They travelled all that day, cutting with their parangs, jerking their shoulders free as packs and shoulders became caught and entangled by every kind of thorned creeper and branch. At four o’clock they stopped to make camp for the night, each man trying to make a platform of small branches and leaves to lift him a little off the sodden ground. There was no smoking and no campfire, for the smell of smoke filtered for miles, betraying any man’s presence. The rations they ate were hard tack biscuits, corned beef and a figgy type of chocolate, washed down with water taken from the jungle streams and shaken up with sterilising tablets in their canteens. It tasted, Alan thought, like the worst kind of chlorinated swimming-baths water. Then, with ponchos used like individual tents, they fell into exhausted sleep where they lay or crouched, dragged to wakefulness only when it was their term for watch.
At dawn they moved off again. For that day and the following night they had no further sighting of any living thing beyond many bright-green snakes, lizards of all sizes and a variety of monkeys, some frankly curious, some disturbed, frightened and aggressive at the intrusion into their domain.
On the morning of the third day Major Sturgess had them cut a small clearing to aid radio transmission and gave Alan a new radio frequency and call sign. It took some repositioning of the set to make contact and when the voice at the other end finally answered Alan was surprised to recognise the mine manager, George Harfield, though rumour had it he and the major had been together in the wartime guerrilla Force 136 in the jungle of Malaya.
Sturgess took over the headphones and microphone and informed their contact, ‘Operation Nutcracker in position.’
‘Everything to go as planned.’
The little band of men were then called together. ‘We’re approaching a major settlement which we know the communists are using as a kind of supply depot and post office for a large jungle-based unit. Food, messages, intermediaries, they’re all going through this place. Mr George Harfield is with a force coming in from the main road. At precisely thirteen hundred hours we shall all go in. Our task is to catch the ones who try to slip away. We shall take up positions along the tracks running into the jungle from the back of the kampong, move in as close as we can a few minutes before thirteen hundred hours. Synchronise your watches. It is now eleven thirty-nine.’
Following the briefing, extreme caution and silence was the rule, particularly as they reached and began to follow a water pipeline out from a jungle reservoir to the kampong. As the track alongside the water pipe widened and other paths crossed theirs, they knew they were near their objective.
At a signal from the sergeant and officer, they fanned out sideways, each man understanding the dotting finger gesture of the commander. Taking a track, each prepared to lie in ambush until the time came for them to move forwards at the same minute as George Harfield’s unit moved in from the main road.
Slowly and silently the guardsmen disappeared into the jungle by the track sides. Alan reached his track, slid off the wireless and his pack and with infinite care concealed both behind himself, opening the set out so it was ready for immediate transmission, should it be needed. He took note of a giant fern growing behind a moss-encrusted rock, smaller ferns growing from the moss, so if he moved away he should be able to recognise the exact spot without delay.
The art of ambushing was a strange mixture of peace and tension. He lay still so long that lizards, ants and butterflies took him as part of the environment, yet at the same time the tension of listening and — on this operation — watching his wristwatch was a particular torment. For all his antimilitary feeling, he had to acknowledge it was training that made him able to concentrate; at college he would have gone off into a dream about his latest girlfriend, even gone to sleep. He was conditioned now to total vigilance. He merely checked that Liz’s photograph was quite safe, looked at his watch again and listened.
At two minutes to one he cautiously began to belly forwards and between his own movements he could faintly hear his mates doing the same.
At a few seconds before thirteen hundred hours he raised his head from his new position and could see the village houses. His lips formed a silent whistle of surprise. On either side of the steps leading up to the verandah of the nearest house were two huge, shiny, green flowerpots, shaped like turtles. He lowered his head so his lips lay on one hand. How many flowerpots like that were there in Malaya?
Cautiously he looked again. He remembered all Liz had told him of her old nurse and the grandson. Sturgess had waited for her during that visit and now had brought the army here.
He could hear an increase in the sound of traffic on the road, then vehicles stopping. It was too late to caution anyone now. His heart began to pound as vehicle doors slammed and men began to shout. He could not make out actual words, but the commands linked with reassurance were clear enough — to him anyway — though if you were Malay or Chinese would you panic?
He eased his rifle forwards so he might either threaten or, God forbid, fire the damned thing. There was some movement on the verandah of the house with the turtles. One man came to the door and listened, a tall, heftily built, blond man.
‘Bloody Josef!’ Alan mouthed in astonishment. It had to be, from the description Liz had given of her former childhood friend. The man disappeared inside again and was replaced in the doorway by two men, one of Chinese origin, another of mixed race.
