She died in 1971, three years before I was born, and was out here because my grandad was head of music for the Royal Brunei Malay Regiment at the time.
You can see the resemblance - she has cool shades.
My grandad remarried and so I do actually have a grandmother alive and well in Surrey, she’s not my biological grandmother, but she always has and always will be my grandma. She was the grandma of my first memories, noone will ever replace her, and I love her dearly.
Ever since I can remember though, I have been aware of Zena and always thought it sad I never got to meet her. I know very little about her as she is rarely talked about in the family, not deliberately I’m sure, but just because she died such a long time ago and everyone has moved on.
The ‘Brunei years’ have always featured heavily in family stories over the years, and until very shortly before my trip when I actually got an atlas out and had a look at this part of the world I had no idea where it was. But as far as my childhood brain was concerned it was an impossibly exotic place - it had a Sultan who had a Lamborghini, for God’s sake - and I had to see it.
The problem with paying Zena my respects was that I didn’t actually know where she was buried. The only instructions I’d got from home were that it was near the former military barracks and behind the Chinese cemetery.
I’d emailed the British High Commission here a few weeks before arriving in the hope of some help locating the plot but received no reply. So my first stop was the Consular office, both to vent my anger at their non-response and to politely ask again for their help.
A very pleasant middle-aged woman who seemed to be suffering from swine flu listened to my questions and then disappeared to confer with a colleague.
Some 10 minutes later she returned to tell me through coughs and sniffles that she was very sorry but she wasn’t able to talk to me about military records. If only I’d asked for help earlier, they could have sought permission from the right person. And what a shame it was I was only here for a few days as they’d surely be able to help next week, but they certainly wouldn‘t be able to turn a request round like mine around so quickly.
The joys of empire.
The mission I’d assumed would be so easy and that had sub-consciously become my raison d’etre for being in this part of the world was crumbling rapidly before me. I was too angry to even mention the email they‘d ignored. What was the point in the face of such stupid bureaucracy?
To add insult to injury she told me that even if they had the right permissions there had been a flood some years previously and the file had probably been destroyed. Great, thanks.
She suggested I try the Catholic church, but my grandad had had a humanist funeral so I couldn’t imagine he would have had Zena buried in a Catholic cemetery.
She must have seen how crestfallen I was, because she furtively leaned forward, scribbled on a scrap of paper and said, “I’m not sure, but if you show this to a taxi driver, I think there’s some kind of cemetery around there.”
I wasn’t sure if she was breaking the rules or she genuinely wasn’t sure, but it was the only lead I had and I forgave her giving me whatever tropical disease she‘d sneezed over me.
I set off to find a cab driver - no mean feat when there are only 43 in the whole country (seriously, there’s only 43, the Sultan subsidises car purchases and so most Bruneians own two or three) - and eventually found a rank by the bus station.
I showed my piece of paper to the cabbies. Half a dozen of them passed it around among themselves, turning it upside down, pointing in different directions to vague points on the horizon and chattered away to themselves in Malay.
Eventually one seemed certain he knew the place and I gratefully jumped in his air-conned cab.
We drove for about 20 minutes heading out of the city and into the suburbs. As the houses grew thinner and the jungle thicker the driver pointed across me to the trees on our left. Flashing between the foliage were the unmistakable shapes of crosses and headstones. Well it was definitely a cemetery, but was it the right one?
We headed up a dirt road and found ourselves halfway up a hill - to the left and up the slope countless brightly coloured graves covered in Chinese writing.
To the right down the slope fewer, more sombre Christian-looking graves… but also covered in Chinese writing. Oh no.
I asked some locals lunching in the shade if this was the English cemetery, “This one Chinese Buddhist,” he said gesturing up the hill, “That one Christian,” pointing behind me at the lower one.
Oh well, the sign over the gate said Christian too, so it must be the right place.
It wasn’t a big graveyard, but without any official records as to the location the only thing I could do was be methodical, begin at the beginning, walk in straight lines and look at every headstone.
For the first 15 minutes every grave I looked at was dated within the last 10 years and made of brand spanking new polished black marble - and every inhabitant was Chinese. Although I was able to quickly discount these, I did come across a few graves marked only with white-painted wooden crosses on and faded, illegible writing.
