by Jean Chapman
Liz had picked up a handful of pens and pencils from George’s desk and tapped them into an orderly bundle. The mine’s books had been rather ostentatiously whisked away when they entered the bungalow. She reflected that she had kept the rubber accounts ever since work had restarted at Rinsey — but that could easily be taken over by one of the foremen.
She patted the points of the pencils into line. She had sketched nothing, nor wanted to, since Alan had been reported missing, presumed killed. Drawing had been part of her life for as long as she could remember. Her first memory of her father was sitting on his knee and being helped to draw a monkey hanging from their tree. There was no more sketching, no pleasure in her life any more. She was just amazed that they went on doing things like getting up, going to bed, dealing with the business, eating. ‘You’re asking me to stay until after Christmas,’ she stated.
‘And you don’t want to?’
Liz imagined that distance might ease her grief, that she might leave behind this tortured creature she had become. ‘You have Anna and her grandson,’ she said.
The remark cut but Blanche was still stifling the mind’s cry of hurt, balancing it against her daughter’s surprise that she should need her, or anyone. Doggedly she went on with the plan she was devising as they talked.
‘Ivy won’t, of course, leave your uncle Raymond on his own, particularly not at Christmas, so Wendy would have to travel alone. If you stayed until after her holiday you could go back together.’ She paused, wondering what she had to say to reach her daughter. ‘I do believe she has to come, to grieve here, perhaps to hit some kind of bottom — like us — before we can begin to go upwards again.’
‘I never shall,’ Liz stated.
‘Oh, Liz! Believe me.’ Her mother clenched both fists and pounded them silently on the closed case. ‘Believe me, you will! We both will in time.’
‘Thanks for not saying “you’re young”.’
‘Well, you may have stopped me just before I reached it.’
Blanche held out a hand and Liz suddenly came to her and took it, helping her mother to her feet, their grip tight with mutual need and tacit love.
‘Let’s leave Spotty down there to his fate,’ Blanche said, reaffirming her support in an extra squeeze. ‘Come and help me load up. We’re taking George’s fridge, by the way. We’ll put that on the back seat first, and we’ll use it when we get it back home.’
In the end Ira Coole helped them load the fridge. He came protesting up to the bungalow, until Blanche had told him in her most regal manner that it was her refrigerator which the previous manager had borrowed. She added that she hoped he did not expect her to leave it for his benefit.
‘Mother, you are a liar,’ Liz said as the car cleared the driveway of Bukit Kinta.
‘Right,’ Blanche admitted uncompromisingly. ‘I’ve tried doing things the legal way, but now I’ll use any way I can — just like these terrorists and their molls.’
When everything was unloaded at Rinsey, Liz watched as her mother took the glass of tea Anna had waiting for them and went outside. Most days now she spent some time on the long stone seat she had had placed alongside her husband’s grave. Stirring the ample amount of sugar she liked in her tea, Blanche seemed to sit as one might by the side of a patient’s bed in hospital, leaning forwards exchanging pleasantries and news.
‘Go sit by her, Miss Liz,’ Anna said, coming to stand next to her at the window. ‘She shouldn’t be out there by herself.’
‘No!’ she heard herself say sharply. ‘No, I can’t, Anna, I can’t be a comfort to her when I almost envy her. She’s had her life, her marriage, her children. She’s even got the grave of her loved one to sit by, she can talk to him.’
‘Miss Liz!’ Anna was shocked. ‘You young! You know nothing or you would not say such things. Your mother suffering. She need you.’
‘She’s so used to coping alone. I don’t mean to sound heard, it’s just a fact, isn’t it!’
‘Alone is not when expecting someone come back,’ Anna said, slapping her hands together sharply as she used to do to catch her charge’s complete attention.
‘I know,’ she answered, with the ring of such loss in her voice that her amah caught her in her arms.
‘Now all three know,’ she said. Liz held her tight. Their great sorrows seemed as close as the ghosts of their lost ones around them.
‘Perhaps I will go out.’
Liz was looking out and Anna nodding at the correctness of the thought, but just then the sound of a shot came from the front of the bungalow.
