Текст книги "The Red Pavillion"

Автор книги: Jean Chapman

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Текущая страница: 3 (всего у книги 23 страниц)

Not too far away a colony of monkeys was disturbed; their sudden screams of alarm momentarily chilled Liz’s spine. Then, in the beluka nearer the garden, there was a different noise, the heavy sound of something big coming through the jungle fringe.

She held her breath to listen and the perspiration on her body felt suddenly cold. On the untreated overgrown lalang grass at the edge of what had been garden Liz was aware of a figure, no more than a blacker shape on blackness – but a man, she was sure.

Sturgess’s instruction that the back should be kept bolted and shuttered while he watched the front suddenly seemed very sensible. Was this a terrorist coming for the guns?

Without any visible movement she pushed herself farther back into the doorway, melting into the shadows as the figure approached.

Chapter Three

There had been spectres protruding from the curtains at her first boarding school, and howling voices in the cold winter winds, but there had been no bogeymen here at Rinsey – but childhood is soon over.

She thought about screaming for Major Sturgess, but felt guilty about having unlocked the back doors. If only she could slip back inside without being detected! She kept her eyes riveted to the black shape, fearful that once she lost sight of the man she wouldn’t be able to relocate him in the jungle night or guess his intentions.

Her heart gave a great leap of anticipation as the thought occurred to her that it might be her father. He would be cautious, of course he would, seeing a strange vehicle in his drive. She breathed quickly and silently through her mouth, gripping the door frame behind herself. She must be sure. The figure paused between the fan-palm trees at the far end of the overgrown garden and she could have sobbed aloud with disappointment, for the man was much too tall and too heavily built.

She watched his bulk pass between the trees one way, then come back again, lingering, irresolute, it seemed. Could it possibly be Kurt Guisan, her father’s manager? He had been tall and burly, and there was something familiar ... In the moment of speculation, she lost sight of the figure. Then a movement far out to the left made her realise he was moving more purposefully now, going on as if he intended to skirt around the garden, around the whole property perhaps.

Was he making his way round to the front? She slipped back into the dark house, ran swiftly through kitchen and hallway. Her hand was poised to push open the verandah door as she heard Sturgess challenge – and a voice farther out reply.

‘Walk in slowly,’ Sturgess commanded, adding, with an authority that Liz certainly believed, ‘I have you covered and can kill from this range.’

‘Is it ... Mr Hammond? You’re back, sir! It’s me, Josef.’

‘Josef!’ Liz whispered to herself. Of course, grown-up, he had the same burly figure as his father. ‘Josef!’ she called, bursting from the door. She would have run to him, but Sturgess caught her arm for the second time that night. This time his grip was quite unrelenting as she tried to prise open his fingers.

‘Walk in slowly,’ he ordered again as behind them the bungalow lights went on and her mother came out carrying her revolver.

‘It’s Josef, Mother!’ Liz called. ‘Josef Guisan!’

The man was at the bottom of the verandah steps. Blanche turned back into the hallway and snapped on the verandah lights.

‘Let me go!’ Liz demanded. ‘He’s our friend, our manager’s son. Mother, tell him!’

Blanche came forward, still holding her revolver slightly raised, looking over the tall, fair young man who advanced another step, arms and hands spread to show he was quite unarmed, smiling a greeting. For a second Blanche appeared to raise her revolver.

‘Mother?’ The word was low, almost disbelieving, as Liz questioned an action that looked more instinctive than intentional.

‘Mrs Hammond, you like to shoot me?’

The revolver was lowered to her side but reluctance was the only word that matched the action as Blanche nodded. ‘It is Josef,’ she admitted. ‘No one else could look that much like his Swiss father, sound so Chinese, and turn up at Rinsey.’

Released, Liz held out her arms as Josef bounded up the steps. ‘Now it begins to feel like home,’ she said, her head level with the open V of his shirt – even, she thought, her mother’s antagonism towards her childhood friend was the same.

He hugged her, stooped to kiss her on the cheek, and exclaimed how she had changed. ‘A lady,’ he said, bowing with mock solemnity, totally Chinese.

Then he became formal and quite European again as he offered his hand to Blanche, expressing his pleasure that she was home. She shook hands but Sturgess only nodded as he introduced himself and asked, ‘You expected Mr Hammond to be here?’

‘He is not with you?’ Josef frowned. ‘I don’t understand.’

‘You know where he went?’

‘Where did he go – and when?’

Sturgess and Blanche questioned together.

‘To meet you. To Singapore.’

‘When?’ Sturgess snapped in the manner of cross-examination.

Josef frowned as if perplexed. ‘Several days, two or three – I am not sure.’

