‘Nothing, thakin. Still nothing.’
At nineteen, Saw Tun Shwe was four years his junior. Nay Dun had paraded him for consideration the day Gilling joined the battalion. ‘A volunteer,’ the subedar had said pointedly. Even by Karen standards he was on the short side, but his lack of inches was no measure of his strength and determination. Stripped, he had the body of a dark-skinned pocket Hercules. Indefatigable, uncomplaining, zealous — he was all these things and Gilling had never regretted having accepted him. Abbott often jokingly referred to him as The Shadow’ and there was a dogged loyalty about him which Gilling had long since taken for granted. But now, glancing at the young Karen’s gaunt, pockmarked face, he found himself curiously drawn to him, grateful suddenly for his constancy and unquestioning respect.
He gazed at the road on the spur and said thickly: ‘They’re taking their time.’
Saw Tun Shwe agreed. ‘It is like waiting in a tree for the tiger to come.’
‘I’ve never done that.’ It was a relief to talk; to know that another experienced the finer shades of fear.
‘You feel he is somewhere near, but the waiting is bad for the nerves.’
‘Captain Abbott called it “Micawber business”.’
‘Thakin?’
‘ “Micawber business”,’ He spoke without thinking, dulled with weariness.
‘I don’t understand, thakin.’
Gilling tried again, but without success.
‘Micawba?’ Saw Tun Shwe frowned, making it sound like a Burmese place-name.
‘Yes, Micawber.’ Desperately, he said: ‘He was a person in a book.’
He might have been in conversation with a child. And as he laboured to clarify his meaning he grew vividly and hopelessly aware of the totality of his isolation.
Birds planed in to their nesting-places on the rock; broke from the baize-green swell below like skittering flying fish. But where it mattered — on the road and from the track — nothing showed. Gilling left the walnut tree and climbed a tonsured hillock which stood back from the escarpment. Southwards, he could see no more than from elsewhere. But most of Bandaung was visible to the north and memories stirred in him as the actuality matched his recollection. The tin roofs of the town itself made a huddled patchwork of rust-brown terraces around which, on slopes and knolls, timbered bungalows stood amid orderly patterns of white-fenced gardens. He picked out Flagstaff House, the tennis courts beside the Bandaung Club, the squat shape of the Protestant Church. Roving, his eyes identified the Colonial and Overseas Bank’s rest house, the swimming pool, the Cottage Hospital and the P.W.D. bungalow. Nearer, on the golf course, the water of the lake was heavy with the reflected weight of oaks, and he saw the broad swathes of the fairways and the bunkers around the small sandy ‘browns’.
The flaccid marker-flags hung as if in surrender; as if confirming that the town was dead. Despite Nay Dun’s report it gave Gilling a pang of despair, almost of deprivation, to find it so. The bungalows, he remembered, had names like ‘Meadowside’ and ‘Midlothian’ and ‘Glenbarr’, and roses and geraniums flourished in the gardens amid the bougainvillea and hibiscus. There had been swimming parties, dinner parties, dancing. And there had been a girl called Ailsa Seymour ...
He thought of it all with defeat. Neither what had happened then nor what was happening now seemed entirely real. Even the town didn’t seem real, somehow. Held in the sun’s blazing amber it had the look of an abandoned relic of the past. The watered lawns and immaculate gravel drives and wrought-iron gates belonged elsewhere — half the world away, where his own roots were. Soon, now, everything would have been engulfed, just as fear and horror and self-doubt had already engulfed him. It had been a gay place once, a sane and nostalgic oasis, with dew on the grass at dawn and women driving into the bazaar to shop as if they were in a Sussex market town. And now it was doomed; as empty and deserted as he felt himself.
He turned his back on it and stared at the road ahead, wretched and confused. The flame of the match was invisible in the glare as he lit the last of his crushed cigarettes. Replacing the matches in his breast pocket his fingers touched a piece of folded paper which, when he drew it out, he saw was a letter from his father. It was the only one to have reached him since the Japanese came into the war. Dated 8th December, it had taken its time to get to him, being delivered only a few days before the battalion moved into the line near Pegu. It was weeks since he had last looked at it. Sweat had blotched the thick, angular writing along the folds, but none of it was indecipherable.
