Текст книги "The Red Pavillion"

Автор книги: Jean Chapman

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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.’

‘He would have known,’ her daughter said stonily.

Alan glanced at his sergeant as Ben called from outside, ‘Any trouble?’

‘We’d better take them back to where the prisoners are,’ the sergeant decided before going to the door and shouting back, ‘Just two women, check there’s no one else in the back.’

Just two women, Alan thought, who had a lot of heartache to come as they learned the extent of Josef Guisan’s infamy. He felt a greater sympathy for the mother, who seemed determined to defend her son at all costs. Suddenly remembering the girl’s name, he opened his mouth to say it, when there was the sound of running footsteps and shouts at the far end of the camp.

‘They’ve found – ’ Alan began, but the sound of extended and excessive shooting was heard, coming nearer. There were shouts, orders and counter-orders. He looked at his sergeant.

Mackenzie gestured to the women. ‘Get down!’

The young one hesitated. ‘Lee,’ Alan shouted, ‘get down!’

The two disappeared beneath the solid bed and Alan thought they wouldn’t find a better place than that this side of Ipoh.

‘Come on, don’t think they’ll go anywhere.’

‘Stay under the bed,’ Alan instructed as his sergeant left the room. ‘Liz would never forgive me if anything happened to you two now we’ve found you.’

He followed his sergeant out to see at least two different units of English soldiers come pouring from the jungle, retreating, it seemed, dropping back to the huts, a hail of fire following them.

Sturgess came weaving and running low across to their side. ‘The police have got them pinned down on the road, and Unit Seven have their escape route plugged – they’ve got to come back this way!’

Alan pulled a low bamboo chair on to its side on the verandah. The sergeant crouched in the doorway, while Sturgess spread the news to the others in his unit. The last Alan saw of him was as he zigzagged his way back to the far side of the camp.

The firing increased in fury and they could hear the shattering explosions of hand grenades, still at the far side of the camp, then the stuttering of automatic fire came nearer. He heard the sergeant mutter, ‘Wish I had a couple of Bren gunners.’

Danny, he remembered, had been a Bren gunner. He was missing this lot. Lucky bastard! Alan thought as several bandits came running to the camp. One’s arm was raised and a grenade went off at the side of the compound; another had some kind of automatic and as Alan took aim the man sprayed the whole bungalow front with fire.

Alan felt a strange hot feeling across his head. He felt peeved more than anything. His hand still hurt from securing the crate, and this as well seemed too much. He clenched the sore hand into a white-knuckled fist. Then he relaxed, fingers outstretched, as he saw Danny smiling and surrounded by a great light coming towards him. He smiled back and tried to get up and go to meet him.

Chapter Sixteen

‘We shouldn’t leave Anna alone at Rinsey – not overnight, anyway,’ Liz said, standing at the front window of the Wildons’ bungalow.

‘No.’ Blanche’s tone was of reluctant agreement. ‘I wish now I’d gone with Aubrey to KL.’

‘You’d have been a hindrance, darling, believe me. Half the information Aubrey’ll get will be from the gossip in men’s clubs and the best part of all that’ll pass in the bog!’

Liz thought only Joan could get away with a remark like that to her mother – well, Joan and possibly George Harfield. She wondered if this was why her mother was friends with these two disparate people; they dared tell her the truth.

‘And if we’re going to motor back in daylight, we’ll have to leave soon.’ Liz added.

‘He might also pick up some news of this big op that the major’s been on,’ Joan added. It sounded an innocuous enough remark, but Liz glanced at her sharply and, finding her adopted aunt’s gaze on her, felt her colour rise.

