Send a Gunboat (1960) (12 page)

“This is not British territory,” Rolfe’s voice was quite flat
and devoid of emotion. “It is practically part of the Chusan Archipelago and it has no government of its own.”

Vincent thought Laker would have a fit. His cheeks wobbled and his mouth spluttered in fury. “No government? What the hell’s the General doin’ then?”

There was a sharp crash and everybody jumped at the sound, their incredulous eyes riveted on Rolfe’s doubled fist which had slammed down suddenly on the table. He was leaning forward, the grey eyes no longer quiet and patient, but flashing with fierceness that seemed to shrivel Laker where he stood.

“Now listen to me!” he barked, “and I mean all of you! Mr. Laker has just mentioned the General. Well, I haven’t met him yet, but I will tomorrow morning. He is the ruler of this island as it stands, I am not denying that! But where is the government? A couple of thousand soldiers strutting round the place like the bandits that they are, while the half-starved thousands of this miserable population exist on what they can scratch from the land or fish from the sea. If they think the Communists can offer them something better, and let’s face it, they couldn’t be much worse off, what choice d’you think they’ll make when the troops start landing?” He glared at Laker, a lock of dark hair falling over one eye. “Is this the paradise you want the British navy to fight for? D’you honestly think this island is another Formosa? Worth another world war, perhaps?” His chest heaved under the white tunic. “Well, whatever you think, Mr. Laker, you’re leaving with me. Quietly and sensibly! I would have thought that a man of your experience would realize how the Communists could make use of you and your families, as scapegoats!”

“I think you’d better stop, Captain!” Mrs. Laker’s voice shook, and she held her thin arms protectively across her husband’s massive shoulders.

“Stop?” Rolfe laughed wildly, but there was no mirth in the sound. “I’m sorry if I’ve offended you, Mrs. Laker. It’s just that I’ve got sick and tired of hearing about the achievements here! If you want to know the Communists’ strongest lever to get you out of here, just ask yourselves who have gained from these achievements. The wretched population, or you?” He dropped his arms to his sides, suddenly limp.

“Any further questions?” His face was wet under the lamp-light.

Grant nodded his square head. “What d’you want us to do first, Captain?” He spoke as a leader, and the others seemed eager to avoid looking at Laker, who had walked slowly out on to the darkening veranda.

“I shall want you to have all your necessary gear packed and ready to be moved aboard by tomorrow midday. Bring it down yourselves, altogether if possible, anyone watching will think it’s stores. D’you have a lorry or something like that?”

“We’ve a couple of estate vans,” nodded Grant, his practical face squinting with concentration.

“Good, that’s fine. Don’t forget, not a word!”

Ursula stretched her long legs. “What would happen if the news got around?”

Grant bit his lip. “I can answer that one, I think. There’d be quite a lot of people would like to go too, eh?”

Rolfe smiled briefly. “Right. That would very likely be the case. It would also draw the attention of our friends on the mainland, who might very well bring their invasion on a bit earlier!”

Laker shuffled past, gripping his wife’s arm. “Goin’ to think for a bit. Got to have time to think. All a bit of a shock!” He glared back at Rolfe with something like his old confidence. “See you damned for this!”

Vincent sighed loudly. It had been perfect, and he felt a little weak.

Rolfe’s gaze swung on him suddenly. “All right, Vincent. Back to the ship. I want a state of readiness as from when you arrive. Just as I explained it to you!”

“Aye, aye, sir!” Vincent stood up sulkily, yet vaguely pleased by the audience, who watched him with mingled emotions of fear and frustration.

Fallow rose too, his belly sagging untidily, and his big hands plucking at the seams of his trousers. “Sir?” he choked, his face a mass of worry, “shall I go, too, sir?”

Rolfe grinned crookedly. “No, certainly not, Number One. We’ll finish our drinks in comfort. Let the youngster do the work!”

Fallow sweated miserably and edged closer to his Captain, his ugly nose looking like part of a grotesque mask. “D’you think it’ll be all right, sir? I mean ‘bout us leaving’?” His throaty
voice was drowned by the babble of excited conversation from the others.

“All right?” Rolfe was looking at him with a wild gleam in his eyes, “Safe as bloody houses, I should think!”

Fallow groaned inwardly. The Captain was looking odd again. Must do something. He looked appealingly at the girl, who was watching them with brazen interest.

