Tiger, Tiger
Philip Caveney
Malaya in the late 1960s was at last casting off the yoke of British colonial rule. But Harry ‘Tiger’ Sullivan, a retired military officer, had made his career in Malaya for almost two decades had nowhere else to go.Well respected for his distinguished military service, and even more so for his legendary skill in tracking and killing man-eating tigers, Harry Sullivan’s life was a comfortable and well-ordered one, until the arrival of Bob Beresford, a brash and handsome Australian.Melissa Tremayne, an eighteen-year-old British expatriate bored with the slow pace of life in Malaya, had always been like the daughter Sullivan never had, but one look at Bob Beresford makes Melissa determined to win his not-so-fatherly affection.The rivalry between the two men intensifies with the sudden appearance of a man-eating tiger, emerging from the jungle at unpredictable intervals to attach and terrorise Malayan villagers. Bob wants the glory of killing the beast, while Melissa is pursuing a different kind of trophy – Bob himself. Sullivan finds himself drawn into a trial of manhood that he is unwilling to undertake. The tension builds steadily towards a thrilling climax in the Malayan jungle.
Tiger, Tiger
Philip Caveney
Copyright (#ulink_5918fde1-4143-5c63-a018-6b006f4ade8f)
This is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
Harper
An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd.
1 London Bridge Street,
London SE1 9GF
Published by HarperCollinsPublishers 2015
First published in 1984 by Granada Publishing
Copyright © Philip Caveney 1984
Philip Caveney asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
Cover design layout © HarperCollinsPublishers 2015
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
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Source ISBN: 9780246124739
Ebook Edition © APRIL 2015 ISBN: 9780008133283
Version: 2015-04-15
A glossary of foreign terms is provided at the end of the book
Dedication (#ulink_dcba8e00-8081-5ad0-bfff-78e7081c80f6)
MARION BURNS.
ROBBIE ROBINSON.
Good friends both, sadly missed.
This book is for them.
Contents
Cover (#u54b65c07-6644-5641-b95a-3194f3690846)
Title Page (#ua5b8e13c-6a1c-55f6-ab33-a5ab153d68fe)
Copyright (#ulink_745cb349-9ac3-5827-9505-9fcdf34d18bd)
Dedication (#ulink_b3eb6a18-ab78-5fd1-9745-537e1b080636)
One
Chapter 1 (#ulink_7fcd70a3-2e55-5a35-8000-befcea10ec15)
Chapter 2 (#ulink_1ce29feb-9d90-5238-a3a4-9f5adec069af)
Chapter 3 (#ulink_3ec94ca9-1d1e-5b54-8510-2d2717aeddc2)
Chapter 4 (#ulink_14f284b2-6933-5d51-9a9b-044c10b3beb2)
Chapter 5 (#ulink_10defe4b-364e-5710-aed6-3fb5f2b0b862)
Chapter 6 (#ulink_daa66717-a30a-566d-979b-6ece831f4628)
Chapter 7 (#ulink_fa53495b-0d1f-5891-9ed2-234ad7e0a780)
Chapter 8 (#ulink_37804c6d-06c1-5ce9-b6ef-7531de0aec01)
Chapter 9 (#ulink_af74ac27-fdd7-5405-bf4a-a900298c492f)
Chapter 10 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 11 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 12 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 13 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 14 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 15 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 16 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 17 (#litres_trial_promo)
Two
Chapter 18 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 19 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 20 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 21 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 22 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 23 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 24 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 25 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 26 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 27 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 28 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 29 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 30 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 31 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 32 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 33 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 34 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 35 (#litres_trial_promo)
Glossary (#litres_trial_promo)
Keep Reading (#litres_trial_promo)
About the Author (#litres_trial_promo)
By Philip Caveney (#litres_trial_promo)
About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)
ONE (#ulink_aee71761-832b-5a05-9ad5-d5d0071ac26e)
Chapter 1 (#ulink_f29e93df-aa43-51cc-9e00-43fd553fc3b5)
The afternoon sun was still fierce. Haji lay stretched out in the shade of a bamboo thicket, his head resting on his great paws. Aligned with the shadows cast through the bamboo screen, the jet-black stripes that crisscrossed his tawny body served to render him virtually invisible. He lay stock-still, but for all that he was not comfortable. There was a dull ache of hunger in the pit of his stomach and his right forepaw throbbed relentlessly where the spines of a tok landak had struck him some weeks ago. He had long since chewed the protruding ends away, but the barbed heads had remained buried deep in the flesh of his foot, where they had begun to suppurate. The earlier agonizing pain had given way to a constant nagging ache that was with him every moment of the day and night.
He was an old tiger, and sixteen years of prowling swamps and jungles without serious harm should have taught him more caution. But the hunting had been bad for a long time now and the porcupine’s succulent flesh had been a tempting proposition. Perhaps Haji was simply not as fast as he had once been. At any rate, in attempting to flip the spiny creature over onto its back to expose the vulnerable underbelly, something had gone wrong. The tok landak had scuttled away to safety, leaving Haji roaring with pain and frustration. Since then, the hunting had not got any easier.
Haji lifted his head slightly and stared through the screen of bushes into the kampong, twenty yards to his right. A large group of Upright cubs were playing a noisy game of Sepak Takraw, kicking a rattan ball to each other over an improvised net. The cubs were very skilful and the ball rarely touched the ground. The frenzied cries and shouts of their strange squeaky language echoed on the still air. Haji’s yellow eyes took in every movement. He watched with curiosity and a little fear; he feared the Uprights as he feared anything which he did not readily understand, but something had called him from the depths of the jungle this day and he had forsaken the constant hunt for food in order to travel out into patches of secondary jungle and scrub. He knew he would not rest easy until it was done. Now, here he lay, closer to the Uprights’ lair than he had ever been, and there was nothing for him to do but lie silent and still while he watched.
The Uprights had always mystified him: these strange hairless creatures that walked on two legs, possessed incredible powers, could march around the jungle, seemingly oblivious to the fact that a bigger and stronger creature was lying mere inches from where their tiny feet trod. On the few occasions when Haji had actually made his presence known, the Uprights had all reacted in a variety of extraordinary ways. Some had simply fled, howling and screaming in a most curious fashion, while others had clambered clumsily onto the branches of nearby trees. Most confusing of all, two of these uprights had on separate occasions produced some black sticks that roared fire at Haji, a moving fire that seemed to tear at the bushes and earth, shattering it into abrupt movement. On these two misadventures, it had been Haji who chose to run away, for such things were not then within the range of his experience. He knew now that the black sticks carried death to those animals who did not run quite fast enough, though he could not comprehend how such a thing might be brought about. Once, while Haji had been painstakingly stalking a large rusa, an Upright had approached from another direction, pointed his black stick at the beast, and the roaring fire had struck the rusa so hard that his whole body shook. Then he had fallen, as dead as a stone.
Haji put out his long rasping tongue and licked absentmindedly at his paw. The action revived fresh spasms of pain from the wound and he growled softly at the discomfort. It hurt his pride to think how clumsy he’d been with the tok landak, but it was a pride tempered with healthy respect. He would have to be very hungry indeed before he tackled another of the wretched beasts.
An extra loud yell from the cubs focused his attention, and suddenly something crashed down into the bushes by his side, startling him and almost putting him to flight. But he caught himself as he realized that it was just the rattan ball, which had sailed over the heads of the nearest cubs and come to a halt mere feet from Haji’s outstretched paws. He sniffed at it suspiciously, but it lay quite still and harmless and he relaxed again. After a few moments, there was a pounding of naked feet on earth and one of the cubs approached the undergrowth. He snatched up a length of stick and began to poke around in the bushes, probably more wary of snakes than of anything else. He did not see Haji lying in the shade of the bamboo. Haji watched with calm interest. The Upright was small and carried no black stick. He seemed to offer little threat.
The other cubs began to shout and wave. Tired of the game, they were moving on. They beckoned for the lone cub to accompany them, but he pointed into the bushes and jabbered something in his curious high-pitched voice. Evidently the rattan ball belonged to him and he wanted to retrieve it. The others wandered away and it was very quiet now. The Upright turned back and began to employ the stick more aggressively, muttering softly to himself as he searched. He moved a few steps nearer to Haji and looked there, stooping down on one knee and pushing the thick leaves aside with his bare arm. He was so close now that Haji could smell his half-naked little body; the faint odour of sweat drifting from beneath his armpits; the aroma of rice and cooked meat on his breath. Now, the cub’s gaze fell on the bamboo thicket. Through the gaps in the upright stalks, he could perceive the shadowy sphere that was his ball. With an exclamation of relief, he moved forward and thrust an arm into the thicket to try and retrieve the ball. It was quite a stretch.
Haji gazed at the little brown hand as it grasped the ball, no more than two feet from his own paws. It was a strange-looking arrangement, more like a soft brown crab with wriggling feet than anything else. But it gripped the ball surely and snatched it out from the cover into sunlight. The cub got to his feet as though to walk away, but then he hesitated, sniffing the air suspiciously. He gazed intently into the thicket, scratching his head in puzzlement. Then he sank down again onto one knee, reached out to push the screen of bamboo aside …
‘Ché!’ A mother’s voice from somewhere in the kampong. ‘Ché!’ The cub frowned, half turned, stared off into the jumble of tumbledown dwellings as though reluctant to answer his mother’s call. He turned back to the bamboo, reached out his hands again …
‘Ché!’ Again the call, more insistent now. It was time to eat, or wash, or sleep. The cub’s tiny fingers, curled around the stems of bamboo, slid gently away. With a sigh, he collected his ball and trudged wearily homewards, forgetting now the unfamiliar odour that had initially roused his curiosity.
Haji watched the cub walk away into the lengthening shadows of late afternoon. Soon, the sun would die bloodily on the horizon and the brief twilight would come and go in silence. In the high-stilted kampong houses, oil lamps would be lit and prayers would be muttered to safeguard the villagers from the demons of advancing darkness. And for Haji, the long night’s hunt would begin.
He got to his feet and, silent as a ghost, he limped away.
Harry ‘Tiger’ Sullivan was occupying his favourite table at the Officers’ Mess, Kuala Hitam barracks. It was a table like all the others, but it was placed in a strategic position where the sitter could take in every corner of the Mess at a glance. Harry had been using the same table for something like eighteen years now, and it was an unspoken custom in the Mess to leave it free whenever Harry was around. In retirement, he used the table as often as he had when he was a Lieutenant Colonel with the resident regiment, the Fourth Gurkha Rifles. He had now been retired for five years but was as much a central figure at the Mess as he had ever been. Nobody would have dreamed of questioning his presence there.
Trimani, the white-coated Tamil barman, approached the table with the customary chilled glass of ‘Tiger’ beer. The care and reverence with which Trimani went about the task made it almost a religious ceremony. The glass was wearing a clean towelling band to make it more agreeable to the touch.
‘Thank you, Trimani.’ Harry put a hand into the breast pocket of his cotton jacket and pulled out a leather wallet containing five cigars. He extracted one, cut the end with a silver gadget he always carried, and placed the cigar between his lips. Trimani was waiting with a match and Harry puffed contentedly, releasing clouds of aromatic smoke.
‘The Tuan has had a good day?’ ventured Trimani politely. Like every other aspect of the ceremony it was a habitual question.
‘Very good, Trimani, thank you very much.’ And Harry dropped a fifty-cent coin into the barman’s silver tray. With a respectful nod, Trimani retired to his usual place behind the bar.
Harry sighed. The truth of the matter was, of course, that it had been a bloody boring sort of day. Most days for him had been bloody boring since he had left the forces; or more accurately, since he had been obliged to leave the forces. He had always felt bitter about that.
Harry was sixty-seven years old, but few people would have thought it. He was a thin wiry individual with not a pound of excess fat on his body. Though iron grey, his hair was thick (and a shade on the long side by forces standards) and his moustache was immaculately trimmed. He was undoubtedly the most popular officer that the regiment had ever possessed, and he was regarded now by the men with a peculiar kind of affection that elevated him almost to the role of a mascot. His connections with the Fourth went back a long way. He had originally served with them as a junior officer in India during the Burma campaign, where he had steadily risen through the ranks. He had come across to Malaya with them in 1948, where he commanded them during the ten-year ‘confrontation’ with the Communist terrorists. He had seen the task through admirably, and had expected to move on with them to Sarawak in 1962 to help quell the Brunei Revolt. But a medical examination had discovered a tricky heart problem and he had been promptly – and rather unceremoniously, he thought – dumped in favour of a younger man. Shortly after that, he had been ‘bowler-hatted’, though he had moved heaven and earth in an attempt to stay in longer. It had been to no avail. He was sixty-three years old and, whatever his views concerning his own health, he must stand aside and give somebody else a chance. And so, reluctantly, he had settled down to enjoy an idyllic, well-pensioned retirement.
And that was where his problems had really begun. A man who had spent his life with energy, authority, and decisiveness did not take very kindly to lazing about on beaches or beside swimming pools, and there was not a great deal more to do in this lonely outpost. Situated in the Dungun district of South Trengganu, on the east coast of the Malay Peninsula, the area was little more than several isolated kampongs, the barracks and a few accompanying dwellings, dotted at intervals of a mile or so along the main coast road to Kuala Trengganu, the state capital. All around lay thick and virtually inaccessible jungle. The barracks had been established as a forward grouping point in the campaign against the C.T.s, who had known only too well how to use the jungle to their own advantage. But the emergency had officially ended in 1960, and most of the troops had been dispatched back to the main barracks in Singapore. Now Kuala Hitam was maintained by what amounted to a skeleton crew; worse still, recent rumours of major cutbacks in the Gurkha regiments had become more than just rumours. The numbers were to be whittled down to a mere ten thousand men. For the rest, the prospects were nothing more than a meagre pension or redundancy payment and a one-way ticket back to their homes in India, where they were expected to pick up from where they had left off in 1940. The decision meant inevitable poverty and heartbreak for the majority of men, but, as always, the Gurkhas had accepted their fate with quiet humility. Now it was simply a question of waiting. Harry shared the feelings of regret, but was unable to change anything. His voice, which had once carried so much power in these matters, was now rendered useless; a vague, impotent whimper.
