In the Mouth of the Tiger (8 page)

The best times were in the evenings, when the grown-ups went down to dinner, surrendering the brightly lit decks and public rooms to the children on board. We would raid the smoking room to steal left-over crisps and stuffed olives, and to search for half-empty wine glasses, making faces at the awful taste. And then run squealing around the boat deck, exhilarated by the wide starlit sky and the swooping of the ship as it pitched gently in the mid-ocean swell.

By the time we disembarked in Melbourne, Mother, Robbie and I had become used to being a family. We ate together at every meal, went everywhere together, and thought of each other as extensions of ourselves. For me it was a lovely feeling, and I think Robbie enjoyed it too. With Mother I am not so sure. She sometimes became irritated at our togetherness: ‘For God's sake, Nona, stop tripping over my feet! Can't you go somewhere else and play?'

The high point of our trip was a visit to Canberra to see the opening of the new Parliament House. I remember that while the road into the new capital city had been made green by miles of staked pine trees, Canberra itself was little more than a dusty brown paddock. I can't remember the actual opening of Parliament House, but I do remember a picnic just outside the city, when friends we had met taught us to catch yabbies by dangling a piece of meat on a string into the Cotter River. We boiled the yabbies in a pot suspended over the picnic fire, and ate them with mouthfuls of buttered bread.

I also remember that one yabby escaped and was noticed only when it had climbed onto Robbie's knee as he reclined by the fire. Robbie had leapt to his feet, beating at the poor creature with his hat as the children present screamed with laughter.

Poor Robbie. It had been so unfair of Mr Mayhew to imply such awful things about him. Robbie had been a lovely, kind and gentle person whose only fault had been that his sense of adventure had betrayed him, luring him well out of his depth. He had been a successful tea merchant in Mincing Lane in London until well into his forties, when he had visited the Far East and fallen in love with the huge tropical moon, the colourful villages, the talk of gold mines deep in the jungle – and my mother. The Far East, and my mother, swallowed him up whole and then spat him out, leaving him to die of blackwater fever, alone and bankrupt in the middle of the Pahang jungle.

My walk had taken me to Victoria Quay, the embarkation pier where street traders and food vendors clustered to serve those boarding or disembarking from the ships lying in the Roads. I felt hungry and bought satay from one of the vendors, sitting in the shade under an awning and scooping up the mild curry from its coconut-frond pouch with my fingers. My mother would have been outraged. Europeans were not supposed to touch food from the street vendors. It was seen as a first step to ‘going native'.

After my satay I bought a handful of syrup ice – a ball of crushed ice flavoured by a squirt of syrup. This was real rebellion: Mother would have disowned me on the spot if she had seen me, knees apart, my skirt rucked up
to avoid being stained, and my face deep in the soft, strawberry-flavoured ice.

‘Good morning. Or is it good afternoon?'

I looked up to see the carrot-topped young man from the chummery in Argyll Street grinning down at me. He lifted his solar helmet politely. ‘You do look as if you are enjoying yourself.'

I nodded vigorously, unable to speak because my mouth was full of ice.

‘I'm down to greet some chums off the
China
,' he explained. ‘The lighter is on its way in from the ship, actually. They'll be landing directly. I say, you wouldn't care to join us? We'll be going on to the Australia for a drink before I take them to their digs.'

I didn't answer immediately but got up, licking my fingers. ‘I really would like to join you,' I said. ‘But I can't this afternoon. I'm fighting a bunch of lawyers who want to take my inheritance off me.'

He stared at me for a second, shocked. Wondering if I was joking.

‘I might not be able to stop them,' I went on. ‘But I'll draw blood trying!'

‘Good for you,' he said, looking at me closely. Then, deciding there must have been some truth in what I was saying, he touched me companionably on the shoulder. ‘I really mean that. The very best of luck.'

I gave what I hoped was a plucky grin.

‘By the way,' he said, shoving out a hand, ‘my name is Tim. Tim Featherstone. I'm with Dunlops. They're trying to turn me into an Assistant Manager for one of their estates up in Selangor.'

I took Tim's hand. ‘Norma Roberts,' I said, then wondered why on earth I'd said that. It was probably the unreality of everything that had happened to me that day. I felt as if I was playing a role in a play rather than living real life. A brave little English girl all alone in a foreign country, fighting the bad guys who held all the cards.

