‘I must move out,’ he said to himself in Malay as he slowed down along the rutted river road. ‘This can’t be the only kampong where I can hide away. Tomorrow I’ll go into Pekan and start asking around.’
Even in the torrential rain he recognized the shape of the body walking along the roadside, holding a banana leaf over her head as an ineffectual umbrella. In the midst of planning his way out of danger, James stopped and leaned across to open the door of the truck. Khatijah climbed in with difficulty in her drenched clothes, smiling shy thanks.
I could do it now, James thought, and no one would know. You can’t see twenty yards in this downpour. He felt breathless. Resolutely, he slammed the truck into gear and drove on as fast as he dared, nearly running down a group of water buffalo in his distraction. Neither of them spoke.
They reached the village and he stopped the truck on the area reinforced with stones where he usually parked it. I could do it here, he thought, seeing that the blinding rain still screened them.
Desire was like a hot pain squeezing his genitals. He drew the wide-eyed girl towards him and tugged at her sarong where it was folded above her breasts. He could feel her flesh warm and firm beneath the clammy fabric. The wetness of the cloth made it hard to unfold, and in that instant of difficulty James came to his senses. He threw himself out of the cab in panic and Khatijah scrambled out at her side and ran away in the sluicing rain.
Next morning he prepared to drive to Pekan as soon as he awoke, but Maimunah was watching for him and appeared at the foot of his steps. Her excuse for the visit was a dish of little cakes. Her greeting was friendly and her manner grave.
‘The war has brought trouble into many people’s lives,’ she began. ‘In times such as these, what can we do? Our destiny is changed by events just as the sands of the riverbed are shaped by deep waters.’
James lit a cigarette to conceal his anxiety.
She rambled on through a tortuous series of observations about family life until James at last realized she had come to suggest that he married Khatijah. The solution had not occurred to him before. It was simple, perfect. When she mentioned a sum suitable for bridewealth he agreed to it at once.
The occupation was made the excuse for dispensing with most of the wedding formalities. Maimunah decorated her house with a few paper flowers, and as he sat beside Khatijah on the sacred carpet, his status of king-for-a-day perfunctorily indicated by a borrowed strip of gold-embroidered cloth and a hat similarly decorated, James realized that he was at least as satisfied with the marriage as most of Khatijah’s relations. Her mother beamed with pleasure; her stepfather, a massively fat and self-important man, grinned like a buddha.
That night, James realized something else which had not crossed his mind before – Khatijah herself worshipped him, if only for restoring her status in the community. She clung to him with kittenish sensuality, giving him delicate caresses then withdrawing, shocked by her own avidity. Naked, she was more beautiful than he had imagined in his most fervid dreams. Her breasts were high and round like pomegranates and her legs sinewy and slender.
He found he could not put her out of his mind by day, as he had been able to do with his Tamil woman. His flesh yearned for her unbearably every night he spent away from her, and at the kampong he idled away hours merely watching her prepare their food or cultivate her little plot of vegetables. He spent as much money as he dared buying her jewellery and clothes. When they had been married almost a year she told him she was pregnant, and he was childishly delighted.
He drove to the lakeside camp; there was a dazzling carpet of pink flowers on the pellucid water and Bill was alive with a new optimism.
‘They’ve got through to Ceylon on the radio,’ he explained. ‘We’re in business at last, Jim. Get me everything you can on troop movements, shipping, cargoes, communications, the lot. Spread the word. They’re going to start to airdrop ammunition next week. Perak reckons they can raise a thousand men already.’
He led James into his wood and bamboo hut and took away the back wall of woven palm leaves panel by panel; behind it was a secret room stacked with journals, papers, charts, the wireless and a map of Malaya showing the strength of the resistance. James looked at it, unmoved. Bill followed his thoughts at once.
‘They’ll come over to us in hundreds once the Japs are on the run in Burma,’ he said, rapidly assembling the false wall once more. ‘Shall we celebrate Christmas?’
