The Red Pavilion (23 page)

‘I give now,’ she said immediately, ‘before I think about Heng Hou too much.’

Liz wanted to be with her but Sturgess insisted it would be better if he questioned her alone.

‘Then you work in Father’s study with the door open,’ Liz heard herself say.

Blanche turned away for a second to keep a straight face at so serious a time, for the major huffed and puffed for a few seconds like the proverbial Colonel Blimp, quite unable to believe his ears.

‘Lee would only have to call if she needed anyone or anything,’ Blanche reminded her daughter. She pulled Liz’s hand through her arm and stood shoulder to shoulder with her, facing the momentarily speechless officer.

Lee too came forward to reassure. ‘I’m quite rested, don’t worry.’

‘I’ll show you the way.’ Blanche passed her daughter’s hand into that of her amah.

Liz stood trembling as the three left the kitchen. Turning to Anna, she was shocked to see her hand over her mouth, her eyes creased above. ‘You’re laughing!’ Liz accused.

Anna shook her head in denial but kept her hand in place until she saw the anguish in her girl’s eyes. The laughter at the major’s discomfort vanished. ‘What you do? What you thinking?’ she asked suspiciously.

‘I’m thinking women are just helpless,’ Liz said darkly. Anna wagged a finger at her and said crossly, ‘I know you not thinking that!’

Blanche came back shortly. ‘He wants Lee to go to Ipoh tomorrow. The police have rounded up quite a few men who’ve materialised in the kampongs who they suspect are not locals, but the villagers are too frightened to identify them. He feels Lee may have seen some of them at the camp.’

Liz did not answer immediately. Her fears were quite different. She dreaded that the waiting Sakai might be frightened away; she fretted at the thought of delay. She remembered what Lee had said about Alan’s condition. Images of him kept coming back to her — as he had been and as he might be now. That was most heart-rending of all and she tried to repress it with many journeys in and out of the hall, past the study door, where the voices went on and on.

‘Lee will be exhausted again,’ she complained as she reached the kitchen once more.

‘As you will be,’ her mother said dryly. ‘Sit down.’ Her words were unheard as Liz again paced from kitchen to hall to bedroom.

At last they emerged. Lee looked pale, mentally bruised, Liz thought. As soon as she could she took her friend away to her bedroom, leaving Sturgess to explain that he was going to Bukit Kinta from Rinsey to interview more people there. She heard the rise in pitch of her mother’s voice as she related their experiences with the girl and the new manager.

She closed her bedroom door. ‘Lee?’ The one word held all the questions about what they were to do and whether Lee felt strong enough to take any more.

The girl look up, smiled ruefully and held her hands out in front of her, palms down. They shook uncontrollably. ‘That is talking about Heng Hou ... ’ she said.

‘And Josef is out there, too,’ Liz said, feeling she must remind her of all the hazards before she should decide.

‘I know.’

‘But Major Sturgess will be at Bukit Kinta.’

‘And I see you! What you do.’ Lee nodded knowingly. ‘Brandy and medicines in father’s old rucksack. And we have Sardin waiting for us.’

‘Oh, Lee!’ Liz knelt. ‘My best frister!’

They both gasped and embraced each other as the name they had invented as children for how they felt about each other, half friend, half sister, leaped from memory.

‘I’ll defend you with my life,’ Liz promised solemnly. ‘I’ve got a revolver for each of us and a rifle as well.’

They stared into each other’s eyes. ‘Whatever the outcome, Lee, I’ll never forget this, never.’

‘And what are you two plotting?’ Blanche asked, standing in the doorway. As neither replied, she shook her head, adding, ‘Come on, dinner! Let’s get a proper meal inside this child.’

Blanche was strangely quiet, they thought, through dinner and she pushed them all off to bed early, going to her own room soon after darkness had fallen. The fact that Liz made no comment, no enquiry, added to the little she had overhead, confirmed Blanche’s anxieties.

She spent a wakeful night and before dawn heard the two girls depart. She went to the kitchen door and listened as they made their way to the escape tunnel. In her mind she followed them to their meeting place with the Sakai at the rock. After that it was all guesswork, and heart-tearing anxiety.