From the direction of the main road came more shouts, both orders and hasty warnings shouted on the run. Alan’s fingers went to the safety catch on his rifle as he heard more than one person running full pelt along the tracks into the jungle. He waited, nerves at breaking point, praying no one came along his path. Nearby someone challenged, there was a shot, then the Bren gun began its murderous chatter.
A man came charging along his path, but with hands lifted. Alan half raised himself, showing his rifle.
‘Don’t shoot,’ the man said urgently, pushing his hands higher towards the sky.
Alan removed the safety catch from his rifle, slowly stood up and directed the man back along the path at gunpoint. ‘Slowly,’ he warned him. ‘If you dive I shoot.’
The man walked the middle of the path, never veering, never lowering his hands by a millimetre. As he neared the turtle pots Alan saw the major and Dan.
‘Good man!’ the major said, seeing the prisoner.
‘Speak to you, sir,’ Alan requested, trying to keep calm. If armed men were still in the house with the turtle pots ... ’
The major nodded to the sergeant to take over the prisoner. Alan walked away a little and placed himself so that he screened Sturgess from possible gunfire from the amah’s house.
‘I think the Hammonds’ old nurse lives there. Miss Hammond mentioned those turtle pots and described Josef Guisan. I’m sure I saw him standing in the doorway before the shooting started. I think he’s still inside with two more.’
The major’s face hardened but he did not move a muscle. ‘Ready to go in with me then, Cresswell.’ It was not a question. ‘We’ll saunter back towards the sergeant, then take the steps at a run. OK, off we go!’
Alan was at the major’s side as they walked back towards Sergeant Mackenzie. Perhaps the expression on their faces, or the angle of his rifle as he again drew back the safety catch, made the sergeant ready for action. ‘Take the back!’ Sturgess shouted at him as he and Alan took the front steps at a run and charged into the house.
Alan immediately remembered Liz’s question, ‘Did you see my old amah? An oldish Malay woman in a black sarong and a coolie hat?’
The coolie hat lay on one chair and the Malay woman in black lay in the other as if she had just walked back from the funeral. A boy of ten crouched against her, his arms across her body as if protecting her.
Alan made calming gestures with one hand as they circled the room, gently parting the bead curtain to search the far end and look out of the back door. There was a scuffle, a challenge, then shots and more shouting.
‘Two of them, sir,’ the sergeant shouted.
Back in the main room the old woman now had the boy in her arms. It seemed to Alan that she was restraining him as much as holding him in a caring embrace. Before they could begin to ask questions, the boy made a rolling, exaggerated movement with his eyes — upwards towards the ceiling.
It was not wasted on either of the men, but neither looked up. Both their minds seemed to be working as one, for Alan calculated the spot above them the boy had indicated — and wished they had the Bren gunner with them. Sturgess lifted his revolver as if to put it back in its holster. ‘On with the Nutcracker Suite then, Cresswell,’ he said.
The shots ran out together. Alan pumped his full magazine up into the bamboo roof. The effect was devastating. There was a cry as of someone being hit, then they thought for a moment they were being fired back at as a serious of rapid reports rang out and bullets careered in wild fashion through the house, whining and ricocheting off at all angles. A mirror shattered behind them, glass ornaments burst as if in excited sympathy, the whole structure of the house shook and cracked as above them as flames took immediate hold of dry inner wood. It was like being shut inside a gigantic box of prematurely sparked fireworks.
‘Christ!’ Sturgess exclaimed, grabbing the boy’s arm. ‘Ammunition in the roof. Let’s get out!’
Alan bent low and swept the old Malay up into his arms. The bright heat of flames was spreading all around them with the rapidity of a petrol-soaked bonfire. He saw slithers of bamboo like shards of sharp steel impale themselves into the cushions of the chair he had lifted her from. Crouching low over her, he ran.
As he reached the verandah he glanced back, glimpsing a man, the tall blond man, dropping down from the roof like Lucifer into hell, rifle in hand.
Alan jumped down the steps and fell but tried to keep Liz’s old nurse shielded from the man above. He heard Mackenzie and the major bellow challenges. Someone ran across to where they lay; he could feel the vibration of the ground, saw a pair of army jungle boots near him. The man above him challenged.
‘All right, Guisan! It’s over!’
There was a shot. The man above him swore and dropped to his knees. Several other shots rang out.
Alan raised himself to find George Harfield bent over him, holding his forearm. Some paces from the house Josef Guisan had dropped his rifle and was clutching his face. He nearly fell, but then he began a half-crouching, swerving run towards the jungle. Shots came from several directions in the village, then more from farther down one of the tracks. Even as Alan rose and helped the nurse farther away from the still exploding house, he was sure the man had escaped.
