‘Don’t look so worried, Miss Liz.’ Anna hugged her two girls. ‘You not in army ... ’
‘No, that’s right, he can’t order us about!’ It was the truth but it felt like bravado. The trouble was, Alan was in the army.
Anna wanted to put Lee to bed but there was too much to tell and too many questions to be asked. In the end they compromised, making her comfortable on pillows on a day-bed in the lounge. Then they all sat round talking, filling in some of the gaps of eight traumatic years, while Anna bathed and iodised some of the many jungle sores and scratches on Lee’s arms and legs, her grandson holding the bowl for her.
There was so much to tell, so many questions to be asked, they rather forgot the presence of young Datuk. Liz noticed that his hands shook a little as Lee talked of the sadistic Heng Hou. He kept his eyes lowered though he was obviously listening with all the big-eared stillness of the young, who know they will be banished once their presence is noticed.
Realising that the boy had some first-hand experience of communist methods, Liz wondered if he would be able to sleep that night after hearing some of the details of life inside the communists’ camp. She felt Anna had rather overlooked him since his return from school with their foreman’s children. He had been given milk and biscuits and then more or less ignored. She caught her mother’s gaze and gave the briefest of nods in the boy’s direction.
‘Don’t you have homework to do, Datuk?’ Blanche asked. ‘You could use the desk in the study.’
‘Aaah!’ Anna exclaimed. ‘You still here!’ Datuk was despatched with some alacrity to Anna’s room. ‘You have table there!’ he was told when he tried to take up Blanche’s offer of the desk.
‘John Sturgess said he would be here shortly. That was hours ago,’ Blanche commented after Datuk had been despatched. Then she motioned towards the day-bed. Lee had fallen asleep.
‘Leave her there, I think,’ Blanche whispered. ‘Let’s adjourn to the kitchen.’
‘I thought I’d get some of Daddy’s old puttees. I can bind them round my trousers. And I might borrow some of his socks, they’re thicker than any I’ve got.’
Blanche and Anna exchanged glances as Liz went off to look for them. Blanche reflected that she had worn some of Neville’s puttees when they had gone on jungle safaris during their early days in Malaya.
‘She loves this boy,’ Anna said.
‘I’m convinced she does.’ Blanche paused, then asked, ‘So we totally believe Lee?’
Anna looked at her mem of so many years and knew exactly the comparison she was making between Lee and her brother.
‘Yes,’ she said, ‘we right believe.’
A short time later they heard a vehicle come racing to their gate. ‘The major,’ Blanche said as Liz reappeared from her room.
‘The galloping major,’ Liz echoed without enthusiasm. Blanche went to meet him and bring him straight to the kitchen so as not to wake Lee.
Regarding him with total objectivity, Liz felt he was like something out of a War Pictorial Encyclopaedia, all khaki and belts and guns and emblems of rank. Through the front door she glimpsed the army jeep with driver and rear Bren gunner, who remained in the vehicle. She thought this was a good sign: he wasn’t staying.
Although invited to sit down, he stood to listen, which he did in silence until the facts where all told and speculation began to enter the two accounts.
‘So this girl is actually Josef’s sister who’s been living at the camp? She can tell us a lot. I’d like to take her back to Ipoh.’
Liz turned as if she had not heard right.
‘For questioning. I haven’t the power of arrest.’
‘You haven’t — ’ Liz for a moment felt she might just be physically sick. ‘You haven’t the power of arrest! What are you talking about? You haven’t the power of anything in this house! Lee will help you when we’ve come back.’
‘Come back?’
Liz watched incredulously as now he sat down, as if he considered the difficult part over. He placed his cap upside down on the table; somehow the gesture seemed to requisition the whole place and make it his office. ‘Come, back,’ he asked again, tone steely, ‘from where?’
‘Lee has come to take me to Alan.’ She repeated the information with emphasis. ‘He’s sick in a Sakai kampong, and the jungle people think it might help bring him out of a coma if someone of his own goes to him, talks to him.’
‘Yes, yes, I know all this. Your mother told me first on the telephone. I have arranged for a special unit with a doctor to come here tomorrow, then we’ll leave the next day.’
‘I’m leaving tomorrow with Lee.’
Sturgess shook his head. ‘Neither of you young ladies is going anywhere. We’ve had an ambush today on the main Taiping-Selama road north of Ipoh. We nearly lost a high-ranking civil servant; his wife and daughter were killed. The whole state is on high alert and there is a dawn-to-dusk curfew. Inspector Aba is convinced the communists we ousted from their camp are regrouping and are hellbent on revenge.’
‘High alert for a civil servant you nearly lost and bad luck about his wife and daughter.’ The sarcasm fairly dripped from her tone. ‘But nothing, nothing done for weeks for the soldier you did lose! And left behind!’
‘Liz, please.’ Her mother’s intervention was so mild it was a mere formality.
Sturgess looked fixedly across at the girl. Was she accusing him of neglect? He refused to try to explain to a non-combatant woman the heat of action or the search for his man afterwards. He noted she had called him Alan.
‘He is, of course, under my command,’ he said. The lack of weight on any particular word made it the message of an absolute authoritarian.
She was appalled. ‘Even though you have no idea where he is? What condition he’s in? You still feel he’s under your orders!’
‘When we have a witness such as your manager’s daughter who has lived with the communists and has travelled with a friendly Sakai, I count that as knowing where he is.’
‘But I don’t count it as doing your best for him. You will be holding things up — collecting a unit tomorrow, travelling the day after … ’
‘When we do go we’ll go quicker than two women.’ His voice came lower, with more weight, his lips barely parting now as he answered.
‘Two women and a Sakai.’
‘No.’ He shook his head most positively. ‘I can if necessary get Inspector Aba to put Lee under protective custody.’
Blanche glanced at her daughter and hoped she had sense enough to back down at this point, or they would have all kinds of extra official complications to deal with.
‘Lee is exhausted and I would much prefer her left in peace here with me,’ she intervened as her daughter seemed about to lose herself verbally at the major’s throat. ‘Surely you would trust me to look after her and she could be interviewed here? In fact, I don’t mind making a formal request to the civil authorities to allow this. I know Inspector Aba well.’
Sturgess blinked rapidly as if refocusing on the double attack on his authority.
‘After all, she and her mother have been kept prisoner. They were not in a jungle camp willingly. You have no evidence to refute that!’ Blanche challenged.
‘No, that is true,’ he admitted stiffly.
‘So why mention custody?’ Liz asked.
‘Protective custody was what I said, and what I meant.’ Liz felt he almost added ‘young woman,’ for he turned abruptly to her mother and spoke as if only to her, the senior generation.
‘What we do have,’ he went on, ‘is evidence that her brother has promised this girl to Heng Hou in return for his life. We know that “girlfriends” were kidnapped and taken in blindfold to this camp. The officers had their pick, but Josef was careful always to keep his sister clear of all this, though Heng Hou was always interested in her. The man used his sister as a kind of insurance against bad times. Those times have come and he has to pay up. Josef Guisan is hunting his sister to save his own skin.’