‘Is it Christmas now?’
‘What’s the matter, Jim? Can’t you even count in English any more?’
James grinned. Bill led him to the end of a listing jetty of planks where the fishermen tied up their small boats, and pulled up a string to which a bottle of champagne was attached.
‘Best I could do to chill it.’ Bill slapped the label in appreciation and, loosened by its long soak in the water, it peeled away in his hand.
James had not touched alcohol for two years, and his tolerance had vanished. After two tiny glasses he was quite drunk.
‘Congratulate me, old man,’ he invited Bill, ‘I’m going to be a father.’
The blue eyes glared at him in cold perplexity.
‘Perfect cover – what could be better?’ James was grinning like an idiot.
‘You’ll be finished if it’s born white.’
‘Won’t be – just a lighter shade of brown, I should think. Mother’s half-caste anyway.’
The Australian shook his head. ‘For Christ’s sake, man, there’s a war on. You’ve got more important things to think about.’
James’s gaiety promptly deflated. ‘You’re right. I’m sorry, Bill,’ he raised his glass. ‘Here’s to victory.’
By the time the child was due they had the news from Europe of Germany’s surrender. In Burma, the Japanese were falling back. British aircraft could now reach Malaya, and were dropping thousands of tons of arms and supplies, with more and more soldiers, to secret airstrips in Perak. Bill’s concealed map showed that almost four thousand Malayan citizens could be called up and armed the instant a rebellion against the Japanese was ordered.
The signs that the Japanese were suffering on other fronts were everywhere. In the towns food was scarce, and Khatijah’s little vegetable garden was feeding dozens of men in the field. Japanese requisition parties periodically raided the kampong, and the cattle, goats and chickens were sent to graze in jungle clearings far away from the road where there was less chance that they would be discovered.
On the docksides of the east and west coast ports the bales of latex piled up; no shipping could get through to pick them up. The price Maimunah got for her latex dropped each week, and James advised her to stockpile the pressed sheets rather than sell them for next-to-nothing. He gave her money.
Supplies of petrol dwindled, and James was forced to run his truck on a crude alcohol distilled from rubber, on which the gallant vehicle spluttered like a bronchitic pensioner.
The Japanese bounty for allied undercover agents was increased, but in the kampong James became aware of a subtle shift of loyalty towards him. The villagers’ reserve warmed. His father-in-law, Osman, praised him openly before the other men, and ventured a few words of English. James’s suspicion that the villagers had never been deceived by his false identity was confirmed when Maimunah presented him with his newborn daughter. The baby had large, round black eyes, and a faint down of black hair on her head. Her skin, James was relieved to notice, was a pleasant olive shade, and her tiny rosebud lips were cinnamon-pink.
He knew that what he had to do was whisper the Moslem call-to-prayer in the newborn infant’s ear, but as he prepared to do so Osman took the quiet bundle and said the words for him. The baby snuffled, Osman gave a proprietorial smile and there was a murmur of surprise and approval in the small knot of people standing in the house to see the infant.
‘What will you do when the war ends?’ Khatijah asked him a few weeks later, swinging the baby in a cradle made from a sarong suspended from the roof by two str
ings.
‘I don’t know,’ he said. With all his energy directed to the coming uprising, he had not thought beyond the struggle for liberation.
‘Will there be fighting again?’ she pressed him, curling her lips in the feline smile he could not resist.
‘Yes, I think so. And we shall win, the Japanese will go.’
‘Will you leave?’ She left the swinging cradle and nestled close to him.
‘I may have to. I will have orders.’ Should he tell her just a little bit of the truth? Would she be able to understand it? She was pitifully young and ignorant; only a peasant for all the intuitive cunning she used to give him pleasure.
‘If you leave, will you take us? Say you will, please. I don’t want to be left here without you. My stepfather hates me and my mother’s always mean to me when he’s around.’ She was warm and yielding in his arms and the faint vanilla smell of frangipani clung to her hair. No, he must not tell: he had said too much already.
