In the Mouth of the Tiger (74 page)

It was at that point that the square-faced Scottish woman said something that I will remember until the day I die. ‘We're all pals here, aren't we?' she said, reaching out and touching each of us in turn. ‘You know, I really wouldn't be anywhere else for quids.' Her name was Christine Maclean – the name comes back to me after all the years – and the memory of her companionship and bright courage burns through the blackness like a flame.

That was the last raid we were to experience, but of course we weren't to know that. The long afternoon passed, hours of tortured anticipation of disaster mixed with ecstasy that we were still alive, and then the sky began to turn pale salmon pink and the flat sea indigo, and we were safe. As we motored through the late afternoon one could almost hear the ship sighing with relief. People gathered in little groups, shaking hands, patting each other on the back. Someone, somewhere, laughed gently, an infinitely comforting sound. I stood on the deck outside our cabin breathing deeply, saying ‘thank you' to God in my mind, and then beginning to worry about Denis.

He didn't come, so I went looking for him. The whole vessel was a shambles and I stumbled past wrecked cabins, the shattered remains of a gun position still wet with blood, and through a dark labyrinth of corridors stinking of cordite.

I reached a ladder marked ‘Bridge' but they stopped me going up, an armed sailor barring my way with his rifle. I think that was the worst moment of all. I had no strength to insist, none even to explain my quest, and so I just stood there mute, sagging against the wall of the companionway for support. And then, miraculously, Denis was by my side, a spray of dried blood across one shoulder of his uniform, but smiling and alive.

We stood together by the rail, clinging together as the darkening sea slid past. I wanted so much to cry. With relief that we were all alive. With sorrow for all those who had died – on the
Empire Star
and back in Singapore. For the loss of the lovely world which we had taken for granted and which had been so brutally torn from us. But of course I didn't. To weep would have demeaned all those on board who had lost so much more than we had.

‘You took your own sweet time to beat off a few measly Japs, didn't you?'
I asked. ‘I thought you said it would be a piece of cake.'

Many – the exact number will never be known – had died during the day, and some of the dead were buried at sunset. During the heat of action, many others had been pushed over the side, but now there was no need for haste and there was time for ceremony. Prayers were said for the safe delivery of the ship and for the souls of the departed. As the bodies, weighted in their canvas shrouds, were consigned to the deep beneath the flag of the Empire for which they had given their lives, we sang the well-known hymn ‘Abide with Me.'

The next morning dawned overcast, and we steamed all day through a pearl-grey world in which the sea merged indistinguishably with the sky. It meant that we were hidden from the Japanese bombers, and all over the ship there were little celebrations of relief. But it was relief mixed with a new anxiety. It was known that Japanese submarines were in the area and people were often to be found staring out at the flat grey sea, looking out for torpedo tracks. Occasionally someone would see something and shouts would go up and I'd find my heart thumping as I looked about desperately for the boys. But it would be a seagull taking off or water breaking on a drifting coconut frond, and there would be raucous laughter and relief.

The Australians had acquitted themselves well in the fight, and were now treated as heroes by all those on board. Our cabin had adopted one in particular as our mascot, or perhaps he had adopted us – a fresh-faced youngster named Roy Cornford, who had been in the thick of the fighting.

That night we invited him to join us for a supper of chocolate cake and cocoa which Christine had scrounged from the kitchens. He sat on the floor with the children, and I realised that he was not much more than a child himself. He couldn't have been more than eighteen or nineteen.

‘Where do you come from, Roy?' I asked, and he swung round from the game he was playing with the children and faced me politely. ‘Wollongong, ma'am. That's a small town south of Sydney. Right on the coast. Our house is so close to the beach the surf keeps you awake on stormy nights.'

He had been in the army three months before being bundled on a ship for Singapore. His unit had expected to receive combat training on the island but they had gone straight into battle, hardly knowing how to use their Lee Enfield .303 rifles. He had been cut off with three or four mates when the Japs had stormed across the Straits of Johore, and the group had been told by
its sergeant that it was every man for himself. A three-day trek through the mangroves had brought them to the coast west of Singapore, and from there they had used their hands and some planks to paddle to the
Empire Star
in an oarless sampan. ‘Still don't know too much about the .303,' Roy said self-deprecatingly. ‘But I reckon I'm a bit of an expert on paddling a sampan.' He was a modest boy and blushed scarlet when we all solemnly lifted our cocoa cups in his honour.

