In the Mouth of the Tiger (88 page)

‘Does that mean that I cannot visit Singapore?' Catherine snapped. ‘This is my country too, you know. I fought for it as hard as any of you British.' Then her voice softened too. ‘If you must know, one of my people became very ill. We thought he was dying. Last night I drove him down to the Alexandra Hospital, which is the best hospital in Malaya. Wu Sing fought beside me all though the war and he deserves the best.'

‘Is he all right?'

Catherine was silent for a moment, clearly regretting that she had been so forthcoming. ‘It was appendicitis,' she said finally. ‘They operated very early this morning. He is still very sick with peritonitis, but the doctors say he should live.'

‘So you have been at the hospital all night? You don't look exhausted but you must be.'

‘I am used to being up all night,' she said. ‘We drove non-stop. I asked them in Raub to put him in an ambulance but the dogs refused point-blank. They wanted him to stay in the dressing station until the morning. If I had agreed to do as they said, Wu Sing would have died.'

Raub. The fact that she had called into Raub meant that Catherine's secret camp must be somewhere in the jungles of western Pahang. Country I had known well as a girl.

Something clicked in my brain. ‘Is your camp at Kuala Rau?' I asked.

Catherine said nothing but I saw the shock in her eyes and knew beyond doubt that her secret encampment was at the old gold mine at Kuala Rau.

Robbie's – my – gold mine. Bought and now owned by one of Denis's companies.

Catherine also got up from the table so that we now both stood facing each other. ‘I must go,' she said brusquely. ‘I do not know if we will ever meet again, Mrs Elesmere-Elliott.'

That afternoon I had an hour or so to spare and dropped in to the Alexandra Hospital towards the end of visiting hours. Wu Sing was in the surgery ward and I looked in quietly. Catherine was beside his bed, as I thought she would be. He was asleep and Catherine sat holding his hand against her cheek. Even from a distance it was clear that she was in love.

I waited until Denis and I were in bed before I sprang my question, my arm lying casually across his chest. ‘Why didn't you tell me Catherine was at Kuala Rau?' I asked. ‘I thought we were partners in this game. I thought we confided everything.'

Denis took a long breath. ‘I didn't know she was at Kuala Rau,' he said. ‘I thought she might be, because I knew she was in Pahang, but I didn't really know. I take it someone has told you. Can I ask you who?'

‘I spoke to Catherine today. She was in Robinsons. She didn't tell me she was at Kuala Rau, but I guessed.'

‘It just shows how careful one must be in this game,' Denis said almost crossly. ‘I should never have told you that I owned Kuala Rau. You've put two and two together, and no doubt frightened the dickens out of poor Catherine.' He turned over towards me and propped himself up on one elbow. ‘I promise you that I didn't know Catherine was at Kuala Rau,' he said. ‘But even if I had there would have been no point in telling you. You couldn't have contacted her there, and if you had tried you would have stirred up a hornets' nest.' He seemed about to say something more but changed his mind and lay back down.

I turned away and lay with my back to Denis, staring into the night. I told myself firmly that Denis couldn't have known for certain that Catherine was at Kuala Rau, and that I mustn't misjudge him. But my mind rolled on,
thinking about the places in the jungle that Denis owned. Tin mines, tea plantations, disused timber mills. Presumably all of them potential camps for jungle warriors. But the war was over, so all he was doing now was providing safe-houses to the MCP. Providing bases for the hot-heads who were posing a threat to British control.

It all seemed rather self-defeating. But I was too tired to pursue the subject, and perhaps a little depressed. Denis may not have deliberately kept Catherine's whereabouts from me, but he had certainly been less forthcoming than he might have been.

Malcolm Bryant called on me in the middle of a hot afternoon in June. I'd been resting under the fan in the bedroom, and heard the sound of a motorcycle coming through the kampong and up the long driveway to Casuarinas. I thought it must have been a dispatch rider of some sort and brushed my hair perfunctorily before making my way to the front door.

‘Mind if I drop in?' Malcolm looked magnificent, tanned and fit and impeccably turned out in grey flannels and a cream shirt, with a Selangor cricket jumper casually knotted around his shoulders.