Harry raised the glass of beer to his lips and drank a silent toast to an old adversary, the head of which glowered down at him from above the doorway of the Mess. The taxidermist, as usual, had done a good job, but somehow they were never able to capture that certain look. The tiger’s eyes were blind glass, staring vacantly down at the peaceful crowd below. The expression of feral rage was totally contrived. He had died with a look of complete peace on his face; and, in dying, he had gazed up at Harry, seeming to ask, Why?
‘Because you’re a cattle-killer,’ Harry had answered in his mind, knowing in his soul that this was not really the truth. His words had rung hollow, and after some deliberation, he had had to admit that the months of trailing and tracking and sitting up nights over the stinking carcasses of slain cows and goats had all been done in the name of ‘sport.’ Cattle-killing was merely the excuse, a means to an end. The look in that dying tiger’s eyes had shaken him badly. He could not rid his mind of the image for days afterwards, and he had never gone hunting again. That had been back in 1958. He still cleaned and oiled the rifle regularly, more from force of habit than from any conscious intention to use it again. He had impulsively bequeathed the trophy to his regiment, having no desire to put it in his own home. He had realized too late that the beast would always be there in the Mess, staring down at him in silent accusation. Thus, another little ceremony was born. A toast from one tiger to another. After all, it was the death of this cat and many others like him that had earned Harry his nickname; what more fitting celebration than to drink to the creature in ‘Tiger’ beer, that infamous beverage that was both the delight and the ruin of the armed forces in Malaysia?
The beer was a delicious shock to his dehydrated insides. He set the glass down carefully and tilted back his head a little, allowing the electric fan above him to direct a cooling breeze onto his face and neck. He closed his eyes and gave a small sigh of contentment.
‘Bloody hell, Trim, pour me a big one! I’ve got a mouth like a badger’s bum! Oh no, you don’t, lads, the first round is mine …’
Harry opened his eyes again, the peace and quiet having been rudely shattered by an unfamiliar Australian voice that had all the delicacy of a drum kit falling down a flight of stairs. A small group of young officers had just trooped into the Mess, headed by somebody who was a stranger to Harry. He was a tall athletic fellow, with close-cropped fair hair. Evidently a civilian, judging by his sloppy T-shirt and blue jeans; even out of uniform, military men maintained a certain bearing that was unmistakable.
‘Now, alright, Jim, what’re you having? What? I should bloody well say so! And how about you? Aw, for chrissakes, have whatever you like! No, no, honestly … make that a double, Trim, and make sure it is a bloody double, too! Have one yerself while you’re about it …’
Harry frowned. There was not a man in the world who could call him a racist. After all, he had worked side by side with the Gurkhas for half his life, and he thought them one of the most agreeable races he had ever encountered. Likewise, he loved and respected the Malays, Indians, and Chinese who peopled the Peninsula; the homely Burmese people he had met in the war. He had even come to honour the Japanese nation against whom he had fought for so long. But try as he might to be fair and totally objective, he could not bring himself to like the Australians. He imagined that, somewhere, there must exist an antipodean male that was not loud, boorish, and obsessed with booze and dirty stories. Unfortunately, he had yet to meet this man.
‘Here, this one’ll kill ya! There’s this bloke, see, goes to the doctor cause he can’t get it up anymore. His sheila’s goin’ berserk with ’im, reckons he don’t love her anymore. Anyway, the doctor tells ’im to drop his trousers and when he does, the bloke’s got this great big …’ The rest of the story was obliterated by a burst of raucous laughter from the young officers.
Harry was quietly outraged by this lack of respect. In his day, a certain restraint had always been observed around the Mess; it had been a place where gentlemen congregated. Of course, there had always been room for a certain amount of high-spirits, but the telling of off-colour jokes in a voice loud enough to wake the dead seemed to illustrate just how drastically standards had dropped in the last decade. What seemed most upsetting to Harry was the fact that the young officers were openly encouraging this oaf to do his worst. Well, it was plain that somebody had to draw the line, even if it simply meant removing oneself from the scene of the outrage as quickly as possible. Harry drained his glass, banged it down on the table with just enough force to turn a few heads at the bar. Then he stood up, nodded curtly to Trimani, and strolled out of the room. Trimani smiled apologetically as Harry passed by him. He, at least, understood.
Outside, the night was humid and cacophonous with the chirping of a myriad insects. Some large fat moths flapped vainly around the lantern that overhung the entrance to the Mess. The grizzled old trishaw man who had appointed himself Harry’s customary driver for this journey eased his creaking vehicle around to the base of the white stone steps. In the glow of his oil lamp, beneath the wide brim of his coolie hat, the man’s wizened face looked almost skeletal. He grinned gummily.
‘Selamat petang, Tuan. You leave early, yes?’
‘Yes, we leave now.’ Harry smiled warmly at the old Chinese man, whose name he had never enquired after. He could never remember Chinese names anyway. ‘Tonight not good for me. Too noisy.’
The driver nodded. He too was a seeker after peace and understood only too well. He waited patiently while Harry climbed into the seat, then gratefully accepted the cigar that was passed to him. He leaned forward as Harry’s lighter flared, and inhaled with slow satisfaction. Then he leaned back, removed the cigar, and grinned again.
‘Good,’ he murmured. ‘Good cigar. I thank the Tuan.’ He engaged his sandalled feet on the pedals and his skinny legs performed the motion they had been making half his life. The trishaw accelerated away from the Mess, crunching on the gravel drive and then turning out onto the deserted road, its lantern blazing a lonely message in the darkness. They began to pick up speed, the wheels making a dry whirring sound as they sped past the black silhouettes of secondary jungle that flanked their path. Riding in this way, smoking with his old travelling companion, Harry felt a peculiar peace settle around him, and he found himself wishing that time could be suspended, and that this long gliding ride through the night might somehow last forever.
Chapter 2 (#ulink_eda896e2-f8da-5a43-bdf4-08b956fa3aaa)
Haji was still patrolling the western end of his extensive home range. It was always necessary to keep on the move, because potential prey soon became alerted to his presence in an area and promptly moved on. It took Haji around ten to twelve days to complete a trip around his territory, which consisted of a rough triangle of fifteen square miles. Right now, he was prowling the secondary jungle that ran beside the coast road, for he had long ago learned that troops of monkeys often chose to congregate there, thinking themselves safe so near to the wandering grounds of the Uprights. When they thought themselves to be beyond danger, they sometimes got careless and were slow to react to an unexpected attack … but tonight, Haji was out of luck. Somehow the monkeys had got wind of his notion and stayed safely in the topmost limbs of the Meranti trees.
Haji was unhappy, but quite used to such hard times. Even when the hunting was good, he could expect eighteen unsuccessful stalks for each triumph. The rest of the jungle creatures conspired against him. The monkeys gibbered his presence from the tall trees and the birds, hearing this, quickly took up the cry. The rusa uttered their distinctive ‘pooking’ sound to alert their brothers, whenever their sharp noses picked up the merest trace of that distinctive, musky, tiger smell. Hampered as he was by his wound and his advancing years, Haji was doing well to bring down one kill in thirty, and in between he could expect nothing but long bouts of frantic hunger. When at last he did succeed in killing something, a rusa, a wild pig, sometimes even a fat seladang calf (provided he could snatch the creature away from its massive, highly aggressive parents) then he would gorge himself until his stomach was a bloated obscenity, consuming maybe eighty pounds of meat in one sitting. It had been three days since he had devoured what remained of his last kill, an insubstantial mouse deer that hardly warranted the effort it had taken to stalk it. But hunger dictated its own rules and the instinct for survival kept him moving.
He paused for a moment to listen. Far away to his right, deep in jungle sanctuary, the lonely sound of an argus pheasant calling to his mate. Silence for a moment and then a barking deer sounded an alarm as the wind carried a familiar odour to his nostrils. Haji growled softly to himself and was about to move on when a new sound came to his sensitive ears. He froze in his tracks, snapped his gaze to the roadside at his left. The sound was not made by any kind of animal that he knew of. It was a rapid whirring noise, much too loud to be produced by the wings of any insect. Haji slunk beneath the cover of some large ferns as a light came soaring out of the darkness. He twisted around, holding himself ready to run if need be. For an instant, the twin orbs of his eyes mirrored the bouncing reflection of the light.
A curious vehicle sped into view, a gleaming, clattering, froglike thing in which two Uprights were riding. Haji could see them quite clearly for an instant in the glow of the light, which swung from side to side in front of their heads, like a dangerous firefly. Haji could see the naked wrinkled sternness of their faces, as they gazed unswervingly at the road ahead of them. How foolish to travel in such an unthinking manner, always looking forward when danger might lie in the shadows at either side of them; or was it simply that the Uprights were so powerful, they did not fear the beasts of the jungle? They did not look very powerful, that was for sure.
The Uprights left a curious smell behind them on the wind, a fragrant burning-leaf smell that lingered on the warm air for some moments. Haji sniffed, grimaced, watched as the Uprights sped away into blackness, taking their light with them. For some time, he was still aware of the constant whirring noise, fading gradually into distance. Then his thoughts returned to the sound of the barking deer he had heard before the interruption. He emerged from the bushes and moved right of his original path, heading deeper into jungle, his head down, his mind intent on the long hunt ahead of him.
The barking deer sounded again and Haji homed in on the noise, moving with the calm, silent intent of one who had been hungry for far too long.
The trishaw driver came to a halt outside Harry’s bungalow, part of a small estate just off the coast road, a mile south of the nearest village, Kampong Panjang, which they had passed on the two-mile journey from Kuala Hitam barracks. Harry alighted and pressed a dollar into the driver’s arthritic hand. The fare was always the same, whatever the distance, and the old man would probably have been insulted if Harry tried to give him more than that.
‘Safe journey back,’ he told the Chinaman.
‘Of course, Tuan!’ The old man grinned, waved briefly, and pedalled gamely away, hoping to reach his own home safely. Few trishaw owners ventured to drive at night, preferring to leave it to the taxicab drivers, but this engaging fellow had somehow discovered Harry’s regular Mess nights and would not have dreamed of missing a single one of them. Neither, for that matter, would Harry have dreamed of using another driver.
‘You get to a certain age,’ thought Harry, ‘and all your life becomes a ritual. Has to. The only way you can make any bloody sense of it.’
He unlatched the metal gate and strolled into the large, neatly ordered garden. The path was wide enough to take a car but curiously, in all his years in the army, he had never learned to drive. There had always been somebody to ferry him about and that was the way he preferred to keep things now. He strolled up the path, past banana and papaya trees, whistling tunelessly to himself. The bungalow was like many others, purposely built for British tenants. A long, low, white-painted building with a green slate roof and an adjoining verandah; it was compact, practical and possessed no particular style. The windows were comprised of slatted bars of frosted glass that could be levered open, like venetian blinds, to admit fresh air. These were reinforced by metal bars that had been disguised as wrought-iron decorations in an attempt to make them look more attractive. In fact, they looked quite hideous. Harry, who believed in calling a spade a spade, would have preferred plain upright bars. A more acceptable feature were the sliding metal grills that could be padlocked across the front and back doors of the house. A legacy of more Communist-threatened times, they were still very useful weapons in the constant war against house-thieves that had been going on for many years and showed no signs of letting up yet.
No sooner had Harry inserted his key in the front door and stepped into the house, than Pawn, Harry’s aged amah, came bustling up to greet him. There was a toothy smile of welcome on her wizened little monkey-face and she still held a straw broom with which she had presumably been dusting somewhere. Pawn never stopped work while she was in the house and when there was no work, she quite simply invented some. She lived at Kampong Panjang and usually went home to her own family at five o’clock. But on the nights that Harry went to the Mess, she insisted on staying the night in the amah’s room at the back of the house, to ensure that the ‘Tuan’ was properly looked after when he came in. Harry would quite happily have looked after himself, but once Pawn had an idea fixed firmly in her mind, it was impossible to shake it.
‘Tuan have good time soldiers’ Mess?’ she inquired; and before waiting for a reply, she was hurrying off to the kitchen to prepare the cocoa and biscuits that Harry always had before retiring for the night.
He shook his head ruefully, wondering just exactly how it was that he had managed to get himself saddled with a cranky old creature like Pawn. Most of his acquaintances had pretty young Chinese amahs to care for their needs. It was easy enough to organize: there were countless agencies in Kuala Trengganu that specialized in providing the girls. You simply had to tell them what your preferences were and if the girl turned out to be lazy or inefficient, you simply sent her away and ordered another one. But Pawn now, she’d been a legacy of sorts. She’d worked for the previous occupant of the house, a mining engineer, and the day Harry had moved in she’d just arrived on his doorstep, walked past him into the house, and commenced work. Mind you, it was not as if Harry had any cause for complaint. She was an excellent worker, worth every cent of the one hundred and twenty dollars a month wage she received. This worked out at about fifteen pounds and was considered a decent wage by Malay standards. She was far too proud to accept anything more than her basic salary, but Harry had found that she was not averse to accepting little gifts from time to time, particularly if they were intended for her grandson, Ché, of whom she was very proud. The boy was a bright, articulate twelve-year-old, who sometimes accompanied his grandmother to the ‘Tuan’s’ house and had, as a result, become a great friend of Harry’s. In fact, if the truth were known, Harry doted on the boy, reserving for him the kind of affection that he would have given to his own son, if he had ever sired one.
