by Jean Chapman
At the hut doorway she paused, watching as Alan sat before the gently humming radio transmitter, headphones over his ears, fingers turning the dials to his frequency. At precisely eighteen hundred hours he made his report. ‘Echo Bravo Six. Echo Bravo Six. Routine call.’ Then he listened, his voice suddenly rising a pitch as he asked, ‘That you, Larry? Any news of the football scores back home?’ He listened again, then laughed. ‘Next time then, got to keep up with the important things in life.’
He turned as he spoke as if sensing a presence, then blushed, looking as if he wanted to explain to her that the football scores were for his mates. She inclined her head as if to acknowledge the tacit information. He nodded back as he made his final signing-off, moving his head very slowly like someone reassuring a timid child.
He removed his headphones, flipped a switch on the set and came to her, his arms part open, part raised, reminding her of a picture of Christ called ‘Suffer Little Children to Come unto Me’. His tallness overshadowing her, his dark uniform touching her, his arms around her, she closed her eyes and leaned to him.
She leaned on him so heavily, for a slight girl such a leaden weight, he almost asked her what was the matter. He rephrased the unspoken words. ‘Is there something else?’
Chapter Ten
‘Good morning.’
Liz turned from the kitchen dresser where she was pressing oranges for breakfast. She returned the greeting and handed John Sturgess a glass of the fresh juice. He nodded his thanks.
He was dressed and shaved. It seemed the right time to ask her favour. She sipped her drink and began to make them both coffee and toast.
The night before she had told Alan the story of her old nurse who had come to the funeral and disappeared immediately afterwards. He had mentioned Sturgess’s jeep, and she had the distinct feeling that had she asked him outright he would have taken it and driven her to Anna’s kampong there and then.
He had been so concerned when she told him how she had first sought out Anna, recognising the turtle pots; how strange her old nurse had been, and the encounter with the terrorist. He had got up and stridden about, then come to take her hand as if he would be off that second to find the old lady. She had in the end felt she must make him promise not to do anything before she herself had asked the major if he would take her back to the kampong, or lend his vehicle.
‘Yesterday my old amah came to the funeral — ’ she began now.
‘I wondered if that was who it was,’ he interrupted slowly putting his glass down and looking fixedly at her. ‘The lady from the quiet kampong! She left before the service ended.’
‘I wondered if you would take me back to her village again to make sure she is ... all right.’
‘How did she get here?’
‘She could have walked.’ She felt under cross-examination. ‘I didn’t actually get to speak to her.’
‘Unlike the time we stopped at her kampong.’
‘I did speak to her then, of course.’ Professional cross-examination, she thought.
‘And did something happen there that day?’ He leaned forwards over the table and she instinctively leaned back on to the dresser, inching away from his scrutiny. ‘This could be vitally important to me — and my men,’ he added.
She told him defensively, uneasy as his eyes seem to be assessing her every move, as if reading from her movements any degree of vacillation from the spoken truth — but she told it all.
‘Hmm’ he said when she had finished and reached over for the plate of toast she had made.
‘Is that it, then?’ she demanded. The revelation of the terrorist’s appearance and the terrified boy had been a battle between her amah’s trust in her silence and what felt like the commonsense need to speak out now. ‘Hmm!’
‘Sorry, but it’s more or less what I expected.’
‘So the third degree wasn’t necessary.’
He looked at her and laughed. it astonished her how his face changed, the long lean lines vanished, the man shone through the military machine. ‘That wasn’t even a first degree,’ he told her.
‘So will you take me to check on my amah?’
He shook his head at her. ‘No can do, sorry!’
‘But it wouldn’t take you long.’
He again shook his head.
‘Would you lend us your jeep for a couple of hours?’
‘Us?’
‘Me.’
‘All of us will shortly be gone — until then no one comes in or goes out of here.’
‘Gone ? But if I ... but I’m not under your command.’
‘You may be endangering my men’s lives if you do anything other than stay around Rinsey for the next few days.’
It felt as if he could have told her more without giving away any great secrets. She gave him back look for look, wanting to pierce his strict correctness, to trip up his calculating military mind.
‘You know, you remind me of someone,’ he said, sounding as if he had made some kind of capitulation.
‘Really?’ She poured coffee to mask her astonishment as she saw the quality of his scrutiny had completely changed and his tone was bordering on the confidential. She was about to ask who it might be but shied away from letting their relationship become more personal. She picked up her coffee and prepared to go and look in on her mother. ‘I think you remind me of somebody, too.’
‘Oh! Who?’ His turn to sound surprised now.
‘Jekyll and Hyde.’
She had not meant it humorously and yet as the door closed behind her she listened for at least a humph of laughter. There was none and it somehow made John Sturgess more difficult to know, impossible to reach with any easy friendship. What was his past? Whom did she reminded him of? She was mildly curious.
She went to her mother’s room and peeped in. Joan Wildon had left two sleeping tablets, saying, ‘I use them when I’m off duty at home.’ Blanche had said she would take them if she was still awake after midnight. It seemed she had been, for as Liz watched she slept deeply with no movement.
