The Red Pavilion (11 page)

‘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.

At the hut doorway she paused, watching as Alan sat before the gently humming radio transmitter, headphones over his ears, fingers turning the dials to his frequency. At precisely eighteen hundred hours he made his report. ‘Echo Bravo Six. Echo Bravo Six. Routine call.’ Then he listened, his voice suddenly rising a pitch as he asked, ‘That you, Larry? Any news of the football scores back home?’ He listened again, then laughed. ‘Next time then, got to keep up with the important things in life.’

He turned as he spoke as if sensing a presence, then blushed, looking as if he wanted to explain to her that the football scores were for his mates. She inclined her head as if to acknowledge the tacit information. He nodded back as he made his final signing-off, moving his head very slowly like someone reassuring a timid child.

He removed his headphones, flipped a switch on the set and came to her, his arms part open, part raised, reminding her of a picture of Christ called ‘Suffer Little Children to Come unto Me’. His tallness overshadowing her, his dark uniform touching her, his arms around her, she closed her eyes and leaned to him.

She leaned on him so heavily, for a slight girl such a leaden weight, he almost asked her what was the matter. He rephrased the unspoken words. ‘Is there something else?’

Chapter Ten

‘Good morning.’

Liz turned from the kitchen dresser where she was pressing oranges for breakfast. She returned the greeting and handed John Sturgess a glass of the fresh juice. He nodded his thanks.

He was dressed and shaved. It seemed the right time to ask her favour. She sipped her drink and began to make them both coffee and toast.

The night before she had told Alan the story of her old nurse who had come to the funeral and disappeared immediately afterwards. He had mentioned Sturgess’s jeep, and she had the distinct feeling that had she asked him outright he would have taken it and driven her to Anna’s kampong there and then.

He had been so concerned when she told him how she had first sought out Anna, recognising the turtle pots; how strange her old nurse had been, and the encounter with the terrorist. He had got up and stridden about, then come to take her hand as if he would be off that second to find the old lady. She had in the end felt she must make him promise not to do anything before she herself had asked the major if he would take her back to the kampong, or lend his vehicle.

‘Yesterday my old amah came to the funeral — ’ she began now.

‘I wondered if that was who it was,’ he interrupted slowly putting his glass down and looking fixedly at her. ‘The lady from the quiet kampong! She left before the service ended.’

‘I wondered if you would take me back to her village again to make sure she is ... all right.’

‘How did she get here?’

‘She could have walked.’ She felt under cross-examination. ‘I didn’t actually get to speak to her.’

‘Unlike the time we stopped at her kampong.’

‘I did speak to her then, of course.’ Professional cross-examination, she thought.

‘And did something happen there that day?’ He leaned forwards over the table and she instinctively leaned back on to the dresser, inching away from his scrutiny. ‘This could be vitally important to me — and my men,’ he added.

She told him defensively, uneasy as his eyes seem to be assessing her every move, as if reading from her movements any degree of vacillation from the spoken truth — but she told it all.

‘Hmm’ he said when she had finished and reached over for the plate of toast she had made.

‘Is that it, then?’ she demanded. The revelation of the terrorist’s appearance and the terrified boy had been a battle between her amah’s trust in her silence and what felt like the commonsense need to speak out now. ‘Hmm!’

‘Sorry, but it’s more or less what I expected.’

‘So the third degree wasn’t necessary.’

He looked at her and laughed. it astonished her how his face changed, the long lean lines vanished, the man shone through the military machine. ‘That wasn’t even a first degree,’ he told her.

‘So will you take me to check on my amah?’

He shook his head at her. ‘No can do, sorry!’

‘But it wouldn’t take you long.’

He again shook his head.

‘Would you lend us your jeep for a couple of hours?’

‘Us?’

‘Me.’

‘All of us will shortly be gone — until then no one comes in or goes out of here.’

‘Gone ? But if I ... but
I’m
not under your command.’

‘You may be endangering my men’s lives if you do anything other than stay around Rinsey for the next few days.’

It felt as if he could have told her more without giving away any great secrets. She gave him back look for look, wanting to pierce his strict correctness, to trip up his calculating military mind.

