Forgotten Life (15 page)

He stood up.

‘Leave it with me.'

I rose to my feet, red in the face.

‘Does that mean yes or no, sir?'

‘I'll think about it.'

‘Why can't you say yes or no to me, Captain Zajac? It's no skin off your nose to make a decision, is it? You only have to put her name down on a list – one of those endless army lists.'

His mouth set angrily at this outbreak, but he said with surprising meekness, ‘Give me her name, Winter, and I'll get my orderly to ring through to the RTO straight away. Thirteenth, you said?'

‘Thank you, sir. Thanks very much.'

I saluted and left. They could not resist wielding their power. Zajac was less awful than most officers; and he as a permanent exile had more excuse than most to be awful.

Feeling considerably worked up, I went for a drink in the sergeants' mess. Again the longing to tell everyone what was going on; but such was my peculiar moral code that I was still bound to silence. I would have been mortified if Charlie Frost found out how I had abused my friendship with the Merciers.

Bradbury was making a speech. The three native mess orderlies,
Ali, Thomas, and Chan, were moving about silently, serving drinks to all concerned.

‘Come in, stranger,' said Bradbury, interrupting himself when he saw me. ‘We're just into the question of what constitutes immovable equipment and how we should best destroy it, to keep it out of the hands of the Indos. Now then, gents, on this subject of liquor. We have built up quite good stocks from what the Japs disgorged. Enough, probably, to last a hard-drinking mess like this for six months, taking it easy.'

‘I never saw you taking it easy,' said Blizzard, and there was general laughter.

‘Thank you. Now, I have a few questions to ask you about leaving this valuable liquor behind. Do we want the squarehead Dutch to drink it?'

‘No,' went up the cry.

‘Do we want the bloody wogs to drink it?'

‘No.'

‘Do we want the yellow-skinned Chinks to drink it?'

‘No.'

‘Do we want the extremists to drink it?'

‘No-oo.'

‘Then we have to drink it all ourselves.'

‘Ye-es.' And Bragg was shouting above the noise, ‘Let's have a party every night till we leave.'

The vote was passed
nem con
. Ali, Thomas, and Chan went on filling up glasses amid the uproar, their faces inscrutable.

I downed a couple of whiskies and then went to tell Mandy my good news.

 

I was five minutes late when I entered the rear door of Miss Chew's little bungalow. Mandy was sitting on the bed, dwarfed by the stacks of tables and chests of drawers which lined the room. She had already drawn the curtains, so that the room existed in twilight. With the window shut, it seemed hotter than ever.

She immediately read something in my looks and manner. We sat
together and kissed and caressed each other. Then I told her of my conversation with Zajac.

To my surprise, she burst into tears. I had seen the odd tear, but never a full-scale weep, and was properly dismayed by it. With my arm round those brittle shoulders, she gradually lay against me and began to talk.

She had decided that she had been utterly mistaken in trying to take advantage of me. She should long ago have listened to what I said. She knew at heart that she was not fit to be my wife, quite apart from the fact that she was already married and burdened with two children. She knew all the things that the British said about the Chinese, calling them Chinks, and saying they were slit-eyed and cowardly. More weeping.

I asked where all this nonsense had come from, but she would say nothing.

‘Well, whether you marry me or not, there's going to be a ticket for the
Van Heutz
on the thirteenth. You'll have to go. And before that you'll have to say something to Wang.'

‘I can't go. I can't possibly, my God. What for I go? Better I stay here and be killed and finish with everything.'

‘Mandy – we can get married in Singapore. Not here, but it's civilized there.' I heard my own voice ringing in my ears. I did not know I intended to say any such thing, but there it was, cool as anything, born perhaps of protectiveness, shame, and desperation.

She became rigid. Then she started to mop her little nose.

‘You don't really want to marry me. It's too much for you, I know.' She knelt beside me on the bed, looking up, looking down, sniffing intermittently. ‘I know it's all too much. I understand, Joe.'