My dear Tony,
By the time this arrives you will probably be well and truly in the war. Yesterday’s attack on Pearl Harbour has come as a great shock, and this morning I heard on the news that our fellows have already been in action in Hong Kong and, on the north-east coast of Malaya. I dare say you’re relieved that it’s at last come to a head for I know how frustrated you were feeling. But, naturally, I’m anxious about you. Burma looks a goodish way from the flash-points at the moment, but this is obviously only the beginning and the fighting is going to spread.
All I can say is that I’m glad you’ve had this last year’s experience of soldiering. The training will prove itself invaluable if and when it comes to the real thing. We didn’t have half enough in the 1914-18 show and most of us were pitchforked into the trenches after only a few weeks in uniform,. I’m also glad that you’ve got such a first-rate second-in-command in this man Nay Dun. He’s going to be a tremendous help to you in every way.
Except for the odd hit-and-run raid it’s been pretty quiet here just recently, but I’ve been as busy as could be at the library. More people seem to be reading than ever before, though it’s a pity they need a war to encourage them!
Write when you have the chance. Your last took only three weeks, incidentally, which is a lot quicker than some. Good luck, Tony. My fingers are crossed for you and dozens of friends send kind wishes.
Your affectionate father, Charles.
P.S. I’ll write again soon, at greater length, but I wanted this to go off at the earliest opportunity. If circumstances prevent you from receiving any mail for a while, don’t think you aren’t in my thoughts. You are, and will be, constantly — as well as the fellows you command. I know you’re going to find them pure gold — particularly now you’ve had so long together and got to understand one another. And I know they’ll find you the same.
Gilling put the letter away with a groan. Beard-stubble rasped as he rubbed his hands over his face. His eyes stung. Slowly he mastered emotion, drawing deliberately on the remains of his cigarette.
Oh Christ, he thought simply. Oh Christ.
The jungle dissolved; solidified. Incredibly, a cuckoo started to call from the plantation of pines fringing the nearest fairway on the golf course and the pure, faint notes seemed to split his mind. Trembling, he stood up, and as he did so he saw his orderly signal violently from the shadow of the walnut tree.
He lumbered down the reverse slope of the hillock and ran, crouching, to the vantage point.
‘Trucks, thakin.’
Trucks ... He took the binoculars; fiddled them into focus. He saw a little dust to begin with; then, immediately afterwards, the first of several vehicles. It was moving slowly and he had time to recognize it. Even at that range he could tell it as a three-tonner. The next, unmistakably, was a Fordson fifteen-hundredweight. Another Fordson followed, after which six more three-tonners went by — greenish-brown, familiar in outline despite their minuteness.
Ours, he thought. They’re using ours ...
‘How many went through before I got here?’
‘Four.’
‘Sure about that?’
‘Sure, thakin.’
Thirteen in all. The road was empty now. Two hundred men, say ... There was a tightness in Gilling’s chest.
‘There were also men on foot,’ Saw Tun Shwe said.
‘How many?’
‘A handful only.’
‘No more?’
<
br /> ‘Four or five — moving in front.’
A key turned in Gilling’s mind. Booby-traps, he congratulated himself — because of the booby-traps. That’s why.
Without taking his eyes off the road, he said: ‘Warn Subedar Nay Dun and the other platoon commanders. Everyone to stand-to. No one to open fire until I give the order. It’ll be a longish while yet.’
He’d urged them to come; to show themselves. And yet he dreaded what he’d seen. Two hundred, at least ... A part of him quailed.
CHAPTER FIVE
There were three other places where the road was visible. The nearest was perhaps a mile away; the most distant twice as far. It was on this heat-blurred twist of brown that Gilling concentrated, but forty minutes passed before the convoy again nosed into view. This time he saw for himself the midget figures walking in front — three now, he thought. They were spread out across the road about fifty yards ahead of the first truck, and the convoy moved after them by fits and starts as if caught in a traffic-jam. He could see the Japanese in the trucks, too — solid loads of men, packed close. The trucks looked no larger than toys.
