South By Java Head (22 page)

"Better than the heart," Walters said cheerfully. "I really need that."
"Get up there as fast as you can. The rest of you go with him -- and don't forget to announce yourselves. For all the captain knows we lost -- and he's got a gun lying handy. Bo'sun, you stay with me." He broke off suddenly as he heard splashing in the vicinity of the nearest lifeboat. "Who's there?"
"Me, Farnholme. Just investigatin', old boy. Dozens of them, actually dozens of them."
"What the devil are you talking about?" Nicolson asked irritably,
"Grenades. Bags full of 'em. Fellow here like a walkin' arsenal."
"Take them away, will you? We may need them. Get someone to help you." Nicolson and McKinnon waited till the last of the men had gone, then waded out towards the nearest lifeboat. Just as they reached it, two machine-guns opened up from the darkness to the south, tracer bullets burning white then extinguishing in vicious plops and gouts of water. Now and then a freak ricocheted off the water and whined thinly into the darkness: more rarely still a bullet thudded solidly into one or other of the lifeboats.
Stretched full length behind a boat, only his head above water, McKinnon touched Nicolson on the arm. "What's all this in aid of, sir?" The soft Highland voice was puzzled, but completely unworried. Nicolson grinned to himself in the darkness.
"Anybody's guess, Bo'sun. Chances are that their landing party was supposed to signal -- torch or something -- if they landed safely. Alarums and excursions ashore and our pals on the sub climbing the walls with uncertainty. Finally, they open up -- no signal."
"And if that's all they're wanting, why shouldn't we be sending them one?"
Nicolson stared at him for a moment in the darkness, then laughed softly. "Genius, McKinnon, pure genius. If they're all confused, and if they imagine their pals ashore are as confused as they are themselves, any old signal has a chance of getting by."
And so it proved. Nicolson raised his hand above the lifeboat gunwale, flashed the torch irregularly on and off, then hurriedly withdraw his arm. To any trigger-happy machine-gunner that pinpoint of light must have been the answer to a prayer, but no line of tracers came lancing at them out of the darkness. Instead, both machine-guns abruptly ceased fire and all at once the night was silent and still. Land and sea alike might have been deserted; empty of all life: even the blurred silhouette of the submarine lying quietly out to sea was only a shadow, insubstantial and quite unreal, more imagined than seen.
Furtive attempts at concealment seemed not only unnecessary but dangerous. Unhurriedly both men rose to their feet and inspected the lifeboats in the light of the torch. Number two, Siran's boat, had been holed in several places, but all above the water-line, and she appeared to be making little or no water: several of her airtight tanks had been punctured, but sufficient were undamaged to provide a still reasonable margin of safety.
It was a different story altogether with number one, the motor lifeboat. If anything, even fewer random shots had pierced her hull, but she was already settled deeply, heavily in the shallow water, her floorboards covered. The water inside the boat was stained and streaked with red blood from the shockingly mutilated Japanese sailor who lay draped over the gunwale, and it was below this barely recognisable remains of a human being that Nicolson found the cause of the trouble. The same grenade that had blown off a hand and most of a face had also blown a hole clear through the bottom of the boat, shattering the garboard strake for eighteen inches of its length and the adjacent planks right up to the bilge stringer on the starboard side. Nicolson straightened slowly and looked at McKinnon in the backwash of reflected light.
"Holed," he murmured briefly. "I could stick my head and shoulders through that gap in the bottom. Take us days to patch the damn' thing."
But McKinnon wasn't listening. The beam of the torch had shifted and he was staring down into the boat. When he spoke, he sounded remote, indifferent.
"It doesn't matter anyway, sir. The engine's finished." He paused, then went on quietly: "The magneto, sir: the grenade must have gone off just beneath it."
"Oh, lord, no! The magneto? Perhaps the second engineer------"
"No one could repair it, sir," McKinnon interrupted patiently. "There's damn all left to repair."
"I see." Nicolson nodded heavily and gazed down at the shattered magneto, his mind dull and heavy with all the appalling implications that smashed magneto carried with it. "There isn't very much left of it, is there?"
McKinnon shivered. "Somebody's walking over my grave," he complained. He shook his head slowly, stared down into the boat even after Nicolson had switched the light off, then touched Nicolson lightly on the arm. "You know something, sir? It's a long, long row to Darwin."
