Текст книги "The Red Pavillion"

Автор книги: Jean Chapman

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Текущая страница: 6 (всего у книги 23 страниц)

Chapter Seven

The last hundred yards from the falls were the most hazardous. None of them was dressed for pushing through this mass of growth and Chemor unsheathed his machete.

‘Don’t catch hold of anything if you can help it,’ George advised, and, as the slope grew steeper once more, gripped Blanche’s hand and supported her down.

Sliding and slipping, Liz remembered from her childhood that the most beautiful plants and flowers usually had the biggest, sharpest thorns. Under the massed jungle canopy the gloom increased. Perspiration poured from them as they negotiated each step, while Chemor worked with steady rhythmical sweeps of his machete from head height to ground level to clear a way large enough for them to pass through. Roots, ferns, tortuous vines and creepers climbing up to the light, wonderful pale ghostlike sprays of orchids, and butterflies that looked like flowers until they moved, inhabited this dripping, drowned world.

Liz wished she could stop dwelling on the thought that anyone who had gone over the edge in that vehicle would, even if they survived, never have made this climb back up. Then again, they might still be there in the jeep ... A gasp of alarm came with the thought and the consequent stumble. She raised an arm to sweep away both tears and the perspiration which was running into and stinging her eyes.

Chemor heard and paused to look at her. Then they both turned to look farther back to George, who, progressing at her mother’s pace, was some way behind.

‘Your mother a brave lady,’ Chemor said. ‘This is bad jungle.’

Liz nodded, too breathless to speak.

‘You too.’

She shook her head with conviction. She was terrified of what they might find – a bloated body cooked in a metal jeep for two tropical weeks. Oh, God, stop it! Stop it!

‘Go on!’ she urged.

They battled on for another half an hour. She felt as if they had travelled to the far side of the peninsula, but calculated they had probably only gone about a hundred yards. She suddenly had a different fear, of not finding the vehicle after all. Once they had descended into the ravine they could no longer see where they were heading. George had taken sightings from the sun and the steep escarpment, but once in the jungle proper they could see neither sun nor rock face.

In another quarter of an hour, George hailed from the back for a halt. It was not until Liz’s laboured breathing had eased that the two caught up. George swept his boot and then his hand along a wet but substantial fallen branch where the two women could sit down.

‘I think we’ve come too far,’ he told Chemor. ‘I feel we’ve veered too far from the rock face.’

‘You stay with the ladies, tuan, I’ll go back to see.’ Chemor immediately began to retrace their steps along the path he had cut. George too wandered back some paces, then a low birdlike whistle made him go more urgently after his man.

Listening, the two women could hear more jungle being cleared and with tacit agreement both rose and went towards the sound.

Chemor was chopping into the side of their original path. He stopped as they reached the two men. ‘You smell something here, tuan?’ he asked.

They all sniffed the air. George pushed his head into the new way. ‘Perhaps ... oil? Or … ’

‘Rust,’ Chemor said. ‘I think jeep this way.’

It took ten minutes and the vehicle lay within some five yards of the path he had first cut.

‘Be careful, look around.’ The anxiety in George’s voice matched a sudden concern in Liz’s mind as the machete, willingly wielded, swung high and to ground level.

‘Let me,’ George said, taking the machete. ‘Stay well clear, it might move as we cut closer.’

He worked a little more slowly, with more regard to what might be lying around, then reported, ‘I don’t think it’ll move. It’s wedged between rocks like something stuck fast in a pair of scissors.’

They watched with terrible fascination as George worked his way near enough to climb on to a wheel and peer into the vehicle. ‘I can’t see anyone – and I would have thought I could here.’ He glanced up to the canopy, which was thinner here, the plants merely reaching across, for the rocks below gave no purchase for roots. He leaned back, pulling at the closed door. It gave and he had to reclose it hastily to keep his balance. He climbed down and reached the handle again, letting the door fall open.

Liz’s hand flew to her mouth. Blanche got slowly to her feet as Harfield climbed back on to the wheel and half got inside the vehicle.

‘There’s no one in here,’ he reported.

‘Thank God!’ Blanche breathed.

Chemor, who was by his side, concluded, ‘No one in it when it fell.’

‘No ... ’ George was right inside the vehicle now, peering and running his hand over surfaces, looking at the damage. ‘I agree with you.’

‘So you think it was pushed over?’ Liz asked.

‘Not pushed – look at this, Chemor.’ The two men partly disappeared into the bowels of the nose-dived car, then reappeared with a length of rope. ‘The engine was set running and the jeep kept on course for the edge by tying a rope around the seat stays and the bottom of the steering wheel. Whoever sent it over was probably quite unlucky it didn’t burst into flames.’

