by Jean Chapman
Realising that the boy had some first-hand experience of communist methods, Liz wondered if he would be able to sleep that night after hearing some of the details of life inside the communists’ camp. She felt Anna had rather overlooked him since his return from school with their foreman’s children. He had been given milk and biscuits and then more or less ignored. She caught her mother’s gaze and gave the briefest of nods in the boy’s direction.
‘Don’t you have homework to do, Datuk?’ Blanche asked. ‘You could use the desk in the study.’
‘Aaah!’ Anna exclaimed. ‘You still here!’ Datuk was despatched with some alacrity to Anna’s room. ‘You have table there!’ he was told when he tried to take up Blanche’s offer of the desk.
‘John Sturgess said he would be here shortly. That was hours ago,’ Blanche commented after Datuk had been despatched. Then she motioned towards the day-bed. Lee had fallen asleep.
‘Leave her there, I think,’ Blanche whispered. ‘Let’s adjourn to the kitchen.’
‘I thought I’d get some of Daddy’s old puttees. I can bind them round my trousers. And I might borrow some of his socks, they’re thicker than any I’ve got.’
Blanche and Anna exchanged glances as Liz went off to look for them. Blanche reflected that she had worn some of Neville’s puttees when they had gone on jungle safaris during their early days in Malaya.
‘She loves this boy,’ Anna said.
‘I’m convinced she does.’ Blanche paused, then asked, ‘So we totally believe Lee?’
Anna looked at her mem of so many years and knew exactly the comparison she was making between Lee and her brother.
‘Yes,’ she said, ‘we right believe.’
A short time later they heard a vehicle come racing to their gate. ‘The major,’ Blanche said as Liz reappeared from her room.
‘The galloping major,’ Liz echoed without enthusiasm. Blanche went to meet him and bring him straight to the kitchen so as not to wake Lee.
Regarding him with total objectivity, Liz felt he was like something out of a War Pictorial Encyclopaedia, all khaki and belts and guns and emblems of rank. Through the front door she glimpsed the army jeep with driver and rear Bren gunner, who remained in the vehicle. She thought this was a good sign: he wasn’t staying.
Although invited to sit down, he stood to listen, which he did in silence until the facts where all told and speculation began to enter the two accounts.
‘So this girl is actually Josef’s sister who’s been living at the camp? She can tell us a lot. I’d like to take her back to Ipoh.’
Liz turned as if she had not heard right.
‘For questioning. I haven’t the power of arrest.’
‘You haven’t — ’ Liz for a moment felt she might just be physically sick. ‘You haven’t the power of arrest! What are you talking about? You haven’t the power of anything in this house! Lee will help you when we’ve come back.’
‘Come back?’
Liz watched incredulously as now he sat down, as if he considered the difficult part over. He placed his cap upside down on the table; somehow the gesture seemed to requisition the whole place and make it his office. ‘Come, back,’ he asked again, tone steely, ‘from where?’
‘Lee has come to take me to Alan.’ She repeated the information with emphasis. ‘He’s sick in a Sakai kampong, and the jungle people think it might help bring him out of a coma if someone of his own goes to him, talks to him.’
‘Yes, yes, I know all this. Your mother told me first on the telephone. I have arranged for a special unit with a doctor to come here tomorrow, then we’ll leave the next day.’
‘I’m leaving tomorrow with Lee.’
Sturgess shook his head. ‘Neither of you young ladies is going anywhere. We’ve had an ambush today on the main Taiping-Selama road north of Ipoh. We nearly lost a high-ranking civil servant; his wife and daughter were killed. The whole state is on high alert and there is a dawn-to-dusk curfew. Inspector Aba is convinced the communists we ousted from their camp are regrouping and are hellbent on revenge.’
‘High alert for a civil servant you nearly lost and bad luck about his wife and daughter.’ The sarcasm fairly dripped from her tone. ‘But nothing, nothing done for weeks for the soldier you did lose! And left behind!’
‘Liz, please.’ Her mother’s intervention was so mild it was a mere formality.
