November 2020, No. 2

I realise the last paragraph of episode 1 of this blog says I will explain why I decided to stay on Pulau Sibu, however I’ve changed my mind and decided to give a little background to us setting up home at Sea Gypsy. Probably procrastination because the sudden and unexpected death of one’s spouse, especially one so young, is a tough subject to make fun reading, which is what I’d like this blog to be. I promise I will get to it but let’s go back to 1992 and work our way there in chronological order.

Just rereading episode 1 and notice I didn’t actually mention at the beginning that I was pregnant when Daniel went on his jolly to Malaysia. I had never wanted children, ever. I was completely lacking in any type of biological clock or maternal instinct and avoided anything to do with children like the plague. Daniel was like the Pied Piper and wherever he went any children about would follow (for those of you that know our son Richard you will be well aware that he has inherited this trait from his father). Of course the fact that Daniel (and Richard for that matter) are both Peter Panesque (so to speak) has a great deal to do with it!

Upon discovering that Daniel regularly stopped off at a neighbour’s house on his way home from work in order to visit the new born baby (the mother was extolling his virtues as a helper because he didn’t just pop in to see the baby, he actually bathed her and looked after, whilst entertaining her older sister so that the mother could take a shower or relax for a while) I realised I had to allow the poor chap needed to be a father.  He had said that he would rather be with me without children than with someone else with children, and we could always adopt if I changed my mind later and was too old. 

Why is it that an older man with a younger woman doesn’t raise an eyebrow but an older woman with a younger man does?  I suppose times have changed but 30 years ago it was shocking.  Not that the age difference showed particularly, not at that point in time.  However I must admit it did occur to me that when I was 50 he would only just turning 39 and it would be very easy for him to dump me and marry a younger woman to have children.  I know, I know, you’ve already decided he was marvelous and loved me and he wouldn’t do that and so had I but I’m nothing if not a realist! Banking on the fact he was a commercial diver and sperm can be affected by pressure, plus the fact I’d been on the pill virtually continuously since I was 17, I took the risk of coming off the pill to get pregnant. Nothing happened, yay! I had taken the high road and done the right thing by my lovely husband, it wasn’t my fault if nothing happened.  My idyllic self absorbed life with my darling man could continue just as I loved it.  After nearly two years, in March 1992 to be precise, I went to the doctor with a suspected kidney infection, which he confirmed, and then continued with “and you’re pregnant”.  I was absolutely horrified. I slapped on a fake smile and leapt up and down with my deliriously happy husband. What on earth had I done? Especially as two months later Daniel went to Malaysia and by July 1992 he was living on Pulau Sibu, leaving me alone on Male’ to wind up our businesses. 

I stood staring at my own personal Survivor Island in the South China Sea and contemplated the 10 years I was being sentenced to, rather than the usual 42 days of the Survivor Island contestants.  At 39 years of age and 5 months pregnant I was quite sure this scenario was not included in my childhood dreams. It was 15^th July and we had just signed the agreement with the landlord in Johor Bahru. I had refused to go to Pulau Sibu before we signed for fear of chickening out if I actually saw what we were undertaking.

“Remind me why we’re here.”

“Because it’s so beautiful and because it’s Malaysia!” beauty obviously being in the eye of the beholder, in this case my husband. “Here” was an extremely dirty mainland beach, alive with sand flies, looking out at an island that I thought probably resembled a craggy outcrop somewhere in a remote part of Scotland on a bad day.   The sea was full of white caps and it looked like rain was imminent.   I had been assured that July is the middle of the high season with bright blue skies, nothing but the gentlest of breezes and a sea like a duck pond.

The small speedboat we were about to board looked none too safe.   Not that we had to go far on the small speedboat, just out to a rather disreputable looking bumboat that was bobbing up and down belching foul black smoke from it’s rear end.   The prospect of getting out of the speedboat and into the bumboat was not appealing.     As previously stated, I do not consider myself an outdoors sort of person and certainly not an adventurous sort of person.   The fact that I had spent the last seven years of my life in the Maldive Islands in bare feet with no makeup and was now condemning myself to another ten years of island life was just one of God’s little jokes.   I therefore would not feel happy about the next hour of this journey even under normal circumstances but these were not normal circumstances because I was pregnant with my first child.   The two hour road trip from Johor Bahru to Tanjung Leman bouncing through plantations in an old mini bus type thing with lousy suspension and worse air conditioning had not agreed with me. Furthermore my legs and feet were starting to resemble something the Michelin Man could be proud of and I was not feeling terribly agile.   I was calculating the odds of having the life crushed out of me and baby between the two boats when a grinning Daniel asked,    “Are you ready darling?” hugely enjoying the whole thing.   I slapped on my best gung ho smile, not for nothing all that air hostess training!   “Of course, how exciting.” Having reached the bum boat and before I realised what was what, my husband, a strong chap used to lifting heavy weights, simply threw me onto the bumboat “to be on the safe side”, can’t think why I had been worried, I should have known he’d have a plan.