A photograph of his late wife, Meg, stood on the sideboard. Harry walked over to it now, as he often did, picked it up, and stared thoughtfully at the face he had loved for so many years. She had always been a rather frail sort of creature and it was a wonder that she had ever taken to a life in the tropics as well as she had. She had died quite suddenly, in 1950, a cerebral haemorrhage. They had tried for children most of their married life, but something was evidently wrong with one of them. Ironically enough, the night before Meg had died, the two of them had discussed the possibility of adopting a Malaysian child. They had both been strongly in favour of the idea. Later, that same evening, Meg had awoken from sleep complaining of a terrible headache. She got up to go to the bathroom and fetch some aspirins, but halfway to the door, she had spun around to look at Harry, her face suddenly drained of colour and she had spoken his name once, softly, in a tiny, frightened tone. In that instant, he had somehow known that it was all over for her, that he would never hear her voice again. She had crumpled lifelessly to the floor before Harry could reach her and there was not a thing in the world he could have done to save her. Then, his grief and torment had been indescribable; but now, looking back with the advantage of hindsight, he knew that when his time came, this is how he would want it to be. Quick, clean, a minimum of fuss and pain; far better than lingering on in some hospital ward, a useless, incontinent old fossil. His own father had died that way, during the war. Harry had only been allowed leave to visit him once and he vividly remembered leaving the hospital room for the silence of the corridor outside, where he had proceeded to cry like a baby for several minutes, unable to stop himself. It was not the grief of losing his father that had affected him so; it was more a horror at the appalling loss of dignity the old man was suffering. He had been incapable of doing anything for himself by this time. In Harry’s opinion, all a man had was his dignity. Lose that and you had lost the reason for living. But his father had lived on, a horrifying eighteen months longer in that tiny cheerless hospital room. It was Harry’s personal nightmare to find himself with a similar prospect at the end of his life.
Pawn came bustling in with a silver tray holding the mug of cocoa and two digestive biscuits that constituted Harry’s usual bedtime snack. He sat himself down in his favourite armchair, the tray placed on the table beside him. He glanced through the day’s news in the Straits Times, but there was little that took his interest. Pawn excused herself and retired to her little room. Harry sipped at his cocoa and watched the antics of a couple of chit-chats on the ceiling above his head. The smaller of the two, presumably the male, was chasing his somewhat larger mate around the room, but she seemed to resent his advances, and consequently their antics took in every square inch of the wall and ceiling. Harry soon tired of them and, after locking doors and windows and switching off the lights, he retired to his bedroom. He changed into a pair of silk pyjamas, climbed into bed, and let the mosquito net down around him. He lay down for a few moments with the bedside light on, staring blankly up at the ceiling above his head. A varied collection of moths and other flying insects had congregated in the pool of light reflected on it, but Harry was hardly aware of them. He was thinking of the boorish Australian he had seen in the Mess earlier. For some reason he was not entirely sure of, he felt vaguely threatened by the man’s presence. Perhaps he felt that this man represented the new order here on the archipelago, and perhaps he also realized that his kind was disappearing fast from these parts.
He smiled wryly.
‘I’m an endangered species,’ he murmured, and reaching out he switched out the light. He slept and dreamed he was riding in a trishaw.
Chapter 3 (#ulink_d345fece-13c1-509b-b781-ce0de539463e)
Haji woke from a fitful doze and the world snapped into focus as he opened his large yellow eyes. The first flame of dawn was still an unfulfilled promise on the far horizon and it was cool. The damp, shivering land awaited the first rays of warmth to ignite the spark of life. Haji stretched and yawned, throwing out a long rumbling growl that would have sounded more content had it been fuelled by a full belly. Wasting little time, he struck out along a well-worn cattle track into deep jungle, his eyes and ears alert to anything they might encounter. They were his greatest aids, much more developed than his comparatively poor sense of smell, and the day that they began to fail him would be the day that Haji would admit defeat. But now, there was a terrible hunger, knotting and coiling in his belly, and while his legs still possessed the strength to carry him he would hunt to the best of his ability, and somehow stay alive.
The jungle was beginning to come awake. There was a distant whooping of gibbons in the forest canopy, interspersed with the distinctive ‘Kuang! Kuang!’ cry of an argus pheasant. Black and yellow hornbills fluttered amongst the foliage and there was the familiar weeping tones of the bird that the Malays had named, Burung Anak Mati or ‘bird whose child has died.’ But none of that distracted Haji from his quest for what was good to eat and within his reach. Presently, his ears were rewarded by a rustling in the undergrowth some eighty yards ahead of him. He stopped in his tracks and listened intently. He could hear quite clearly the crunching of a deer’s wide jaws on a bunch of leaves. Haji flattened himself down against the ground and began to move around to his right, keeping himself downwind of his intended prey, hoping to get it in sight. He moved with infinite care and precision, knowing that one telltale rustle in the grass would be enough to frighten the creature away. Slowly, slowly, setting down each foot in a carefully considered spot, he began to shorten the distance between himself and the deer. After twenty minutes, he had worked himself close enough to see it. A rusa, he could glimpse the rust-red hide, dappled by the rising sun. The rusa was nervous. He kept lifting his head between mouthfuls, staring skittishly this way and that. On such occasions, Haji remained still, not moving so much as a muscle. Each time that the deer returned to its meal, he inched forward again, his eyes never leaving the creature for an instant. In this way, another half-hour passed and now Haji was within twenty yards of the rusa; but here, the cover ended. There was a clearing now, over which he could not pass undetected. His only hope was to rush the beast and trust that the resulting panic would confuse his prey long enough for Haji to leap upon it. He flexed his muscles, craned forward, ready to rush upon the deer like a bow from an arrow; and in that instant, another deer further upwind caught the familiar smell of tiger and gave a loud cry of warning.
The rusa wheeled about with a snort, and with a bellow of rage Haji broke from cover, propelling his four hundred pounds of body weight along with tremendous bursts of power from his heavily muscled legs. For an instant, the rusa seemed frozen to the spot with fear, but abruptly the instinct for survival maintained itself and the deer turned and bolted across the clearing with Haji mere inches from his flying heels. But where Haji was already at top speed, the rusa was just approaching his. He lengthened his stride, sailed effortlessly across a fallen tree stump and was off, gathering speed all the time. Haji followed for just a few yards, knowing only too well when he was beaten. He dropped down onto the grass, panting for breath while he watched the rusa recede into distance, tail flashing impertinently at his would-be killer.
Haji fashioned his rage and frustration into a great blasting roar that seemed to shake the ground on which he stood. The noise disturbed a troop of pig-tailed monkeys resting in the top limbs of a nearby Kapok tree. Safe in their leafy sanctuary, they began to chatter and shriek abuse at him, and Haji, blind to everything but his own anger, flung himself at the base of the tree and began to tear at the wood in a frenzy, his great claws rending the soft wood to shreds and scattering bits of tree bark in every direction. The monkeys quietened for a moment, but then, seeing that they were safe, began their impudent mockery again, leaping up and down on the branches and grimacing, while Haji raged vainly, far below them.
At last, his anger ran its course and he drew back from the tree, still growling bitterly beneath his breath. He paced up and down for a moment, ignoring the monkeys, his head low, his eyes fixed to the ground while he waited for the great calm to come to him again. At last it did. He stared once along the track the rusa had taken. No sense in going that way now, the deer’s panic would have alerted every creature for miles in that direction. Haji gave one last roar, but this time it was controlled, decisive. He struck out along a path to his left which led to secondary jungle and, eventually, Kampong Panjang.
The monkeys watched him stalk away and they fell silent again. A couple of the braver ones stood tall and made threatening gestures with their arms in the direction he had gone; even so, it was some considerable time before they ventured to leave the safety of their tall Kapok tree.
Harry strolled in through the open glass doors of the Kuala Hitam Sports Club, nodding to the pretty Chinese receptionist, who rewarded him with a radiant smile. He passed through another open doorway and was outside again. He turned right, past the forest of white-painted chairs and tables that ran alongside the long open-air bar, which in turn overlooked the three well-maintained tennis courts belonging to the club. Harry had come for his regular game with Captain Dennis Tremayne, a long-standing friend who still served with the Fourth and was therefore a useful source of gossip where they were concerned. He was considerably younger than Harry, but that hardly seemed to matter. Tennis was the one sport that Harry really enjoyed and he was thankful that he had never put on any weight in his advancing years. Nothing looked more ludicrous than a fat man in shorts attempting to play a game that was quite beyond his capabilities. But it was probably quite true to say that Harry cut a more imposing figure in shorts than Dennis, who, at the age of forty-four, was already a little on the stout side.
Harry spotted Dennis sitting at one of the small tables.
‘Hello old chap!’ chuckled Dennis. ‘It seems we’re a bit early for our game today. Let me get you a drink.’
‘Fresh orange juice, please.’ Harry settled into a chair as Dennis signalled to the barman.
‘Two fresh oranges, please. Plenty of ice,’ Dennis grinned and turned his attention to the game in progress. ‘All action out there today,’ he observed. ‘Hope they don’t expect that sort of routine from us.’ He had a plump, ruddy-complexioned face that always wore a happy expression. His cornflower blue eyes were hidden today behind a pair of mirrored sunglasses. ‘Strewth,’ he exclaimed. ‘Is it just me or does it get hotter here all the time?’ He motioned to Harry’s sweater. ‘Beats me how you can wear that thing.’
‘Well, don’t forget Dennis, I’ve been living in this climate for most of my adult life. India, Burma, Malaya, all got one thing in common – they’re bloody hot. Couldn’t stand it any other way now.’
Dennis nodded.
‘You er … wouldn’t fancy going back to Blighty ever?’
‘I should say not! I’d freeze to death.’ He narrowed his eyes suspiciously. ‘Why did you ask that?’
‘Oh, no reason, really …’
‘No reason, my hat! What’s up? C’mon Dennis, spill the beans, you know you never could hide anything from me.’
Dennis raised his hands in capitulation.
‘Alright, alright, I surrender!’ He leaned forward, lowered his voice slightly. ‘It’s just that word came through today about some more cuts and –’
‘More cuts!’ Harry shook his head. ‘Don’t see how they can do it, frankly. Surely they’ve cut the Gurkhas down as much as they possibly can. Trimming the force to ten thousand men, it’s butchery!’
Dennis nodded sympathetically.
‘Well, you know my views on that one Harry, I couldn’t agree with you more. But the particular news I’m referring to concerns Kuala Hitam in particular. Seems the top brass have got it into their heads that it’s unnecessary. It’s got to go, old son. Complete demobilization by 1969. Fact. Heard it myself, just this morning.’
‘What … you mean … everything?’
‘The works. Lock, stock, and barrel. What troops we leave in Malaya will be based at the barracks in Singapore. As for this lot –’ He gestured briefly around him and then made a sawing motion across his throat with his index finger. ‘Which is why I asked you if you ever thought of going home,’ he concluded.
Harry stared at the grey Formica top of the table.
‘Dammit Dennis, this is my home. What the hell would there be for me over there, anyway? My relatives are all dead –’
‘You’ve a nephew, haven’t you?’
‘Oh yes, and very pleased he’d be to have a crotchety old devil like me descending on his household from the far-off tropics, I’m sure.’
Dennis smiled. ‘I wouldn’t call you crotchety,’ he said.
‘Well, thank you for that anyway. But let’s face it, Dennis, here I be and here I stay, until the Lord in all his infinite wisdom sees fit to reorganize my accommodation. What will you be doing?’
‘Oh, I’ll be going back home. Expecting confirmation any day now. Suffolk, I hope. Where my roots are. The fact is, I’m quite looking forward to it. I keep imagining snow at Christmas, all that sort of thing. I’m a romantic old devil at heart, you know. And Kate’s thrilled to bits. There’re lots of things she misses. Good shops, fashions, family … Well, she’s all but got the bags packed.’
Harry nodded.
‘And what about that pretty young daughter of yours?’
‘I think Melissa is pleased too. Things are a bit too quiet around these parts for her liking.’
The barman arrived with the drinks, tall glasses filled with freshly blended orange juice and topped with crushed ice. He set them down on the table and left.
‘I’ll miss you,’ observed Harry, after a few moments’ silence. ‘I’ll miss you all.’
‘Yes … well, look here, old chap. If you ever want to come and visit us, there’ll always be a place for you. I hope you realize that.’
Harry sipped his drink thoughtfully, and stared impatiently at the couple sweating it out on the tennis court. ‘Are they never going to finish?’ he muttered. ‘In the old days, these games always finished bang on time …’ His voice trailed off as he recognized one of the players. It was the loudmouthed Australian from the night before. ‘I say Dennis, who is that fellow on the court?’
Dennis lifted his sunglasses, peered in the direction that Harry was indicating.
‘It’s Corporal Barnes, isn’t it?’
‘No, not him! The other one.’
‘Oh! You mean Bob Beresford.’
‘Do I indeed? And who, may I ask, is Bob Beresford? He’s not an enlisted man, surely to God?’
‘No, a civvy. He’s working at Kuala Hitam on the Gurkha repatriation scheme though, so he’s been given the run of the place.’
‘Yes. He was at the Mess last night. Just what exactly is he supposed to be teaching the Gurkhas? How to tell dirty stories?’
‘I don’t think so. Farming techniques, I believe. You know … irrigation, animal husbandry, that sort of thing. How to make the most out of very limited resources, basically. I can’t help thinking that these repatriation schemes are more an attempt to salve the British government’s conscience than anything else. But Beresford seems to be making the best of it. He’s certainly well-liked by the men.’ Dennis smiled warily at Harry. ‘I get the impression he hasn’t made an instant hit with you though,’ he observed.
