South By Java Head (28 page)

"A touching and pathetic scene, is it not?" The Japanese officer shook his head in mock sorrow. "Alas, gentlemen, alas for the frailty of human hopes. I look upon you and I am almost overcome myself. Almost, I said, but not quite. Further, it is about to rain, and rain heavily." He looked at the heavy bank of cloud bearing down from the north-east, at the thick curtain of rain, now less than half a mile away, sweeping across the darkening sea. "I have a rooted objection to being soaked by rain, especially when it is quite unnecessary. I suggest, therefore------"
"Any more suggestions are superfluous. Do you expect me to remain in this damned boat all night?" Nicolson swung round as the deep, irate voice boomed out behind him. He swung round to see Farnholme standing upright, one hand grasping the handle of the heavy Gladstone bag.
"What -- what are you doing?" Nicolson demanded.
Farnholme looked at him, but said nothing. Instead he smiled, the curve of the upper lip below the white moustache a masterpiece of slow contempt, looked up at the officer standing above them and jerked a thumb in Nicolson's direction.
"If this fool attempts to do anything silly or restrain me in any way, shoot him down."
Nicolson stared at him in sheer incredulity, then glanced up at the Japanese officer. No incredulity there, no surprise even, just a grin of satisfaction. He started to speak rapidly in some language quite unintelligible to Nicolson, and Farnholme answered him, readily and fluently, in the same tongue. And then, before Nicolson had quite realised what was happening, Farnholme had thrust a hand into his bag, brought out a gun and was making for the side of the boat, bag in one hand, gun in the other.
"This gentleman said we were welcome." Farnholme smiled down at Nicolson. "I fear that he referred only to myself. A welcome and, as you can see, honoured guest." He turned to the Japanese. "You have done splendidly. Your reward shall be great." Then he broke once more into the foreign language -- Japanese, it must be, Nicolson was sure -- and the conversation lasted for almost two minutes. Once more he looked down at Nicolson. The first heavy drops of the next rain-squall were beginning to patter on the decks of the M.T.B.
"My friend here suggests that you come aboard as prisoners. However, I have convinced him that you are too dangerous and that you should be shot out of hand. We are going below to consider in comfort the exact methods of your disposal." He turned to the Japanese. "Tie their boat aft. They are desperate men -- it is most inadvisable to have them alongside. Come, my friend, let us go below. But one moment -- I forget my manners. The departing guest must thank his hosts." He bowed ironically. "Captain Findhorn, Mr. Nicolson, my compliments. Thank you for the lift. Thank you for your courtesy and skill in rendezvousing so accurately with my very good friends."
"You damned traitor!" Nicolson spoke with slow savagery.
"There speaks the youthful voice of unthinking nationalism." Farnholme shook his head sadly. "It's a harsh and cruel world, my boy. One has to earn a living somehow." He waved a negligent, mocking hand. "Au revoir. It's been very pleasant."
A moment later he was lost to sight and the rain swept down in blinding sheets.
CHAPTER TWELVE
FOR WHAT seemed a long time no one in the lifeboat spoke or moved, except to ride with the slight rolling of the boat: oblivious of the cold driving rain they just stared blankly, stupidly, at the spot where Farnholme had been standing before he had disappeared.
It probably wasn't a long time, it just seemed that way, it was probably only a matter of seconds before Nicolson heard Miss Plenderleith call him by name and say something. But in the swish of the heavy rain in the sea and frenetic drumming on the torpedo boat's deck, her voice was only a meaningless murmur. He turned and stooped, the better to hear, and even in that moment of shock her appearance caught and held his attention. She was sitting on the port side bench, her back as straight as a wand, her hands clasped primly in her lap, her face quiet and composed. She might have been sitting in her drawing-room at home, but for one thing: her eyes were flooded with tears and, even as he watched, two large drops trickled slowly down the lined cheeks and fell on to her hands.
"What's the matter, Miss Plenderleith?" Nicolson asked gently. "What is it?"
"Take the boat farther back," she said. Her eyes stared sightlessly ahead, and she gave no signs of seeing him. "He told you. Farther back, at once."
"I don't understand." Nicolson shook his head. "Why do you want us------"
He broke off abruptly as something hard and cold struck painfully at the back of his neck. He whirled round and stared up at the Japanese who had just prodded him with the barrel of his machine-gun, at the smooth, yellow face shining in the rain.
