The Secret Journal of Mrs Daphne Jackman
3rd May 1935: Thank God! After an interminable journey -- I feel as though I've been at sea for ever -- we have at last reached Singapore. In just two days time I will finally see my new home in Malaya. My brother Roger was there in dress uniform to meet me and Jack off the boat, which was a relief.
10th May 1935: God, it is so stiflingly hot here! Even the stopover in Ceylon didn't prepare me for this. How does anybody stand it? The capital, KL -- that's short for Kuala Lumpur -- is like a dust-filled furnace, and even out here in the hills the humidity is unbearable. My manservant spends his entire day binging me glasses of lemonade, poor thing, and I perspire them away faster than I can drink them.
23rd August 1935: Roger has lost his mind! They say the heat can take one like that. Completely out of the blue he's gone and married a bloody coolie girl! He insists she call herself May, though her name's really Mei Ling. He says she's 22, which is quite young enough, but she looks younger to me. Ducky Duckworth said at the Regency Club, "Nobody minds one poking the native girls, old boy, but to marry one seems in rather poor taste." Vulgar as old Ducky might be, I am afraid one tends to agree.
11th September 1935: Mei Ling -- I refuse to use Roger's silly Anglicisation of her name -- is delightful! She's such a sweet, gay little thing, with a dazzling white smile. She seems quite nervous around me -- she can't get used to calling me Daphne -- but I know we shall become firm chums. Marjorie Thomason thinks me a young fool but Mei Ling is my brother's wife and, dangerously progressive thinking or not, I regard her as my equal. I have determined to train her to become a model Colonial wife.
28th November 1935: I am so angry at Roger! And at Jack! Some of the chaps were making the usual snide comments about Mei Ling at the Regency, and I thought that for once Roger was going to stand up for himself, and for her. He told Colonel Roberts "I married her, sir, because I love her, and I am proud of her." Roberts, the cad, made some stage-whispered comment about her no doubt also being a damned good fuck. Roger just turned red as a beetroot and stared into his Pimm's. Jack, damn him, guffawed along with the rest of the buffoons.
5th January 1936: Oops! A bit of a faux pas today. I went to visit Mei Ling and, well, I suppose I should have got her manservant to announce me, but the verandah door was open and I went looking for her. I heard a sound in the bathroom and there she was, standing under the shower Roger has had installed. She had her back to me, and I should have withdrawn of course; I was just so captivated by her natural beauty. I gazed at her long slim tan-coloured back, her jet black hair plastered by the water between her shoulder blades; her sweet, dimpled, pear-shaped bottom; and the sweep of her long slim legs. Then she turned and saw me. Any English lady would have been deeply embarrassed (as I was), but Mei Ling simply gave me that dazzling smile of hers as, I confess, I stared at her surprisingly large bust with its small, berry-like chocolate brown nipples, and the veritable jungle of black hair at the join of her legs. "Hello Daphne" she called in her melodious sing-song voice, "You wait on verandah, I be out in minute." What a very dear, sweet, naΓ―ve girl.