How nerds love.

Married his high school classmate Choo Kwa Geok.

They began dating before his departure to England, later he solicited for her a vacancy in Cambridge, and when she arrived they married in secret, and lived together for three more years. After return to Singapore they made an official Singaporean marriage ceremony and staid together till the bitter end.

At the end of each of the three terms in the academic year there were examinations, and for the first of these I was the best student in mathematics, scoring over 90 marks. But to my horror, I discovered I was not the best in either English or economics. I was in second place, way behind a certain Miss Kwa Geok Choo. I had already met Miss Kwa at Raffles Institution. In 1939, as the only girl in a boys’ school, she had been asked by the principal to present prizes on the annual prize-giving day, and I had collected three books from her. She had been in the special class preparing to try for the Queen’s scholarship two years running. I was disturbed and upset. There were only two Queen’s scholarships a year for the whole of the Straits Settlements (Singapore, Penang and Malacca), and they would not necessarily go to the two top-scoring students. Above all, I feared an even-handed geographical distribution designed to give a chance to entrants from Penang and Malacca. The scholarship board might not want to give both scholarships to Singapore students, in which case coming second might just not be good enough.

The gum turned a decent profit, and we made it in two centres. One was my home, with my mother and sister helping; the other was Nyuk Lin’s home, where he was helped by his wife and his wife’s younger sister, Kwa Geok Choo, the girl who had done better than me at Raffles College. I had seen her again when I first looked for Nyuk Lin in his flat in Tiong Bahru, riding my bicycle with its solid tyres. She was sitting on a veranda when I arrived, and when I asked where I could find him, she smiled and pointed out a staircase around the corner. Now we were meeting under different circumstances. She was at home, at a loose end, doing domestic chores as there were no maids. Making gum was one chore that gave her pin money, and my visits to check on production led to a friendship that developed over the months.

By September 1944, we knew each other well enough for me to invite Nyuk Lin, his wife and Geok Choo (now simply Choo) to my 21st birthday dinner at a Chinese restaurant at the Great World, an amusement park. It was the first time I had asked her out. True, she was escorted by her brother-in-law, but in the Singapore of that era, if a girl accepted an invitation to a young man’s 21st birthday dinner, it was an event not without significance.

The gum-making lasted for some six to seven months until late 1944. By then, the war was going badly for the Japanese. Few merchant ships came through and trade was at a standstill; business dwindled and offices did not need gum. I discontinued gum-making, but continued to visit Choo at her Tiong Bahru home to chat and keep up the friendship.

All this while, I had also been preoccupied over what I was to do about my uncompleted education and my growing attachment to Choo. I did not feel optimistic about being able to finish my diploma course at Raffles College soon enough. The college would take at least a year to get restarted. Then I would need another one or one and a half years to graduate. In all, I would lose two to three years. I discussed the matter with my mother. We decided that, with her savings and jewellery, my earnings from the black market and my contract work, the family could pay for my law studies in Britain and those of Dennis. I planned to leave for England as soon as possible instead of returning to Raffles College to try to win the Queen’s scholarship.

In October-November 1945, I introduced Choo to the librarian at Raffles Library (now the National Library) and got her a temporary job there. Her family had moved to a bungalow in Devonshire Road, about a mile from our house, and I used to walk her home. Sometimes we would sit at a quiet spot in the grounds of the big Chesed-El Synagogue at Oxley Rise, close to where the Kempeitei had had one of their centres. But in November 1945, I could afford to buy a second-hand car, a pre-war Morris refurbished with spares now available from the British army. As my business improved, I sold it at a profit after a few months and bought a pre-war Ford V8, restored to good condition. It must have been used by a Japanese general during the occupation.

On New Year’s Eve, I took Choo to a party for young people at Mandalay Villa in Amber Road, the seaside mansion of Mrs Lee Choon Guan, doyenne of the Straits-born Chinese and a very wealthy widow. Just before the party broke up, I led her out into the garden facing the sea. I told her that I no longer planned to return to Raffles College, but would go to England to read law. I asked her whether she would wait for me until I came back three years later after being called to the Bar. Choo asked if I knew she was two and a half years older than I was. I said I knew, and had considered this carefully. I was mature for my age and most of my friends were older than me anyway. Moreover, I wanted someone my equal, not someone who was not really grown up and needed looking after, and I was not likely to find another girl who was my equal and who shared my interests. She said she would wait. We did not tell our parents. It would have been too difficult to get them to agree to such a long commitment. This was the way we dealt with each other; when we ran into difficult personal problems, we faced them and sorted them out. We did not dodge or bury them. The courtship blossomed. I started to plan on leaving Singapore that year, 1946.

