by Jean Chapman
‘Extra equipment?’ Josef spread his hands, shrugged his shoulders and asked, ‘What can I do? Do you have a spare rifle?’
‘Switch the lights out,’ Sturgess ordered him, ‘and come to the back of the house with me. You two cover the front.’
‘If I had a gun … ’
‘If and when any shooting begins I’ll let you have my revolver,’ Sturgess told him.
The lights were snapped out and Liz was left to feel her way back to her bedroom. Groping in the drawer of the bedside table, she was surprised how reassuring the weight of the .38 Smith & Wesson was in her hand.
From the kitchen Sturgess shouted, ‘Don’t go outside, Mrs Hammond. You and your daughter take a window either side of the front door and shoot at anything that moves.’
Liz felt both annoyed to be referred to as an unthinking mere appendage to her mother and expected to shoot at anything that moved? Ridiculous! She was about to protest at the order and remind him of his ‘military’ sortie to deal with the water buffalo as the first shot came from the right of the front door.
‘Good God!’ Blanche exclaimed, but immediately poked her gun through the side of the rattan blinds and fired back.
‘Watch for the flashes, aim at them,’ Sturgess had time to shout as another shot came from the back of the house.
Two more shots from the trees were returned with fire from the front and back of the bungalow. Liz found she had undergone a complete change of heart. In the silence that followed she had to discipline herself not to empty her revolver into the night.
Crouched by her window in the hot, sticky darkness, she knew it was no use either rushing out, guns blazing, or trying to identify the night noises that came from the beluka. Anyone running or walking without caution might have been easy to hear, but it would be impossible to separate a stealthy human approach from the cracks, drips and unhuman calls the jungle night added resonance and menace to. The twenty yards or so between bungalow and tree fringe seemed a very narrow margin for safety.
‘Are they coming or aren’t they, for God’s sake?’ Her mother’s whispered exasperation exactly summed up her own feelings.
‘Liz!’ Josef’s voice in the same room made her start so violently she realised just how ajangle her nerves were. She heard her mother swear under her breath.
‘Mrs Hammond, Major Sturgess wants to speak to you in the kitchen.’
‘What do you think is happening?’ Liz asked as she saw Josef’s black figure outlined at the other window.
‘Are you all right?’ he asked and came across to be near her. She could feel his warmth through her thin blouse and his breath on her neck. ‘Not too frightened?’
‘I’m glad you came when you did — someone we really know.’ In turning to whisper to him she leaned briefly against his shoulder.
‘I am so pleased you are back.’ He paused but she was so near him she could feel him shaking his head as he spoke. ‘After all these years, now it has all happened so quickly, it makes me feel ... kind of mixed up.’
‘I know … ’
‘He hasn’t given me a gun,’ he added.
Liz was digesting this information and emotional switch as there was a sudden, violent burst of shooting from inside the bungalow. The shock of the noise made her drop to her knees and she heard Josef say something about a Sten gun, then, as the pumping cracks of automatic fire ceased, her mother was there ordering, ‘Stay down!’
There was more movement in the room and the noise was repeated as Sturgess raked the trees and the undergrowth at the front of her home with a similar barrage of fire.
In the tail end of the thudding punishment, obscenely loud indoors, they all heard the involuntary cry of someone hit. It had not sounded far away and she wondered if Sturgess’s tactics had stopped them from being rushed. There were other noises out there now, definable noises of men moving in the undergrowth, a groan and then the noises retreated.
‘Retrieving their wounded?’ Liz wondered.
‘Hum!’ Sturgess sounded noncommittal. ‘it may be all over for this time,’ he judged, ‘but be cautious. I’ll just check the rear.’
‘What a good thing he came with us,’ Blanche breathed.
‘Yes.’ Liz felt her agreement was slightly tight-lipped for he made her, and obviously Josef, feel rather like stupid and irresponsible children, not to be trusted.
‘Would you go and keep watch from the kitchen, Josef?’ Sturgess ordered as he came back. He waited until Josef had moved away, then said, ‘We’ll only shoot again if they do, but I feel they’ve withdrawn to reassess the situation.’
