by Jean Chapman
They were as Liz remembered them, both tall, elegant, beautiful people with an air of deceptive languidity, for they threw themselves into the role of comforters with the same forthrightness as they damned all communists and swore they would never be ousted from their plantation.
John Sturgess and George Harfield had worked together to erase the painful hours along, to think ahead of all the arrangements and formalities. George had seen that everything had been done with the police and the authorities to enable the burial to take place at Rinsey. John Sturgess had secured the services of the military padre, six guardsmen, a trumpeter and extra men to guard the surrounding area.
Liz must have looked overwhelmed and appalled by the idea, for he explained with quiet certainty that it was necessary after an attack on an army burial at Cheras cemetery. Communists had targeted the ceremony from hills surrounding Kuala Lumpur and the firing party had been forced to take cover in the open grave.
As if her mind must re-establish every painful thought, she now remembered her sketch of Alan Cresswell and how she had imagined his pose right for a memorial. God! No! She shook her head wildly, censoring the thought. Joan Wildon caught and squeezed her elbow, but Liz’s concern was to find Alan in the line of guardsmen, to reassure herself of his presence.
He stood at the far end, tallest at the extremes, smallest in the middle, in true Guards fashion. Although he was, she had come to realise, no more military and warlike than her father had been. Perhaps only she could acknowledge that his help had been more telling than anyone else’s.
He had finally expressed the sentiment that decided where her father’s grave should be. Blanche had wondered about the top of the falls, but that was linked in their minds with the hidden jeep. Alan had said to Liz that wherever they decided, the place under the tree would always be of such awful significance that it would be better to allow a proper burial in the same place. ‘A kind of exorcism. That’s how I would feel, anyway,’ he had said to her.
‘I do have many good memories of my father under that tree.’ He had taken her hand and held it very tight, helping her through the idea like a kindly doctor with a difficult prognosis to make.
‘A right act to purge a wrong,’ Blanche had replied when Liz had tentatively conveyed the suggestion, instinct making her keep the source of the idea to herself. Since the arrival of John Sturgess it seemed to Liz that her mother had made a subtle relegation of George Harfield and certainly of the young conscript billeted with them.
Under the expert guidance of a tree specialist George had contacted, the big tree had been pruned of its dead leaves and some of its top branches to give it a better shape and a chance of swift re-establishment. Liz had felt an illogical, smouldering resentment as the tree had been tidied; people couldn’t be pruned and given a second chance when they had been shot in the back — with the rifle found under the body.
She had been both surprised and resentful when four of their senior tappers had materialised the day before the funeral and offered sympathy and expressions of loyalty to all the Hammond family. ‘Where have they been until now? Why weren’t they here with — ’ Joan had caught her arm before she could rush out to join her mother at the front of the bungalow.
‘These Malays might be useful to the police — they certainly should be encouraged to stay.’
‘If only to tell us why they feel it’s safe to come back now,’ her husband agreed. ‘They obviously know a damn sight more than we do.’
Her mother had lit a fresh cigarette and fired one swift question after she had received their murmured condolences: ‘Have you seen Josef Guisan?’
The question had stilled their fidgetings with their round coolie hats, but the only answer had been a minimal shaking of one head, which, when observed, was repeated with growing conviction by the others.
As a signal from the padre these same four Malays stepped forward on either side of the grave, taking the strain of the hessian straps. Liz concentrated on the figures rather than the lowering box and suddenly realised she actually knew one of the men. His face was thinner now so his ears seemed larger and more protruding, but he it had been who had taught her how to hold a tapping knife — and tears were running steadily down his cheeks.
Who had done this to them all? Who had forced them into these acts and roles they did not want to play? She could see Anna’s head bent low again now, she could feel her mother trembling by her side. She again watched the falling tears on the Malay’s face and was suddenly very angry as the straining figures took the weight, paying the strap out through their careful fingers inch by inch, lowering her father’s body down into the earth. Joan and Aubrey were right, of course, these men must stay long enough to be questioned.
The orders came for the small firing party to bring their rifles to their shoulders and ‘Fire!’ The six shots rang in unison up and above the trees, echoing mournfully in the surrounding hills. Liz felt her heart impounded by the sorrow and the jungle seemed to listen and take stock, as if some new, sad creature had entered its domain.
Then softly came the trumpet notes to mark the end for all who die untimely deaths. The grouping tiers of notes, the climbing sweetness of life’s round told and retold, completed by that long last lingering note that at once questioned eternity and expressed human hope.
As ‘The Last Post’ ended she felt her mother sway by her side, and immediately she and Joan tightened their hold, a thin line of women firm until the last echo died.
Alan, his gaze slightly off front, saw and willed them strength. The spine-jarring stamp to attention as an order rang out was as automatic as a bird responding to the tropical thermals, but his heart and mind were with the women of the Hammond family. They were becoming more important in his life with every day of his posting at Rinsey. He admired the one and loved the other. He’d heard of love at first sight, had felt immediate longings for various girls, but this he knew was different. In his mind the admission brought scoffing and laughter from his peers, but he mentally fended them off, silenced them.
