‘And missed?’ Liz asked.
He shrugged apologetically. ‘I think he big man.’
Chemor, who had opted to stay at Rinsey after his boss’s arrest, came from outside the gates. ‘We’re looking all around, miss. There was someone, been here some time by the look of the tracks, but he gone now.’
‘Good,’ Liz said, ‘and thanks, Chemor, all of you. We must all stay alert.’ But as she went back to the bungalow she thought that, as for herself, she did not much care what happened to her.
She reported to her mother and Anna, then went to her room. She could settle to nothing, wandering aimlessly around. When she turned to the sketches she made of Alan, she felt the most exquisite sadness. There were also sketches of her father and Wendy. Oh, God! How could I be so selfish? Even when you’re old it must be a terrible pain, Liz thought. She left her bedroom and went to try to make amends.
From the kitchen window she could see her mother and Anna sitting close together on the seat by the grave. It looked almost as if they were engaged in a three-way conversation, so closely did they concentrate on the mound at their feet.
Older women were right to comfort each other, but she wondered if they did not forget what it was like to feel deprived of all that made life worth the trouble. They had a grave to grieve over; she wanted flesh-and-blood arms around her. She needed life, not death — unless death brought reunion.
She must get away, out, leave the house or she’d suffocate. She had to go, walk out, just be free of this compound with its grief and panicking guards — outside was her country, too. She picked up her rifle and left by the front door, then made off to the side and the tunnel. Even as she went she knew it was foolish with possible prowlers about.
At the far end of the tunnel she carefully recovered the trapdoor, then moved away from the path that led to the burned-out bungalow and towards the cleared section of the plantation, where now the tappers were daily cutting and collecting phenomenal yields. Beyond sight or earshot of their own guards, she knew where she wanted to be: in a beautiful place she had shared with Alan.
As she drew near to the falls she also remembered tracking her father’s car to the edge and beyond. On the second visit she recalled running to the edge and how she had alarmed Alan — how he had caught her and held her close.
He had tried to still her weeping, afraid the depth and ferocity of her sobbing would make her ill. She had touched the depth of mourning for her father that day, but now there were no tears. Her grief seemed sterile, without a physical centre. She felt a sudden great pang of pain for all the women who had lost their men in the war, men with no known grave. For the first time she began to know what that meant. It was like having a terrible pain you could not locate; there was no focus, only the pain.
Reaching the flat platform of rocks above the falls, she recalled how awed he had been by the beauty of the place. ‘War in paradise,’ he had said, and she had said, ‘Love, too.’
The falls were much swollen by the recent heavy downpours. She guessed the path they had walked on the far side would be under the swirling rush of white water. The flat tables of rock they had walked across so easily were covered by a swift-moving deep slide of water. She longed to go to the cavern under the falls and sit on the shelf of rock, drowned in the sound and the memories.
She knelt down by the edge, watching, feeling stupefied by the ear-filling crash of the waters and pulled forwards by the sight of the speeding torrents. After a while it seemed easier to think of just slipping over into the water, into oblivion, than to walk all the way back to Rinsey, to explain where she had been, to go on living.
It would not be painless, there were rocks she would strike and she guessed that even in extremis her body would still make frantic and futile efforts to breathe — but it should not last long. She felt it a sin, was vaguely afraid of divine retribution — felt exasperated by some stubborn streak of life force that still held her to the rock refused to accept being thrown down, extinguished before its time.
‘Some part of my mother in me, deep down,’ she mouthed, sitting back on her calves. ‘A lot of Daddy, the outside bits, the arty bits, but perhaps the core is Mother.’ She sighed and sat down with her legs outstretched, put her arms straight behind her and leaned back, head turned up to the sky.
She tried to review what she was certain of. It would certainly grieve her mother — and poor Anna — if she killed herself. No, she supposed, like Hamlet, she had to go on, haunted by almost the same ghosts — the murdered father, the lost lover. She rose, quickly aware she must move away from these falls; like Hamlet, she should put the temptation behind her.
As she turned and her eyes adjusted from the glare of the sun, her eyes scanned the fringes of jungle and the plantation in front of her — and a movement caught her eye. Someone or something? Someone, she decided and instinctively her hand sought her abandoned rifle. She raised it towards the rubber trees.
Then she caught a second movement — two people at least. Her heart began to thud and she recognised the irony or hypocrisy of her self-indulgence — one minute seeking a way to end her life, the next panicking to save it.
She sighted the rifle rapidly and instinctively, finger curled ready to press the trigger, as a figure stepped out from the trees directly in front of her. Liz saw it was a girl and did not fire, but nor did she lower her sight.
The girl stood very still, then called, ‘Elizabeth! Is it Elizabeth? Elizabeth, it’s me, Lee.’ The girl began to move towards her, slowly at first, then running.
‘Lee?’ Liz repeated, then recognised her beyond doubt. ‘Lee!’ She threw down the rifle and ran towards the girl, struggling like someone in dream or nightmare on ground that seemed less than solid and legs that hardly obeyed.
They threw themselves into each other’s arms crying, disbelieving, each examining the other, stroking, hugging, unable to speak, unable to let go each of the other for long, long minutes.
‘Lee! Where have you been all this time? I don’t understand.’ Liz held her at arm’s length and saw how gaunt and pale she looked, how torn were her clothes.
‘You, Liz, you ... ’ Lee looked but could not find words for how gaunt, pale and sad her friend looked. ‘You ... ’ Tears drowned the words. ‘You have to come ... ’ She swallowed, trying to stem the tears. ‘You have to ... ’ She turned and called, once, twice. In the trees Elizabeth saw the native.