‘Oooh!’ Anna wailed. ‘And children not home from school.’
‘The jeep’s not left to fetch them yet so don’t worry.’
Anna held the door open for Blanche as she ran in, leaving her tea on the seat. ‘Must stick more rigidly to this gun rule,’ Blanche said, snatching up the rifles from the corner of the kitchen and handing one to each. ‘Let down the shutters on the windows, Anna. I’ll bar the door.’
‘I’ll do the front,’ Liz said. But as she reached the door and the sandbagged windows and looked out across the wide shadowed verandah, she could see their guards standing in the middle of the drive arguing.
‘What is it?’ she called.
‘This man thought he saw someone prowling around.’
‘I sure. Twice, three times I see man going from tree to tree.’ He made graphic pictures with his hand, half-circles moving rapidly along. ‘He coming closer without coming in the open. So I shoot.’
‘And missed?’ Liz asked.
He shrugged apologetically. ‘I think he big man.’
Chemor, who had opted to stay at Rinsey after his boss’s arrest, came from outside the gates. ‘We’re looking all around, miss. There was someone, been here some time by the look of the tracks, but he gone now.’
‘Good,’ Liz said, ‘and thanks, Chemor, all of you. We must all stay alert.’ But as she went back to the bungalow she thought that, as for herself, she did not much care what happened to her.
She reported to her mother and Anna, then went to her room. She could settle to nothing, wandering aimlessly around. When she turned to the sketches she made of Alan, she felt the most exquisite sadness. There were also sketches of her father and Wendy. Oh, God! How could I be so selfish? Even when you’re old it must be a terrible pain, Liz thought. She left her bedroom and went to try to make amends.
From the kitchen window she could see her mother and Anna sitting close together on the seat by the grave. It looked almost as if they were engaged in a three-way conversation, so closely did they concentrate on the mound at their feet.
Older women were right to comfort each other, but she wondered if they did not forget what it was like to feel deprived of all that made life worth the trouble. They had a grave to grieve over; she wanted flesh-and-blood arms around her. She needed life, not death — unless death brought reunion.
She must get away, out, leave the house or she’d suffocate. She had to go, walk out, just be free of this compound with its grief and panicking guards — outside was her country, too. She picked up her rifle and left by the front door, then made off to the side and the tunnel. Even as she went she knew it was foolish with possible prowlers about.
At the far end of the tunnel she carefully recovered the trapdoor, then moved away from the path that led to the burned-out bungalow and towards the cleared section of the plantation, where now the tappers were daily cutting and collecting phenomenal yields. Beyond sight or earshot of their own guards, she knew where she wanted to be: in a beautiful place she had shared with Alan.
As she drew near to the falls she also remembered tracking her father’s car to the edge and beyond. On the second visit she recalled running to the edge and how she had alarmed Alan — how he had caught her and held her close.
He had tried to still her weeping, afraid the depth and ferocity of her sobbing would make her ill. She had touched the depth of mourning for her father that day, but now there were
no tears. Her grief seemed sterile, without a physical centre. She felt a sudden great pang of pain for all the women who had lost their men in the war, men with no known grave. For the first time she began to know what that meant. It was like having a terrible pain you could not locate; there was no focus, only the pain.
Reaching the flat platform of rocks above the falls, she recalled how awed he had been by the beauty of the place. ‘War in paradise,’ he had said, and she had said, ‘Love, too.’
The falls were much swollen by the recent heavy downpours. She guessed the path they had walked on the far side would be under the swirling rush of white water. The flat tables of rock they had walked across so easily were covered by a swift-moving deep slide of water. She longed to go to the cavern under the falls and sit on the shelf of rock, drowned in the sound and the memories.
She knelt down by the edge, watching, feeling stupefied by the ear-filling crash of the waters and pulled forwards by the sight of the speeding torrents. After a while it seemed easier to think of just slipping over into the water, into oblivion, than to walk all the way back to Rinsey, to explain where she had been, to go on living.