"No speaking, Englishman." His English was far poorer than his officer's. He looked dangerous, the kind of man who might welcome the opportunity to use the gently waving gun in his hand. "No speaking, anyone. I do not trust you. I will kill."
"You heard what I said." Miss Plenderleith's voice was firm and clear, without the vestige of a tremor. "Please."
The sailor moved his gun till it was lined up on Miss Plenderleith's head, and dozen pairs of eyes watched as the knuckles of his right index finger whitened under the pull. His lips were drawn back in an evil smile and Nicolson knew that the Japanese -- many of them, at least -- required far less provocation to kill. But Miss Plenderleith just stared up at him with an expressionless face -- almost certainly she wasn't seeing him anyway -- and he suddenly lowered the gun with some angry exclamation and took a pace backwards. He jerked his head at the other armed sailor -- the officer had taken the third with him when he had gone below -- and gestured that the rope made fast to the lifeboat's bow should be brought farther aft. Nicolson and McKinnon paid the lifeboat along the torpedo boat's side, and very soon they were streaming off its stern at the end of a couple of fathoms of rope. The two sailors stood side by side on the poop of the torpedo boat, side by side, cocked carbines ready in their hands. Their eyes searched the lifeboat hungrily, searched for the slightest movement, for anything at all that would give them an excuse to use their guns.
The torpedo boat was moving again, engines throttled back to dead slow but still enough to send it cutting through the water at three or four knots. It headed north-east, into the sea and the heavy rain, rain so heavy that, from the lifeboat, the bows of the torpedo boat were almost lost in the mirk and the gloom. The lifeboat itself was beginning to pitch at the end of the tautened rope, but not heavily.
Miss Plenderleith had her back to the rain and the guards. Perhaps there were still tears on her cheeks, it was difficult to say -- the heavy rain was soaking through the straw brim of her hat, and all her face was wet. But her eyes were clearer now, and they were looking straight at Nicolson. He caught her glance, saw her drop it to the carbine lying by her side where Farnholme had left it, saw her raise her eyes to his again.
"Don't look at me," she murmured. "Pay no attention to me. Can they hear me?"
Nicolson stared ahead at the guards, his face bleak. The tiny shake of his head must have been imperceptible to them.
"Can you see the gun? Behind my bag?"
Nicolson looked idly at the bench where Miss Plenderleith was sitting and looked away again. Behind the canvas and leather bag where Miss Plenderleith kept her knitting and all her worldly possessions he could see the heel of the butt of the carbine. Farnholme's gun, the carbine he had used so effectively against----- Suddenly there flooded into Nicolson's mind the recollection of all the times the brigadier had used that gun, of the damage he'd done with it, how he'd blown up the big gun on the submarine, how he'd beaten off the attack by the Zero that had attacked the lifeboat, how he'd saved his, Nicolson's life on the beach of that little island, and all at once he knew that there was something fantastically wrong with this desertion and betrayal, that no man could so wholly alter-----
"Can you see it?" Miss Plenderleith repeated urgently. Nicolson was startled, but didn't show it. He nodded slowly, carefully. The butt of the carbine was less than a foot from his hand.
"It's cocked," Miss Plenderleith said quietly. "It's ready to fire. Foster said it was ready to fire."
This time Nicolson did look at her, slow astonishment and wonder in his face, his eyes blinking in the driving rain as he tried to read her expression. And then he had forgotten all about Miss Plenderleith, and he was half out of his seat, staring intently for'ard, his head automatically reaching for the carbine.
Even at that distance of forty or fifty feet the sound of the explosion was deafening and the sheer physical shock of the pressure wave like an invisible blow in their faces. Smoke and flames belched out through a great hole blown in the starboard side and almost at once the torpedo boat was heavily on fire amidships. The guards, their charge completely forgotten, had swung round to face for'ard, but one of them, caught off-balance by the force of the explosion, stumbled, flung away his machine-gun in a clawing, desperate attempt to regain balance and save himself, failed and fell backwards over the stern into the sea: the other had only taken a couple of running paces forward when the blast of the carbine in Nicolson's hand pitched him forward on his face, dead. Even as he was falling, McKinnon was plunging towards the bows, an axe in his hand, and one vicious blow on the tow-rope taut-stretched across the gunwale severed it completely. Immediately, Nicolson pushed the tiller hard over to starboard, and the lifeboat slewed away heavily to the west. The torpedo boat still throbbed north-east on unaltered course, and within half a minute all signs of it, even the flames that twisted high above the bridge, were completely lost in the rain-squalls and the rapidly falling darkness.