‘One day,' Tim said determinedly, ‘you won't be able to say you have something important to do, and you will simply have to accept one of my invitations.'

‘One day,' I smiled coolly, still playing my role.

At two o'clock precisely I was shown into Dr Mahmood's cluttered office.

I told Dr Mahmood everything, including the proposal to invest the proceeds from the sale of Burnbrae in a hairdressing salon in KL, and then handed over the copy of the deed of trust. I did not want to waste his valuable
time. ‘I don't want to sell Burnbrae, or to own a hairdressing salon,' I said unemotionally, ‘but I rather think there is little anyone can do.'

Dr Mahmood read the trust deed carefully, then took his glasses off and placed them on his desk. ‘You are quite correct, Miss Roberts,' he said. ‘There is little I or anyone else can do. This deed gives the trustee great powers, including the power to draw down funds for any purpose – including investment in a business – if he believes that is in your interests. If we challenge the proposal all we would do would be to waste what funds there are in the trust.'

‘Do you think Mr Mayhew is being fair to me?' I asked. ‘I'd just like your personal opinion.'

Dr Mahmood frowned thoughtfully. ‘To be frank, Miss Roberts, I think that the proposed arrangements may be in your best interests. A few thousand dollars in trust investments is not going to keep you at school, but the proposed hairdressing business will at least give you a job and some income.'

‘I rather think that is what a court would say,' I said, rather pleased at my apparent dispassion. Now that I had lost the battle, I felt it important that nobody should know the hurt I felt at losing Burnbrae.

‘Mr Mayhew has told me that my fees for seeing you are to be met from the estate,' Dr Mahmood said. ‘It will be a trivial amount, I assure you.' He handed me back the deed. ‘So I think perhaps our business is concluded?'

‘There is one other thing,' I said quietly. I fumbled in my purse and extracted the ten-dollar note Tanya had thrust into my hand as lunch money. ‘I would like you to use this to pay for Rajeev's bail.'

Dr Mahmood looked at me for a moment, then shook his head with a smile. ‘That is a fine gesture, Miss Roberts. I will inform Rajeev of your offer. But others have already paid for his bail. He would be . . .' his eyes crinkled with thought ‘... he would be in Singapore already. He was on last night's train.'

Of course others would have raised the paltry sum of ten dollars. I felt myself blush slightly. I had felt ennobled by my gesture, but now it seemed quite silly. How naïve I must have seemed to Dr Mahmood.

On my way back to Beach Street I resolved to be businesslike and unemotional when I spoke again to Mr Mayhew. I would cease playing the little girl. I would instead act as the man in my dream would expect me to act. Coolly and dispassionately, a mature woman accepting the inevitable with grace.

Mother and Tanya were waiting in the reception area when I arrived,
and I had one awful moment when I thought Mother had been crying. I felt responding tears start in my own eyes but realised just in time that she had been laughing instead. She was a little tipsy and gave me a solemn wink.

Before we could talk the receptionist whisked me off to Mr Mayhew's office. I was as good as my resolution, walking up to him as he lounged back in his chair and offering him my hand, forcing him to rise and respond.

‘I don't want to waste your time or mine, Mr Mayhew,' I said as evenly as I could. ‘I accept that the arrangements you have in mind for the balance of the Burnbrae money are in my interests, and I will sign your memorandum. But I have two conditions, which I won't budge from.'

‘I'm not bargaining with you, Nona . . .' he began, but I interrupted.

‘I think my conditions are very reasonable,' I said. ‘Please listen to them. I want to take a cheque away with me today to pay the board owing on my accommodation with the Ulrichs. And I want the estate to pay for me to spend one more term at the Convent. I can't just leave without any notice. The Convent has been my life for the past three years, and I also have commitments. To the Sisters, and to myself.'

I think the common sense and maturity of my requests surprised Mr Mayhew. He stared at me wordlessly for half a minute while the fan swung lazily on the ceiling above us and the occasional honk of a car horn penetrated from Beach Street below.

Finally he stirred. ‘Do you have the Ulrich account?' he asked, and I passed Irma's envelope to him wordlessly.