‘You know, you remind me of someone,’ he said, sounding as if he had made some kind of capitulation.

‘Really?’ She poured coffee to mask her astonishment as she saw the quality of his scrutiny had completely changed and his tone was bordering on the confidential. She was about to ask who it might be but shied away from letting their relationship become more personal. She picked up her coffee and prepared to go and look in on her mother. ‘I think you remind me of somebody, too.’

‘Oh! Who?’ His turn to sound surprised now.

‘Jekyll and Hyde.’

She had not meant it humorously and yet as the door closed behind her she listened for at least a humph of laughter. There was none and it somehow made John Sturgess more difficult to know, impossible to reach with any easy friendship. What was his past? Whom did she reminded him of? She was mildly curious.

She went to her mother’s room and peeped in. Joan Wildon had left two sleeping tablets, saying, ‘I use them when I’m off duty at home.’ Blanche had said she would take them if she was still awake after midnight. It seemed she had been, for as Liz watched she slept deeply with no movement.

Going to her own room, she open her sketchbook. She had worked late on a picture of the tree; the canopy was detailed, each leaf painstakingly drawn, but she had not been able to fill in the bottom of the picture. She felt there was no base to her life, no bottom to her sketch. She turned to the page before where she had begun a head-and-shoulders sketch of Alan. She thought it a decent likeness but what twisted her heart was that John Sturgess had said they would soon all be gone.

She slowly turned the page back to the tree and, picking up an eraser, slowly and methodically rubbed out the whole drawing. And then she wept.

*

Alan became certain that they would go into the jungle just before dawn the next day. Their sergeant made an informal kit inspection, paying particular attention to clean socks, insect repellent, and later issued tinned ration packs to each man for three days.

Alan checked and familiarised himself with the model-33 wireless set they had brought in for him, which, though apparently despatched from Canada, had dials labelled in Russian. Profit, even equipment for war, crossed all political divides, it seemed.

He was not sure whether the tension at Rinsey, which to him seemed to tighten a notch with every passing hour, was not just in his own mind. His dread was that once his jungle operation was put under way, his time at the plantation would come to an end and he would not return. Even the thought had menacing echoes.

He had come to Malaya with a curious feeling of destiny hanging over him. He had almost reached the conviction that he should have been a conscientious objector, but that, he was sure, took more real courage than he had. Conscripted for national service in 1948, he had assumed that he stood a fair chance of seeing very little active service; certainly it had not seemed possible he would be sent halfway around the world to shoot other human beings — not so soon after his and his companions’ fathers had come home from fighting the Second World War. The lights had gone on again in a land fit for heroes to live in — the ringing phrases had an empty echo.

Until now he had shot nothing bigger than a hare, and then only because it was needed for the table. But it was free season here on all men with red stars on their forage caps, provided they didn’t get you first — and they knew the terrain.

Alan had been entranced by the
beluka
, the jungle edges, where there was room and light to admire the enormous leaves jungle plants produced; one such and a man or woman could be decently covered, fig leaves were poor things by comparison.

The deeper jungle he had found more darkly awe-inspiring, with its dripping constant dusk. It would be a matter of luck whether a shot hit its target with so many trunks to deflect the bullet’s flight. He calculated that deflections could probably be the cause of more injuries than direct intentions.

The day dragged through to his final network call. He had seen nothing of Liz all day through he had wandered around making himself as visible as he could. She must have been in the bungalow — with her mother, he supposed, and with Sturgess, who went in and out fairly constantly. If it could have gained him entry, he told himself he would have applied for officer training right away. Instead he sent many yearning thoughts to her — though how was she to know it might be his last day there?

He went back to his shack and lay on his bed as darkness swept down. His mood changed as he decided he was surprised she did not guess something was going on, for even though the work on the wiring and lighting was finished, the perimeter lights were not switched on. Instead, still figures stood guarding either side of the newly erected double gates — fifteen feet of lashed poles and woven barbed wire. Except for a concealed escape for emergencies, this was the only way in and out.

