‘Gimme the map.’ Torrance took it from him and unfolded it, quickly orienting it. A moment later he tapped it. ‘There you are. That’s where we want to be – Tanjong Malim.’ He pointed across the swamp. ‘That way. We’ll have to wade across.’
‘Wade across! It’s probably crawling wi’ leeches!’
‘Which would you prefer, leeches or Japs?’ asked Rossi.
Descending into the swamp, they began to forge through the reeds, holding their guns over their heads. The thick silt at the bottom sucked at their boots, and the bubbling water released a foetid stench of decay.
‘Jesus!’ muttered Torrance. ‘I haven’t whiffed a pong as bad as that since Primsie took his boots off after the march from Mersing!’
It took them twenty minutes to cross, wading waist deep in the turbid waters, pestered by mosquitos and midges which they could not even slap at because of the need to carry their guns. Finally they clambered out on the drier ground at the fringe of a patch of jungle, crawling under some thorny palm bushes to reach the shadows beyond.
Torrance noticed a leech clinging to MacLeod’s chest in the V of his open collar. ‘Hold still.’ He lit a cigarette. ‘You’ve got a leech on you.’
‘Ugh! Where? Get it off me! Get it off!’
‘Let me get it. If you pull them off with your fingers, they leave their teeth inside you. Then the wound goes septic. What you gotta do is make ’em fall off by applying a cigarette end. Hold still now, I don’t want to burn you.’ Torrance touched the glowing tip of his cigarette to the leech, and it promptly curled up and dropped off, leaving a few drops of blood to run down from the open wound.
‘You’ve got one too, Titch,’ Rossi told Grant.
Kerr sighed. ‘All right, everyone strip off and check each other for leeches.’
They shrugged off their webbing and took off their sweaty khaki drills to reveal that each one of them had at least a dozen leeches clinging to various parts of his body. Everyone lit a cigarette and they set about de-leeching each other, applying a pinch of fine-ground red tobacco to the wounds afterwards to stanch the blood and kill any infection.
‘Hey, Slugger!’ said Kerr. ‘Will you check behind my bawbag?’
Torrance sighed. ‘It’s a dirty job, but I suppose someone’s gotta do it.’ He knelt in front of Kerr, who hauled up his scrotum. ‘What is it the recruiting posters say? “Join the army, the finest job in the world!” Anyone got a camera? Someone should take a snap of me picking leeches off Primsie’s bollocks, they could use that in the next poster. You’re all clear, Primsie. As if any self-respecting leech would want to suck your balls.’
They dressed again, shrugged on their webbing and resumed their march. It took them two hours to hack through a patch of jungle no more than a mile wide. When they had finally threaded their way through a strand of thorny palms, they emerged on the other side to find themselves amongst the regimental rows of rubber trees on a plantation. An estate road led them to where a bungalow with whitewashed weatherboard sides and an atap roof stood at the top of a rise in the ground, shaded by royal poincianas and cassia trees.
‘It’ll be dark soon,’ said Torrance. ‘This looks as good a place as any to spend the night.’
‘What about the people who live here?’ asked MacLeod.
‘They’ll have cleared out days ago.’
‘And how do we know the Japs haven’t moved in?’ demanded Kerr.
‘We don’t,’ said Torrance, ‘so we play it safe. We’ll split into two squads – you and Titch can go in through the front while Lefty, Jimmy and me go round the back and check those outbuildings.’
‘No’ so fast!’ said Kerr. ‘I’m in command here. I’ll decide what we’re goin’ to do.’
‘All right, Primsie,’ said Torrance. ‘How do you want to play it?’
‘I, uh… we do what Slugger said, lads. Only me and Titch will go round the back and check yon outbuildings while Slugger, Lefty and Jimmy go in through the front. All right, let’s—’
‘Aren’t you forgetting something?’ interrupted Torrance.
‘I dinna think so.’
‘Don’t you think we should agree a password and countersign to avoid shooting at each other in the dark?’
Kerr scowled. ‘The password is, uh, “rubber” and the countersign is “duck”.’