‘Why should you think that?’ Liz felt he should be made to explain as well as to issue orders.
‘Two reasons. They were undoubtedly after the guns that were laid out here, so it probably means they want the extra arms or ammunition for another operation. They certainly weren’t expecting us to be here, and now they also know we can defend ourselves, they won’t want to waste a lot of ammunition just to take a few more weapons. We’ve also made it awkward for them; they don’t like casualties in the jungle. Gunshot wounds are difficult to explain if you need a doctor or surgeon, complicated to nurse if you haven’t got the right drugs.’
That was three reasons, she thought, good reasons. ‘You’re obviously an expert on war,’ she told him. It was the only thing she had really heard him talk about.
‘I’ve had plenty of experience in this country.’
She admitted to herself there was only bitterness in the tone of that remark, no joy of the man of war, no hint of the make-up of a mercenary.
‘I think we could have a small lamp on now,’ he said, going over to the table. The soft upward light made her realise how the immaculate man she had first seen in Raffles had been completely transformed. His light shirt and trousers were much crumpled and the Sten gun had left traces of oil on his shirt. He had the dark shadow of a beard on his face. She remembered sitting by her father in the bathroom there, watching him shave. He had dabbed a blob of shaving soap on her nose and asked if she knew that whiskers grew quicker in a hot climate. She had always thought it a joke, now she wondered if it was true.
Looking back at Josef, she observed how relatively uncreased were his shorts and shirt, how smooth his chin. He looked like a man come back from a meeting, or going out for the evening, dressed to impress.
She felt slightly ashamed to realise that they had not thought to offer the man who had given up his last free hours to drive them to Rinsey the opportunity to shave and refresh himself — and he had not asked.
Any good will Sturgess had notched up with her immediately evaporated as he stated, ‘Josef can keep watch at the front and I’ll take the back this time. Until first light, then I’ll drive you two ladies back to Bukit Kinta. I’m sure George won’t mind having you as house guests until we ... sort out your future plans.’
Liz was amazed at his audacity. ‘We’ve been here before, haven’t we?’
Chapter Four
‘We could have stayed with Josef!’
‘I think not,’ her mother denied shortly, obviously not willing to go over the debate she had settled to her own satisfaction the night before.
‘Josef could have arranged some security. We could have got some of the tappers to act as guards.’
‘What tappers? There’s no one working in the plantation this morning — and what do you propose?’ Blanche asked stonily as they walked towards the jeep, where Sturgess was loading the guns and ammunition. ‘That we throw chicken wire over the whole bungalow?’
Her mother was right about the tappers. The early hours of each working morning had always seemed to Liz a magical time. Tappers moving out between the dark lines of trees, the lights on their hats twinkling, disappearing, reappearing as men and women moved from trunk to trunk making the skilful, shallow cuts into the bark, balancing the cup in its wire hoop.
Once the heat of the day came, the latex ran less freely, so before dawn each worker started w
ork on his or her section of trees. Soon afterwards her father would have been up, and often she was allowed to go with him on his rounds. All the old workforce had known her. Her wish to be a tapper when she grew up had been as keen as any boy’s ambition to be the proverbial engine driver. Even now she could remember the exact angle of the tapper’s curiously hooked knife and the amount of steady pressure it took to remove a slender portion of bark.
‘I could have stayed.’ She heard the petulant child lingering in her own voice. ‘But you don’t trust Josef.’
‘That is one reason,’ she agreed. ‘Another is you seem prepared to throw yourself into his arms.’
‘To balance your prejudices, perhaps.’
‘Hu-hu, probably.’ Blanche made a tiny assenting noise. ‘It seems to be how we work.’
‘Right!’ Liz agreed nevertheless taking the heavy bag of ammunition clips from her mother.
‘The main reason is I want to go to Ipoh and KL and mobilise the police and the military to help locate your father.’
‘Of course.’ Liz felt a little humbled and suddenly selfish in her wish to remain. ‘Another thing,’ she said, making amends, ‘while we’re driving through the villages we could ask when he passed through. Someone might remember.’
