The Red Pavilion

by Jean Chapman

  More than anything the voice from Rinsey — if it had been Rinsey her call had reached — disturbed her. She dismissed the feeling that it had been Kurt on the other end, the tones had been too hard, too unsympathetic — and would she recognise his voice after eight years? Could it have been his son, Josef? Her heart lifted ridiculously at that sudden idea. But why had the call been cut off so abruptly? Had something happened suddenly at the other end? The questions churned endlessly. And why wasn’t her father here?

  This last thought was like a great shout in her mind. She remembered their arrival and a group of men talking earnestly together in the foyer, men discussing a serious problem, an emergency even, certainly not chatting. If anyone knew anything, she must find out.

  The two men behind the reception desk were the same ones who had denied they had any information when Liz checked in. Could she rephrase the same questions without feeling a fool? She approached somewhat circumspectly, but was purposefully greeted.

  ‘Ah! Miss Hammond, I was just calling your room. There is a gentleman here to see you.’ The receptionist indicated a tall man, in his late thirties perhaps, certainly of white origins but whose skin had the permanent colour of one who had been long in the tropics rather than the swift and impermanent tan of a mere visitor.

  ‘Miss Hammond?’ he queried. His voice, she decided, was English but as complex as that cut off over the telephone. It was deep, welcoming to a degree, but held a tone of reserve. ‘Miss Elizabeth Hammond?’

  ‘Yes, that’s right.’ She took the proffered hand. ‘Have you a message from my father?’

  ‘Is Mrs Blanche Hammond, your mother, with you?’

  ‘She’s tired from the journey.’ She questioned him by her stillness as he indicated a seat at the far side of the foyer.

  ‘I have no direct information of any kind for you,’ he told her, ‘but we have mutual friends — the Wildons — who told me you were expected today.’

  ‘I do remember the Wildons,’ she agreed. ‘But we’ve tried to telephone to our estate.’ She felt suddenly aggressive towards this man with his shuttered expressions. How could she make him see her desperate concern? ‘We ... I ...’

  ‘Yes.’

  The single word implied he knew. She decided he could be nothing but some kind of civil servant, some bureaucrat, his words were more official jargon than conversation.

  ‘So what’s going on? What’s happened at Rinsey? Do you know? And where’s my father?’ The shout that had been in her head was moderated to a piercing stage whisper — which paralysed all the foyer conversation.

  ‘Look,’ he said, rising from the seat and offering his arm to steer her away from the now silently watching group in the far corner. ‘Come and dine with me. I can tell you everything I know. It’s not simple — ’

  She withdrew her hand from his arm. ‘Don’t bloody patronise me,’ she hissed at him, and thought with immediate penitence that she sounded like her mother.

  ‘I wouldn’t dream of it, Miss Hammond. In any case I really haven’t time.’

  ‘Then tell me what you know now!’ They had taken a few steps in the direction of the dining room. Liz felt she stayed upright only because she was taut with anger and exhaustion.

  ‘We both need to eat, don’t we?’ The extreme ends of his lips may have quivered upwards a little, but not so as anyone more than an arm’s length away would have noticed.

  She thought, God, don’t let me cry when I sit down. To relax even that much might be a catalyst.

  ‘John Sturgess,’ he said when they were seated. ‘John Robson Sturgess.’

  She stared at him, waiting for the information he had.

  ‘My mother’s maiden name,’ he added, mistaking her stare. ‘A lot of people call me — ’

  ‘Now we have the important things out of the way ... ’ She stopped and shook her head. ‘No, I’m sorry, Mr Sturgess — but for God’s sake put me out of my misery, if you don’t want me to start having hysterics. I’m too tired for tact. What do you know?’

  He lowered his gaze to the table, taking time, she thought to censor what he had to tell, and to avoid her reading anything extra in his eyes. She noted the compression of the lips, the jaw tightening. The silence went on to complete abstraction as he picked up a fork and slowly impaled the bread roll on his side plate. He made it look like murder, like a commando making a deliberate and silent kill.

  A sudden nervous laugh escaped her at the disparity between the idea and the action that evoked it. He looked up at her and then at the roll with equal surprise as if he had forgotten one and been quite unaware of the other. Briefly, she wondered if the problems that haunted him were not even greater than her own.

