Free In the Mouth of the Tiger by Lynette Silver Page B

would be in Singapore already. He was on last night’s train.’
    Of course others would have raised the paltry sum of ten dollars. I felt myself blush slightly. I had felt ennobled by my gesture, but now it seemed quite silly. How naïve I must have seemed to Dr Mahmood.
    On my way back to Beach Street I resolved to be businesslike and unemotional when I spoke again to Mr Mayhew. I would cease playing the little girl. I would instead act as the man in my dream would expect me to act. Coolly and dispassionately, a mature woman accepting the inevitable with grace.
    Mother and Tanya were waiting in the reception area when I arrived,and I had one awful moment when I thought Mother had been crying. I felt responding tears start in my own eyes but realised just in time that she had been laughing instead. She was a little tipsy and gave me a solemn wink.
    Before we could talk the receptionist whisked me off to Mr Mayhew’s office. I was as good as my resolution, walking up to him as he lounged back in his chair and offering him my hand, forcing him to rise and respond.
    â€˜I don’t want to waste your time or mine, Mr Mayhew,’ I said as evenly as I could. ‘I accept that the arrangements you have in mind for the balance of the Burnbrae money are in my interests, and I will sign your memorandum. But I have two conditions, which I won’t budge from.’
    â€˜I’m not bargaining with you, Nona . . .’ he began, but I interrupted.
    â€˜I think my conditions are very reasonable,’ I said. ‘Please listen to them. I want to take a cheque away with me today to pay the board owing on my accommodation with the Ulrichs. And I want the estate to pay for me to spend one more term at the Convent. I can’t just leave without any notice. The Convent has been my life for the past three years, and I also have commitments. To the Sisters, and to myself.’
    I think the common sense and maturity of my requests surprised Mr Mayhew. He stared at me wordlessly for half a minute while the fan swung lazily on the ceiling above us and the occasional honk of a car horn penetrated from Beach Street below.
    Finally he stirred. ‘Do you have the Ulrich account?’ he asked, and I passed Irma’s envelope to him wordlessly.
    â€˜I will have a cheque drawn immediately,’ he said, opening the envelope and smoothing the account on his blotter. ‘And I think it is quite reasonable that you give your school a term’s notice.’
    When I finally left his office I couldn’t help turning around at the doorway. ‘Your insinuations about my relationship with my stepfather were quite uncalled for,’ I said quietly. ‘And obviously quite unprofessional. You are after all his chosen trustee.’ And then I closed the door firmly.
    â€˜For heaven’s sake . . .’ I heard him begin plaintively behind me. It gave me a stab of unalloyed joy.

Chapter Four
    Kuala Lumpur, 1935
    I have been told that there is more tin in the ground around Kuala Lumpur than there is in the rest of the world put together. The place was swamp and jungle until the industrial revolution created a great hunger for the metal and men flocked to the area to dig it out of the rich red soil. The closest point to the tin deposits which could be reached by lighter was the muddy confluence ( kuala lumpur in Malay) of the Klang and Gomback rivers, and so it was at this point that a city arose. It was initially no more than a vast, ramshackle collection of tin and thatch huts designed only to keep out the rain, but it eventually became a sprawling, gracious colonial town full of broad streets, impressive granite buildings and verdant parks. In 1935 it was the jewel in the crown of British Malaya, and the capital of the Federated Malay States.
    I arrived in KL by train on a wet afternoon in May 1935 to be met at the grand Moorish-style railway station by my mother and Madam Tanya. Mother hugged me and