Harry grimaced and shrugged.
‘Well … you know how I feel about the Aussies, Dennis. I mean, good God, they’ve all descended from convicts anyway! And that one was in the Mess last night, shouting his mouth off to all and sundry, telling some filthy story … it … shows a lack of respect, that’s all.’
Dennis chuckled.
‘Oh come on, Harry. None of us are above telling a dirty story now and then. The British tell it in a whisper and the Aussies tell it to the world. I’m not so sure that they haven’t got the healthier attitude. It just comes down to what you’re used to really. Beresford isn’t so bad; and I tell you what, you’ve got something in common with him.’
Harry fixed his friend with a suspicious look.
‘Really? And what might that be?’
‘By all accounts, he fancies himself a bit of a crack-shot. Done some hunting in his time, or so he tells me.’
Harry shook his head.
‘I haven’t hunted for years, as well you know. If this Beresford chap still does, it just confirms that he’s got some growing up to do.’
Dennis laughed out loud.
‘Good heavens, Harry, give the poor lad a break, will you! It seems you’ve really got it in for him.’
‘Not at all, not at all! I just think people should show a little bit of resp – Ah, looks as though they’ve finally called it a day!’
Beresford and his partner were leaving the court. The Australian was pumping his partner’s hand in what looked like an exaggerated display of good sportsmanship.
‘Great game, Ron! Let me buy you a drink …’
Dennis and Harry collected their kit and walked out towards the court. Beresford eyed the two of them with a mocking glint in his eye. As he walked past, Harry distinctly heard the Australian say to Corporal Barnes, ‘Strewth, look at these two old buggers goin’ out for a bash!’ Barnes smothered a laugh, but Harry pretended he had heard nothing. He wasn’t going to let the observations of some jumped-up sheep-farmer from the outback make any impression on him. He followed Dennis into the court and closed the metal gate behind him.
Dennis had heard nothing of the brief exchange.
‘Let’s have a quick warm-up,’ he suggested. Then he laughed. ‘I say, that’s a bit of a joke. I’m sweating like a pig now.’ He trotted over to the far side of the court and Harry served a lazy ball over to him. They played for some time in silence. They rarely bothered to score the games; it was playing that they relished, not winning.
The white surface of the court reflected the fierce sun up at them and it was somewhat like playing tennis on a vast electric hot plate. After a few moments their clothes were sticking to them. Harry played mechanically, his thoughts not really on the game.
For some reason, his mind had slipped back to a much earlier memory, a memory of Britain before the last war. He was unsure of the actual year, but it had been a fine summer and there was a tennis court not far from the family home in Sussex. He had been a young man in his twenties then, with no thought of enlisting in the army, no thought of doing anything in particular. His family was rich and landed and though he would never have admitted it at the time, he was a wealthy layabout. Life at his parents’ home seemed to comprise an endless succession of parties, dances, frivolous social functions; and as the potential inheritor of his father’s land and wealth, he was considered very eligible by the young ladies in the neighbourhood and did not go short of female companionship.
But marriage had been the last thing on his mind; at least, until that particular day, the day when they had all gone to play tennis and Harry had spotted an exquisite young female on the court, a frail little thing, dressed in white, who played tennis like nobody’s business. Harry had watched her for ages as she dashed about the court, a look of grim determination on her pretty face. He had fallen in love with here then and there; and when his mother had wandered over to him to enquire what it was he was looking at, he had smiled at her and replied, ‘My future wife, I think.’
Meg. Sometimes in the night, he lay alone in the darkness trying to conjure into his mind, a vision of her face. He could not do it. Her features were soft wax blurred by time. In the end, he would have to switch on the light and fetch her photograph, just to reassure himself that she had existed. It frightened him, this loss of definition. It made him wonder if the past was not just a series of hazy ghosts set to haunt him for eternity …
‘Come on, Harry, wake up! You missed that by a mile.’
‘Hmm?’ The present came abruptly back into focus. Dennis was peering at him over the net.
‘Do you want to rest for a moment?’
‘Certainly not!’ Harry retrieved the ball and stepped up to the serving line. He flung the ball skywards, whipped back his arm to serve. An unexpected pain lanced through his chest, making his breath escape in an involuntary exclamation of surpise.
The ball dropped untouched beside him and he stood where he was for a moment, swaying slightly. He could not seem to get his breath and his heart was thudding like a great hammer in his chest.
‘Harry? Are you alright, old chap? You’ve gone white as a sheet.’
‘Yes, yes! I’m fine …’ Harry stooped to retrieve the ball but as he stood up, the court seemed to seesaw crazily from left to right. His racquet clattered to the ground and he flung out his arms to try to maintain his balance. Suddenly Dennis was at his side, supporting his arm.
‘Here, here, old chap. You’ve been in the sun too long, I think.’
‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ protested Harry feebly. ‘I’ll be fine in a moment. Let’s play on.’
‘I don’t think we better had.’ Dennis was easing him towards the exit. ‘Come and sit down for a while, at least till the feeling passes.’
‘This is really quite silly … I’m alright I tell you.’ Harry was aware of anxious faces peering at him from the press of tables. He felt totally humiliated, an object of ridicule. He tried to detach his arm from Dennis’s grasp, so that he might walk under his own steam, but when he exerted any effort, the dizziness seemed to get worse, filling his head with a powerful red hum. He felt vaguely nauseous.
‘Here old chap, this way. Our table’s just a few more feet …’
Out of the corner of his eye, Harry could see Beresford and his companion watching the scene with expressions of amusement on their faces. The Australian turned to mutter something to his companion and the two of them collapsed into fits of laughter. Harry wanted to die of shame. He was lowered into a seat and a cold drink was thrust into his hand.
‘How do you feel Harry?’ It was Dennis’s voice, but it seemed terribly distant.
Harry forced a smile.
‘I’ll survive,’ he muttered. ‘Just a dizzy spell, that’s all.’
‘Alright …’ Dennis sounded far from being reassured. ‘I’ll go and fetch your stuff.’
‘But … aren’t we going to play on again, in a minute or two?’
Dennis didn’t answer, he just walked away, leaving Harry to brave the glare of two hundred sympathetic eyes. Harry could imagine what they were thinking.
‘Poor old man. Poor old man. Poor old man …’
And he knew in his heart that he would never have the courage to come to this place again.
Bob Beresford threw his kit bag carelessly into the back of his beaten-up old Land Rover, climbed into the seat, kicked the engine into life and drove away from the sports club, chuckling to himself. Honestly, these bloody old majors who thought they were still fighting a bloody war! Malaya seemed to be full of them. Bob still wasn’t quite sure what to think about Malaya. He missed the social life he had back in Oz, but it was plain that he’d landed himself a cushy number here with the repatriation scheme. The pay was excellent, considering that he only actually worked three mornings a week. The rest of the time was his own and though there wasn’t a great deal to do, he certainly couldn’t complain that he was overworked. The Gurkhas were a likable bunch of blokes who followed their various courses with quiet dedication. They never complained, though, of course, they had every reason to. After fighting Britain’s wars for the last twenty years, they were being surreptitiously swept under the carpet. In similar circumstances, Bob would have been fighting and yelling every inch of the way, but in this instance it was simply none of his business.
As he drove, his eyes kept scanning the screens of secondary jungle on either side for signs of life. It was his old man’s influence that had turned Bob into a keen amateur hunter; Roy Beresford had been an obsessive animal hunter most of his life. He was forever undertaking extensive hunting trips to New Zealand, after deer and boar mostly. Bob had never been old enough to accompany his father, but his earliest memories were of being in Roy’s trophy room, standing beneath the gigantic spread of antlers belonging to a fine stag. Roy had told him the story of that particular hunt a hundred times. Where most children got fairy stories last thing at night, Bob got true-life adventures from his dad and thus, it was easy to see how the hunting bug had bitten him. Bob’s greatest regret was that his father had died of cancer, long before he was big enough to accompany him on an expedition. Since then, Bob had been doing his utmost to wear his father’s boots and the need to do so had become a singular obsession with him. As yet, he had not organized himself into hunting in Malaya. For one thing, the territory was completely new to him and he felt that he would first have to find himself a good guide, someone who knew how to track in such a difficult environment. The land here was, for the most part, covered in thick inaccessible jungle and Bob didn’t much fancy the idea of wandering in there unaccompanied. But most of the locals he had talked to had displayed an astonishing ignorance of their native wildlife. Oh indeed, the Tuan was quite correct. There were tigers and rusa and wild pigs and even the occasional elephant out there somewhere, but why any man should be interested in going after the creatures was quite beyond them. It was part of the Malays’ simple, happy-go-lucky policy to get on with their own lives and leave the beasts of the jungle to do likewise. Bob lived in hope of finding a Malay with a more adventurous policy.
He turned left off the coast road and entered the small estate of houses where the army had allotted him a bungalow. He lurched the Land Rover unceremoniously into the drive, clambered out, grabbed his kit, and entered the house through the open door. Lim hurried into the room at the sound of his arrival.
Lim. Now there was one of the benefits of living in Malaya. Lim was his amah, slim, pretty, eighteen years old and Chinese. Bob had been quite particular in his instructions to the agency. In the few weeks that he had been at Kuala Hitam, his relationship with Lim had developed beyond that of mere servant and master. She lived in full time, and when the nights were long and lonely, which they invariably were, it was not her tiny room to which she retired, but the Tuan’s. Bob was careful to keep the situation well under control, showing little outward emotion for her. He was well aware that a large percentage of Chinese girls aspired to nothing more than marriage to a white man, shortly followed by a oneway trip out of the country of their birth, preferably to Britain or best of all, America. It was a part of the Chinese preoccupation with all things Western. Lim’s full name was Pik Sen Lim, but for reasons best known to herself she preferred to be called Suzy Lim. Most young Chinese girls had Western versions of their names and were anxious that they should be used in place of their existing ones. Lim knew too that once his work was finished, the Tuan would be heading home, not to Britain or the United States, but to Australia. Even so, she seemed to have resolved in her mind that anywhere would be preferable to her current home and never lost an opportunity of telling him how much she would love to see the Sydney Harbour Bridge or a kangaroo or an aborigine. But unfortunately for her, Bob was planning to remain a bachelor for many years to come.
She stood now, a smile of welcome on her face, attentive to any needs he might have.
‘Bob want drink now?’ She insisted on calling him by his first name, which had proved embarrassing on the few occasions when he had had company.
‘No thanks.’
‘You take these clothes off,’ she advised him. ‘I wash.’
‘Alright.’ He stripped off his tennis gear without further ado, ignoring Lim’s giggles as he strode naked to his bedroom. ‘I’m going to have a shower,’ he announced.
‘There is letter for you in bedroom,’ Lim called after him.
It was lying on the bedside table, airmail from Australia. He recognized his mother’s laborious handwriting. He picked it up, looked at it blankly for a moment, and then turned to gaze thoughtfully out of the slatted window. He could see next door’s amah, dressed in a brightly coloured san fu, pinning out ranks of billowing washing on the line. Above the rooftops behind her, a lushly forested hillside was framed against a sky that was cloudless turquoise. Bob looked back at the envelope and frowned. He pulled open the drawer of the bedside table, slipped the letter inside with four others, none of which had been read. Then he closed the drawer again and, turning, he went to the bathroom to take his shower.
Chapter 4 (#ulink_e5afd3f4-b7d7-5694-a3d0-cf03050b4d3b)
Harry prepared himself for bed. He felt fine now, as good as ever. He regretted all the fuss he’d caused at the tennis court earlier that day. The trouble was that the grapevine was so efficient here. Word would soon get around that old ‘Tiger’ Sullivan had had a bit of a turn. Well … let them talk! Why should he let it bother him?
Dennis hadn’t helped matters much, he’d fussed around like an old hen, trying to get Harry to promise him that he’d see a doctor. The very idea! Harry had never bothered with doctors in his life and he didn’t intend to start now. Leeches, the lot of them! Eventually he’d managed to persuade Dennis to push off home and leave him in peace. He felt sad, for he realized that the games of tennis would have to be crossed off his agenda and he did so look forward to them. But pride was a fearsome thing and it would never allow him to revisit the scene of such a humiliation. At any rate, Dennis would be far from keen to get him out on a court again, so there was little to be done in that direction. He would have to take up chess, something a bit more suitable for his declining years.
After all, that was the general belief, wasn’t it? That anyone over the age of fifty was ready for the scrap heap, obsolete, of no use to anybody; what did it matter how much they had achieved in their lives? Let them retire to a grim silent home somewhere and eke out their lives playing chess and doing crossword puzzles.
Harry frowned. My God, he was feeling bitter! Everybody went through it eventually, why should he be any exception? He undressed slowly, hanging his clothes in neat ranks over the back of a chair. Then turning to look for his pyjamas, he caught sight of his naked reflection in the wardrobe mirror. He froze, momentarily horrified by this vision of stark skinny manhood. Lord, the ravages that time made upon flesh and bone! It turned muscle to folds of saggy flesh, etched itself deep into hollows and crevices, stretched dry parchment skin tight across sharp bone ridges; and worst of all, it shrank you, turned your atoms in upon themselves, until you were literally a flimsy parody of your former self. Harry’s gaze moved quickly over his own reflection, from head to toe, pausing only over some particularly harrowing feature. The rib cage, over which the flesh was as thin as an excuse; the forearms, two lengths of knotted sinew from which the hands dangled like ungainly flippers. He glanced sideways to the dressing table, where a photograph of himself stood. It had been taken during the war, shortly after his arrival in Burma. It showed a tall, suntanned individual in khaki battle-dress, his muscular arms crossed over his chest, a mischievous grin on his handsome face. His hair was a series of thick black curls that had yet to be taken in hand by the regimental barber and he had not yet decided to grow the moustache that would later become a permanent feature. He moved over to the photograph, picked it up, examined it more closely. A dark rage flared up in his heart. Why, he was unrecognizable! His mother, were she still alive, would not recognize the hideous, shrunken wretch that he had become. With an abrupt movement, he snatched the picture up, with the intention of flinging it across the room; but in that same instant, his rage died, he felt vaguely ridiculous.