  He cleared his throat as if ridding himself of such petty things as emotions. ‘The only hard news I have about your father is that he sent you a telegram on 18 June telling you and your mother not to travel, but to stay in England.’

  She stared at the fork piercing the bread and remembered the telegram boy they had put in the ditch.

  ‘On the 16th Chinese bandits went to one of the loneliest rubber estates in Perak — not Rinsey, Miss Hammond,’ he reassured her, ‘and shot the English manager and undermanager.’

  ‘Elphil?’ she guessed, remembering visiting that other remote estate with her father, travelling the seemingly endless jungle roads. Neville Hammond had described Elphil with those same words.

  ‘Yes.’ He looked at her with slightly more interest. ‘You surmise correctly.’

  ‘That’s terrible,’ she said, but resented the primness of his remark. ‘But perhaps just an incident? We knew there had been labour troubles.’

  ‘No!’ The denial was harshly emphatic. ‘I’m afraid not. There have been other incidents. Most of the planters in the north have seen this trouble coming since the end of the war. The chief Chinese communists held a huge gathering at Sungei Siput about a month ago … ’

  Liz lost some of what he was saying as she remembered Sungei Siput, one of the chief towns of the state of Perak, as a place for shopping and the occasional cinema trip. Rinsey was in the same foothills as Elphil though some ten long jungle miles further southeast. ‘But you said bandits?’ she interrupted.

  ‘Bandits was the official line at first, but bandits don’t shoot people and leave two thousand dollars in the office safe with the key under their noses and not a damned soul who dare intervene.’

  ‘So what do they want?’

  He gave her a strange agonised look which seemed to contain a personal hurt, as if he had been intimately betrayed, and said briefly, as the waiter came towards them, ‘To make Malaya a communist republic.’

  The implications were left unsaid as the Chinese waiter came to take their order with all the polite attention, lack of servility and inscrutability of his race.

  ‘But how? How they can hope to — ’ She stopped short, then added her own answer, ‘By killing the English? But they couldn’t ... ’

  ‘Not in the towns. It’s the classic Mao Tse-tung stuff. Guerrillas attack lonely estates, tin and coal mines ... ’ He pulled the fork from his roll, then used it to chip away at the edges of the bread. ‘As well as the English they will attack the police, government officials in small towns and terrorise villagers into supplying them with food. They believe if they control the sources of wealth in the countryside the cities will eventually be starved to submission. Make no mistake, they’re already well organised ... ’

  For a few seconds they both looked at the exposed white middle of his bread, before he put down his fork and pushed the side plate away.

  She waited for him to go on with a growing sense of alarm. She remembered enough to know that the tin mines of eastern Malaya or the opencast coal mines of Batu Arang were no more than holes in the ground, lonely as any rubber plantation and just as jungle-surrounded.

  She felt suddenly very curious. Whatever he was saying, however impassive his features, he was emotionally as involved in all this as she was.
r />   ‘Do you have someone living upcountry?’

  ‘No! I have no one.’ The denial was too sharp, too decisive, implied loss rather than the never had. ‘I lived in Malaya before the war,’ he said, adding with finality, ‘but that’s all over long ago.’

  ‘So what is your role?’ she asked. ‘I mean, you’re obviously official even if you’re not in uniform.’

  His spoon stopped between bowl and mouth. She thought for a moment she had committed some social gaffe, but then very briefly he smiled. ‘Is it that obvious?’

  She kept her face impassive, remembering that her Malayan amah had said there were times when silence brought the most answers.

  ‘I became a major after the war, after I’d stayed behind in the jungle during the Japanese occupation. I . .’ Pausing, he looked up at her and for the first time she felt it was an ordinary flesh-and-blood man who sat opposite her, for she could see the hurt in his eyes. ‘I helped train the Chinese — we knew a lot of them were communists — to harass the Japs. I lived with them in their jungle often not far from Elphil and Rinsey. I’m seconded back because I know where these camps are and how these Chinese terrorists think.’

