‘Tickety-boo,’ said Torrance.
‘I’m no’ a poof!’ said Rossi.
Sheridan nodded. ‘Oh, I get it. Charlie told you I’m studying psychoanalysis, and now you’re all terrified I’ll be analysing everything you say?’
Torrance, Kerr, Grant and Rossi nodded sheepishly.
‘Then let’s get a few things straight,’ she said. ‘Firstly, even if I were a qualified psychiatrist – which I’m not – it would be highly unprofessional of me to make judgements about your psychology on the basis of casual conversations, when you’re not even patients of mine. Secondly, I have more important things to worry about at the moment. And thirdly, trust me, I have no more desire to delve into the inner recesses of your subconsciouses than I do to go swimming in a sewer.’
‘Oh, are you a psychiatrist?’ asked MacLeod. ‘Only, I’ve been havin’ these weird dreams about Mae West…’
‘Is she starko?’ asked Grant.
‘Aye, but that’s no’ the weird part.’ MacLeod laughed. ‘Come on, it would be weird if I was havin’ dreams about Mae West an’ she was fully clothed.’
‘Save it for later,’ said Kerr. ‘Doc, may I suggest you throw anythin’ you canna bear to leave behind in a suitcase? It’ll soon be dawn. Time we were on our way.’
‘Isn’t there something we’re forgetting?’ asked Torrance. ‘There’s six of us now. How are we gonna fit six people in a Morris Ten?’
Kerr, Grant, MacLeod and Rossi all stared at one another.
Sheridan cleared her throat. ‘Maybe I can make a suggestion…?’
Ten
‘You’re no’ serious, are you?’ Grant demanded indignantly.
‘What choice have we got?’ asked Torrance. ‘Seems to me like the doc’s come up with a neat solution to our problem.’
‘Well, I’m no’ riding in it!’
‘It’ was a Leason light utility trailer which they had now hooked up to the towbar on the Morris Ten’s bumper.
‘We’ll draw straws.’ Torrance patted down his pockets until he found the box CSM Fraser had given him, took out five matchsticks and cut two of them in half. Turning his back on the others, he arranged them in his fist so it was impossible to tell which were the short ones. He proffered them to Kerr. ‘Privilege of rank, Primsie – you go first.’
‘No’ me, Slugger. I’m drivin’.’
‘The hell you say!’ said Sheridan. ‘If anyone’s driving, it’s me.’
‘You must be jokin’!’ said Kerr. ‘You know what they say about women drivers!’
‘No. What do they say?’
Kerr blushed. ‘Well… you know… about how you’re no’ very good at driving.’
‘Let me guess… you’re one of those male chauvinist pigs?’
‘What’s one of them?’ asked Kerr.
‘Someone like you,’ said Rossi.
‘Come on, come on,’ Torrance said impatiently. ‘You pays your money and you takes your choice, like the rest of us.’
Kerr’s fingers hovered over the match-heads while he stared at them, biting his lower lip nervously.
‘Don’t keep us in suspense,’ said Torrance. ‘You’re not Alfred bleedin’ Hitchcock, you know. Blimey, the war will be over at this rate!’
Kerr finally took one, smirking when he saw it was not short.
‘Who’s next?’ asked Torrance. When no one volunteered, he proffered them to Grant. ‘We’ll do it alphabetical. Go on, Titch, pick one!’
Grant took a match, and looked pained when he saw it was a short one. ‘Ah, sod it!’ he said, and then blushed. ‘Sorry, missus.’
‘Who’s next?’ asked Torrance. ‘G, H, I, J, K, L M… your turn, Jimmy.’
MacLeod took a match. It was another short one. He grinned delightedly. ‘Ah, greet!’
‘Don’t tell me you actually want to ride in the trailer?’ asked Rossi.
‘Aye, it’ll be fun!’
‘All right, lads, in you get,’ said Kerr. ‘You’d better go first, Titch, so there’s room for your legs. Jimmy can sit between your knees.’
As Grant and MacLeod arranged themselves in the trailer, Kerr and Sheridan raced each other for the driver’s side. The doctor won, opening the door for herself and sliding behind the wheel. Kerr stood there for a moment, considering his options, and evidently realised he only had one, which was to accept defeat with good grace and walk around the bonnet to the passenger side. Torrance and Rossi got in the back.
