Blanche had looked but said nothing until the moment she was alone with her daughter. Then it was as if she demanded of Rinsey rather than Liz, ‘Where in God’s name is Neville? No one here at all — his car gone, his manager gone, his workers gone.’
‘We’ll find him!’ Liz was convinced it was true. ‘He’ll be back.’ Hadn’t he always come back from the war, from sea battles, the dangers of which she could only guess at? ‘We certainly can’t do anything more tonight. Tomorrow’s another day,’ she heard herself say.
‘Very profound.’
‘Perhaps you should have a drink.’
‘There are times when I believe you think I’m an alcoholic; either that or you’re trying to make me one.’
‘Perhaps we’ll both have one.’ Liz wondered how much of her mother’s daughter she was.
‘I would have time to drive you back to Bukit Kinta first thing tomorrow,’ Sturgess said as they returned to join him in the lounge.
Blanche shook her head. ‘We’re home for good. Will you have a drink? Coffee?’
He refused. Taking one of the rifles, he left them to go and sit on the verandah, where he said he intended to spend the night.
Liz uncharitably thought it was a pity they hadn’t got a sheriff’s star he could pin on. She still could not reconcile the images Sturgess was making her consider with the laughter she remembered echoing through these same rooms as she and Lee — and Josef, if her mother was not about — played hide and seek. It had been peek-a-boo when they were younger; with Anna, her gentle, smiling Malay amah, leading the game. Barefooted, the lithe young Anna would surprise her charges from all directions, stopping only when they giggled so much she was afraid it might harm them. Liz curled her arms around her waist, remembering the ache of childhood laughter.
She left her mother with a gin in bed and went to her room. It was so much smaller than she remembered. She had grown, and got used to the spacious rooms at Pearling.
She spread one of the clean sheets they had found over the mattress, but before she could rest there was still something she must do — she felt she must really get to grips with Rinsey again. Perhaps she needed to address it as her mother had done. There had to be some communication or perhaps even just some solitary standing and listening, some reaching out of the severed ends of threads towards each other.
There were many impressions of their return she wanted to sketch, a visual record of emotion — the peninsula and islands as they flew in; the bumboats crowding Singapore river; a hand reaching to steal a cake; an oriental dragon on a shop front — but her home was still an enigma she could not begin to put on to paper.
She left her room quietly, having no wish to be challenged by their watchman.
In the back doorway, she listened to the generator thudding like a heartbeat, always a sign of life in remote bungalows. One day the electric wires would travel even as far as Rinsey, her father had written that and about improvements he was making — ‘from the ground up’ had been his words. She smiled, they knew what he meant now. She clenched her fists, lifted her face to the sky and wished, breathing a message quietly into the soft damp night: ‘We’re here! Come home soon.’
She listened to all the noises that would cease only with dawn. Near to her ear the high-pitched whine of the mosquitoes, deep in the jungle the whooping communication of orang-utans, the high-pitched scream of lesser monkeys, the booming of great frogs, and so many other noises told of a teeming life that none but the sakais — the aborigines, the real jungle dwellers — could even guess at.
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.’