The trip had just gone from bad to worse as far as I was concerned.   The bumboat smelt of oil and diesel fumes and certainly hadn’t been cleaned since it was built, somewhere before the last war by the look of it.

“Isn’t this wonderful?”

“Absolutely!” My jaws were beginning to hurt from the effort of smiling.   All I can say is it’s a shame my Lord and Master didn’t have a plan for getting me off the bumboat at the other side.   Having spent a delightful hour or so ploughing through the waves over to Pulau Sibu we were greeted by the sight of a spindly wooden structure swaying its way out from the shore.   It occurred to me that in a fight between this structure, otherwise known as the jetty, and the bumboat, the jetty would lose.   This did not deter our gallant captain from heading straight for it.   I was stationed at the side of the bumboat and told to standby.   The bumboat was now alongside the jetty and smacking up against it as the breakers were rolling into the shore.   I eyed the poles of round jungle wood that one was supposed to climb to the top of the jetty.   They looked suspiciously slimy and treacherously slippery to me.   Luckily I had worn boat shoes, knowing myself to be notoriously klutzy when it comes to boats I wasn’t taking any chances.

“OK, go.”

I stepped off the boat and onto the nearest pole, my hands grabbing another pole further up.   At the same instant the boat was pulled away from the jetty by another wave, my feet slipped off the pole and I was left hanging.   I turned my head slightly and realized the boat was just about to come back and do the crushing job I had been worried about earlier.   My beloved’s face was looking somewhat horrified but he was bellowing in what I took to be Malay.   I hadn’t heard him speak Bahasa Melayu before but he obviously had not lost his command of the language because at that instant I felt several pairs of hands grabbing my wrists.   Having been fairly small chested all my life my swelling breasts had become a thing of fascination to me and I was looking forward to breast feeding.   I was also enjoying having a cleavage for the first time in my life.   I suddenly wished I were as flat as a board as I was heaved over each pole and then finally over the splintered wood that comprised the planking on the top of the jetty.   I lay there like a beached whale wondering if my boobs were still in one piece or, if I dared to look, I’d find them torn into the bloody shreds they now felt.   I finally rolled over onto my back and looked into the inquisitive faces of my rescuers.   Five pairs of bemused eyes all seemed to reflect the same, possibly contemptuous, thought, ‘so this must be the new boss’s wife’.

I’m popping in this brochure as it was the one that the landlord used to advertise Sea Gypsy pre the Wills’. It doesn’t look terrible and people actually paid to come and stay. I decided they must have used it as a camp site (time proved me right as all our first guests came loaded with pillows, sheets, towels, food & drink, etc.). There was general consternation when I asked for a towel, they finally found me one that looked like a dirty tea towel, when I asked about linen stock they looked confused. I threw the pillows out of the shack we’d been allocated as they were alive and piled all the clothes we had with us on the mattresses so that they wouldn’t touch our bodies.  For some strange reason there were fences everywhere and I wondered if it was to keep people in rather than out? I couldn’t try the food as it was too spicy and apparently the only thing to drink was Tiger (naturally), luckily the water was drinkable (as it still is). The kitchen fascinated me, not only because of the very low asbestos roof, making enough noise to wake the dead when it rained, and stifling heat but because the staff seemed to use it as a lounge, with chairs, guitar and of course smoking. The sink didn’t appear to be plumbed in so all that went into it was routed outside via an open gutter. Rubbish was left open and then, when enough, was burned pretty much anywhere at random. Consequently there were rats everywhere and cockroaches spilled out of any cupboard opened. Health and safety would have shut them down in a heartbeat, I felt like burning the place down and running for the hills (or in my case the flat land since the Maldives doesn’t actually have any hills). 

Daniel assured me that by the time I returned to Malaysia he’d have the resort built and everything organised. I could have cared less, I had already made my mind up that what he really wanted to do was build the place but that he would HATE being a hotelier. I left for the Maldives feeling that my sojourn on Pulau Sibu would be short lived, meanwhile I had more important things to think about, like what on earth I was meant to do with a baby? How often and at what time does a nappy need changing? How often and at what time do you feed it? I knew the very person to ask.