He knew this was a new emotion because it hurt more, he cared more about her glance than he did about the opportunity of taking half a dozen other girls to bed, or the wrath of a dozen Major Sturgesses or his ilk. He wanted to protect her, lift this awful burden of grief from her, cherish her. He saw her in the sparkling novel magic of the jungle waterfalls and yet it was difficult to believe he had not always known her — certainly he knew he had always been waiting for her. From the Midland village where his father had been a small-time builder and undertaker, to the depths of the tropics he felt he had been chosen to come to find her.
He thought of his father and how he had prepared for village funerals, the coffin shaped, planed and sanded in the woodwork shop in the far corner of the builder’s yard. The brass furniture was selected from large drawers in the work-bench according to size and price and screwed into place, the name plate last. Then his father would lean on the finished box, running his hand along it, nodding, satisfied with the craftsmanship and giving a minute to the occupant-to-be. It was like a dedication, Alan thought, looking back. There’d be a summing-up of what his father knew about the deceased, then, after a decent pause, always the same words, ‘Ah, well! No use burdening the rest of the day with it. Life goes on.’
Perhaps he would be able to say something of that to Liz — no use burdening the rest of your life with it. Love goes on. Love goes on even when life does not, he thought, and felt a twist of pain as he experienced a keen wish that his father might have made his own coffin before he died. Instead, a stranger’s hand had been destined to fashion the wood for Edgar Cresswell’s earthly remains.
His eyes hurt with the effort of looking so far sideways at the family party and he allowed his gaze to centre as he decided he did believe in destiny — he certainly believed in love.
He was glad for everyone when the ceremony was over and they could leave the graveside. He admired the way Mrs Hammond turned with great dignity and
invited the four Malays who had lowered the coffin to join them at the bungalow. Blanche Hammond was like her friends Mr and Mrs Wildon, elegant and classy, confident that she knew her place and, he thought ironically, just as surely they thought they knew everyone else’s.
There was some delay as, at a word from Liz, the Malays looked around as if to ask someone else to join them, but then turned back to each other with a few hasty words and shaking heads. Then a formal procession moved away. Liz and her mother went first with the Wildons next, their height making George Harfield, who followed, look more square and bulldoggish than ever. Major John Sturgess walked by Harfield’s side, of the same ilk as the Wildons but a bitter man, Alan judged, one with a chip on his shoulder and who had certainly taken a personal dislike to him, of that he was sure. Then came the precise police inspector from Ipoh, two of his men and the army chaplain.
Li Kim, the cook from Bukit Kinta, had been put in charge of the meal laid on inside. The guardsmen had been catered for in the shack at the back where Alan had set up his radio. There were generous plates of sandwiches and Tiger beer. They piled in, pulling off their caps, propping rifles by the walls. He was pleased to be part of the chatting mess-room atmosphere they soon created, boys noisy to conceal emotions, and he knew they were sufficiently removed from the bungalow for their gossip and laughter not to be offensive.
Most of these men were eighteen, three years younger than Alan, and most of them he had sailed across with in the Empire Signal. One young man with light-red hair and a pale, freckled face had turned out to be from a neighbouring village and the two had spent much time together on the voyage reminiscing about people and places they both knew. Dan Veasey greeted him now in the melee of youths reaching for bottles of beer to replace some of the fluid they constantly sweated away.
The pair shook hands and slapped each other on the back. Dan was some eight inches shorter and Alan always told him they had added in the width of his toothy grin to make up the height requirement for the Guards regiment. It was wide enough now. ‘Ah, it’s great to see you! How y’doing, boy?’
‘Told him about the present we’ve brought him?’ a dark youth wanted to know. He was cynically nicknamed Babyface because of his acne-scarred cheeks.
‘What’s this, then?’
‘More to the point, have you told him we’ve all come to stay?’
‘Come on,’ Alan demanded, ‘what’s it all about?’
‘No, fetch him his present first,’ Babyface said.
A lot of ragging ensued, though it didn’t interfere with the rapid consumption of sandwiches and beer. Alan had a growing feeling of unease that whatever was coming would bring the idea of his prolonged stay within reach of Elizabeth Hammond rapidly to an end.
He groaned aloud and it was no hardship to make a big show of putting his head in his hands as he was presented with a model-33 radio set — the portable kind, the kind carried through the jungle on operations.
‘OK, so when do we go?’
Now the laughter at his expense settled to speculation and apprehension, then to serious consideration about their own temporary quarters. One or two went off to investigate the other nearby workers’ huts pending the arrival of another lorry which was following after dark with their kit.
‘I think the major’s used the funeral as an excuse to get us up here ready to go in. He hopes the CTs will think we’re all going back straight back to KL — the lorries will, of course, with a couple of men stuck in the back to make ‘em think we’ve scarpered. He’s cute, that Major Sturgess.’
Cute, Alan decided, was not exactly the word he would have used.
‘Don’t take much to be cuter than some of ‘em who’re supposed to be on our side. Heard about the thousand machine guns and the one ammunition clip?’ Dan asked.
This sounded like some stupid music-hall gag, and it took the teller some time to convince the group that it was true, that there was a nearby police section with a thousand guns and no clips to load the ammunition, which made the arms quite useless.