Sturgess looked fixedly across at the girl. Was she accusing him of neglect? He refused to try to explain to a non-combatant woman the heat of action or the search for his man afterwards. He noted she had called him Alan.
‘He is, of course, under my command,’ he said. The lack of weight on any particular word made it the message of an absolute authoritarian.
She was appalled. ‘Even though you have no idea where he is? What condition he’s in? You still feel he’s under your orders!’
‘When we have a witness such as your manager’s daughter who has lived with the communists and has travelled with a friendly Sakai, I count that as knowing where he is.’
‘But I don’t count it as doing your best for him. You will be holding things up — collecting a unit tomorrow, travelling the day after … ’
‘When we do go we’ll go quicker than two women.’ His voice came lower, with more weight, his lips barely parting now as he answered.
‘Two women and a Sakai.’
‘No.’ He shook his head most positively. ‘I can if necessary get Inspector Aba to put Lee under protective custody.’
Blanche glanced at her daughter and hoped she had sense enough to back down at this point, or they would have all kinds of extra official complications to deal with.
‘Lee is exhausted and I would much prefer her left in peace here with me,’ she intervened as her daughter seemed about to lose herself verbally at the major’s throat. ‘Surely you would trust me to look after her and she could be interviewed here? In fact, I don’t mind making a formal request to the civil authorities to allow this. I know Inspector Aba well.’
Sturgess blinked rapidly as if refocusing on the double attack on his authority.
‘After all, she and her mother have been kept prisoner. They were not in a jungle camp willingly. You have no evidence to refute that!’ Blanche challenged.
‘No, that is true,’ he admitted stiffly.
‘So why mention custody?’ Liz asked.
‘Protective custody was what I said, and what I meant.’ Liz felt he almost added ‘young woman,’ for he turned abruptly to her mother and spoke as if only to her, the senior generation.
‘What we do have,’ he went on, ‘is evidence that her brother has promised this girl to Heng Hou in return for his life. We know that “girlfriends” were kidnapped and taken in blindfold to this camp. The officers had their pick, but Josef was careful always to keep his sister clear of all this, though Heng Hou was always interested in her. The man used his sister as a kind of insurance against bad times. Those times have come and he has to pay up. Josef Guisan is hunting his sister to save his own skin.’
‘One of the guards thought they saw a big man outside the compound today,’ Liz intervened, ‘but it was before Lee arrived.’
‘It would be Josef.’ Lee had come unobserved and stood listening in the doorway. ‘He said he would give me to Heng Hou.’
She shuddered and staggered. Sturgess was by her side and supporting her to a chair. ‘He is terrible man,’ she looked up to tell him. Heng Hou and Josef have much food, many girls at their camp, but I hear other men say in other places communists starving. Young men with good intentions to make everyone equal, Heng Hou not interested in them.’
Sturgess patted her clumsily on the shoulder. ‘We know this m’dear. What I need from you is immediate information about people you have seen in this camp, what you know about their organisation. This is so important — ’
‘I give now,’ she said immediately, ‘before I think about Heng Hou too much.’
Liz wanted to be with her
but Sturgess insisted it would be better if he questioned her alone.
‘Then you work in Father’s study with the door open,’ Liz heard herself say.
Blanche turned away for a second to keep a straight face at so serious a time, for the major huffed and puffed for a few seconds like the proverbial Colonel Blimp, quite unable to believe his ears.
‘Lee would only have to call if she needed anyone or anything,’ Blanche reminded her daughter. She pulled Liz’s hand through her arm and stood shoulder to shoulder with her, facing the momentarily speechless officer.
Lee too came forward to reassure. ‘I’m quite rested, don’t worry.’
‘I’ll show you the way.’ Blanche passed her daughter’s hand into that of her amah.
Liz stood trembling as the three left the kitchen. Turning to Anna, she was shocked to see her hand over her mouth, her eyes creased above. ‘You’re laughing!’ Liz accused.
Anna shook her head in denial but kept her hand in place until she saw the anguish in her girl’s eyes. The laughter at the major’s discomfort vanished. ‘What you do? What you thinking?’ she asked suspiciously.