“That was a mighty good dinner we ’ad, miss!” he blurted desperately. “Your father certainly knows how to give a party,” he ended lamely.

She stretched and smoothed her dress with slow movements of her hands. “Quite so,” she agreed solemnly. “And I must say the speeches afterwards were a cut above the usual!” She smiled wickedly at Rolfe, who was frowning absently at his glass. “Have another, Captain? It might help!”

Rolfe took the drink without answering, his eyes now on the murmuring groups in the far corner of the room. The party was breaking up, and with quick nods and nervous smiles, the guests began to depart.

Grant, puffing busily at his pipe, paused at the door. “Well, see you tomorrow, Captain. No doubt we’ll see things a bit clearer then. I only hope you know what you’re up to, for all our sakes!”

The door closed, and the three of them exchanged glances.

“You’ve really got ’em stirred up!” commented the girl, her voice signifying that she wanted no part of it.

“Could be,” nodded Rolfe, his eyes still vague.

Fallow felt the uneasiness growing in the deserted room, and sweated accordingly. Got to do something! Must think of a way to get ’im back to the ship!

“I think I’ll go down into the town!” Rolfe’s voice brightened, as if he had just suggested something original. “Good a time as any to meet this doctor of yours!”

“Not mine!” she exclaimed, standing up suddenly. “Still, if you must go cantering off down there at this time of the evening, I’ll drive you in Daddy’s car.” She marched towards the door, her long legs flashing, as if eager for the exercise. She called casually over her shoulder, “I said I’d show you round, anyway!” There was a tremble of deeper excitement in her voice.

Rolfe stared at the littered table and discarded chairs. “Pity, pity! Always mess everything up!” His gaze sharpened, “Ah, Number One, just a little left, I see.” And he hurried gleefully to the oak sideboard and snatched up a bottle.

Fallow followed him dumbly. He had lost count of the Captain’s consumption of drinks during the evening, but it was something quite fantastic.

Rolfe pushed the bottle towards him. “Go on,” he prompted. “Fill your boots!” His eyes shone glassily, and his grave face was twisted into a smile, which was filled with bitterness.

Fallow shook his head frantically, “Please, sir, don’t you think—I mean—wouldn’t be better if, if you—” he stopped, beaten again.

Rolfe patted his shoulder playfully, “Don’t worry, Number One, I’m all right. Jus’ a little bit tired,” he waved his hand, as if to clear a mist away from his face. “Quite a party, as you so right—, rightfully observed! I would say that all the natives are friendly!” With a gulp he finished the bottle, as with a screech, the car pulled up outside the veranda.

Although a cool breeze now filtered up from the sea to fan the parched earth, Ursula’s bare shoulders gleamed defiantly from behind the wheel of the long, throbbing car. She shook her short curls and pushed open the door. “Come on, come on! Town tour just starting!”

Rolfe jammed his cap clumsily on his head, and slid awkwardly into the wide bench-seat beside her. As if in afterthought, he beckoned to the ponderous figure in the doorway. “Come on, Number One! Y’heard what the lady said!”

Ursula grimaced as the car sagged under the man’s weight, but trembled as Rolfe was forced against her. The car whined and bounded forward along the straight estate road, the headlights cutting through the darkness like twin white swords. The estate gates were flung open hurriedly, and the girl laughed wildly, her hair rippling in the wind.

“Is it safe to be out late in the car, miss? I mean, didn’t they say there’s bin shootin’ an’ that?” Fallow tried to see her expression.

“Relax, little man!” she cried, her voice choked with laughter. “They’d rather shoot the General than interfere with this car!”

The tyres screeched in protest as the car hurtled on to the main road, loose gravel rattling up under the wings. Trees, boulders and huts flashed into the headlights, distorted into frightening shapes and were swallowed up behind them.

Fallow’s body stiffened, as the luminous dial of the speedometer showed the needle quivering at eighty. She’s drunk, or mad, he breathed, she’ll kill us all in a second! He felt Rolfe jolting loosely with the lurching motion of the car, his face was hidden in the shadow of his cap.

Ursula pressed her foot down harder, regardless of her skirt which had blown halfway up her lap. As a wheel grated across a hump in the road, Rolfe sprawled heavily against her. Taking one hand off the wheel she groped for one of his, and breathing hard, she pressed it down against the smooth skin of her thigh. It lay there, warm and strong, but unmoving, and she twisted her head to see his face.

