The Other Side of Paradise (11 page)

‘Eavesdroppers never hear anything good.’

‘That’s true. And this wasn’t good at all. He thinks we’re in deadly danger. He said the Japs will certainly attack us and that we aren’t properly defended or prepared.’

‘Newspaper chaps make it all up.’

‘But my father believed him. He’s having an air raid shelter built in the garden and he’s thinking of packing my mother and me off to Australia. Isn’t it ridiculous?’

They turned to walk back.

Denys said, ‘Maybe it’s not such a bad idea, though, sweetie. Just to be on the safe side.’

She stopped, staring at him. ‘You don’t really imagine I’d leave, do you, Denys? Like a meek little lamb?’

‘Well, no … not actually.’

They walked on; she picked up another shell – a pretty pink and white one. ‘The newspaper man also said that the Japs will know everything about us from the ones that have been living in Singapore. They’ve been spying on us, apparently.’

‘No need to worry about that any more. A lot of the Nips scarpered back in July – haven’t you noticed how few there are around these days?’

She frowned. ‘The Jap who runs the camera shop near us has closed down but I hadn’t thought much about it.’

‘He’ll have popped off back to Japan. And we’ll soon be rounding up the rest and booting them off the island.’ He grinned at her. ‘Forget about the Japs. How about that swim to cool off? Race you in.’

She ran after him and they splashed into the water and swam around and then came out and lay on the sand. He leaned over and kissed her.

‘Your moustache always tickles, Denys.’

‘Well, you know what Kipling said.’

‘No, I don’t. What did he say?’

‘A kiss without a waxed moustache is like eating an egg without salt.’

‘What a peculiar idea! Anyway, yours isn’t that sort of moustache and I don’t take salt with eggs.’

‘They taste much better.’

‘Hmmm.’

After a while, she said, ‘We ought to go, Denys.’

‘Why? It’s very nice here. Like being shipwrecked on a desert island.’

‘We’ve got a perfectly good seaworthy ship waiting for us over there. And it’s getting late. Come on.’

He called after her, ‘You forgot your shells.’

‘Leave them. They belong here.’

She helped him push the dinghy out into the water and turned to look back over her shoulder as they sailed away. At the beautiful stretch of white sand with no guns or trenches or ugly barbed wire to spoil it.

The fish-eyed examiner had been replaced by a much nicer man and there was no nonsense about putting glasses of water in the back. Susan gave him her best smile, hitched up her skirt a notch and did her very best driving. She took the ambulance sedately through bends, up and down steep hills and backed it round corners, and only crashed the gears once.

‘Well done, Miss Roper. You did very well.’

‘You mean I’ve passed?’

‘Indeed you have.’ He patted her bare knee. ‘Keep on like you did today, my dear, and you’ll be fine.’

The sourpuss at the hospital reception desk said, ‘I’m afraid I’ve no idea where Captain Harvey is at the moment. He’s on duty and he’ll be very busy, in any case.’

‘I’d like to leave a message for him.’ She scrawled on a scrap of paper, handed it over. ‘Would you see that he gets this?’

He phoned that evening. ‘I got your note, Susan. Congratulations. How about a drink to celebrate?’

‘All right.’ It would be a pleasure to see him grovel.

She’d half-expected him to collect her in an ambulance – wouldn’t have put it past him – but it was an ordinary old car. Nothing special at all. Instead of taking her to one of the usual watering holes he drove out of town to a stony hillside overlooking the sea. The bar was only a tin shack but it had a spectacular view of the lights of Singapore and a three-piece Hawaiian band was strumming away softly. A nice little warm breeze fanned her hair as she listened to the South Seas music and watched the lights twinkling below. Ten thousand miles away in freezing cold, winter London there wouldn’t be any lights at all.

She sipped her drink through a straw. ‘I bet you were surprised that I passed.’

‘No. I knew you would – if you wanted to. Now, let’s see if you can stick it out.’

He wasn’t exactly grovelling. Quite the contrary. She’d imagined him apologetic, at the very least. Impressed by what she’d done.

She poked around in her glass with the straw, hooked out a chunk of pineapple and chewed on it. ‘You don’t think much of me, do you, Ray?’

‘I reckon you’re pretty spoiled.’

‘You’ve got a nerve. You don’t know me at all.’

‘You don’t know me either, Susan. So let’s call it quits.’