While Kerr and Grant disappeared around the back of the house, Torrance, MacLeod and Rossi trampled through a bed of zinnias to crouch by a hibiscus bush at the side of the front lawn. The night turned blacker as clouds drifted across the sky and it began to rain, just a few fat drops at first, but in a matter of seconds had turned into a torrential downpour. Torrance consoled himself with the thought that at least it would cover his approach to the bungalow.
At the front, a flight of wooden stairs led up to a veranda. Torrance nudged Rossi and indicated the jalousied windows. ‘I’ll go in first, you cover me.’ He had to raise his voice to make himself heard over the hiss of the rain.
Rossi nodded, unslinging his rifle and working the bolt.
Torrance gripped his arm. ‘If you are tempted to shoot, make sure whoever you’re shooting at is a Jap. For all we know, there might be no one but the owners in there.’
Rossi nodded again, pale with tension, and Torrance dashed across the lawn, thundering up the steps to the veranda. Glad to get in out of the rain, which had already soaked him to the skin, he pressed himself up against the weatherboards between the door and one of the front windows. The way the slats of the jalousies were angled precluded taking a quick peek inside before going through the door. He drew in a deep breath, then stepped out to face the door, slamming the heel of a boot against it, immediately below the lock. The door burst open and he stepped aside quickly in case a hail of lead came from within, then crouched down to peer cautiously around the jamb.
The room beyond was in blackness. He took out his lighter, flicking it on well away from his body in case the flame attracted a hail of lead. The yellow glow dimly revealed the room, at least well enough to show there was no one in there. An art deco paraffin lamp hung from the ceiling. Snapping off his lighter, he fumbled for the lamp in the dark, removing the glass flue and snapping his lighter back on to light the wick. It caught at once, and he replaced the flue, stepping back to survey the room as the glow filled it.
He saw a sitting room, everything neat and tidy, rattan chairs around a teak table off to one side, the legs of the furniture standing in china cups filled with water, presumably to keep the ants at bay. A faint smell of paraffin permeated the air. Native weapons decorated the walls: spears, blowpipes and wavy-bladed krises. Flowers stood in a vase on the table: they had scarcely begun to lose their petals. There were books on the shelves and the latest issues of the Journal of Consulting Psychology and the Psychoanalytic Quarterly arrayed on a coffee table. Bloody hell, thought Torrance, one of those Aleister Crowley looneys, with a pack of tarot cards in his pocket, no doubt, and a ouija board under the bed.
He closed the jalousies – there was no sense in advertising their presence – and looked around for a wireless. The latest news from Radio Malaya might give them some idea of the present military situation; it would be helpful to know how completely the Japanese had broken through. But the closest thing he saw was a hand-cranked gramophone player. There were no overhead fans, no evidence of electricity at all.
Catching sight of a movement out of the corner of his eye, he whirled, bringing the muzzle of his Thompson to bear, but it was only a gecko scuttling across one wall. Lowering the gun with a sigh of relief, he signalled MacLeod and Rossi to join him and indicated a door to the left. ‘Check through there.’
Rossi nodded and did as he was told. Torrance nudged open a door on the right with the Thompson’s muzzle, revealing a single bed with an iron bedstead, canopied with a mosquito net. A movie poster for Way Out West was framed on one wall. Torrance nodded approvingly: evidently he was in the bedroom of a fellow Laurel and Hardy aficionado.
&n
bsp; He caught sight of a dirty, unshaven figure reflected in the mirror behind the dresser, and realised with a shock it was himself. He could not resist lifting the lid of a filigree jewellery box amongst the cosmetics and scent bottles on the dresser: necklaces, earrings and bracelets; nothing spectacular, but perhaps worth a few bob. After a moment’s hesitation, he let the lid fall back into place.
Hearing a sound outside, he crossed to the window and saw Kerr and Grant covering one another as they made their way along the shadows of the covered walkway leading from the outhouses.
‘Rubber!’ called Torrance.
‘Duck!’ came the reply.
‘Find anything?’
‘No. You?’
‘Nah. The place is empty. I reckon the owners must’ve cleared out.’
The five of them assembled in the sitting room. ‘What’s in those outhouses?’ Torrance asked Kerr.
‘Kitchens, laundry and servants’ quarters.’
‘Plenty of grub in the pantry,’ added Grant.
