16

On the fourth day they took Archie’s body out of the pit. Tom watched, his mouth dry with horror, as four guards surrounded the hole, threw aside the corrugated iron and the bamboo, and leaned in to pull Archie out. The boy’s face had almost turned blue and was covered in wounds from his beatings. His body was stiff and unwieldy, and it took the guards a lot of pulling and heaving to remove him.

Tom’s anger and grief spilled over. ‘You bastards! You murdering bastards. He could have lived. You’ve murdered him in cold blood.’

He screamed and shouted until his voice was hoarse. ‘Let me out! Let me out! Or I’ll die too!’

One of the guards came over and pulled the metal aside. He shoved his steel-capped boot into Tom’s head. The guard kicked him again and again. Tom tried to put up his hands against the blows, but the pit restricted the movement of his arms. He stopped shouting.

The lid was clamped back down. His head was pounding. He watched as four prisoners arrived with a bamboo stretcher and loaded Archie’s body onto it. They had brought a large but battered Union Jack with them, which they draped over the body. Then they picked up the stretcher and carried it away towards the cemetery. They did not stagger under its weight. Archie was so emaciated that he must have weighed no more than a child.

Tom closed his eyes and imagined the scene in the cemetery. He had been to many funerals during his time in the camp. The padre would recite the words of the funeral service as men stood round in mournful little groups, watching and praying, their heads bowed. The body would be lowered into the shallow grave, and earth would be shovelled on to his body. They would be careful to remove the flag and fold it, and keep it ready for the next dead prisoner. Then the men would wander back to camp with heavy hearts.

‘Goodbye, Archie, old mate,’ Tom said quietly, breaking into sobs.

* * *

Tom’s misery turned to despair. He was beginning to suspect they would never let him out. He was sure he would die a humiliating and pointless death in this filthy hole in the ground. He tried to think of Joy, but her memory failed to bring him any comfort. There was no point even hoping that he might see her again. He found himself weeping at this thought. He couldn’t bear to think he wouldn’t see her again. That would be the death of all hope for him. He would give up and surrender to his inevitable end. He slid his palm over the photograph and pressed it against his sweating chest. Closing his eyes, he tried to conjure up her face once again.

He screwed up his face with the effort, but it was not Joy’s face that swam before his eyes, but Millicent Atherton’s. That very English face, with the pampered pale skin and carefully applied makeup. He felt she was watching him, even here in this god-forsaken pit, with that knowing, sardonic smile.

He was back on that first Tuesday evening at the Penang Club. Millicent and Tom had met at six o’clock as arranged and played tennis as the sun set over the harbour. Millicent played competently, but Tom, who was unfit and nervous, made many mistakes, and she won the match easily. As he went inside to change she said casually, ‘When you’re done, come upstairs to Room 201. It’s my private suite. We can have a quiet drink.’

Tom spent a long time showering and changing. He was agonising over what was inevitably about to happen between him and Millicent. He was reluctant to encourage her, but for some reason he could not explain to himself, either then or now, he felt drawn into the situation. As he walked slowly across the entrance hall and mounted the marble staircase to the private rooms, he sensed a sudden hush in the club and the eyes of every single member and servant upon him, following him, assessing him, judging him.

Room 201 was a palatial suite overlooking the harbour, furnished with soft white sofas and low Chinese tables bearing bowls of lotus blossoms. Millicent was wearing a flimsy silk bathrobe.

‘Lighten up. I’m not going to eat you,’ she giggled as she opened the door for him. She was smoking a slim cigarette from a tortoiseshell holder. ‘Come on in and sit down. Would you like a ciggie?’

She passed him a cigarette. As she leaned forward to light it for him, she watched his face intently.

‘Are you normally so nervous?’ she asked.

‘Normally?’

‘Yes. When you are with a woman. You look like a lamb to the slaughter.’

‘Well, perhaps I’m not used to being alone with a married woman, who is wearing only a bathrobe.’

‘Oh, don’t be so prim. And I wouldn’t worry about the married bit. James doesn’t mind.’

‘Really? I find that hard to believe.’

‘Well, you wouldn’t if you knew the full story. Perhaps I’ll tell you one day.’

She had a bottle of champagne standing ready in an ice bucket. It had already been opened, and she poured them each a generous glass. Then she sat down next to him. As she leaned over to pass him his glass, she allowed her robe to fall open a little at the front. Tom looked away quickly.

‘Now, why don’t you tell me all about your life in London, Tom?’ she purred, watching him closely.

‘Well, there isn’t that much to tell. It was all rather dull, I’m afraid,’ he said, trying not to meet her eyes.

‘Oh, come on. You must have had lots of girlfriends.’