‘I will have a cheque drawn immediately,' he said, opening the envelope and smoothing the account on his blotter. ‘And I think it is quite reasonable that you give your school a term's notice.'

When I finally left his office I couldn't help turning around at the doorway. ‘Your insinuations about my relationship with my stepfather were quite uncalled for,' I said quietly. ‘And obviously quite unprofessional. You are after all his chosen trustee.' And then I closed the door firmly.

‘For heaven's sake . . .' I heard him begin plaintively behind me. It gave me a stab of unalloyed joy.

Chapter Four

Kuala Lumpur, 1935

I
have been told that there is more tin in the ground around Kuala Lumpur than there is in the rest of the world put together. The place was swamp and jungle until the industrial revolution created a great hunger for the metal and men flocked to the area to dig it out of the rich red soil. The closest point to the tin deposits which could be reached by lighter was the muddy confluence (
kuala lumpur
in Malay) of the Klang and Gomback rivers, and so it was at this point that a city arose. It was initially no more than a vast, ramshackle collection of tin and thatch huts designed only to keep out the rain, but it eventually became a sprawling, gracious colonial town full of broad streets, impressive granite buildings and verdant parks. In 1935 it was the jewel in the crown of British Malaya, and the capital of the Federated Malay States.

I arrived in KL by train on a wet afternoon in May 1935 to be met at the grand Moorish-style railway station by my mother and Madam Tanya. Mother hugged me and Tanya kissed me formally in the Russian style on both cheeks.

‘My lovely little girl!' Mother cried, holding me with outspread arms. ‘So tall and so grown up! And I so love your beautiful dress.'

I couldn't help but compare this greeting with the time I had welcomed Mother and Tanya back from their trip on the
Gorgon
. At that time I had been a tolerated child: now I was a cherished member of the family, an asset to be appreciated. I loved the feeling, and the confidence it gave me.

Peter Mayhew had kept to our agreement and I had remained at the Convent in Light Street for the whole of first term. It had not been a happy
time, and I had almost regretted staying on. As soon as it was known that I was leaving I had become a transient, left out of any plans made by the Sisters or by my friends which extended beyond first term. I was not selected for the school play, or made a prefect, or included in the debating team in which I had always done so well. Even my friends stepped back a pace or two, because remaining close to me would only make it harder when the time came to say goodbye.

But most painful of all had been the need to tell Sister Felice that I was leaving, and to see her brave attempts to cover up her distress.

Sister Felice was a small, round woman with a fierce spirit who had befriended me when I first attended the Convent as a shy, knock-kneed twelve-year-old with the beginnings of a defensive stutter. Our friendship had arisen under quite dramatic circumstances. I had been picked on by Sister Bernadette, a martinet who took malicious pleasure in exploiting my youthful insecurity. One day, Sister Bernadette had ordered me to do penance for some small infraction or other by kneeling on the steps of the chapel. I don't know how long my ordeal had been intended to last but I had been there for over an hour, half-fainting under the tropical sun and with my hands clasped piously before my eyes, when Sister Felice had swept out of the glare and gathered me up in her arms. From then on she had been my sanctuary and my inspiration.

Sister Felice taught history and music, and it was in her classes that I developed my lifelong passions for French history and for playing the piano. But it was not in her formal role as a teacher that she had the greatest effect on me. She had a bright, smiling, indomitable personality that made her glow like a jewel amidst the regimented grey of Convent life, and I tried to be as much like her as I could. In fact, I used to practise a brave, insouciant grin in the privacy of my room, and would wear it as a badge of courage whenever things were bad. ‘Look at Nona, always smiling in the face of adversity,' Sister Felice would say as I grinned like a fool after some minor catastrophe, and I would feel most fully rewarded.

During my second year at the Convent, Mother had paid for Sister Felice to give me private piano lessons, and during these lessons we became the best of friends, often talking afterwards about anything and everything under the sun. ‘Follow your dreams,' she would say, waving her plump arms theatrically. ‘And do what your heart wants you to do, because if your heart is pure
nothing
you do can be evil.' Sister Felice was not typical of the Order she served: most of the nuns were piously French or Irish, but her background was Italian, and
she had a Latin fire about her that I suspect kept her permanently in Mother Superior's bad books.