleven, so we had time to sit out on deck after coffee, enjoying the cool sea breeze and chatting.

It was while we were chatting that the scales fell from my eyes. I had often heard that expression, but this was the first time I actually experienced the phenomenon. One moment I was looking at a cheerful middle-aged man nursing a whisky and soda and telling us a comical story about his army days, and then suddenly everything clicked and I was looking at a member of Stewart Menzies' Linlithgow Hunt. He was a Scot, he was a director of J & P Coats, a world-wide Scottish trading firm, he was a war hero, and he had quietly arranged a long private talk with Denis without raising a shred of suspicion.

On an impulse I leant forward and tapped him on the knee. ‘You work for Stewart Menzies, don't you?' I said with wide, innocent eyes.

To give him credit Colin hardly blinked. ‘And so do you, Norma, whether you realise it or not.'

There was a moment of silence and then we were all laughing. It was a magic moment for me, a moment of complete and unreserved acceptance. When we escorted Colin ashore I linked my arm with his and helped him down the steep gangway, and knew that we were the best of friends.

The next day the
Cathay
was hit by a full-fledged storm. It began after breakfast, with the black sky streaked with lightning and the wind buffeting the superstructure like a wild animal. By lunchtime the swell was huge and despite her 15,000 tons the ship was rolling badly. The fiddles were up in the dining room and they rigged silk cords in the public rooms to help people move about, but most of the passengers remained firmly in their cabins. Our little family quite enjoyed the excitement: I can still see Tony standing on tiptoe on his bunk and peering open-mouthed at the racing white water visible through the bolted porthole.

The storm dissipated in time to produce a perfect morning for us to enter Port Aden. My first glimpse of Arabia did not disappoint me. Surrounded by stark brown hills, the squat, flat-roofed buildings of the Old Town could have come straight out of the Bible, while Arabs in bleached white galabiyyas trotted their donkeys beneath the date palms. Aden gave me a taste for the Middle East that has never left me. As soon as we were underway again, ploughing up the Red Sea with the ochre hills of the Empty Quarter sliding past the starboard bow, I raided the library and came away with
The Seven Pillars of Wisdom
and an armful of books on the glories of ancient Egypt.