‘He’s obviously all right, though,’ Joan went on, reassuringly smiling, ‘it’s in the newspaper.’ She riffled through the pages on the desk near the window. ‘Here you are ... ’ She read snatches of the text, “Largest operation of the emergency so far ... hundred troops raided area headquarters jungle camp ... captured two terrorists, one man and one woman, who have been taken to Ipoh for interrogation. Four other terrorists dead ... two identified on the wanted list.”’ She paused and looked up. ‘We lost one man killed, one man missing – so I presume you would say two men dead. Major Sturgess, it says, is working with the police at Ipoh, so he’s obviously safely returned.’ She stopped and smiled at Liz. ‘That’s some comfort.’

‘He has his uses, I suppose … ’

‘Come on, Liz, more than that, surely?’ Joan urged.

‘Well, at least he’s on our side!’ Blanche interjected.

‘It didn’t feel like that when we first met him in Singapore,’ Liz reminded her.

Blanche stood up and stretched. ‘That seems like several lifetimes ago,’ she said, adding thoughtfully, ‘and in a way it is. Neville’s, plus these soldiers that have just lost their lives.’

‘What’s the matter, Liz? You suddenly look terrible.’

Joan went to catch the girl’s arm.

‘I ... ’ She sat down in the nearest chair. ‘I just hope it’s no one we know.’

‘How could it be?’ Blanche asked, suddenly alerted by the sound of a vehicle sounding a horn for the front gates to be opened by the guards. ‘Unless,’ she added, on her feet and making for the door, ‘it was that boy who was stationed with us. Alan somebody. I never caught the name of any of the others.’

‘Cresswell,’ Liz added quietly to her mother’s back as she went out to meet Aubrey.

Joan stood looking at her, then stooped and caught her hands. ‘Oh, my dear! I thought it was the major who had caught your eye. He seemed to think so – you’ve certainly caught his!’ She glanced after Blanche. ‘Your mother doesn’t know,’ she surmised, searching the girl’s face. ‘N-o-o.’ The negative included both the knowledge that Blanche would definitely not approve and that she saw the same implacable determination in Liz.

‘An approaching impasse, I think.’ She patted Liz’s hands and whispered, ‘Don’t look so awful, darling, we’ll find out about your Alan Cresswell.’ She stood up to greet her husband as he and Blanche came back into the room.

‘Aubrey, darling! All right?’ Joan kissed her husband on the cheek.

He nodded and, looking searchingly both at his wife and all around the room, asked, ‘And here?’

‘Perfectly fine, darling. No enemy activity and all the tappers are in, everything secure. We’re just hanging on what you have to tell us.’

He tossed his hat on to the table and helped himself to a stiff gin and tonic.

‘Did you see the high commissioner?’ Blanche asked.

He shook his head. ‘No, he’s away, next in command, but it was apparently arranged to take George to KL because he’ll have a better chance of his case coming up much quicker and there will be less chance of any local prejudice against him.’

‘Local prejudice! What the hell do they mean?’

‘Blanche, you have to understand this girl is of a family who have worked for the Bukit Kinta mine for years, generations! That a girl like this should accuse him is very emotive. If it had been a stranger ... ’

‘I don’t see it makes any difference. If the little tart is a prostitute, anyone could have beaten her up.’

‘The trouble is, my dear, that there is absolutely no evidence that she is or ever was a prostitute. There is no record of George receiving a message begging him to go to that house of ill repute in Ipoh. It’s just George’s word against all the evidence, which I have to tell you is pretty damning.’

‘The evidence is a put-up job, isn’t it? George Harfield has been a thorn in the side – ’ she paused momentarily and tut-ted at her own cliché – ‘of the communists ever since the war. He told them he’d bury them up to their necks if he found any of them caching away English arms supplies then and he’s been the target for all kinds of attacks. Look at his headman, Rasa, look what they did to him!’

‘M’dear, this is what makes it so much worse for him. His barrister says the prosecution are likely to bring these things up and use them as evidence to say how damned unlikely it would be for a girl born and brought up at Kampong Kinta to be a communist sympathiser.’

‘I don’t see that counts. All youngsters kick against the parental traces however they’re brought up!’ Blanche argued.