Gudrun was her name, she told him, Gudrun Jorgensen Drachmann, the Jorgensen being for her maternal grandfather. She was three parts Danish, twenty-three years old and had been born in Odense on Armistice Day, 1918. Apart from two short stays in Malaya, she had lived in Odense all her life until she had qualified as a nurse and come out to her father's plantations near Penang. That had been in August, 1939.
Nicolson, lying on his back against the bank of the hollow, elasped hands beneath bis head and staring up unseeingly at the dark canopy of clouds, waited for her to go on, waited till she would begin again and hoped she would begin again. What was that quotation that old Willoughby, a hopeless, inveterate bachelor if ever there had lived one, had thrown at him so often in the past? "ù Her voice was ever soft" -- that was it. King Lear. "Her voice was ever soft, gentle and low." Willoughby's stock excuse for avoiding the accursed snares -- his own words -- of holy matrimony: a female -- Willoughby could invest that word with a wealth of scorn -- with a voice ever soft, gentle and low -- he had never found one. But maybe if Willoughby had been sitting where he'd been in the twenty minutes that had elapsed since he'd reported back to Findhorn and then come to see how the young boy was, he might have changed his mind.
Two minutes passed, three and she had said no more. By and by Nicolson stirred and turned towards her.
"You're a long way from home, Miss Drachmann. Denmark -- you liked it?" It was just something to say, but the vehemence of her answer surprised him.
"I loved it." There was finality in her voice, the tone of someone speaking of something lost beyond recall. Damn the Japanese, damn that waiting submarine, Nicolson thought viciously. He changed the subject abruptly.
"And Malaya? Hardly the same high regard for that, eh?"
"Malaya?" The tone changed, was the vocal accompaniment of an indifferent shrug. "Penang was all right, I suppose. But not Singapore. I -- I hated Singapore." She was suddenly vehement, all indifference gone, and had no sooner shown the depths of her feelings than she had realised what she had done, for voice and subject changed again. She reached out and touched him on the arm. "I would love a cigarette too. Or does Mr. Nicolson disapprove."
"Mr. Nicolson is sadly lacking in old world courtesy, I'm afraid." He passed over a packet of cigarettes, struck a match and as she bent to dip her cigarette in the pool of flame he could smell the elusive sandalwood again and the faint fragrance of her hair before she straightened and withdrew into the darkness. He ground out his match into the soil and asked her gently: "Why do you hate Singapore?"
Almost half a minute passed before she replied. "Don't you think that that might be a very personal question?"
"Very possibly." He paused a moment, then went on quietly, "What does it matter now?"
She took his meaning at once. "You're right, of course.
Even if it's only idle curiosity on your part, what does it matter now? It's funny, but I don't mind telling you -- probably because I can be sure that you wouldn't waste false sympathy on anyone, and I couldn't stand that." She was silent for a few seconds, and the tip of her cigarette burnt brightly in the gloom. "It's true what I say. I do hate Singapore. I hate it because I have pride, personal pride, because I have self-pity and because I hate not to belong. You wouldn't know about any of these things, Mr. Nicolson."
"You know an awful lot about me," Nicolson murmured mildly. "Please go on."
"I think you know what I mean," she said slowly. "I am European, was born in Europe, brought up and educated in Europe, and thought of myself only as a Dane -- as did all the Danish people. I was welcome in any house in Odense. I have never been asked to any European's house in Singapore, Mr. Nicolson." She tried to keep her voice light. "A drug on the social market, you might say. I wasn't a nice person to be seen with. It's not funny when you hear someone say,' A touch of the tarbrush, old man." And say it without bothering to lower their voice, and then everybody looks at you and you never go back there again. I know my mother's mother was Malay, but she is a wonderful, kind old lady and-----"
"Easy, take it easy. I know it must have been rotten. And the British were the worst, weren't they?"
"Yes, yes they were." She was hesitant. "Why do you say that?"
"When it comes to empire-building and colonialism we are the world's best -- and the world's worst. Singapore is the happy hunting ground of the worst, and our worst is something to wonder at. God's chosen people and with a dual mission in life -- to pickle their livers in an impossibly short time and to see to it that those who are not of the chosen remain continually aware of the fact -- the sons of Ham to be hewers of wood and drawers of water to the end of their days. Good Christians all, of course, and staunch pillars and atten-ders of the church -- if they can sober up in time on the Sunday morning. They're not all like that, not even in Singapore: but you just didn't have the luck to run into any of the others."