It would not be painless, there were rocks she would strike and she guessed that even in extremis her body would still make frantic and futile efforts to breathe — but it should not last long. She felt it a sin, was vaguely afraid of divine retribution — felt exasperated by some stubborn streak of life force that still held her to the rock refused to accept being thrown down, extinguished before its time.
‘Some part of my mother in me, deep down,’ she mouthed, sitting back on her calves. ‘A lot of Daddy, the outside bits, the arty bits, but perhaps the core is Mother.’ She sighed and sat down with her legs outstretched, put her arms straight behind her and leaned back, head turned up to the sky.
She tried to review what she was certain of. It would certainly grieve her mother — and poor Anna — if she killed herself. No, she supposed, like Hamlet, she had to go on, haunted by almost the same ghosts — the murdered father, the lost lover. She rose, quickly aware she must move away from these falls; like Hamlet, she should put the temptation behind her.
As she turned and her eyes adjusted from the glare of the sun, her eyes scanned the fringes of jungle and the plantation in front of her — and a movement caught her eye. Someone or something? Someone, she decided and instinctively her hand sought her abandoned rifle. She raised it towards the rubber trees.
Then she caught a second movement — two people at least. Her heart began to thud and she recognised the irony or hypocrisy of her self-indulgence — one minute seeking a way to end her life, the next panicking to save it.
She sighted the rifle rapidly and instinctively, finger curled ready to press the trigger, as a figure stepped out from the trees directly in front of her. Liz saw it was a girl and did not fire, but nor did she lower her sight.
The girl stood very still, then called, ‘Elizabeth! Is it Elizabeth? Elizabeth, it’s me, Lee.’ The girl began to move towards her, slowly at first, then running.
‘Lee?’ Liz repeated, then recognised her beyond doubt. ‘Lee!’ She threw down the rifle and ran towards the girl, struggling like someone in dream or nightmare on ground that seemed less than solid and legs that hardly obeyed.
They threw themselves into each other’s arms crying, disbelieving, each examining the other, stroking, hugging, unable to speak, unable to let go each of the other for long, long minutes.
‘Lee! Where have you been all this time? I don’t understand.’ Liz held her at arm’s length and saw how gaunt and pale she looked, how torn were her clothes.
‘You, Liz, you ... ’ Lee looked but could not find words for how gaunt, pale and sad her friend looked. ‘You ... ’ Tears drowned the words. ‘You have to come ... ’ She swallowed, trying to stem the tears. ‘You have to ... ’ She turned and called, once, twice. In the trees Elizabeth saw the native.
‘You’ve been in the jungle travelling with the Sakais,’ Liz guessed, seeing all the evidence in Lee’s appearance.
‘The soldier with your photograph — ’
‘Alan!’ She felt as if every hair on her head rose at the words, her skin was ice cold. ‘Alan! You’ve seen him. But how ... I ... is he?’ She could not go on. ‘Lee, tell me.’
‘It’s not good news, Elizabeth,’ she said, tears streaming from her eyes as if the fault was hers. ‘I’m so sorry. He is very ill — ’
‘He’s not dead? You mean he’s not dead!’
‘The Sakais have been nursing him since the raid on our camp. But he is in a coma, Liz, I don’t think there’s much hope.’
‘I must go to him,’ she said, almost laughing with relief, with hope. No one could deny her that if he was alive! ‘Lee ... ’ She shook her head at seeing the girl she thought of as a sister restored to her. ‘Your camp? I don’t understand! I can’t believe all this — but I must go to him.’
‘This is why we have come.’
Chapter Nineteen
The emotion of the next hours was epitomised for Liz by Anna. The amah soon had an arm around each girl, alternatively beaming as if her face would split and almost bursting into tears. Liz and Lee took turns talking or burying their faces in her shoulder, stooping and snuggling like overgrown fledglings trying to return under her wings.
Blanche in the meantime came first to touch one and then the other as if reassuring herself of Lee’s presence and the safety of both girls. In between she paced up and down, raging about the infamy of Josef condemning his mother and sister to a life of drudgery and abasement, pausing as she remembered taking the squirming youngster to his father for punishment, dragging him protesting all the way from one bungalow to the other.