‘We’ll requisition it,’ said Kerr. ‘Lefty, you’re on cook-house duties. Jimmy, you’re on first stag. Slugger, take a shufti outside, make sure there aren’t any Japs around.’
‘Do I have to? It’s chucking it down out there!’
‘You dinna think that’ll stop the Japs, do you?’
‘Yes. Yes, I bloody well do! The Japs have got more sense than to be out on a night like this.’ Muttering under his breath, Torrance took his gas cape from his pack, put it on and made his way outside.
The first thing he found was a garage, camouflaged by trellises covered with jasmine. Finding a gleaming black Morris Ten saloon within, he patted the bonnet admiringly. He opened the door on the driver’s side and slid behind the wheel. Pulling out the choke, he pressed the starter button and eased down the accelerator. The engine turned over, a little rough to begin with but he figured it would sound better once it had warmed up. He glanced at the petrol gauge: the tank was almost full; at last the gods appeared to be smiling on them. It was a four-seater, which meant someone would have to be left behind. Torrance did not mind, he just had to find a way to make sure he was not that someone.
He switched off the engine and got out. Raising the bonnet, he removed the rotor arm from the distributor cap and slipped it in his pocket. He closed the bonnet quietly and plunged out into the rainy night.
His patrol was cursory. The plantation seemed to be at the end of a long gravel bridle path. There was no reason for the Japanese to come this way. As far as Torrance could see, Tojo’s hordes were going all out in their determination to get to Singapore, and did not have time to stop and search every single out-of-the-way rubber plantation. Circling back through the acres, he found some crude huts which were obviously where the plantation’s rubber tappers lived, and just as obviously abandoned.
Returning to the bungalow, he found Kerr keeping watch from the comfort of a rattan chair in the darkest corner of the veranda.
‘No one within miles,’ he told the corporal. ‘I reckon we’ve got the place to ourselves, for one night at least.’
‘We’ll be on our way in the morning. You’d best go in, get dried off and get something to eat.’
‘Right-oh, Primsie.’
In the sitting room, Grant and Rossi had stripped off their wet uniforms, rigging up their log-lines to dry off their sodden khaki drills. Rossi tucked in to sausages and beans from a china plate, pausing occasionally to swig from a bottle of Tiger beer. Three dirty plates showed that Kerr, Grant and MacLeod had already eaten. There was no sign of MacLeod: presumably he was taking a turn on stag at the back. Grant was curled up in an armchair, reading a book. Both he and Rossi were naked.
‘Oh, that’s lovely, that is,’ said Torrance. ‘Can’t you blokes find towels or bathrobes or something?’
‘It’s no’ that cold,’ said Grant.
‘Never mind how cold it is,’ said Torrance. ‘What makes you think I want to look at your wedding tackle while I’m eating my sausage and beans?’
‘I’ve no’ got anything you hivnae seen before.’
‘Yes, and it doesn’t improve with repeated viewings!’
‘Aye, well, we’ve none of us got any spare shorts now, so you’ll have to do the same,’ said Rossi. ‘Unless you want to get Dhobi itch frae sitting around in wet shorts.’
Torrance shrugged off his Thompson and webbing, unlaced his boots and pulled them off, and stripped, hanging his own sopping clothes up to dry. Finding a towel in one of the bedrooms, he wrapped it around his waist, doing a twirl for Grant and Rossi. ‘See? That’s all it takes.’
He put his feet up on the coffee table, helped himself to the last plate of sausages and beans, and took the cap off a bottle of Tiger beer by smashing the neck against the edge of the table.
When he had eaten, he lit a cigarette and set about cleaning his Thompson. The problem with a Thompson was that you only had to wave a glass of water in its direction and it started to rust; in the humid atmosphere of the jungle, it had to be cleaned and oiled daily to keep it in working order.
He glanced across at Grant, who was still engrossed in his book. This circumstance was sufficiently unusual to warrant further investigation. The book was handwritten, a leather-bound diary with a flap that closed over the pages and a little lock on the front cover. Grant had sliced through the flap with a knife. Now his finger traced the words while his lips moved silently.
‘What are you reading?’ Torrance asked him.
Grant let fly a lip-quivering belch before replying. ‘It’s a diary.’
‘I can see that. Whose diary?’
‘The judy who lived here.’
