by JH Fletcher
An hour later, two hours, who could say, she fell again.
She got up, more wearily this time, struggled on.
A mile further, the path exceptionally steep at this point, the muddy surface like glass, her remaining strength died. She lost her grip on the root she was using to haul herself up, she tumbled to the bottom of the slope, lay with tears of exhaustion and despair streaking her face.
Ba Gyaw, the youth whom Richard had sent first into the village they now remembered as the place of the dead, was by her in an instant, helping her up. He steadied her as she swayed, leaning against him, dragging the moist forest air into her labouring lungs.
When she was strong enough to go on, Ba Gyaw helped her up the slope and walked beside her, hand beneath her arm.
‘I can manage.’ More than anything else, dreaded being a burden, knowing that her weakness might cause the death of them all. Saw that Richard, whose responsibility was first and foremost to his men, knew it, too.
‘Don’t wait for me,’ she told him. ‘I’ll rest a bit, come on in a little while.’
‘Ba Gyaw will stay with you,’ he said. ‘We’ll push on up the trail and make camp. Join us when you can.’
She had suggested it yet, watching the party disappear into the darkness of the forest, Ruth found herself bitterly resentful. Of herself for being weak. Of the others for abandoning her. Of the interminable struggle that was destroying them all.
She sat for a while, head hanging between her knees, then looked up to find Ba Gyaw watching her. Somehow she managed a smile. ‘This is a mess.’
He was slim and golden, with almond-shaped eyes and long black hair dressed on top of his head. He looked wild and exotic, even dangerous, then he smiled back and she saw that he, too, was just a boy.
He said something to her in dialect and she shook her head.
‘I ask if you are well,’ he said then.
He spoke the English words in a strange, sibilated way but if she listened carefully she could understand him well enough.
‘I am better,’ she answered. So she was, better for having even that amount of communication with another human. It was an astonishing relief and she felt stronger because of it. ‘Maybe we should go on?’
Again his arm supported her.
‘There’s no need for that.’
He might not have understood the words but the sense he understood. ‘The thakin say help. I help.’
They caught up with the main party just before darkness, so quick to come in the forest, descended on them.
They smelt them before they saw them.
‘What is that smell?’ Ruth wondered. Saw that Ba Gyaw, too, was sniffing the air, nostrils distended.
They stared at each other, eyes widening.
‘It can’t be …’ Ruth said uncertainly. But began to move more purposefully, staggering forward, saliva a dense rope of longing in her mouth.
The smell grew stronger.
‘It can’t be …’
It was.
A fire. The dark shadows of men bending over the orange coals. On the fire …
Ruth reached them. Swaying, feverish-eyed, she stared at the fish cooking over the flame. It wasn’t much of a fish. In the old days she might have turned up her nose at it. Now she stared with wonder, as at the second coming of Christ, and her eyes were full of tears.
Richard found her.
‘Where did you get it?’ she asked. Her eyes did not leave the fish.
‘There’s another pool through the trees. We caught them there.’
‘Them?’
‘There are three more. Plenty for everyone.’
‘How did you catch them?’
‘Hand grenade. You chuck it in the water. The concussion stuns the fish. They float to the surface. You grab them.’
‘You didn’t do it at the other pool.’
‘I was afraid the Chinese might hear.’
Around them the whole party, even Ba Chit, was laughing. It was a glorious moment. Life might not be over after all.
The moment of wonder came. Richard took the fish from the fire, broke it into pieces, distributed it among them.
Ruth stood with her share of fish burning her hands. Slowly, reverently, she lifted it to her mouth. It burned that, too, but she did not care.
It was dry, bony, the skin blackened and tasting of the fire. It was glory. She forced herself to chew it, taste buds working, saliva working, her whole being open to receive the life-giving food. At last, when she could bear to wait no longer, she swallowed it. Was at once bereft. So small a taste.
Later, there was a second piece and that, too, was good but nothing could approach the ecstasy of that first bite.
They sat around the fire, watching the dying flames casting orange shadows on the trees. For the first time for days they were at peace.
‘What does thakin mean?’ Ruth asked Richard.
‘Where did you hear that?’
‘Ba Gyaw used it. He was referring to you.’
‘It’s a term of respect. Like calling someone Mister, only grander.’
‘Are you grand?’
Richard’s shirt was torn and filthy, shorts ragged, boots broken and flapping.
‘Very grand. Can’t you tell?’
She felt close to him, closer than she had been at any time since they had visited the jungle pool together. The warm feeling she might have felt for a brother, had she had one.
Derision flickered with returning strength. A brother? she asked herself. Is that how you feel about him?
It was not at all how she felt but she was glad she had not thrown herself at him by the pool, as she had been tempted to do. She might have scared him off and that she did not want. She did not know what her feelings were but knew that much, at least.
The next morning, glory added to glory, they reached the top of the range and began to work their way along the summit ridge.
THIRTEEN
The trail split, split again. They followed paths that petered out in the forest, retraced their steps, tried once more. They became hopelessly lost, followed a compass course through country wilder than any they had traversed before. For a whole day they never saw the sky, moving through a twilight world where the interlaced leaves and branches formed a continuous canopy three hundred feet above their heads and the forest trees dominated all.