We entered Tanjong Priok, the harbour for Batavia, in the early hours of the morning, and I remember lying half awake, and thinking with muzzy happiness of the words of the lovely psalm 107: ‘bring us safe into harbour'.

Christine stormed into our cabin, shouting us awake. ‘Quick, everybody. We've got to stop them taking the Aussies away!'

None of us had the slightest idea what she was talking about but we pulled on our clothes and tumbled out onto the deck. We were alongside by now and we could see the Australian soldiers lined up on the wharf surrounded by grim-looking British Marines with Tommy guns under their arms. The Australians were dressing under the British guns with a kind of desperate dignity, shuffling crisply into perfect lines and then snapping to attention as if on a parade ground. They looked strangely vulnerable without their arms, which we could see piled neatly at the foot of the gangway. ‘They've been arrested,' Christine said breathlessly. ‘For cowardice or some such stupid thing.'

People were beginning to pack the side of the ship, calling down angrily to the Marines and shouting encouragement to the Australians. But the incipient protest had no time to gather strength because within minutes the party was marched off towards a line of waiting trucks. I caught sight of young Roy, marching tall and with his slouch hat at a rakish angle, but his face as white as a sheet.

Dreadful rumours swept the ship during the morning, the worst being that the whole party had been lined up just outside the dock gates and shot for cowardice. ‘I've seen the bullet holes in the side of a godown,' some dreadful woman said, seeming to relish the words. ‘And the blood on the road! So much blood . . .' Denis assured me that none of it was true, that the Australians were simply being re-mustered and would only be reprimanded for what they had done. But the thought that something might have happened to them, to Roy, lingered on in my mind, spoiling even the feeling of relief that we had escaped.

We were in Tanjong Priok for three days as welders and engineers swarmed over the ship making her seaworthy, and then we were on our way again, heading south for Australia.

On 23 February 1942 the
Empire Star
docked in Fremantle, Western Australia. Denis joined me at the rail as we stared out over the rusty tin roofs of Victoria Docks. It was raining, soft summer rain falling from a leaden sky and making puddles on the wharf where customs officers, military policemen and Red Cross officials waited for us under black umbrellas.

‘It's going to be very different, Norma,' Denis said, gripping my arm gently. Behind us, the boys were arguing the toss about who should carry the umbrella we had given them to share. In the innocence of childhood, they were completely oblivious of the immense change we were about to face, as they had been oblivious of the huge dangers we had been through.

Their calm acceptance gave me strength and I gripped Denis's arm in return. ‘Piece of cake,' I said.

Chapter Twenty-Seven

A
t the beginning, it
was
a piece of cake.

We spent our first night in a small seaside hotel just south of Fremantle, dining on fish and chips, then walking along the beach before turning in. The weather had cleared but I was so tired that I walked in a daze, enjoying but scarcely noticing the darkening sea, the loom of houses in the dusk, and the other strollers out with their dogs. I was glad to get back to the hotel, and it was bliss to doze off knowing that there were no Japanese planes to fear, no submarines lurking in the depths beneath. There was just the sound of a distant train in the night, and the soughing of the wind in the Norfolk pines outside our windows.

After breakfast, we had a family conference. Denis insisted on the two boys being present, and they sat on the edge of our bed as we discussed our new life in a new land. I remember that conference so well, the boys nodding their heads solemnly as Denis made them promise to look after me, the muslin curtains billowing in a warm sea breeze, the sound of traffic from the street outside. I felt it was all a little unreal, as though we were actors in a play. I half expected Amah to tap gently on the door to ask about lunch, or to hear Margaret calling from the garden. I suppose the truth was that I was a little bit in shock, but we didn't recognise the condition in those days and so I just gritted my teeth and tried harder to pull my weight.

