by Clare Flynn
Christopher had been relieved to discover that the Brookes were out of the country, thus removing the need for him to call on them. Everything his mother had told him about Sylvia, the Ranee, convinced him he’d had a lucky escape.
He spent a few days resting and visiting a British clergyman and his wife, the Lawrences, who had befriended him on his previous expedition. On that occasion there had been four Englishmen on the trip. Now he would be alone. The Lawrences had started a family since Christopher was there – three daughters, born in rapid succession.
‘I’d love to join you, but my days of hill climbing and tramping through forests are done,’ said the Reverend Lawrence. ‘Your best bet is to hire a Malay guide to take you into the jungle to one of the Dyak villages where you can hire local guides. You won’t be able to keep the same ones for the whole trip – they don’t like to be away from their village for long – but they’ll get you to the next settlement and you can engage some more there.’
‘How do I communicate with them?’
‘The Malay guide will translate. I know just the fellow. Name’s Hilmi. Decent chap. Go light on the luggage though – you can leave some baggage here. The Dyaks aren’t so great at carrying a lot of weight.’ He gave a wry laugh. ‘Well, the women are, but they won’t be guiding you. They’re hard at work in the fields. Dyak men are rather lazy in comparison to their womenfolk.’
After a day’s gentle climb through the forest, Christopher and his guide reached a small Dyak settlement, surrounded by rice and vegetable fields. They were shown to a circular hut built on raised posts, which the villagers used as a council chamber and to conduct trade, and where the young single men and any visiting strangers slept. There was a fireplace in the centre of the building, the smoke issuing through an opening in the roof.
Soon after their arrival, the villagers gathered to inspect the visiting white man. The men wore traditional loin cloths, known as chawats, tied two or three times around the waist and between the legs with the long ends left to dangle at the front and rear. Their necks were adorned with necklaces made from shells and they wore brass bangles, earrings and belts.
Negotiations with the head man, the orang kaya, were protracted and Christopher got the sense that the chief was holding out for a better price. Christopher turned his head from his translator to the orang kaya, trying to follow the progress of the discussion. Once arrangements were eventually agreed they settled back to eat – a meal of rice and vegetables, with gifts of eggs which he wasn’t sure whether he was expected to eat or keep. Rice wine was passed around, then the company watched as the villagers danced, accompanied by Chinese gongs.
The following day, Hilmi and Christopher set off upstream with a small group of young men, pushing higher into the hills and deeper into the forest. Every now and then they had to divert from the stream they were following in order to get past dense thickets of bamboo. After several hours walking, Christopher’s leg was chafing, but his body was full of energy and he was exhilarated by his surroundings.
The plan was to move as deeply as possible into the lower reaches of the jungle. Climbing up to the summit of the mountains was out of the question, given Christopher’s disability.
Each time they reached a village, they were obliged to recruit another set of guides, entailing lengthy discussions with the village head men and occasional delays. Christopher was both frustrated by the process and grateful – it gave him ample opportunity to rest between bouts of walking. Leaving Hilmi to handle the arrangements, he explored the area around the villages, where every available strip of land was used to grow rice. Reverend Lawrence was right – the hardest labour was done by women, who spent all day working in the fields, carrying heavy loads of vegetables or firewood back to their villages at the end of the day, often for miles and over difficult terrain. Their domestic duties then began with pounding rice to powder, before cooking the evening meal. Meanwhile, the men sat around talking and chewing betel nuts.
Each night, when he lay on a bed of palm matting, he would look up and see the small, dark outlines of shrunken heads hanging from the rafters. After a while he began to find these departed spirits oddly comforting.
Where possible, they travelled by canoe, the Dyaks propelling the boats forward with long poles. While he had little personal luggage, Christopher’s boxes and bags for transporting seeds and specimens took up a lot of space. As the journey progressed they gradually filled up. Christopher realised that would determine the time of their return, as he would need to get the boxes back to Kuching and acquire new ones.
Parts of the forest were bright with colour, flowers growing up the trees and hanging down in vibrant red and orange festoons, like curtains. During the day, the jungle was eerily quiet, coming alive at dusk with the sound of birds, the cooing of pigeons and the beating of wings, and, if they were close to the river, the croaking of frogs.
After three weeks in the jungle, Christopher had collected a substantial quantity of seeds, as well as photographing and sketching numerous different species of the pitcher plants which were the main object of the expedition. As he was considering it was time to undertake the long trek back down to Kuching, he heard the Dyaks talking rapidly to Hilmi. The Malay told him they had news of a rumoured flowering of the giant rafflesia plant, a little higher up and across a river, close to a section of rapids.
As Hilmi translated their words for him, Christopher brimmed with excitement. He thought of that afternoon when, after they had made love, he had described the rafflesia to Martha, telling her how he regretted failing to photograph the plant, due to the fading light and the steep slopes, where setting up a tripod was well-nigh impossible. How could he miss another opportunity now?
His original plan had been to return to Kuching for a couple of weeks, catch up on letters to his mother, his tutor and the Horticultural Society, and fulfil a promise to dine with the Lawrences before heading back towards the heart of the island for another trip. However, the opportunity to see the rafflesia was too significant to pass up. And it would delay him by only one or two days, three at the most. Were he to postpone hunting for it, it would be dead by the time he returned.
