His attention was drawn back to the bungalow by the noise of the back door being opened. His heart leaped as a woman’s figure appeared, but it was Blanche Hammond. For a moment she stood erect, alone, looking towards the newly closed grave which had been left covered with the green baize weighted by neatly cut slabs of granite which would form the kerb of the final surround.
He thought for a moment that she was going to walk out but suddenly she sat down in the middle of the back steps, just sat, and he started towards her. His mother had done precisely this in the middle of the village — just sat down on the newsagent’s step. The niceties of decent behaviour, the concerned and outraged sensibilities of passers-by, the gossips of the community, had not mattered to her any more.
He reached Blanche Hammond as the door opened again and George Harfield came out. The older man knelt immediately by her. ‘What’s this now?’ he asked carefully, then, looking up at Alan, said, ‘Get her daughter, will you.’
Alan started through the door but met John Sturgess at the entrance to the hall.
‘What’s this, Cresswell?’
‘Liz, sir, her mother — ’
‘Miss Hammond, sir! Who the hell do you think you are?’
Alan looked the man straight in the eye. ‘I know who I am, sir. Miss Hammond is wanted outside. Mr Harfield asked me to fetch her.’
‘You on guard, are you?’ he growled, glancing at his rifle.
‘Sir,’ he confirmed.
‘Righto. I’d suggest back to your post double quick. I also suggest you keep yourself — ’ He stopped as if what he had been about to say he himself felt was too extreme, and ended, ‘to yourself. I’ll tell Miss Hammond.’
Alan left the kitchen and walked back down the steps where George Harfield was trying to persuade Blanche to her feet, talking to her quietly in a slow continuous stream as if bathing her with kind words. ‘Come on, my love,’ he was saying gently. ‘I had you down for at least a front-doorstep sitter, not a back.’
George Harfield had better watch out, he thought, or Major Sturgess would be telling him to keep himself ... to himself.
But the remark broke the woman’s isolation. A noise, half laugh, half sob, escaped Blanche Hammond and then she began to cry with such bitterness Alan felt it must be true that hearts could be broken. He watched as Liz came down the steps and gathered her mother into her arms. Soon she and George were able to persuade her to her feet and they took her back inside.
He felt heartsick for them all, for himself too.
*
Liz felt completely enervated, though unable to rest, and wandered away from the lounge where George and John were still talking quietly to her mother. She knew her restlessness was partly because she had overheard the exchange between the major and the guardsman and partly because she knew precisely where Alan would be and what he would be doing at that particular moment.
Without further thought she left the bungalow and went quietly along the path to his hut, wondering how many more times she might do this. So far there had been no discussion about going or staying. Her mother had fleetingly mentioned Wendy once but had stopped mid-sentence.
At the hut doorway she paused, watching as Alan sat before the gently humming radio transmitter, headphones over his ears, fingers turning the dials to his frequency. At precisely eighteen hundred hours he made his report. ‘Echo Bravo Six. Echo Bravo Six. Routine call.’ Then he listened, his voice suddenly rising a pitch as he asked, ‘That you, Larry? Any news of the football scores back home?’ He listened again, then laughed. ‘Next time then, got to keep up with the important things in life.’
He turned as he spoke as if sensing a presence, then blushed, looking as if he wanted to explain to her that the football scores were for his mates. She inclined her head as if to acknowledge the tacit information. He nodded back as he made his final signing-off, moving his head very slowly like someone reassuring a timid child.
He removed his headphones, flipped a switch on the set and came to her, his arms part open, part raised, reminding her of a picture of Christ called ‘Suffer Little Children to Come unto Me’. His tallness overshadowing her, his dark uniform touching her, his arms around her, she closed her eyes and leaned to him.
She leaned on him so heavily, for a slight girl such a leaden weight, he almost asked her what was the matter. He rephrased the unspoken words. ‘Is there something else?’
Chapter Ten
‘Good morning.’
Liz turned from the kitchen dresser where she was pressing oranges for breakfast. She returned the greeting and handed John Sturgess a glass of the fresh juice. He nodded his thanks.
He was dressed and shaved. It seemed the right time to ask her favour. She sipped her drink and began to make them both coffee and toast.
The night before she had told Alan the story of her old nurse who had come to the funeral and disappeared immediately afterwards. He had mentioned Sturgess’s jeep, and she had the distinct feeling that had she asked him outright he would have taken it and driven her to Anna’s kampong there and then.
He had been so concerned when she told him how she had first sought out Anna, recognising the turtle pots; how strange her old nurse had been, and the encounter with the terrorist. He had got up and stridden about, then come to take her hand as if he would be off that second to find the old lady. She had in the end felt she must make him promise not to do anything before she herself had asked the major if he would take her back to the kampong, or lend his vehicle.
‘Yesterday my old amah came to the funeral — ’ she began now.
‘I wondered if that was who it was,’ he interrupted slowly putting his glass down and looking fixedly at her. ‘The lady from the quiet kampong! She left before the service ended.’
‘I wondered if you would take me back to her village again to make sure she is ... all right.’
‘How did she get here?’
‘She could have walked.’ She felt under cross-examination. ‘I didn’t actually get to speak to her.’
‘Unlike the time we stopped at her kampong.’
‘I did speak to her then, of course.’ Professional cross-examination, she thought.
‘And did something happen there that day?’ He leaned forwards over the table and she instinctively leaned back on to the dresser, inching away from his scrutiny. ‘This could be vitally important to me — and my men,’ he added.
She told him defensively, uneasy as his eyes seem to be assessing her every move, as if reading from her movements any degree of vacillation from the spoken truth — but she told it all.
‘Hmm’ he said when she had finished and reached over for the plate of toast she had made.
‘Is that it, then?’ she demanded. The revelation of the terrorist’s appearance and the terrified boy had been a battle between her amah’s trust in her silence and what felt like the commonsense need to speak out now. ‘Hmm!’
‘Sorry, but it’s more or less what I expected.’
‘So the third degree wasn’t necessary.’
He looked at her and laughed. it astonished her how his face changed, the long lean lines vanished, the man shone through the military machine. ‘That wasn’t even a first degree,’ he told her.
‘So will you take me to check on my amah?’
He shook his head at her. ‘No can do, sorry!’
‘But it wouldn’t take you long.’
He again shook his head.
‘Would you lend us your jeep for a couple of hours?’