The Other Side of Paradise (12 page)

‘We think so, but then we’re prejudiced.’

‘I’d like to go to see it for myself one of these days.’

‘It’s worth the trip.’

Her father liked Ray, she could tell that. So did her mother, who was hard to please. He’d done all the right things, said all the right things, used all the right knives and forks. Her father went on asking questions about Australia and after dinner, when they sat out on the verandah, he said to Ray, ‘I’m thinking of sending Susan and her mother to your country, if the Japs take it into their heads to try attacking us.’

‘It makes sense to me, sir.’

‘Of course they won’t want to leave, but it might come to that. What do you think of the situation here in Malaya?’

‘I think it’s very bad.’

‘So do I. Most people wouldn’t agree with us – only a few have grasped the real truth. Everyone else has their head stuck firmly in the sand. They can’t see how dangerous the Japs are.
Refuse
to see it.’

Her mother said, ‘Oh, do stop going on about the wretched Japanese, Thomas. I’m sure Captain Harvey would far sooner talk about something else. Tell me, Captain, what is the weather like in Australia?’

She listened to him answering her mother, explaining to her about their upside-down temperatures and opposite seasons. And she watched him while she listened. Dishy, Milly had called him, but she couldn’t see it herself – except for the eyes. A sort of green-grey and with smoky depths so that you couldn’t exactly tell what he was thinking. Well, she knew what he thought of her because he’d told her. Pretty spoiled.

At the end of the evening she went to the front door to see him out.

‘You weren’t much help,’ she told him. ‘My father’s more determined to send us off to your ghastly country than ever.’

‘Would you sooner he didn’t care about what happened to you?’

‘He’s in a flap because some newspaper correspondent keeps telling him scary stories. That’s all.’

They were standing out on the step beneath the portico and it was raining.

‘I bet they’re true.’

‘I’m sick of hearing about the Japs,’ she said. ‘It’s spoiling everything.’

‘You’ll be hearing a lot more, I reckon.’

Ghani was bringing the ordinary old car round, driving it under the portico out of the wet, stopping by the steps, getting out, standing at ramrod attention as he held the driver’s door open.

She said, ‘Your carriage awaits, sire.’

‘Yeah, I’d noticed.’ He looked down at her. ‘Well, thanks for the evening.’

‘It was my father who invited you.’

He said drily, ‘I know. But you were there.’

He gave her one of those Aussie swatting-away-flies salutes as he drove off. The rain was coming down in torrents.

When she went back into the hall, Soojal was still hovering. He would have heard the conversation at dinner and afterwards on the verandah and probably what had been said just now. Nothing was secret from him.

‘You wish for anything,
missee
?’

She sighed. ‘What I wish for is that everything could stay just as it’s always been, Soojal.’

He nodded gravely. ‘I understand,
missee
. I also wish the same.’

She rubbed the Buddha’s fat tummy as she passed him on the way to bed. He smiled but it seemed to be a sad smile.

November turned into December. Roger Clark had been sent somewhere on the mainland and kept writing her letters that she didn’t answer. It was kinder not to.

The usual scare-rumours were circulating. A Jap submarine had been spotted surfacing in the Johore Straits. Jap warships had been sighted off the southern tip of Indo-China. Jap planes had been seen in the skies over the peninsula. Nobody took them any more seriously than before, least of all the men that Susan transported to and fro in her ambulance.

‘Don’t you worry, love. We’ll see them Nips off all right,’ one of them told her breezily. ‘Nothin’ to it.’

Two big Royal Navy ships arrived from England. The new and reputedly unsinkable battleship, the
Prince of Wales
, and the battle cruiser, the
Repulse
– Lawrence Trent’s ‘old lady’. They steamed majestically into Keppel Harbour, their great grey bulk magnificent against the blue sky and the misty green islands. They were greeted by crowds of sightseers, loud cheers and a lot of patriotic flag-waving.

On the first Sunday of the month Susan went with a group of friends to the Sea View Hotel for the customary pre-lunch drinks – a dozen or so of them squashed into two cars, careering along the coast road to Tanjong Katong.