‘Not really. Nothing serious, anyway.’

‘Now I find that extremely hard to believe,’ she said, edging a little closer, so that her thigh touched his momentarily. He felt a surge of desire, but inched away from her.

She ran her hand slowly along the inside of his thigh, sending shivers up his spine. She then undid a button and slipped her hand inside his shirt. It felt cool and smooth against his skin. Tom realised he needed to act quickly to stop what was happening. But he found himself frozen, partly through embarrassment and partly through indecision. A part of him didn’t want her to stop, wanted her to carry on, and didn’t want to think of the consequences.

He felt her lips on his. Their tongues touched. Then he was lost. He was kissing her back with the suppressed passion and stifled expression of all his dull, empty years. He felt as though he was suddenly opening up, like a bud flowering to her touch.

After that first time they met discreetly, two or three times a week, sometimes at the club, sometimes at his bungalow. Occasionally, she would turn up in Sir James’s old Bentley, with a picnic hamper on the back seat. She would drive him to a deserted beach near Batu Ferringhi, where they would eat under the coconut palms and swim in the clear water. At first he felt as though every eye in the European community was on him, and that he was being judged, ridiculed. But after a while he ceased to care. No-one said anything to him, except for Henry: ‘I warned you, old boy. Be careful,’ he remarked with an amused glint in his eye.

Life established itself into a round of idyllic days. He was up before dawn and out on the estate when the mist was still rising from the trees and the earth was still cool. His undemanding routine was finished in the afternoon, and he would bathe, rest and then go down into Georgetown to the club most evenings. Sometimes he would play tennis with Henry. Tom’s game even became passable.

It was a blissful life, one he couldn’t even have imagined a few months before. He went through the days in a happy dream-like state, half expecting that one day he would wake up and be back in an office in London, poring over a contract.

On the few occasions that Tom saw Sir James at the club, the older man showed no sign of knowing anything about Tom and Millicent. He remembered who Tom was, though.

‘Have you decided to come back into the legal fold yet?’ he would ask each time they met.

Tom was not in love with Millie, but he felt a powerful physical attraction to her, and he enjoyed her quick wit and entertaining conversation. However, when he was with her, he found himself very aware of the feeling that she was just playing with him, amusing herself, passing the time with him until she tired of the game.

She was a good ten years older than Tom, and close up she looked her age. She was not beautiful, or even pretty, but she made the most of herself. She had arresting grey eyes and strong features. Tom wondered why she had never had children. One day, when he felt the moment was right, he asked her. They were lying under the mosquito net in his bungalow, sharing a cigarette. The heat of the afternoon was stifling, the ceiling fan just stirring the hot air. Beads of sweat covered her naked body.

When he asked the question she turned over quickly, away from him.

‘I’m sorry. Have I upset you?’ he asked, instantly regretting having asked her.

‘I was going to have a baby once,’ she said in a low voice, still turning away from him. ‘Imagine it, I was only nineteen. I was at Oxford, and James was lecturing part-time. He was a barrister then. We fell in love, and I got pregnant. Of course we got married very quickly. He had already accepted this post, and we set off to come out here. I lost the baby on the voyage. It was a girl. And since then I have never got pregnant again.’

‘You were at Oxford?’

She nodded. ‘I was studying History.’

‘I can’t really imagine you as a bluestocking.’

She laughed. ‘I was never one of those.’

‘Do you regret giving it all up?’

‘Not in the slightest. Life out here is wonderful. It might be frivolous, but I could never leave. I could live like this forever.’

She turned onto her back again and stretched her arms out languidly. Her white breasts were flat against her chest.

‘And now, of course, James and I will never have a child because we’ve drifted apart,’ she said casually. ‘I expect he amuses himself in a discreet way when he’s off on trips, but certainly not with me.’

‘Really?’

‘Yes. For quite a number of years now.’

‘So you find your pleasure elsewhere. Is that it?’

She smiled.

‘And doesn’t he mind?’

‘He turns a blind eye. I think he is relieved in a way. It eases his guilt.’

She rolled over onto her side, and settled her head on a pillow. She began to stroke his back. ‘Anyway. Let’s not talk about all that. In fact, let’s not talk at all,’ she said.

* * *

Tom had been in Penang for a little over a year when news broke that Britain had declared war on Germany.

He was not surprised. His father’s letters had alerted him to the storm clouds gathering in Europe. He was at the club with a group of ex-pats when they listened to the broadcast from the World Service on the crackly wireless in the smoking room. The news was treated with polite interest, but like a story from a far-off land, as if it had no effect upon the assembled company whatever. There was only one voice of concern.