Liz, glancing at her mother, saw the bleakness. ‘But do we know it’s my father’s?’

‘I’m afraid we do,’ George answered. ‘Between the rocks at the other side is part of the front number plate – enough to be sure.’

George and Chemor scoured all around the vehicle, but found nothing else. ‘No one has been to or from since it fell,’ Chemor was confident.

‘So his jeep was deliberately hidden ... ’ Blanche addressed herself to George.

‘We must tell the police.’

‘And assume that Neville was … ’

‘Kidnapped – otherwise … ’

‘Where is his body?’ Blanche added the words George was reluctant to say, then asked, ‘Will the police fingerprint the jeep?’

‘Two weeks in the jungle, already red with rust – the only prints would be inside. Chemor said he will have another look round at the top of the falls. He may learn something more.’

Liz immediately stood, ready to move off; Blanche rose only as George offered his hand to pull her up.

It was hardly with any feeling of success that they climbed back up into the light. One mystery solved, another deepened. ‘The jungle keeps it secrets,’ Anna had told Liz when Wendy had been born and, feeling neglected, the elder sister had packed doll, drawing book and crayons to leave home. And it will keep you if you run away.’

At the top of the escarpment they rested while Chemor looked around the area. Another time Liz would have pulled off her shoes and socks and dangled her feet in the running water, but it was not the time to take comforts.

Chemor beckoned from some fifty yards away where the jungle grew down to the first rocky step of the falls. ‘Here, see,’ he said, pointing to the ground, ‘tiger tracks. He drinks here – ’ his fingers traced a line from trees over the rocks to where a natural hollow in the rock made a deep pool – ‘but more.’ He moved a few more paces and stooped to show them a tunnel through the undergrowth. ‘Way tiger comes, and man goes – once, anyway.’ He stood up to show where twigs had been broken above the height of the tiger’s back. ‘Man pushed through some two, three weeks ago.’ Delicately between his finger and thumb he held a twig that had been broken off and displayed where two new young growths sprang from it. He found others the same.

‘You think whoever sent the jeep over left this way?’ George said.

‘Someone did, tuan.’

George nodded.

‘You want me to follow man’s trail, see if he went to jungle or plantation?’ Chemor asked, demonstrating the two directions the track could take – straight on or curving back towards Rinsey.

‘I don’t want you eaten by a tiger or murdered by communists,’ George told him.

Chemor shook his head. ‘No one here now, and tiger he no bother, he well eaten, big heavy tracks.’ He pointed down to a recent spoor and swayed his body, holding his hands some distance from his stomach and grinning. ‘He very full.’

George nodded agreement but added, ‘Don’t go far. I don’t want to lose any more men.’

‘Quite safe.’ Chemor turned and stooped into the tunnel.

George and Blanche turned to make their way back through the plantation. Liz waited until they were some dozen paces away and called after them, ‘I’m going with Chemor, I have to see where this man went.’

She heard their protests as she too ducked into the run, like Alice down the rabbit hole, she thought. Indeed, hurrying to catch up Chemor she was reminded of the rabbit runs she had seen through the English hedgerows. This run was just a larger version, she told herself, and provided you could stoop low enough it was a much easier way of travelling then hacking a way through the jungle.

Chemor heard her coming and waited. ‘Tuan know you come?’ he asked. When she nodded he looked doubtful but moved on. They had not gone far when he stopped. She was both awed and fascinated by the way he crouched quite still, every sense so alert she was reminded of a sea anemone, tentacles drifting, trawling for sensations.

She realised as he slowly looked around that he was motionless because he did not want to destroy any shred of evidence either beneath his feet or by pushing through the undergrowth. Unexpectedly he put out a hand to the wall of the run, gave a low grunt of satisfaction and beckoned Liz off at a tangent through the jungle again.

He used his machete a few times but Liz could see it was merely to give her better passage. In minutes they were in the lesser jungle, the beluka. Suddenly her mouth dropped open in surprise. They were at the rear of Rinsey. She could see ahead the old buildings at the back and the young guardsman coming out of one of them.

So whoever had caused her father’s jeep to go over the escarpment had come back to Rinsey. She folded her arms over her stomach and rocked with anguish.

Under questioning from Sturgess, Josef had only belatedly remembered his employer had driven down to Singapore, but had been unsure what day he had left. Josef had said he was living at the manager’s bungalow. So much pointed to the duplicity of Josef. It was like finding one’s brother was a thief or a murderer ... She felt the prickly chill of icy perspiration on her forehead.

Alan Cresswell turned and smiled as he saw her. She thought he looked as if he suddenly decided to come to meet them, but was not sure. In the tide of blackness that was rushing over her, she felt her limbs, her life, drift like some hapless thing unanchored from all it knew. Then someone caught and lifted her as she sank into insensibility.