Sturgess helped stow the guns and ammunition. ‘Unfortunately I won’t have time to stop today,’ he reminded her.
‘I think we should buy a vehicle,’ Liz suggested. ‘Give us that bit more independence. I’ll need my own vehicle soon anyway. Then, when we drive back to Rinsey, we could make enquiries.’
‘I should leave such things to the professionals,’ Sturgess said, taking the last bag from her hands, ‘and it’s not a good time to begin driving around on your own.’
‘From what you say, “the professionals” already have enough on their hands,’ she snapped back and moved quickly past him into the jeep. ‘You have nothing good to say, do you?’
‘There is nothing good to say about this place at the moment.’ He started up and set off at some speed. She glared at his dour reflection in the rear-view mirror, and he glanced up. She lifted her chin in an abrupt challenge, which distracted his attention, and the vehicle lurched in and out of a deep water-filled pothole.
Sturgess swore silently. He must just drive like hell if he was to make KL in time, first leaving Daddy’s girl, as he had come to think of her, to George — perhaps he could talk sense into her. Getting them back to Singapore would be the best option. He thought of the two women as the equivalent of all reckless amateurs who climb mountains or lower themselves down potholes, so that good men have to risk their lives bringing them back to safety.
‘God! I shall be glad to stop rocketing around.’ Blanche braced her feet against the Jeep’s floor as once again Sturgess swept around the great outcrop of dripping fern-covered rock from the plantation service road to the wider thoroughfare.
‘Makes me wonder if we’ll ever catch up with each other,’ Liz complained, ‘if no one ever stays in one place.’
‘Josef is there. He’ll contact us if your father returns.’
‘What do you think George Harfield can do to help us make Rinsey secure?’ Liz raised her voice, feeling that Sturgess should not be allowed just to sit there and drive. It was mostly because of his total refusal to back her belief in Josef’s abilities to defend them that they were on the move again.
‘Barbed wire, I should think, lots of it — lights on tall poles all round the property.’
‘Like a prison camp’?’
‘You either have to create a secure zone, or move to one.’
‘We’re not being frightened out! I was brought up here. I know the people and how they think and work. We are not helpless women!’ she retorted.
‘I’ve never thought of women as helpless.’ His reply was so even in its flatness of tone, it was as if what he did think was far worse. It took her some moments to absorb the full implications and then it was too late to reply. She reflected, to the tune of a popular song, that it was not what he said but the way that he said it.
They fell into silence then as Sturgess drove back towards Bukit Kinta. The wider road was dry, exposed to the full sun, and they raised a cloud of red dust as they sped along.
Liz wondered if her father had gone to track down his missing tappers and been waylaid — ambushed somewhere. She became more and more concerned as she took note of the junctions where tracks led to nearby kampongs and others followed water pipes into jungle reservoirs — so many byways.
The jungle was a place of sunshine and shadows at the fringes but of wet, dripping dusk in its depths. It lent itself to lengthy games of hide and seek, as well as to sudden attack. The swift cruel strike, the step back into the jungle, as quick to do as tell. She didn’t need Sturgess continually spelling it out.
Grim thoughts of what could be so readily secreted in the depths were impinged upon by the sight of neat rows of pineapples growing by the side of the road, the first she had seen since she had been back. The Malay farmer was harvesting one lot of fruit and at the same time slicing off the top of the pineapple and planting this for his next crop.
There was a familiarity about this procedure, even about this section of road. She was suddenly more attentive, holding her breath as they passed a village shop where herbs and spices were the speciality. A cacao tree grew at the far side of the shop and nutmeg trees at the back — she couldn’t see any of that, but she remembered!
‘Stop!’ she shouted. As Sturgess jammed on the brakes, she added, ‘I mean, have we time?’
Before either of the others could take her to task for the alarm, she babbled on about this being the kampong her amah came from. ‘I’ve been visiting here with her many times. She used to bring me on the bus. We waited by the rock. You remember, Mother! She might be here, might know something. She would have been to see Daddy since he was back. Sure to have.’