‘Not sure that’s politically true,’ Joan said, shaking her head. ‘Generations of our village folk back home used to vote Conservative whether it was a lord or a cabbage who stood in their constituency.’

‘This is more about ideals, isn’t it? About fairer shares for all,’ Liz said quietly.

‘For God’s sake!’ Blanche exploded. ‘What it’s about is a man being set up by some fanatic who’s prepared to let herself be beaten up to trap an enemy to her cause.’

‘Her cause is her ideal,’ Liz emphasised. ‘People have to have ideals to be prepared to suffer.’

‘Probably sees herself as a martyr,’ Joan confirmed.

‘But we all agree the evidence is contrived.’ Blanche was pacing the floor now, throwing her arms wide to appeal to her audience.

‘But,’ Aubrey said with infinite patience, ‘it is difficult to deny that evidence when it was the police who were in fact the ones who found George at the girl’s side, actually with his hand on her shoulder.’

‘He was sent for urgently – the girl had been missing.’

‘Yes, yes, we know this because it is what Harfield says – but it all seems to work against the man. It seems the girl was in the same room all the time she was “missing” and a white man was seen going in and out – and there are witnesses prepared to say it was Harfield they saw.’

‘Paid witness!’ Blanche asserted.

‘Possibly,’ he began and as Blanche glared at him, amended, ‘Most probably, even most certainly – but I saw the photographs of the girl’s injuries.’ He shook his head. ‘I can’t see any jury doubting the attack or the rape.’

‘Well, George Harfield didn’t do it! I’d stake my life on that,’

‘What makes it worse is that in her statement the girl says she always thought of Mr Harfield as a second father or a favourite uncle. She trusted him.’ He rose and sighed deeply, taking Blanche’s glass from the table and his own for a refill. ‘I saw George, you know. He says she’s a damned convincing actress.’

‘The girl!’ Blanche suddenly shouted. ‘The girl! What is her bloody name anyway?’

‘Li Min,’ Aubrey told her quietly.

‘Li,’ Blanche repeated, ‘that’s appropriate anyway.’

‘I’m afraid I agree with Harfield’s advocate; unless we can find some evidence that definitely links the girl with the communists, the man’s defence is very thin.’

‘We will then,’ Blanche said as if to herself. ‘We will then.’

‘I wondered if you heard anything more about Major Sturgess’s last jungle operation?’ Liz asked. Her voice sounded high, thin, quite unnatural. ‘There’s so little in the paper.’

‘He’s safe, saw him briefly. Called at Ipoh on the way, why I’m late really. He’s helping interrogate prisoners, and ... er, he does have a funeral, unfortunately. One of his own unit, I understand.’

Liz felt as if someone had swept her whole world away. ‘Do you know who it was?’ she asked, voice no more than a whisper.

‘Sorry, I never asked. Did you think you might know ... ?’

‘Liz wondered if it might be any of the men who were stationed at Rinsey, that was all.’ Joan came to her rescue.

‘Possibly,’ Aubrey said. ‘Quite possibly.’

‘Could we find out?’ Joan asked and, as Aubrey opened his mouth again, caught Liz’s eye and added sharply, ‘Don’t say “possibly”, darling, I don’t think our nerves could stand it. Just tell me if you could find out?’

‘I suppose ... ’ he said languidly.

‘We’d better make tracks,’ Blanche said. ‘come on, Liz. I’ll see what I can find out at Bukit Kinta and be in touch. Thanks for everything.’

‘I’ll tell your man you’re ready.’ Aubrey went to find the crack-shot Malay tapper they had brought with them as guard.

‘Remember, don’t stop for anyone or anything,’ Joan reiterated the emergency code of safety, ‘and, darling – ’ she caught Liz’s hand – ‘I’ll make him get through to KL as soon as you’ve gone, and the second I find out anything I’ll let you know.’

Aubrey went to the barbed-wire gates and helped his guard open them, waving their guests on their way. Joan stood on the verandah waiting. Aubrey came and slipped his arm around her waist.