Sheridan started the engine with practised ease, put the car in gear and pulled smoothly out of the garage. At the end of the drive, she braked. ‘Where to?’
‘Tanjong Malim,’ said Kerr. ‘Our mob will be rallying there.’
‘If there’s anything left of it,’ muttered Torrance. He twisted to glance out of the rear window to see how Grant and MacLeod were doing. Grant looked as if he was praying that none of his other comrades saw them subjected to such indignity. MacLeod was grinning, as cheerful as a spaniel sticking its head out of a car window at speed. Torrance gave them the thumbs-up. MacLeod gave him two thumbs-up in response. Grant scowled and gave him two fingers.
Rubber plantations lined both sides of the road for much of the drive, though here and there they passed padi fields. Occasionally the tyres of the Morris rumbled over the wooden boards of a bridge over a stream the colour of strong, milky tea. There was no other traffic on the roads; Torrance understood that this was Malaya, not Surrey, but even so, it was eerie: as though the war had wiped out every living soul in the country, and they were the last six people left alive.
They had been driving for about ten minutes when they passed a signpost indicating a T-junction up ahead: Ipoh to the left, Kuala Lumpur to the right. A few seconds later they saw the Trunk Road, and a constant stream of traffic on it: dark green lorries bearing Japanese flags on the radiator grilles, some of them towing artillery, all of them headed south.
‘Sod it!’ said Torrance. ‘Get us out of here, doc. Not too fast, mind! We don’t want to draw attention to ourselves.’
‘Don’t worry about that. You ever tried driving fast in reverse with a trailer attached?’ Sheridan backed a few dozen yards up the road, until they came to where it passed an estate road leading into the trees on one side. She pulled up. ‘We can turn here, if one of you would open that gate.’
Twisting in his seat, Torrance saw both Grant and MacLeod had hunkered down in the trailer. He rapped his knuckles against the glass to get their attention, and pointed to the gate. Grant got out and opened it. Once Sheridan had completed the manoeuvre and Grant was back in the trailer, she drove on until a strand of rubber trees hid them from the Trunk Road. She put the handbrake on and folded her arms. ‘Well?’
‘We’re stuffed,’ said Kerr. ‘Well and truly stuffed. We might as well go back down to the Trunk Road now and surrender to the Kenpeitai.’
‘It’s being so cheerful as keeps you going, innit?’ Torrance punched Kerr on the shoulder, hard. ‘Instead of sitting there bleating on about how doomed we are, why don’t you check the maps in that map case I gave you? There must be some other way out of here.’
‘Mebbe if we lie up till dusk, there’ll be less traffic come nightfall?’ said Rossi.
‘Maybe, but I doubt it. Forget it, Lefty. We’ll just have to find some other way to Kuala Lumpur.’
‘Kuala Lumpur!’ Kerr had found a map, and was now struggling to unfold it. ‘I thought we was headed to Tanjong Malim?’
‘If there’s this much traffic heading south this close to Tanjong Malim, then it must be in Jap hands already. My guess is our best bet now is to head for Kuala Lumpur.’
Torrance was startled by someone rapping on the window next to his head. Looking up, he saw MacLeod standing there. He wound down the window. ‘What’s gaun on?’ asked MacLeod.
‘Primsie’s trying to read a map,’ explained Torrance.
Kerr finally got the map open. ‘There’s only two roads leading south! The Trunk Road and the Coast Road. Could we
drive down the Coast Road, d’you think?’
Torrance leaned forward to look at the map over Kerr’s shoulder. ‘As far as I can see, the only way of getting to the Coast Road from here is to go back up the Trunk Road to Bidor and then follow the signs to Telok Anson. And we’ve already agreed, the Trunk Road is out.’
‘Bloody hell!’ said Kerr. ‘Who designed this bloody country?’
MacLeod pointed down the road where they were parked. ‘Where does yon road lead?’
‘That’s just an estate road,’ said Kerr. ‘It disnae lead anywhere.’
‘It must lead somewhere. They widnae have built it, otherwise.’