Had she done the right thing, letting them go? Sturgess would be furious, but she was fast coming to the conclusion that in this campaign rules were for fools. Her brain said no, but her heart said yes, Liz had to go; she had seen it in the girl’s eyes.

Chapter Twenty

‘So where is the girl?’ Heng Hou’s voice was low and threatening, his temper shortened by exposure to a rainstorm which had all the blinding ferocity of the beginning of the annual monsoon. The daily ration of hill thunder and lightning had been increasing and Heng Hou, used to his creature comforts, was on edge.

Josef stood with his hands half raised in a pacifying gesture as Heng Hou’s bodyguards kept him covered. ‘I thought she’d make for Rinsey, but the journey was bad from the camp. She would never have made it, Heng Hou, the river was already too swollen and there was her mother — she would not have left her mother.’ At the back of his mind he momentarily remembered she was
his
mother, too — but this was serious trouble he was in.

He had seen that malcontented look on the communist leader’s face many times before he maimed or injured someone Malay, English, Chinese, Tamil — anyone who crossed him or even merely glanced his way at the wrong moment.

‘She must have gone to the Hammonds’ friends, the Wildons, they have the Kose estate. Yes! I should have thought of that before, it would be an easier journey,’ he gabbled on, desperate not to leave pause for any decision until he had presented a new course of action. ‘They may have been able to follow one of our routes out to the road near their estate. The main communication tracks … ’

Heng Hou narrowed his eyes, not listening any more, playing with the idea of just shooting the man there and then. He was in no mood for more amusing but time-consuming ways of despatching a man. On the other hand he was not quite sure whether he had wrung every last advantage out of this Eurasian. Certainly he had provided much in the way of arms and ammunition — until the planter Hammond had returned. Then they had lost a consignment from Rinsey
and
their store in the Malayan house Josef had sworn was safe. He growled gently to himself, musing whether to let the man live or die.

‘If they are at the Wildons’ bungalow, I know it well and they have many arms there, machine guns. This I do know.’

Heng Hou grunted, speculated. He needed guns; then he might kill this man.

Josef’s heart gave a thump of hope. ‘The girl and guns … ’ He repeated the prizes slowly.

‘Your sister?’ the terrorist queried. It amused him to see what this man would sacrifice for his skin.

Josef nodded energetically. ‘I know the layout of the plantation and the bungalow almost as well as I know Rinsey.’

Heng Hou grunted again and nodded his agreement to this last offer.

Josef turned to lead the way, lifting his head for a moment to allow the rain to flood over his face. Reprieved! Time brought opportunity.

*

The moment Aubrey set off for his morning rounds at Kose was always a moment of anxiety, and each morning Joan held him in her arms with a gentle, sad passion, so unlike their embraces at any other time, so unlike a husband going off to routine daily work.

In that final quiet embrace was the fear each had for the other: fear that Aubrey might be attacked on his inspection of the plantation and his tappers; fear that the bungalow might be attacked while he was away. They had made a rule never to agonise about risks; they parted with a smile and the mutually spoken slogan, ‘Chin up!’

Joan as always watched him go off in the car they called ‘the warrior’ since armour-plating it with sheets cut from the Japanese tank still stuck in their riverbed.

Before setting about the morning’s chores she decided to ring Blanche to see how the Hammonds were, Liz in particular. That they should both have lost their chaps seemed particularly galling. Liz, of course, would find someone else. She might come round to that major yet? Joan had serious doubts whether either Blanche or her daughter would stay at Rinsey in the long term. She listened as the telephone rang out, then her friend answered.

She knew immediately something had happened by Blanche’s voice. ‘Don’t think I should talk on the telephone. Can you and Aubrey come over later? I’ve done something ... ’ She paused, seeking the right description. ‘Something pretty indiscreet.’

‘Didn’t know you knew the meaning of the word, darling.’ She waited for Blanche to laugh, but the empty quality of the silence on the other end of the line made her add quickly, ‘The second he’s back from his rounds, darling.’