She came to on a long chair in the house. For a moment she thought it was a compassionate, sympathetic stranger looking down at her, then she remembered the soldier.

‘Lie still,’ he said.

She closed her eyes again, half rebellious. Was he going to start ordering her about too, like his officer?

‘I’ll fetch missy drink.’ It was Chemor’s voice. ‘Then go find mother and tuan. They coming long way round,’ he said, nodding significantly to Liz as she opened her eyes again.

Alan Cresswell supported the glass as her limbs shook. ‘I think it’s shock,’ she reported as the glass rattled on her teeth.

‘I would say that’s about right,’ he agreed, holding on to the glass and pulling up a stool so he could hand it back if she wanted more. ‘The tracker told me you had found your father’s jeep.’ She looked up at him with such an agonised expression he reached forward and took her hand, held it tight.

‘Mysteries about people you love are awful,’ he said.

She suddenly realised he was older than she had first thought, probably not an eighteen-year-old conscript at all. She wondered if there was some personal reason he had made that remark, or whether he was just talking to distract her from whatever thoughts had driven her to escape consciousness.

‘I heard before I came that your father was missing. I’m not sure how that feels – but maybe something like my father’s sudden death.’ He stopped, frowned and looked down at their hands, and instinctively she curled her fingers tighter around his as if the role of comforter could be hers too. ‘I went to his funeral the day before we sailed from Southampton.’

‘I’m so sorry.’ Her concern for him now veneered the raw anxiety she had been feeling; innate sympathy and trained good manners prompted the question, ‘What happened?’

‘I still can’t believe it, really. He was only forty-eight. In the air force all through the war, then dies digging the garden. My mother’s completely floored.’

The unseemliness of rushing a son from his mother within a day of his father’s funeral was outrageous. ‘Wouldn’t the army give you compassionate leave?’

‘I did have extra time, but there was a postmortem and an inquest – and they said as I had an older brother at home they considered my mother was taken care of.’ He paused and looked at her a little shamefaced, ‘Sorry,’ he apologised, ‘I shouldn’t he … you have enough worries.’

She pushed herself upright, denying the need for apology. ‘So your mystery was how he died.’

‘More why, really. The sort of question you ask yourself when you’re hurt. It doesn’t make sense, just gives you a better sense of grievance.’ He smiled ruefully.

‘But at least you know.’ She gritted her teeth for a second to stay the tears, lifting her chin as she had been taught. Shoulders back, chin up, don’t slouch. She remembered being stood in the school gymnasium, her shoulder blades and the small of her back pressed against the wall, to teach her deportment. ‘Are you a regular soldier?’ she asked.

‘No, just your run-of-the-mill conscript.’ He tossed the empty glass in the air and caught it. ‘But I wish our drill sergeant at the Guards’ depot could hear you ask me. He used to say I was “as upright as the bleeding Tower of Pisa!”’

The imitation made her laugh. Then she heard herself say, ‘I think my father’s dead. Now I do think he’s dead. It’s just not knowing where he is, what happened to him.’

He gave her time to take control again. ‘He was in the war, I expect.’

‘He was in the navy. He was always away, always in danger – but I thought when the war was over ... ’ She looked around as if scanning not just the lounge but the whole terrorised countryside. ‘But we’ve just swopped one battle for another.’

‘That was another thing my mother took so hard, my being sent out to a battle area when her husband and first son had fought all through until 1945. She wrote to her Member of Parliament.’

‘Did she have an answer?’

‘He came to Southampton to see the troop ship off.’

They both laughed. Looking in each other’s eyes they saw the rueful understanding and laughed again but softer, like echoes of people in old age talking of lost loves.

The sound was that of a man presented with an intriguing emotional problem he wanted to solve, but was totally unsure how to tackle it.

Liz studied him as he now tossed the glass in a series of rapid arcs from hand to hand, thinking of the sketch she had made of him. How strange that he should come to Rinsey! She weighed what she now knew, weighing the sadness in his life with her impression, and yet there was still more, some quality that she could not name in words or drawings – not yet, anyway. She felt she might well have echoed his ‘Hmm’ for she was just as fascinated.

He held the glass suddenly still and caught her studying him. They both smiled again, very carefully.

‘I think I can hear your mother coming.’ He rose to his feet and, backing away, looked once more a young, tall, awkward soldier in jungle green. Desolate was how she felt as he moved away towards the door.

Blanche came in quickly, anxiety making her forgetful of her own exhaustion. She noted the glass in the young man’s hand and the complete lack of vagueness in her daughter’s face. ‘No wonder you felt faint going off after Chemor! What did that achieve?’