‘You mean you want to have an easy life in town and spend all day gossiping with other women instead of working, eh?’ She lowered her eyes and pouted, and he leaned over and kissed the warm hollow of her neck, feeling the delicate pulse of the artery under his lips. ‘Don’t worry,’ he murmured. ‘If I go back to the town you will come with me – you are my wife.’ She giggled and teased him as he played with the braided-thread buttons of her tight blouse, caressing her breasts lovingly.
A few days later a distant, mechanical whine cut into the heavy silence of a cloudless noon, and James looked up to see three aircraft, like silver bullets, flying high overhead in the blue sky. Quickly the news came that the Americans were bombing Singapore, and Bill sent a message calling James to headquarters.
James told Khatijah that he might be away for some time, and set off for the lakeside in a state of high excitement, wondering what more news awaited him. As he jumped down from his cab in the clearing he saw the Australian, with Ibrahim, three Chinese and two unfamiliar British men, sitting in the shade under the palm-thatched shelter beside the hut. Their poses were apathetic, and James at once sensed a peculiar atmosphere of shock.
Ibrahim looked up as he approached.
‘It’s all over,’ he said, his voice flat.
James looked from one face to another.
‘What do you mean, it’s all over? What’s happened? Why all the gloom?’
‘The Japanese have surrendered. The Americans dropped some big bombs on Nagasaki. The war’s all finished.’
James could think of nothing to say. He was shocked, and disappointed, so were they all, bitterly downcast and feeling they had striven for nothing. But the enemy was vanquished, the war was over, and they knew they should be rejoicing.
‘Just like that?’ he asked at last.
They nodded. ‘They told us this morning.’
‘Have we got any orders?’
Bill unfolded his bony height and stood aimlessly, his hands in his pockets. ‘Yes, we have orders. Special Operations Division are to join forces with American strategic services and the prisoner-of-war escape liaison to begin recovering our men in captivity. We are,’ he picked the paper on which the message had been taken down out of his shirt pocket, unfolded his spectacles, and read, ‘to make no move at all until HQ are satisfied that the surrender is holding, but we should set about identifying POW camps in our area. Under no circumstances must we approach a camp until we receive a signal.’
‘What about our men?’
‘Stay in the jungle, do not engage the enemy, await orders to disband.’
‘What?’
Ibrahim nodded, his round, humorous face for once grim. ‘We’ve spent two years teaching them how to fight and now we’ve got to tell them the show’s over before it started.’
‘Bad luck to sheath a knife before it has tasted blood,’ James quoted the Malay proverb with a weak smile, not expecting a response. The situation was beyond the power of charm to lighten it.
‘What’s the truck running on? Jungle juice?’ Bill straightened his shoulders and shook off his despondency, preparing to plan their next actions.
James nodded. ‘There’s no gas for miles around Kechil.’
‘How much can you get hold of? I’ll ask for supplies, but they’ll be a while coming.’
‘As much as you want. Some guys from the kampong brew it up.’
‘Right. We’ll get the map out and see if we can pinpoint locations for any camps we’ve heard about, then since we’ve got transport we might as well reconnoitre as much of the state as we can and find out exactly where they are.’
They had a new map, printed in vivid green, blue and brown on a thick silk scarf. The two newly-arrived Englishmen had brought it with them. During the Burmese campaign, the British had discovered that a map made of silk would not rot in the tropical climate, and could be concealed far more easily and put to many more uses than a conventional linen-backed paper chart.
In the next few days the skies filled with aircraft. Over Pekan leaflets were dropped announcing the Allied victory. Japanese troops paraded in front of the palace under their commanding officers and surrendered with no incident, beyond some suicides. In the country, the story was different, and there were many stories of Japanese attacks and Communist reprisals which Bill refused to commit to his journal.
They found three hundred Tamils in an internment camp in the south, hungry and diseased but not seriously debilitated. Another camp inland, whose existence they had not suspected, contained over a thousand workers of mixed Asiatic races, mostly suffering from chronic malnutrition.
