For the first mile of their journey the lanes twisted towards the village of Pearling, through farmland Liz’s paternal great-grandparents had owned and her grandparents had sold to invest in the Far East. She was aware of her family’s deep roots in this green and moderate land, but her heart ached for the excesses of the tropics.
She turned a corner and confronted a boy on an overlarge bicycle riding near the middle of the road. He swerved violently to the side, wobbled, caught his pedal on the grass and described a fair dive into the lush verge. Liz slowed automatically, peering back through her rear-view mirror.
‘You’re not stopping!’ Blanche exclaimed.
‘I think it’s the post-office boy who delivers telegrams,’ she said as she saw him stoop to pick up a cap, which he hesitantly raised in their direction.
‘Oh! he’s fine!’ Blanche decided, glancing back. ‘I thought we hadn’t much time,’ she added when Liz did not immediately drive on.
Liz looked in her mirror again and decided he was unhurt and time was short though she resented her mother’s dismissive attitude. This time at Rinsey she might not be able to be quite so like the Red Queen in Alice in Wonderland, issuing her orders, autocratic to the point of despotism.
The Chinese cookie and office clerks, the happy contented Malay houseboys, the Tamil rubber-tappers would perhaps have different attitudes after having seen their English lords and masters run before the Japanese. Leaving them to the severity of a culture which saw confession as a necessary precursor to guilt and so torture as a weapon of justice. No wonder her father had found his workforce at first scattered and then organised by extremists into rebellious groups demanding higher wages.
A swift intake of breath by her side alerted Liz a second before Blanche shouted: ‘Lights! There’s traffic lights ahead!’
‘I see them, mother,’ she said.
‘You’d gone off into a dream.’
‘I can think and drive at the same time.’
‘No,’ Liz agreed, for the first time rather dreading the journey herself. It would be a couple of days even after landing at Singapore before they could reach Rinsey, though her mother would undoubtedly be an asset back at her father’s side. Motivating unwilling workers had become quite a speciality of hers during the war — and Father, though Liz would admit it to no one but herself, was not good at business, it seemed to embarrass him.
‘We’ll have a few days at Raffles,’ her mother mused. ‘Your father said he would meet us in Singapore ... no point in rushing upcountry. We’ll have some cotton dresses and slacks made.’
What Liz wanted was a complete reunion with her father and the Guisans; Joseph, her first heartthrob, and his sister Lee, her best friend. Contemplating an even longer delay, she frowned. She wanted to travel straight on to greet them all, find them all safe, not to stay poncing about at Raffles for days.
‘You’re doing it again!’
‘Yes.’ She admitted the loss of concentration, but, pleased to be distracted from more dour thoughts, turned to her mother with a grin. ‘I was about to order you a gin sling in Raffles.’
Blanche tutted but laughed. ‘You always have to make life as bearable as you can.’
*
Liz felt it was the numerous sips from the flask, refilled several times as they flew in the new Constellation via Lisbon, Colombo and out over the Bay of Bengal, that kept her mother going at all. Once the journey was begun, her mother confined her criticisms to the odd ironic remark. A stoical quality surfaced on these occasions. Blanche might raise Cain if her wishes were not carried out, but never continued grumbling once the inevitable had happened. She metaphorically closed her eyes to the situation, and on this protracted flight spent much of the time feigning sleep.
The final leg of their journey from Rangoon to Singapore drove all weariness from Liz’s eyes. As the plane came in from the north of the island, she peered down and saw the luxuriant jungle of Malaya bordered by white sandy beaches. The tiny island of Sentosa could be seen off the coast of the larger island of Singapore, and she caught a glimpse of the causeway to the mainland as the plane turned.
The sky was deepening from orange to red as the rapid tropical dusk accompanied their arrival. Blanche, the taller of the two, strained to see over the heads of those waiting but could not see her husband. Any second Liz expected a raised arm and a shout, and held her own greeting ready in her throat, joy and the cry pent up — but as the small crowd cleared she felt choked with childlike disappointment.
Anxiety for her mother took over as she turned to see Blanche slumped on the edge of a bench, head in hands, in the last stages of exhaustion. Leaving her in charge of their bags, Liz walked out into the full heat of the night beyond the reception area. She had forgotten it was quite this hot, to the uninitiated like stepping into a bakehouse with the ovens at full blast. The cicadas were loud in every verge and patch of the coarse-leaved lalang grass.
She looked past the hopefully loitering trishaw boys, trying to push away a growing sense of desolation. After all, so much could delay a person in Malaya. A single train breakdown on the one line that ran the length of the west coast, or a landslip from the rain-soaked, jungle-clad hillsides could hold him up for hours, even days.
She strained to look at every man who loomed taller than the Malays and Chinese, but soon decided that for her mother’s sake they would go to Raffles and wait there. It was the obvious solution.
She beckoned a Chinese boy to find them a taxi. He ran swiftly off, then helped to porter their cases, trying to carry them all at once, all smiles and eager for the dollar note she held.
Blanche caught her breath as the heat outside greeted her. ‘My God! We’re back,’ she said to no one in particular.
The teeming life of the city slid by the open car windows, the chattering bustle of some million Chinese, a quarter of a million Malays, half that again of Indians and Pakistanis and tens of thousands of Europeans — all making a living from the island and the peninsula of Malaya.
They travelled across the island from Seletar airport along the river front lined with godowns — the warehouses, piled with goods as if for a gigantic auction sale. The lights of the many bumboats and houseboats were bobbing about like a multitude of fireflies.
The whole populace seemed to be in the streets, bustling around the street hawkers’ stalls, eating at the many charcoal barbecues that sprang up each evening. Japanese-made trishaws now outnumbered the local rickshaws, Liz ironically noted as they swung between carts and bicycles piled high with produce. Monkeys trained to pick coconuts rode the back of their masters’ bicycles, tethered by thin cords attached to the animals’ collars. She pushed to the back of her mind the other things they did with monkeys and other animals in the meat markets. England had coloured her outlook in that respect, but for the rest she wanted to lift up her arms and embrace the whole palm-fringed tropical island.
The car pulled up on the drive between the fan-palm trees and hedges screening the entrance to the Raffles Hotel from the seafront Beach Road. The driver carried their cases in to the reception desk, where an undermanager, immaculate in his tropical suit, stood ready to greet them. Blanche collapsed wearily into a large basket chair and waved Liz on to make the enquiries.
Liz went back to her, shaking her head. ‘No news and no reservations made in the name of Hammond.’
‘God!’ Blanche breathed. The journey and now the heat had drained her face of its last vestige of colour and her usually silky blonde hair hung dark and lank. ‘This damn country is bad enough but without Neville it’s intolerable.’