Before I sailed, she also did her best to make sure I would leave Singapore committed to some Chinese girl, and therefore be less likely to return with an English one. Several students had come back with British wives, often with unhappy results. Their families were upset, and couples broke up or else went off to settle in England because they could not fit into British colonial society, where they were patronised if not publicly ostracised. She introduced me in turn to three eligible young ladies of suitable background and good social status. I was not enthusiastic. They were the right age, their families were comfortably off and they were presentable. But they did not arouse my interest. I was quite happy, having settled on Choo. Finally, I decided to confide in my mother. She was a shrewd woman. Once she realised I had really made up my mind, she stopped her search. Her attitude to Choo changed to one of the warm friendliness of a prospective mother-in-law.

I had earlier told her about Choo, the girl who had beaten me in the English and economics examinations at Raffles College. She had also met Choo during our gum-making days and had visited the family. Choo’s father, Kwa Siew Tee, a banker at the Oversea-Chinese Banking Corporation, was a Java-born Chinese like my father and my paternal grandmother. Her mother was a Straits-born Singapore Chinese like my own mother. We had similar backgrounds, spoke the same language at home and shared the same social norms.

Choo had been educated at Methodist Girls’ School, and having passed her Senior Cambridge examinations, was only 16 when she went to the special class at Raffles Institution for students competing for the Queen’s scholarship, but she did not get it. She told me later she was waiting for her Prince Charming. I turned up, not on a white horse but a bicycle with solid tyres! In 1940, she went to Raffles College, and we met at dinners and picnics, but at that time I kept my distance as I was in my first year and having a difficult time adjusting. Moreover, I was not eager to get close to any girl because I was not ready for any commitment. The few times we met socially or in lecture rooms, we were friendly but casual. In 1943–44, however, we came together in a different setting – myself older by three years of Japanese occupation and seeing her with different eyes; Choo cooped up in a flat doing housework, learning Mandarin, reading whatever books she could get and ready for our gum-making venture.

She belonged to a large family of eight children and had a happy, sheltered childhood in a conservative home. Her parents were moderately well off and there was always a car to take her to school, to Raffles College or wherever she needed to go. They also had a keen sense of propriety. On one occasion, after they moved to Devonshire Road, Choo arrived home from the library riding pillion on my motorcycle to the consternation of her mother. She was roundly rebuked for such improper behaviour. What would people think! Who would want to marry her! Soon afterwards, her family moved back to Pasir Panjang, where they had lived before. Fortunately, by then I had a car.

In the hectic months before September 1946 we spent a lot of time together. Before I left, I got my cousin Harold Liem, who was boarding with us at 38 Oxley Road, to take a whole series of photographs of us, all within a couple of days. We were young and in love, anxious to record this moment of our lives, to have something to remember each other by during the three years that I would be away in England. We did not know when we would meet again once I left. We both hoped she would go back to Raffles College, win the Queen’s scholarship to read law, and join me wherever I might be. She was totally committed. I sensed it. I was equally determined to keep my commitment to her.

When I left Singapore on my 23rd birthday, 16 September 1946, aboard the Britannic and waved to her from the ship’s deck, she was tearful. So was I. All my family and some friends, including Hon Sui Sen, were on the quay to wish me luck and wave me goodbye.

At the end of June, Choo wrote that she had taken a Class I diploma. She now stood a good chance of winning the Queen’s scholarship to study in England. I was optimistic. Towards the end of July came the best news of all, a cable from Choo that she had been awarded the Queen’s scholarship. But the Colonial Office could find no place for her in any university for the academic year beginning October 1947. She would have to wait until 1948. Stirred to action, I puzzled over how to get her into Cambridge

I looked up Mr Barret, the chief clerk at Fitzwilliam. He was a tubby, competent and experienced man in his late 40s. He had seen hundreds of young students come and go. He knew that the censor liked me. I told him of a lady friend in Singapore, very bright, who had won the top scholarship to study in England. She wanted to read law. How could she get into Cambridge in time for the Michaelmas term? With a twinkle in his eyes he said, “You know the censor knows Miss Butler, the mistress of Girton, very well. Now, if you could get him to speak to the mistress of Girton, that could make a difference.” I was excited at this possibility.

