He heard forbidden intimacy and indiscretion in the two words. His knife slipped from the unidentified meat, hitting his plate with a crack.
‘Alan,’ Blanche said as if cued by the sound, ‘you’ll eat with us while you’re here on your own.’
It had the air of an order but one he was pleased to obey.
‘Our nurse,’ she continued in a conversational tone, giving him time only to nod rather than voice his acceptance, ‘tells me that Josef has been hiding at her house since the search for Neville was intensified and has been using it also to make contact with his Red friends.’
‘I think you can take the word of the workers that are returning to Rinsey, who think Guisan is gone for good,’ George told her.
‘But he escaped!’ Blanche protested.
‘But the men see Rinsey fortified, soldiers around and Josef Guisan as a wanted man. They’ll feel as safe here as anywhere these days, and they want to earn some money.’
Alan remembered Major Sturgess’s ominous threat that he had not finished with Guisan yet.
‘Did you see the marks on Anna’s face? That woman loved and looked after him when he was a little boy! How could he? I’ll hang for that man before I’m through here,’ Blanche vowed.
Liz looked sharply across at her mother. Alan thought he read her anxiety; how long would that be, before her mother was ‘through here’?
‘Will you go back to live in England, Blanche?’ George asked as if he too was questioning the exact meaning of the same words.
Blanche lined her knife and fork up very precisely on her plate, then straightened the fork and spoon still on the table. ‘There’s a lot still to be done here, and I suppose I mustn’t assume that Rinsey is mine. Neville could have left it to our children.’ she paused and glanced over to Liz. ‘There’s Wendy in England, and ... Liz here. Actually I’m not too sure I care what happens to me now.’
There was a few seconds’ awkward pause, a swift searching of faces, but before anyone could come up with a suitable reply, Li Kim came in to clear the plates. The silence continued as George’s cook carried in a platter of individual crème caramels and loaded baskets of fruits and nuts.
‘The men who have already arrived are eager to get back to work,’ George added as a belated postscript to their topic. ‘There are trees planted just before the war that have never been tapped — the yield should be enormous.’
‘I could organise the tappers and do the plantation bookkeeping, I’ve watched it all so often,’ Liz offered. ‘I honestly do know how it’s done.’
‘The men also want to form themselves into a kind of security force. I could set up a roster of guards.’
‘I’d appreciate that, George; in fact, I appreciate all the work you’ve done. Lending us Li Kim, but we have to ... ’ She made a brave attempt at a gesture of moving on, though her arms lifted as if weighted with lead and did not match the smile she conjured, too bright, too brittle. ‘I know when Liz came here she wanted to make her life at Rinsey — ’ Blanche looked across at her daughter, — ‘while I certainly did not, but things have changed.’ She paused and gave a short ironic, laugh, ‘For the worse, of course, but — ’ she blew a speculative smoke ring before stubbing out her quarter smoked cigarette.
‘I think we have to carry on here at Rinsey as Daddy would have wanted to do — for the time being, anyway. We’ll decide big issues later.’ Liz’s tone was controlled but then she jumped up and went round the table to put her arms around her mother.
Blanche gave her daughter a swift hug and a kiss, then rose. ‘Excuse me, George, and ... ’ she nodded to Alan. ‘Please finish your meal, Liz, all of you,’ she added and left the dining room — but striding out, head up. In the silence that followed they heard the master bedroom door firmly close.
*
The next morning very early Alan wondered if the invitation to eat with the Hammonds included breakfast. He strolled hesitantly around the corner of the bungalow, and stopped as he saw Liz near the grave.
She had on pale lime-green slacks and a matching short-sleeved blouse. The colour suited her, he thought, gave her a Peter Pan look — or perhaps standing over her father’s grave like that he should think of her as one of the ‘lost boys’.
He watched her from a distance for some time, then drew a little nearer. She still stood so quiet and contemplative that he was not sure she had heard him come. He saw there were fresh scarlet frangipani blossoms on the mound; their fragile blood-redness spilled on the soil expressing an emotional shock like another death.
‘You were right about the tree,’ she said quietly without looking up. ‘He feels right here. He loved this country and the people. Anna, he loved old Anna. Though of course she wasn’t old when we were babies ... ’ She paused as if taking breath, then went on again quickly. ‘It’ll be a good thing, Anna and her grandson being here. It’s made my mother busy again. She was busy all through the war; when Daddy was away she created and ran a market garden, did I tell you that? It’s right she should be busy again now.’
He watched her, hardly listening. ‘What’s the matter?’ he asked. ‘Something’s happened.’
She looked up at him then and her bottom lip looked fuller, as if she was going to cry. ‘Major Sturgess rang last night. He’s coming back in just two days’ time.’
‘Ah!’ he breathed out his understandings. He wanted to leap to her side, comfort and hold her, to be close in their mutual disappointment, but felt inhibited by the chance of being seen from the bungalow — yet why should he care now? He compromised by moving to her side and taking her hand into his discreetly while it still hung by her side.
By mutual consent they turned and walked from the garden along the path towards the wireless hut.
‘Did he say anything else?’ he asked.
‘It was George who spoke to him. George is a bit upset because the army won’t let him go “on this one”. In any case there’s some trouble at his mine, the daughter of one of his foremen has gone missing — that’s all I know.’
It was enough. A few moments ago Alan had stood with his heart lifting at the mere sight of this girl, now his time with her was curtailed, condemned to a quick end. Two days. It would be so easy for this time, this emotion, this love all to pass away without being marked. He was afraid of the curious inertia an allotted span could inflict; one could watch the feeling go like a tropical sunset, blazing, glorious, unbelievably beautiful, and be left blinking in the dark at dazzles existing only inside one’s own eyes.
‘What are you thinking?’ she asked.
‘That we shouldn’t waste any time.’ He felt his colour rise at his own words, they sounded apt but plain and crudely put after his thoughts. ‘I mean,’ he tried to express himself more elegantly, ‘we must use every minute to get to know each other properly.’
She gave him a long, curious look, as if she was both looking at him and beyond him. ‘And to plan how to keep in touch when you do have to leave,’ she said.
They neared his hut and could hear the chopping of bamboos and the chatter of the men.
‘They’ve started rebuilding their quarters,’ she stated. ‘I didn’t realise.’
‘Came at first light to tell me,’ he confirmed, ‘the four tappers who came to the funeral … ’
She nodded. ‘The police have exonerated them of any involvement with the terrorists. They want to bring their families inside the security fencing as soon as possible.’
‘Pity they couldn’t wait another two days,’ he said ruefully as they reached the doorway of his hut and two of the tappers came by carrying the parangs they used for cutting the thick bamboos.
A third man called to the first two, who turned back and acknowledged his request for a greater quantity of wood, then smiled and nodded to Alan and Liz, friendly, deferential to Liz — and intrusive.