The Red Pavilion (18 page)

Sturgess came back almost immediately with Danny’s pack and began to unstrap his waterproof poncho cape.

‘We take him with us,’ Alan asserted.

‘Of course.’ As if seeing in Alan’s concern all the questions of what happened to a body in the heat, he explained ‘There’s a road much nearer the far side of this camp we’re heading for. Don’t worry, we’ll get him out. Do you want to ... ’ he held out the cape questioningly, then added, ‘wrap him tight?’

The sergeant took the cape and Alan nodded. They laid it on the ground; Alan closed his eyes as the sergeant took his shoulders and poor half head while he lifted the feet and placed him on his cape.

‘Wrap him tight,’ his brain was saying, ‘for he sleeps well tonight. Wrap him in swaddling clothes and lay him in the tropics thousands of miles away.’

When the body was neatly swathed, Mackenzie produced two lengths of cord. ‘Twist and tie the ends,’ he ordered and, when Alan looked up questioning the added indignity, he added, ‘We don’t want anything in there with him.’

The time of darkness was nearly upon them and there had to be much swift organisation. The major photographed the dead terrorists. The prisoners were gagged and their lashed feet tied to the trunks of trees. Alan watched critically, determined nothing should be left to chance. He saw how, with her hands lashed to her pole, the girl’s black shirt was pulled tight over her breasts.

Danny had talked a lot about his mother. Alan’s heart gave a sickening thud as he realised he must write to her, tell her how her son had died — well, some of how he died — and how in half an hour or less, all their lives had changed. Dan’s mother wouldn’t know for days; he hoped she would have a nice time until she was told. He wondered what day it was, perhaps the weekend?

He went back to his radio duties, reporting to headquarters. He was informed that other units had been under similar fire in areas surrounding parts of the camp. Things were quietening down now it was dark, but they were to proceed into the camp at first light, ‘taking the normal precautions’.

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 cathedral: 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.

They heard the movements coming nearer, then whispers. Question, swift answer. Holding his breath, Alan thought the voices sounded like women, Chinese women. They waited — cat and mouse — expecting whoever it was to try to make a break either front or back. Ben was covering the back of the hut; they could see the front through the window.

There were sounds of at least two people coming along the passage towards the open lounge door. Alan bit his lip and sighted his rifle at the open doorway at chest height. He held his breath and stood, rifle steady, waiting to fire at the first sighting.

A girl’s voice called in excellent English with just the touch of Chinese inflection, ‘Please do not shoot, we wish to surrender.’

Alan saw the end of his rifle sight waver a little. He controlled it, stood firm. He remembered the stories of tricks played by communists, fatal deceptions.

‘We have our hands up,’ the girl added as she edged into the room, pushing it wider with her foot for an older, smaller Chinese woman to follow her in.

There was something different about this girl, Alan thought, as she led the way into the room. She moved with a freedom more associated with a Western woman, a longer, striding step, though the older woman had the sliding walk which always seemed to mark a more deferential Eastern approach.

‘Pleeze,’ the older woman said with no other request attached than that the girl had made.

‘My mother is Mrs Guisan,’ the girl said.

‘Who is Mrs Guisan when she’s at home?’ the sergeant asked.

‘The wife of the old manager of Rinsey,’ Alan supplied.

‘Huh! I may have bells on the other. We’d better put ‘em with the other prisoners.’

‘Just a minute, Sarge, I may be able to prove what they say.’

The sergeant looked very sceptical and as the women went to lower their arms he made a meaningful upward jerk with his rifle barrel. ‘Go on, then.’

‘Where did this furniture come from?’ Alan asked.

‘It is mine!’ the older woman said with some dignity.

‘It was stolen by ... It was stolen and brought here.’

‘By?’ he persisted.

‘By my son,’ she admitted, ‘my son Josef.’

‘He’s a traitor!’ the younger woman stated vehemently.

Her mother said something low and condemnatory in Chinese and the girl’s answer in the same language clearly indicated she did not care and it was the truth.

He reached for the pocket of his shirt, managed to undo the button in the sweat-soaked material with one hand and drew out the photograph. ‘Keep them covered, Sarge.’ He laid down his gun and unwrapped the small photograph. ‘who is that?’ he asked.

‘That Elizabeth,’ the girl said, regarding him as if he was part magician, part God. ‘How you have her photograph?’

‘She gave it to me.’

‘She here in Malaya? Not at Rinsey!’

‘Yes, she’s here and at Rinsey.’ Alan warmed to the girl as her face showed astonishment and delight, and thought for a moment she was going to throw her arms about his neck. She regarded him with the air of one diving into a new relationship with a stranger, the slightly roguish expression of one who was viewing the boyfriend of her girlfriend for the first time.

‘The Hammonds are back at Rinsey?’ the older Chinese woman asked and went on with rising disbelief and enthusiasm, ‘Mr Hammond, Mrs Hammond, Miss Elizabeth, Miss Wendy.’ Then her face suddenly clouded. ‘But no, no, or Josef would have told us — if he had known.’