‘Bloody old fool,’ he murmured softly. He replaced the photograph carefully on the dressing table. After a moment’s thought, he laid the picture face down on the polished wood, reasoning to himself that if he did not look at it again, it could not antagonize him.
He moved back to his bed, found the pyjamas he had been looking for, and dressed himself in them. He did not look in the wardrobe mirror again that night.
The hunger that Haji felt in his belly was now a scream, a wide gaping scream that begged to be crammed tight-shut with a plug of raw, bloody meat; yet even in the midst of his hunger, he kept control. As he crept through the darkness, every sense stayed alert. His pupils had dilated to their fullest extent, enabling him to see quite clearly. He was patrolling the road just below Kampong Panjang, for into his head had come the idea that here his luck might change. His usual fear of the Uprights had been made more flexible by the current predicament in which he found himself. He worked his way along a monsoon ditch at the base of a short decline which led down from the road. The night was fine and clear and, for the moment, silent save for the steady background of insect noise. Patches of vividly coloured wild orchids perfumed the air. Haji began to think that he had made a mistake coming here. There was no movement amongst the trees and bushes, only the soft sighing of a night breeze. He paused for a moment to listen, his head tilted to one side. Now, he could faintly discern another sound, rising gently above the noise of the wind. Distant, mournful, it rose and fell in a cadence. Haji waited. The sound gradually became clearer. It was an Upright, coming along the road, singing. Haji dropped low on his belly and crept silently up the slope to peer over the rise.
An Upright cub was strolling towards him. More interestingly, the boy was leading a skinny white cow on a piece of rope. All this Haji saw in an instant and then he dropped down again, to glide along the ditch, so as to come up again behind the cow. The nearness of the Upright cub made him nervous, but the prospect of the cow’s red flesh was too tempting a proposition for him. He stole along for twenty yards or so, then waited for a few moments, his ears alert to the sound of bare feet and hard hooves on the dry dirt surface of the road. At last, he turned and moved swiftly up the bank, until he was crouched on the edge of it, some ten yards behind the Upright and his cow. The beast’s flanks waddled in invitation. Haji began to inch forward.
The cow became abruptly nervous. She snorted, pulled back on the rope. The cub stopped singing, and turning he yelled something at the frightened creature. He began to tug at the rope, but the cow would not go along. She began to low in a deep, distressed tone, wrenching her head from side to side. Haji, afraid of the sounds attracting more Uprights, launched his attack, taking the intervening gap at a steady run. Glancing up, the cub saw Haji and gave a scream of terror. He stood transfixed, still clutching the rope.
Haji launched himself onto the cow’s back, his claws extended to grip the animal’s shoulders. At the same time, he bit down into the nape of the cow’s skinny neck with all his force, his great yellowed canine teeth crushing nerves and blood vessels. The combined weight and impetus of his leap bore the cow, bawling and squealing, to her knees. Haji swung his weight sideways, twisting his prey around, while his jaws took a firmer hold on the creature’s throat.
At last, the cub had the presence of mind to relinquish his grip on the rope. Half-deafened by Haji’s bellowing roars, he stumbled backwards, away from the nightmare that had suddenly engulfed his most precious possession. The cow was kicking feebly, her eyes bulging as the tiger’s jaws throttled the life from her. The cub tripped, sprawled on the road, and the shock of the fall finally returned his voice to him. Screaming with terror, he staggered upright and began to run in the direction of the kampong.
Haji was intent on his kill. The cow’s struggles were becoming weaker and Haji’s mouth was filling up with the delicious taste of hot blood. He gave a couple of powerful wrenches from side to side, in order to hasten the end. At last, the cow gave a final convulsive shudder and was still. Anxious to waste as little time as possible, Haji swung the creature around and began to drag it, in a series of violent jerks, towards the bank. In doing so, he displayed the awesome power that tigers have at their disposal. It would have taken six strong Uprights to even move the cow three inches to left or right, but within a few moments, Haji had dragged the white carcass across the road and had dropped it over the steep bank. Once there, he leaped down beside it and began to jerk it along, deeper into the jungle, pulling it between bushes and over rocks, an incredible task. The cow’s long horns were jamming in roots and behind tree trunks and Haji had to keep backtracking, in order to release them. He went on, though, covering an amazing distance over such difficult terrain. In this matter, Haji displayed the characteristic guilt that tigers always felt when they had killed a domestic animal or, for that matter, an Upright. He dragged the kill much further than he would have had the beast been his natural prey, a wild pig or a rusa. Despite his awful hunger, he rejected two perfectly good feeding spots and did not call a halt until he was a mile and a half from the scene of the kill. At last, he dropped the cow in a sheltered hollow, where there was a flowing stream in which he could slake his thirst. He then settled down to eat.
As was always his habit, Haji began with the rump, tearing ravenously at the soft flesh and ripping it away in huge mouthfuls, which he virtually swallowed whole, such was his haste. His feasting was accompanied by a series of hideous noises, slurps, grunts, the dull crunching of brittle bones. As his hunger diminished, he began to take more time over the meal, savouring the raw meat and chewing it more thoroughly. From the rump, he moved to the thick flesh between the cow’s thighs and then he tore open the stomach, spilling the entrails onto the ground. These he also devoured, but then he paused in his eating to drag the cow forward a few yards, thus leaving the foul-tasting rumen pouch safely out of the way. By the time his appetite was truly fulfilled, he had eaten almost half of the carcass. He crept over to the stream and drank deeply, lapping up the water with his great, rasping tongue until his stomach was bloated. Then with a deep rumble of satisfaction, he strolled back to the carcass, walked proudly around it a few times, then backed up to it and with his slender rear legs, he began to kick dry grass over the remains. He did this for several minutes, but turning he saw that the white hide was still clearly visible. He went over to a thick clump of ferns, tore them from the ground with his mouth and turning back, deposited the whole clump on top of the dead cow. He paraded around the slain beast again, critically surveying his handiwork. He paused a couple of times, to kick more grass over it from different angles. At last, satisfied with his efforts, he moved away from the kill and sat, licking contentedly at his bloody paws for a while. For the first time in days, he felt content, and he shaped the feeling of well-being into a loud blasting roar of triumph, which echoed in the silence of the night and sent flocks of slumbering birds flapping from the treetops in alarm. The sound of his own voice pleased him, and he sent another roar close on the heels of its predecessor, then another, and another, great sonorous exhalations that could be heard for miles in every direction.
Then, well pleased with himself and his night’s hunting, he sauntered away to find a secure place to sleep for the night.
A distant sound woke Bob Beresford from a shallow, dreamless sleep. He lay for a moment, staring up at the darkened ceiling and wondering where he was. For a few seconds, he had the fleeting impression that he was aboard an aeroplane; but then he realized it was just the noise and the cool breeze from the large electric fan above his head. It had not been that noise that woke him though. He lay still, listening intently, and after a couple of minutes he could discern the sound again – a long, mournful wail, distorted by distance. It might have been anything. A locomotive horn, perhaps, from the iron mine over at Padang Pulst …
Lim stirred in her sleep beside him and became aware of his wakefulness.
‘Bob not sleep?’ she murmured, her own voice a dreamy slur. ‘You want me fetch drink … you want …?’ But then she was gone again, submerged in the pool of slumber from which she had but briefly surfaced. Bob smiled. He closed his own eyes, tried to settle back down, but then the noise came again, long, constant, not a mechanical sound at all. It went on for some considerable time, repeating at regular intervals, and then at last it stopped abruptly, as though the animal responsible had called it a night and had drifted away in search of sleep.
‘Wish I could bloody well find some,’ thought Bob, but he knew only too well that once disturbed in this way, he would lie awake till dawn, thinking bad thoughts. Thoughts of his father who lay dead in the cold earth and of his mother, whom he had abandoned because she had remarried. Bob had worshipped his father. He could never bring himself to understand how she could have forgotten him so readily; worse still, how she could have chosen a no-account bank clerk to take his place. Well, Bob had fixed her wagon, right enough. It didn’t matter how many letters she wrote him, he was just going to let her stew in her own juice along with the bloody little twerp she called her husband. Some people might think of it as rough justice, but then, they hadn’t known Roy Beresford. They hadn’t known the sort of man he was.
Bob fumbled around on the bedside cabinet until he found his cigarettes and matches. The brief flare of light as he struck a match lit the room with a strange glow. He lay, staring up at the ceiling, smoking his cigarette and occasionally glancing at the red glowing tip of hot ash as it burned steadily downwards in the darkness.
Chapter 5 (#ulink_3ad9f772-87ff-5617-b028-8f2a3f770453)
Haji woke with new spirit. His hunger was satisfied, his pride restored. He was once again a killer of flesh. He emerged from the thicket where he had been resting and stretched himself luxuriously for a few minutes, aimless for the time being, for he knew that there was another dinner stored safely away which he could go to whenever his hunger returned. Some monkeys in a nearby tree shrieked an alarm, and he noted with satisfaction that there was a new respect in their manner.
He strolled off along a well-worn cattle track, moving gracefully and stopping from time to time to spray the trees and bushes with the aid of a scent gland beneath his tail. This was simply a way of marking out his territory. The secretion, mixed liberally with urine, possessed a powerful stink that could linger for weeks, provided it did not rain. Now that the urgency of his hunting had, for the time being, been dispelled, he travelled with the air of a sophisticated landowner surveying his property. Even the dull pain in his injured leg was temporarily forgotten. The sun was rapidly gaining in heat and Haji could hear the curious maddening song of a brain-fever bird in the treetops to his left. The track led down a slope to where a sluggish yellow river wound its way between sandbanks and boulders. Without hesitation, Haji plunged into the water, glad of the chance to cool off. He submerged his body completely, leaving just his head sticking above the surface. The water was wonderfully cooling, especially to the wound on his leg and he would have been content to remain there for the rest of the day; but after an hour or so of lounging, his keen eyes caught sight of a telltale swirl in the water that spoke of a large crocodile nosing his way. Haji had no real enemies in nature, unless of course one counted the Uprights, who could be dangerous when roused; but he knew well enough that the only other beast likely to try and attack him would be a crocodile. Stupid and brutish creatures, they tended to go for anything that moved and in their natural element, water, they were unbeatable. Haji, perhaps wisely, decided to curtail his bathing session and move on to new pastures. But he waded out with dignity, refusing to hurry himself, even though the crocodile’s snout was no more than a few feet away from him when he finally clambered back onto dry land. He half turned, directed a threatening roar at the pair of beady eyes surveying him from the surface of the water, and the crocodile, thinking better of his own motives, dropped from sight and looked elsewhere for a meal. Haji growled and shook himself to remove the water from his fur. Then he went on his way, moving along beside the river for some distance. He could see the brilliant blue flash of kingfishers as they skimmed down to touch the surface of the water and occasionally, there would be the curious wriggling wake of a long sea snake that had journeyed in from the coast.
After a while, Haji moved right, along another track into deeper jungle. He was astonished to find the powerful scent of a male tiger, sprayed on the bushes and trees. He came to a halt, sniffing and grimacing. It was rare for one male tiger to invade another one’s territory. It was true, certainly, that young tigers who did not possess their own home ranges sometimes crossed an established run, but such creatures were merely transients. They killed game on their travels but were rarely opposed by the resident animal, for they were only en route to another place. They certainly didn’t go around marking out territory in such a brazen way, and Haji was very angry that his authority should be challenged in this manner. He paced up and down for a moment, growling to himself, not sure how to resolve the matter. After some moments of indecision, he simply lifted his tail and blanketed the area with his own scent, so that if the intruder should return this way he would be left in no doubt about Haji’s feelings over the outrage. This accomplished, Haji moved to the centre of the track and made two distinct scrape marks in the dirt with his hind feet, a further indication that the territory was his. He made as though to move off again, but returned after a few steps, still not satisfied with his efforts. He squatted down near the bushes and defecated, leaving a large pile of steaming dung as a calling card. There could be no mistaking a move like that.
Content at last that he had made his intentions clear, he moved on again, stopping to spray at regular intervals. The scent of the other cat kept recurring along the track for some considerable distance until Haji reached a place where the intruder had veered off towards the river, leaving two scrape marks to indicate his change of direction. Haji growled, sniffed at the ground and gave out one last obliterating spray as a parting gesture. Then he moved along his way, trotting briskly, his head down. His aim was to make a wide rambling circle within the confines of his territory and arrive back for a second feed on his kill, around dusk. The rather vague intentions he had were soon channelled into more positive notions, when a mile or two along the track, he came across another scent. This one, however, did not antagonize him, for it belonged to Timah, one of the two resident tigresses that shared Haji’s range. Haji had not yet mated with Timah for she was only just coming to maturity and would be expecting her first ‘heat’ any time now. The older tigress, Seti, was already heavily pregnant after a brief encounter with Haji some four months back and could expect to drop her litter in a day or so.