‘I’m thinking women are just helpless,’ Liz said darkly. Anna wagged a finger at her and said crossly, ‘I know you not thinking that!’
Blanche came back shortly. ‘He wants Lee to go to Ipoh tomorrow. The police have rounded up quite a few men who’ve materialised in the kampongs who they suspect are not locals, but the villagers are too frightened to identify them. He feels Lee may have seen some of them at the camp.’
Liz did not answer immediately. Her fears were quite different. She dreaded that the waiting Sakai might be frightened away; she fretted at the thought of delay. She remembered what Lee had said about Alan’s condition. Images of him kept coming back to her — as he had been and as he might be now. That was most heart-rending of all and she tried to repress it with many journeys in and out of the hall, past the study door, where the voices went on and on.
‘Lee will be exhausted again,’ she complained as she reached the kitchen once more.
‘As you will be,’ her mother said dryly. ‘Sit down.’ Her words were unheard as Liz again paced from kitchen to hall to bedroom.
At last they emerged. Lee looked pale, mentally bruised, Liz thought. As soon as she could she took her friend away to her bedroom, leaving Sturgess to explain that he was going to Bukit Kinta from Rinsey to interview more people there. She heard the rise in pitch of her mother’s voice as she related their experiences with the girl and the new manager.
She closed her bedroom door. ‘Lee?’ The one word held all the questions about what they were to do and whether Lee felt strong enough to take any more.
The girl look up, smiled ruefully and held her hands out in front of her, palms down. They shook uncontrollably. ‘That is talking about Heng Hou ... ’ she said.
‘And Josef is out there, too,’ Liz said, feeling she must remind her of all the hazards before she should decide.
‘I know.’
‘But Major Sturgess will be at Bukit Kinta.’
‘And I see you! What you do.’ Lee nodded knowingly. ‘Brandy and medicines in father’s old rucksack. And we have Sardin waiting for us.’
‘Oh, Lee!’ Liz knelt. ‘My best frister!’
They both gasped and embraced each other as the name they had invented as children for how they felt about each other, half friend, half sister, leaped from memory.
‘I’ll defend you with my life,’ Liz promised solemnly. ‘I’ve got a revolver for each of us and a rifle as well.’
They stared into each other’s eyes. ‘Whatever the outcome, Lee, I’ll never forget this, never.’
‘And what are you two plotting?’ Blanche asked, standing in the doorway. As neither replied, she shook her head, adding, ‘Come on, dinner! Let’s get a proper meal inside this child.’
Blanche was strangely quiet, they thought, through dinner and she pushed them all off to bed early, going to her own room soon after darkness had fallen. The fact that Liz made no comment, no enquiry, added to the little she had overhead, confirmed Blanche’s anxieties.
She spent a wakeful night and before dawn heard the two girls depart. She went to the kitchen door and listened as they made their way to the escape tunnel. In her mind she followed them to their meeting place with the Sakai at the rock. After that it was all guesswork, and heart-tearing anxiety.
Had she done the right thing, letting them go? Sturgess would be furious, but she was fast coming to the conclusion that in this campaign rules were for fools. Her brain said no, but her heart said yes, Liz had to go; she had seen it in the girl’s eyes.
Chapter Twenty
‘So where is the girl?’ Heng Hou’s voice was low and threatening, his temper shortened by exposure to a rainstorm which had all the blinding ferocity of the beginning of the annual monsoon. The daily ration of hill thunder and lightning had been increasing and Heng Hou, used to his creature comforts, was on edge.
Josef stood with his hands half raised in a pacifying gesture as Heng Hou’s bodyguards kept him covered. ‘I thought she’d make for Rinsey, but the journey was bad from the camp. She would never have made it, Heng Hou, the river was already too swollen and there was her mother — she would not have left her mother.’ At the back of his mind he momentarily remembered she was his mother, too — but this was serious trouble he was in.