Some didn’t even have crosses and as I realised I didn’t know what kind of headstone was on Zena’s grave I had to scrape leaves and debris off a number of headstone-less graves searching for names.
Nothing.
I’d read on the internet while trying to research the cemetery that vandals had targeted it a few years ago - what if Zena’s was one that was destroyed? It didn’t bear thinking about.
I was getting more and more desperate, I’d looked at nearly every grave in the place and found nothing at all to even suggest I was in the right place, let alone the right grave.
I’d walked every aisle but one and turned into the last line not believing I’d come all this way to be frustrated when I had seemingly come so close. I was so disappointed I was hardly even looking at the headstones anymore.
Then as I looked at the fourth to last grave in the row I saw to my right the word ‘Morgan’.
Then ‘Capt F. Morgan’.
I walked closer, not believing what I’d seen and there she was. Difficult to read through the black staining, but it was definitely my grandmother: ‘Zena Winifred Morgan, died 3rd November 1971, Aged 51 years, Beloved wife of Capt F. Morgan, The Royal Brunei Malay Regiment’.
I stopped in my tracks, put my hand over my mouth in shock, and the tears came.
I don’t know if it was relief at having found her when it seemed I never would, sadness at seeing my grandad’s name and remembering him again or just grief for a grandmother I’d never met, but I just stood there with tears streaming down my cheeks reading and rereading the headstone.
I sat down on the marble at the foot of her grave, pulled myself together and had a little chat about who I was and what I was doing there. Silly, but I didn’t know what else to do.
I promised I’d be back the next day to give her a bit of a wash and scrub up. If in doubt, be practical. T’was ever the English way.
Despite being fearful of more tears I actually woke up the next day with a big grin on my face. For once I wasn’t doing what I wanted, I mean I wanted to do it, but I wasn’t doing something solely for my benefit, which I had been for this whole trip really.
It felt like work. I had a reason to get up in the morning and a task to fulfil by a certain time. But it was also about family - something I’ve come to appreciate more and more since I’ve been away from them.
This grave held my Dad and uncle and grandfather’s mum and wife, it was a long way from England and a bit dirty. I wanted to make it look good, find some nice flowers and take some pics for Dad and Andrew. It felt right.
So, it was up early to the local supermarket for a bucket, a pack of scrubbers and some cleaning products. I scoured (sorry, couldn’t resist) the shelves wondering what the right cleanser was for scrubbing old-age stains off headstones.
If my Dad and Andrew got their sense of humour from Zena then I’m sure she would have found the fact I seriously considered toilet cleaner hilarious. But however funny it seemed at the time, I just couldn’t bring myself to use bog bleach!
I settled for some basic cream cleanser, bought a little bucket, a stiff scrubbing brush, a packet of scourers and a three-litre bottle of water and headed out to find a florist.
A very pleasant Malay lady put together a beautiful little bouquet there and then, even including a couple of the dark red roses that were synonymous in our family of my grandad and the Parachute Regiment.
I headed back to the bus station looking for the nice chap who’d taken me the day before, but he was on a job. However, all the drivers waved at me and knew where I wanted to go and why. Apparently the crazy Englishman visiting the grave of the grandmother he’d never met was the talk of the rank.
Anyway, the very charming Mr Goh drove me out to the cemetery again and sat smoking a cigarette in the shade while I set to work weeding and scrubbing in the sun.
Brunei is hot and humid at the best of times, but at midday it’s REALLY hot. I had to take my sunglasses off because the sweat from my face was collecting in a pool in their concavity. The mosquito repellent and sunscreen I’d plastered myself in was similarly dripping into my eyes and pretty soon I was blind.
When I first put the cream cleanser on the reverse side of Zena’s headstone to check the effect of it, the stone went green. Not a good sign. Though of course it could have been the insect repellant.
But after a few more scrubs and rinses the cleanser seemed to be doing its job, and pretty soon Mr Goh and another local took pity on the half-blind, mad-dog Englishman and started to help out.
Within an hour or so we’d pretty much done what we could. I only had enough cash to have Mr Goh hang around for an hour, so I laid down the flowers, touched the foot of Zena’s grave, said goodbye and left.