As is the accustomed way with tigers, Haji lived a solitary existence, as did his two mates. They would only meet up to copulate and then after a few hours together would go their separate ways. It was true that sometimes, when chance brought them within range of each other, they would meet up briefly and possibly even share a kill. Such was Haji’s intention now. Timah’s scent was still fresh and he was soon able to locate her, by a series of calls which she promptly answered. A short while later, he found her waiting on the track ahead of him and hurried forward to join her. They made the familiar coughing greeting to each other that tigers invariably used and they rubbed against each other, flank to flank, purring contentedly like overgrown domestic tabbies. Timah was a particularly handsome creature. Some three years old, in the first flush of maturity, she was considerably smaller than Haji and shorter in total length by over a foot; but her fine dark coat was smooth and glossy and her green eyes glittered with quick intelligence. In old age, Haji’s coat had grown tattered and pale, and there were many grey hairs about his face and throat. But for all that, Timah was still his mate. In many ways, Haji preferred Timah to good dependable old Seti, who had borne him four litters over the years. Raising cubs was an arduous business for any tigress, for she was obliged to keep them with her for two years until they were deemed adept enough to look after themselves. Then, they either left of their own accord or were physically driven away, so they might search for territories of their own. More often than not, there would not be one available and they would have to content themselves with being transients for a year or so, until a resident cat died or moved away, leaving a range free. The cruel laws of nature usually maintained the balance and it was rare to have a waiting list. But there were instances of a maturing cat fighting an old male for possession of his territory, and it was such a circumstance that Haji feared.
But all that was quickly put out of his mind by the playful, mischievous Timah. In some ways still a cub at heart, she had obviously decided that she wanted to romp and she began to leap around Haji, pawing at him in a display of mock-fighting and then, when he reciprocated, gambolling off into the bushes for a game of hide-and-seek. Dour old Haji felt this to be a little beneath his dignity and after going along with it for a short while, be brought matters to a head by gripping Timah firmly by the nape of the neck and biting her just a little bit harder than qualified as mere play. She quietened down considerably after that and contented herself with trotting obediently along behind him, especially when he intimated to her that a splendid meal was waiting at the end of the journey.
They set off, with keen appetites and high expectations, into the dappled green depths of the jungle.
It was late afternoon and Harry was seated at the little table on the verandah, drinking Darjeeling tea and enjoying the last few peaceful hours before dusk. Behind him, Pawn worked tirelessly, flitting about the various rooms of the house like a restless fly. It was once again Mess night, and she was anxious to have everything spick and span for the Tuan before he left.
The stillness of the day was abruptly shattered by the bronchial wheezing of a battered old Ford saloon as it came clattering into view around the corner. The car had an overall background colour of dark grey, but was liberally splattered with patches of other colours where rusty abrasions had been plastered over with metal filler. All in all, it was surprising that Doctor Kalim’s car had not fallen apart long ago. It showered flakes of rust onto the drive as it eased in through the open gateway and came to a shuddering, sorrowful halt. Harry raised his eyes heavenwards, for he had half expected this visit. Nonetheless, he called through into the house.
‘Pawn! Bring out an extra cup and saucer, please!’
Doctor Kalim emerged from his car and, as always, Harry was struck by the incongruity of it all. Kalim was a neat and dapper little Muslim, who always insisted on wearing an immaculate white shirt, his English university tie and a sombre black suit, which must have been hellishly uncomfortable in such heat. The whole effect was topped by a wide-brimmed black fedora, which added another six inches to his unimposing stature. He leaned into the back of the car, retrieved his leather briefcase, and came striding purposefully up the driveway, peering at Harry through a pair of pebble-lensed spectacles.
He stepped onto the verandah just as Pawn emerged from the house carrying the spare crockery.
‘Doctor Kalim!’ announced Harry graciously. ‘This is an unexpected pleasure. Won’t you sit down and take a cup of tea?’
Kalim gave a stiff little bow of assent.
‘Thank you, Mr Sullivan, I’d love some.’ He sat himself in the spare chair, removed his hat, and placed it carefully on the table. Pawn set the cup down in front of him and withdrew into the house, trying hard not to smile.
‘Allow me to fill your cup,’ said Harry. ‘It’s only just been made.’ He leaned over and filled Kalim’s cup to the brim. ‘There now. It’s such a pleasure to sit out here in the afternoon and drink a good tea, don’t you think?’
Kalim said nothing.
‘I er … take it this is just a social call?’ ventured Harry, knowing in his heart that such was surely not the case. Kalim had been his doctor for six years now, and though in that time Harry had never called on the fellow once, Kalim had often taken the initiative himself. The plain fact was that Harry didn’t like doctors or surgeries or hospitals and would have had to be taken forcibly, even after a major accident.
‘Indeed, this is not a social call, Mr Sullivan, as I am thinking you must be most aware.’ Kalim talked slowly and emphatically, for despite his years at university he still had problems with his English. ‘Your very good chum, Mr Tremayne, is asking me to be calling on you. He is telling me that you are having a very bad do at the tennis courts, yesterday.’
Harry smiled, spread his arms.
‘Well, here I am, Doctor,’ he exclaimed. ‘How do I look?’
Kalim clenched his teeth and lifted the corners of his mouth, a device that was supposed to pass for smiling.
‘Come, come, Mr Sullivan. As I am sure you are aware, how you look has very little to do with it. Tell me, when did you have last a major physical checkup?’
‘Oh, let me see now … that would have been in ’62, when we had the trouble in Brunei. Told me then I had a dodgy ticker, but that if I looked after it, there’d be no problem …’
A look of supreme annoyance came over Kalim’s usually placid face.
‘Oh really, Mr Sullivan! Would you be saying that playing tennis is a particularly good way of looking after this … dodgy ticker, as you call it? Sometimes, I despair of the British mentality, I really do. Mr Tremayne was telling me that you had a very nasty turn. It’s a wonder you didn’t kill yourself.’
Harry gave a gesture of dismissal.
‘Dennis Tremayne is a natural-born exaggerater. Always has been. The fact is, it was hot. I had a bit of a dizzy spell, that’s all.’
‘A dizzy spell. Do you not think that I am being better qualified to judge the severity of what was happening to you?’
‘My dear Doctor Kalim! You weren’t even there, old man, so how can you be expected to know what was wrong with me? I say, do drink up your tea before it goes cold.’
Kalim muttered something beneath his breath, but obediently, he picked up his cup and sipped at it a few times. He watched, horrified, as Harry took a cigar case from his shirt pocket. He extracted one, put it into his mouth, and then offered the case to Kalim.
‘No, thank you very much, I don’t. And neither should you, if you are not minding me saying so.’
‘Say what you like,’ muttered Harry gruffly. He struck a match and lit the cigar. ‘It’s your loss. These are very fine Havanas.’
Kalim shook his head in mute exasperation. He thought for a moment, then leaned down, opened his briefcase and took out a stethoscope.
‘Well you can put that away for a start,’ warned Harry.
‘Mr Sullivan … now, it would not be taking me more than two minutes to be having a quick listen to your dodgy old ticker. We could be doing it right here, you will not even have to get out of your chair …’
‘Certainly not. I’m not having you listen to my insides, some things are sacred you know!’
‘But really, this is being most childish …’
‘You can say what you like, I know my rights. If I don’t want to be looked at, then there’s nothing you can do to make me. Now please, Doctor Kalim, stop being a confounded nuisance, sit still, and drink your bloody tea!’
‘Well, really!’ Kalim was outraged. He thrust the stethoscope back into his briefcase and sat where he was for a moment, staring out across the garden, a look of dark, impotent fury on his face. ‘When I think of the poor people around here who would give anything to secure a doctor’s help,’ he muttered. ‘And then I am encountering people like you, Mr Sullivan … people who are refusing to help themselves. It is making me most annoyed.’ He sipped again at his tea. ‘Let me tell you the symptoms I think you were experiencing yesterday. You have already spoken of dizziness. I think also there would have been a sharp pain in the chest, a pounding of the heart, an inability to control one’s breathing … shall I go on, Mr Sullivan? Possibly, you were feeling nauseous and could not maintain your balance; Mr Tremayne is already confirming that point with me. He is saying he had to be holding you upright …’ He glanced accusingly at Harry. ‘Well? Are these the symptoms you were having?’
Harry shrugged expressively.
‘Perhaps,’ he said, noncommittally.
‘Well then, Mr Sullivan, it is hardly needing a doctor to be telling you that it was most probably a heart attack you were suffering yesterday.’
‘A …?’ Harry laughed unconvincingly.
‘Oh, so it is ‘a matter for merriment is it?’ cried Kalim. He was getting more and more annoyed and his voice was sliding rapidly higher and higher up the vocal scale.
‘Not at all, not at all. But really, Doctor, a heart attack! Why, I’m as strong as a mule. I hardly think I’d be wandering about today, if I’d really had a heart attack yesterday.’
‘There are being all different kinds of heart seizures,’ shrieked Kalim. ‘There are earth tremors and earthquakes, but all of them are starting in the same place. That is exactly why I am wanting to examine you, you silly old man! Now I am asking you for the last time, Mr Sullivan. Will you submit yourself to me for a thorough physical examination?’
‘I will not,’ replied Harry coolly.
Kalim stood up, crammed his hat down on his head, and snatched up his briefcase.
‘Then I am clearly wasting my time here,’ he announced.
‘I could have told you that before you sat down,’ said Harry.
Kalim gave an involuntary cry of exasperation. ‘You are without doubt the most cantankerous, impossible old fool,’ he concluded, and began to walk away.
‘And you, my dear Doctor Kalim, are without doubt the most insufferable quack!’ retorted Harry.
Kalim stopped in his tracks for a moment. He gazed back at Harry with a look that would have scorched the varnish of a grand piano. Then he strode away, clambered back into his ramshackle car, and reversed carelessly out of the drive, catching the left rear wing on a gatepost and scraping a new area free of grey paint.
Harry winced, then chuckled. The car lurched around in a ragged circle and accelerated away down the road, making a noise like an electric mixer filled with chestnuts. Pawn came to the door, gazed out in surprise.
‘Doctor man not stay very long,’ she observed drily.
‘No,’ chuckled Harry, puffing on his cigar. ‘I don’t think he was feeling very well.’
Chapter 6 (#ulink_7d233a79-374d-5e9e-ba00-22f7d7b8eb3a)
The tiger’s head above the doorway seemed to have acquired a grin. Harry settled into his familiar seat with a decided feeling of well-being for the world in general, even for Doctor Kalim. Harry was hatching a wicked little plan which involved sending the good doctor a box of Havana cigars. Trimani must have caught on to the Tuan’s feeling of contentment, for he brought the glass of beer with a huge dazzling grin stretched across his dark face. He lit Harry’s cigar for him and received a Havana for himself, along with the more usual fifty-cent tip.
After a little while, Dennis came in, with his lovely young daughter, Melissa, in tow. She hurried over to Harry’s table while her father sorted out some business at the bar.
‘Hello, Uncle Harry!’ She kissed him energetically on the cheek. She always had called him ‘uncle,’ though, of course, they were really not related.
He beamed at her.
‘And how are you?’ he enquired. ‘Found anything to occupy yourself yet?’
‘I’m afraid not. Everything’s so quiet around here!’ Melissa had recently finished school in Singapore and was anxious now to do a little living. Harry sympathized with her. There really wasn’t that much for an eighteen-year-old to get involved in here, the most energetic preoccupation being the acquisition of a suntan. That was a novelty that wore off after a few days.
‘I expect you’re itching to get back to England, aren’t you?’
‘I should say so!’
‘Will you go to university or something?’
She shook her head.
‘No thanks. I’ve had enough schooling to last a lifetime. What I want is a career and a lot of fun, but not necessarily in that order … Oh, but Uncle Harry, I wish you were coming back with us. Writing letters just won’t be the same somehow.’
‘Yes, well, I think I’ve already had this conversation with Dennis …’
‘Somebody mention my name?’ Dennis arrived carrying drinks, one of which he passed to Melissa.
‘Good heavens, what is she drinking now?’ cried Harry, in mock horror.
‘Gin fizz,’ announced Melissa. ‘And don’t forget, it’s legal now. I was eighteen last week, in case you’ve forgotten.’ She winked slyly. ‘Age of consent,’ she murmured.
Harry laughed. He was extremely fond of Melissa and would accept things from her that he would not have tolerated in others. She was a lean, very attractive girl, with thick dark hair and enchanting hazel eyes; very like her mother in looks, but infinitely more outgoing in her personality. Harry’s affection for her was, of course, purely platonic, almost paternal. In many ways it was similar to the relationship that he had with Pawn’s grandson, Ché.
‘You’re a lucky fellow,’ he told Dennis. ‘Lovely wife, lovely daughter. Where is Kate, by the way?’
‘Oh, you know her. More content to sit at home with a good book. Can’t say I blame her really. There’s not much here if you don’t enjoy a drink.’
Harry nodded.
‘I’ve a bone to pick with you,’ he said.
‘Oh?’ Dennis looked wary. ‘Why, what’s up?’
‘You know very well what’s up, so don’t give me the wide-eyed innocent look. There was a certain Muslim doctor round at my place today …’
‘Ah.’
‘You may know him. Drives about in a battered old Ford.’
‘Ah. Yes, well …’
‘What on earth are you both on about?’ demanded Melissa.
Dennis smiled sheepishly.
‘I think your Uncle Harry is referring to ah … Doctor Kalim … who I just happened to bump into this morning … and I may have, inadvertently of course … happened to mention Harry’s little upset at the courts yesterday. I mean, not even thinking that Kalim, as a doctor, might want to ah, investigate the situation …’
‘Oh really, Daddy! Have you been spreading nasty rumours about poor Uncle Harry? Anyone can see he’s fitter than you are.’
‘Well that’s not saying very much,’ observed Dennis drily.
‘You must remember that Uncle Harry is sixty-eight years old.’