  So this was his bête noire; he had helped train men who had turned on his own race. She wondered if her mother would agree to stay at Raffles while she took the train to Ipoh, hoping to find or be contacted by her father. ‘So you’re travelling up to Perak?’ she asked.

  ‘Yes.’ He paused and looked at her sharply. ‘But I don’t advise you to — the police have enough on their hands. Stay here and news will come, I’ll see to it.’

  ‘I shall travel up by train tomorrow,’ she said simply. ‘Rinsey is my home.’

  Chapter Two

  ‘Oh! Certainly not! We’ve come this far ... ’ Blanche’s reaction to the suggestion that she should remain in Singapore had been as determined as Liz’s to John Sturgess the night before. Once Blanche, rested and showered, had been told of events at Elphil, she took over organising their immediate departure.

  ‘They don’t want us to go,’ Liz felt she should warn. ‘Two more Englishwomen to look after is exactly what they don’t need.’

  ‘And bungling bureaucrats we can do without.’ Blanche pushed her toilet bag into her case. ‘There were enough people chasing their own tails during the war. We know what we want, where we want to go.’ She paused, hands pressing down the clothes in her case before she added, ‘And who we want to find there when we arrive.’

  ‘And we do not need looking after,’ Liz affirmed. The two exchanged looks which acknowledged their mutual resolution and their fears.

  ‘So what is this major like?’

  ‘A man shut up with his own problems,’ she judged sharply, recalling his brusque, uncompromising comment, ‘Childhood is soon over,’ when she had said how badly she wanted to reach the home where she was brought up. ‘He’s travelling today, we’re sure to meet him before we reach Ipoh. He’ll probably have a delegation on the platform to try to stop us going — that was the feeling he left me with last night.’

  John Sturgess was in fact standing alone when they reached the platform. He nodded briefly but remained aloof.

  Hardly had their luggage been carried to their compartment and the boy tipped when they were startled by a shout.

  ‘Mr Sturgess, sir! Robbo!’ A well-built man perhaps a little older than Liz’s father advanced on Sturgess with arms outstretched.

  ‘Harfield! George! My God! It’s good to see you!’ The two men slapped each other on the back and gave out cries of greeting and surprise as they performed a kind of spontaneous jig together.

  Liz thought what an ill-assorted couple they made. Sturgess was tall and spare, pale with a triangle of shadow under his fine, high cheekbones, his manner off-putting and unsmiling until he greeted the older man. George Harfield looked like a healthy British butcher who might still give a good account of himself on the rugby field as one of the bigger forwards.

  ‘Thought you were in England.’

  ‘Thought you were in Australia!’ the big man countered, laughing hugely. ‘Thrown you out of there, too?’

  ‘Something like that. And I knew you’d never stay in Blighty!’

  Liz and Blanche exchanged speculative glances and lingered outside their compartment, looking at the two men. Instead of bringing the second man over to introduce him, Sturgess took George Harfield’s arm and led him away along the waiting train. It seemed to Liz that she and her mother were being discussed.

  ‘He wouldn’t know anything anyway,’ Liz concluded, watching them go, ‘not if he’s just come from England.’

  ‘Don’t think much of your Robbo’s manners,’ Blanche said, fidgeting with their luggage on the overhead racks to ensure it was safely stowed. ‘You did dine with him last night, after all. Extraordinarily rude — though he’s damned good-looking in a ravaged sort of way, might have a bit of breeding about him.’

  Liz laughed at her mother’s description.

  Blanche sank into her seat. ‘I feel a bit like that myself already this morning — ravaged. It’s this unrelenting heat. How long does this damned train take? I forget — never mind, don’t tell me, let me be blissful in ignorance a bit longer.’

  Liz pushed up the wooden shutters that served as windows and hoped that when ignorance turned to knowledge they would be rejoicing, quite mad in fact with the happiness of reunion. She watched the two-toned brown carriages begin to curve away as they moved out of Singapore station on this last stage of their journey.

  They crossed the stone causeway from the island of Singapore to the peninsula of Malaya. She smiled to see her mother take out a Delderfield novel to read and, having brought a little of England with her, refuse to be distracted from it.

