The press reported our return, giving prominence to my academic success in Cambridge, and also to Choo’s. The publicity helped me get my first job. While visiting the Supreme Court, I met a Straits-born lawyer, T.W. Ong, who asked me if I was interested in doing my pupillage in his firm, Laycock & Ong. I was, and he immediately arranged for me to see John Laycock, his senior partner, the following day.
Laycock was a Yorkshireman of about 60 who had qualified as a solicitor in England. He had been in practice in Singapore since the early 1930s, and had married a Chinese woman. They had no offspring of their own and had adopted several Chinese children. He had a powerful mind and a fierce temper, but his voice was small for a tubby man with such a big head; his face would flush when he was angry and he would become almost incoherent. He was full of energy, drank heavily, and perspired all the time, wiping himself with a large handkerchief. He offered to take me as his personal pupil. This meant I would sit in his office cooled by two large Philco air-conditioners, which made a powerful racket but were otherwise effective. He would pay me $500 a month until I was called to the Singapore Bar, which would take one year because I had chosen not to read in chambers in England.
I started work almost immediately. I had tropical clothes made – white drill trousers and light seersucker jackets – and bought cellular cotton shirts that could breathe. But it did not help. I sweated profusely, not having acclimatised to the heat and humidity, and every time I went out to the courts I would come back soaked. It was disastrous to be wet in Laycock’s draughty air-conditioned room, and I would go down with coughs and colds. I soon learnt that the first thing to do when I got back to the office was to wash my face with cold water, cool down and change into dry clothes.
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.