‘Two unhappy people,’ she commented.

‘Umm. Neville, bad show, coming out and never seeing him again.’

‘Don’t think I meant Neville, really, darling. Young Liz has a crush on that young guardsman, the signaller you remember they had billeted on them at the time Neville’s body was found. Could be a problem if her mother has to know.’

‘Not sure it will,’ Aubrey said thoughtfully. ‘He’s either the one killed or the one missing. I particularly remember Sturgess mentioning his signaller, seemed to be preying on his mind a bit.’

‘Oh; dear!’

‘I tell you something else, Blanche is going to have a shock about that Harfield chap. He’s going to go to prison for a long time.’

‘You don’t think he’s guilty!’

He shook his head but said, ‘All the evidence points that way – and no other. If they’ve set him up they’ve made a damned good job of it.’

*

Liz drove the Ford at speed as the twilight was swiftly replaced by darkness.

‘We should have left earlier,’ her mother stated.

Liz might have retaliated if she could have found room in her mind for anything else but Alan. One missing, one dead. What had Joan said, ‘so I presume you would say two dead’? Two dead out of ten that had stayed so briefly at Rinsey, two dead in one unit out of the whole operation. That couldn’t be fair.

‘Liz! For God’s sake, take your time. There’s no point in us killing ourselves!’

‘You worry too much, Mother.’

‘You’re frightening our guard to death.’ She turned round to the Malay who, while gripping his rifle, was endeavouring to stay still long enough on the back seat to keep a lookout for possible roadblocks or people trying to flag them down. ‘He’s pale yellow around the gills now. And it’s not going to get any darker now it is dark.’

‘You begin to sound like George Harfield and his clichés!’

‘He’s certainly on my mind,’ Blanche admitted, gripping the overhead panic handle as they hurtled around another corner. ‘Liz! keep a sense of proportion or we’ll all either be travelsick or dead!’

Liz had to make a real effort to drive more slowly, consciously making her foot lift from the accelerator a little – and then feeling they were creeping along. Speed seemed the only thing that made any impact on her sensibilities, a kind of consolation for not being able to take any action that might help. Until she knew ... what could she choose to do?

She supposed she could make assumptions, use logic. She could work from what she knew. She knew she loved Alan totally. She knew that to be without him would be to know the rest of her life was over, useless.

It seemed unbelievable to her that he could possibly have been killed and she had not known, had not had some premonition. She remembered darkly that Alan himself had said he felt doom-laden from the moment he had left England, then he had met her and obviously the feeling had been all nonsense. She blinked, bit her lip as tears welled.

The lights of the car picked up something or someone at the jungle edge. Was it a figure of a man? Tall, hefty, wearing a peaked cap, carrying a rifle. He was gone in the same second, so she was not sure.

The next moment she was jamming on the car brakes as she was confronted by a torrent of water over a huge rock. She looked up at the curtain of falling water as they hurtled towards it, and remembered being under the waterfall with Alan.

‘For God’s sake!’ Blanche cried, while in the back their guard gave out a whimpering cry of relief as the car stopped a hand’s span from the outjutting rock indicating the turn for Rinsey.

‘All I can say is I’m glad we’re nearly home. You totally oversteered there. We’re no use to anybody dead.’

Not sure I’m much use to Alan alive, she thought.

‘Did you see anyone on the corner?’ she asked. ‘I thought ... ’

‘No!’ Her mother’s stony response seemed to indicate she thought her daughter was just looking for an excuse.

‘No, missy,’ a shaky voice came from the back of the car. Some instinct, some premonition stopped her from saying more. Perhaps it had after all been some trick of the light on wet leaves, the shape of trees or ferns?

She restarted the car with shaking hands and went at a cautious twenty miles an hour the rest of the way to Rinsey’s barbed-wire gates.

