‘No, don’t tell us,’ Liz took up the game, her eyes never leaving the now frowning and uneasy man. ‘I know who would remember, Major Sturgess. I could go and get him in a second.’
They knew then the man was alone for he stepped back, half bowed and left the room backwards. After a few seconds Liz hurried after him and returned to report, ‘He’s gone, but who was he?’
Amah shook her head and all eyes turned to the boy, who was now bursting with information.
‘They came when we were playing football earlier … ’
‘They?’ Blanche queried.
He shook his head at the very seriousness of what he had to tell. ‘Six men. The others all had guns. They sent our teams home to tell their mothers and fathers the communists were here and no one was to come out — but they kept me. I had to learn a message to tell my grandmother.’ He stopped and looked at Anna, who nodded once for him to go on. ‘I have to say that they will always know where to find me.’ His eyes were wide and his lips drawn down. ‘That those who work for running dogs will be killed like snakes.’ His head dropped right to his chest as he mumbled the last words, ‘And those who work for Tuan Hammond will be killed like bad snakes.’
Liz dropped to her knees and took his hands. ‘Don’t worry. Your grandmother will look after you.’
‘He’s all I have, mem,’ Anna appealed to Blanche. ‘I lost my son and his wife to the Japanese. Please leave us alone.’
‘Oh! Amah, I’m so sorry ... ’ Liz began.
‘Please, go quickly now. They may be watching. Please make no fuss.’
‘Do you know anything of my husband?’
‘I know nothing, nothing, nothing that will help him, or you — except go away, mem, go back to England.’ She leaned forwards over the boy she clutched to her. It was pitiful to see her eagerness to have them gone.
‘Anna, don’t worry, we’re going.’ Blanche reached out and touched the woman’s hair in a tender and uncharacteristic gesture. ‘I’m sorry we meet again in unhappy times.’
Liz stooped to kiss her, silenced now by the many implications of what had been said — and what not. All she asked her mother as they returned to the jeep was, ‘Do we tell Sturgess? And if we do, could it makes things worse for Anna?’
Blanche looked at her soberly. ‘I’m not sure,’ she murmured as they approached the jeep which Sturgess had pulled in under the shade of the trees.
‘Shall we just say Anna seemed afraid?’
Blanche nodded. Both realised they were already willy-nilly involved in the conspiracy of silence and terror that was spreading like a contagion over the whole of Malaya.
Sturgess watched the two women coining back. ‘Straitened circumstances’ was the phrase that always came to his mind when he dealt with people who were unable to open their hearts, minds and mouths to the truth — and these two, he thought, were becoming more straitened by the minute.
He wondered if their old nurse had died. They looked as if they had heard bad news, and as he watched their approach and the way their eyes stayed on him while they talked to each other, he knew they were not going to tell him whatever they had found. Reflecting that he had wasted some seven years of his life and several thousands pounds because his wife had not bothered to tell him things, he slipped in behind the steering wheel and started up the engine.
The women exchanged curious glances at his seeming lack of interest.
‘We found our amah,’ Liz volunteered. ‘She seemed frightened.’
He laughed. ‘Really, you surprise me!’ He paused to change up the gears and swing out on to the road. ‘The bad news came to this place before we stopped here.’ He had made a mental note of the name, and of the layout of the main houses. He felt he might well be back here with troops before long.
Chapter Five
‘The communists rarely take prisoners, Mrs Hammond.’
Liz felt the police officer had chosen his moment carefully to make the point. They had gone to Ipoh as being the nearest centre of authority and been received with sympathy and understanding.
Smart in the khaki short-sleeved shirt and trousers of the Perak force, Inspector Aba had listened carefully, nodding from time to time, aligning his fingertips in a carefully spaced arch one after the other as if putting their story together point by point.
‘Could he have gone somewhere by himself?’ the Malay asked most respectfully but for the first time seeming a little diffident as he expanded, ‘I mean, even in troubled times we all have our own private lives.’
‘Do you mean, has he another woman?’ Blanche asked, making Liz feel totally naive for she had been thinking the man was a bit of a fool because surely his wife and daughters were her father’s private life. She might have felt more affronted by the policeman, had he not been totally embarrassed by her mother’s frank response. The dapper Malay rose and paced his first-floor office with erratic speed, uneasy with this outspoken English mem and out of harmony with the ponderous ceiling fans stirring the hot air above their heads.
‘I suppose you have to ask,’ Blanche began, ‘but it would have been very easy for my husband to have kept me at home in England. Hardly a propitious time for anyone to start philandering — while his wife and daughter are in the air flying halfway around the world to join him. If nothing else, Neville has more sense than that!’
Liz remembered the telegram, then was annoyed with herself — sow a seed, grow a tree. Of all men, her father was not like that, was he? He might be impetuous, overgenerous at times to the wrong people, but he was devoted to his family, loved her mother.
‘I’m sorry, Mrs Hammond.’ The inspector stopped pacing, went back to his desk and with an expressive shrug explained the way the world could be. ‘What I really should say is, no news is good news. You see, his vehicle has not been found. It is harder to hide a vehicle than a man. As times goes on, of course …. ’
‘Yes.’ Blanche acknowledged the worrying reality that three days and nights was a long time for anyone to be out of touch. ‘I wondered if you could advise me, should I call on the civil authority downstairs and see if they can do anything more, or should I ask for military assistance?’
‘You already have that, Mrs Hammond.’ He smiled and nodded indulgently. ‘Major Sturgess instigated investigations the moment he reached his command; they in turn called our headquarters.’ He paused to lift placating hands as Blanche glanced sharply at him. ‘I had to hear your story. I assure you everything that can be done to find your husband is being done. Major Sturgess fought in this particular area during the war; if you had asked for the best man in the world fitted to help you, you could not have chosen a better.’
They left the police station a little stunned by the glowing testimonial Sturgess had received. ‘No wonder he laughed when we left Anna’s home,’ Blanche commented. ‘I don’t suppose we fooled him for one moment.’
‘You don’t think Daddy’s gone off ... ’ She had to hear it said.
‘No, I don’t,’ Blanche said and, after hesitating, added, ‘I could perhaps wish he had, he might be safer.’
Liz grasped her mother’s hand and squeezed it hard. ‘You don’t seriously think he’s ... ’ She could not bring herself to say the word; the inspector had avoided it too. They rarely take prisoners, he had said.
‘I’m trying not to think anything, and I’m certainly not letting anyone rest until we do know what has happened to him — someone somewhere must know.’
As they turned away from the police station, a small, incongruous convoy of camouflaged British army lorries swept out from the old Colonial style Ipoh railway station. A jeep armed with a Bren gun preceded four lorries, protected at the rear by another jeep with another Bren gun at the ready. The two women were regaled by whistles, greetings and propositions from some young British soldiers.