*

All the whole expedition achieved was related to the police inspector from Ipoh and his sergeant early the next morning. Liz was surprised when all those who had visited the fails, and Alan Cresswell, were interviewed separately by Inspector Aba. ‘As if we’re suspects,’ she complained.

After her interview she admitted to herself she had told far more about the missing Josef than she would had her mother been present, even going back to her first sighting of him coming through the back garden.

Chemor also spent a long time with the police and afterwards led them off through the plantation. She was helping her mother prepare a curry tiffin for everyone when they returned by the back way.

‘The inspector’s uniform looks a bit worse for wear.’ She drew her mother’s attention to the window.

They watched as George joined the police and Chemor. A serious conference seemed to be developing and the guardsman was beckoned over.

Liz wondered about going out to join them, but judged it looked like a closed circle of men making decisions.

‘Men only, I think,’ Blanche said, as if reaching the same conclusion.

‘And it’s not about where the perimeter wire is going to be,’ Liz was certain. ‘They look as if they’ve got their hands tied to their sides, they’re keeping them so still!’

‘They know we’re watching.’

The serious talk went on for some time, then the inspector seemed to reach some decision and all of them nodded.

‘That was unanimous, anyway,’ Blanche commented with dark irony.

‘I’ll go and see what they’re discussing.’

‘They’d stop. Just watch.’

The inspector stepped back as if leaving his final words for approval. George nodded several times and moved forward, hand outstretched as if ready to help. Instructions now from inspector to sergeant, who saluted his acceptance, then more tentatively to the soldier. He rubbed his chin speculatively, then seemed to make a suggestion that rather spoiled the momentum. The men went back to the circle. The inspector spoke rapidly again; George put his hand on the young man’s shoulder.

Liz saw Alan glance towards the kitchen window where they stood, then he made the dismissive open-handed gesture of one who has tried to help but has been turned down. She would ask him what it was all about. She was deciding to go and tell him about the spare charpoy in the old nursery at the first opportunity, as the inspector nodded himself away from the others and came towards the kitchen door.

‘Mrs Hammond.’ He bowed himself into the kitchen. ‘More men are being detailed to come immediately so we can make a thorough search both around the jeep and around your house.’ He paused, then pronounced in more serious and ponderous tones, ‘Also farther afield for the son of your former manager.’

‘What are you expecting to find?’ Blanche asked.

‘Well ... ’ The inspector paused to put his finger ends together as if steadying himself against this English mem and her disconcerting directness. ‘We cannot afford to overlook anything. Mr Harfield’s man found much on his own, so my trained men may find ... much more.’ He smiled disarmingly.

That afternoon there was a message from Bukit Kinta for George to return immediately – some difficulties with one of the dredgers.

‘Shall I try to ring back,’ Blanche asked.

‘No, I’d better go. It’s getting on for time and I’ve a mechanic whose favourite tool is a big hammer if I’m not there to restrain him.’

It seemed to Liz that hardly had the mine manager left Rinsey than his men digging holes for the fencing and lighting posts became severely hampered by the police, whose search was closing around the bungalow. Some of the officers were working slowly over the area just looking, others with stout bamboo poles prodding and poking the ground.

‘I wish they’d hurry up,’ Liz exclaimed, thinking she had spent most of her day watching men take decisions and do things, while she and her mother wandered around the bungalow from window to window, as if the mental seige they felt under also restricted them physically.

Blanche came to her side, inhaling on yet another cigarette. ‘Those poles!’ Liz exclaimed. ‘Is that all really necessary? What are they doing?’

‘I just know enough about gardening to know a cane goes into the ground much easier where it has been dug.’

She had hardly screwed out her cigarette in the ashtray on the kitchen windowsill, and Liz just begun to put together the possible implications of what her mother had said, when one of the men shouted. Those nearby hurried that way, then the inspector arrived at a run.

The two women watched as the inspector took a pole from his man and gently probed into the earth under the great tree.

In a curious kind of flashback it seemed to Liz she saw her father sitting under the tree, with herself as a child reaching up and begging to look at a sketch he had made of her as she sat at his feet. It was like looking into a picture containing a picture of the original and on the picture another representation of the same scene. She felt a strange conviction that if only her mind had been capacious enough to hold all the images together, it would have been possible to go back in time to the original, to that very time.

So was the image confirmation of the worst possible scenario? Never had she felt so vulnerable, so unprotected.

The kitchen window seemed suddenly like a proscenium arch, with overgrown lawn as theatre apron, the trees a backdrop with policemen and poles. Friendly guardsman entering and coming towards front stage, while lesser players entered stage left, carrying spades.