There were only two months to go before the new academic year began. I asked to see the censor. Not only did he see me, he was also willing to help. On 1 August, he wrote to Miss Butler, and for good measure to the principal of Newnham, the other women’s college in Cambridge. Both replied immediately. Newnham offered a place in 1948. Miss Butler was more positive. She was willing to offer a vacancy in October 1947 that Girton kept for special cases, provided Choo had the qualifications for admission. Thatcher wrote sending me both replies. I dashed off to the Examinations Syndicate near Silver Street along the river Cam. I gave them the year Choo had taken her Senior Cambridge – 1936. They traced her results and gave me a certified copy – she was the top student of her year.

I then wrote and asked to see Miss Butler at Girton. She was willing to see me, and I turned up at the appointed time on the morning of 6 August. I told her that my friend, Miss Kwa, was a very bright girl, brighter than I was, and that she had come top of the list, ahead of me in Raffles College on many occasions. I added that I had come up to Cambridge one term late and taken a First in my Qualifying One examination, and I had no doubt that she would do likewise. Miss Butler was a friendly, white-haired lady with glasses, somewhat plump and benign-looking. She was amused at this young Chinese boy talking in glowing terms of his lady friend being a better student than he was, and intrigued by the idea that perhaps the girl was exceptional. That same day I cabled Choo: “Girton accepts. Official correspondence following. Get cracking.”

She boarded a troopship in Singapore in late August. I was waiting impatiently at the docks when she finally arrived in Liverpool in early October, and was overjoyed to see her after a long year of separation. We went off at once to London by train and after five days there we went on to Cambridge.

By now, I had got myself organised and knew my way around. But there were new problems. Mr Pounds, the junior tutor and bursar of Fitzwilliam, had given me rooms some three miles to the south of Cambridge. I was aghast. Girton was to the north of town. I tried hard to get a room nearer to Choo but to no avail. Mr Pounds was unrelenting. I appealed to the censor. His reply was fatherly, but spiced with a touch of dry humour:

“My dear Lee,

“… You plead that it is a long way to go to see your fiancée, or your wife as apparently you hope she will become. Not really so far as you make out, especially if love supplies the motive power. I don’t know whether you read the great myths, but you will remember the gentleman who swam the Bosphorus every night to see his lady love. Going to Girton is a slight thing compared with that. Unhappily, the gentleman got drowned in the doing it (sic) one fine evening, but I doubt whether you need die of exhaustion on the road. If, however, you can find rooms near Girton, we will do our utmost to cooperate with you and get them licensed, so if you like to come up and look round, do so. “By the way, I am not sure that Girton will appreciate you marrying the young lady so quickly, as they will very naturally and properly assume that in the first light of love there will be very little work done. But I am too old to offer advice between a man and the light of his eyes. Yours sincerely, W.S.Thatcher”

A week later, I found a room near Fitzwilliam at Captain Harris’ Stables. Captain Harris kept horses and foxhounds. I was his one student boarder. He charged an exorbitant price, some £9 a week just for bed and breakfast, with baths and everything else extra. I had no choice. It was convenient. I was to stay there for the next two years until I came down from Cambridge in the summer of 1949.

Meanwhile, Choo and I discussed our life in Britain with an eye to the future. We decided that it would be best if we got married quietly in December during the Christmas vacation, and kept it a secret. Choo’s parents would have been most upset had they been asked; Girton College might not have approved, as the censor had reminded me in his letter; and the Queen’s scholarship authorities might have raised difficulties. We were already mature, in our mid-20s, and we had made up our minds. Unaware of our true motive, a friend who came from that part of England recommended an inn at Stratford-on-Avon as a place to spend Christmas and to visit the renowned Shakespeare theatre. Once we arrived, we notified the local Registrar of Marriages of our intention, and after two weeks of residence were duly married. On the way to Stratford-on-Avon we had stopped in London, where I bought Choo a platinum wedding ring from a jeweller in Regent Street. But when we went back to Cambridge, she wore the ring on a chain around her neck.