They came at last to a trail that showed signs of recent use. They followed it along a ridge and came to a sunlit meadow, on the far side of which were the clustered huts of a small village. They lay in cover at the edge of the forest and watched. For a long time they saw nothing. With sinking heart Ruth had begun to think that this place, too, had been abandoned when suddenly a child ran between two huts, a woman followed, and she realised with an extraordinary lightening of her spirit that after so many days in the jungle they had returned at last to the world of men.
Though in some respects they seemed closer to animals. The villagers were dark, short, as timorous as deer, speaking a dialect that even the Karens could not understand. The bare-breasted women wore aprons of animal skins, the men loincloths of the same material. Several of the men were armed with wooden spears but showed no signs of using them. They were not in the least aggressive.
To the villagers, isolated as they were on their lonely hilltop, these strangers might have come from another planet but when they realised the newcomers meant no harm they were welcoming enough. They brought what food they had and, after it grew dark, they made a fire. By its light they danced; an intricate routine of steps and counter-steps while the flames cast stammering shadows across their naked bodies. The dissonant wail of their voices rose reed-thin into the night and their movements were punctuated by the sharp thud of a drum.
Ruth and Richard sat side by side to watch them, the Karens gathered around them. She remembered again how they had sat together after their swim in the jungle pool and was very conscious of his body beside hers.
‘Do you think they always do
this,’ she wondered, ‘or are they putting it on for our benefit?’
‘Either way we’re pretty lucky.’
Ruth thought of everything that had happened since the invasion, the bombing, the terror, the jungle ordeal that was not yet over. ‘Lucky?’
‘I bet there aren’t many Europeans who’ve seen anything like this.’
She stared at him. ‘And that makes up for all the rest?’
‘Maybe not. But it’s quite a bonus, isn’t it?’
He spoke as though none of the things that had happened to them really mattered but Ruth was too tired, too apprehensive of the future, to go along with that. ‘We still have to get out of here.’
His teeth gleamed in the firelight as he smiled. ‘We’ll manage.’
‘It’s all right for you. You’re used to it.’
‘Why do you say that?’
‘If you’ve lived in Burma all your life?’
He laughed softly. ‘I never set eyes on the place until the war started.’
‘But you speak the language.’
‘The only sensible thing the army did. They sent me on a course as soon as I got here.’
‘What did you do before the war?’
‘I was at school. Then I spent a couple of years in South Africa. I’ve got an uncle there, a geologist. He looks for diamonds. I went out to help him.’
‘Did you find any?’
‘Not many. He’s found heaps, in his time. He opened up a whole new field south of the Orange River.’
It was a continent that had always fascinated her. ‘What’s it like?’
‘Very open country. Nothing much there, really.’
‘Except diamonds.’
‘It’s a good land. Vast. Acacia trees and thornbush. For miles. This huge sky. At night the stars are the brightest things you ever saw. If you’re lucky you can hear the lions roaring. That’s something, I can tell you.’
Ruth watched the flames, the rhythmic movements of the dance, thinking how strange it must be to discover heaps of diamonds in a place where for thousands of years people had believed there was nothing.
‘It must be wonderful to see a place like that.’
‘It was.’
While the firelight played softly on their faces he went on talking about it, the herds of game, the veld hazed by heat, the vultures riding the thermals as they circled, tiny dots against a brilliant sky. And beneath the grass the blue ground, the volcanic pipe that contained the diamonds.
He made her see it all as he talked. She felt its magic and wished she, too, could go to the rolling emptiness of the African plains. ‘It sounds great.’
He gestured at the dancers, their movements punctuated by the staccato thud of the drum. ‘So’s this.’
He was right yet to Ruth it had come at too high a price. ‘You going back there after the war?’ she asked, her mind still on Africa.
He shook his head. ‘My father’s a publisher in London. He’ll expect me to join him when I get back.’
She would have thought him too wedded to adventure to settle for a desk job in London. ‘Is that what you want?’
He shrugged. ‘Isn’t that what we’re all supposed to do? Follow in father’s footsteps?’
‘Only if we want to.’
He smiled at her. ‘What about you?’
‘My dad’s a farmer,’ Ruth told him. ‘He doesn’t think farming’s a job for a woman.’
‘What does he want you to do, then?’
She laughed. ‘Marry and have lots of kids. Another farmer, for preference.’
‘And will you?’
‘We’ll see.’ She was tempted to tell him about her writing but did not. Superstition bound her tongue. Life after the war depended on too many things. Survival, for a start. Some people liked making plans, talking about what they would do when the fighting was over, but Ruth had never been one to tempt providence. ‘Let’s get the war over first, eh? Then we can start thinking about what happens next.’
‘How come you’re in Burma?’ he asked her. ‘Not many Aussies around here.’
‘The matron at the hospital in Malacca was the real reason. We didn’t hit it off so she packed me off here to get rid of me.’
