‘Did you sleep here?’ Blanche asked.
‘No, only Mr Hammond.’
‘I mean during the war.’
‘No, Japanese officer and his wife — ’
‘Damnation!’ Blanche interrupted and she eyed Josef as if she might just have preferred him in her home to the Japs. ‘So you’ve not stayed here since my husband left?’
‘Or seen anyone else here?’
Josef shook his head slowly.
‘The bungalow was open when we arrived,’ Sturgess added.
‘Ah! I should have checked, that is bad,’ Josef admitted, then smiled. ‘Mr Hammond was in a hurry to come to meet his lovely wife and daughter.’
Blanche’s facial expression remained pointedly unmoved. Liz smiled as graciously as she could, but realised that the matter of the guns had to be explained. She could imagine no circumstances that would make her father leave guns laid out on a bed, then drive to Singapore. Such behaviour broke every rule he had ever impressed on them all from childhood — herself, Lee and Josef.
The slight obsequiousness in Josef’s tone reminded her he had always been a touch too willing to abase himself to her father and mother — but if she or Lee had tried to put him down, that was another matter and his temper would flare.
The ill-timed pleasantry was forgotten as in the middle distance they heard again monkeys screaming protest at being disturbed. Josef too was listening intently and half turned as if he would go to the back of the bungalow. Seconds later there was a high-pitched single screech. In daytime none of them would have taken any account of it at all.
‘A day bird’s call at night?’
Surprisingly, it was her mother who made the comment. No one answered. Liz had the distinct feeling that her mother and Sturgess were watching Josef closely for any reaction.
‘We’ll play this for safety,’ Sturgess said, picking up his rifle. ‘I have a feeling we have visitors on the way who expect to collect some extra equipment.’
Blanche took her revolver from the table.
‘I’ll fetch my gun,’ Liz said.
‘Extra equipment?’ Josef spread his hands, shrugged his shoulders and asked, ‘What can I do? Do you have a spare rifle?’
‘Switch the lights out,’ Sturgess ordered him, ‘and come to the back of the house with me. You two cover the front.’
‘If I had a gun … ’
‘If and when any shooting begins I’ll let you have my revolver,’ Sturgess told him.
The lights were snapped out and Liz was left to feel her way back to her bedroom. Groping in the drawer of the bedside table, she was surprised how reassuring the weight of the .38 Smith & Wesson was in her hand.
From the kitchen Sturgess shouted, ‘Don’t go outside, Mrs Hammond. You and your daughter take a window either side of the front door and shoot at anything that moves.’
Liz felt both annoyed to be referred to as an unthinking mere appendage to her mother and expected to shoot at anything that moved? Ridiculous! She was about to protest at the order and remind him of his ‘military’ sortie to deal with the water buffalo as the first shot came from the right of the front door.
‘Good God!’ Blanche exclaimed, but immediately poked her gun through the side of the rattan blinds and fired back.
‘Watch for the flashes, aim at them,’ Sturgess had time to shout as another shot came from the back of the house.
Two more shots from the trees were returned with fire from the front and back of the bungalow. Liz found she had undergone a complete change of heart. In the silence that followed she had to discipline herself not to empty her revolver into the night.
Crouched by her window in the hot, sticky darkness, she knew it was no use either rushing out, guns blazing, or trying to identify the night noises that came from the beluka. Anyone running or walking without caution might have been easy to hear, but it would be impossible to separate a stealthy human approach from the cracks, drips and unhuman calls the jungle night added resonance and menace to. The twenty yards or so between bungalow and tree fringe seemed a very narrow margin for safety.
‘Are they coming or aren’t they, for God’s sake?’ Her mother’s whispered exasperation exactly summed up her own feelings.
‘Liz!’ Josef’s voice in the same room made her start so violently she realised just how ajangle her nerves were. She heard her mother swear under her breath.
‘Mrs Hammond, Major Sturgess wants to speak to you in the kitchen.’
‘What do you think is happening?’ Liz asked as she saw Josef’s black figure outlined at the other window.
‘Are you all right?’ he asked and came across to be near her. She could feel his warmth through her thin blouse and his breath on her neck. ‘Not too frightened?’
‘I’m glad you came when you did — someone we really know.’ In turning to whisper to him she leaned briefly against his shoulder.
‘I am so pleased you are back.’ He paused but she was so near him she could feel him shaking his head as he spoke. ‘After all these years, now it has all happened so quickly, it makes me feel ... kind of mixed up.’
‘I know … ’
‘He hasn’t given me a gun,’ he added.
Liz was digesting this information and emotional switch as there was a sudden, violent burst of shooting from inside the bungalow. The shock of the noise made her drop to her knees and she heard Josef say something about a Sten gun, then, as the pumping cracks of automatic fire ceased, her mother was there ordering, ‘Stay down!’
There was more movement in the room and the noise was repeated as Sturgess raked the trees and the undergrowth at the front of her home with a similar barrage of fire.
In the tail end of the thudding punishment, obscenely loud indoors, they all heard the involuntary cry of someone hit. It had not sounded far away and she wondered if Sturgess’s tactics had stopped them from being rushed. There were other noises out there now, definable noises of men moving in the undergrowth, a groan and then the noises retreated.
‘Retrieving their wounded?’ Liz wondered.
‘Hum!’ Sturgess sounded noncommittal. ‘it may be all over for this time,’ he judged, ‘but be cautious. I’ll just check the rear.’
‘What a good thing he came with us,’ Blanche breathed.
‘Yes.’ Liz felt her agreement was slightly tight-lipped for he made her, and obviously Josef, feel rather like stupid and irresponsible children, not to be trusted.
‘Would you go and keep watch from the kitchen, Josef?’ Sturgess ordered as he came back. He waited until Josef had moved away, then said, ‘We’ll only shoot again if they do, but I feel they’ve withdrawn to reassess the situation.’
‘Why should you think that?’ Liz felt he should be made to explain as well as to issue orders.
‘Two reasons. They were undoubtedly after the guns that were laid out here, so it probably means they want the extra arms or ammunition for another operation. They certainly weren’t expecting us to be here, and now they also know we can defend ourselves, they won’t want to waste a lot of ammunition just to take a few more weapons. We’ve also made it awkward for them; they don’t like casualties in the jungle. Gunshot wounds are difficult to explain if you need a doctor or surgeon, complicated to nurse if you haven’t got the right drugs.’
That was three reasons, she thought, good reasons. ‘You’re obviously an expert on war,’ she told him. It was the only thing she had really heard him talk about.
‘I’ve had plenty of experience in this country.’
She admitted to herself there was only bitterness in the tone of that remark, no joy of the man of war, no hint of the make-up of a mercenary.
‘I think we could have a small lamp on now,’ he said, going over to the table. The soft upward light made her realise how the immaculate man she had first seen in Raffles had been completely transformed. His light shirt and trousers were much crumpled and the Sten gun had left traces of oil on his shirt. He had the dark shadow of a beard on his face. She remembered sitting by her father in the bathroom there, watching him shave. He had dabbed a blob of shaving soap on her nose and asked if she knew that whiskers grew quicker in a hot climate. She had always thought it a joke, now she wondered if it was true.