I had the great good fortune to meet a very highly qualified nanny in the Maldives. She was working for a friend of mine who owned four resorts there and had a baby boy. Nancy, Daniel and I became great friends and on her days off she would come down to ‘town’ and stay with us. One mile long and half a mile wide with unpaved streets, 80 mosques and no building taller than the tallest palm tree, Male’, the big city, was not atypical of a capital city. However, when you live on an island that takes ten minutes to walk around it’s a veritable metropolis. I remember on one visit Nancy and I were terribly excited to go to the opening of the first supermarket and got even more excited when we found out they actually had trolleys. I also remember my prize purchase was a tin of John West Kipper Fillets (talk about coals to Newcastle!).

I sat Nancy down at our kitchen table, got out a pen and paper, told her I was pregnant and then demanded she gave me a list of what I needed to buy and the answer to my questions, reference nappies, feed, etc. So horrified that I would actually kill the baby she immediately told me she would come to Pulau Sibu (knowing the islands from previous travel) at the beginning of 1993 to teach me what to do and thus save the child. I cannot begin to tell you of my relief and finally relaxed.

It’s hard to remember what life was like pre cellular phones and free video calling but in 1992 being apart meant practically no communication. Although at that time Sea Gypsy had a perfect radio phone line for international calls the cost was prohibitive. I missed Daniel so much and was dying to see him for what I thought would be a two week romantic stay in our newly rebuilt resort before we headed off to my mother’s home in Florida for the baby’s birth and a lovely Christmas. From the (infrequent) phone calls I gathered things were going well and he was obviously enjoying himself enormously, despite missing the great love of his life… no, not me, scuba diving, he had no compressor as yet!

Daniel met me in Singapore and we had a wonderful couple of days, however I felt all might not be well in paradise. As we arrived on the island I instantly understood this would be no romantic idyll, what I did not know was that I (singular, as in not part of a couple) would spend the next two weeks trawling around Johor Bahru looking for linen, cutlery, crockery, etc. or that my toe rag of husband had changed his ticket and would not be flying to Florida with me (where’s the angry swearing emoji when you need it?). Not only was the resort still a building site, when I asked about mundane matters like taking reservations, menus, laundry, etc., etc. Daniel brushed it off as though it was nothing because it wasn’t “his department”, except marketing, I wasn’t to worry about that.

At 17 I had gone to work in a hotel in Austria as a bar maid, that turned into a summer season as a skivvy in another hotel and a third season promoted to silver service waitress. In London I was assistant to the Food & Beverage Manager of a large casino, also moonlighting in the casino VIP lounges & bars for special events. In other words I had a background in F&B, plus I had worked in various offices and been an air hostess, all of which (apparently) made all things to do with the actual running of the resort “my department”, including the accounts.

The heck with it, I didn’t care, I’d do my part until he couldn’t stand it any more and we’d leave. In the meantime I waddled around JB in the heat to find what we needed, came up with some plans for admin and ticked off the days till I could fly out. We didn’t stand a hope in hell of opening in for Chinese New Year which was 23^rd January 1993 and I still hadn’t seen any sign of marketing from Daniel.

Daniel made it to Florida two days prior to Richard’s (quick and easy) birth on 18^th November 1992 and all too soon our amazing holiday and Christmas was over, we flew back to Malaysia on 2^nd January 1993 with our precious son.

It was then the reality of our situation hit me like a cartoon anvil flattening Wile E. Coyote and I felt just as dazed. It wasn’t standing once again on that dirty mainland beach looking at Pulau Sibu in pouring rain. It wasn’t that this time the monsoon seas were so rough we couldn’t land at the resort (well, we couldn’t even if it wasn’t rough as there was no longer a jetty, that spindly structure fell down annually). It wasn’t that my pathological fear of boats made me believe I was taking my precious six week old baby on a death trap or even having to climb another slippery bamboo jetty at Coconut Village to walk through to Sea Gypsy. It was the broken bridge over the mangroves which meant we had to wade through them knee deep in yuk, knowing all the while that the only thing waiting to greet us the other side was a wooden hut in a rat ridden, snake infested dump without any home comforts and not even the chance of decent milk to make a proper cup of tea!

Will I make Daniel’s life a living hell for inflicting this upon us or will learn to love the outdoor life? To be continued next month…

If you have been, thanks for reading x