She was relieved to find all quiet, the gates properly manned, even pulled a face at her mother as the guard literally fell out of the back of the car with comic haste – while inside the telephone was ringing.

Anna greeted her in the hall on the way to answer the telephone.

‘I’ll get it,’ she said, asking, as John had done when he arrived home, ‘Everything all right here? Your little one safely tucked in?’

Anna nodded and went to the door to greet Blanche. Liz picked up the telephone.

‘Liz?’ Joan Wildon’s voice asked. ‘I promised to ring as soon as I knew. I’ve just spoken to John Sturgess on the telephone.’ She paused as if apologising for doing it all so quickly, then asked, ‘Is your mother there?’

‘Yes,’ and Liz with the same unmoving tone her mother had used only minutes before, and clamped the handset harder to her ear.

‘I’m afraid, darling, the two guardsmen lost were among those who stayed with you.’ Joan went on, ‘The man killed was a Daniel Veasey and the one missing ... is your Alan Cresswell.’

There was a pause as Liz stood rigid, knowing but not accepting.

‘Liz! Darling! Are you all right?’

She made some kind of murmur of confirmation.

‘Let me speak to your mother.’

Without a word Liz passed the telephone to her mother.

Blanche, who had followed her daughter in and watched as she took the call, took the receiver quickly and asked, ‘Who is this? Joan?’

Liz walked away into the kitchen. She heard Anna and her mother exchange a few words, then she supposed her mother was listening intently to all Joan had to say. She guessed that because Joan would be concerned for her she might tell her mother everything.

There was something she had to do and quickly.

She went to her bedroom and took the torch she had used to go through the escape tunnel from her bedside table. Hurrying to the kitchen, she took a box of matches from the kitchen drawer, then left the bungalow by the back door before anyone should try to stop her.

She could do nothing for Alan but grieve, but she could stop Josef, the traitor, the murderer, the man she was convinced she had seen momentarily in the jungle opposite the rock, from finding any sanctuary near Rinsey.

She started the fire in the room where they made love. It began with the symbol of their passion for she fed the first match strike with the dried red frangipangi blossoms and the stalks of the orchid sprays. They made a brave, quick show. Anxious that they should not go out, she ran to fetch the twigs and dried leaves that still lay in other rooms, then she carefully applied the raffia mat so she did not exclude the air from the flames. When that was well established, pyre-shaped and blazing, she added the cushions.

‘Only the butterfly escapes,’ she said as the room blazed around her. She felt the heat of the flames easier to bear than the new sorrows life had brought. The opposite wall suddenly caught fire in a sheet, lapping hungrily, roaring out of the windows and up, up into the butterfly sky. She lifted her face and listened; she could hear the timbers of the roof crackling over her head. It felt like a cleansing. Now Josef would never sully this place with his presence.

She wondered if her mother and Anna could see the flames from the main bungalow yet. In this thought outside her own grief came the guilty knowledge that what she was doing would only heighten the sorrow for them. Any further deprivation would be another victory for Josef. He had always been greedy for more, gathering childhood triumphs around himself with the speed of these swift flames that scoured the room for new conquests, reaching out for her so she must snatch her dress to her legs.

But no more, Josef. No! Her amah’s home had been destroyed, her father murdered, her love destroyed – now surely was the time of retribution. She fled the place, the heat swirling after her, flames shooting as far as the verandah as if in a last bid to take her.

She turned back, awed by the blaze – hotter than the tropical night, bright as the tropical sun and, like the jungle, dangerous to those who misused it.

Once convinced her place was back with her mother and Anna, she ran as if the flames pursued her even into the tunnel. She left the far end of the tunnel gasping in the closeness as if the heat of the flames still took her air.

She was almost back at the bungalow when she saw her mother on the back porch. Blanche saw her at the same moment and came out to meet her, staggering as if her legs were stiff with long standing, long watching. She held out her arms wide and there were no questions. Just a silent coming-together of the two women, embracing as if they would never release each other again.