‘Malcolm,' I cried. ‘You look wonderful! I thought you'd be a bag of bones after Changi, but you look absolutely terrific.'

‘I've just spent a couple of months up in the mountains of Kashmir,' he said. ‘Srinagar is a tremendous place for recuperation, Norma. Lovely weather, boating on the lake, dancing at the club, picnics in the hills, and even a spot of trout fishing – or something as near as you can get to trout fishing in the East.'

We sat in the shade of the casuarinas, sipping tea and chatting. Malcolm was a different man to the morose police officer I had known before the war – charming, frank, sensitive and funny. He told me how his sister had finally found a man and was happily married. ‘And living in a semi-detached in Tooting, if you don't mind,' he said. ‘How conventional can one be?'

‘What about yourself?' I asked. ‘You didn't go back to England? And why Srinagar?'

Malcolm looked serious for a moment. ‘I didn't go back to Blighty because it's lonely for me there, Norma. No-one knows me except Barbara, and she doesn't want an old stick like me hanging around.'

‘And Srinagar?' I prompted.

‘I've been taken on by MI5,' he said. ‘Counterintelligence. And seconded
to a body called Security Intelligence Far East. SIFE. For my sins I'm in charge of internal security. I keep an eye on everyone in the organisation, making sure there's no backsliding or corruption. Or, heaven forbid, Communist penetration. We had our training at Mandrake – a big old house in Srinagar where they really put us through our paces.'

‘Should you be telling me all this?' I asked lightly. ‘About being in Intelligence and so on? Surely it's supposed to be hush-hush.'

Malcolm chuckled. ‘I'm aware you're well in with the Intelligence crowd, Norma, so let's not pretend with each other,' he said. ‘Which leads me to the necessity for an apology. I used to think Denis was a Russian spy. Of course I now know how wrong I was. I'm sorry for the hurt I caused, but I really didn't know he was one of ours.'

I was glad it was out in the open, and gave Malcolm my brightest smile. ‘It's all water under the bridge, Malcolm. But thank you for the apology. It means we can now be the best of friends.'

One of Denis's and my greatest pleasures in those days was to spend an afternoon at the races. The Singapore Turf Club had arisen phoenix-like from the ashes of the Japanese occupation, and by the end of 1946 it was holding regular Saturday meetings out at Bukit Timah. The horses may have been below standard but when the field came around the final turn and thundered down the straight it was every bit as exciting as Flemington in November or Goodwood in June.

One Saturday we were strolling arm in arm along the front of the Members Stand when I saw a sight that sent a jolt of pure joy straight to my heart. Tanya and Eugene Aubrey were coming towards us, a little blond boy swinging on their hands between them.

‘Tanya,' I called softly, almost fearing that the vision would disappear like a puff of smoke. Eugene saw me before Tanya did, and I saw him slip his arm around her and turn her towards us.

‘By Jove this is wonderful!' he called, and then Tanya was hurrying towards me. I thought for a moment she was going to wrap me in her arms but this was the Members Stand after all and she gripped both my hands in hers instead. ‘I'm so glad to see you – I didn't know whether you were dead or alive!' she blurted out. ‘We only arrived from England yesterday and I was dreading having to make enquiries. I didn't think you and Denis could possibly have survived. We read all about how badly Singapore was bombed,
how many people were killed.'

We lunched together, little Andrei behaving beautifully in his high chair while the adults chatted twenty to the dozen. We told each other our respective stories, breathlessly and in outline at first, and then filling in the details as lunch proceeded. The Aubreys had spent six months in Cape Town, and then at Eugene's insistence they had sailed to England. ‘I wanted to strike a blow,' Eugene said earnestly. ‘I had my commission, and I offered myself to SOE in Baker Street. I know a little bit about explosives – you know I first came to Malaya as a tin miner, don't you? – and I can speak one or two of the Balkan languages. So they attached me to SOE in the Eastern Med.'

He had had what was called a ‘good war'. Not too much suffering, but the spice of danger in a setting that allowed his skills full scope. He was parachuted into Yugoslavia six months before the war ended, joining a British unit attached to General Tito's partisans. He blew up three bridges, a Germanmanned police station, and – just for good measure – a classy bordello full of senior German officers. ‘He also nearly blew himself up too,' Tanya laughed, looping her arm over Eugene's shoulder. ‘He was trying to blow up an enemy bunker but after he lit the fuse he got stuck trying to get out of the place. But the bomb didn't go off.'