‘You’ve been in the jungle travelling with the Sakais,’ Liz guessed, seeing all the evidence in Lee’s appearance.
‘The soldier with your photograph — ’
‘Alan!’ She felt as if every hair on her head rose at the words, her skin was ice cold. ‘Alan! You’ve seen him. But how ... I ... is he?’ She could not go on. ‘Lee, tell me.’
‘It’s not good news, Elizabeth,’ she said, tears streaming from her eyes as if the fault was hers. ‘I’m so sorry. He is very ill — ’
‘He’s not dead? You mean he’s not dead!’
‘The Sakais have been nursing him since the raid on our camp. But he is in a coma, Liz, I don’t think there’s much hope.’
‘I must go to him,’ she said, almost laughing with relief, with hope. No one could deny her that if he was alive! ‘Lee ... ’ She shook her head at seeing the girl she thought of as a sister restored to her. ‘Your camp? I don’t understand! I can’t believe all this — but I must go to him.’
‘This is why we have come.’
The emotion of the next hours was epitomised for Liz by Anna. The amah soon had an arm around each girl, alternatively beaming as if her face would split and almost bursting into tears. Liz and Lee took turns talking or burying their faces in her shoulder, stooping and snuggling like overgrown fledglings trying to return under her wings.
Blanche in the meantime came first to touch one and then the other as if reassuring herself of Lee’s presence and the safety of both girls. In between she paced up and down, raging about the infamy of Josef condemning his mother and sister to a life of drudgery and abasement, pausing as she remembered taking the squirming youngster to his father for punishment, dragging him protesting all the way from one bungalow to the other.
The ever indulgent Kurt Guisan had to her fury laughed when she described his son as a thieving magpie. And Mrs Guisan had been too weak to control him. Poor Ch’ing. ‘So your mother is … ?’ she asked again.
‘The Sakais have taken her to their village, while the soldier is farther away in a cooler hill camp.’
‘I always knew that boy was a total waster, but even I didn’t think ... ’ Blanche’s mind returned continually to Josef while at the same time trying to grasp this amazing reunion and think of the best way to deal with all its implications.
There was one thing she was quite certain about. Liz had come to life again with the news of Alan Cresswell’s survival. The boy must be given all the help he needed as soon as possible. From what Lee said, this was the presence of someone who loved him, someone to try to talk him back to life. There had been such cases, she seemed to remember, people tended in modern hospitals and continually talked to by their loved ones had survived ... But Alan Cresswell’s predicament seemed to her chillingly like Neville’s disappearance; the circumstances and the time involved were against a happy outcome. This boy’s injuries had been suffered some weeks ago, he had languished in the jungle among aborigines and been carried from one place to another. Then there was the journey back — with a Sakai, which guaranteed it would be through remote primary jungle. God alone knew how long that would take! She dreaded to think what extra heartache Liz might have coming to her.
‘You’re sure Sardin will wait until morning?’ Liz asked anxiously. ‘And that there’s nothing more we can give him?’
Lee and Liz had gone back to take him cooked rice and meat to the gates when he would not come nearer. He had carried the meal away into the trees. Later the bowl, empty except for a spray of tree orchids, had been brought in from the main gates — though shamefacedly even Chemor had to admit no one had seen it returned.
‘I have great respect for all Sakais,’ Lee said. ‘Sardin said he would wait by the big rock. He will do that.’
‘I wish we could go now,’ Liz murmured.
Lee shook her head. ‘He will not travel at night.’
‘So first light then.’
Blanche was alarmed at the thought of the two girls going off God knew where in the company of one aborigine. This needed organising — tactfully. ‘Lee, you can sleep in the old nursery, I’ll make up the bed, but first I must ring John Sturgess. He had to be told there’s chance of recovering one of his men.’
Liz felt her heart plummet. He had opposed everything she had wanted to do since she arrived back in Malaya. ‘We don’t need him, do we? We don’t want him to come. He’s so officious.’
‘But he’s also efficient — and what about a doctor? He could send an army doctor with you.’
‘We don’t want him arriving like a troop of cavalry and frightening our man off. Then no one will find Alan.’ She looked anxiously at Lee.
Lee shook her head. ‘The Sakais are clever in the jungle. They live all time by CT camp, Heng Hou, no one know until they come to help us. I think Sardin will see army but army not see Sardin until he is ready.’
‘And to take a doctor, is that a good idea? Is it worth waiting around while they fill in forms in triplicate or whatever they have to do?’
‘Can doctors bring people out of comas?’ Lee shrugged.
‘But I do feel I have to tell Major Sturgess,’ Blanche intervened gently. ‘You do understand that?’
Liz, back turned, shoulders tense, made no show of assent but neither did she protest as Blanche went to make the call in the study.
‘Don’t look so worried, Miss Liz.’ Anna hugged her two girls. ‘You not in army ... ’
‘No, that’s right, he can’t order us about!’ It was the truth but it felt like bravado. The trouble was, Alan was in the army.
Anna wanted to put Lee to bed but there was too much to tell and too many questions to be asked. In the end they compromised, making her comfortable on pillows on a day-bed in the lounge. Then they all sat round talking, filling in some of the gaps of eight traumatic years, while Anna bathed and iodised some of the many jungle sores and scratches on Lee’s arms and legs, her grandson holding the bowl for her.
There was so much to tell, so many questions to be asked, they rather forgot the presence of young Datuk. Liz noticed that his hands shook a little as Lee talked of the sadistic Heng Hou. He kept his eyes lowered though he was obviously listening with all the big-eared stillness of the young, who know they will be banished once their presence is noticed.
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 — ’