A Daughter's Quest by Ann Bennett

Author:Ann Bennett [Bennett, Ann]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Andaman Press
Published: 2019-05-09T22:00:00+00:00

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.

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