Hilmi was reluctant, presumably keen to return to Kuching and his family. Christopher persuaded the Malay to travel back without him and convey his apologies to the Lawrences for his delay. He asked him to take the boxes of specimens with him and arrange their shipment back to England.
The guide protested, pointing out Christopher’s lack of the local language.
‘As long as they return me to the same villages I can pick up new guides as I go. The orang kaya know me now so I should be able to get by without the language.’
Hilmi shook his head, unhappy, but torn between a desire to go home and a wish to stand by the Englishman. He tried again to dissuade Christopher from the enterprise but Christopher was determined. So Hilmi left, accompanied by one of the Dyaks in the canoe with the seed collection.
It took Christopher and the three remaining Dyaks six hours hard trekking to reach the river they needed to cross. The fast-flowing river was several feet below them in a deep gorge. Christopher could see no means of crossing it. He peered down at the clear stream. Rocks protruded through the water in several places, forming rapids. The bed of the river was covered in pebbles, white quartz, and semi-precious stones that Christopher thought were agates and jaspers, their bright colours shining in the sunlight that filtered through the trees. They followed the banks of the stream for about a mile until they reached a makeshift bridge, suspended between overhanging trees on each bank and also supported by wooden struts set diagonally into the riverbanks on each side. By a process of sign language, Christopher understood that they were to camp here for the night and cross the bridge the following morning.
When he woke up next morning, the Dyaks appeared to be arguing, something Christopher had not witnessed until now. For the first time, he wished he had not persuaded Hilmi to return without him. After five minutes
’ heated debate the men fell silent, and one of them gestured to Christopher to follow him. The other two hung back, sitting down on the riverbank, chewing betel nuts which they cracked open with the daggers they wore tucked in the waistbands of their chawats.
The bridge swayed and creaked as Christopher and the single guide made their way across. Christopher tried to keep his eyes fixed on the back of the man in front of him, avoiding looking down into the river ten or twelve feet below. The sound of rushing water as it hit the rocks and tumbled downwards, was disturbing as the bridge wobbled under their weight.
He turned his head back, expecting the other two men to follow them across the bridge but they remained, squatting on the bank, chewing and watching.
It took Christopher and his single guide a couple of hours to reach the rafflesia plant. The leafless parasite was showing two buds and one single bloom which had burst through the bark of the vine which hosted the body of the plant. Christopher measured the span of the open flower at an inch under three feet wide. Carrion flies were buzzing around the bloom, dipping inside the central bowl, attracted by the foul smell of the plant. He was overjoyed. The plant was rare and was concealed inside the vine stems until the buds burst through for their brief lives.
The Dyak guide was talking to him rapidly. Shaking his head and gesturing with his hands to convey his bewilderment, Christopher set up his tripod and began to photograph the plant. The light was less than perfect, so after getting what he could, he sat down on a nearby tree trunk and took out his sketchbook and began to draw the rafflesia.
When he had finished, he moved back to the enormous flower and took some more measurements. The Dyak man began to speak again, pointing to the two unopened buds. Before Christopher had a chance to sketch these, the man had taken out his betel knife from his waistband and cut the buds off. He wrapped them in a fold of his chawat, which he tucked back into his waist. Christopher, annoyed, remembered the Dyaks believed the buds of the rafflesia had aphrodisiac properties and were also used to facilitate childbirth. He could hardly begrudge the man his harvest, and he couldn’t take it back to England, where it would never survive without its host and in a hostile climate.
Their mission complete, the two men headed back to the stream and the bridge. The other Dyaks were still waiting on the opposite bank.
The Dyak stepped onto the structure which shook under his weight. As Christopher followed him, he could hear the voices of the others. One called something to Christopher’s guide, but the man ignored it.
A sudden cracking noise. Christopher looked towards the bank, six feet away. Before he could turn around again, he felt a heaving movement, then the flimsy platform beneath him jerked and fell away and he found himself lurching forward and pitching towards the river below. A scream penetrated his consciousness, sharp, strident, raw with emotion. He’d heard that sound before – far away on the muddy fields of the Somme, the cry of a man certain in the knowledge he was confronting his own death.
Christopher’s hand flew out, desperate to gain purchase on the twisted palm-leaf guide rope, but as he grabbed hold of it, it tore through his hand, ripping his skin, burning like a brand. The rope bridge bounced back upwards, part of it rebounding on him like the lash of bullwhip. He hurtled through space. Time stopped as the shallow rapids below rose up to meet him. His last thought was of Martha, before he hit the rock-strewn river.
Chapter 31
Christopher never found out how he had been rescued from the river, how the Dyaks had fished his body from the rapids and hauled him up the steep banks, then carried him, unconscious, back to their village.
When he eventually awoke, back in the Dyak village, Christopher was disorientated. He was lying on a pallet in a corner of the otherwise deserted circular hut. He could smell the smoke from the fire. Turning his head he saw sunlight shafting through the aperture in the roof, setting dust motes dancing. It was evidently the middle of the day, but which day?