‘Next time, Guisan!’ George Harfield said quietly. He still clutched his forearm.
Alan nodded at it. ‘I’ll put you a pad on it.’
‘I don’t think it’s much.’
‘Take care of it, though, better covered straight away,’ Alan bound up the deep score over the outside of the mine manager’s forearm.
‘Glad it wasn’t my head,’ George commented dryly as the field dressing was wound puttee fashion up his arm.
The major took the nurse to sit on the steps of another house and appeared to be questioning her. When he came back he seemed fairly satisfied, and all in all when notes were compared they felt the operation had been a success.
‘We’ve got six and three dead, two of those I think are on the official wanted pictures with rewards on their heads. That was undoubtedly Guisan, he’s obviously been terrorising the old woman into concealing him. She says the ammunition was down inside the bigger bamboos in the roof. She has marks across her face where he struck her for attending Neville Hammond’s funeral. If ever there was a bastard ... Unfortunately he seems to have got clear,’ Sturgess commented as the last of two units collected in the centre of the village.
‘But he’s injured.’ There was a grim note in the broad Glaswegian postscript from the sergeant. ‘That’ll be no picnic in the jungle — and he may be out of favour with his mates after this little lot.’
‘And we’re not finished with him yet,’ the major said grimly.
Just then the hut, which had looked as if the fire was dying down, exploded with some force. There was little of it left at all now, but with an inclination of his head Alan asked permission of Sergeant Mackenzie to go over to the owner and her grandson.
‘Where will we go now?’ the boy was asking as he approached.
She did not answer, only shook her head, looking up at the blackened, smouldering ashes that had been her home and all her possessions. Alan noticed that the boy had no shoes and the woman no hat, and the hopeless perplexity of having nothing in the world but what they were wearing was in the dull despair in their eyes.
Alan looked back to where the men were giving reports, comparing notes, binding the prisoners’ hands. They were all busy about their duties, or work, or whatever it was they were all doing in this women’s country. This stoical little Malay in a black sarong, what could he do for her?
Then he knew. He reached for the oilskin-wrapped photograph and held it up before her eyes. ‘You should go to Rinsey,’ he told her. ‘You’re needed there.’
Alan stood under the ‘shower’ — a bamboo frame surrounded by a tarpaulin, a bucket tipped by a string — and had difficulty in not breaking into song as the three-day grime and sweat was washed from his body. Three cheers, he thought, for dark-red Lifebuoy soap and the order long ago in England that had sent him on a signaller’s course.
He had driven George Harfield, Anna and her grandson back to Rinsey in the mine owner’s jeep, while the rest of the units had been taken straight back to base camp near Ipoh. He had no illusions that had there been another signaller the major would not have sent
him
back to the plantation. When the order was given, and Alan was helping the Malayan woman into the jeep, he had been able to sense the major’s personal irritation with him. He had half thought he might order him to show what he had put back into his breast pocket.
But now, with the bucket angled to release the last of the water and gently wash the lather from his body, he felt wonderful. He ran his hands over his chest, his shoulders, his thighs, revelling in that rare moment in the close tropical heat when he was wet all over but clean, smelling good.
He tied the towel around his middle and stepped across the path to his hut. Completely enervated, he did not attempt to rub himself dry but lay down on his bed letting the wetness evaporate slowly from his skin.
Rest after labour, peace after aches and pains, he thought. His mind wandered and wondered over legions of soldiers over the ages who had learned not only how to fight and perhaps even die, as he had seen the young communist boys die that day, but also to live, to value every minute granted to them.
With his hands under his head he lay contemplating this bonus of time he had been granted at Liz Hammond’s home. He turned his head to see the photograph he had propped open against the wireless. He vowed he would take his opportunities now he knew how she felt. He sensed he would not have long, that there was more action to come very soon, and wondered how she felt about having an affair with a man who might die in battle. The way the major had said they were not finished with the blond escaping man had sounded more like ready conceived plans than vague threats.
There had been nothing vague in the reception Mrs Hammond and Liz had given to Anna and the grandson. They had been hugged and comforted. Liz had given Alan a look of intense gratitude when Anna had told some of his part in the rescue, and as he left to radio in that he was on the network again, she had invited him back in a couple of hours so they could eat the evening meal all together.
He left Liz settling Anna and the boy in a room and Blanche tending George Harfield’s wound. He closed his eyes with the sheer happiness of his present state. If only they could have found Liz’s father unharmed so the family had no cause for grief! If only it had been just the old nurse’s hut that had been lost ...
