Whatever Remains Page 18

  Pat has no recollection of seeing her father at this age, but Doris and Len did meet. Many years later, Pat told me the story of how her mother had told her that Len had asked for a divorce. It was not what Doris wanted. She was still in love with Len, but she was prepared to give him his freedom if that was what he wanted. It was, so plans were put in place. The divorce was a contrived arrangement, not uncommon for the times. Len would be ‘caught’ sharing a hotel room with another woman (who was probably in the pay of the private detective who photographed the couple for evidence). This gave Doris the evidence needed to divorce Len on the grounds of adultery. It was a relatively quick and painless way to end a marriage.

  Len, of course, did not contest the divorce nor did he hang around to see it through the courts. By now he was also probably heartily sick of the cold and damp of a British winter and ready to return to the sultry heat of the tropics.

  On 2 February 1934, Denis Elliott, a 27-year-old planter, left London Dock on the P&O ship Ranchi bound for Singapore. Len had put in motion his divorce from Doris, had dropped a year in age and was heading back to Malaya to continue his career.

  The decree nisi was granted on 1 June 1934 and made absolute six months later. The Court records cite Doris Emerson (nee Rathbone) as the Petitioner and Leonard Emerson as the Respondent. It is interesting that Len used his birth name for the divorce as by now he was known (at least in Singapore and Malaya) as Leslie Denis Elliott.

  The day the marriage was dissolved would have been a sad day for Doris. She was now a 29-year-old divorcée with a child to support. She still had the physical support of her mother and sisters, but with no other financial support, she would have to work to raise her child. It would have been hard for her to find a man prepared take on an older woman with a child, even if that was what she would have wanted. But Doris, it seems, was content to live out her life without another man in her life. Her priority was raising her child, and spending her free time with family and friends.

  Doris continued to live with her mother and siblings for many years after Pat was born. When Pat was about eight years old, the family moved to Ferndale Road in Clapham where they lived until the death of Pat’s grandmother, Isabella, in 1961. From 1961 till five years before her death, Doris lived alone in her small flat. She worked as a receptionist for the Harris Plating Company, then at the Mission to Seamen, a very old charitable institution that cares for sailors, physically and morally, when they are far from home. During World War II she also worked evenings at a large telephone exchange doing her bit for the war effort. She lived a quiet, even secluded, life. She never remarried or lived with another man. In 1985, in failing health, she moved in with her beloved daughter Pat and son-in-law Albert. She died after a long fight with cancer at St Barnabas Hospice, Durrington, West Sussex in 1990, where she had spent the last two weeks of her life.

  Len, or Leslie Denis Elliott, as he now preferred to call himself, was in 1934, a well-spoken, good-looking relatively young man, free to marry and with prospects of a good future in the colonies. His family, particularly his mother, would have been pleased for him.

  Of his thoughts for a continuing career plan on his arrival back in Singapore, we have no knowledge. His contract with Dunlop was now completed but with his innate optimism, we believe he decided he was experienced enough to go it alone. He was always one for grand schemes and big ideas.

  In the 1935 Singapore and Malayan Directory (for the year 1934), a new business pops up. The Anglo-Malayan Agencies, Ltd (incorporated in Straits Settlements) was described as Importers and Manufacturers’ Representatives. The business address is Laidlaw Building, Singapore, and the Managing Director is none other than L. D. Emerson-Elliott. Len Emerson, alias Leslie D Elliott has metamorphosed into the import-export entrepreneur L. D. Emerson-Elliott. The directory indicates that Anglo-Malayan Agencies also employed a book-keeper, a salesman, a stenographer and a storekeeper.

  Was it lack of experience or lack of business expertise? For whatever reasons, the business failed and within the year Anglo-Malayan Agencies, Ltd went into voluntary receivership.

  In December 1934, Leslie Dennis (sic) Emerson-Elliott signed an employment agreement with Guthrie and Company Limited, General Merchants and Agents in the Straits Settlements. He was to start work ‘as from the First day of January 1935 and serve the Company for a period of four years’ at a commencing salary of 350 Straits dollars per month. The agreement was officially stamped on 28 December 1934 in Kuala Lumpur. He has obviously decided he needs more experience to make a go of it in the general merchants business. To take up the position he has moved to the busy industrial city of Kuala Lumpur and will work for the company as an ‘Assistant in its business’.

