The Plantation - Di Morrissey [84]
After dinner that evening, Shane took Julie into their great grandfather’s library. She tried to ignore the glassy-eyed mounted animal heads and watched as Shane opened a drawer in the large, elaborate old desk in the corner. He pulled out a bound notebook and handed it to her.
‘Roland’s memoir. It’s the original. I thought you might prefer to read it in his hand.’
‘How wonderful.’ She fingered the old notebook. ‘I don’t think that I’ve ever held anything that belonged to him before. Can I read it here?’
‘Yes. It’s not a diary, it’s really a short account of his war years. It wasn’t meant for publication or anything like that. I don’t even think that it was for the family. I know that many men who served wrote some account of their time in the war,’ said Shane. ‘It may have been the highlight of their lives. In our grandfather’s case, his whole life was quite eventful, but when you read this, you realise that he revelled in his years fighting in special operations behind the lines.’
‘I’ll look forward to reading it.’ She glanced at the handwritten title neatly underlined in red ink and when Shane left her, she began to read.
Behind the Green Curtain. A Memoir. By Roland Elliott.
On reflection, one wonders how more people didn’t see it coming. The war. The invasion. The rise of communism. I suppose hindsight is a wonderful thing. We thought that we were important to England, but found that we weren’t. Whitehall had more important priorities in Europe and we were betrayed. Even after the Japanese war was over, the times have changed and the mood is no longer complacent in our neck of the woods. Life on our plantation appears to have returned to normal, but the scars run deep. Even now, I realise that the halcyon prewar days will never return and I am doubtful that Malaya can become united. Too many races, cultures, creeds, too much betrayal. But, as my dear father was wont to say, ’twas ever thus.
But that is now. The days before the war were carefree. The word of the white man was obeyed without question and we had the best of times, the best of whatever was available from here and from abroad, and, along with the sense of privilege, we also had the freedom to do as we wished. We were treated as honoured guests in the villages, given a meal that could have cost a family a day or more of hard toil. And we took it as our due. And when the war came, when we were reduced to being no better than coolies in the eyes of the invaders, when the loyalties of those we’d looked down upon came to save us, to help us shelter or escape, and inevitably, at the end, we let them down.
Of course, many never expected the war with the Japanese to come anywhere near us in Malaya or Borneo. Life went on at its indulgent pace with parties, dances, hunting and tennis, love matches, courtships, and the business of making money. If you were rich, influential, educated, no matter what your skin colour, you mixed with us. My father occasionally commented that Malaya was run by the British for the benefit of the Chinese or, depending on your viewpoint, Malaya was a country run by the Chinese to benefit the British. The Malay elite had a sense of entitlement, which perhaps is not surprising. It was their country, the other races were immigrants. But, of course, if you have money, position, power, you can enter any of the worlds of Malaya. But the poor, the Chinese coolies, the Indian plantation workers and the native Malays, with neither wealth nor influence, were overlooked or dismissed by the ruling powers. This was the Malaya I lived in before the war, which changed it all.
Although war had erupted in Europe in 1939, it was thought, especially in England, that the European war would never touch the Pacific. Indeed Whitehall thought that the strategic defences of Malaya could be kept minimal. The belief was always that ‘Singapore will be held’, an invincible island fortress, we were told. And who would attack us? The Japanese had