His artificial limb was missing, whether lost, damaged or removed by the Dyaks for his comfort. Head throbbing he raised a hand to his brow and felt a cloth bandage there. A sweet smell of some kind of poultice struck him as he touched the barkcloth. How had he got here?
The bridge. His heart constricted in remembered fear. Swinging above the water by one arm until the force of the rebounding structure had caused him to lose his grip and sent him plummeting to the river. After that, nothing.
His whole body ached. Running his hand down his arms and leg and over his stump, he checked to see if he had broken any bones. Miraculously he appeared to be intact, just bruised and battered. There was a gash along his left arm and his right hand was bandaged in a dressing that seemed to be made of woven leaves, underneath which he felt a burning across his palm where the skin had been torn off.
Looking around the room from his horizontal position he could see no one and no sign of his missing wooden limb. He tried to ease himself up into a sitting position but the room swam around him, pains shafted up his back and he fell back again, unconscious.
When Christopher came to, Hilmi and the Reverend Lawrence were sitting cross-legged on mats on the floor beside his bed.
‘Ah! Christopher,’ said Lawrence. ‘Welcome back to the land of the living. You gave us quite a scare. We weren’t sure you were going to make it.’ His tone was jovial but his eyes were filled with concern.
‘How long have I been here?’
‘Almost two weeks. Two of the Dyaks came down to Kuching to bring us here. Apparently you fell from a bridge?’
‘I didn’t fall. The bridge collapsed underneath me. There was another chap in front of me. Is he all right?’
‘He die. Head crack open on rocks. You lucky, sir.’ Hilmi grinned at Christopher. ‘Yes, you very lucky.’
Christopher thought of the young man who would never have a chance to test the aphrodisiac powers of the buds he had plucked. He said a silent prayer of thanks for his own life.
‘Thank you for coming here. Both of you. Sorry to have been the cause of so much trouble.’
‘No trouble. I was happy to have an excuse to use with Mrs Lawrence to come up here. Bit of an adventure for me. Oh, and she sends you her best wishes. Wants you to stay with us when we get back to Kuching. Until you’re fighting fit again, old boy.’
Christopher nodded his thanks. ‘Have you seen my leg? It’s missing.’
Hilmi said. ‘Gone in river. Leg save you life. Catch in rocks. Dyaks cut leg off to get you free. In Kuching make new one.’
Christopher’s heart sank. How was he to manage without his custom-made limb? But when he thought about it later he realised it was a strange irony that his missing leg had been the means of his escaping death.
* * *
They brought him back to Kuching in a rough and ready open palanquin, made by the Dyaks from long bamboo poles with palm matting stretched between. It was a journey that took several days, stopping in different villages overnight. Time passed in a daze for Christopher, mingled with moments of vivid consciousness as they passed through the forest and he spotted a plant he wanted to stop and examine. But there were no halts or diversions for plant collecting on this trip. Straight down to the coastal plain. The stretcher lurched about as the Dyaks negotiated obstacles, but Christopher must have been weary or drugged in some way – who knew what concoctions his hosts had administered to ease his pain and aid his recovery?
The day before they were due to reach Kuching, Christopher’s temperature rose and he felt alternately feverish and chilled. Even though he was lying motionless, he felt the weight of exhaustion upon him and all his muscles ached – a different kind of pain to the background pain from his injuries. He began vomiting as they were moving through the woods on the last leg of the journey. Voices carried on the air towards him, but Christopher could not hear what they were saying. The canopy of forest above his head seemed to be moving down towards him, as though to crush him under the weight of leaves and branches.
W
hen he was next aware of anything, he was lying in a comfortable bed, shrouded by mosquito netting. A cool breeze drifted through an open door from a veranda, carrying the scent of hibiscus and jasmine. There was a Bible on the nightstand beside the bed and the room was sparsely furnished but clean and bright.
As he was taking this in, a woman came through the doorway and drew back the net to look at him. ‘You’re awake, Captain Shipley. I hope you’re feeling a little better at last?’
‘Mrs Lawrence,’ he said, smiling up at her kind face.
The woman took his temperature and ran her fingers over his brow, pushing his unkempt hair away. ‘You had us extremely worried for a time.’
‘I had a fall. From a bridge.’
‘More than that. You’ve had malaria. A very bad bout. We didn’t think you were going to make it. Your body was run-down after your accident, so the disease took a firm hold.’ She pulled her lips into a tight smile. ‘My husband wanted to inform your family – but we couldn’t find anything to tell us their address. There was only your trunk but it was locked and he didn’t want to break into it unless…’
‘Unless I’d actually died?’
She nodded, embarrassed. ‘But fortunately it didn’t come to that.’
‘How long have I been ill?’
‘Several weeks. And you must rest for weeks more. We have to rebuild your strength. But the good news is that a letter arrived for you today.’ She flipped over the envelope. ‘It’s from your mother! Now you’ll be able to write to her and tell her you are on the road to recovery, so I am rather glad we didn’t find her address and give her cause for worry. But no letter-writing until you are feeling strong enough.’