The hotel was even more crowded than usual but they commandeered a table and chairs and the Chinese boys brought drinks – cold Tiger beers, gin slings, iced lime juice. The laughing and the talk drowned out the orchestra’s selection from
The Desert Song
and rounds of drinks were called for as though it was some big party – a grand celebration. She caught sight of fat, sweaty Paul and rabbit-toothed Marjorie, Clive’s dreary friends from the time she’d been there before – still in Singapore and probably still feeling guilty about it.

Once again, the orchestra played a loud chord and there was a dramatic roll of drums. The singing began. Not so much singing as yelling.

There’ll always be an England

And England shall be free
…

Later, they went to swim at Tanglin where there was a lot of horseplay in the pool and shrieks of laughter. They spent the afternoon lounging idly in the shade of the trees and, afterwards, there was an impromptu party at someone’s house with smoochy dancing to gramophone records. When Susan finally got home it was dark, a full moon shining down brightly on the city.

‘
Missee
look very happy.’

‘It’s been rather a jolly day, Soojal.’

‘That is good,
missee
. I bring lime juice?’

‘No thanks. I’m off to bed.’

She rubbed the Buddha’s fat tummy, skipped up the stairs and danced along the corridor.

At first she thought it was another violent thunderstorm that had awoken her during the night. But the noise wasn’t a storm. It was the staccato firing of guns, the distant drone of aeroplanes, the muffled boom-boom of explosions. She ran out on to the upstairs verandah to see searchlight beams sweeping to and fro across the sky. The planes came closer, their engines louder. A high-pitched, whistling sound was followed by a deafening explosion that made the verandah shake beneath her bare feet.

Over in the servants’ quarters, an
amah
started screaming hysterically. Much later, the air raid siren began its warning wail.

Six

AT BREAKFAST THE
kebuns
were beavering away at the shelter by the tennis court, but otherwise everything seemed quite normal, as though the bombing raid had been nothing more than a bad dream. Amith brought orange juice, fruit and coffee, Rex was stationed under the table, Sweep stalking some quarry on the lawn. The sun was shining, the songbirds twittering, cicadas chorusing, her father calmly reading the
Straits Times
.

When Amith had gone her father said, ‘It’s important to carry on as usual, poppet. To set an example to the servants. Show them there’s nothing to worry about.’

‘What if there’s another raid tonight?’

‘The Japs will find it much more difficult if they try it again. We made it easy for them last night. Lights blazing, no air raid warning until much too late, not one of our fighters in the air. And it wasn’t only Singapore that they attacked, I’m afraid. They bombed Hong Kong and the American fleet in Hawaii, at the same time.’

She stared at him. ‘How do you know?’

‘They said so on the wireless this morning. There was a special news bulletin. No details yet but it means that the Americans will have to come into the war.’

‘Then they’ll help us.’

‘I doubt if they’ll be able to help Malaya. They’ll have too much else on their plate. We’ll have to fight our own war. You and Mummy will leave as soon as I can arrange it. There’s to be no argument now from either of you – or from your grandmother either. She must get out of Penang and come down here to Singapore, whether she likes it or not.’

She fed the doves after breakfast, sitting on the verandah steps while they fluttered round her and perched on her shoulders, cooing in her ears. When she phoned Milly later, Milly didn’t sound a bit alarmed.

‘Daddy says the Japs tried to land in the north but we soon got rid of them. They’ll never manage it.’

‘They managed to bomb Singapore.’

‘He says we’ll be ready for them next time.’

‘I hope he’s right.’

‘I’m on duty at the hospital later. How about you?’

‘Not till tomorrow. And the good news is that Pitman’s has closed down until after Christmas because of the bombing. No more typing, no more shorthand. I’m rather grateful to the Japs.’

Susan went with her mother to buy blackout material. It was a shock to see the bomb damage in Raffles Place – shops wrecked, glass and rubble in the streets, and Robinson’s had been hit. The front of the store had been badly damaged, windows blown in. Tamil labourers were clearing away the rubble, and crowds of people had come to gawp – European, Eurasian, Chinese, Indian, Malay – gathered to stare at what the Japs had done.

Inside the store, there were long queues and a shortage of assistants. Lady Battersby was complaining to a harassed floor manager.

‘How much longer do you intend to keep me waiting?’