"I didn't expect to hear you say that." Her voice was slow, surprised.
"Why not? It's true."
"That's not what I mean. It's just that I didn't expect to hear you talking like -- oh, well, never mind." She laughed, self-consciously. "The colour of my skin is not all that important."
"That's right. Go on. Give the knife a good twist." Nicolson ground out his cigarette beneath his heel. His voice was deliberately rough, almost brutal. "It's damned important to you, but it shouldn't be. Singapore's not the world. We like you, and we don't give two hoots if you're heliotrope."
"Your young officer -- Mr. Vannier -- he gives two hoots," she murmured.
"Don't be silly -- and try to be fair. He saw that gash and he was shocked -- and ever since he's been ashamed of showing that shock. He's just very young, that's all. And the captain thinks you're the cat's pyjamas. 'Translucent amber,' that's what he says your skin's like." Nicolson tut-tutted softly. "Just an elderly Lothario."
"He is not. He's just very, very nice and I like him very much." She added, inconsequentially: "You make him feel old."
"Nuts!" Nicolson said rudely. "A bullet in the lungs would make anyone feel old." He shook his head. "Oh, lord, there I go again. Sorry, sorry, didn't mean to snap at you. Daggers away, shall we, Miss Drachmann?"
"Gudrun." The one word was both his answer and a request, and completely innocent of any hint of coquetry.
"Gudrun? I like it, and it suits you."
"But you don't -- what is the word -- reciprocate?" There was mischief now in the husky voice. "I have heard the captain call you 'Johnny.' Nice," she said consideringly. "In Denmark it is the kind of name we would give to a very little boy. But I think I might manage to become used to it."
"No doubt," Nicolson said uncomfortably. "But you"
"Oh, but of course!" She was laughing at him, he knew, and he felt still more uncomfortable. "'Johnny' in front of the members of your crew -- unthinkable! But then, of course, it would be Mr. Nicolson," she added demurely. "Or perhaps you think 'sir' would be better?"
"Oh, for heaven's sake!" Nicolson began, then stopped short and found himself echoing the girl's barely audible laughter. "Call me anything you like. I'll probably deserve it."
He rose to his feet, crossed to the front of the hollow where the Muslim priest was keeping watch, spoke briefly to him then moved down the hill to where Van Effen was keeping watch over the one serviceable lifeboat. He sat there with him for a few minutes, wondering what point there was anyway in guarding the boat, then made his way back up to the hollow. Gudrun Drachmann was still awake, sitting close by the little boy. He sat down quietly beside her.
"There's no point in sitting up all night," he said gently. "Peter will be all right. Why don't you go to sleep?"
"Tell me straight." Her voice was very low. "How much chance have we got?"
"None."
"Honest and blunt enough," she acknowledged. "How long?"
"Noon tomorrow -- and that's a very late estimate. The submarine will almost certainly send a landing party ashore first -- or try to. Then they'll call up help -- but probably the planes will be here at first light anyway."
"Perhaps the men from the submarine will be enough. Perhaps they won't require to call up help. How many-----"
"We'll cut them to ribbons," Nicolson said matter-of-factly. "They'll need help, all right. They'll get it. Then they'll get us. If they don't kill us all by bombing or shelling, they may take you and Lena and Miss Plenderleith prisoner. I hope not."
"I saw them at Kota Bharu." She shivered at the memory. "I hope not too. And little Peter?"
"I know. Peter. Just another casualty," Nicolson safd bitterly. "Who cares about a two-year-old kid?" He did, he knew; he was becoming more attached to the youngster than he would ever have admitted to anybody, and one day, had Caroline lived-----
"Is there nothing we can do?" The girl's voice cut through his wandering thoughts.
"I'm afraid not. Just wait, that's all."
"But -- but couldn't you go out to the submarine and -- and do something?"
"Yes, I know. Cutlasses in teeth, capture it and sail it home in triumph. You've been reading the wrong comic books, lady." Before she could speak, he stretched out and caught her arm. "Cheap and nasty. I'm sorry. But they'll be just begging for us to do something like that."
"Couldn't we sail the boat away without being heard or seen?"
"My dear girl, that was the first thing we thought of. Hopeless. We might get away, but not far. They or the planes would get us at dawn -- and then those who weren't killed would be drowned. Funny, Van Eifen was very keen on the idea too. It's a fast way of committing suicide," he ended abruptly.