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was jammed with traffic, lorries with near toppling loads of rubber or
pigs in rattan carriers or foul-smelling durian; over all hung the pow-
erful scents of cooking, of garlic and ghee…..it was all too much for me
and I retired to blissful oblivion under the mosquito net.
It was said that one fell in love with Singapore at first sight. I did not.
I disliked everything about it. I had left behind everything I most cher-
ished and my love for England was deeper than I knew. I was com-
pletely unprepared and my spirit quite deserted me. Val had told me
nothing. My belief is that the Empire only survived because wives
were told nothing and by the time they arrived at some outpost with
trunks of trousseau never to be worn and contact with home several
weeks away, it was all too late. All one could do was think of England.
At New Year there was the ritual signing of the Governor’s book at the
gates of Government House, followed by the Colonial Secretary’s
drinks party. I was introduced to the Malayan Civil Service (MCS). I
was Val Meadows’ new bride (and young, they must have thought)
but I had not yet grown into my new identity. My real self was left be-
hind in England.
The MCS, the Heaven Born, were rigidly correct. ‘Not in front of
Asians’ I was told when I took Val’s hand in public. They seldom
mixed, certainly not with the commercial world. In their large colonial
houses, open on three sides to allow a cooling through breeze, they
lived conventional English lives curiously detached from any Asian
influence. We went to dinners where Secretaries of this and that enter-
tained other Secretaries. I found myself in a very grown-up world of
which I had no experience. There was, it must be said, an air of impe-
rialism about them. A characteristic of the Empire, the web that held it
together, was the ability of the British to form a strong enclave, to pre-
serve Britishness at all costs, unaffected by the customs and cultures of
the peoples with whom they lived.
An invitation from the Governor was a Royal command requiring for-
mality of dress that made no concession to the climate; for The Queen’s
Birthday Garden Party, when the great and good of all races gathered
on the lawns in the late afternoon, an elaborate dress and spectacular
hat; for a Ball, kid gloves of opera length. And if one might wonder
