‘Us?’
‘Me.’
‘All of us will shortly be gone — until then no one comes in or goes out of here.’
‘Gone ? But if I ... but I’m not under your command.’
‘You may be endangering my men’s lives if you do anything other than stay around Rinsey for the next few days.’
It felt as if he could have told her more without giving away any great secrets. She gave him back look for look, wanting to pierce his strict correctness, to trip up his calculating military mind.
‘You know, you remind me of someone,’ he said, sounding as if he had made some kind of capitulation.
‘Really?’ She poured coffee to mask her astonishment as she saw the quality of his scrutiny had completely changed and his tone was bordering on the confidential. She was about to ask who it might be but shied away from letting their relationship become more personal. She picked up her coffee and prepared to go and look in on her mother. ‘I think you remind me of somebody, too.’
‘Oh! Who?’ His turn to sound surprised now.
‘Jekyll and Hyde.’
She had not meant it humorously and yet as the door closed behind her she listened for at least a humph of laughter. There was none and it somehow made John Sturgess more difficult to know, impossible to reach with any easy friendship. What was his past? Whom did she reminded him of? She was mildly curious.
She went to her mother’s room and peeped in. Joan Wildon had left two sleeping tablets, saying, ‘I use them when I’m off duty at home.’ Blanche had said she would take them if she was still awake after midnight. It seemed she had been, for as Liz watched she slept deeply with no movement.
Going to her own room, she open her sketchbook. She had worked late on a picture of the tree; the canopy was detailed, each leaf painstakingly drawn, but she had not been able to fill in the bottom of the picture. She felt there was no base to her life, no bottom to her sketch. She turned to the page before where she had begun a head-and-shoulders sketch of Alan. She thought it a decent likeness but what twisted her heart was that John Sturgess had said they would soon all be gone.
She slowly turned the page back to the tree and, picking up an eraser, slowly and methodically rubbed out the whole drawing. And then she wept.
*
Alan became certain that they would go into the jungle just before dawn the next day. Their sergeant made an informal kit inspection, paying particular attention to clean socks, insect repellent, and later issued tinned ration packs to each man for three days.
Alan checked and familiarised himself with the model-33 wireless set they had brought in for him, which, though apparently despatched from Canada, had dials labelled in Russian. Profit, even equipment for war, crossed all political divides, it seemed.
He was not sure whether the tension at Rinsey, which to him seemed to tighten a notch with every passing hour, was not just in his own mind. His dread was that once his jungle operation was put under way, his time at the plantation would come to an end and he would not return. Even the thought had menacing echoes.
He had come to Malaya with a curious feeling of destiny hanging over him. He had almost reached the conviction that he should have been a conscientious objector, but that, he was sure, took more real courage than he had. Conscripted for national service in 1948, he had assumed that he stood a fair chance of seeing very little active service; certainly it had not seemed possible he would be sent halfway around the world to shoot other human beings — not so soon after his and his companions’ fathers had come home from fighting the Second World War. The lights had gone on again in a land fit for heroes to live in — the ringing phrases had an empty echo.
Until now he had shot nothing bigger than a hare, and then only because it was needed for the table. But it was free season here on all men with red stars on their forage caps, provided they didn’t get you first — and they knew the terrain.
Alan had been entranced by the beluka, the jungle edges, where there was room and light to admire the enormous leaves jungle plants produced; one such and a man or woman could be decently covered, fig leaves were poor things by comparison.
The deeper jungle he had found more darkly awe-inspiring, with its dripping constant dusk. It would be a matter of luck whether a shot hit its target with so many trunks to deflect the bullet’s flight. He calculated that deflections could probably be the cause of more injuries than direct intentions.
The day dragged through to his final network call. He had seen nothing of Liz all day through he had wandered around making himself as visible as he could. She must have been in the bungalow — with her mother, he supposed, and with Sturgess, who went in and out fairly constantly. If it could have gained him entry, he told himself he would have applied for officer training right away. Instead he sent many yearning thoughts to her — though how was she to know it might be his last day there?
He went back to his shack and lay on his bed as darkness swept down. His mood changed as he decided he was surprised she did not guess something was going on, for even though the work on the wiring and lighting was finished, the perimeter lights were not switched on. Instead, still figures stood guarding either side of the newly erected double gates — fifteen feet of lashed poles and woven barbed wire. Except for a concealed escape for emergencies, this was the only way in and out.
He must find some excuse to go to the bungalow. He cared little for making a fool of himself, or being censured yet again by the major, but there was behaviour suitable for the day after a family funeral, and it was this restraint that had all day kept him from the door. He heard himself sighing heavily in the darkness. He was like a Shakespearean lover, he decided, ‘sighing like a furnace’.
He struck a deal with himself; if she did not come while he was making his call, then he would go to the back door and say ... what? Another sigh. He glanced at the luminous hands of the army watch. It was time he was at the transmitter. He switched on the shaded light and went to the table, where his hand stopped partway to the dials. A small leather wallet was propped against the set.
His hand shook as he opened it. The leather wallet was a tiny photograph holder and inside was a photograph of Liz. A small oval, it seemed to encapsulate her quiet dignity, yet the direct look from the eyes that followed the viewer showed the spirit.
A slip of paper was tucked into the opposite side. His hasty fingers were clumsy as he unfolded it.
‘There is a saying: send a likeness of yourself with a loved one and it speeds their return.’
The excitement of the gift and of the words ‘loved one’ made his network call late and kept him awake all night. Awake tormented by her nearness and her inaccessibility, with the knowledge that he would leave at dawn. It felt like a separation before they had properly met, a divorce without a marriage.
When the sergeant arrived to say they would shortly be moving out, a torrential downpour was in progress. He carefully cut a piece of oilskin from an old map case and wrapped the leather photograph wallet, putting it into his breast pocket.
With his small pack hanging below the 33 set hitched as high as he could get it on his back, his waterproof poncho over everything, rifle in hand, he was well loaded, like all the others. But he had only to raise his left arm a little to feel the small package in his pocket, to press it close to his heart.
Major Sturgess took the lead with the sergeant, Bert Mackenzie, next, ready to take over should anything happen to his officer; then Babyface; Alan; Dan, who carried a Bren gun; and finally two brothers, Donald and Benjamin Sutherland, who with Sergeant Mackenzie had the distinction (frequently mentioned to conscripts when they were in regular barracks) of being regular soldiers.
Each had to keep his head down low enough to let the rain run off the wide-brimmed jungle hat, but not so low as to be unable to see the man in front. The noise of the rain on the palms and huge jungle leaves made it quite impossible for them to talk to each other even if it had been allowed. It was just sheer slogging work, and soon they were as soaked with perspiration inside their ponchos as everywhere else was saturated by the downpour.