‘A brilliant piece of work,' Eugene said with satisfaction. ‘Easy enough to make something blow up when you want it to blow up. Getting something
not
to blow up when you don't want it to blow up is sheer genius.'

We spent the rest of the afternoon together, and as soon Tanya and I were alone I confronted her. ‘So?' I asked.

‘So?' Tanya grinned back.

‘So how did you stop being Ingrid Bergman?'

Tanya's blue eyes danced. ‘I had to give him
something
, didn't I? After cheating him out of his adventure in the jungle. So I got myself all sloshed one night in Cape Town and lay back thinking of England. Or rather, thinking about our place in Penang, because that's the happiest place I'd ever been. And that's when it happened. Or rather, when it didn't happen.'

‘Don't talk in riddles,' I said. ‘What do you mean, when it didn't happen?'

Tanya blushed. ‘Eugene couldn't manage it. He tried awfully hard. After a while I felt so sorry for him that I did my best to help him. It didn't do any good and he got all red in the face and cursed in Armenian or some such language. And then we were just rolling about the bed and laughing, and
laughing, and laughing. Sex was never an issue after that. That awful, crippling fear I'd had for so long simply disappeared.'

I thought of something and chuckled out loud. ‘Are you sure Eugene wasn't foxing? Remember what he said at lunch: “Easy enough to make something blow up when you want it to blow up. Getting something
not
to blow up when you don't want it to blow up is sheer genius”.'

We were still laughing when the men caught up with us. ‘No, we're not going to tell you what is so funny,' I said firmly. ‘Can't sisters have their little secrets?'

Which of course turned my thoughts towards my mother. ‘I know Mother got away from Singapore safely,' I said to Tanya. ‘But I haven't heard from her since. Have you any idea how she is?'

‘She is well. We were in touch with her in England during the war. She managed to keep her hands on some of her money, and bought a house. A small cottage in Wales, with a lovely garden and a view of the sea. She has a friend, too. A local man. He is not wealthy but neither is he totally without means. I suspect that one day they will be married.'

I breathed a sigh of relief. Mother in a Welsh cottage seemed incongruous, but it suggested that at last she was beginning to adjust to the reality of life. I tried to picture the man who had established a place in her life, but failed. Mother's choice of men had always been exotic. A ‘local man' from a Welsh village seemed extraordinarily unlikely.

Tanya must have read my mind. ‘He's an ex-sea captain. A very strong character who won't let your mother get away with any nonsense. He loves her, I'm sure. So you can rest assured that she will be all right.'

So Mother was off my hands, I told myself. I could forget her with an easy mind. But even as I said the words to myself I realised that they were not true. Mother would never really be ‘off my hands', even when she was dead.

It was delightful having the Aubreys back, and we saw a lot of them after that. Frances and Andrei were close enough in age to play together and so it was practical for Tanya and me to spend whole days together with our children. We alternated between the Swimming Club, Casuarinas and the Aubreys' rented home in Holt Road.

‘It would be nice to stay in Singapore,' Tanya said one day. ‘But Eugene has to earn a living. So we've decided to buy a rubber plantation in Malaya, and live the life of planters. It's going to be fun, Nona, but I will miss you.'

We were lounging on cane chairs on the upstairs verandah at Holt Road, iced ire limos in our hands, the children playing with blocks on the floor between us. ‘I thought Eugene was as rich as Croesus,' I said. ‘Surely he's got enough money to go into business in Singapore?' I didn't at all like the thought of Tanya leaving the island.

Tanya sensed my disappointment and made a little gesture to show she understood. ‘He lost a lot of money just after the war started. Some ships were sunk, and he was underinsured. He had to sell a lot of real estate at rockbottom prices to cover his losses, and invested most of what he had left in English bonds. He thought it was the patriotic thing to do, but he isn't getting any sort of return on them. So we are going to put everything we've got into buying a good plantation. It has to have a nice house, because we're going to live there and manage the place ourselves.'