‘Have you time?’ Blanche consulted Sturgess but Liz was out of the vehicle.
‘No! I haven’t.’
‘Just ten minutes.’ The girl was already some paces away from the vehicle.
What should he do? Drag her back? She deserved to be left.
‘Anna was always a mine of local information,’ Blanche said. ‘Never seemed to miss anything. She would certainly know if Neville had been through here.’
‘It really will have to be only minutes.’ His tone was weary and grudging but Liz was too eager to have the chance to visit her old amah’s home to care.
‘Ten minutes,’ she promised.
‘And I’m counting,’ he said.
‘I’m coming,’ Blanche called after her as she hurried towards the centre of the village.
Built on stilts, the bamboo-framed houses thatched with woven attap, the plaited leaves of the nipa palm, had many tins and bicycles stored underneath, many hens and ducks scavenging all around and brilliant clay pots of flowers, mostly orchids and herbs. Dogs came to bark, but lethargically, for she was not afraid and no one encouraged them. There were no children, no old people, no wives sweeping and tidying their precincts. The realisation made her stumble mid-stride. This was quite wrong. Stopping to look around, she saw a boy being pulled back from the verandah of a house and a door being discreetly closed.
She stood in the middle of the village, isolated by — what? Suspicion? Fear? Her memories were that should any visitor set foot in a kampong, everyone came to see, children first, then the elderly, all to stare and wonder. One smile and the visitor would be surrounded by young smiling faces and ever hopeful hands.
There were covert movements and the sense of being observed was overwhelming but as she turned around and back it was as if the very houses held their bamboos rigid until her glance passed them by. ‘What’s the time, Mr Wolf?’ she muttered and walked on.
Eight years ago her amah’s parental home had been away to the left. She knew she would remember it, for she had always felt vaguely uneasy about the two great flowerpots like sentries
either side of the front steps, each one lacquered green and shaped like two great turtles embracing each other in a most difficult-looking manner. They were still there.
She paused at the bottom of the verandah steps, as she had been taught to do, and called in that gentle voice her amah had taught her was polite, ‘Anna! Ann Leo! Please, are you there? There are visitors for you.’
There was a soft movement at the top of the steps and an elderly, plump Malay stood in a dark maroon sarong at the half-opened door. The dark eyes recognised, a hand covered her mouth and she stepped back inside, the door swinging closed.
‘What is the matter?’ Blanche asked as she came up to her daughter.
‘Let me go to her,’ Liz said. ‘She may talk to me.’
‘Yes, go on, learn as much as you can.’
With sudden insight, Liz knew that she and her mother were on the edge of devastating events. She hoped it was not their future that had been mirrored in her old amah’s startled face.
‘Anna, dear?’ she called again from the door, but the only sound that came was a soft keening. ‘Please. It’s Elizabeth Hammond. May I come to you?’
Her old amah sat on a small basket chair, her head bent and her upper body rocking. As Liz came nearer, her head went even lower over her knees, but she stretched out her arms, her hands opened wide, like someone making a dramatic and frantic appeal.
‘Anna, dear Anna!’ Liz knelt in front of her, tears springing to her eyes. ‘Anna, I do love you. I’m so pleased to find you.’
The rocking increased almost to a frenzy and still the woman did not look at her, but Liz could see the tears streaming down her cheeks. Liz could bear it no more. She pulled her old nurse into her arms and they rocked more slowly together.
‘Ah! Tidapah! Tidapah!’
Liz was not sure which of them spoke the old comforting word, it was certainly on her lips. Tidapah, never mind. Never mind! It had comforted many a grazed knee or bruised ego.
‘Anna, what is it? Tell me you’re at least pleased to see me.’
‘Ah!’ Anna’s hand came up and stroked her hair, their tears mingling as she kissed the girl’s cheeks with all the unrestrained smacking wet enthusiasm of old. Liz grinned at her. This she remembered as a proper kiss — unlike the dry and formal pecks her English grandparents had bestowed on her from time to time.
