‘I think,’ he said, ‘we are going to have to use our initiative. What time do they all stop work and go to bed?’
‘I’ve a better idea,’ she told him. ‘You know the place to the east where George has made a concealed exit under the wire?’
He nodded but wondered if she knew quite what she did to him standing so close, looking so cool and determined, a smaller, darker, more compact, infinitely more lovable version of her mother, like a dryad.
‘Can you meet me there in an hour?’
He nodded, then, unable to resist her nearness, he took her arm and gently pulled her the last few paces so they were out of sight inside his hut. He pushed the door to with his foot and kissed her quickly. She had not expected the swift kiss and her mouth was slightly open, he felt her teeth under his lip.
‘I feel as if I’ve joined the Secret Seven on Children’s Hour or something,’ he whispered. Something in the ineptitude of the kiss made him feel so very young, gauche, but he delighted in her laugh.
‘Alan, I ... ’
‘I love you,’ he breathed.
‘And I love you.’
A greeting was called nearby and George Harfield answered. A moment later they were standing discreetly apart as George came to the hut door.
‘Oh, you’ve beaten me to it,’ he said to Liz, then paused and added, ‘I mean, coming to tell this young man his breakfast’s ready.’ He hooked a hand on Alan’s shoulder. ‘Look, I have to leave after breakfast, but I’ve organised a twenty-four-hour guard roster. You’ve eighteen men back now,’ he told Liz. ‘They’re fair flocking back.’ He grinned and winked before slapping the young guardsman on the shoulder. ‘You’ve got a brave chap here,’ he said, before turning and leaving them.
‘Did he see?’ Liz wondered.
‘Even if he guessed, I don’t think he would say anything to anybody else, not even to his friend Robbo. I think he’s too straightforward for that. He’d tell me off to my face if anything.’
An hour later he felt sure a court martial would be his fate if anyone did say anything about this liaison, this planned jaunt beyond the bounds of safety.
He took his rifle; if they were going out beyond the wire he was not risking being caught unarmed. He still felt uneasy about the man he had seen jumping down through the flames of the hut. He’d had the luck of the devil to escape, and Alan had an illogical fear that Josef Guisan might somehow make his way back to Rinsey. He had come before, several times, it seemed.
Alan wondered just what Liz had in mind; the waterfalls were too far for such a tryst. What they needed was somewhere secluded, safe and nearby.
He was quite out of sight of the workers and the huts as he approached the section of the wire which had been underrun by a short, reinforcement tunnel. This emergency escape route in case of out-and-out siege ran out into the undergrowth beyond the cleared area immediately beyond the perimeter wire. It was just like an escape tunnel from a prisoner-of-war camp, the only difference being that these ‘prisoners’ had voluntarily built their own compound.
‘Alan.’
The soft voice behind him made him spin sharply round. ‘You’ve gone by.’
He turned back to the small store hut which contained the bungalow end of the tunnel. ‘I was looking for you.’
‘I’m here.’ She looked solemnly up at him from where she had moved the boxes covering the trap door, raised it and was standing with her feet on the rungs of the home-made ladder leading down into the roughly wood-lined tunnel. ‘come on before I’m missed,’ she urged. ‘We won’t have too long today.’
‘Is outside the wire going to be any better than inside?’ he asked as he followed, closing the trap behind himself. ‘It could be more dangerous.’
‘And more exciting,’ she said as she switched on the small torch she carried. Bent low ahead of him she made rapid progress while he was somewhat hampered by his height and the rifle.
‘Hold on,’ he whispered. ‘I feel like Alice and this rabbit hole’s not big enough.’
‘No, I’ll be Alice,’ she hissed back at him, ‘the hair ribbons will suit me better. You can be the White Rabbit.’
‘OK’ he said in a mock-resigned tone, ‘but you know what rabbits are like.’
He bumped into her as she came to a halt, gasping with sudden laughter and for some reasons switching off the torch.
‘This is an emergency situation,’ she told him. ‘We’re not supposed to be ... giggling.’
‘I’m not,’ he said truthfully, ‘just stating fact, ma’am.’
‘Are we saving the batteries? It’s not that far, is it?’
He heard her tut. The torch was switched on again and they went another twelve paces.
Seeing solid earth in front of them, he caught her arm. They had reached the end of the escape route. Holding his rifle ready before him, he eased up the trap very carefully. Between the vegetation, sunlight seared into their darkness. He peered all around but could see nothing but soil and ferns. A real rabbit’s-eye view, he thought, but it was not the moment for more quips; he did want her to take him seriously.
When he could neither see nor hear anything untoward he pushed the trap right up and found they had emerged in a patch of thick undergrowth some fifteen yards beyond the fortifications. He could just see the high barbed wire stretched between the tall posts, the lights high on the corners and inside the long, low bungalow, quiet but embattled. He leaned down, took Liz’s hand and helped her up. Together they closed the exit and re-covered it with soil and ferns.
‘Come on, this way,’ she said. She led the way out of the undergrowth, careful not to tread down more than was essential to their passage, and quickly led him to where an overgrown but still plain path crossed their way. She turned away from the direction of her home.
He stayed her once to listen, but the busy noise of parrots and other birds in nearby trees suggested that no one had been around for some time.
They soon came in sight of a building he had not seen before. She ran up the rickety steps to the verandah and turned back to him with the air of an estate agent displaying a prize property.
‘Our old manager’s home,’ she explained. ‘No one will look for us here.’
Chapter Twelve
To Alan the place looked as if it had grown up with the vegetation, some parts even seemed supported by the trees that grew pressed right against its walls. The jungle soon claimed back its own spaces, he thought. In the same instant he remembered the terrorists who had melted from path to beluka in seconds. Bounding up to the verandah, he silently indicated she should stand aside and he would go first.
‘But ... ’ she protested.
He put his fingers to his lips and went slowly forwards, rifle at the ready.
By the time he had made his way over the creaking timbers and was inside, he was convinced that no one was hiding there nor had anyone been there very recently. He had learned from listening to Chemor that it was the smell that gave men away as much as anything. All this place smelled of was of man’s neglect and of nature’s busyness.
There was much debris blown in by the monsoon winds and rain. The dust had been piled in some corners and fanned out like raised ribs on old wood in others, and a banana palm intruded its leaves through a window frame.
A movement at another window made him lift his rifle again, but it was no more than a breeze moving the remnants of a blind in a single flap like a derogatory dismissal. It did not endear the place to him. He wondered if he wouldn’t have been prejudiced anyway because presumably the Guisan family had lived here.
He had certainly not expected such privacy. This wasn’t going to be anything like the stolen moments in a shop doorway or by a field gate, which was all most young people back home managed. If he had known Liz several years, courted her for one or two and been engaged for another, then, he felt, it would have been all right.