MY FATHER KNEW Mr Keech, the Year 9 PE teacher, from coaching the rugby team made up mostly of Royal Australian Air Force men and other expat blokes from the circle of parents around the international school. The school had originally been built on breezy Penang Hill, where expats had lived in colonial times, pre-aircon, and was now in a converted novitiate, hunkered under gold and silver high-rises. Parent–teacher evening was for some reason staged as a whole-of-family event, with parents visiting classrooms for short briefings in the good clothes they would wear for going out at night, while teenagers waited outside in hushed conference on the unlit picnic tables. 

I was an achiever in that higher-than-middle way that takes most of the tension out of this kind of meeting. Although I wasn’t soccer-crazy like everyone else in Malaysia, even in PE the worst you could say was that I showed up and didn’t create problems. But a strange atmosphere presided when my parents drove me home under the lights strung above the road, between the Angsana trees. As well as being a military family – my dad had met my mum while they were working at the same RAAF base, and their siblings, parents and my older half-siblings were all in the army, navy or reserve – the men in my family were each rugby players or coaches, whereas I had always liked writing and drawing and keeping my business to myself. As it happened, the tension in the car turned out to be an unexpected pride. Mr Keech had told my parents they didn’t need to worry: ‘Your son is going to be the kind of man who needs to know badminton, golf and tennis, the sports he’ll play with other international businessmen.’