‘You shouldnae be reading that,’ said Rossi. ‘That contains her private, personal thoughts.’
‘I’ll bet that’s riveting,’ said Torrance. ‘“Dear diary, today I sat on the veranda getting plastered on gin and tonic while my husband beat the servants.”’
Grant furrowed his brow. ‘What dis “fellatio” mean?’
Torrance leaped to his feet and snatched the diary from his hands. Grant tried to snatch it back, but Torrance held him at bay with one hand on the big man’s chest while holding the book with the other so he could continue reading from it. While the two of them struggled, Torrance’s towel came adrift and gathered in a pool at his feet.
‘Give it back, Slugger! I’m readin’ that!’
‘“…When I got back, I found Eric in the bedroom, being pleasured by one of the girls from the village.” Who’s Eric?’
‘Her husband,’ said Grant. ‘Give it back!’
‘“The usual angry scene ensued. Eric had the temerity to claim that he had not broken his promise as fellatio does not count as infidelity.” The cheeky bastard! “I told him it was the final straw and that I wanted a divorce. He refused, said it would be my word against his as the girl would be too afraid to testify in a court of law, and besides did I want to be humiliated by having the whole thing discussed in public? I told him that if he was that concerned about the court of public opinion, he should have thought of that before he put his—”’
‘What the HELL do you think you’re doing?’
It was a woman’s voice, American-accented. Torrance, Grant and Rossi turned to see a young woman wearing a mackintosh, a Gladstone bag in her hand. She wore an unflattering rain hat on her shoulder-length auburn hair, her complexion unspoiled by the tropical sun, good cheekbones, something kittenish in her eyes and something minxish in the pout of her generous lower lip. No doubt she looked lovely when she smiled. She was not smiling now, however. In fact, she looked as if she was about to start screaming, stamping her feet and throwing heavy objects at people’s heads.
‘Who are you?’ demanded Torrance.
‘Who am I? I live here! Who the hell are you?’
Nine
Torrance hastily snapped the diary shut and held it in front of his crotch. Grant and Rossi used their balmorals to cover themselves.
The woman
pointed. ‘That’s private!’
‘Yes, miss,’ said Torrance. ‘That’s why I’m keeping it covered with the diary.’
‘I was referring to the diary. Give it to me. Actually, on second thoughts, keep it where it is.’
Rossi came to Torrance’s rescue, snatching up his balmoral and tossing it to him. Torrance caught it in one hand, holding it in front of the diary, then taking the diary out from behind it and proffering it to the woman.
‘I’m most dreadfully sorry, miss,’ he said, his usual cockney accent in abeyance, now using the more upper-class accent he used to charm women or make his comrades laugh in the barrack room. ‘I’m afraid we took the liberty of commandeering your home. You see, we rather assumed the owners had evacuated.’
Snatching back the diary and clutching it to her bosom, she furrowed her brow. ‘Evacuated? Why should we evacuate, for Pete’s sake?’
Torrance gestured helplessly with his balmoral, before belatedly remembering why he was holding it in front of him. He hastily replaced it in front of his crotch. ‘Because of the Japs.’
‘Oh, don’t be ridiculous.’ She snatched coasters from the sideboard and made a circuit of the table, placing them under their beers. ‘The army’s holding the Japs at Kuala Kangsar. That’s seventy miles north of here.’
‘Who told you that?’
‘It was on the news today, on Radio Malaya.’ She pressed a hand to her forehead, and closed her eyes. ‘Or was it yesterday?’
‘Do you have a wireless set?’
‘Sure. Not here. At the clinic where I work.’ She swayed on her feet.
‘Are you awreet, missus?’ asked Rossi.
‘No.’ She pulled out a chair and dropped heavily into it. ‘And it’s not “missus”, it’s “doctor”. Dr Kay Sheridan.’
‘Charlie Torrance, Gino Rossi and Andy Grant,’ said Torrance. ‘Aren’t you a little young to be a doctor?’
‘Why? How old does a gal have to be? Look, mister, I’ve just spent the past fifty hours delivering a baby. Then on the way home I crashed my bicycle swerving to avoid an elephant, and when I finally get here I find that some heel has trampled my zinnias and three naked soldiers have invaded my home without so much as a by-your-leave.’
The Name of Valour Page 9