  Guthrie & Company was established in 1821 on the island of Singapore by Alexander Guthrie. It rose to become one of the leading agency houses in Singapore during the 19th and 20th centuries. First located in a rented godown on Hill Street, the company sold British goods to the European and Chinese quarters of Singapore. The firm diversified its interests into agricultural and mining estates in the Malay Peninsula and the surrounding region. By the early 20th century, its main interests were in rubber and general trading. The business later expanded to include services in transhipment, cargo storage, insurance, and local forwarding. His work with Guthries would have given him a good grounding in the general merchant business. Some years later, he would once again go it alone with an equal degree of failure as his first venture.

  It was in late 1934 or early 1935 that Len started seriously courting the then 16-year-old Nona. We know this because my aunts Daisy and Irene remember him coming to their home at that time. Denis, as he now called himself (and I shall now revert to calling him that too), was visiting the family and escorting Julia and Nona to social events on a regular basis. He dressed well, had cultivated a well-educated upper class British accent, was good looking and had plenty of money in his pocket. He also sported an open-topped, flashy looking red sports car and was considered by both Nona and Julia, to be ‘quality’ and a highly desirable match. It was now some months since Julia’s second husband Ernest Roberts had died so tragically in Penang, and Julia and her daughters were living in KL where Julia scraped a living for the family by working in Madam Sonia’s hairdressing salon.

  There has been much speculation among my Russian aunts and cousins as to whether Denis was first courting Julia and then dropped her for the much younger Nona. This, they believe, could account for the extreme hostility that would develop between Julia and Denis and indeed between Julia and Nona in the years ahead. Whatever the truth, Denis was a regular visitor to their home, escorting first mother and daughter then just the daughter to parties and dancing. Whether Julia was misled by Denis or just distressed at losing her much loved confidante and daughter is all speculation. If Julia saw salvation through marriage either for herself or her daughter she was in for a nasty shock. Denis was to give Julia neither financial nor moral support and would not marry Nona for another five years. Contrary to Julia’s expectations, the liaison between Nona and Denis took the relationship between mother and daughter to breaking point.

  In the 1936 (for 1935) Singapore and Malayan Directory, an L. D. E. Elliott is listed as one of the 10 Assistants at Guthrie & Co., Kuala Lumpur. Two years later, the 1938 Directory (for 1937) shows L. D. E. Elliott still working for Guthries.

  But the free and easy life as a bachelor about town is about to change.

  And now a very strange event occurs. On page 6 of the Singapore Free Press and Advertiser for 10 March 1936, there is a very interesting paragraph. It states: ‘Cable news has been received from Florida, USA, announcing the tragic death following a motor accident of the Rev. and Mrs E.J. Emerson-Elliott who were on a tour. The Rev. E.J. Emerson-Elliott was the brother of Mr L.D.E. Elliott of Messrs. Guthrie and Co., Ltd., Kuala Lumpur.’

  There was no mention of this ‘cable’ in the Straits Times suggesting that perhaps its standard of proof was a little mor
e rigorous than the Singapore Free Press.

  Leonard Emerson did indeed have an older brother called Ernest John (known as Jack to the family), being the fourth child of Thomas and Fanny Emerson. In 1936 Jack was married, alive and well and living near his parents in 168 Brixton Road, London. Given that there was no Rev. E.J. Emerson-Elliott and the real brother E.J. Emerson had not died, one can only conclude that the ‘cable news’ was provided to the newspaper by Denis. So why had he decided to add an Elliott to his brother’s name, reinvent him as an Anglican minister and then conveniently kill him and his wife off? Well, maybe this is why.