‘Sixty-seven,’ corrected Harry.
‘Exactly! And if I’m as healthy and downright good-looking as he is when I’m sixty-eight …’
‘Sixty-seven!’
‘… then I’ll feel very pleased with myself.’
‘Hear, hear,’ enthused Harry. ‘For that, I think you deserve another gin fizz. Dennis, will you have another drink?’
‘Me? Thought I was in the doghouse.’
‘Well, we all make mistakes from time to time. Actually, I rather enjoyed Kalim’s little visit. Haven’t had a good row in ages. So, what’ll it be?’
‘Well, nothing for the moment, old chap. I’ve got to pop over to my office and pick up some papers. But I’ll certainly take you up on it when I get back. Meanwhile, perhaps you wouldn’t mind keeping this young lady out of mischief.’
‘Delighted. Can’t you let the papers ride for a while, though?’
‘Afraid not. Some of us have to work around here, you know. See you in a bit.’
He went out of the room.
‘Poor Daddy,’ observed Melissa thoughtfully. ‘He’s had rather a lot on his plate lately. I expect he’ll be glad to get back to England for a rest.’
Harry motioned to Trimani, who came hurrying over from the bar.
‘One Tiger beer. One … gin fizz, please.’
‘Right away, Tuan!’ And he was gone.
Melissa shook her head.
‘Look at the way they run around for you, Uncle Harry. But if anybody else tried to get that kind of service, they’d just be ignored. Why is that?’
‘Because I’m a relic, I suppose.’ He shrugged. ‘In my day, that’s how it was always done, nobody thought anything of it. Trimani there, he’s served at this Mess a long time. I expect he remembers the old ways too, but lately he’s been told by a lot of people that he doesn’t have to bow and scrape to the white sahibs anymore, that he’s equal to them, and should they require a drink well, let them jolly well come and ask for one. I don’t suppose any of them bothered to ask him what he’d like to do, but that’s neither here nor there. Still, for all his new freedom, he chooses to keep one memory of the old days alive and that memory is me. Oh, you’re absolutely right, Melissa. Nobody else here gets the same treatment I do; but then, nobody else here goes as far back as me and Trimani. We’re the only two dinosaurs left in this particular patch of swamp.’
‘You’re not a dinosaur,’ cried Melissa emphatically. ‘And neither is Trimani.’
‘Pardon, Missy?’ inquired the barman, who had just arrived with the drinks.
She stared at him, flustered.
‘Oh … ah … I was just saying, Trimani … you’re not a … dinosaur.’
Trimani shook his head gravely.
‘No, Missy, that is right. I am a Buddhist.’ He set down the drinks, smiled proudly, and walked away. Harry and Melissa managed to hold back their laughter until he was out of earshot.
‘You see, I told you,’ giggled Melissa. ‘He’s not a dinosaur.’
She sipped at her gin fizz. It was deliciously cold and she found herself musing that she was rarely happier than when she was in Uncle Harry’s company. She had really meant what she said about missing him. There was nothing strange about it either; it was simply that Harry Sullivan had always represented a kind of reassuring steadfastness that she had come to rely on. Even when she was a little girl, she had relished the visits to Uncle Harry’s house. She would sit on his lap, inhaling the familiar cigar-smoke smell of him, while she listened enthralled to his wonderful stories of adventure in far away places.
Even then he’d been alone, of course. The Tremaynes had not come to live in Malaya until 1956, when Melissa was eight years old. Harry had already been a widower for six years and he was then, what he was now, an extremely nice, but very lonely old man. As far as Melissa knew, he had not had a relationship with another woman since his wife died; at least, not one that was anything more than platonic, though lord knows, he must have had some opportunities along the way.
‘Do you remember much of England?’ he asked her now.
‘Not really. Little things.’ She smiled. ‘I remember building a snowman one Christmas and I remember a field, I think, that must have been outside our back garden … There’s nothing definite, you know, just very abstract images. Oh, I remember a dog too, a big black thing. Must have been ours I suppose, goodness knows what must have happened to him.’ She shook her head. ‘Not much to go on, is it? Everyone keeps telling me how very cold it is over there and …’
Her voice trailed away as her attention was distracted by the entrance of a stranger, a tall, blond-haired man, wearing jeans and a white T-shirt. He was walking slowly, rather dejectedly, she thought, his hands in his pockets and a rather glum expression on his handsome, tanned face. He moved over to the bar and began chatting to Trimani.
‘Is something wrong?’ enquired Harry, who had not noticed the focus of her attention.
‘I was just wondering who the dish was.’
‘The what?’
She smiled apologetically.
‘It’s just an expression I picked up from a magazine. It means good-looking, that’s all … and I wondered who he was. I haven’t seen him before.’
‘Who?’ cried Harry in exasperation.
Melissa leaned closer in order to whisper. ‘I’m talking about the chap by the bar. There … wearing blue jeans …’
Harry looked in the direction she was indicating.
‘Him?’ he cried.
‘Shush! Yes, him. Why, what’s wrong?’
‘That’s Beresford!’
‘Oh. Well, he’s very handsome.’
‘But … he’s Australian!’
Melissa giggled. ‘Well alright then. He’s a handsome Australian. I say … why is Trimani pointing at us like that?’
‘I can’t imagine!’ muttered Harry. He was somewhat taken aback. He had always thought that Melissa had some degree of discernment.
‘He is though, Uncle Harry. Look.’
Harry looked. Sure enough, Beresford was chatting to Trimani, and Trimani did seem to be pointing at the table where Harry and Melissa were sitting.
‘Do you know him very well?’ asked Melissa.
‘Hardly at all. Never even passed the time of day with him.’
‘Well, he seems to think he knows you. He’s coming over.’
‘What?’ Harry glanced up in alarm. The Australian was sailing towards him with a disarming grin on his face. A few steps brought him right to the side of the table.
‘Hello there. Hope you don’t mind me introducing myself. I’m Bob Beresford. You must be Harry Sullivan.’ He thrust out a hand that was doubtless intended as a shaking device, but Harry just sat there staring at him; so he swivelled slightly to the left and offered the hand to Melissa, who took it more readily. ‘I’m afraid I don’t know your name, miss.’
‘Melissa. Melissa Tremayne. Pleased to meet you Mr Beresford.’
‘Tremayne. That wouldn’t be anything to do with Captain Tremayne, by any chance?’
‘His daughter.’
‘Well now … fancy that!’ There was a brief, rather uncomfortable silence. Bob turned back to Harry. ‘Well, I hope you don’t mind me coming forward like this, but I had to come over and offer to buy you a drink, the moment I learned it was you what bagged the big stripey over there.’
‘Bagged the …?’ Harry was beginning to suspect that the rest of the local population had decided to switch to new language overnight, without informing him. He glanced at Melissa for some support.
‘I think he means the tiger,’ she said cautiously.
‘Yeah, sure, the big old bugger stuck on the wall there …’
Harry raised his eyebrows.
‘May I remind you that there is a lady present?’ he asked icily.
‘Oh, that’s alright, Uncle Harry. I’ve heard worse at school! Won’t you sit down with us, Mr Beresford?’
‘Ah, thanks very much, Miss Tremayne.’
‘Melissa.’
‘Right, Melissa.’ Bob pulled up a chair and sat himself down at the table. ‘And you must both call me Bob. Now, I took the liberty of asking Trim to bring over another round of drinks; you see, Mr Sullivan, we’re birds of the same feather. I do a bit of hunting meself and I was thinking …’
Harry took a deep breath.
‘Mr Beresford …’
‘Bob. My friends call me Bob.’
‘Mr Beresford. I can assure you that …’
‘’Course, I’ve never actually gone after tigers before. That’s where you come in. See, I’ve heard that a bloody big tiger killed a cow last night, on the coast road just outside of Kampong Panjang … and I was thinkin’ that you and me, the two of us together, so to speak, could team up and have a crack at him …’
‘Mister Beresford!’ Harry’s voice was harsh. Even the impetuous Australian stopped to listen this time.
‘First, let me assure you that I have not gone hunting tiger, nor anything else for that matter, for something like eight years. I am a retired man, Mr Beresford, I am sixty-seven years old and, frankly, I do not feel in the least bit interested in renewing the hobby. I hope I have made myself clear.’
It became very quiet again. Trimani arrived with the tray of drinks, sensed the uncomfortable atmosphere, set down his load and departed as rapidly as possible. Bob took a packet of cigarettes from his back pocket, extracted one, offered the pack to Melissa who shook her head dumbly. He lit his own smoke and then tried another angle.
‘Of course, Mr Sullivan, you wouldn’t actually have to join in the hunt. See, what I’m really lookin’ for is a good guide, a tracker, someone who knows the ropes. I’d be willin’ to pay …” He saw from the outraged expression on Harry’s face that he had put his foot in it again and he glanced wildly at Melissa, hoping that she might bail him out.
‘What er … part of Australia are you from … ah … Bob?’ she ventured.
‘From New South Wales. Do you know it at all?’
‘I’m afraid not.’
‘Oh, well you must go there sometime, it’s very beautiful.’
‘Anywhere near Botany Bay?’ enquired Harry unexpectedly.
‘Why do you ask that Mr Sullivan?’ asked Bob, brightening a little.
‘That’s where all the convicts landed, isn’t it?’
The two men glowered at each other across the table for a moment.
‘You know,’ exclaimed Melissa, with exaggerated jollity. ‘I was only saying to Daddy the other day. I wouldn’t mind learning to shoot, myself.’
‘Oh well, Miss Tremayne … Melissa … I’d be only too glad to give you some lessons, anytime you like …’
‘If Miss Tremayne decides she wants shooting lessons, I think she knows only too well that I can provide them,’ said Harry tonelessly. He turned to gaze at Melissa. ‘Strange you’ve never mentioned it before.’
‘Oh, well I …’
‘You can still shoot then?’ murmured Bob.
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘You can still shoot, Mr Sullivan. Only, I thought perhaps the reason you didn’t hunt anymore was because your eyes had gone … something like that.’
‘My eyesight is perfect, thank you.’
‘Well, it’s interesting this, but me and some of the junior officers have got together and organized a little target-shooting event for Saturday. They’ve got permission to use the rifle range at the barracks. Officially, the prize is just a crate of beer … but we’re going to put up a little money between ourselves, just to make it more fun. Everybody puts in fifty dollars and the winner takes the lot …’
‘Gambling.’ Harry said the one word in a measured, icy tone that seemed to transform it into something quite filthy.
‘Yeah … well, I appreciate not everybody approves of it … but you’ve got to do something to pass the hours away, haven’t you?’
‘Oh, Uncle Harry! It sounds like terrific fun,’ enthused Melissa. ‘Why don’t you go in for it? Then I could come along and cheer you on.’ She turned back to Bob. ‘Are members of the public allowed to come?’
‘Sure. The more the merrier, that’s what I reckon. But maybe Mr Sullivan doesn’t feel up to it …’ He glanced slyly at Harry. ‘After all, some of those young officers are crack shots; could be he doesn’t want to risk his fifty dollars.’
‘What time is this competition?’ snapped Harry defensively.
‘We’re starting off at ten in the morning before the sun gets too strong.’
‘I’ll be there,’ announced Harry calmly.
‘Fantastic!’ Melissa clapped her hands in anticipation. ‘I can hardly wait. I’ve always wanted to see you in action, Uncle Harry!’ She lifted her gin fizz and took a generous swallow of it. ‘Here’s to Saturday,’ she said.
‘Cheers.’ Bob raised his glass of beer and drank. Then the two of them glanced at Harry, but he remained motionless, his face impassive. The awkward silence returned.
‘About this tiger, Mr Sullivan,’ ventured Bob warily. ‘Couldn’t you give me some advice, at least? I don’t know the first thing about tiger hunting. I’ve been asking around the kampongs for guides, but nobody seems to have much idea. I suppose the obvious thing to do is to find the carcass of the cow he killed and then try tracking him into the jungle from there …’
Harry let out an exclamation of contempt.
‘Mr Beresford, that is the last thing you do! I only once ever resorted to trailing a tiger through its home ground and that time I was lucky to escape with my life. The tiger was wounded. The only possible reason for following a cat into the jungle is to put it out of its misery after your first shot has failed to finish it off.’
Bob shrugged.
‘Fair enough. But … how do you get the shot in, in the first place?’
Harry gazed at Bob contemptuously, almost wearily, like an aged schoolmaster regarding a particularly troublesome pupil.
‘You build a machan, Mr Beresford.’
‘A what?’
‘A tree platform. You place it in a tree overlooking the half-eaten kill. A tiger will return every night to feed on it. You fix a flashlight to the barrel of your gun and when you hear the cat eating, you aim, switch on the light, and shoot.’ He spread his hands in a gesture of finality. ‘One dead tiger,’ he said calmly. ‘Or possibly, one wounded tiger, which is when you come down the tree and follow him up.’
‘Ah. That sound a bit more sporting!’
Harry stared at Bob for a moment in silence.
‘Excuse me,’ he said at last. ‘I didn’t realize we were discussing sport. I thought we were talking about killing tigers.’
Bob frowned. ‘Is there a difference?’ he enquired.
‘Oh yes. I wasn’t aware of it myself for a very long time. But now I can tell you with authority, that there is a difference; and one day, you’ll learn that for yourself.’ He picked up his drink and sipped at it thoughtfully.
‘So … er … how do I go about making this … machan?’
‘There will be someone in the kampongs who remembers. Ask the older men to help you. It’s a long time since I heard of a tiger venturing out of the jungle. It may just kill once and go back, in which case there’s no reason to try and shoot it.’