‘Which day of the week, then? You must remember that,’ Blanche said impatiently.

‘I’m surprised he remembers anything with both of you snapping questions at him like that,’ Liz remonstrated. ‘Let’s go inside and sit down like civilised people, friends who’ve just met again after eight years.’ She wanted to know about her father, but she wanted to hear Josef’s story too. These two were spoiling it all, putting Josef at a distance, Sturgess behaving as if he were tuan of Rinsey.

‘Where’s his jeep? It’s not at Ipoh station.’

‘Did he drive to Sungei Siput?’

It was only Liz who made any move towards the door as the other two continued their questions.

‘No … no ... ’ Josef shook his head, frowning. ‘Ah! Yes!’ he exclaimed. ‘I remember! He said he was going to drive all the way – said it would be easier with the luggage.’

The silence this statement created had its own presence. ‘All the way to Singapore?’ Sturgess asked.

‘It’s only like driving to London from – ’ Liz began, only to be swiftly interrupted as her mother vetoed any such calculations.

‘Your father would know I would not undertake such a drive in the heat and knowing the state of the roads. I can hardly believe ... ’ Her gaze questioned Josef more directly.

‘This is only what I remember, I did not see him leave.’

‘Mother! Are you doubting his word?’ She knew the answer. Blanche had always doubted Josef’s word. Liz had always had to defend him. ‘Surely it’s the answer! Daddy could have broken down anywhere and not been able to reach us.’

‘It is possible,’ Sturgess had to admit, for the telephone services were in many places widely spaced.

‘And if the local shop had sold out of petrol.’ Liz remembered that the supply of petrol was often a stack of cans outside a village store.

‘He could have had other reasons for driving, I suppose,’ Sturgess added, seemingly lost in thought. The next moment, he demanded of Josef, ‘And where have you just come from?’

The younger man appeared stunned by the abrupt delivery of the question and flung an arm vaguely towards the plantation behind him. ‘I thought I heard a vehicle, I came to see if Mr Hammond was back. I was,’ he added with an incline of the head, ‘at home.’

Liz rushed forward and took his arm, determined now to extract him from their questioning. ‘Come and have a beer, Josef. Is your father at home? And I want to know about Lee and your mother. What has happened to them in all this time? Are they all at your bungalow’?’

Her spirits lifted a little at the thought of her friends so close by, just some two hundred yards along a track lined with bananas and bamboo. ‘Would your father know more about my father?’ There were a million questions to ask. ‘When he comes home we must have a party – all of us.’ She led him inside, beaming at the idea of all her loved ones together. Turning, she saw his face was solemn, hard.

‘The old days can never come back, Miss Hammond.’

Perhaps it was the sudden formality that gave her some inkling of what was to come. ‘Liz!’ she corrected, waving him to a chair, but his reciprocal smile was brief.

‘My father is dead, I think. When he tried to sabotage the Japanese plans for taking over the estate, they took him away. I’ve never been able to trace even where he was taken.’ He tightly interlaced his fingers as he added, ‘I think they just shot him out in the plantation and left him for the ants to eat. There were many bodies when the Japanese came.’

Sturgess and Blanche had joined them in the lounge. ‘Neville never said any of this in his letters,’ Blanche stated. ‘You must have told him what you thought.’

Josef smiled ruefully. ‘Mr Hammond still thought we would find him.’

‘Your mother and Lee?’ Liz asked, fearful of his answer. ‘My mother and sister, they live far away, and I am pleased because they helped the Japanese – they were traitors.’

‘Oh, Josef!’ She was devastated to hear such a condemnation. ‘Lee was only a child, you were only a child, your mother probably collaborated to save you both – and with your father being taken away ... You must forgive them, they must come back to Rinsey. We need you all here.’

He shook his head. ‘I think not.’

‘We must make things as much like they used to be as we can,’ she urged.

‘I think not,’ he repeated and the tone was harder, held a greater note of certainty.

‘Then I must go to see them.’

Josef shook his head. ‘I do not know where they are.’

The stony response sounded like a lie.

‘And what did you do,’ Sturgess asked, ‘through the war?’

‘He was only a boy,’ Liz remonstrated.

‘I helped the Chinese guerrillas who stayed to fight the Japanese.’ For a moment the look he gave Sturgess was like an accusation that the officer belonged to the British dogs who ran.

‘Did you indeed?’

‘Oh, yes.’ Josef looked him straight in the eye. ‘That is what I did.’

‘And is it what you are doing now?’

The innocuous-sounding question had Josef springing to his feet, protesting, ‘I work for Mr Hammond. You are calling me a traitor!’