He awoke to a sensation of touch below his ribs; he woke but did not stir. He calculated that his rifle was within arm’s reach. He would never make it if this was the gun barrel he had half expected in his belly ever since he had landed in Singapore — but the touch was too warm. Although fully awake, he did not move a muscle. The touch was also too gentle — a finger touch, no more, tracing the line of his bottom ribs as he lay with his hands still under his head just as he had fallen asleep.
Very cautiously he raised his eyelids a fraction, just as Liz, who was sitting on the edge of the bed, turned her eyes again to his face. She pulled her finger away from his chest like a concert pianist releasing the sound cleanly from a note.
‘I didn’t want you to stop,’ he said, finding it difficult to unlock his arms from their crooked position. His instinct was to grab her and hold her tight; his reason said he’d better not. ‘You may make free with my body any time,’ he said instead. He realised that it was quite dark outside and she had put on the light.
‘I wanted to wake you gently. You were so deeply asleep.’ Her colour rose, delightfully blushing her cheeks, replacing the pale, drawn look that had been so much part of her appearance since he had known her. It made him wonder what other tactics she had used to try to wake him. ‘I didn’t want to make you jump,’ she added.
‘What time is it?’ he asked.
‘We’re about to sit down to eat,’ she told him, glancing at the towel around his waist. ‘Shall I tell them you’re coming?’
‘Five minutes.’ He sat up so he was very near to her, and when she remained sitting he leaned over and kissed her cheek, gently, tentatively, alert for the least fraction of withdrawal on her part. ‘Thank you for the photograph.’ The lightness of tone he tried to affect was betrayed by a sudden huskiness as she leaned towards him.
‘It worked, didn’t it? I mean, you soon came back.’
‘I’ll keep it always, wherever I go.’ The gruffness sounded like an affliction now.
‘Don’t talk of going.’ She stood up quickly as if to escape the idea — or not trusting herself.
‘Well, not before dinner, anyway.’ The words were flippant to dispel her distress, but the tone confirmed that he would never go willingly.
In clean shirt and shorts he hurried to the front door, smoothing his hair with his hand as he knocked and entered. George Harfield offered a beer as he saw him standing in the doorway of the dining room. Alan hesitated and Liz asked, ‘Iced tea?’
‘Please.’ He nodded. ‘Not sure about beer on a stomach as empty as mine feels.’ He smiled an apology towards Blanche as if he had committed some social gaffe.
‘There’s plenty to eat,’ Blanche said, going towards the table. Alan stepped forward and pulled out her chair. ‘I was surprised,’ she said, ‘that Major Sturgess did not come back with you.’
He felt, rightly or wrongly, put in his place. If Major Sturgess had been at this dinner table, Alan wondered, would he have been eating outside? He glanced across at Liz and his heart leaped — no, he thought, she would have made sure of his presence.
‘Robbo,’ George said, as the rest of them took their places, ‘is likely to be a very busy man for the next few days, questioning those prisoners, collating information.’
And planning our next trip up the ulu, Alan thought but did not voice the army slang for the jungle aloud. How useful, he thought, were the restraints of customs and manners! He marvelled at Blanche Hammond and Liz playing hostesses, controlled and dignified when their world was seemingly falling apart.
What a disparate looking pair were their guests. He tall laying claim to a few muscles perhaps but no spare flesh while George, with his arm freshly bandaged, plus a fresh nick on his chin from shaving, looked as if he had just come from the boxing ring or the rugby field — a veterans’ game maybe, but still solid.
Alan grinned as George caught him looking. ‘You enjoying that?’ he asked, nodding to the piled plate of meat Li Kim had roasted, served with rice and a tropical selection of colourful vegetables.
‘Everything tastes wonderful after a few days of army rationing, but this is excellent.’
‘Prefer beef with two veg and a Yorkshire pudding, though,’ George persisted.
‘I’ve never been out of England before, but it seems to me one has to try the local fare,’ he answered. ‘Their ways are more suited to their climate, I suppose.’
‘Of course,’ Liz supported.
‘When in Rome ... ’ George began.
‘We won’t trot out the old clichés,’ Blanche said, raising her eyebrows at him.
George laughed good-naturedly. ‘We can’t all be originals.’
Alan looked from one to the other. They were such opposites, yet they appeared to be at ease in each other’s company, one might even say there was a kind of understood repartee between them. He felt George Harfield was not a man easily offended or roused to anger, and Blanche Hammond would not be easily diverted or suppressed. Alan found himself glancing uneasily in her direction at the idea of trying.
He turned to Liz and asked after the amah and her grandson.
‘Anna won’t come and eat with us, but they’ve eaten and a short time ago they were both asleep — like you,’ she added.
He heard forbidden intimacy and indiscretion in the two words. His knife slipped from the unidentified meat, hitting his plate with a crack.