  Liz felt an overwhelming excitement as childhood memories were relived as they stopped at minor stations. She watched locals energetically appeal for the train passengers to raise their shutters and buy from their trays of fruit, tiny highly coloured rice cakes or hand-embroidered slippers, or take tea from the char-wallahs, with their brass charcoal burners and tea kettles hanging from sturdy bamboo canes. She saw a hand come from a window and steal a cake as a tray was carried along on the vendor’s head.

  This was the Malaya she remembered, the population like the ever burgeoning jungle competing for space, striving for a living in heat like the hottest of greenhouses, growth often outstripping resources. She watched the variety of faces: the Chinese more competitive, their smiles angled to prospective customers; the Malays, she thought, good-natured in the contented way of people whose generous land could grow both basic sustenance and exotica with very little help.

  Although the train’s speed through the green jungle corridor created a breeze, it was hot and soporific, and she found the effort of trying to see the landscape through the shading wooden slats trying to the eyes. She was drifting into sleep when there was a tap on the door of their compartment.

  They were both surprised to see George Harfield standing there with two green coconuts cupped in one huge hand. Blanche lowered her novel and frowned. ‘I hope you’re not going to offer us those!’ she said.

  George Harfield laughed, quite unperturbed by her assumption or her manner. ‘This, my lady, is so tasty that not only will you want to drink the contents but you’ll be scraping out the inside with your manicured fingernails.’

  She made a large dismissive gesture, but laughed at his crudeness, stating, ‘You’re the man who met Major Sturgess.’

  He sat down uninvited and Liz waited for her mother’s reaction.

  ‘How does fresh limes, splash of gin and ice sound?’ he asked, again offering the smooth green shell of a young coconut, sliced off at the top. Usually the content offered for sale was the coconut milk itself — nice enough but tepid. Liz saw her mother swallow in anticipation and she licked her own lips at the thought of a really cold drink.

  ‘Ice?’ Blanche queried. ‘Well, then you’re irresistible. Do sit down.’


  ‘Thanks!’ Harfield grinned quite unabashed as he handed over the drinks.

  It was all as he said, complete with straws into the thick-fleshed nut. Quite delicious, and after the first few deep swallows both women savoured and eked out the rest.

  ‘Are you some sort of a magician?’ Blanche asked.

  He tapped the side of his nose and laughed as she sniffed deprecatingly. ‘Local products plus British enterprise,’ he answered, adding, ‘and I have a proposition to put to you.’ The teasing look was gone, his blue eyes suddenly stony. He sat back in the seat and openly studied both women.

  ‘A proposition?’ Blanche queried. ‘To discourage us from doing what?’

  ‘Of course Major Sturgess has sent you,’ Liz surmised.

  ‘Robbo, no,’ he denied. ‘We’ve talked, I know who you are, but he’s asleep now. Been through a traumatic time and travelled from the far side of Australia before flying back to Singapore.’

  She wondered first how anyone could call the inflexible Major Sturgess ‘Robbo’ and secondly what the ‘traumatic time’ had involved — but George Harfield was obviously not going to enlighten them.

  ‘He really only knows second hand what’s going on here.’ He paused as if to make certain of his ground. ‘You are from Rinsey?’

  Blanche acknowledged the last remark with a nod before asking, ‘Haven’t you just returned from England?’

  He shook his head. ‘I’ve only been in England for twelve weeks in the last three years. I came back immediately after the war to manage a mine for Pacific Tin. I was a young engineer here prewar, and I understand you lived here too.’ He paused. ‘I have to tell you this has suddenly become a very different country to the one you left. Can you both handle a gun?’

  ‘Of course,’ Blanche said brusquely. ‘Do we need to?’

  Liz felt a weary anger rekindle; these men really did not know her Malaya at all. Twelve had seemed to be the age when planters’ children all learned to handle guns. Josef Guisan and she had devised competitions, shooting first at tins on tree stumps, then at pieces of liana posing as deadly snakes thrown unexpectedly from bushes. Finally they practised shooting at bundles of ferns on the ends of bamboos poked out as attacking tigers, the green target accompanied by savage roars — until Liz, startled by a bellow from an unexpected direction, had shot off the toe of one of Josef’s sandals.