‘I am asking if you have contact with any of the Chinese still in the jungle,’ Sturgess repeated with a politeness that was curiously threatening. ‘If you knew them up to three years ago it’s likely you know them still now.’

‘No, no. I am no terrorist!’

The denial held fury but Liz was not altogether surprised. She remembered Josef had a temper when roused, and Sturgess was accusing Josef of associating with murderers.

‘Not all communists are violent criminals,’ Sturgess said evenly. ‘I’ve met many who were idealists, who really wanted equality for all people – weren’t ambitious just for themselves.’

‘I do not know any of these people,’ Josef said, sounding stubborn but chastened.

‘No, they are fewer and farther in between,’ Sturgess confirmed, ‘than the villains.’

‘No!’ Josef blazed again. ‘I mean, I did not know – ’

‘I think I can do without any of this shouting in my house, thank you.’ Blanche’s voice was cool, re-establishing the hierarchy.

‘Look at me!’ Josef moderated his voice but displayed his height, his fairness. ‘I was no use in the jungle fighting. I stayed on the plantation – my help was with food and money for the guerrillas.’

‘The kind of help they will be needing now,’ Sturgess persisted.

‘Not from me, tuan, only in the war.’

Liz looked at Josef sharply as he actually called his questioner ‘master’.

‘I have been too busy,’ he went on. ‘Mr Hammond will tell you.’

‘Did you sleep here?’ Blanche asked.

‘No, only Mr Hammond.’

‘I mean during the war.’

‘No, Japanese officer and his wife – ’

‘Damnation!’ Blanche interrupted and she eyed Josef as if she might just have preferred him in her home to the Japs. ‘So you’ve not stayed here since my husband left?’

‘Or seen anyone else here?’

Josef shook his head slowly.

‘The bungalow was open when we arrived,’ Sturgess added.

‘Ah! I should have checked, that is bad,’ Josef admitted, then smiled. ‘Mr Hammond was in a hurry to come to meet his lovely wife and daughter.’

Blanche’s facial expression remained pointedly unmoved. Liz smiled as graciously as she could, but realised that the matter of the guns had to be explained. She could imagine no circumstances that would make her father leave guns laid out on a bed, then drive to Singapore. Such behaviour broke every rule he had ever impressed on them all from childhood – herself, Lee and Josef.

The slight obsequiousness in Josef’s tone reminded her he had always been a touch too willing to abase himself to her father and mother – but if she or Lee had tried to put him down, that was another matter and his temper would flare.

The ill-timed pleasantry was forgotten as in the middle distance they heard again monkeys screaming protest at being disturbed. Josef too was listening intently and half turned as if he would go to the back of the bungalow. Seconds later there was a high-pitched single screech. In daytime none of them would have taken any account of it at all.

‘A day bird’s call at night?’

Surprisingly, it was her mother who made the comment. No one answered. Liz had the distinct feeling that her mother and Sturgess were watching Josef closely for any reaction.

‘We’ll play this for safety,’ Sturgess said, picking up his rifle. ‘I have a feeling we have visitors on the way who expect to collect some extra equipment.’

Blanche took her revolver from the table.

‘I’ll fetch my gun,’ Liz said.

‘Extra equipment?’ Josef spread his hands, shrugged his shoulders and asked, ‘What can I do? Do you have a spare rifle?’

‘Switch the lights out,’ Sturgess ordered him, ‘and come to the back of the house with me. You two cover the front.’

‘If I had a gun … ’

‘If and when any shooting begins I’ll let you have my revolver,’ Sturgess told him.

The lights were snapped out and Liz was left to feel her way back to her bedroom. Groping in the drawer of the bedside table, she was surprised how reassuring the weight of the .38 Smith & Wesson was in her hand.

From the kitchen Sturgess shouted, ‘Don’t go outside, Mrs Hammond. You and your daughter take a window either side of the front door and shoot at anything that moves.’

Liz felt both annoyed to be referred to as an unthinking mere appendage to her mother and expected to shoot at anything that moved? Ridiculous! She was about to protest at the order and remind him of his ‘military’ sortie to deal with the water buffalo as the first shot came from the right of the front door.

‘Good God!’ Blanche exclaimed, but immediately poked her gun through the side of the rattan blinds and fired back.

‘Watch for the flashes, aim at them,’ Sturgess had time to shout as another shot came from the back of the house.

Two more shots from the trees were returned with fire from the front and back of the bungalow. Liz found she had undergone a complete change of heart. In the silence that followed she had to discipline herself not to empty her revolver into the night.