‘I’m very sorry, madam. So many of our staff are busy clearing up, and everything has to be moved down from the restaurant.’

‘Whatever for?’

‘The top floor was bombed in the raid, madam. We’re planning to reopen the restaurant temporarily in the basement, as soon as possible. Rest assured that refreshments will still be available to our customers.’

‘I’m not concerned about your refreshments – only what I came for: a large quantity of your best blackout material to be delivered immediately to my address.’

The woman queueing in front of them said, ‘I don’t know what all the fuss is about. My husband says the Japs won’t dare do it again.’

They went on to the Cold Storage where the glass shelves were intact and as well stocked as ever, but Maynards the chemist had boarded up its shattered windows against looters.

In the car, going home, her mother said, ‘Daddy is insisting on us leaving Singapore.’

‘Yes. I know.’

‘I’m more than happy to go home to England but he wants us to go to Australia. He thinks it’s safer there.’

‘I’d far sooner stay in Singapore.’

‘He won’t let you, Susan. Not if the Japs go on bombing us. He wants Grandmother Penang to come with us too, but she’s being very difficult about leaving her home. And I must say I don’t much like the idea of coping with her on a long sea voyage. We’ve never exactly seen eye to eye.’

Denys telephoned in the early evening. ‘Just wanted to make sure you were all right, sweetie.’

She was touched. ‘Of course I’m all right. What have you been up to?’

‘I’ve been busy rounding up Jap civilians and bunging them in a camp.’

‘Do you think the bombers will pay us another visit tonight?’

‘If so, we’ll be ready for them.’

‘We weren’t very ready last night.’

‘Well, apparently the ARP headquarters weren’t manned so nobody could get a message to them to sound the siren, and the chap with the street-lighting master key was at an all-night cinema.’

‘How pathetic.’

‘Yes, isn’t it? If they do come back, go and sit in that shelter of yours.’

‘It’s full of water at the moment; the mosquitoes love it.’

The blackout curtaining made the house unbearably hot and escaping to the verandah after dinner was a relief. In the moonlight, the lallang grass was a silver carpet, the palms giant black fans. She curled up on the divan and kicked off her shoes. The houseboys brought out coffee and her father’s
stengah
.

He lit his cigar. ‘If there’s another raid tonight, we’ll go to the shelter.’

Her mother said, ‘Don’t be ridiculous, Tom. I’m not sitting with my feet in muddy water, being bitten to death by mosquitoes.’

‘The
kebuns
drained it today. It’s all right now.’

‘The water will come back again. It always does in Singapore. We live in a swamp.’

There was more argument about the shelter and, finally, her mother went off to bed. Her father went on smoking in silence for a moment, drinking his
stengah
.

The blackout curtain twitched and a shaft of yellow light showed at the edge of the doorway. ‘There is a visitor,
tuan
. Mr Trent. You wish him to be admitted?’

‘Yes, certainly, Soojal. Show him out here.’

After a moment the blackout moved again like a stage curtain, and the newspaper correspondent emerged.

Her father stood up. ‘Come and join us, Lawrence. You remember my daughter, don’t you?’

‘Of course. Good evening, Susan.’ He bowed in her direction.

‘You’ll have a
stengah
, Lawrence?’

‘Thank you. I could do with one. It’s been a long day, one way and another. I’m sorry to disturb you, but I thought you might like to hear the latest news.’

‘Bad, I take it?’

‘It rather depends on your interpretation.’

‘Wait till the boy has brought your drink – he’d better not hear it.’

Soojal came and went on silent feet. The ice tinkled in the
stengah
glass.

‘Mind if I smoke my pipe?’

‘Go ahead, Lawrence. You don’t mind, do you, poppet?’

‘Not at all.’

The acrid smell of pipe smoke joined the cigar’s rich aroma.

‘I don’t want to alarm your daughter, Tom.’

‘I should much prefer her to be aware of the facts. Carry on.’

‘Very well. The press was issued with three communiqués today. The first said that the Japanese army landed at Singora and Patani in south Siam during last night and met with no resistance.’

‘That doesn’t surprise me. The Thais were never going to put up much of a fight.’

‘It didn’t surprise me either. But, unfortunately, the Japs have also landed men on the Malayan peninsula.’