Blanche hesitated. ‘I suppose there’s no particular hurry ... now. I’ll make us all lunch.’

Joan left the phone thoughtful. No hurry now, about what? To be there for lunch would be a rush, Aubrey wouldn’t get his lunchtime gin sling. And she remembered she had not, after all, enquired about Liz.

She wandered to the front door again as if she had some chance of catching Aubrey before he left, though she knew that by now he would be heading for the far reaches of the plantation, then gradually working his way back to the bungalow.

The area around the Kose bungalow fell away and was planted with small new rubber trees. Aubrey said the troubles should be well over before the trees grew much taller. The recently cleared ground certainly made the bungalow easier to defend.

Silly to worry or speculate, no useful purpose in it, she told herself. Chin up and get busy. She decided to make one of those Dundee cakes Blanche and Liz were so fond of. If she started straight away it should be cool enough to pack by the time Aubrey came back, but she still stood thinking what a curious note Blanche’s voice had held, depression underlaid with a kind of excitement. ‘Most intriguing, darling.’

‘Intriguing,’ she repeated, gazing out over the verdant, burgeoning land around her home. ‘It
is
beautiful,’ she said as if she must confirm aloud a fact she had always known. She had spent half her lifetime in this country, and loved it as her own. Now she knew many planters felt abandoned. News from England said their plight was hardly reported in the newspapers; the Berlin airlift and the fear that America and Russia might be sliding towards war dominated the news.

She grimaced ruefully at the triple barbed-wire fences, the spotlights, each with their own unsightly batteries so that all could not be put out at once, the machine guns. Aubrey had left nothing to chance.

‘Baking, that’s the thing,’ she told herself, ‘then strip down and clean old Bertha.’ She glanced at her gun. It began to feel like the one reliable friend she had when Aubrey was away. Her houseboy was loyal enough but not bright and often when she wanted to indulge in a little cooking and thinking she employed him in the garden. She had set him to construct long lines of low attap thatched ‘cloches’ to protect her sun-shy English lettuces.

A most satisfactory cake had been turned out, almonds baked beautifully even on the top, but it was still hot when she heard Aubrey’s car coming back. She always heard the car well before the prearranged signal on the horn — long, short, long, short — which announced his safe return and was the prerequisite to the gates being opened.

She frowned as she thought the car had come on through the gates without the hooter having sounded, or had she really been so engrossed in the beautiful evenness of her almonds that she had failed to register the daily signal? The car came right up to the front of the bungalow, so she must have done.

She slipped off her apron, pulled her dress in order, fluffed up her hair, put on a smile and went to meet her darling Aubrey.

Her pace slowed as she reached the front door. The car stood just beyond the shadow of the verandah, the rainstorm so lately stopped that the sun was striking brilliant prisms of colour, blue, red, orange, yellow, on the car’s armour. She could see no one inside and glanced round, looking back to where the guards were closing the gates. Two of them seemed to be having words, arguing. Had Aubrey gone back to see what was wrong?

Then one of the men seemed to make a decision and lifted an arm to her. Even from a distance she thought he looked alarmed. Something was wrong. Where the hell was Aubrey? And there was something about their car ... something hanging from under the door.

Her heart bounded to her throat as she recognised the strip of material hanging from the passenger-side door. She had bought that blue and beige striped shirt in Airey & Wheeler’s, Piccadilly.

She turned away and was heading for Bertha as, with a sudden explosion of action and firing, all the doors of the car were thrown open. The impact of the bullets lifted and span her round. As she fell she saw Aubrey’s head and shoulders sagging from the passenger seat.

Five or six men spilled out of the car, two treading over Aubrey’s body. One made for Bertha and cut down the Kose guards as they scattered in curious slow motion with legs turned to lead as they realised their mistake.

‘Damn!’ The word formed on Joan’s lips but was never spoken.