The first decision we had to make was whether to try and access the funds we had in the Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank, or to assume they were lost for the duration of the war and to try and cope on Denis's naval salary. I favoured the latter course. I had seen too many émigré families in Malaya living beyond their means, led on by expectations that they would recover the fortunes they had left behind in Russia. They had always seemed rather
pitiful to me, pretentious and silly, and I didn't want us to become like them. So we opened the
West Australian
to the ‘to let' pages and tried to gauge the rental market. A small house (‘three bed plus sleep-out, verandah and garage') looked viable, and we circled a couple in South Perth and Bicton.

‘Have you boys anything you want to say?' Denis asked. ‘You are part of this conference too, you know.'

Tony put on his grown-up look, frowning mightily. ‘Can Bobby and I watch the trains? There's a railway bridge just up the road.'

Denis sighed. ‘I will soon be going off with the Navy,' he said seriously. ‘When I do go, Tony, you will be the man of the family. So you will have to be very grown up, and help Mummy when she needs help. You won't have too much time to watch trains.'

Tony hung his head, abashed. Then he brightened a little. ‘Can we watch them from the window? You can just see them if you climb on a chair. They're steam trains, Daddy.'

‘I want to watch the trains, too,' Bobby piped up.

Denis looked at me across the boys' heads, shaking his head but with a twinkle in his eyes. ‘A lost cause, I'm afraid,' he said ruffling their hair. ‘I suppose we had better adjourn and have a look for these trains.'

So our family conference reconvened on a railway overpass, and while the three males craned their necks over the white-painted fence-rail at the puffing engines beneath us, I wrestled with sums in my head, trying to work out how much we could afford for rent. It was a strange experience for me, being exclusively in charge of the family budget, and not a totally unpleasant one.

After lunch we ordered a taxi and set out to inspect a handful of houses. There weren't many available in our range and we settled on an older red-brick home in a sandy street in Bicton. It was small but it had a sunny sleep-out, linoleum on the kitchen floor and a fenced back yard for the boys to play in. When we got back to the hotel there was a dark blue Navy car parked outside with a WRAN driver polishing the windscreen. It belonged to a lanky RAN lieutenant called Lumley Rycroft, who became our first friend in Western Australia.

Lumley, or ‘Rye' as he insisted we call him, had brought along a veritable treasure trove: drawing pads and pencils for the boys, kit allowance and a pay advance for Denis, and a small suitcase for me. The suitcase was packed with good quality second-hand clothes for the children, a few essentials like soaps
and toothpaste, and a few morale-boosting luxuries including cigarettes, stockings and cosmetics. Fremantle was receiving quite a number of displaced Navy wives from Singapore and the Far East, and the RAN Women's Auxiliary had developed a very useful rescue package.

We drank tea in the pokey hotel lounge while the boys scribbled busily on their drawing pads, and then Rye drew a brown manila envelope from his pocket. ‘Orders from Naval Officer in Charge Western Australia, Denis. I can tell you what's in them because I drafted them. You are to join me as an Intelligence Officer on Admiral Collins' staff here at HMAS
Leeuwin
.'

‘Who is the Senior IO?' Denis asked, and Rye grinned a little self-deprecatingly.

‘I am he, old son. A humble lieutenant like yourself. I'm afraid they don't rate Naval Intelligence fellows too highly in this part of the world.'

Denis got up and shook his hand. ‘Glad to join you, sir.'

I couldn't have happier to hear this news. HMAS
Leeuwin
was the shore depot at nearby Fremantle. Until he was posted elsewhere, Denis could live with us at Bicton and go to work each day, just like a normal husband.

When we'd finished our tea, Rye took us for a drive in his Humber, or rather the young WRAN driver did while Rye lounged beside her, leaning over the seat to point out the sights. We drove along a highway that skirted the Swan River, stopped for a while in Perth while I did a little shopping, and had an early dinner on the terrace of an open-air café in Kings Park. When he dropped us back at the hotel, Rye gave us one last gift. It was a couple of little silver-plated spoons embossed with the Perth crest, which he had picked up at a tourist kiosk next door to the café in Kings Park. ‘Just something to say welcome to Australia,' he said almost shyly. ‘Only worth a few bob but if you collect trinkets it will remind you how welcome you are here.'