Despite this change in our lives, we worked systematically and hard at our studies. I wanted to make sure that I kept up the standard I had set for Tripos I. But Choo had a difficult time coping with a second-year course. The examinations came around again in May 1948, and in June the results were posted at the Senate House. I had made my Class I on the Tripos I honours list. Choo was placed in Class II in Law Qualifying Two. She was disappointed. But it was not a Tripos and did not really count. I consoled her, and we decided to take a two-week holiday on the Continent. Avoiding tour groups, we arranged to spend five days in Paris, then a week in Switzerland.

In October, we were back in Cambridge for our final year. We attended lectures, wrote essays and assignments for supervisors, and read in the library or in my room at Captain Harris’ Stables. But life was not all work. At weekends and on some evenings I would cycle to Girton, and Choo would cook Singapore dishes on the one gas ring in the gyp wing. I would invite Yong Pung How and Eddie Barker, also a Queen’s scholar from Raffles College and reading law. Sometimes, my whole week’s ration of meat went into a curry, or Choo would make marvellous fried kway teow, using fettucine, chicken in place of pork, and paprika in place of chillies.

We took our final law examinations in May 1949, and when the results came out in June, I was satisfied. I had made a First and won the only star for Distinction on the final Law Tripos II honours list. Choo also made a First, and we cabled the good news to our parents. It was a good cachet for the next stage of my life. Before an undergraduate can take his degree, university rules require him to “keep” at least nine terms, in other words to stay in residence in college or in approved digs for about eight weeks in a term. Choo had been in Cambridge for only six terms; I for only eight. Special dispensations must have been granted because we were both allowed to take our degrees that midsummer day, 21 June. Otherwise I would have had to remain in Cambridge for another term, and Choo for another three before we could graduate.

We then adjourned to Trevor Thomas’ rooms in Trinity Hall to celebrate the occasion with champagne. Another lecturer, Dr T. Ellis Lewis, affectionately called TEL, who had taught both of us, joined us. He was Welsh, with a delightful quizzical face, bald, wispy white hair at the sides and rimless glasses. He said to Choo and me, “If it’s a boy, send him to us in Trinity Hall.” When Loong, our first child, was born in 1952, I did write to the senior tutor to book a place for him. But 19 years later, when he went up to Cambridge, Loong decided to go instead to Trinity College, which Isaac Newton had established as the premier school of mathematics. Good tutors in Trinity helped him become a wrangler (a student with first class honours in mathematics) in two years instead of the usual three.

The photograph of our graduation that I treasure most is one of Billy Thatcher standing between Choo and me. I had not let him down. Nor had my “lady friend”. Thatcher left a deep impression on me. He was a wise, perceptive man who had a lot of time for the students in his charge. One day, when I was having tea with him in his room, he pointed to the road workers who had been digging up Trumpington Street, and said that in the previous three hours they had had two tea breaks. They had been different before and during the war. Now they were not willing to work as hard, and the country would not progress. I thought him a reactionary old man, but he taught economics, and years later I concluded that he knew what made for growth. On another occasion, he told me, “You are Chinese. You Chinese have a long civilisation of several thousand years to back you up. That is a great advantage.” Just before we went down from Cambridge in June 1949, he invited Choo and me for morning coffee for the last time. He patted Choo’s hand and, looking at me, said, “He is too impatient. Don’t let him be in such a hurry.” He had read my character well, but he also knew that I had a serious purpose in life and was determined to achieve it.

Having graduated, we took a 10-day holiday, this time touring England and Scotland in a coach. But we were not finished with our law studies yet. To practise in Singapore, even a degree from Cambridge University was not enough. We still had to qualify as a solicitor or a barrister in England. So we had joined the Middle Temple, which was one of the four Inns of Court that together taught and examined students for admission to the Bar. When we came back from our trip, therefore, we tried to live in London and for a while took a flat not far from my old digs on Fitzjohn’s Avenue. But for Choo housekeeping and study did not mix well, so we decided to skip lectures at the Inns of Court, and stay at Tintagel in Cornwall to read up and prepare for the Bar finals by ourselves.

