In the Mouth of the Tiger (10 page)

It was Tim who saved the situation. ‘Well, I'm quite prepared to be auctioned off,' he offered to the table at large. And he winked so outrageously at the dowager sitting opposite us that she burst into good-natured laughter. The rest of the table followed suit and the moment was over.

The rest of that lunch passed surprisingly well. Mother had been quite
chastened by what had happened and tried to make up by being pleasant to Tim. Tim for his part was magnificent, acting as if nothing at all untoward had happened.

After lunch, the guests gathered on the first tee to watch the American demonstrate his clubs. There were ‘Oohs!' and ‘Aahs!' as drive after drive sent the glittering white balls out of sight.

‘Damn fine golfer!' Tim said. ‘You know he's ranked about number two in the world?'

I admitted demurely that I didn't, which gave Tim just the opening he needed to escort me to the terrace bar, plonk me down in front of a lemonade, and regale me with international golfing lore.

‘Do you play much golf yourself?' I asked, trying to turn the conversation away from names I'd never heard of to something I was remotely interested in.

‘Just a bit. I generally play a round or two on a Saturday morning. It's a long trip in from the estate, but worth the effort.'

‘Do you win?' I asked with careful naivety.

He grinned. ‘I'm about the weakest of the bunch I play with. Though actually, I did pretty well this morning. Managed to birdie the fourth, which is the trickiest on the course.'

‘Who is the best of your bunch?' I asked, determined to keep the conversation going. I could see Mother out of the corner of my eye, watching us through a cloud of cigarette smoke from a strategically placed table she had requisitioned with Tanya.

‘The best of our bunch?' Tim mused. ‘Probably Denis. At least, he has the lowest handicap. He's down to two. Should have been here for lunch today but he's gone off to shoot some seladang up in the Telom Valley.'

That was the first time I heard Denis's name. Of course it meant nothing to me at the time. But nevertheless this Denis interested me. Not because he had a golf handicap of two, but because he was presumably at this moment deep in the ulu hunting the huge and unpredictable seladang, the wild ox of the Malayan jungle. The ulu was the interior, the real jungle, where elephants and tigers and seladang roamed free, and pythons up to sixty feet long slithered through the leaf-mould. Something altogether different and much scarier than the tame few acres I frightened myself with in the Botanical Gardens.

‘I'd love to go into the real jungle,' I said. ‘It would be terrific fun. Is your friend on an elephant?'

Tim shook his head. ‘You're probably thinking about India. Denis hasn't gone off with a Rajah's hunting party. He was asked by a Sakai headman to stop a herd of rogue seladang raiding his crops.'

‘I didn't know the Sakais had crops,' I said. Sakais are the original aboriginal inhabitants of the Malayan Peninsula, a gentle people who hunt small jungle animals and birds with blowpipes and poison-tipped arrows.

‘They clear small areas of the jungle, called
ladangs
, and plant them with stuff they need to balance their diet,' Tim said. ‘Things like tapioca, hill rice, bananas and so on. It's a very serious matter if the local seladang take it into their heads to raid the plots.'

I sipped my lemonade thoughtfully. ‘Why does he do it? I mean go off into the jungle just because some Sakai asked for his help?'

‘I rather think he does it for the adventure. I'd go like a shot myself given half a chance.' Tim suddenly leaned across the table. ‘What's all this nonsense of your mother's about our ages being too far apart?' he asked seriously. ‘I'm only twenty, for heaven's sake. What is wrong with a difference of four years?'

‘Don't worry about Mother,' I said. ‘She was just disappointed that you weren't interested in Tanya. Tanya is in her twenties and so Mother thinks she's already on the shelf.'

‘Will you come to the pictures with me tonight?' Tim asked. He held up a hand before I could say anything. ‘Now, before you answer, remember your solemn promise on the quay in Penang. You're simply not allowed to say you have something better to do.'

I laughed. ‘I made no such promise,' I said, looking into his eyes. He had a nice face, prevented from being good-looking only by the awful carrot-coloured hair and protruding ears. But the set of the mouth, and his eyes, were rather attractive.

‘What could we see?' I asked, temporising.