He must find some excuse to go to the bungalow. He cared little for making a fool of himself, or being censured yet again by the major, but there was behaviour suitable for the day after a family funeral, and it was this restraint that had all day kept him from the door. He heard himself sighing heavily in the darkness. He was like a Shakespearean lover, he decided, ‘sighing like a furnace’.

He struck a deal with himself; if she did not come while he was making his call, then he would go to the back door and say ... what? Another sigh. He glanced at the luminous hands of the army watch. It was time he was at the transmitter. He switched on the shaded light and went to the table, where his hand stopped partway to the dials. A small leather wallet was propped against the set.

His hand shook as he opened it. The leather wallet was a tiny photograph holder and inside was a photograph of Liz. A small oval, it seemed to encapsulate her quiet dignity, yet the direct look from the eyes that followed the viewer showed the spirit.

A slip of paper was tucked into the opposite side. His hasty fingers were clumsy as he unfolded it.

‘There is a saying: send a likeness of yourself with a loved one and it speeds their return.’

The excitement of the gift and of the words ‘loved one’ made his network call late and kept him awake all night. Awake tormented by her nearness and her inaccessibility, with the knowledge that he would leave at dawn. It felt like a separation before they had properly met, a divorce without a marriage.

When the sergeant arrived to say they would shortly be moving out, a torrential downpour was in progress. He carefully cut a piece of oilskin from an old map case and wrapped the leather photograph wallet, putting it into his breast pocket.

With his small pack hanging below the 33 set hitched as high as he could get it on his back, his waterproof poncho over everything, rifle in hand, he was well loaded, like all the others. But he had only to raise his left arm a little to feel the small package in his pocket, to press it close to his heart.

Major Sturgess took the lead with the sergeant, Bert Mackenzie, next, ready to take over should anything happen to his officer; then Babyface; Alan; Dan, who carried a Bren gun; and finally two brothers, Donald and Benjamin Sutherland, who with Sergeant Mackenzie had the distinction (frequently mentioned to conscripts when they were in regular barracks) of being regular soldiers.

Each had to keep his head down low enough to let the rain run off the wide-brimmed jungle hat, but not so low as to be unable to see the man in front. The noise of the rain on the palms and huge jungle leaves made it quite impossible for them to talk to each other even if it had been allowed. It was just sheer slogging work, and soon they were as soaked with perspiration inside their ponchos as everywhere else was saturated by the downpour.

As the light became stronger, they came to the edge of a rubber plantation that had been neglected for some time. The going was hard because the extra sunlight had aided the growth of every kind of bush and scrub around the rows of young trees. Alan wondered if this was part of the Rinsey estate. He felt it must be for they had not travelled far.

Soon they came to a wide track and, as if someone had turned off the tap, the rain stopped, the sigh of relief was palpable if not audible as the major raised his hand for a halt. They took off their ponchos, shook and rolled them and were fastening them to each other’s kit when round the corner of the track came a line of khaki-clad men, red stars on their hats and carrying a flag with the hammer and sickle on it, for all the world like Boy Scouts on a camping holiday.

It was debatable who were the most surprised, but by the time the Guards had their rifles to their shoulders the terrorists had dived for cover. They fired after them, the shots whining and ricocheting through the trees.

After the incident the major and the sergeant had a quick huddled conference over map and compass. Alan wildly hoped that meeting the CTs might abort whatever they were about and they might all just go back to Rinsey. Instead the major led them off at a tangent from the path and soon they were cutting into virgin jungle to make their way.

Progress was torturously slow and the continual bang of his small pack at the base of his spine with each movement began to be a repetitive torment. He tried not to think of it, not to wait for it to swing back and hit him just on the nerve centre at his tail end. It made his nerve ends tingle as they anticipated the thud of the pack and their curl and scream as it landed.

He pushed his left arm up under his left breast to feel the photograph wallet and tried to concentrate on plans to be with Liz. The trouble was that private soldiers weren’t allowed to plan their movements or their lives, all that and beyond was in the hands of the authorities — he remembered helping to stack the piles of long wooden crates near Batu Caves.