We had already spent several vacations there, in an old manor house run by a Mrs Mellor with the help of her three sons. She fed us well, and was reasonable and helpful. We had the whole house to ourselves, except during the summer when there were a few other guests. We took long walks along country lanes and enjoyed the warm, moist southwesterly winds. Our only entertainment was to listen to the BBC Home Service on a Pye radio I bought in Cambridge. It gave us many hours of relaxation and pleasure. For exercise and recreation, I started to play golf, alone most of the time, on a nine-hole course at King Arthur’s Castle Hotel that was empty except during the holiday season. The course was hilly and windy, and exciting for a duffer like me. It kept me fit. Choo and I spent much time looking for my lost golf balls, often finding other, better ones. Choo would also pick wild mushrooms, which Mrs Mellor cooked for us. They were delicious.

In February 1950, while I was still at Tintagel, David Widdicombe, one of my Cambridge friends, stood as the Labour candidate for the rural seat of Totnes in Devon, an hour and a half away by train. He needed a driver for his truck and a general assistant. Choo and I spent a fortnight helping him until election night. We were both put up with Labour supporters, I with a train driver, Choo with the young wife and children of a man who was away training to be a solicitor.

A month or two later, I received a letter from the Singapore commissioner of police, R.E. Foulger, who was home on leave. He knew my parents, had heard that I was in Cornwall, and invited Choo and me to his house at Thurlstone in Devon. We spent three days there. He wanted to size me up, and I was interested in making contact and seeing what a post-war British colonial police chief was like. We played golf. My golf was still bad, but it was a useful weekend. I knew by then that I had drawn the attention of Singapore’s Special Branch and would be on their watch list. I had made some anti-British, anti-colonial speeches at Malaya Hall. They would know I was no dilettante. I thought it best if they also knew that I acted above board, constitutionally, and that I had no communist ties or sympathies. For we would soon be returning to Singapore.

In May 1950, we went down to London to take our Bar finals. We ran into a football crowd that weekend, and they banged the doors of the hotel where we stayed day and night, distracting us from our studies. But it would not have made much difference: we were to pay the price for being out of London and failing to listen to the lecturers who were also the examiners in the major subjects. They had set their questions on new cases they had taught. No one got a First Class. I got a Second Class and was listed in third place. Choo got a Third. But all was well. On 21 June 1950, wigged and robed as the pageantry demanded, we were both called to the Bar at the Middle Temple dining hall. Life was about to enter a new phase.

Mrs Jackson was friendly to all the students. But from the very first she was particularly kind to me. During my vacations, as I changed addresses from London to Cambridge to London to Tintagel, 16 Gordon Square became my postbox. It was also a repository for our spare bags and books. Choo and I frequented it because we had no home in London, and at the China Institute we could wash off the grime of a capital sooty from coal fires with hot water, soap and clean basins that cost us nothing. All we needed were our own towels. And since the premises were rent-free, Mrs Jackson was also able to provide good and substantial high teas for just one shilling.

Petty matters? No one who was not a foreign student in England in those years of privation and shortages immediately after the war can imagine how difficult and inconvenient life was for us in a London bedsitter. The landlady supplied only breakfast, after which Choo and I would have to get out of our room to allow her to clean it. We would go to the public library to study, and eat our lunches and dinners in a restaurant. A clean and quiet place to rest and wash was an immense luxury, especially when it was free.

When I was in London in 1956 for the constitutional conference on the future of Singapore, I went back to Gordon Square to visit Mrs Jackson. She was as pleased to see me as I was to see her. But my association with the China Institute had meanwhile produced an unexpected political backlash. Years later, I discovered old reports in files of the Singapore Special Branch claiming that Choo and I had frequented it in order to fraternise with pro-communists from China, where Mao Zedong was then heading for victory in the civil war and on 1 October 1949 proclaimed the People’s Republic. One report even said that Choo was a more radical left-winger than I was. My confidence in Special Branch reports was badly shaken.

It was against such a backdrop that Choo and I sailed home on a Dutch liner, the Willem Ruys. It was the best ship plying between Southampton and Singapore – new, air-conditioned, with excellent Indonesian and Dutch food, and wonderful service provided by literally hundreds of djongos, or Javanese waiters, dressed in native costume. It was a farewell fling. We travelled first class in adjoining cabins, and had a wonderful time – except when I got seasick in the Bay of Biscay and again on the Arabian Sea, and was reduced to a diet of dry toast and dried beef. Otherwise, it was a memorable journey.