Going to her own room, she open her sketchbook. She had worked late on a picture of the tree; the canopy was detailed, each leaf painstakingly drawn, but she had not been able to fill in the bottom of the picture. She felt there was no base to her life, no bottom to her sketch. She turned to the page before where she had begun a head-and-shoulders sketch of Alan. She thought it a decent likeness but what twisted her heart was that John Sturgess had said they would soon all be gone.
She slowly turned the page back to the tree and, picking up an eraser, slowly and methodically rubbed out the whole drawing. And then she wept.
*
Alan became certain that they would go into the jungle just before dawn the next day. Their sergeant made an informal kit inspection, paying particular attention to clean socks, insect repellent, and later issued tinned ration packs to each man for three days.
Alan checked and familiarised himself with the model-33 wireless set they had brought in for him, which, though apparently despatched from Canada, had dials labelled in Russian. Profit, even equipment for war, crossed all political divides, it seemed.
He was not sure whether the tension at Rinsey, which to him seemed to tighten a notch with every passing hour, was not just in his own mind. His dread was that once his jungle operation was put under way, his time at the plantation would come to an end and he would not return. Even the thought had menacing echoes.
He had come to Malaya with a curious feeling of destiny hanging over him. He had almost reached the conviction that he should have been a conscientious objector, but that, he was sure, took more real courage than he had. Conscripted for national service in 1948, he had assumed that he stood a fair chance of seeing very little active service; certainly it had not seemed possible he would be sent halfway around the world to shoot other human beings — not so soon after his and his companions’ fathers had come home from fighting the Second World War. The lights had gone on again in a land fit for he
roes to live in — the ringing phrases had an empty echo.
Until now he had shot nothing bigger than a hare, and then only because it was needed for the table. But it was free season here on all men with red stars on their forage caps, provided they didn’t get you first — and they knew the terrain.
Alan had been entranced by the beluka, the jungle edges, where there was room and light to admire the enormous leaves jungle plants produced; one such and a man or woman could be decently covered, fig leaves were poor things by comparison.
The deeper jungle he had found more darkly awe-inspiring, with its dripping constant dusk. It would be a matter of luck whether a shot hit its target with so many trunks to deflect the bullet’s flight. He calculated that deflections could probably be the cause of more injuries than direct intentions.
The day dragged through to his final network call. He had seen nothing of Liz all day through he had wandered around making himself as visible as he could. She must have been in the bungalow — with her mother, he supposed, and with Sturgess, who went in and out fairly constantly. If it could have gained him entry, he told himself he would have applied for officer training right away. Instead he sent many yearning thoughts to her — though how was she to know it might be his last day there?
He went back to his shack and lay on his bed as darkness swept down. His mood changed as he decided he was surprised she did not guess something was going on, for even though the work on the wiring and lighting was finished, the perimeter lights were not switched on. Instead, still figures stood guarding either side of the newly erected double gates — fifteen feet of lashed poles and woven barbed wire. Except for a concealed escape for emergencies, this was the only way in and out.
He must find some excuse to go to the bungalow. He cared little for making a fool of himself, or being censured yet again by the major, but there was behaviour suitable for the day after a family funeral, and it was this restraint that had all day kept him from the door. He heard himself sighing heavily in the darkness. He was like a Shakespearean lover, he decided, ‘sighing like a furnace’.
He struck a deal with himself; if she did not come while he was making his call, then he would go to the back door and say ... what? Another sigh. He glanced at the luminous hands of the army watch. It was time he was at the transmitter. He switched on the shaded light and went to the table, where his hand stopped partway to the dials. A small leather wallet was propped against the set.
His hand shook as he opened it. The leather wallet was a tiny photograph holder and inside was a photograph of Liz. A small oval, it seemed to encapsulate her quiet dignity, yet the direct look from the eyes that followed the viewer showed the spirit.
A slip of paper was tucked into the opposite side. His hasty fingers were clumsy as he unfolded it.
‘There is a saying: send a likeness of yourself with a loved one and it speeds their return.’
The excitement of the gift and of the words ‘loved one’ made his network call late and kept him awake all night. Awake tormented by her nearness and her inaccessibility, with the knowledge that he would leave at dawn. It felt like a separation before they had properly met, a divorce without a marriage.
When the sergeant arrived to say they would shortly be moving out, a torrential downpour was in progress. He carefully cut a piece of oilskin from an old map case and wrapped the leather photograph wallet, putting it into his breast pocket.
With his small pack hanging below the 33 set hitched as high as he could get it on his back, his waterproof poncho over everything, rifle in hand, he was well loaded, like all the others. But he had only to raise his left arm a little to feel the small package in his pocket, to press it close to his heart.
Major Sturgess took the lead with the sergeant, Bert Mackenzie, next, ready to take over should anything happen to his officer; then Babyface; Alan; Dan, who carried a Bren gun; and finally two brothers, Donald and Benjamin Sutherland, who with Sergeant Mackenzie had the distinction (frequently mentioned to conscripts when they were in regular barracks) of being regular soldiers.