They were in view for a couple of minutes before the jungle covered them up. A quarter of an hour went by before Gilling had another glimpse of them, thinly veined over by branches. They were bigger now, though still like models on a playroom floor. It was uncanny to be able to see them and yet to hear nothing. In ten minutes they would be exposed for the last time before nearing the base of the escarpment, and the fact that he could plot their progress made the suspense all the more difficult to bear. There was an unnerving quality about the inexorable pace of their approach — as if a fuse were burning down.
The tic started flicking Gilling’s left eye again. He lay in the fractured shade of the walnut tree and waited for the convoy to emerge into the sunlit gap a mile away. It arrived punctually, almost to the minute. He counted the men in front — still three; the trucks — thirteen. They didn’t look like toys any more and he clearly saw the troop-loads sway as the vehicles lurched over some ruts. He thought he could hear the massed growl of engines and the small sound was menacing, bringing his nerves to fever pitch.
‘Thakin.’ Nay Dun was suddenly at his elbow, clutching binoculars. Gilling hadn’t heard him come. ‘Those men on foot —’
‘What about them?’
‘They are Karens, thakin. Not Japanese.’
Gilling stared at him stupidly. ‘Karens?’
His mind whirled. He put the glasses on the road but he was too late to see anything. The last of the trucks had vanished.
‘Karens,’ Nay Dun repeated flatly. ‘From Naik Ba Tin’s section. I recognized them myself.’
‘At that distance?’
‘With these, yes.’ The subedar flourished his binoculars. ‘I am not mistaken.’
Against his will Gilling believed him. He turned his head, dismay in full flood. ‘The bastards. The bloody bastards. Those grenades ...’
He broke off, mesmerized by Nay Dun’s expression: You put them there, it accused. They were your idea.
*
The sound of engines thrust at them like the muffled snarl of an animal, unmistakable now. Instinctively, Gilling peered at the matted surface of the forest, but his only thoughts were of the booby-traps and deceptions he had planted along the way; his only feeling one of guilt. For what seemed a long time he suffered within himself, but gradually his dismay soured into bitterness and his mind cried out: How was I to know this would happen?
He spoke it aloud: ‘How was I to know?’ But the subedar was squirming away to his platoon without appearing to have heard and there was no one to say — as Church had once said: ‘Don’t reproach yourself.’
Sick at heart, Gilling listened to the low, oncoming growl and as it grew louder he experienced the returning prick of fear. In a few minutes more the trucks would halt and the troops deploy. Without hope he considered the pattern of what would ensue; wondered how long it would be before sheer weight of numbers forced them off the escarpment. Sixty against two hundred or more — it was a cowering thought. And he still wasn’t certain about the track; not even now. For all he knew another column was working around to their left and he continued to shoot an occasional anxious glance in the direction of Meingyi.
It was exactly quarter to three when he suddenly realized that the only thing he could hear was the sawing of cicadas. With his binoculars he followed the road from the lowermost hairpin to where it disappeared under the trees, then searched the patches of broken light along the length of their front. There was nothing significant to be seen, but the feeling of being under observation was intense, almost physical. Somewhere in the submarine shadows below he knew that every ledge of the road, every square yard of the escarpment, was being subjected to the closest scrutiny. There was a dreadful inevitability about the silence. Soon, now, a move would be made; the probing begin. They’d hardly delay — not unless they were waiting to synchronize their assault with a flanking movement. Again he looked towards the hidden village of Meingyi, doubt reviving, but again he saw nothing.