‘Half a mo’, lads,’ said Torrance. ‘He might be on to something. All right, so it’s just an estate road. Are you telling me it doesn’t join up with an estate road on the next plantation? And that one doesn’t join up with an estate road on the plantation beyond that? I bet we could drive all the way from here to Kuala Lumpur on the estate roads. It won’t be as smooth or as quick as the Trunk Road, but there’ll be less chance of running into any Japs.’
‘They’re no’ marked on the map!’ said Kerr.
‘We don’t need a map. We just keep heading south.’
‘It’s no’ what I’d call one of your more brilliant plans,’ said Rossi. ‘But for want of a better one…’
Sheridan put the car in gear, and they bumped slowly up the rutted and uneven estate road. She kept the speed under twenty miles an hour, and even then the two men in the trailer were tossed about like dice in a cup. Every mile or so they came to a five-barred gate between one man’s property and the next, and Sheridan would have to stop while Grant and MacLeod took it in turns to jump out and open the gate for them. They frequently came to Y-junctions. These tended not to be signposted, so it was a toss-up which one would lead them to the next plantation, and which one would simply peter out in the middle of nowhere. If it was the latter, they simply had to turn the car around, head back to the last junction and try the other fork. Not infrequently, both forks turned out to lead to dead ends, and then they had to go back to the junction before last. It was a slow, laborious process, and when midday came, Torrance was not convinced they had covered more than five miles as the crow flew.
The road left the rubber behind and ran along the top of a causeway cutting across some padi fields. In one of the fields, a half-naked Malay boy worked knee deep in the turbid water, managing a team of water buffaloes drawing a plough. More solid ground was visible where the causeway disappeared into some trees perhaps half a mile away.
When they were a few hundred yards along the causeway, Sheridan suddenly braked.
‘Why’ve you stopped?’ asked Kerr.
She pointed to where a lorry had emerged from the trees and was coming down the causeway towards them. It was not wide enough for two vehicles to pass. ‘I don’t think the rule about the vehicle with the greatest distance to back up having right of way applies in wartime,’ she explained. ‘Especially when the other vehicle is Japanese.’
Torrance opened the door and leaped out of the car. ‘Unhitch that trailer,’ he told Grant and MacLeod.
‘You’re leaving us?’ asked MacLeod.
‘There’s a Jap lorry coming. The doc can’t back up in time pushing the trailer. The two of you will have to stand on the running boards, at least until we get off this causeway.’
Grant was already unhitching the trailer. With MacLeod’s help, he shoved it off the bridle path so it rolled down the side of the embankment into the padi field below. Torrance got back in the car and Grant and MacLeod stood on the running boards, arms crooked around the roof posts. Sheridan put the car in reverse and twisted in her seat to gaze out of the rear window as she backed along the causeway as quickly as she dared.
As fast as that was, even at the relatively sedate speed of twenty miles an hour the lorry inevitably gained on them, and it had already closed the distance by several hundred yards while they were unhitching the trailer. Now it was only a hundred yards away and bearing down on them relentlessly. What the Japanese in the cab would do when they saw the two soldiers clinging to the outside of the Morris Ten was anyone’s guess, but Torrance knew that if he had been in the lorry driver’s shoes, he would have put his foot down and forced the car off the road. He twisted to see that the end of the causeway was still several hundred yards away: they were never going to make it.
‘Pour the coal on, doc!’ he said.
‘I’m going as fast as I can!’
‘What did I tell you about woman drivers?’ said Kerr.
‘A couple of questions for you, doc,’ said Torrance. ‘One, does your husband’s car insurance policy cover acts of war? And two, how do you feel about loud bangs?’
‘I’ve no idea, and I loathe them.’
‘Then this just isn’t your day, sweetheart.’ Torrance levelled the Thompson between the two front seats and fired through the windscreen at the cab of the lorry, less then twenty yards away now. Kerr squealed in fright as the windscreen shattered, shards of glass scattering over the bonnet, and a row of stars appeared across the lorry’s windscreen. The three men sitting in the cab shuddered and dark shadows splashed across the back of the cab. The driver seemed to slump forward over the wheel. If anything, the lorry gained speed: the driver’s foot must have jammed against the accelerator.
Torrance put a second burst through the lorry’s radiator grille, with no discernible effect.
‘He’s no’ stopping!’ said Rossi.