‘Then listen. I know you must fear what Wang will do. Simply tell him that you are going on a holiday to Singapore to see your cousins from Amoy.'

‘He won't believe that. He will know I am going to join you.'

‘How will he know if you don't tell him?'

‘Oh, Joseph, he has known all about our affair all along. How could I not tell him, when he is my husband?'

This casual remark left me utterly deflated. I had no response to it. If there is anything worse than scheming it is having the scheming found out – and proved to be for nothing.

She then said, speaking rapidly while I floundered, ‘Then I will accept the ticket. I will take the kids to Singapore, where my cousins will be happy to look after them. It will only be a holiday. If you are there, we can go to Happy World and similar enjoyment places. I will just stay for one month. In that time, I can see how conditions are back here. If too bad, then others follow me. Maybe Ginny comes over for a holiday to recuperate her health. It's a good arrangement. Nobody gets hurt … Now we make love to celebrate and I do a special thing to you you most like.'

What could I say?

‘It's a deal,' I said.

 

Every day saw scenes of drunkenness as the British celebrated their coming departure. The Indonesians sensibly held their hand and waited. Our vehicles and weapons were sold off to the Dutch who were remaining. Advance parties began to leave on the
San Salvrino
and other troopships. Zajac and I were delegated as part of the rear; we should be among the last to leave.

I closed the Rex down, said goodbye to the Rajputs, and took a temporary room in the sergeants' mess for safety, just in case of a last-minute attack. Tension grew. So did the drinking.

Ginny was determined to throw a proper Chinese banquet for Charlie and me. So weak was she that she could do no cooking. In the end, she had to settle for a modest affair. Charlie and I spent a day shopping, buying farewell presents for Jean, Ginny, and Wang, as well as taking them a Jeepload of groceries from the store of loot in the sergeants' mess. Whatever happened, Jean was cool and collected as ever, and showed no agitation. He said that an Indonesian official had promised that he might get his plantation back once the Dutch had left. When that would be, no one could say.

The British had one small trick up their sleeve. The rear party was geared to leave on the fourteenth, a day before the time announced.
Thus we hoped to avoid any last-minute acts of violence. Zajac told me this late on the thirteenth. For once security had functioned properly. By that time, Mandy should have left on the
Van Heutz
– but the
Van Heutz
had been inexplicably delayed, and had not reached Belawan. It was not unusual for the ship to suffer delays; the poor old lady, feeling her age, was always undergoing mechanical repair.

So the next day it was Mandy who said a tearful goodbye to me, flinging her arms about my neck and kissing me over and over.

‘We'll be together in a very few days,' I said. ‘I'll find out the time the ship arrives and I'll be waiting for you on the quayside in Singapore. That's a promise.'

‘Please, please be there. I'm so frightened of what may happen. I would die if I never saw you again.'

I drove Captain Zajac down to Belawan, with the rear of the Jeep filled with luggage that was mainly his. As if news had got about, there were people on the wild road, waving and smiling and shouting
‘Merdeka!
', happy to see us go, just as they had once been glad to see us arrive.

With a minimum of delay, we were loaded on to the landing craft in the docks, which then made a slow progress out to sea. I had charge of the luggage. Zajac, as an officer, was taken out in a faster and more elegant craft.

Once aboard the
San Salvrino
, we underwent the usual wait, two miles out from harbour. Sumatra was now reduced to a flat and unpromising line of mangroves; far in the background floated remote and lofty mountains, some of their peaks clothed in cloud.

It was impossible to blot from my mind the question of Mandy – and the whole problem of Ginny and Jean's future in the new Sumatra. Ginny had said goodbye so bravely, with her usual bright smile. But who could say what lay in their future? I had decided that, whatever my doubts, they must be subordinated to rescuing Mandy. Once she had left the country, the others would be tempted to follow, and remove themselves to safety. There were surely plenty of places in Malaysia where an experienced planter like Jean Mercier would be welcome.

