Alec grinned at the news. ‘Join the club, lad! I was in the bog earlier on and just happened to hear voices passing outside. It was the Welsh wizard and Lena Franklin — she was giving him hell for being so jealous about Jimmy Robertson. Virtually accused him of shooting the poor bugger!’
Tom could not help being intrigued by these local dramas, in spite of his better self telling him to mind his own business.
‘What did our gasman have to say to that?’ he asked.
Alec shrugged forlornly. ‘Dunno, they walked out of earshot straight away. Short of running after them with my pants around my ankles, I couldn’t get the rest of the squabble.’
When they all met half an hour later under the awning to eat, the grouping had changed somewhat. Diane was pointedly sitting with Doris Hawkins, Lena and Alfred Morris, leaving Peter Bright with a sullen-looking David Meredith on another table. Joan Parnell grasped the opportunity to slide next to the surgeon on the picnic benches, with another of the QA captains filling the fourth place. Tom naturally shepherded Lynette to another table, where Alec and Clarence Bottomley were sitting.
The last glow of light reddened the horizon, the palms silhouetted blackly against the sky. With the gentle swish of the sea as a background, and a pretty girl at his side, Tom Howden felt as if the Malayan Emergency had been conjured up merely for his benefit. He found it hard to believe that forty thousand men were engaged in a bloody campaign up and down this lovely country, though at home this was already being called ‘The Forgotten War’.
‘Could have been posted to Catterick — or some gloomy dump in West Germany,’ observed Alec, as if reading his friend’s mind. ‘Not bad this, romantic setting, good beer, plenty of grub and very convivial company!’
Tom had to agree, though his ever-present Geordie conscience nagged him later that night, as he lay in the chalet, listening to the chirp of the cicadas and the occasional screech of a monkey. This ‘emergency’ — for the Government stubbornly refused to call it a ‘war’ because of its effect on planter’s insurance premiums — was no fun for a hell of a lot of people. The previous day, he had taken blood samples from three very ill soldiers, young men like himself, called up for National Service, who had come in from a week’s patrol in the jungle. The lads had had to sleep in water in the swamps, contaminated by rat’s urine, which had infected them with the leptospirosis germ. It could be fatal, as could the many cases of malaria which he saw on blood-slides in the laboratory every day. Amoebic dysentery, hepatitis, scrub typhus, encephalitis and a host of other tropical nasties lurked to disable or even kill the vulnerable squaddies. Though the terrorist attacks seemed to have passed their zenith, there was always the danger of a road or rail ambush and the hand-to-hand combats in the ulu and the deep jungle still took its toll of young lives. As he lay listening to Alec snorting in his sleep, Tom thought that only a quirk of fate prevented him from being one of those lads with Weil’s disease. If he had not got his scholarship to medical school, he might well have been on that jungle patrol, instead of living well in an Officers’ Mess, able to have a romantic weekend with attractive nursing officers. With this philosophical guilt revolving in his head, he soon fell asleep, to dream of drizzle-soaked pavements and the corner chip shop in a cold and miserable Gateshead.
On Sunday, they arrived back at the hospital in the early evening, before darkness fell, as part of the road back from Lumut was in a ‘black area’ and was under curfew outside daylight hours. Tired from too much sun and exertion, they scattered to their messes and their rooms, to get washed and dressed for dinner.
In the RAMC Mess, most gravitated to the anteroom for a beer and a nostalgic chat about the weekend, to the annoyance of those who had had to stay behind and look after the hospital.
‘When’s the Old Man back?’ asked Percy.
Morris signed Number One’s chit for his Tiger before replying.
‘He’s coming up on the night train, but I’ll bet he’ll be holding Morning Prayers as usual, so don’t think of staying in bed.’
The discussion settled, as it often did, on to the colonel’s strange behaviour. Major Martin, the senior physician was there, as his wife had gone off to the Cameron Highlands for a week and he came to eat in the Mess. He seemed genuinely worried about the state of Desmond O’Neill’s mental health.
‘Damned difficult situation, with him outranking us all and being the CO,’ he said gravely. ‘But I think there’s something seriously amiss with him. If it was you behaving like that, Alf, I’d get the Command Psychiatrist up from Singapore and give you a going over!’
‘Why don’t you do a dummy run on Percy Loosemore?’ said Peter Bright acidulously, having suffered much from the dermatologist’s sarcastic humour about his personal affairs.
Clarence Bottomley’s languid accents cut off Percy’s retort.
‘Joan Parnell was telling me that Matron’s concerned about the colonel’s antics, too. It seems he’s been lurking around their mess and the QAOR’s billet at dead of night. When she tackled him about it, he claimed he was concerned about prowlers!’
‘And this business of the armoury is strange,’ cut in Tom Howden. ‘One of my Malay technicians came to me on Friday and asked if I could do anything about the postings. I was going to see you about it, Alf.’
The Administrative Officer grunted. ‘I already know the problem, Tom. What did your MOR want?’
‘He said that two of his pals, who had been on a lot of night duty at the arms kote, had suddenly been posted off to BMH Kamunting, though one had only come down from there two months ago. The other has a wife and kids living in the kampong near here and it was making life very difficult for them.’
‘What’s going on, Alf?’ asked Eddie Rosen. ‘You must have authorized the moves.’
Morris sighed. ‘I tried to put the colonel off, but he insisted. It was he who demanded that they went. I couldn’t get any proper explanation from him, just some blather about weapons security after all the recent trouble.’
John Martin shook his head sadly. ‘The man’s acting very oddly, especially since his wife went away. This business with the Quartermaster is another example, he seems to be getting more and more paranoid.’
As usual, Percy Loosemore seemed to have the best information about this particular problem.
‘I went down with Robbie Burns to the Gunners’ Mess in the garrison the other night. After he’d filled himself up with Johnnie Walker, he started babbling and reckoned that O’Neill was threatening to have him court-martialled over him fiddling the stores. Robbie got very aggressive and began ranting that he’d swing for the bastard one of these days! I had to drag him home before he said something too outrageous.’
Alfred Morris, already with too many problems on his plate, looked even more worried at this. ‘I hope to God that Robbie doesn’t do anything stupid,’ he muttered. ‘With a grudge like that and a few whiskies inside him, he’s not a chap to meet on a dark night!’
ELEVEN
Steven Blackwell was another worried man, as he sat alone in his office early on Monday morning. A Telex had come in over the weekend from the Police Headquarters in Kuala Lumpur, carrying an enquiry from the Assistant Commissioner wanting an update about progress in the Robertson investigation. Usually, the superintendent in Tanah Timah was given a fairly free hand, KL rarely breathing down his neck about cases, but it seemed that this death had come to the ears of the High Commissioner in Government House.
Though Steven had already assured his superiors that this was not a terrorist shooting, the murder of a British planter was being taken seriously by the representatives of Whitehall. The political set-up in Malaya was complicated and was likely to become more so as pressure for independence grew with the run-down of colonialism. The ‘Federation of Malaya’ consisted of nine separate states, though Singapore, Malacca and Penang remained British Crown Colonies. Each state had a Sultan, a nominal head, who took it in turns to be overall ‘king’, but the real administration and the efficient infrastructure was run by the British. Independence was being pushed hard by the Malay population, even though the numerous Chinese and Indians dominated the commercial and professional life. The problem was that many Chinese who, with British help had fought a three-year guerrilla war against the Japanese, now wanted a Communist state and had returned to the jungle to fight for it, with open assistance from Red China.