But there were other reports in their file on me to earn me the distinction of being the last passenger on the Willem Ruys to be cleared. When I recorded my oral history in 1981, a researcher showed me documents of a meeting on 28 June 1950 at Government House at which Nigel Morris, the director of Special Branch, had recommended that Choo and I be detained on our return from England. However, R.E. Foulger, the commissioner of police who had earlier invited us to spend a weekend with him in Devon, had disagreed. The minutes further recorded that the governor, the general officer commanding and the colonial secretary had supported Foulger, arguing that because we both came from respectable families, public reaction to our arrest would be bad. Instead, they said, more could be gained if we were befriended and won over. The commissioner general for Southeast Asia, Malcolm MacDonald, “was suggested as an appropriate host since he frequently invited students to dinner”. In fact Malcolm MacDonald did invite Choo and me a few months after our return.

While Mr Fox kept me waiting in the first class lounge of the Willem Ruys, I popped out on deck to wave to my family – Father, Mother, Fred, Monica and Suan – on the quay with some friends, including Hon Sui Sen. Choo’s family was also waiting for her, but when we disembarked, we parted company. She went back with her parents to Pasir Panjang, I to Oxley Road. We parted as friends, not giving away the secret of our marriage in Britain.

Having found a job, my next task was to see Choo’s father, Kwa Siew Tee. He was a tall, energetic, self-made man who had taught himself accountancy and banking through correspondence courses and had risen to his present position in the Oversea-Chinese Banking Corporation on his own merits, having neither relatives to give him a push nor money to buy promotion. I asked him for his daughter’s hand and when we could have the wedding. He was dumbfounded. He had expected the normal ritual of a visit by my parents to broach the subject, but this brash young man had turned up to settle the day himself, taking for granted that consent would be given. However, he did not grumble as much to me as he later did to Choo. We agreed to an engagement, to be followed by marriage at the end of September. Reading the announcement in the newspaper, Laycock offered to take Choo as a pupil and pay her $500 a month too. I told Choo about it, and she promptly accepted. It was most convenient. We could go to work together, and see each other every day.

On 30 September 1950, after being married secretly for nearly three years, we went through a second ceremony at the Registry of Marriages, which was then in the Supreme Court building. The registrar, Mr Grosse, was 15 minutes late. I was furious and told him off. An appointment had been made yet he kept all of us waiting. Later that afternoon, our parents held a reception for relatives and friends at the Raffles Hotel. Tom Silcock, professor of economics at the University of Singapore who had taught both of us at Raffles College, proposed the toast to the bride. He was not a witty, light-hearted speaker, but he did Choo proud. Choo then moved into 38 Oxley Road. My mother had bought some new furniture for us, and we started our official married life. But it was a difficult adjustment for Choo because she had now to fit into the Lee family, consisting not only of my grandmother, father, mother, sister, and three brothers, but several relatives from Indonesia who were still boarding with us, supplementing my mother’s income.

I joined the Singapore Island Club to keep up the golf I had learnt to play at Tintagel, and was so keen on the exercise that one wet afternoon I drove Choo there despite the rain. On Thomson Road my Studebaker skidded, did a U-turn, and rolled over onto a soft grass slope. I was stunned. So was she. We were lucky. We had absolutely no injuries. Had we gone off the road a little further up, we would have struck a large water pipe instead of wet ground, and that might have been the end.

On 7 August 1951, I completed my one year of pupillage. To be called to the Bar, Choo and I dressed in sombre clothes and donned our barrister’s robes complete with white tabs and, in my case, a stiff wing collar. It was an important occasion then, for the entire Bar had 140 members, and only some 10 new lawyers were admitted each year. René Eber, a respected old Eurasian lawyer, moved our petition for admission with a gracious little speech. It was his crypto-communist son, John, who had been arrested seven months before. Singapore is a small world.

…interpreters have other uses, and when our first child was born on Sunday, 10 February 1952, I consulted one of those at the Supreme Court who had helped many lawyers find appropriate Chinese names for their children. The date of birth was the most auspicious in the Chinese calendar, the 15th day of the first moon of the Year of the Dragon. We therefore decided to name our son Hsien Loong – Illustrious Dragon. He was a long baby, scrawny but weighing more than eight pounds, and he gave us great joy.