The lorry was only ten yards away now, seconds from impact.
Grant jumped off the running board, rolling down the side of the causeway. On the other side of the car, MacLeod followed his lead.
‘Jump for it!’ Torrance threw the door open and dived out. He rolled down the side of the causeway, over and over, until he pitched up in the water of the padi field. He looked up and saw the lorry’s bumper smash into the Morris Ten’s headlights. The car was pushed backwards along the causeway by the out-of-control lorry. The nearside rear wheel cleared the edge of the causeway, then the nearside front wheel, and the Morris was tumbling down the slope to the padi field with a succession of metallic crunches, glass flying in all directions. The lorry ploughed on for another twenty yards before that too veered off the causeway, tumbling over twice before landing on its side with a terrific splash.
Picking himself up, Torrance squelched back up the side of the causeway and ran along it, discarding the empty magazine from his Thompson and replacing it with a fresh one from one of his utility pouches. When he stood almost directly over the lorry, he levelled the gun. ‘Anyone in the back of that lorry had better come out now with his hands empty, because I’m about to riddle it with lead!’
Two cowering Japanese soldiers emerged from the back of the vehicle, ankle deep in muddy water, their hands over their heads. They wore white armbands over their left sleeves, printed with two Japanese characters in red. One of them said something in Japanese, his tone pleading.
‘What are we goin’ to do wi’ them?’ asked Kerr. ‘We canna take them back to our lines wi’ us. They’ll give us away the first chance they get.’
‘What are you saying?’ asked Rossi. ‘They’re our prisoners. We canna just shoot unarmed men—’
Torrance fired a couple of short bursts. One after another, the two Japanese fell back into the padi water, their chests ripped open.
Kerr, Grant, MacLeod and Rossi gaped at the carnage.
Torrance slipped the safety catch back on. ‘Sorry, Lefty, what was you saying? I couldn’t hear you for the noise of my tommy gun.’
‘You… you shot them!’ stammered MacLeod.
‘Yeah.’
‘You canna shoot unarmed men!’ protested Rossi.
‘I bleedin’ well can. I just did.’ Torrance looked at the others, and belatedly realised someone was missing. ‘Where’s the doc?’
He got four blank looks in return.
‘Shit!’
He sprint
ed back to where the Morris lay on its side, submerged to a depth of about three inches in padi water. Making his way around to the front, he saw that Sheridan was still behind the wheel.
‘Are you all right?’
‘Oh, I’m swell, thanks!’
‘Why didn’t you jump?’
‘Out of a moving car? Mr Torrance, maybe Maureen O’Sullivan or Frances Gifford or one of those other modern women in Hollywood could jump out of a moving vehicle and spring to their feet without so much as a hair out of place. But I’m not a modern woman. I’m a simple family doctor. A family doctor in an exotic country, perhaps, but still… I’ve been driven out of my home by the Japanese, my husband’s car is wrecked, I’ve just seen three men shot to death, I’m soaked with filthy water, my hair is ruined, and I’ve had enough of this cockamamie war and I just wanna go home!’ She burst into tears.
‘Would it help if I got you out of there?’
‘That would be a start,’ she sniffled.
‘Put your arm over your eyes.’
‘What for?’
‘’Cause I’m gonna kick these last few shards of glass out of the window frame, and I don’t want any going in your eyes and blinding you. That really would ruin your day.’
She crooked her arm over her face and he kicked out the glass, before clasping her hands and pulling her through. ‘Better?’
‘A little.’
‘When you say you just want to go home, do you mean home as in that bungalow where we met you, or home Wichita Falls?’
‘Home Wichita Falls.’
‘If it makes you feel any better, me and the other lads feel exactly the same way about getting out of this sodding country.’ He helped her up to the top of the causeway.
The others waited for them there with faces like thunder. ‘Torrance, you’re under open arrest,’ said Kerr.
‘What the bloody hell are you on about now?’
‘You just killed two men in cold blood! Soon as we get back to our lines, I’m handin’ you over to the redcaps so you can stand trial for murder. You canna just shoot unarmed prisoners!’
‘Check your Manual of Military Law, Primsie. So they tried to surrender. So what? There’s nothing says we gotta accept their surrender.’
The Name of Valour Page 11