Read In the Mouth of the Tiger for Free Online

to have a European client in a matter involving the prestigious firm of Mayhew, Jones & Tan. But then reality reasserted itself: it would have to be Dr Mahmood or nobody. I was virtually penniless, a minor, and an alien to boot. No established firm would want to have anything to do with me. Particularly if it meant going up against Mr Mayhew, the doyen of the Penang legal profession.
    â€˜Thank you, Molly,’ I said sincerely. ‘How can I get to see Dr Mahmood?’
    â€˜I’ve made an appointment for you to see him tomorrow,’ Molly said. ‘He has an office in Chulia Street, just around from the Police Courts. Number 126. He is upstairs, on the second floor. He will be expecting you at two o’clock.’
    I wrote the details on a piece of paper lying on the telephone table and tucked it into the pocket of my school blouse. I wore my school uniform on Sundays because it was the only decent set of day clothes I possessed.
    â€˜Do you know exactly when my mother is coming back, Molly?’ I asked, feeling the familiar mix of anticipation and trepidation churn in my breast. Anticipation because I loved my mother, trepidation because I needed her love and she so often withheld it.
    â€˜Next Tuesday,’ Molly said. ‘The Gorgon disembarks about midday. I understand she and Tanya are booked into the E&O Hotel.’
    I sighed. The Eastern & Oriental was the most expensive hotel in Penang. It was exactly like my mother to arrive in style, whether she could afford to or not. I could imagine the satisfaction she would have had in cabling Mr Mayhew: ‘ Arriving Tuesday and staying at the E&O .’ The reality was that shewas at the moment as penniless as I was. Her passage on the Gorgon , and Tanya’s as well, had been paid for by an Ipoh doctor, Dr Macleod, as a form of pay-off for his failure to marry her. Breach of promise was a serious matter in Malaya in the 1930s.
    â€˜Everything all right?’ Molly asked.
    I sighed again. I thought I could see where all this was leading. My mother had become accustomed to the shipboard lifestyle and was counting on the sale of Burnbrae for its continuance. ‘Yes, Molly,’ I said finally. And then, with determination, ‘I’ll be at Dr Mahmood’s office at two o’clock tomorrow afternoon. And thank you so much for helping me.’
    Dr Mahmood’s office was a large, busy suite of rooms overlooking Chulia Street. The waiting room was crowded with Tamils, presumably all members of one family from the way they pressed around a tall, fierce-looking young man with a bandaged head. I gathered, as I sat there waiting, that he was on bail for a terrorist act. The Depression had hit the rubber industry in Malaya particularly hard, and over three-quarters of all rubber estates had laid off their Tamil workforces, often evicting them from their ‘lines’ as well. This meant that many thousands of Tamil families roamed Malaya as virtual vagabonds, all bearing a grudge against a system which had imported them in the first place to tap rubber and then abandoned them. Many had ended up in Singapore or Penang, dependent on the charity of relatives who had migrated earlier and made places for themselves as servants, doormen, gardeners and cleaners to the city people.
    Occasionally, a Tamil hothead took matters into his own hands and struck back, usually ending up, as this poor fellow obviously had, as fodder for the overworked Police Courts.
    â€˜I will be with you very soon, Miss Roberts,’ Dr Mahmood said from his doorway. ‘As you can well see, I am absolutely flat out at the moment looking after an emergency case. Unless I can do something by the resumption of the Police Court this afternoon, this poor fellow may well be behind bars.’
    The matter dragged on for most of the afternoon, with much coming and going accompanied by a voluble running commentary from an apparently inexhaustible supply of family