The major had decided that now they had prisoners they should withdraw a few yards into the jungle and Danny’s body would lie in his place in the line.
They rigged a string between the ten of them so they could signal if need be without giving away their position. The two Sutherlands had extra strings to the arms of the prisoners, with Ben taking first watch. No one, prisoner or soldier, could move more than an arm’s length without waking the others.
Alan lay keeping vigil by his friend’s body. He stared wide-eyed into the night and his mind went back to the villages he and Dan had known: a litany of Sheepy Magnas and Sheepy Parvas, of Littlethorpes and Greatthorpes; of being on the opposite sides at an inter-village cricket match; of the sleeping mounds in the village churchyard, generations of the same family laid to rest in the same place. But where would this son of England be buried? ‘Some corner of a foreign field … ’
His mind slipped out of control into total despair. Liz loved this country, this jungle he felt bearing down on him, doom-laden. In the heat and tormented noises of the night where creatures preyed on each other he felt he would never see her again. Then his body fell into exhausted sleep while his mind played the nightmare on. He started awake, overwhelmed by terror, as he found the string on his wrist pulled violently by the sergeant. ‘You’re shouting, Cresswell.’
Well before dawn he was awoken again by something moving nearby. He lay rigid with listening until he was sure what he heard was the foraging and grunting of wild pigs. Around him he could begin to make out what looked like a ghastly painting of a ghostly cathedraclass="underline" the pale and dappled greens, blacks and reddish silver bark of the tree trunks rising high and true as pillars to the vaulted canopy of leaves a hundred or a hundred and fifty feet above. Still and straight, the trees seemed at once to witness and to judge man’s presence. The verdict, he felt, was not favourable, and the sentence was carried out by cutting off light for ever to the floor below where man murdered his fellows.
He wondered if it had been his shots that had killed the communist with the face like a startled schoolboy. He knew the sergeant was wrong: it didn’t make up for Dan. The khaki peaked cap with the red star had belonged to some mother’s son ... Babyface had kept it as a souvenir. Alan hadn’t wanted it — all the deaths in the world could not remake a single life.
Beside him Sergeant Mackenzie stirred, awakened by the increasing activity of the pigs. He immediately roused the line and breakfast was handed out from the airdrop rations of hard square biscuits and thick chunks of corned beef. The prisoners were given nothing and no one suggested they should be.
The soldiers were all pale and haggard; any continuous spell in the sweltering, enervating gloom of real jungle made them look like men who had been incarcerated underground.
The major proposed fixing Danny’s body under a thick bamboo pole, so two of them could carry the burden between them. A litter which four would have had to porter would have forced them to take twice as long to travel in double file, for the elephant tracks now moved away from the human settlement.
When, after several false starts, Alan realised that to do what the major suggested meant they must tie Danny’s hands and feet together, pass the pole through them and carry his friend as if he were some kind of hunting trophy, he said, ‘I’ll carry him.’ His tone brooked no denial of his intention and, as the major made no immediate objection, Ben Sutherland added, ‘I’ll carry the radio.’
‘And I’ll take your pack,’ his brother added.
The major looked at the determined men. ‘Right, let’s get on,’ he conceded.
The prisoners were forced to walk like crabs to get through the path cut by their captors. Occasionally the major ordered a stop so they could listen; the distant, spasmodic firing that had begun again at first light seemed to ebb and flow like a tide.
‘I’ll take him for a bit now.’
‘It’s OK, Sarge, I can manage.’
‘The major wants to listen in on the radio for a bit.’
Alan was dropping under the weight, yet reluctant to give up his friend, though his body had lain on his shoulder more like the weight of sandbags than flesh and blood.
‘Gawd!’ The sergeant took the weight as gently as he could. ‘Good job his grin was the biggest thing about him.’
‘Right!’ Alan agreed, choked, nearer to tears than at any time since it had happened. He went quickly to open up the radio pack, pull out a small portable aerial and listen in as they walked on. The reception was poor and he could obtain nothing but a crackle, certainly with voices mixed in, but completely unintelligible.
The major halted them while Entap went ahead to scout. He came back quickly, reporting that the first huts they would come to were all empty.
‘Sergeant, you bring up the rear with Cresswell, find a place to secure Veasey, then join me. Babyface, you take charge of those prisoners and guard them with your life. They may be the most important things to come out of this botch-up.’
They all went slowly forwards, relieved at least to be able to lay Danny’s body down under the raised floor of the first hut they came to. Emerging cautiously, they could see the extent of the camp. They viewed what amounted to a parade ground complete with flagpole and raised dais, surrounded by substantial-looking huts, the main one with verandah and easy chairs.
‘Really roughing it,’ Mackenzie muttered.
‘We built a lot of this during the war, even made furniture,’ Sturgess recalled. ‘I was here with Harfield … ’
‘A bit too quiet for my liking,’ Sinclair muttered as they still stood in a little group peering round the corner.
Alan desperately missed Danny. He would have been voicing all his own and everyone else’s impressions and feelings aloud, making those who shushed him feel braver as he confirmed their own worst secret fears.
‘We’d better have a look, see what we’ve got,’ Sturgess said, detailing Mackenzie, Alan and the two Sutherlands to take one side of the square and the other four to follow him.
They did not need cautioning how to proceed; this part at least of their training had been covered. In a series of diving runs, crouching pauses and door-kicking entrances, they searched the huts one after the other.
‘Chrrrist!’ the sergeant exclaimed as they found themselves in a wash house with latrines with bamboo seats. ‘They’ve got running water! This is better than our camp!’
‘I wonder what else we’ll find,’ Alan muttered grimly. ‘Can’t imagine them giving this lot up easily.’
The next hut was the one with the verandah, grandiose enough to be nominated a bungalow. The sergeant and Alan took the steps at a bound and kicked in the front door, waiting either side lest a burst of fire should greet their arrival. Then, cautiously, they went in.
‘Strike a light!’ Mackenzie muttered, standing blinking as if he could not believe what he saw. It’s like bloody Hansel and Gretel!’
Alan looked at the huge furniture, the enormous bed in the centre of a room packed tight with settee and easy chairs of the same type, hefty and beknobbed. His surprise was because he knew where it had come from. This was the furniture Liz had described as having been made for their plantation manager, shipped in specially. So Josef the half-breed Chinese-Norwegian must have had something to do with its transportation from the deserted bungalow to here. ‘The bastard!’ he mouthed. The only satisfaction it gave him was to know that there was some road fairly near, for this heavy stuff could not even in pieces have been portered far through jungle.
As they threaded their way through the furniture, the sergeant exclaiming at the weight of the chairs, they heard movement. In an instant both were still, rifles at the ready.