She fished out another piece of pineapple. ‘Does this dump serve any food? I’m absolutely starving.’

‘No. We go somewhere else for that.’

It was another out-of-town shack, but Indian this time. There were bare wooden tables, rusty ceiling fans clattering overhead, and instead of plates, wet banana leaves. The food was very hot and very spicy.

‘Makes a change from Raffles,’ he said.

‘It’s certainly different.’ Her mouth felt as though it was on fire.

‘Food too hot for you?’

‘Not at all.’ She took a gulp of lemonade. ‘Tell me, what do you eat in Australia? Kangaroos?’

He smiled. ‘Kangaroos are tough. We eat beef. Lots of steaks.’

‘I’ve heard you even have steak for breakfast.’

‘Too right. With a fried egg on top.’

‘How revolting.’

‘We don’t think so. We eat lots of seafood, too.’

‘What sort?’

‘Barramundi, snapper, salmon, prawns, oysters, lobsters – sharks, sometimes.’

‘
Sharks?
’

‘They taste pretty good and we’ve got plenty of them in the sea.’

‘We have them here, too.’

‘They’re tiddlers compared with ours. Ours are a lot bigger and meaner. They ride right in on the surf and grab hold of you in a few feet of water, if you’re not careful. When I was a student on the wards there were always patients with terrible shark bites – they were the lucky ones.’

‘Lucky?’

‘The others were dead.’

She said, ‘You come from Sydney, don’t you?’

‘Born and brought up there. Biggest and best natural harbour in the world, wonderful sailing, wonderful beaches, wonderful surfing –’

‘Wonderful everything?’

‘That’s about it. I reckon I feel about Sydney the same way you feel about Singapore.’

‘Have you ever been to England?’

He shook his head. ‘I’ll have to go one day to take my Fellowship exams in London. We can’t do those in Australia.’

‘Don’t all you Aussies have a huge chip on your shoulder about the English? That’s what I’ve always heard. We’re bloody Poms.’

‘Too right you are.’

‘I suppose you think we’re frightfully stuck-up.’

‘In Australia Jack’s as good as his master.’

‘Well, you’re all descended from convicts, so he would be.’

She’d hoped to annoy him, to get under his thick skin, but not a bit of it. He only smiled.

‘Sorry to disappoint you, but my grandfather came from a respectable and law-abiding family in Devon. His father kept a chemist’s shop.’

‘How fascinating.’

‘He emigrated to Australia when he was eighteen.’

‘What on earth for?’

‘Adventure. He didn’t like the idea of staying put in Devon for ever.’

‘I can’t blame him for that. I don’t like England that much either. It’s got a horrible climate. What’s the weather like in Australia?’

‘Depends where you are. It’s a big country so it’s got different climates. The further north you go, the hotter it is.’

‘Well, you’re upside down, aren’t you? So everything would be the wrong way round.’

‘True enough. We have summer in winter, and winter in summer.’

‘It sounds awful.’

‘It isn’t.’

She gulped some more lemonade to put out the fire in her throat. ‘My father thinks my mother and I ought to go there – to be safe from the Japs. Rather a joke, really.’

‘Nothing to joke about. It’d be a whole lot safer than staying in Singapore.’

‘You’re the one who said I ought to be doing something useful here.’

‘But you don’t want to stick around too long if the Japs ever land on Malaya.’

‘They wouldn’t get very far, even if they did.’

He set down his beer glass, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. ‘That’s what everyone here believes, but I wouldn’t count on it, Susan. Not if you’re smart.’

‘You think I should run away, then? Personally, I don’t think that’s a very decent thing to do.’

‘It may not be decent, but it’d be bloody sensible. Look at it like this. If Malaya turns into a battleground, you white women are going to be in the way and in big danger. You’d be doing the men a favour by getting out.’

He drove her back in the ordinary old car and without stopping in a secluded spot which most men did, if they could. She half-hoped that he’d try to kiss her when they reached the house so that she could have the pleasure of giving him the brush-off, but when he leaned across, it was only to push open the passenger door.

She put on her gracious, being-very-nice-to-colonials voice. ‘Would you like to come in and have a drink?’

‘If I thought you really meant that, I might.’

‘I do mean it.’

‘No, you don’t, Susan,’ he said in his maddening way. ‘Goodnight and good luck with the ambulance.’

