Chapter Six
The work at Rinsey started four long days later, days without news, days when the two women talked to each other less and less as they exhausted every possibility, every speculation of hopeful things that could have prevented Neville Hammond from contacting someone.
Blanche stood in her lounge watching as the work of unloading the four lorries was begun by the drivers and their mates. The Malays worked as hard as usual, the muscles in their brown arms and legs shiny hard balls of willing power, but their smiles were missing. The death of their headman, and the manner of it, would weigh on them all for a long time — but not a single one of George’s men had deserted him. He was too positive in his determination to beat the CTs and there was not a man at Bukit Kinta who doubted his ability to do it.
He directed them now. Rolls of barbed wire, fifteen-foot poles, electric cable and powerful lamps were quickly and neatly piled to one side of the clearing. Blanche saw George take the smallest and darkest of the men aside; he seemed to be instructing him to walk the perimeter where the defences should be erected.
She wandered outside, still holding the triptych of photographs which always travelled with her or stood on her dressing table. Arriving at Rinsey once more to find it totally deserted had sapped her energy. When Liz wasn’t in evidence, Blanche wondered what she was doing there. Without her man by her side, this uneasy country was unbearable.
George Harfield came over to her. Nodding after the man, he explained, ‘Themor, he’s the best tracker I’ve ever had. I think he must be related to Dyak trackers from Borneo. he can tell whether it’s man or beast that’s been along a path and how long ago. I’ve sent him to look around for any particular sign of activity. It might make a difference to how we arrange the lights.’
Blanche knew she should feel more involved in all this, be vitally interested. She was more aware of the leather photograph folder she held and how comforted she felt to have this other Englishman by her side.
‘My men,’ he was saying if he had already asked her a question and was now repeating it, ‘I would prefer them all to sleep here until the job’s done, if you don’t mind. They’d sleep on the verandah, just the four of them, and take turns on watch. I must go back to Bukit Kinta each evening, particularly while they’re all so jumpy.’
‘We should have heard by now if my husband was safe,’ she stated, opening the folder and displaying the central photograph of Neville, posed in a formal portrait, flanked by family photographs of herself and the two girls, and the four of them in a sailing dinghy.
He took the folder and, as the two of them looked down at the English scenes and English faces, she added, ‘No one can be missing or held up this long. He’s either been captured and held for God knows what purpose — or he’s dead.’
He gently took hold of her forearm. ‘People do disappear. The most extraordinary things do happen.’
‘Not that often.’ She stared down at his hand and thought it was a long time since a man had made her feel that supported. Then, as if he took the protracted gaze for criticism, he released her. She told herself she was glad, too much kindness sapped her resolve. She had long ago realised she needed to maintain her aggressive veneer to face the world.
‘No, but we must hope.’ He indicated Liz in the photographs. ‘Your elder daughter is like her father.’
‘In many ways,’ Blanche agreed. ‘Wendy is more like me. I hope so, anyway, we need some practical people in this family.’
‘This Josef — Liz seems to have faith in him?’
Blanche took the album and closed it as the clatter of the drivers putting up the tailgates of the lorries diverted them. One of the drivers called something in Malay and George indicated his permission for them to go back to the mine, leaving only the wired-in jeep.
‘Josef,’ Blanche repeated, her voice starting low and sinking lower. ‘An example of how much like her father she is — much too eager to think well of the wrong people. Sometimes I think because Neville is in large part saint-like he expects everyone else to be the same.’
‘Life must be a great disappointment to him then.’ George took a retractable tape measure from his pocket and tossed it in his hand as if weighing its worth before beginning to use it.
She laughed briefly and admitted, ‘Often true.’
‘If you have to be on your own ... ’ George gently posed the possibility.
‘God forbid,’ Blanche breathed and held the leather folder close to her breast, crossing her arms over it. ‘I’ve had my war alone. I only came to Malaya to be with Neville … ’
‘That’s right, m’dear. God forbid. Meantime we take precautions against the troubles we know you’re likely to have. So what about this Josef? Where is he?’
‘We did ask him to contact as many tappers as he could. I presume that’s where he is.’
‘Hmm! There’s a lot here that doesn’t add up,’ he mumbled, then lifted his head, listening as the sound of more traffic coming towards them was heard.
A few seconds later an army lorry towing a trailer and a cloud of dust came into view. As it pulled up alongside them, the air was replete with the smell of hot metal and evaporating petrol.
‘The generator! As good as his word,’ George said with satisfaction as he went forward to greet the corporal who sprang down from the driving seat. From the passenger’s side a taller, younger man climbed down. ‘Corporal,’ he greeted the driver.
‘Morning, sir. Mr Harfield? One genny and one guard stroke radio operator for Rinsey. One on permanent loan’ — he nodded towards the generator — ‘and one sort of temporary.’ Blanche raised her eyebrows in surprise as the corporal introduced her to Guardsman Alan Cresswell.
‘I’ve seen you before,’ she said. ‘On a truck coming out of Ipoh station.’
‘That’s right.’ He shook her proffered hand. ‘There were two of you.’
‘My daughter, Elizabeth, she’s around somewhere.’ Blanche thought his gangling height and gaunt features made him look more like someone who needed a few good meals and mothering than like a soldier. ‘So you’re going to be billeted here for a bit. That’ll be good.’
When he smiled down at her she noticed the cleft chin and the dark-brown eyes. He was the kind of man who would wear well, she thought, probably be far more attractive in his middle years than he was as a young man.
‘Seems to me you’re going to have an accommodation problem,’ George said. ‘One minute the place is like the Marie Celeste, the next it’s bulging at the seams.’
‘Major Sturgess said there were some old workers’ quarters at the back. With your permission, Mrs Hammond, I’ll set up my gear there. I can bivouac alongside my transmitter, I’ll have to be on network every few hours. Do you think one of your Malays would take an aerial up a tree for me see what kind of reception I can get?’
‘Let me know where you want to be,’ George said.
The young guardsman nodded. ‘Once I’ve called in I can help with the work. I’ll not be on standby just yet.’
They watched him begin to unload a prodigious amount of equipment from the back of the lorry. ‘A boy in man’s boots,’ Blanche commented quietly.
‘A guardsman’s boots.’ George nodded to the brilliant shine of the toecaps gleaming through the dust as kitbag was added to transmitter and crates of wet batteries at the far end of the bungalow. ‘Spit and polish, drilled across the parade grounds of Caterham Barracks to be a fighting machine in a tropical jungle — and I bet he’d never been farther than Llandudno before he was conscripted.’
‘Putting on a good show then.’ Blanche remembered how he had sat so immobile in the back of the lorry, catching their eye, serious among his wolf-whistling, gesticulating companions. A rather different young man to the general run.