He had seen that malcontented look on the communist leader’s face many times before he maimed or injured someone Malay, English, Chinese, Tamil — anyone who crossed him or even merely glanced his way at the wrong moment.
‘She must have gone to the Hammonds’ friends, the Wildons, they have the Kose estate. Yes! I should have thought of that before, it would be an easier journey,’ he gabbled on, desperate not to leave pause for any decision until he had presented a new course of action. ‘They may have been able to follow one of our routes out to the road near their estate. The main communication tracks … ’
Heng Hou narrowed his eyes, not listening any more, playing with the idea of just shooting the man there and then. He was in no mood for more amusing but time-consuming ways of despatching a man. On the other hand he was not quite sure whether he had wrung every last advantage out of this Eurasian. Certainly he had provided much in the way of arms and ammunition — until the planter Hammond had returned. Then they had lost a consignment from Rinsey and their store in the Malayan house Josef had sworn was safe. He growled gently to himself, musing whether to let the man live or die.
‘If they are at the Wildons’ bungalow, I know it well and they have many arms there, machine guns. This I do know.’
Heng Hou grunted, speculated. He needed guns; then he might kill this man.
Josef’s heart gave a thump of hope. ‘The girl and guns … ’ He repeated the prizes slowly.
‘Your sister?’ the terrorist queried. It amused him to see what this man would sacrifice for his skin.
Josef nodded energetically. ‘I know the layout of the plantation and the bungalow almost as well as I know Rinsey.’
Heng Hou grunted again and nodded his agreement to this last offer.
Josef turned to lead the way, lifting his head for a moment to allow the rain to flood over his face. Reprieved! Time brought opportunity.
*
The moment Aubrey set off for his morning rounds at Kose was always a moment of anxiety, and each morning Joan held him in her arms with a gentle, sad passion, so unlike their embraces at any other time, so unlike a husband going off to routine daily work.
In that final quiet embrace was the fear each had for the other: fear that Aubrey might be attacked on his inspection of the plantation and his tappers; fear that the bungalow might be attacked while he was away. They had made a rule never to agonise about risks; they parted with a smile and the mutually spoken slogan, ‘Chin up!’
Joan as always watched him go off in the car they called ‘the warrior’ since armour-plating it with sheets cut fr
om the Japanese tank still stuck in their riverbed.
Before setting about the morning’s chores she decided to ring Blanche to see how the Hammonds were, Liz in particular. That they should both have lost their chaps seemed particularly galling. Liz, of course, would find someone else. She might come round to that major yet? Joan had serious doubts whether either Blanche or her daughter would stay at Rinsey in the long term. She listened as the telephone rang out, then her friend answered.
She knew immediately something had happened by Blanche’s voice. ‘Don’t think I should talk on the telephone. Can you and Aubrey come over later? I’ve done something ... ’ She paused, seeking the right description. ‘Something pretty indiscreet.’
‘Didn’t know you knew the meaning of the word, darling.’ She waited for Blanche to laugh, but the empty quality of the silence on the other end of the line made her add quickly, ‘The second he’s back from his rounds, darling.’
Blanche hesitated. ‘I suppose there’s no particular hurry ... now. I’ll make us all lunch.’
Joan left the phone thoughtful. No hurry now, about what? To be there for lunch would be a rush, Aubrey wouldn’t get his lunchtime gin sling. And she remembered she had not, after all, enquired about Liz.
She wandered to the front door again as if she had some chance of catching Aubrey before he left, though she knew that by now he would be heading for the far reaches of the plantation, then gradually working his way back to the bungalow.
The area around the Kose bungalow fell away and was planted with small new rubber trees. Aubrey said the troubles should be well over before the trees grew much taller. The recently cleared ground certainly made the bungalow easier to defend.
Silly to worry or speculate, no useful purpose in it, she told herself. Chin up and get busy. She decided to make one of those Dundee cakes Blanche and Liz were so fond of. If she started straight away it should be cool enough to pack by the time Aubrey came back, but she still stood thinking what a curious note Blanche’s voice had held, depression underlaid with a kind of excitement. ‘Most intriguing, darling.’