Crouched by her window in the hot, sticky darkness, she knew it was no use either rushing out, guns blazing, or trying to identify the night noises that came from the beluka. Anyone running or walking without caution might have been easy to hear, but it would be impossible to separate a stealthy human approach from the cracks, drips and unhuman calls the jungle night added resonance and menace to. The twenty yards or so between bungalow and tree fringe seemed a very narrow margin for safety.

‘Are they coming or aren’t they, for God’s sake?’ Her mother’s whispered exasperation exactly summed up her own feelings.

‘Liz!’ Josef’s voice in the same room made her start so violently she realised just how ajangle her nerves were. She heard her mother swear under her breath.

‘Mrs Hammond, Major Sturgess wants to speak to you in the kitchen.’

‘What do you think is happening?’ Liz asked as she saw Josef’s black figure outlined at the other window.

‘Are you all right?’ he asked and came across to be near her. She could feel his warmth through her thin blouse and his breath on her neck. ‘Not too frightened?’

‘I’m glad you came when you did – someone we really know.’ In turning to whisper to him she leaned briefly against his shoulder.

‘I am so pleased you are back.’ He paused but she was so near him she could feel him shaking his head as he spoke. ‘After all these years, now it has all happened so quickly, it makes me feel ... kind of mixed up.’

‘I know … ’

‘He hasn’t given me a gun,’ he added.

Liz was digesting this information and emotional switch as there was a sudden, violent burst of shooting from inside the bungalow. The shock of the noise made her drop to her knees and she heard Josef say something about a Sten gun, then, as the pumping cracks of automatic fire ceased, her mother was there ordering, ‘Stay down!’

There was more movement in the room and the noise was repeated as Sturgess raked the trees and the undergrowth at the front of her home with a similar barrage of fire.

In the tail end of the thudding punishment, obscenely loud indoors, they all heard the involuntary cry of someone hit. It had not sounded far away and she wondered if Sturgess’s tactics had stopped them from being rushed. There were other noises out there now, definable noises of men moving in the undergrowth, a groan and then the noises retreated.

‘Retrieving their wounded?’ Liz wondered.

‘Hum!’ Sturgess sounded noncommittal. ‘it may be all over for this time,’ he judged, ‘but be cautious. I’ll just check the rear.’

‘What a good thing he came with us,’ Blanche breathed.

‘Yes.’ Liz felt her agreement was slightly tight-lipped for he made her, and obviously Josef, feel rather like stupid and irresponsible children, not to be trusted.

‘Would you go and keep watch from the kitchen, Josef?’ Sturgess ordered as he came back. He waited until Josef had moved away, then said, ‘We’ll only shoot again if they do, but I feel they’ve withdrawn to reassess the situation.’

‘Why should you think that?’ Liz felt he should be made to explain as well as to issue orders.

‘Two reasons. They were undoubtedly after the guns that were laid out here, so it probably means they want the extra arms or ammunition for another operation. They certainly weren’t expecting us to be here, and now they also know we can defend ourselves, they won’t want to waste a lot of ammunition just to take a few more weapons. We’ve also made it awkward for them; they don’t like casualties in the jungle. Gunshot wounds are difficult to explain if you need a doctor or surgeon, complicated to nurse if you haven’t got the right drugs.’

That was three reasons, she thought, good reasons. ‘You’re obviously an expert on war,’ she told him. It was the only thing she had really heard him talk about.

‘I’ve had plenty of experience in this country.’

She admitted to herself there was only bitterness in the tone of that remark, no joy of the man of war, no hint of the make-up of a mercenary.

‘I think we could have a small lamp on now,’ he said, going over to the table. The soft upward light made her realise how the immaculate man she had first seen in Raffles had been completely transformed. His light shirt and trousers were much crumpled and the Sten gun had left traces of oil on his shirt. He had the dark shadow of a beard on his face. She remembered sitting by her father in the bathroom there, watching him shave. He had dabbed a blob of shaving soap on her nose and asked if she knew that whiskers grew quicker in a hot climate. She had always thought it a joke, now she wondered if it was true.

Looking back at Josef, she observed how relatively uncreased were his shorts and shirt, how smooth his chin. He looked like a man come back from a meeting, or going out for the evening, dressed to impress.

She felt slightly ashamed to realise that they had not thought to offer the man who had given up his last free hours to drive them to Rinsey the opportunity to shave and refresh himself – and he had not asked.

Any good will Sturgess had notched up with her immediately evaporated as he stated, ‘Josef can keep watch at the front and I’ll take the back this time. Until first light, then I’ll drive you two ladies back to Bukit Kinta. I’m sure George won’t mind having you as house guests until we ... sort out your future plans.’

Liz was amazed at his audacity. ‘We’ve been here before, haven’t we?’