As, at last, the
San Salvrino
upped anchor, I knew with a heavy heart that a period in history was over, and that Sumatra, for good or ill, would never be the same again. I also realized that I was probably the only one who would come to tell its story: for already I felt that here were tragic times, and that the ignorant British ought to know something about a place for which they currently cared less than nothing.

I could not wrench my vision from those shores where my emotions had been so exercised. Tears burned in my eyes. No one has felt the true hollow tooth of sorrow who has not sailed from the place they love; the movement of a ship is as remorseless as time. At last impatient with my own melancholy, I broke away and took a turn round the deck.

Everyone else was jubilant at our departure.

As we swung about, to head in the general direction of Singapore, I observed out to sea a ship I recognized immediately as that steamer upon which so many futures had depended, the
Van Heutz
itself. It lay with a decided list to starboard. There was no sound of engines emanating from it, no movement on its deck.

We drew nearer, eventually passing within a few hundred yards of the other vessel. The truth was already apparent. The
Van Heutz
had stuck on a sandbank and was abandoned.

The spectacular and busy harbour of Singapore formed as great a contrast to Belawan as you might find within such a short distance. On disembarkation we were driven by lorry to Nee Soon Transit Camp in the centre of the island. As soon as I could, I was out of camp again, and making enquiries of the port authorities. I was told it was hoped to tow the
Van Heutz
back to Singapore, where the damage to its propellers could be repaired. There were many shifting sandbanks in the Belawan area, which would soon be properly charted and marked by buoys.

On the following day, I was down at the docks again. All round about, Singapore was furiously at work, remedying three years of neglect and oppression. Shipyards and factories were opening again. Immense though the flow of refugees was into the old grey city, there
was work for everyone, and the Chinese worked with a great will. I had no interest in anything but the waters of the harbour. The roads were congested with shipping. Among those ships about midday came a cripple, towed by a pair of Chinese-manned tugs, the
Van Heutz
.

How insignificant that steamer looked now, the ship which had played such a large part in the history of so many lives. It was rusted and patched and leaky; strange to think that anyone had placed their future hopes on it. But for the war, it would have been dispatched to the scrapyard before this. Instead, it was moored against a distant wharf for repair. Two days later, the foreman told me that the
Van Heutz
would not be sailing again until the following week.

A week! It was a villainous stretch of time. I had no way of getting in touch with Mandy except by letter – which would have had to be delivered by the
Van Heutz
itself. She had no way of getting in touch with me. She did not know my address. We had parted – for all the heartache, I now saw that we had parted so casually, so certain that we would be in each other's embrace again within no more than a few hours. We had not reckoned on the Tumbledown Factor … Now as never before in this time of dismay I realized that I did indeed love and need her.

By a stroke of luck, I had brought with me the address of her cousins, recently arrived in Singapore from Amoy. I could go and see them.

Singapore was a huge ragged city, left drab and unpainted after the Japanese occupation, but bustling with life, and not without touches of glamour. I noted with satisfaction that the cinemas were large and smart affairs, prone to giving special midnight matinees. The array of cafés was inexhaustible. From every shop flowed the music of Chinese opera, the outpouring of a sensibility of which I understood little. The whores seemed of an unparalleled elegance. Only on a later visit, after Singapore had set itself up as an independent city state, did I realize how run down the city really was in that immediate post-war period when the Union Jack still flew there; but I was seeing it for the first time with eyes accustomed to almost
a year on Sumatra, and its vivacity was astonishing. Later, of course, the skyscrapers went up, and all the music was banished.

The Tans were staying in a green suburb of Singapore, in a fine wooden bungalow which had probably belonged to English traders who – for whatever reason – had not returned after the freeing of the island. Or rather, the Tans had found a home in the garden of this bungalow, for the bungalow was already well-occupied. The Tans, seven of them all told, including a young baby, lived in what had been a summerhouse, against which an impromptu kitchen had been built. They were refugees from the struggle between Chiang Kai-shek's Kuomintang forces and the Communist forces of Mao; in China, the great world struggle was still in process.