‘Alan,’ Blanche said as if cued by the sound, ‘you’ll eat with us while you’re here on your own.’
It had the air of an order but one he was pleased to obey.
‘Our nurse,’ she continued in a conversational tone, giving him time only to nod rather than voice his acceptance, ‘tells me that Josef has been hiding at her house since the search for Neville was intensified and has been using it also to make contact with his Red friends.’
‘I think you can take the word of the workers that are returning to Rinsey, who think Guisan is gone for good,’ George told her.
‘But he escaped!’ Blanche protested.
‘But the men see Rinsey fortified, soldiers around and Josef Guisan as a wanted man. They’ll feel as safe here as anywhere these days,
and
they want to earn some money.’
Alan remembered Major Sturgess’s ominous threat that he had not finished with Guisan yet.
‘Did you see the marks on Anna’s face? That woman loved and looked after him when he was a little boy! How could he? I’ll hang for that man before I’m through here,’ Blanche vowed.
Liz looked sharply across at her mother. Alan thought he read her anxiety; how long would that be, before her mother was ‘through here’?
‘Will you go back to live in England, Blanche?’ George asked as if he too was questioning the exact meaning of the same words.
Blanche lined her knife and fork up very precisely on her plate, then straightened the fork and spoon still on the table. ‘There’s a lot still to be done here, and I suppose I mustn’t assume that Rinsey is mine. Neville could have left it to our children.’ she paused and glanced over to Liz. ‘There’s Wendy in England, and ... Liz here. Actually I’m not too sure I care what happens to me now.’
There was a few seconds’ awkward pause, a swift searching of faces, but before anyone could come up with a suitable reply, Li Kim came in to clear the plates. The silence continued as George’s cook carried in a platter of individual crème caramels and loaded baskets of fruits and nuts.
‘The men who have already arrived are eager to get back to work,’ George added as a belated postscript to their topic. ‘There are trees planted just before the war that have never been tapped — the yield should be enormous.’
‘I could organise the tappers
and
do the plantation bookkeeping, I’ve watched it all so often,’ Liz offered. ‘I honestly do know how it’s done.’
‘The men also want to form themselves into a kind of security force. I could set up a roster of guards.’
‘I’d appreciate that, George; in fact, I appreciate all the work you’ve done. Lending us Li Kim, but we have to ... ’ She made a brave attempt at a gesture of moving on, though her arms lifted as if weighted with lead and did not match the smile she conjured, too bright, too brittle. ‘I know when Liz came here she wanted to make her life at Rinsey — ’ Blanche looked across at her daughter, — ‘while I certainly did not, but things have changed.’ She paused and gave a short ironic, laugh, ‘For the worse, of course, but — ’ she blew a speculative smoke ring before stubbing out her quarter smoked cigarette.
‘I think we have to carry on here at Rinsey as Daddy would have wanted to do — for the time being, anyway. We’ll decide big issues later.’ Liz’s tone was controlled but then she jumped up and went round the table to put her arms around her mother.
Blanche gave her daughter a swift hug and a kiss, then rose. ‘Excuse me, George, and ... ’ she nodded to Alan. ‘Please finish your meal, Liz, all of you,’ she added and left the dining room — but striding out, head up. In the silence that followed they heard the master bedroom door firmly close.
*
The next morning very early Alan wondered if the invitation to eat with the Hammonds included breakfast. He strolled hesitantly around the corner of the bungalow, and stopped as he saw Liz near the grave.
She had on pale lime-green slacks and a matching short-sleeved blouse. The colour suited her, he thought, gave her a Peter Pan look — or perhaps standing over her father’s grave like that he should think of her as one of the ‘lost boys’.
He watched her from a distance for some time, then drew a little nearer. She still stood so quiet and contemplative that he was not sure she had heard him come. He saw there were fresh scarlet frangipani blossoms on the mound; their fragile blood-redness spilled on the soil expressing an emotional shock like another death.
‘You were right about the tree,’ she said quietly without looking up. ‘He feels right here. He loved this country and the people. Anna, he loved old Anna. Though of course she wasn’t old when we were babies ... ’ She paused as if taking breath, then went on again quickly. ‘It’ll be a good thing, Anna and her grandson being here. It’s made my mother busy again. She was busy all through the war; when Daddy was away she created and ran a market garden, did I tell you that? It’s right she should be busy again now.’
He watched her, hardly listening. ‘What’s the matter?’ he asked. ‘Something’s happened.’
She looked up at him then and her bottom lip looked fuller, as if she was going to cry. ‘Major Sturgess rang last night. He’s coming back in just two days’ time.’