  On 19 March 1936, only nine days after the newspaper report of the so-called tragic death of his brother, an announcement appeared in the Straits Times. It read: ‘The engagement is announced between Leslie Denis Elliott, youngest son of the late Mr and Mrs Tracey W Emerson-Elliott of Milverton, Somerset and Bunty, only daughter of Mr and Mrs James Melville, Carey Island, Selangor.’

  Despite his wooing of Nona, Denis had become engaged to another woman! He also killed off both his older brother and his parents, introduced the Emerson to his name and reinforced Milverton as his place of birth. On 23 March, a similar announcement of his engagement to Bunty appeared in the Singapore Free Press and Mercantile Advertiser.

  I can only assume that he did not want to face the possibility of pressure being put on him by the Melvilles to have his family come out to Malaya for the proposed wedding.

  The Melvilles lived on Carey Island on the west coast of Malaya, near Kuala Lumpur. At the time of the engagement notice, James Melville, a rubber planter, was Resident General Manager of the Jugra Land and Carey Ltd, a rubber plantation on the island. Bunty was born Bethia Lamb Melville at Macdowall Road, Edinburgh on 15 July 1917, and was the only child of James and Bethia Melville.

  What a complex web of lies Denis has now weaved. Maybe the ‘death’ of his father Tracey (though later he changes his father’s name to ‘Stacy’) and his mother and his brother are the start of a strategy to untangle himself from this mythical family from the pretty village of Milverton.

  A search of the Singapore newspapers for the next few years found no mention of a marriage. Over the next few months, Bunty is mentioned in the social pages as being seen at this or that social function wearing pretty concoctions of lace and silk and she is sometimes with, sometimes without, her fiancé. Then nothing. Bunty Melville’s name suddenly disappears from the society pages and, presumably, from Denis’s life.

  In 1939, only three years after the engagement, the Melvilles left Malaya. James retired and was appointed to the board of Jugra Land and Carey Ltd in London, and Bunty would eventually marry twice. In 1940, to Hal Baldwin Bolus, a lieutenant commander in the Canadian Navy and then, after his death, to James Kerr Liddle Howden. Bunty died in Edinburgh in 2008, survived by one son from her first marriage. Had we known of her existence in 1998, we would love to have contacted her during our time in Scotland that year. Not only could she have given us an idea of what it was like to live the life of a young, well-off young European woman in those days in colonial Malaya, but she could have told us of the circumstances of her engagement to Denis and why they decided to part company. So, some time later in 1936, Bunty and Denis called off the engagement. Why? It looks like Bunty, or the Melville family, had suspicions that Denis was not quite who he presented himself to be or Nona had won the battle for Denis’s love.

  Certainly by early 1937 Nona was living with Denis. He had spirited her away against her mother’s wishes and we believe they were living in a bungalow on Rifle Range Lane. Nona was pregnant and expecting her baby in November of that year. Nona was just 19 years old when she had her first child, Denis was 32. My eldest brother was born at home at 16 Rifle Range Lane, Kuala Lumpur at 8.40 in the evening. The child’s father is shown as Leslie Denis Emerson-Elliott, nationality British, and his mother, Norma Roberts, is also listed as British. At 19 years old, my Russian mother had become a mother, changed her name to Norma (though she will always be called Nona by Denis) and assumed British citizenship. I wonder if she was happy with the change?

  And here lies another mystery, one that I have not, as yet, been able to unravel. On my birth certificate under ‘Previous Living Issue’ my two brothers are listed as being four and two years respectively, and under ‘Previous Issue Deceased’ there is reference to ‘Deceased — 2 Males’. When were they born? Derek is two and three-quarter years my senior, so there certainly could have been a child born and died between us. Between Tony and Derek, there is a one-and-three-quarter-year gap, barely time for two children to be born. Was there another birth before my eldest brother’s birth?

  Kuala Lumpur was not such a big town that it would not be known that a young woman had moved in with Denis. If they felt any stigma attached to their unmarried state, it does not seem to have worried the young couple. They appeared to still enjoy a good social life and spent the hottest part of the year cooling off in the hill stations of the Cameron Highlands or Fraser’s Hill.