‘Well,
The Little Minister
is playing. Katherine Hepburn. They say it's pretty good.'

I still hesitated, half teasing, half worried my mother might not let me go. It would be too awful for words to accept and then have to explain that my mother had prohibited me going. I glanced across to Mother's table and was pleased to see that she and Tanya had been joined by a couple of other ladies and were deep in conversation.

‘I'd love to come,' I said abruptly. Then I hesitated. I'd never been out
with a man before and I didn't know the protocol. Did I offer to meet him at the cinema, or should I ask him to call for me?

‘I'll pick you up at seven-fifteen precisely,' Tim said with a happy grin, solving the problem. ‘Where do you live?'

As I feared, Mother was not at all happy with the arrangement. It led to our first serious argument in KL. ‘You are still just a schoolgirl!' she shouted. ‘Little more than a baby! He is a beast to try this on just because Tanya and I were not there to protect you!'

‘I am sixteen this year,' I retorted. ‘I think it very unfair of you to call me a baby. In the Middle Ages, a woman would be well and truly married at my age.'

‘We are not living in the Middle Ages. Now, no more nonsense, Nona.'

I went to my room and sulked for half an hour, still determined to get my way but giving Mother time to calm down before I tried again. I saw her again just before dinner.

‘I'm going, Mother, whether you like it or not,' I said in as calm and mature a voice as I could muster. ‘You can't live my life for me forever.' I was on my way to the laundry to iron the dress I intended to wear, a rather short pastel creation which I had been keeping for just this occasion. For my first ‘date', as the Americans called it.

Mother looked at me coldly. ‘If you
dare
to wear that skimpy thing, you will not be allowed back inside this flat,' she said, flicking the dress with her hand contemptuously. I sighed with relief: we were no longer arguing about whether or not I would be allowed to go, but about what I would wear.

As it transpired, I did wear the pastel pink dress that night. Tanya had remained strictly neutral during the first part of the argument, but when the style of my dress was the only issue, she came in heavily on my side. ‘She's young, after all, Julia,' she said. ‘If you can't wear something
chic
when you're Nona's age, when can you?'

I'd smiled my thanks across the dinner table.

Tim picked me up in a green Triumph two-seater, and as we spun through the night towards the Plaza Cinema he told me all about it. ‘Bought her this afternoon from Mickey's Cars in Batu Road,' he said proudly. ‘She's had an owner or two but I think she's sound enough. I needed something reliable to get me to and from Sungei Slim, so I took the plunge.' He paused and shot me a glance. ‘In a way, I bought her for you, Nona. I needed something appropriate to collect you in tonight.'

I blushed with pleasure.

I can't say I remember much about
The Little Minister
, except that John Beal, the male lead, looked a bit of a drip. But I do recall that I was just a little disappointed when Tim took me straight home. I had rather expected a fight of some sort, with Tim trying to convince me to sit with him under the moon. But as we pulled up at Parry Drive he explained. ‘This is the first time I've taken you out,' he said. ‘A girl's mother always worries the first time, because the fellow could be an axe-murderer for all she knows. So one brings her daughter home almost before the dinner things have been put away. That concerns mother, who thinks that her lovely daughter might not be quite the hit with the fellows that she should be. So next time, mother actually
hopes
her little dear will come in late, to prove she has what it takes to win a man.'

‘You absolute beast!' I said, almost angry. ‘Do fellows really play games like that? I think it's horrid!'

Tim chuckled. ‘All's fair in love and war, Nona,' he said. And then, quite unfairly, he gave me a quick but emphatic kiss on the lips.

Tim's tactics worked almost too well. ‘For why you are home this early?' Mother demanded, looking at me closely. ‘It has not yet turned ten o'clock! You have had a row, perhaps? The man is a pig not to appreciate a girl like you!'

I slipped my shoes off and sauntered towards my room, turning round with a cheeky grin. ‘You only have our word for it, Mother, that we went to the cinema at all.'

