‘What are you thinking?’ she asked at last as they began to walk into the plantation again.
‘That I feel different,’ he said hesitantly, ‘that I feel maybe we’ve been down to some underworld, to some emotional depths, and found ... ’ He thought it would have been impertinent to voice what he had really discovered. ‘And found it has somehow helped.’
‘It has helped.’ She took up the words quickly but did not add that she felt they had become curiously linked in some strong, sad, tacit bond. ‘I’ve spent my tears — I feel almost it’s been an indulgence. Now it’s time to go back to my mother, but I’ll be more help now. Thanks for putting up with me.’
‘It would be a pleasure to put up with you an awful lot more.’
They stood for a moment under the pretty, sunlit canopy of the delicate leaves of the rubber trees. She looked at him quizzically but saw it was not a skit or a remark to raise spirits, just a statement of fact.
He held out a hand to her and both knew that if she took it now it would mean far more than the clinging in paroxysms of grief, or the helping hand on a steep path — this was quite a different offer.
When she slipped her hand quickly into his, a phrase from some biblical text came to him. ‘I am blessed among men,’ he told her. She looked so astonished that he grinned and raised her hand to kiss it. ‘I did go to Sunday school
and
I
was in the village choir.’
‘Really?’
His turn now to glance sharply at her, but the look that accompanied the word was of wonder and interest, as if she was trying to picture him back in his surplice processing with the other white-robed boys and men up the church aisle. ‘Really,’ he said gently.
‘Some time you must tell me,’ she said as they began to walk back. They heard the noise of a vehicle arriving as they approached the bungalow.
They emerged from the trees as John Sturgess was getting out of his army jeep. He stopped, his legs half out, as if he could not believe his eyes. Then he shouted:
‘Soldier!’
Alan said something inaudible, but kept holding her hand until she reached the clear ground. Then he asked briefly, ‘You be all right now?’ She nodded.
‘Soldier!’ Sturgess again, his voice full of threat as he came towards them. ‘I thought you were taught to jump when an officer spoke.’
‘Sir!’ Alan came to a halt, saluted and stood to attention.
Sturgess’s gaze went to Liz, registering the torn sleeve of her dress and the obvious distress she had been in. ‘What the hell’s been going on?’
Liz thought what an unimaginative man he was, such stock phrases, such military insularity. ‘Your soldier rescued me,’ she said, ignoring the soldier’s eyes as she continued her story. ‘I was so upset I just ran and ran into the jungle, and your guardsman helped me, brought me back.’ She reached over and for a moment put her hand over Alan’s clenched fingers, thumb down the nonexistent seam of his jungle green trousers, as he remained standing to attention. The action was incongruous, reminding Alan of a visitor touching the exhibits in a museum — and he was the prohibited waxwork.
Alan had learned impassivity if nothing else while being berated by foul-mouthed sergeants on parade grounds. He was impassive now as he saw his officer look nonplussed. Even a major could hardly question the veracity of the daughter of the house. Could hardly discipline her: ‘Keep your fingers
off
my soldiers! Miss!’
‘Get back to your post, Cresswell. I’ll see you later.’
‘Sir!’ He executed the high knee turn, one two three, stepping smartly off with the left foot, and marched sharply towards the rear. Out of sight he stopped and listened. The digging had stopped.
‘That man behaved ... properly?’ Sturgess asked.
‘That man was a gentleman — a real knight in shining armour, you might say.’ She gave him a stock phrase to chew on.
‘A knight without his armour, I would have said.’ He looked at her more carefully. ‘You’ve hurt your arm.’
She looked first at the wrong arm, which convinced him that the guardsman was probably telling the truth.
‘Oh! It’s nothing,’ she said, surprised by the torn sleeve and the graze.
As they walked together towards the bungalow, her mother came to the front door. Liz knew immediately that she had news — bad news.
‘I’ve identified your father’s body,’ she said.
Liz stood arm in arm with her mother at the head of the grave. The sides had been draped with green cloth and given the dignity of tidy geometric lines. Her father too had been tidied — into one of the long rectangular boxes kept stored by the army at their depot at Batu Caves ready for the crating of their dead. Burials were of necessity swift in the tropics.
The red, white and blue of the Union Jack over the coffin against the artificial green field made her think of England. She clenched her teeth hard as memories threatened public breakdown. They had draped flags from all the upper storeys of Pearling House in 1945 when the war was over and put out even more to blow in the dry winds of that December when finally her father had been demobbed.
She remembered the bigger banners cracking like whips in the bitter piercing winds, remembered her father coming at last, the joy, then the feeling of being partly shut out from him, her mother supremely important. Later, as he shivered in the same winds, helping her take in the flags, he had said to her, ‘Let’s got back to our Malaya, Liz.’ They had danced round the attic room. ‘Just like at Raffles,’ she had shouted.
‘Our Malaya’ was a bitter irony now, a bitter country — her heart was sick for this beautiful land. She glanced regretfully at the abundant greenness of the garden, the gloss of the fan palms, the delicate leaves of the rubber trees in the middle distance, the hills beyond — high, green, cool — as near to paradise as Mother Nature could get on this earth.
There would be no more memories of her father to add to her store. There is no easy funeral except one’s own — she had heard those words as a child standing at her mother’s side in silent respect as a young boy’s funeral had passed. He was a classmate who had been bitten by a sea snake. The sentiment had meant little to her until that moment.
Where now were the carefree children who had played and laughed in this garden? Wendy far away, mourning a father she had known for less than half her lifetime; Lee, her gentle friend, banished for war crimes never of her doing; and Josef, whom Liz had loved so loyally, defended so regularly — exactly that was Josef guilty of?
A movement to the rear of the ranked guardsmen caught her eye and she saw Anna there, hands clasped, head bowed. Fear had after all not kept the bent old amah from paying her final respects. Liz stared at her and Anna saw, nodding her head as if confirming her devotion to a tuan who had often larked with her and her charges until tears of laughter ran down her cheeks — or mem had arrived. Liz remembered the hands clamped over the mouth trying to hide and stifle the laughter while the dark eyes sparkled irrepressibly above them, and she cried for Anna.
The tears splintered the symmetry of the small military funeral. Then worry for the safety of her amah and her grandson changed her grief momentarily to real concern.
A sharp authoritative command reasserted the formal ceremony and the soldiers stamped up dust as they obeyed. None of this ritual surely was right for the man Anna had come to mourn.
She and her mother had been swept along by the advice of friends like the Wildons who rang full of concern and sorrow and recommended leaving ‘their mutual friend John Sturgess’ in charge of all the arrangements. They had arrived from their regularly besieged bungalow as soon as they could.
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?’