  As we know from Daisy’s story, Daisy met up with her big sister Nona at a hotel in Fraser’s Hill in early 1939 when Tony, my eldest brother, was just a toddler. They spent the afternoon talking, catching up on each other’s lives. The sisters had not seen each other since Nona had left home to join Denis. Daisy told me that Nona seemed distracted and utterly exhausted by her restless little baby. During their talk Nona warned Daisy of the difficulty of childrearing and questioned her own wisdom of living, unmarried, with an older man. I wonder if Nona was not, even at this early stage, showing the signs of the illness that would plague her for the rest of her short life.

  We have part of a photocopied sheet that appears to be an application to lease land or property somewhere in the Malay States. It’s difficult to tell, considering we have only part of one page. In Denis’s hand is a note ‘Dated Jan 1938’. This gives his name as Leslie Denis Emerson Elliott, his place of birth Taunton, Somerset, England, his status as single and his date of birth 1908. His address is 16 Rifle Range Lane, Kuala Lumpur; his occupation Merchant and employer Guthrie and Co. There is an interesting handwritten note under the heading of ‘Military Service’. It says, ‘Reason for not continuing as member of MSVR — Personal’.

  According to a few of my English cousins, Denis spent some years during his early days in Malaya as a volunteer with the MSVR (Malay States Volunteer Reserve). We have a Christmas card, given to us by an English cousin and unfortunately not dated, with the insignia of a tiger over a green banner on the front. The photo in the centre page is of the volunteer forces on parade. Denis has written, ‘To Nell (his sister Helen), Fred (Frederick Dibble) and little Daph (his neice Daphne) with love, Leon’. Leon is the name he seems to have used when writing home to family in England. Obviously ‘Len’ was out of favour as being all too ordinary.

  On our first meeting with my cousin Daphne in 1993, she gave us two photo albums, in one of which we found the photos of his trip on the Suwa Maru. They had been given, or left for safekeeping, with Helen on one of Denis’s trips ‘home’. The photos are of his early days in Malaya. These two very precious albums gave me my first glimpse of Denis as a young man. Though old and sometimes faded, the photos show a part of his life neither my brothers nor I have ever seen. Young men and women enjoying a swim and picnic on the beaches along the Malayan cost, tennis parties, dinner dances, views of rubber plantations, groups of Malays, probably his house servants and plantation workers. Lots and lots of young people, all happy and carefree, enjoying themselves at the end of the day or on the weekend. The men in their open neck shirts, knee length shorts and pith helmets, the young girls in short, drop-waisted chiffon and silk, sporting sleek bobbed hairstyles and flashing smiles. There is one young woman who features more than any other in the albums. She is very young, slim and pretty, her dark wavy hair cut in a fashionable bob. She has a distinctive wide smiling mouth and is often photographed sitting, standing or leaning against Denis. None of the photos are labe
lled, but could this be Bunty?

  Denis is instantly recognisable in many of the beach photos in a smart knitted neck to knee swim suit with diagonal stripes across the chest. Also, among the smiling groups of happy young things are some more serious photos of men in uniform on parade. They look to be his unit in the MSVR.

  In neither of these albums are there any photos of Nona.

  Denis had been living at 16 Rifle Range Lane in Kuala Lumpur and in October 1938, the owner agreed to extend the lease for 18 months from 1 November, with the undertaking that Denis ‘defray all the expenses for exterminating white ants’. It is as well that Denis had secure accommodation, as he is now a family man and Nona is expecting their second child.

  On our way to England to meet my sister Pat in 1993, we stopped off in Kuala Lumpur. We tried to find Rifle Range Lane, but with the rezoning and name change of many of the minor streets on independence, it became all too hard.

  In December 1938, Denis wrote a draft job application. He says he was born in 1908 in Taunton, and educated at Taunton School and Aberdeen University, Scotland. His experience is listed as three years in Malaya with Dunlop Plantations, two years running his own Import/Export business in Singapore, and then four years with Guthrie & Co. in Kuala Lumpur. The application is in draft form and unaddressed. We surmise that he intended to put out feelers for another appointment on his return from his forthcoming trip to Britain.