My friendship with Tim blossomed over the next few months. He was generally down in KL on the weekends, playing golf, or cricket, or both, and staying at the Dunlops' chummery in Ampang Road. We went out together most Saturday nights, either to see a film at the Colosseum or the Plaza, or to watch a play at the Prince's Theatre. On Sundays we usually joined Mother and Tanya for curry tiffin at the Selangor Club, or at the nearby Club Annex because its prices were a little cheaper.

Little by little, we became accepted by those who knew us as a couple. I rather liked the feeling of being one of a couple. It meant joint invitations to parties at the chummery, and occasionally to one of the formal Dunlops dinners. However, at least as far as I was concerned, there was nothing serious or permanent about our relationship. I think Tim would have liked more, but he was still young and quite prepared to bide his time.

And then, in the middle of the 1936, I met the man who had visited me in my dream nearly two years before.

Tim and I were at the Selangor Club, watching a cricket match between Selangor and Perak. Or at least Tim was watching the match – cricket bored me and I had my head in a book by Somerset Maugham. It was a hot, cloudless day, I remember, and from where we sat in the deep shade of the club's upstairs verandah the padang looked like a bowl of glaring light. A bowl in which tiny white figures dashed to and fro in irrational, spasmodic bursts of activity.

Tim was a little annoyed that I didn't appreciate the significance of what was happening before our eyes. ‘You realise, of course, that Selangor are fighting back like tigers?' he asked. ‘And that what's happening here today will be talked about up and down the Peninsula for months to come?'

I looked up into the glare, gave a grunt that I hoped sounded like one of appreciation, and then looked down again into
Lisa of Lambeth.

Tim sighed in exasperation. ‘You realise that the chap doing all the damage for Selangor is Denis Elesmere-Elliott, the chap I told you had gone off shooting seladang for the Sakais?'

I put my book down and made a determined effort to watch the play. ‘Which one is Denis?' I asked.

Tim pointed to a figure who seemed to be doing nothing more exciting than stand nonchalantly beside the pitch, hands on his hips.

‘How is he damaging Perak?' I asked reasonably.

‘You silly little girl. He's bowling from this end. Wait until it's his turn again.'

I put my dark glasses on and studied the play, trying to get an idea what was happening. After a moment or two somebody threw the ball to Denis. He sauntered back from the wicket, then turned and lined himself up. I couldn't make out his features but he carried himself with a relaxed, confident grace that rather impressed me. Then he ran in, gathering speed with every step, and released the ball with an athletic flourish.

From our distance his bowling didn't seem particularly fast, but he was obviously causing the batsmen a lot of difficulty. Twice the man facing him seemed to flinch as balls caught him by surprise, and then one ball clean bowled him, scattering the stumps. A burst of cheering came from the crowd around the fence beneath us, muted by distance but exciting nevertheless.

‘So you actually saw a wicket fall!' Tim said with glee. ‘That was Denis's sixth wicket this innings. We need only one more wicket and the match is ours.'

Tim suddenly got to his feet. ‘Come on, Nona. The way Denis is bowling
this'll be over in a minute or two. Let's get down to cheer the lads off the field. They've made history here today.'

I was suddenly as keen as Tim to be in at the death, and we scurried back through the deserted club rooms, down the staircase, and out onto the padang. Quite a crowd had gathered, perhaps a hundred or so, and I could feel electricity in the air. Only moments before everybody, including most of the players, had seemed to me to be half asleep. Now every movement on the field was invested with drama and significance. Someone failed to field a ball cleanly, allowing the batsman to score a run, and the whole crowd groaned with despair.

We worked our way through the crush of people to the fence just in time to see Denis begin his next over. This close to the action, everything seemed to be happening much faster. When Denis bowled, the ball flickered down the wicket like a red sun-flash, and I felt quite sorry for the poor batsman. He managed to keep the first few balls out of his wicket, but then one rose sharply off the pitch, catching his bat high on the blade. The ball sprang back down the wicket, seemingly clear over the bowler's head. But Denis leapt up and backwards to take the catch, dragging the ball down clutched in his left hand. The crowd about us went wild, even Tim doing a jig, then catching me up in his arms and swinging me around in glee.

By the time the crowd had settled down the players had reached the little gate in the fence beside us, and were standing back in a half-circle to clap Denis off the field.