‘It’ll be us next,’ said Barry Cliff, propping up the bar as he had done every night since he had arrived in Penang as a rookie reporter twenty odd years ago. He was now a seasoned hack on The Straits Times. ‘You just wait. The Japs are building up to something.’

‘You’ve got to be joking,’ jeered Douggie Chambers, one of the hard-drinking rubber planters.

‘No. Not at all. Look how many troops have been drafted into Singapore over the last few months. And there are more on the way.’

‘Well, that’s just a precaution, surely. It’s not serious. Singapore is impregnable. Everyone knows that.’

‘And there are Jap spies everywhere,’ Barry continued. ‘Haven’t you noticed? They are all over the place: in the barbers, in the tailors’ shops, in the doctor’s surgery. They’re spying on us to get information for an invasion. You people really are naïve.’

Douggie laughed uneasily and slapped Barry’s back.

‘Now I know you’re paranoid, Cliff, old man. My advice to you is to have a couple more whiskies and forget all about the Japs.’

And Douggie expressed the view of virtually all the ex-pats on Penang. Life went on exactly as it had for years: one long round of tennis and drinks, and dances at the club. They felt untouchable. The rubber industry was booming, supplying the war effort in the West, and the estates were all working to capacity.

They read the news of the Blitz in the papers with interest, but with a creeping feeling of guilt. Here they were, leading the Lotus Eater’s life, when back at home people were dying. It seemed hardly credible, under the endless sun and in the comfort of their pampered existence. Tom was concerned about his parents, living in central London, but a letter arrived from his father, informing him that they were leaving to stay in Dorset with his sister for a while, and that Tom was not to worry.

It was a few months later that Tom first met Joy. He was still seeing Millicent then. They had slipped into a routine of meeting twice a week, more often than that if Sir James happened to be away. Tom was beginning to tire of the whole thing. It irked him that they had to be so discreet, and that the relationship was ultimately finite. He felt stifled by the constraints it imposed on him, trapped by the secrecy.

One weekday morning he happened to be in Georgetown. He had to visit one of the go-downs on the docks to find a spare part for some machinery on the estate. The man he came to see was delayed on the mainland, so he decided to kill some time by wandering around town.

It was sweltering on the main square. It was almost midday, and the sun was reaching its full height in the sky. Crossing the square, he happened to notice the museum. It was a long low building with arched windows and columns adorning its white facade. Having nothing else to do, he wandered up the flagstone steps, under the shady portico and in through the open door.

It was cool inside the vaulted hall, under the whirring fans, and he took his topee off and wandered around the displays. A portrait of Sir Stamford Raffles and a massive statue of Sir Francis Light, the founding father of Penang, dominated the room. Tom stared at the statue for a while, before walking up the wide stone staircase to the upper level.

A school party of excited Malay and Chinese children dressed in blue and white uniforms appeared at the top and started to swarm down the stairs. They were chattering and shouting, pushing each other and jostling for position. Tom stood aside and waited for them to pass. But as the last group clattered by, one of the little boys, who was holding a fountain pen, flicked it in Tom’s direction. A shower of ink flecks appeared on Tom’s white jacket.

‘Hey! Wait a minute,’ he shouted, but the boy had already run off with his friends, shouting with laughter. Tom turned round, exasperated. He was proud of that jacket. The Chinese tailor had run it up for him only the previous month, and it was cool and comfortable.

Then, suddenly, a young Eurasian woman was standing in front of him, tearful, full of apologies.

‘I’m so sorry, sir. He is my pupil. He will be punished severely.’

Tom looked at her. Even in the heat of his anger, he was struck by her beauty. She was truly exquisite. Her face was delicate and fine boned, with creamy skin, full lips and slightly tilted eyes, brown and soft, now brimming with concern. Her shiny black hair was swept back from her face.

Tom tried to put her at her ease.

‘No, please don’t worry. It really doesn’t matter.’

‘Oh, but of course it matters. That jacket looks new. I know someone who will be able to remove the stain. The school will pay. Please let me take it just for a day or so. I will ensure that your jacket is as good as new.’

She spoke in a precise way, enunciating every word carefully, as if English was familiar to her, but not her first language.

She held out her hand, and automatically he slipped his jacket off his arms and gave it to her.

‘If you are sure it is not too much trouble. I could easily have it cleaned myself

‘No, no. This person is a friend of my family. I assure you, it will be very easy forme.’

He gave it to her, not because he particularly wanted her to get the jacket cleaned, but because he knew that this would be a way to ensure he got to see her again. And that was suddenly very important to him. He knew he would do anything he could to get to know this shy, delicate girl. And he also knew, with sudden clarity, that it would be impossible for him to continue seeing Millicent anymore.