Only one thing was certain; they wouldn’t get the trucks beyond the escarpment in a hurry. This time the demolition called for something more than a little makeshift engineering. Throughout the day the extent of the damage had been his sole encouragement; the one guarantee against a break-through which could rush the Japanese into Gyobin in a matter of hours. But all at once the future had ceased to exist. Here and now were all he could cope with; the next few drawn-out minutes. Cautiously, pressed flat, he studied the scrub which fringed the forest edges. They were there, somewhere. He could sense their presence, their nearness; picture their stealth as they moved into position. His mind was transfixed, but dread crept about inside him like a living thing and the dry, sour taste of it found its way into his throat as if pumped there by the heavy beat of his heart.
He spared his watch a glance. One minute to the hour ... He was in the act of lifting his eyes when Saw Tun Shwe nudged his arm. In the identical instant he saw three men debouch from the trees and start to walk slowly up the road. Through the binoculars they seemed almost close enough for him to reach out and touch them. He recognized them at once as Karen riflemen. They wore no hats and had been stripped of their equipment, but it was a few moments before he realized they were joined, waist to waist, by a slack length of rope.
Appalled, Gilling knew why they came; their function. Anger and pity and guilt were all compounded in his thoughts as he watched them. They walked as if in a stupor, shuffling their feet, wandering about the road. They had no choice. Somewhere out of sight behind them machine-guns were trained on their backs. He stared at them in a fascination of horror, measuring the distance between them and the area where he had planted the booby-traps. There was something diabolical about their being roped together. It was terrible to see their downcast heads and reluctant, suicidal step; to live their thoughts. They came slowly, condemned yet clinging to life, not knowing which way they would die.
When they were about thirty yards from the first grenade one of them strained up at the escarpment in mute appeal. Something seemed to snap in Gilling’s brain. He pushed himself on to his haunches and cupped his hands to his mouth.
‘Run!’ he shouted. ‘Grenades ... Off the road!’
His voice cracked. For a second or two, suspended in time, there was utter silence. Then, from all over the escarpment’s face, the company hoarsely echoed his warning.
‘Run, brothers! ... Mating Daw, Hla May ... Off the road, brothers! ... Chit Kin ... Get to the bushes! ...’
The men stopped between strides, petrified with hope and alarm, incapable of action. Even as they hesitated the Japanese opened fire. A flurry of dust lifted off the bank just ahead of where the trio stood: simultaneously the guttural hammering of a machine-gun reached Gilling’s ears. Life jerked into the men’s limbs. Desperately they stumbled towards the roadside scrub, and it was only then that Gilling realized their feet were h
obbled. The shooting came again, from several points now, and the road surface pitted and spat as if under hailstorm. Two of the men went down instantly — one floundering like a landed fish — anchoring the third. For a brief period the survivor struggled on the end of the rope, working his arms. Then, like a full back fielding a long kick, he suddenly jack-knifed over and slumped on to his side.
Stunned, Gilling watched the dust thin out. He looked down at the bodies roped in death on the road and asked himself how much longer he could endure this kind of war.
I as good as killed them, he thought. Them — and the others who didn’t get this far.
CHAPTER SIX
Encouraged by the silence the cicada-rasp picked up again; birds emptied out of the blazing sky. As a precaution, having shown himself, Gilling edged clear of the walnut tree. Finding cover behind some boulders he mouthed at his orderly to join him. After the firing the quiet was all the more nerve-racking; the renewed waiting charged with the shock of violence. Grimed with sweat though he was, Gilling’s teeth chattered as he scanned the exits from the forest. He felt cold, even in his bones.
Once, as his eyes glossed over the dead Karens, he recalled what Church had said the morning Rance was beheaded — ‘You couldn’t have anticipated this sort of thing.’ And he thought: I should have learned by now. Dear God, I’ve had warning enough.
He was no longer able to hide his fear. The twitch of his eye and the feverish spasm of his lower jaw proclaimed it. Secretly, he pleaded for an excuse to turn tail and withdraw immediately to the final demolition. In a surge of weakness he ignored the dangerously-balanced equation of time and distance that separated the Japanese from Gyobin. He tried to persuade himself that a few hours lost, a few miles abandoned, would do no harm. They could hold the road elsewhere. There were other places ... The urge was to get away — anywhere. Anywhere would do.
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