It was at that very second that Fallow saw the small figure standing transfixed in the swinging headlights.

“For Christ’s sake!” he screamed. “Look out!” He scrabbled vainly for the handbrake in the darkness, dimly aware of the rising scrape of the brakes and the sliding, rolling motion of the car. There was a sickening jolt as the front wheels left the road, and a thousand clutching branches scratched and crackled against the metal sides. Then there was silence but for the distant barking of a dog and the patter of falling leaves across the bonnet. The headlamps still blazed, throwing their glare against the trunk of a gnarled tree in which the twisted bumper bar was embedded.

The impact and the noise of the crash, followed as it was by this shocked silence, held Rolfe completely motionless on the seat, although a surge of jumbled thoughts and emotions rocked his brain and sent a flood of shocked amazement through his tensed limbs. His mind cleared from within, although he still saw the whole incident as a picture, as if he himself was detached bodily from its implications. At his side, Ursula lay weakly on the wheel, moaning into her hands, her shoulders hunched. Fallow had left the car, and he heard him crashing through the undergrowth towards the road.

He licked his parched lips, moving his head slowly as if in a
dream. “You all right, Ursula?” His voice was thick, but strangely steady.

She lifted her face and stared at him, her eyes running with tears. Her lipstick was smudged, and the wide mouth hung open almost vacantly, emitting low, strangled sobs. Then, without answering, she pushed her fingers through her hair, working her jaw and sucking in great gulps of air.

He pulled himself across to the door and stood unsteadily in the bushes, a wave of nausea sweeping over him. His head throbbed and danced, and he put up his hand as if to still the agony. Clumsily and painfully, he forced his way past the car, and stood blinking on the roadway. Fallow, his dim white shape moulded into an uneven hump, crouched on one side muttering softly.

“You hurt, Number One?” The words sounded strangely loud in the darkness.

Fallow didn’t turn, but answered harshly, speaking through his teeth. “Must get ’elp, sir! She’s badly knocked about!”

Rolfe strained his aching mind uncomprehendingly. “No, she’s not hurt. Just shaken.”

“Not ’er!” Fallow answered savagely. “This little nipper! That blasted woman drove right at ’er!”

Rolfe stared as the other man rose slowly to his feet and turned round. In his arms he was holding the small shape of a child, and as Rolfe stepped dazedly towards him, he saw with horror, that Fallow’s tunic was smeared with dark stains. The child lay limply in the huge arms, her tattered clothing ripped away from the shoulders, revealing a series of cruel, ragged gashes, which gleamed angrily in the reflected headlights. For a moment he thought she must be dead, but he saw that the two bright eyes, which seemed to fill her whole face, were fixed desperately on Fallow’s, the small, emaciated mouth twisted into a mask of pain.

Rolfe instinctively reached out to touch her, but Fallow drew back defensively, his heavy features grim and forbidding. “S’alright, sir, I can manage!” Then with an unusual forcefulness, “Can we get ’er to a doctor? It’s ’er only chance!”

Rolfe swung back to the car, his mind forming and re-forming a series of mixed and bitter emotions. Wrenching open the
driving door, he pushed the girl unceremoniously out of the way.

“What are you doing? What’s happened?” Her voice suggested hysteria, but his whole concentration made him force any consideration for her from his thoughts.

The car responded shakily to his exertions, and with a rattle of loose metal, he gunned the engine and backed out on to the roadway. As the great lamps swung across the track, he got a brief glimpse of their long skid marks and the pathetic pool of blood by the roadside. Fallow stepped carefully into the back seat, muttering hoarsely, but in a low, comforting manner, which seemed to soothe the child.

As Rolfe jammed the unfamiliar gears into position and the car began to move ahead, Ursula stared from the child to Rolfe in amazement, and without warning, began to laugh in a high, strained giggle. Nobody spoke, each of the men concentrating on his own task.

“Is that what all the panic was about?” She giggled again, wiping her eyes with the back of her hand. “A damned Chink kid!” She sounded incredulous. “I thought something really terrible had happened!” A strange moan escaped her lips, “What’ll Daddy say about his precious car?”

“For Christ’s sake stow it, will you?” Fallow’s trembling voice surprised even Rolfe, who was trying to shut out their voices and keep his strength for the effort of driving. “Don’t you realize you might’ve killed the poor little thing?” Fallow kept his voice down, and the hissing words were all the more threatening.