*

As Heng Hou and his men raided the bungalow, Josef shot his way back out of the gates. He was well aware that if he was going to escape with his life he needed to do it before Heng Hou realised he had been duped. He privately thought that his mother and sister had wandered into the jungle and got lost and would probably have perished by this time. If they had found a road, though, they would undoubtedly be taken back to Rinsey; it was all his mother ever seemed to crave.

Heng Hou saw his men wrench the machine gun from its stand. Bursting into the house, he grabbed a pile of hand grenades which were arranged like fruit on a glass stand near the door. He swept the bowl to the floor, then kicked it furiously when it did not break. The cut glass rang with a clear, true note as it rebounded from the wall and rolled back toward Heng. He stepped back and shot it to smithereens.

He went through the house like an angry demon, as if furious with everything that dwelt inside, every piece of furniture, every ornament carefully chosen and placed. If he did not want it he broke it.

‘The girl! The girl!’ he screamed when they had turned over every room. ‘Bring Josef to me!’ He turned on his henchmen who stepped back a pace, pockets bulging with trinkets. Heng Hou repeated the demand and stamped his foot. ‘Search outside.’

The two in the room fell over each other in their haste to be outside. Heng sneered, then picked up the cake from the cooling tray and broke it in half, pushing it into his mouth, spitting the browner almonds to the floor.

He was plundering the kitchen cupboards when the bravest of his men came back. The square-built Chinese did not report the escape of the garden boy, just that there was no sign of Josef.

‘You want us go search outside?’

Heng Hou considered that it was dangerous to linger too long in an area they had attacked; anyway, he knew where Josef would go sooner or later. All the man could ever think of was the plantation where his father had been manager. ‘No,’ he added, ‘we’ll just go wait for him near Rinsey.’

The square Chinese face split into a grin of appreciation.

When they were ready to leave, they fired the bungalow. They dragged the Englishman clear of the car and threw him by his dead wife. ‘Long dogs!’ Heng Hou growled, then laughed at the sight of these two, tall in life, long in death. His henchmen laughed too, more outrageously than their leader, and one lifted Aubrey’s arm and placed it around Joan, because they were all terrified of falling foul of Heng Hou.

The next second their leader’s face fell into its usual lines of discontent and he gestured them back into the car before the smoke from the bungalow grew large and aroused suspicion. He poked the driver, indicating the direction towards Rinsey.

Heng Hou pondered with all the hungry sagacity of the greedy predator. Josef had nowhere to go but back to his old home. No home for him in the jungle, no home for him in the towns. Heng Hou had already made sure Josef was a marked man, for he had not trusted him for a long time.

He growled under his breath again. The fact that the man had slipped away from a raid he was personally in charge of was another reason for the unrelenting hunt he would initiate.

*

‘Mem and Tuan Wildon not come yet,’ Anna commented as she added a bowl of floating fragrant frangipangi blossoms to the long-prepared dining table.

‘I’m hoping they’ll arrive before any of the army. Think I may need some moral support.’ Blanche paused, watching as Anna went on making tiny adjustments to the mats and cutlery. ‘What do I say, Anna?’

‘You say,’ Anna said with great emphasis, ‘little as possible.’

‘In case it incriminates me,’ Blanche agreed.

‘In case gets you in trouble.’ Anna nodded vehemently. ‘You no see go, no know where gone. Just gone!’

‘I’m sure you’re right. I just wish Joan would come first so I could unburden my soul by telling the truth first.’

‘You like baby need comforter.’ Anna pretended to suck her thumb. ‘You eat, feel better. Friends not mind.’

‘No, I’ll wait. I’m just so worried about the girls.’ Next moment she swore as they heard vehicles approaching and then Chemor’s loud, harsh challenge.

‘Even the British army doesn’t get by George’s man,’ she commented.

She went to the front door to meet Sturgess. She saw there was a team of men plus a Dyak tracker. Sturgess came towards her with a slightly smaller man, who managed to look dapper even in army jungle issue. ‘Dr James Wright, Mrs Blanche Hammond.’ As the two shook hands, Sturgess announced, ‘We’re going to make a start today, get straight off. The girls will know where their Sakai is, I suppose.’