The ever indulgent Kurt Guisan had to her fury laughed when she described his son as a thieving magpie. And Mrs Guisan had been too weak to control him. Poor Ch’ing. ‘So your mother is … ?’ she asked again.
‘The Sakais have taken her to their village, while the soldier is farther away in a cooler hill camp.’
‘I always knew that boy was a total waster, but even I didn’t think ... ’ Blanche’s mind returned continually to Josef while at the same time trying to grasp this amazing reunion and think of the best way to deal with all its implications.
There was one thing she was quite certain about. Liz had come to life again with the news of Alan Cresswell’s survival. The boy must be given all the help he needed as soon as possible. From what Lee said, this was the presence of someone who loved him, someone to try to talk him back to life. There had been such cases, she seemed to remember, people tended in modern hospitals and continually talked to by their loved ones had survived ... But Alan Cresswell’s predicament seemed to her chillingly like Neville’s disappearance; the circumstances and the time involved were against a happy outcome. This boy’s injuries had been suffered some weeks ago, he had languished in the jungle among aborigines and been carried from one place to another. Then there was the journey back — with a Sakai, which guaranteed it would be through remote primary jungle. God alone knew how long that would take! She dreaded to think what extra heartache Liz might have coming to her.
‘You’re sure Sardin will wait until morning?’ Liz asked anxiously. ‘And that there’s nothing more we can give him?’
Lee and Liz had gone back to take him cooked rice and meat to the gates when he would not come nearer. He had carried the meal away into the trees. Later the bowl, empty except for a spray of tree orchids, had been brought in from the main gates — though shamefacedly even Chemor had to admit no one had seen it returned.
‘I have great respect for all Sakais,’ Lee said. ‘Sardin said he would wait by the big rock. He will do that.’
‘I wish we could go now,’ Liz murmured.
Lee shook her head. ‘He will not travel at night.’
‘So first light then.’
Blanche was alarmed at the thought of the two girls going off God knew where in the company of one aborigi
ne. This needed organising — tactfully. ‘Lee, you can sleep in the old nursery, I’ll make up the bed, but first I must ring John Sturgess. He had to be told there’s chance of recovering one of his men.’
Liz felt her heart plummet. He had opposed everything she had wanted to do since she arrived back in Malaya. ‘We don’t need him, do we? We don’t want him to come. He’s so officious.’
‘But he’s also efficient — and what about a doctor? He could send an army doctor with you.’
‘We don’t want him arriving like a troop of cavalry and frightening our man off. Then no one will find Alan.’ She looked anxiously at Lee.
Lee shook her head. ‘The Sakais are clever in the jungle. They live all time by CT camp, Heng Hou, no one know until they come to help us. I think Sardin will see army but army not see Sardin until he is ready.’
‘And to take a doctor, is that a good idea? Is it worth waiting around while they fill in forms in triplicate or whatever they have to do?’
‘Can doctors bring people out of comas?’ Lee shrugged.
‘But I do feel I have to tell Major Sturgess,’ Blanche intervened gently. ‘You do understand that?’
Liz, back turned, shoulders tense, made no show of assent but neither did she protest as Blanche went to make the call in the study.
‘Don’t look so worried, Miss Liz.’ Anna hugged her two girls. ‘You not in army ... ’
‘No, that’s right, he can’t order us about!’ It was the truth but it felt like bravado. The trouble was, Alan was in the army.
Anna wanted to put Lee to bed but there was too much to tell and too many questions to be asked. In the end they compromised, making her comfortable on pillows on a day-bed in the lounge. Then they all sat round talking, filling in some of the gaps of eight traumatic years, while Anna bathed and iodised some of the many jungle sores and scratches on Lee’s arms and legs, her grandson holding the bowl for her.
There was so much to tell, so many questions to be asked, they rather forgot the presence of young Datuk. Liz noticed that his hands shook a little as Lee talked of the sadistic Heng Hou. He kept his eyes lowered though he was obviously listening with all the big-eared stillness of the young, who know they will be banished once their presence is noticed.