When I saw Choo in Kandang Kerbau (maternity) Hospital over the next few days, I was able to tell her of my second piece of good fortune – my first union work. It would bring me into the political spotlight and into a head-on clash with the government.

Laycock had become increasingly unhappy about my political activities but never complained to me directly. In 1954, after three years of service, he had given me a partnership contract under which I was guaranteed a minimum that was more than what Choo and I earned together. He did not want to continue to employ Choo, who was happy to stay at home to look after Loong – and later Ling, when she was born in January 1955. He knew I was doing my job in accordance with our agreement, and he tolerated me.

In the five years since my return from England, I had built up something of a law practice and also a base for political support in the trade unions. But I now had two tasks ahead of me: to start my own law firm and to create a party organisation for the PAP. There was no great urgency. I had four months before I would leave Laycock & Ong, and four years in which to get the PAP into shape before the next general election. Together with Choo and my brother Dennis, we set up the firm Lee & Lee in Malacca Street, next to Laycock & Ong.

I had decided to get away from this madhouse and go on my annual vacation. With Choo and Loong, age 3, I drove up to the Cameron Highlands on 1 June and stayed there for three weeks. We left 5-month-old Ling at home as she was too young.

I played golf at Tanah Rata every day, morning and afternoon. As I walked on the pleasant and cool nine-hole Cameron Highlands course, 5,000 feet above sea level, I soaked in the significance of the events of the previous few months. I felt in my bones that to continue on the course Lim Chin Siong and Fong had embarked upon would end in political disaster. The PAP and the Middle Road unions (named for the location of their headquarters, not their policies) would be banned. But if Marshall were to flinch from taking unpopular action, the whole economy and society of Singapore would be in such a chaotic mess that the British government would have to suspend the constitution.

On 21 June, I drove back to Singapore with the family.

I was to pick up new impressions. When we stopped overnight at Colombo, I was surprised to find it so well-developed. It had not suffered from Japanese occupation and looked more prosperous than Singapore. Karachi, the other overnight stop, was hot and dusty, and for the first time I saw camels working as beasts of burden, trundling loaded carts and liberally dispensing enormous droppings as they flip-flopped along the roads. But an evening outing in town gave me a chance to buy Choo several sheer silk stoles that looked like organza interwoven with gold thread. She still uses them occasionally. After Karachi, we had refuelling stops at Cairo and Rome, and finally landed in London on 17 April.

Indira Gandhi was the toughest woman prime minister I have met. She was feminine but there was nothing soft about her. She was more determined and ruthless a political leader than Margaret Thatcher, Mrs Bandaranaike or Benazir Bhutto. She had a handsome face with an aquiline nose and a smart hairstyle with a broad streak of white against a jet black mass of hair combed back from her forehead. And she was always dressed elegantly in a sari. She affected some feminine ways, smiling coquettishly at men during social conversation; but once into the flow of an argument, there was that steel in her that would match any Kremlin leader. She was unlike her father. Nehru was a man of ideas, concepts he had polished and repolished – secularism, multiculturalism, rapid industrialisation of the state by heavy industries in the fashion of the Soviet Union. Right or wrong, he was a thinker.

She was practical and pragmatic, concerned primarily with the mechanics of power, its acquisition and its exercise. A sad chapter in her many years in office was when she moved away from secularism, and to win the Hindi-Hindu vote in North India, consciously or otherwise brought Hindu chauvinism to the surface and allowed it to become a legitimate force in Indian politics. It was to lead to the recurrence of Hindu-Muslim riots, the burning and destruction of the ancient mosque at Ayodhya and the emergence of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), a Hindu chauvinist party, as the single major party in Parliament in 1996 and again in 1998. She was at her toughest when the unity of India was threatened. There was outrage throughout the Sikh world when she ordered troops into the Sikh holy temple at Amritsar. Watching how incensed the Sikhs in Singapore were, I thought it was politically disastrous: she was desecrating the innermost sanctuary of the Sikh religion. But she was unsentimental and concerned only with the power of the state which she was determined to preserve. She paid for it with her life in 1984, assassinated by her own Sikh bodyguards.

Primarily homosexual, he attempted to conform to some extent with the norms of his day. After a three-year affair with Syrie Wellcome which produced their daughter, Liza, they married in 1917. The marriage lasted for twelve years, but before, during and after it, Maugham’s principal partner was a younger man, Gerald Haxton.