Swiftly, and in a strange unanimity of silence, they stepped the mast, hoisted the lug and jib, and bore off into the rain and the gloom with as much speed as they could command from their tattered sails. With the port gunwale dipping perilously low, Nicolson steered a point north of west: when the torpedo boat recovered from the shock and the fire -- and it was probably too large a craft to be permanently crippled by an explosion even of that magnitude -- it would come looking for them, but it would almost certainly go looking towards the south-west, in the direction the wind was blowing, in the direction of the Sunda Strait and freedom.
Fifteen minutes passed slowly by, fifteen minutes in which there was only the swift slap of the waves against the hull, the flapping of shredded sails, the creaking of blocks and the tap-tapping of the yard against the mast. Now and again someone would be about to speak, to seek out the reason for the explosion aboard the torpedo boat, then he would catch sight of that stiff-backed little figure with the ridiculous straw hat skewered on the grey bun of hair, and change his mind. There was something about the atmosphere, there was something about that little figure, about the upright carriage, about the indifference to the cold and the rain, about its fierce pride and complete helplessness that precluded easy conversation, that precluded any conversation at all.
It was Gudrun Drachmann who had the courage to make the first move, the delicacy to make it without blundering. She rose carefully to her feet, the blanketed form of the little boy in her arm, and moved across the canted bottom-boards towards the empty seat beside Miss Plenderleith -- the seat where the brigadier had been sitting. Nicolson watched her go, unconsciously holding his breath. Far better if she hadn't gone. So easy to make a mistake, so almost impossible not to make a mistake. But Gudrun Drachmann made no mistake.
For a minute or two they sat together, the young and the old, sat without moving, sat without speaking. Then the little boy, half-asleep in his wet blanket, stretched out a chubby hand and touched Miss Plenderleith on her wet cheek. She started, half turned in her seat, then smiled at the boy and caught her hand in his, and then, almost without thinking, she had the little boy on her lap and was hugging him in her thin arms. She hugged him tightly, but it was as if the child knew that there was something far amiss, he just stirred sleepily and looked at her gravely under heavy eyelids. Then, just as gravely, he smiled at her, and the old lady hugged him again, even more tightly, and smiled back down at him, smiled as if her heart was breaking. But she smiled.
"Why did you come and sit here?" she asked the girl. "You and the little one -- why did you come?" Her voice was very low.
"I don't know." Gudrun shook her head, almost as if the thought were occurring to her for the first time. "I'm afraid I just don't know."
"It's all right. I know." Miss Plenderleith took her band and smiled at her. "It's very curious, it is really very curious. That you should come, I mean. He did it for you, he did it all for you -- for you and the little one."
"You mean-----"
"Fearless Foster." The words were ridiculous, but not the way Miss Plenderleith said them. She said them as if she were saying a prayer. "Fearless Foster Farnholme. That was what we used to call him, when we were in school. He was afraid of nothing that walked on earth." "You have known him so long, Miss Plenderleith?" "He said you were the best of us all." Miss Plenderleith hadn't even heard the question. She shook her head musingly, her eyes soft with remembrance. "He teased me about you this afternoon. He said he didn't know what the young men of the present generation were coming to and, by heaven, if he was thirty years younger, he'd have had you to the altar years ago."
"He was very kind." Gudrun smiled without any embarrassment. "I'm afraid he didn't know me very well."
"That's what he said, that's exactly what he said." Miss Plenderleith gently removed the child's thumb from his mouth: he was almost asleep. "Foster always said that education was very important, but that it didn't really matter, because intelligence was more important than that, and that even intelligence didn't count for so much, that wisdom was far more important still. He said he had no idea in the world whether you had education or intelligence or wisdom and that it couldn't matter less, a blind man could see that you had a good heart, and the good heart was all that mattered in this world." Miss Plenderleith smiled, her grief momentarily lost in nostalgic remembrance. "Foster used to complain that there were very few good-hearted people like himself left." "Brigadier Farnholme was very kind," Gudrun murmured. "Brigadier Farnholme was a very clever man," Miss Plenderleith said in gentle reproof. "He was clever enough to -- well, never mind. You and the little boy. He was very fond of the little boy."