Soojal met her in the hall. ‘Good evening,
missee
. The
tuan
is on the verandah. I bring lime juice there for you?’

‘Yes, please.’

Her father was sitting in one of the rattan armchairs, drinking his whisky
stengah
and smoking a cigar. He smiled at her but she could tell that he was in a bad mood.

‘Nice evening, poppet?’

‘Nothing special.’

‘Who were you out with?’

‘That Australian doctor from the Alexandra that I told you about.’

‘Oh yes, the one who said we ought to be worrying more about the Japs.’

‘He’s still saying that. It’s awfully boring.’

‘It may be boring but he’s absolutely right.’

She flopped on to the divan and Soojal brought the ice-cold lime juice. Her father drained his glass and held it out to the houseboy for a refill.

‘I telephoned your grandmother earlier. She’s refusing to leave Penang. Being very stubborn about it.’

So that was the cause of the bad mood. Susan could imagine the conversation – hear her grandmother’s voice.
Leave Penang! Certainly not, Thomas. Your father and I spent nearly fifty years together here. The Japs don’t frighten me one bit
.

‘I told you she would be.’

‘It’s absurd. The servants would look after the house. They’ve all been with her for years and they’re completely trustworthy.’ He flicked the ash off the end of his cigar. ‘And she’d be much safer down here with us in Singapore.’

Soojal brought another
stengah
. She waited for a few moments for it to take effect before she said casually, ‘By the way, I passed the test.’

‘What test?’

‘Driving an ambulance. I told you about it, Daddy. They’ve been teaching me.’

‘Oh yes, I’d forgotten about that – what with everything else going on. I’m still not too keen on the idea but at least you’ll be doing more good than me filling in my wretched forms. For the time being, anyway.’

‘The time being?’

‘I’m afraid you won’t be able to stay here much longer, poppet. It’s getting too risky.’

‘I’m not going to Australia, if that’s what you mean.’

‘You may not have any choice. And it’s not such a bad place, from what I hear. Why don’t you ask that Australian doctor of yours over to dinner one evening? He can tell us all about it.’

‘He’s not mine.’

‘I’d like to meet him, though. He sounds interesting.’

‘He isn’t.’

‘Ask him, just the same. I’d like to meet him.’

The uniform was better than she’d expected: khaki cotton slacks, a khaki shirt and a cloth peaked cap which she bashed around a bit and arranged at a fetching angle. By the time one of the
amahs
had taken in the slacks at the waist and darted the shirt, it looked quite reasonable and a bright-red lipstick worked wonders.

Her first job was to collect six army patients who were being sent down by train from the mainland. A Chinese medical orderly went with her to the Keppel Road railway station and everything was plain sailing. She stayed at the wheel, eyes front, window blind pulled down behind her, while the soldiers were carried out on stretchers and loaded into the back of the ambulance. She didn’t have to see them and, for good measure, she dabbed some
Je Reviens
on her wrists so that she couldn’t smell them either. Once the patients were on board, she drove them to the hospital. One of them groaned a lot – she could hear him above the engine noise – but the rest were quiet.

On the next trip she picked up a group of ten soldiers from their barracks in Dempsey Road. They had minor ailments and were far more trouble than the ones on stretchers, wolf-whistling as she drove up and shouting cheekily to her through the cabin door on the journey.

But, as she told Milly when they met over a cup of tea in the canteen, there was nothing to it, really, and there was still plenty of time to play tennis or go for a swim. Still the time and the energy to go to parties or out to dine and dance. Best of all, it was a wonderful excuse to skip lessons at Pitman’s. She scarcely bothered to turn up for them any more.

She met Ray when she was waiting by her ambulance outside the hospital and he happened to come along.

‘How’s it going, Susan?’

‘Fine. By the way, my father wants you to come to dinner one evening.’

‘That’s nice of him.’

‘He wants to talk to you about Australia. I can’t think why. How about tomorrow?’

‘I’m on duty.’

‘The day after? Eight o’clock.’

‘OK. I’ll be there.’

He walked on without a word said about the uniform or how she looked in it. Not that she cared.

‘Susan tells me you come from Sydney, Captain Harvey?’

‘That’s right, sir.’

‘A fine city, from all accounts. I hear the harbour is magnificent and that bridge of yours must be an amazing sight.’