‘Your daughter seems conspicuous by her absence.’ George’s glance moved along the bungalow windows. ‘She’s not likely to go off looking for this Josef on her own, is she? They seem to have been very close as children.’
‘Quite possible, though I think she’s in her room sketching. If my daughter has a problem she usually draws pictures. Don’t worry, I’ll keep my eye on her.’
‘Until we have this perimeter fencing up and a proper secure compound, I wish you would. I want nobody wandering about.’
*
Liz had waited until she saw the men all engrossed in unloading the fencing and lighting equipment. While her mother was talking to Harfield, she took the opportunity to slip out into the back garden and from there to the path leading to the manager’s quarters.
She had been put out to find Josef not around, had again defended him from any criticism — but she wanted to know what was happening. Where were the workers? What had Josef done since they last saw him? Where was he?
She remembered the track to the manager’s bungalow as a broad highway for bicycles and tricycles, but now it was much overgrown, wet and slippery. By the time she approached the other property she was full of doubts. If the path was not used, what should she expect? Nevertheless it was a shock to see the wooden walls apparently locked and latticed in trees. She approached with something of the feeling of one in a fairy tale discovering a long-overgrown realm. The manager’s bungalow had been overrun by a legion of saplings, bamboos and seedling ferns to the very walls.
She moved slowly up the steps. The creaking and groaning of the verandah as she crossed it told of long-neglected and probably unsafe timbers. In the window spaces hung the remnants of rattan blinds, dust and leaves lay thick in every niche of the rotting boards and as she pushed the door it dropped sideways and inwards with a terrible clatter. She stood for a moment so startled she was ready to run, but only a parrot screamed and scolded as it stomped about in a nearby clump of bamboo.
Inside there was only debris — the broken staves of a chair, the disconnected telephone, which lay, receiver and rest wide apart, on the floor. She stepped forwards to look at a calendar hanging on the wall above the telephone, but the pages had been rendered illegible and welded together by the humidity. She thought it looked like 1941, but it was a guess. It was all guesses — she felt sick with a sudden, desperate loneliness — for nothing was the same.
She had come to Rinsey to find her father but instead she had lost a friend, her childhood hero and sweetheart. She had lost Josef not just because he was not there, but because she had found out his lie. He had not been living here. And if the Japanese had commandeered their bungalow, where had he lived in the war? If his father had been killed, where had his mother and Lee gone — or had they been taken away?
Walking through the rooms, she remembered how it had been. She recollected the great solid furniture that Mr Guisan had imported, huge wooden beds like decapitated four-posters, chairs with knobs on their arms like cudgels to an unwary child’s elbows or knees. They had been specially commissioned and treated to withstand the tropical weather and termites. They could not have just disappeared. Even if Josef had.
She stood in the silent house feeling like one in the immediate aftermath of an awful accident, uselessly wishing time back on itself — so that all could be as before. That was how she wanted Malaya, Rinsey, Josef. Now it seemed no more than the petulant wish of a child. She watched a black bootlace snake in the corner of the room: each was wary of the other and anxious to leave the other alone. The only thing she felt would absolve Josef was if he came with news of her father.
She walked slowly back along the overgrown path, hands clenched tightly by her sides. She remembered the joy of first seeing Josef, remembered being held in his arms, the warmth of his chest against her shoulder during the attack. But how had he managed to arrive so smartly turned out that first evening? What was his game?
Josef had always laughed in a kind of maniacal fit of jubilation when he won at one of their games, even if he had cheated. She and Lee had hated him then, with all the fury of childhood.
She thought of George Harfield’s Malayan headman, and of the Chinese stranger holding Anna’s grandson — this was life and death, not children’s games. Childhood was soon over.
The sight of a man coming along the path towards her made her think belatedly that she should have carried her revolver or that she might be wise to dive for cover. He approached half trotting, as if eager to come up to her, and when she could see him properly he raised a hand in greeting.
‘Miss Hammond,’ he called with a slight bow of his head, ‘Mr Harfield says you go to the house at once.’
‘Does he!’ She slowed her pace so she could talk to the very dark-skinned native, but turning back she saw he was continuing in the opposite direction.
She was surprised but hurried on. Where the old path divided, she took the one leading to the rear entrance, but as she did so a movement caught her attention. A tall figure was standing in the trees.
‘Josef!’ She practically hurtled through the trees towards him. He was absorbed in something in the tops of the trees.
‘Josef!’ Even as she said the name she knew she was wrong, for though the man was as tall, he was not so broad and the clothes were a soldier’s jungle green.
He started, turned, dropped a length of wire he was carrying and snatched off his wide-brimmed hat. ‘Miss!’
‘I thought you were someone else. Sorry! Did I startle you?’ She smiled both because she recognised him and because her words and his actions were ludicrous, more like a couple bumping into each other in a peacetime English lane than a tropical track in terrorist country.
‘Don’t tell my commander I took my hat off to you. I mean,’ he said, screwing the hat in his hands and smiling ruefully at his own supposed failure, ‘I should really have shot you — well, challenged you.’
It was a relief to laugh. With his wry expression and his military-cropped, sandy hair exposed, he looked much younger than when she had seen him last. ‘You’re the boy from the lorry.’
‘Lorry, yes. Boy — well?’ He cocked an eye. ‘Just because I didn’t shout after you? I was better brought up, but it wasn’t that I didn’t appreciate … ’
She found herself both blushing and laughing under his approving look. ‘Why are you here?’
He displayed the wire he was holding. ‘I’m looking for a friendly native to shin up one of these trees and fix my aerial to the top. I’m stationed here for the time being.’
‘Really? That seems too good to be true.’
‘Thanks!’ The closed-mouth grin and twinkling brown eyes were so full of good spirits she did not qualify the remark. ‘So you’ll be the daughter of the house, Miss Hammond?’
‘Liz.’ She held out her hand, then found herself swallowing hard as his hand enveloped hers. Looking down at her he stood many inches nearer than he needed.
‘Alan Cresswell. Until now I thought I was going to hate it here by myself.’
They both turned, still holding hands, as Chemor came back along the path portering a heavy coil of new rope. ‘Here’s someone who might help you. He’s one of George Harfield’s men.’
The native glanced at Liz as if questioning the fact that she had not obeyed his employer’s summons. ‘You come now,’ he said.
‘Is something wrong at the bungalow?’ she asked.
‘Something found.’ He smiled and with a gesture indicated that someone else was coming. ‘All going now to look.’
‘What is it?’ she demanded as her mother and George Harfield came into sight, alarmed at their sombre expressions and the fact that George was strapping on his gun and holster as he walked.
‘Themor — ’ he paused to nod to her companion — ‘has found a vehicle in the jungle. A jeep.’