He laughed softly. ‘What did you do?’
She smiled back at him. ‘This and that.’
‘I didn’t mean to pry.’ He watched the fire. ‘I’ve never been to Australia,’ he offered presently.
‘It’s a good place. As big as that place in Africa you were talking about. Maybe you should come out after the war and see if there are any diamonds there.’
‘Maybe I will.’
The dance ended. The villagers retired to the huts while the rest of them lay down around the fire.
Once again Ruth was acutely conscious of Richard at her side. He had his back to her and she wanted him to turn. She wanted … Was unsure what she wanted. No, she thought, I am sure. But did not know how to go about things.
‘What you told me about Africa …’ she said.
‘What about it?’ He did not turn but sounded as awake as she felt.
‘I liked hearing about it.’ A pause. ‘About you.’
Now he turned. His hand took hold of hers. ‘I liked telling you.’
‘Are we going to get out of here?’ she asked him.
‘Yes.’
‘I wonder.’
‘We must. We’ve unfinished business.’
Her heart thumped. ‘Have we?’
‘You understand me?’ His voice was low and serious. ‘You and I, we’ve got unfinished business.’
She didn’t want it to be unfinished, wanted to do something about it now. But with the firelight playing on them, the others lying about them, she knew that was impossible.
‘First we must get out of these hills,’ she said.
‘We shall,’ he said. ‘Trust me.’
‘I do.’ Her fingers tightened on his. ‘I do.’
Later, Ruth watched the dying flames drowsily, her mind running over what Richard had told her about diamonds and the vastness of the African veld. She would like to go there. She would like to travel the world. There was too much out there to turn her back on it. Marriage and kids could come later.
In the fire a log collapsed in an explosion of golden sparks. Overhead the quiet stars shone and the war seemed very far away. At her side Richard was asleep.
Let’s get through this lot first, she told herself sleepily. Then we’ll see.
Next morning, very early, the sound of gunfire woke them.
Within seconds everyone was scrambling to their feet, grabbing weapons, looking about them to see where the firing had come from.
Richard cursed softly as he scanned the jungle fringe. ‘I should have set sentries,’ he said. ‘But up here the war seemed so unreal —’
There was another brief burst of firing, some ragged screams, out of the trees a handful of figures came charging, firing in the air as they ran. The yellow uniforms were clearly visible. The Chinese had caught up with them again.
Richard gave a rapid order. The Karen soldiers, lying on their stomachs in a semi-circle between the huts and the advancing Chinese, cocked their rifles, took aim and fired.
Ruth expected at least some of the Chinese to fall but they did not; Richard must have told his men to fire over their heads. It had the required effect, though. The running men threw themselves at once to the ground.
Richard gave another order, his voice clear and incisive in the stillness, and two of his men slithered sideways and disappeared into the long grass. Ruth was lying at his side. He turned to her. ‘I want you to keep out of it. Keep your head down and don’t move. Okay?’
A few minutes passed, then a burst of firing sounded from the high ground to the left of the Chinese position. Richard gave another order, his men leapt to their feet and raced forward across the grass, Richard at their head.
Ruth watched anxiously, expecting to hear gunfire, but none came and in a matter of minute
s the Chinese soldiers were being dragged to their feet, their hands raised in surrender, the Karens’ bayonets prodding them back towards the jungle.
Without thought Ruth started across the grass towards them. Richard moved at once to cut her off from the herded men. His eyes were angry.
‘I told you —’
‘I’m not much for being bossed about.’ She looked past him at the forest fringe into which the men and their escorts had now disappeared. ‘What’re you going to do with them?’
‘None of your business.’
Such arrogance would never work with this Aussie. ‘I got news for you, mate.’ Arrogant in her turn. ‘We’re in this together, aren’t we? It’s as much my business as yours.’
‘Then you must see I’ve no choice.’
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ Was appalled as enlightenment dawned. ‘You’re going to kill them.’
Hoping, praying, that he would deny it.
‘If we let them go they’ll wipe out the whole village, soon as our backs are turned. Do the same to us, given half a chance.’
‘Take their guns off them, turn them loose.’
He shook his head decidedly. Had made up his mind, she saw. ‘Do that, they’re dead, anyway. Without weapons they’ve no chance.’
She couldn’t be having this conversation, she thought. Not with Richard. ‘It’s murder.’
From the forest came a sudden burst of firing. Startled birds exploded squalling above the trees.
Richard’s face, remote and unchanging, absorbed her furious gaze. ‘War is murder.’
There was movement at the edge of the forest as the Karens returned. The execution party, she thought, hating them all.
You will not cry, she ordered herself fiercely. Said, ‘And you are the murderer …’
Little by little, the crying birds resettled. Silence came sifting back. It was over. Or perhaps not.
She could bear it no longer. She turned away, head defiant, eyes burning with appalled tears.
They pulled out of the village, began their tortuous descent of the northern slope of the range. That night they camped in dense forest. From the first Ruth had formed the habit of lying a little apart from the rest of them. They were all in this together, privacy had long ago ceased to have meaning, yet the habit persisted.