‘If you don’t believe me, ask that chap Harfield from Bukit Kinta. He’s going to try to make some clips in his workshops. I heard them talking.’
‘Nothing surprises me about this bloody place,’ a morose voice put it. ‘Your bloody toes rot off, leeches eat you alive, if malaria doesn’t get you prickly heat does.’
‘Keep taking the salt tablets, the “Paludrine” and using the blue unction,’ another advised.
The soldiers’ slang for the gentian violet so liberally painted on, rashes and bacterial infections brought howls of protest.
‘Yeah. Being so cheerful as keeps you going, ain’t it, Babyface?’
Alan was pleased to volunteer to relieve one of the outer guards left to protect the men filling in and tidying the grave; it gave him time to try to come to terms with the new situation. He walked the long way around the completed perimeter wire at the front of the bungalow and took the place of the man patrolling the side, which gave him a view of the back door as well as sight of people leaving the front and going to their vehicles.
He stood listening to the jungle, aware of anyone who approached that way, but watching the bungalow. He could hear the hum of conversation and see people passing to and fro across the open windows. He could gauge the moment when people were leaving by the pause, then the chorus of voices as some of the guests said goodbye. He saw the four Malays come out, accompanied by the inspector of police and his men. They all drove away in police jeeps.
The Wildons were the next to leave and he heard the woman raise her voice on the front porch to say, ‘They usually attack about dusk — must be back at my post, don’t want anyone else messing about with my machine gun — but we’ll be back for tiffin tomorrow.’
Alan raised his eyebrows. In a country where attacks and outrages were almost hourly and where petrol was at a premium, the Wildons could be besieged at night and come forty miles for tiffin the next day! He put a finger to his cap and gave them due acknowledgement.
The bungalow was quieter and soon it would be time for him to be relieved to make his network call. Liz had come twice to his shack at this time. He had felt the very second she had arrived, but had not immediately turned, the first time because he had not believed his intuition and the second because that secret moment of awareness had felt like holding and savouring a wonderful present he still had to unwrap.
He wondered if such a visit could be ever repeated with his mates billeting themselves in the nearby huts. Would he return to Rinsey after the jungle sortie? He had been twice into the deep jungle and each time the relief to be out of the claustrophobic trees with their canopy of leaves and strange plants that rooted and grew in the dense living ceiling had been like the lifting of a death sentence.
His attention was drawn back to the bungalow by the noise of the back door being opened. His heart leaped as a woman’s figure appeared, but it was Blanche Hammond. For a moment she stood erect, alone, looking towards the newly closed grave which had been left covered with the green baize weighted by neatly cut slabs of granite which would form the kerb of the final surround.
He thought for a moment that she was going to walk out but suddenly she sat down in the middle of the back steps, just sat, and he started towards her. His mother had done precisely this in the middle of the village — just sat down on the newsagent’s step. The niceties of decent behaviour, the concerned and outraged sensibilities of passers-by, the gossips of the community, had not mattered to her any more.
He reached Blanche Hammond as the door opened again and George Harfield came out. The older man knelt immediately by her. ‘What’s this now?’ he asked carefully, then, looking up at Alan, said, ‘Get her daughter, will you.’
Alan started through the door but met John Sturgess at the entrance to the hall.
‘What’s this, Cresswell?’
‘Liz, sir, her mother — ’
‘Miss Hammond, sir! Who the hell do you think you are?’
>
Alan looked the man straight in the eye. ‘I know who I am, sir. Miss Hammond is wanted outside. Mr Harfield asked me to fetch her.’
‘You on guard, are you?’ he growled, glancing at his rifle.
‘Sir,’ he confirmed.
‘Righto. I’d suggest back to your post double quick. I also suggest you keep yourself — ’ He stopped as if what he had been about to say he himself felt was too extreme, and ended, ‘to yourself. I’ll tell Miss Hammond.’
Alan left the kitchen and walked back down the steps where George Harfield was trying to persuade Blanche to her feet, talking to her quietly in a slow continuous stream as if bathing her with kind words. ‘Come on, my love,’ he was saying gently. ‘I had you down for at least a front-doorstep sitter, not a back.’
George Harfield had better watch out, he thought, or Major Sturgess would be telling him to keep himself ... to himself.
But the remark broke the woman’s isolation. A noise, half laugh, half sob, escaped Blanche Hammond and then she began to cry with such bitterness Alan felt it must be true that hearts could be broken. He watched as Liz came down the steps and gathered her mother into her arms. Soon she and George were able to persuade her to her feet and they took her back inside.
He felt heartsick for them all, for himself too.
*
Liz felt completely enervated, though unable to rest, and wandered away from the lounge where George and John were still talking quietly to her mother. She knew her restlessness was partly because she had overheard the exchange between the major and the guardsman and partly because she knew precisely where Alan would be and what he would be doing at that particular moment.
Without further thought she left the bungalow and went quietly along the path to his hut, wondering how many more times she might do this. So far there had been no discussion about going or staying. Her mother had fleetingly mentioned Wendy once but had stopped mid-sentence.