Each had to keep his head down low enough to let the rain run off the wide-brimmed jungle hat, but not so low as to be unable to see the man in front. The noise of the rain on the palms and huge jungle leaves made it quite impossible for them to talk to each other even if it had been allowed. It was just sheer slogging work, and soon they were as soaked with perspiration inside their ponchos as everywhere else was saturated by the downpour.
As the light became stronger, they came to the edge of a rubber plantation that had been neglected for some time. The going was hard because the extra sunlight had aided the growth of every kind of bush and scrub around the rows of young trees. Alan wondered if this was part of the Rinsey estate. He felt it must be for they had not travelled far.
Soon they came to a wide track and, as if someone had turned off the tap, the rain stopped, the sigh of relief was palpable if not audible as the major raised his hand for a halt. They took off their ponchos, shook and rolled them and were fastening them to each other’s kit when round the corner of the track came a line of khaki-clad men, red stars on their hats and carrying a flag with the hammer and sickle on it, for all the world like Boy Scouts on a camping holiday.
It was debatable who were the most surprised, but by the time the Guards had their rifles to their shoulders the terrorists had dived for cover. They fired after them, the shots whining and ricocheting through the trees.
After the incident the major and the sergeant had a quick huddled conference over map and compass. Alan wildly hoped that meeting the CTs might abort whatever they were about and they might all just go back to Rinsey. Instead the major led them off at a tangent from the path and soon they were cutting into virgin jungle to make their way.
Progress was torturously slow and the continual bang of his small pack at the base of his spine with each movement began to be a repetitive torment. He tried not to think of it, not to wait for it to swing back and hit him just on the nerve centre at his tail end. It made his nerve ends tingle as they anticipated the thud of the pack and their curl and scream as it landed.
He pushed his left arm up under his left breast to feel the photograph wallet and tried to concentrate on plans to be with Liz. The trouble was that private soldiers weren’t allowed to plan their movements or their lives, all that and beyond was in the hands of the authorities — he remembered helping to stack the piles of long wooden crates near Batu Caves.
They travelled all that day, cutting with their parangs, jerking their shoulders free as packs and shoulders became caught and entangled by every kind of thorned creeper and branch. At four o’clock they stopped to make camp for the night, each man trying to make a platform of small branches and leaves to lift him a little off the sodden ground. There was no smoking and no campfire, for the smell of smoke filtered for miles, betraying any man’s presence. The rations they ate were hard tack biscuits, corned beef and a figgy type of chocolate, washed down with water taken from the jungle streams and shaken up with sterilising tablets in their canteens. It tasted, Alan thought, like the worst kind of chlorinated swimming-baths water. Then, with ponchos used like individual tents, they fell into exhausted sleep where they lay or crouched, dragged to wakefulness only when it was their term for watch.
At dawn they moved off again. For that day and the following night they had no further sighting of any living thing beyond many bright-green snakes, lizards of all sizes and a variety of monkeys, some frankly curious, some disturbed, frightened and aggressive at the intrusion into their domain.
On the morning of the third day Major Sturgess had them cut a small clearing to aid radio transmission and gave Alan a new radio frequency and call sign. It took some repositioning of the set to make contact and when the voice at the other end finally answered Alan was surprised to recognise the mine manager, George Harfield, though rumour had it he and the major had been together in the wartime guerrilla Force 136 in the jungle of Malaya.
Sturgess took over the headphones and microphone and informed their contact, ‘Operation Nutcracker in position.’
‘Everything to go as planned.’
The little band of men were then called together. ‘We’re approaching a major settlement which we know the communists are using as a kind of supply depot and post office for a large jungle-based unit. Food, messages, intermediaries, they’re all going through this place. Mr George Harfield is with a force coming in from the main road. At precisely thirteen hundred hours we shall all go in. Our task is to catch the ones who try to slip away. We shall take up positions along the tracks running into the jungle from the back of the kampong, move in as close as we can a few minutes before thirteen hundred hours. Synchronise your watches. It is now eleven thirty-nine.’
Following the briefing, extreme caution and silence was the rule, particularly as they reached and began to follow a water pipeline out from a jungle reservoir to the kampong. As the track alongside the water pipe widened and other paths crossed theirs, they knew they were near their objective.
At a signal from the sergeant and officer, they fanned out sideways, each man understanding the dotting finger gesture of the commander. Taking a track, each prepared to lie in ambush until the time came for them to move forwards at the same minute as George Harfield’s unit moved in from the main road.
Slowly and silently the guardsmen disappeared into the jungle by the track sides. Alan reached his track, slid off the wireless and his pack and with infinite care concealed both behind himself, opening the set out so it was ready for immediate transmission, should it be needed. He took note of a giant fern growing behind a moss-encrusted rock, smaller ferns growing from the moss, so if he moved away he should be able to recognise the exact spot without delay.
The art of ambushing was a strange mixture of peace and tension. He lay still so long that lizards, ants and butterflies took him as part of the environment, yet at the same time the tension of listening and — on this operation — watching his wristwatch was a particular torment. For all his antimilitary feeling, he had to acknowledge it was training that made him able to concentrate; at college he would have gone off into a dream about his latest girlfriend, even gone to sleep. He was conditioned now to total vigilance. He merely checked that Liz’s photograph was quite safe, looked at his watch again and listened.