A detachment of Gurkha troops was sent to supplement their strength, followed by five Americans commanded by a major whose speech was brisk and clipped and who appeared about thirty-five years old. He had close-cropped, colourless hair and no sense of humour. James asked him his age, and discovered that he was twenty-four.
‘You’re younger than both of us,’ James told him.
‘I guess if fighting your way across the Pacific an inch at a time doesn’t make a man of you, nothing ever will,’ the major responded, blinking rapidly.
Now that they were working alongside seasoned troops, James and Bill had an uncomfortable sense of being amateurs. For three years they had lived in isolation, with no contact with the fighting which had, it seemed, engulfed the whole of the rest of the world. The task to which they had devoted themselves, of raising an underground army of resistance, now seemed of marginal importance.
The war was over, and they had neither of them fired a shot. They were not even versed in the requirements of army bureaucracy, and the mass of conventions, regulations and military practices which they had to assimilate dazed them in its complexity. Neither man shared his feelings with the other. Instead, they applied themselves to their new task with ferocious energy, trying to make up for wasted time. James eradicated every thought of Khatijah and his undercover life on the kampong from his mind.
The Americans in particular made them feel like boys. They were spare, scarred and brawny. They knew exactly where to stick a bayonet in a Japanese and twist it so that the man would not die at once but would recall enough pidgin English to give them information. By this method they learned of another camp, not twenty miles from Kuala Lumpur, where Europeans were held.
Bill ordered the wireless operator to send a signal requesting permission to enter the camp.
‘What the hell are you doing that for?’ the American major demanded.
‘Orders – HQ has to send us a signal before we can go in.’
‘To hell with that. Men could be dying while you ask your CO’s permission. Those guys in Changi looked like the living dead – we weren’t a moment too soon. Get going.’
With reluctance, Bill ordered James to take twenty men, find the camp and liberate it and he set off in a Japanese truck whose markings had been obliterated with paint that was still wet.
They drove on dirt roads for half a day looking for the camp, finding it at last at
the end of the afternoon, a stone’s throw from the main Kuala Lumpur to Singapore railway line. James ordered his men to form a column and they advanced on the raw concrete perimeter fence, the Gurkhas’ footsteps resounding behind him with emphatic, parade-ground precision.
The gate opened at their approach, and the stocky Japanese commandant marched out, his sword already held before him. Drawn up behind him were sixteen soldiers. By his side was a skeletal Englishman, wearing only wire-rimmed spectacles and ragged shorts that had once been white.
‘Captain Twyford, Royal Navy.’ They saluted.
‘Captain Bourton. How many men are there here?’
‘One hundred and eighty-two British, seventy-five other Europeans, two hundred and eleven Asiatics.’
The sun was obliterated by low, dark clouds, which produced a lowering, premature twilight. It had already rained heavily that day, and a thick stratum of white steam was rising from the jungle-covered hillsides. James ordered the Japanese to be confined in one of the featureless, tin-roofed buildings, posted guards and set about assessing the camp’s requirements.
‘This was a transit camp,’ Twyford explained. ‘Men were billeted here on their way north to the labour-camps, or on their way back. The only ones who stayed behind were so far gone the medics reckoned they wouldn’t finish the journey. They didn’t last long, most of them. After a while the Japs agreed to let us have a permanent medical team, which is how I ended up here. MO, you see.’
They found a room which contained unopened Red Cross mail dating back to 1942; beneath the pile of cards was a cache of medical and food supplies, which James ordered to be distributed at once. He radioed Bill, giving him the numbers of internees and Japanese, and requesting more food and disinfectant. ‘And quicklime, if you can get it,’ he said. ‘They’ve been cremating the dead but it’s rained so much there’s no dry fuel. We’ve got half-a-dozen to bury, I’ve got the men digging graves, but there’s only about four feet of earth before we reach bedrock.’
Pearls Page 47