‘Reason?’ Bob chuckled. ‘’Course there’s a reason!’ He jerked a thumb over his shoulder at the tiger’s head trophy on the wall. ‘I want to put another head on the wall beside that one.’ He leaned forward as though confiding a secret. ‘I don’t want to worry you, Harry, but from what I’ve heard, this new tiger is a lot bigger than the one you’ve got there …’
‘Oh, I don’t doubt it! It was one of the villagers who told you about it, was it?’
‘Well, yes …’
‘The Malays have a marvellous capacity for exaggeration.’ Harry pointed to the trophy. ‘That fellow there now. On several occasions, he was described to me as being over twelve feet long. A beast as big as a horse, with jaws like a crocodile, and as tall as a grown man. I measured him when I’d finished him off. He went exactly eight feet, six inches, between pegs. Not small by Malayan standards, but not exactly a monster either.’
Bob looked puzzled. ‘Between pegs?’ he echoed.
‘There are two ways of measuring tigers, Mr Beresford. The honest way is to drive a wooden peg into the ground by the tip of his nose and at the tip of his tail, then measure a straight line between. Some hunters prefer to measure over curves … laying the tape along all the contours of the body. That can add on another four or five inches. Very good for the ego, no doubt. Of course, it was the rajas in India who had the most ingenious method. They had special tape measures constructed that had a couple of inches taken out of every foot. Hence all those records of eleven- and twelve-foot cats, shot from the backs of elephants. It’s true that the Indian tiger does tend to be a little larger than its Malayan counterpart, but even so …’ He went into a silent muse for a few moments, his eyes narrowing as though he were squinting into some misty world that his companions could not see. Then he said, ‘I really wish you would leave that tiger alone, Mr Beresford.’
‘Why?’ The other man stared back at him defiantly.
‘How many tigers do you suppose are out in that jungle now, Mr Beresford? Do you think you could put a figure on it?’
Bob shrugged. ‘Wouldn’t have a clue,’ he admitted. ‘Hey, but look here. You’re a fine one to talk, I must say! You’ve hunted them before, what makes it right for you and wrong for me?’
‘I didn’t say that it was right for me.’
‘Yeah … well, anyway, this one’s a cattle-killer.’
Harry smiled sardonically but he kept gazing intently into the other man’s eyes.
‘Ah, yes,’ he murmured. ‘Of course he is. I’d forgotten about that.’
Melissa had been listening quietly to the two men’s conversation for some time but now she saw the need to move in and referee again. The atmosphere of antagonism between the two of them was extraordinary, though it did seem to stem more from Harry than from the young Australian.
Harry said nothing further, but simply sat regarding the two of them with an expression of open resentment on his face. For Melissa’s part, she was quite happy to chat with Bob Beresford, who was the most interesting proposition that had come her way in a long time. Not only was he strikingly handsome, but he was cheerful and easy to talk to. Still, Harry’s presence made the whole thing rather uncomfortable and Melissa was relieved when she saw her father returning with a bundle of papers under his arm. The relief was short-lived, though, for Harry immediately excused himself, mumbling something about some work he had to do.
‘What on earth’s wrong with Harry?’ asked Dennis, as the old man swept out of the room. ‘He’s got a face like thunder.’
There was a brief silence.
‘Anybody fancy a drink?’ asked Bob awkwardly.
Haji was just about at his wits’ end with Timah. His repeated cuffings and bites served only to discipline her for a very short time. Then her spirits would rise again and she would resume her childish antics, hiding among the bushes, pouncing out at him unexpectedly, pursuing him along the cattle trails like some overgrown cub. It was more than his dignity could bear, and in the end he was moved to indicate to her, by a series of movements and growls, that if she did not curb her frivolity, he would refuse to take her to the kill. This did the trick, for she was every bit as hungry as he was and now she trotted obediently along in his wake.
After some time, they neared the place where Haji had made the kill and they could smell quite clearly the stink of rotten meat that had lain in the hot sun all day. This was tantalizing and Timah would have gone straight to the feast, but Haji directed a low growl of warning at her and she flopped down in the grass to wait with quiet reluctance. Haji did likewise, listening intently and peering into the darkness. He could see the mound of vegetation where the carcass lay and the rustling sounds of movement that reached him from the spot were quickly identified. A pair of large monitor lizards had found the kill and were snapping eagerly at the exposed viscera. Always suspicious, Haji took a long, slow stroll around the area, viewing it from every angle until he was sure that everything was as he had left it. Then, circling back to Timah, he indicated that all was well. The lizards skittered madly away as the big cats approached.
Haji flopped down again, waiting politely while Timah ate her fill. This she did quite eagerly, throwing herself upon the carcass and tearing at the putrefying flesh in a frenzy. She consumed over half the meat that was left on the carcass and at last, satisfied, she moved off to the river to quench her thirst. Now it was Haji’s turn. His appetite was less keen, for he had dined well the previous night. Even so, he had little trouble in stripping the cow down to a poor collection of bare bones. Then he too moved to the river to drink. They lay stretched out beside the kill for a while, listening to the steady vibrant hum of the insects in the night. But Haji was always restless in the vicinity of an eating place and after a short while he got up and led the way along a familiar cattle trail. Timah followed him for a distance of several miles but then they came to a place where the trail forked left and right. Haji started along the right fork, but after he had gone a little way, he realized that Timah was no longer following him. He turned to gaze back at her. She was standing, looking at him, and everything about her stance and expression told him that she wished to take the lefthand path. He growled once, a half-hearted command for her to follow him, but he knew before he had uttered the sound that she would not heed him. In many ways, after the wild behaviour she had exhibited earlier, he was relieved. Without further comment, he continued on his way and when he glanced back a second time the trail behind him was quite empty. He was not surprised to see this. The solitary life was the way of the tiger.
He moved on along the path and vanished into darkness.
The car sped recklessly along the jungle road. Melissa glanced at her father’s face. In the green glow of the dashboard it looked alien, unfamiliar. The two of them had just been discussing Uncle Harry’s mysterious mood earlier that evening.
‘The long and the short of it,’ concluded Dennis, ‘is that he just doesn’t like Bob Beresford.’
‘Why ever not?’
‘Oh, search me. But it’s a fact. Harry always says it’s because the poor fellow’s Australian, but somehow that isn’t reason enough. Do you sense an … antagonism between them? Almost a rivalry?’
‘Yes, but from Uncle Harry more than from Bob.’
Dennis glanced at her slyly. ‘Oh, so it’s Bob already, is it?’
She smiled. ‘Yes, why not? I’m eighteen now, Daddy, you must bear that in mind!’
‘Melissa, I stopped trying to keep you in order years ago. I’ve got nothing against the Aussies, anyway.’
‘He’s not like most Aussies.’
‘Hmm.’ Dennis frowned. ‘Just the same, I’d watch what you say to Harry. He might get jealous.’
Melissa chuckled. ‘Oh really, you have to laugh. Anyone would think Harry and I are engaged, the way you’re going on.’
‘Yes, but you know how fond he is of you, Melissa. God knows what he’ll do when we shove off back to England. Poor old fellow …’
‘We’ve done everything we can to get him to go with us.’
‘Yes …’ Dennis sighed. ‘But let’s face it, he wouldn’t be happy anyplace but here. He belongs.’
The car sped onwards in the comforting direction of home.
Chapter 7 (#ulink_99652dea-40d8-56ab-bb47-0f6578bd633c)
It was early morning and Haji was prowling amongst familiar mangrove swamps, where the silted yellow sluggishness of a river collapsed into a misery of pools and muddy sandbanks. A couple of fat frogs leapt away from his approach and slapped into water. He was, as yet, not hungry enough to bother with them, but when times were particularly hard, there was very little that he considered beneath his dignity. Before now he had eaten many frogs, also snakes, crabs, turtles, and even fish when the opportunity had presented itself. Wild pigs were generally the mainstay of his diet, but lately there seemed to be a bewildering shortage of the creatures and the only signs of them he had encountered all day had been months old.
He came to a place now where a great outcrop of rock jutted up from the surrounding trees and undergrowth and he recalled that here was an old favourite sleeping place of his, a small cave at the base of the rock. But as he neared it, he was perturbed by a powerful smell that seemed to be issuing from within. It was in a strange way familiar and at the same time it incorporated another smell that did not belong with the first odour. He came to a halt for a moment, sniffing and grimacing, unsure of what to do. At last, he ventured a little nearer and issued a loud roar of enquiry; whereupon several large black shapes came squawking and flapping out of the darkness, almost blundering right into him. Haji was so startled, he almost turned tail and ran. But then he realized that the creatures had been just a flock of scavenging magpies who had clearly not noticed his approach. Still, the shock had unnerved him a little and he paced backwards and forwards for several minutes, his head down, while he made low rumbling growls deep in his throat. He began to move away from the cave, but the smell antagonized him with its nagging familiarity and at the back of his mind was the thought that the cave must hold some kind of food if the magpies had been there. So he approached again, slowly, cautiously, craning his head forward to peer into the dark interior. The smell became more powerful by the moment.
He slipped into the cool shade, setting down his feet on the chill rocks with great precision. Now, he realized why the smell had seemed so familiar to him. Against the back wall of the cave, where the ceiling curved down low to meet the ground, he could discern the long striped back of a tigress lying on her side. It was his other, older mate, Seti.
Haji uttered the habitual coughing growl of welcome that tigers use, but she made no reply. She was lying with her head turned away from him and seemed to be resting, though she should surely have woken at the sound of his voice. Haji was unsettled by the strangeness of her behaviour and nervously he called her again, but she remained silent. He stood for several long moments, debating what to do. The unfamiliar smell was frightening him. In it, he thought he detected something that spoke of birth and his suspicions were confirmed when he spotted a tiny cub stretched on the ground beside Seti. He stepped forward and nuzzled it, but it did not move or make a sound. Now he crept fearfully up to Seti and saw that a second cub lay nearby, but that too was strangely still and silent. Then he saw that a third cub lay half in, half out of Seti’s body, the tiny wrinkled face and paws immersed in a sea of congealed blood. A thick mantle of flies buzzed greedily over the area, settling, flying up, resettling.
With an angry growl, Haji moved forward so he could nuzzle at Seti’s face. She was lying stretched out, her dry tongue lolling from her open mouth, which seemed to hold an expression of pain. At first, Haji thought that her eyes were closed for he could see no glimmer of light from them. But then he realized that she had no eyes, for the thieving magpies had stolen them and that was why she was so still and quiet. He knew now that the third smell was the awful stench of death, and he shrank back from it in fear, hugging the wall of the cave as he crept away. He turned back once or twice and cried fearfully for the cubs to follow him but then he realized that the death-smell was on them too and anyway, they had been so young they could barely crawl to their mother’s milk. As she was blind in death, so had they been in life, however brief that was.
Haji reeled out into the sunlight, frightened, bewildered. He knew now that Seti and the cubs could never emerge from the cave, that the death-smell had bound them there forever. He would never encounter them on the trail again and though he could not really understand grief, there was an anxiety in him at the loss of his old companion and his inability to fully comprehend what had happened to her. He paced up and down, walking faster and faster, and working himself into a kind of frenzy, for he could still feel the stench of the death-smell in his nostrils and he was torn between a natural impulse to run away and a powerful desire to stay with his mate. But the image of her blind eyes kept coming back to him, telling him that it was useless to stay and risk the death-smell, for she could never find him now.
At last he articulated the frenzy of conflicting emotions within him into a great shattering roar, which he flung to the wind. It echoed from the crags of rock, seeming to multiply in volume and duration until the entire jungle for miles around throbbed to the sound of his confusion. Flocks of birds scattered skywards, deer raced into jungle, milling in confusion, troops of monkeys shrieked feeble insults in return. But the roaring continued, all through the long morning and late into the afternoon.
Harry stepped out of the taxicab onto the crowded pavement of one of the main streets of Kuala Trengganu, the state capital. He handed the driver a five-dollar bill and waved away the change. The taxi accelerated off into a melee of cars and bicycles all reassuringly ploughing a path down the left-hand side of the road. Harry glanced quickly about. Kuala Trengganu, like most sizeable Malay towns, was a riot of sounds, smells, and visual peculiarities. Harry didn’t make the trip very often, but the only real shops were here and he had something special in mind. He noticed a couple of bedraggled beggars advancing towards him with their arms outstretched, and he wisely took to his heels, striding purposely past the ranks of Chinese emporiums and eating places, each with their own garish advertisements for drink and cigarettes displayed on tin boards outside. It was not that he begrudged the beggars a few cents, but he had learned from experience that news of a generous Englishman could spread amongst the begging community like wildfire and then the wretched creatures would appear as if by magic, crawling out of every nook and cranny. In such instances, it was simply impossible to give everybody something, there were just too many of them; and so, one played a kind of cat-and-mouse game with them, only rewarding those who showed uncanny persistence in staying the distance.
Harry headed for a certain area, where a row of Chinese merchants operated stores that specialized in watches, cameras, and radios. As he struggled through a crowded market, he felt a sharp tugging at his sleeve and glancing down he saw that a Tamil beggar was standing beside him. At first, he thought the man was very short, because he stood no higher than Harry’s elbow.
‘Please, Tuan, please!’ He gazed imploringly up, one hand extended for coins.
‘No, I’m sorry, I haven’t any …’ The excuse died in Harry’s throat, for, glancing down, he saw that the man was suffering from elephantiasis. His body was perfectly normal but his legs had degenerated into two vividly coloured stumps of bloated, clublike flesh, spreading out at the base into wide formless trunks from each of which a single yellow toenail protruded. Harry felt nauseated, humbled. He glanced back at the man’s face which was a portrait of suffering.
‘Please, Tuan …’
‘Yes … yes, of course.’ Harry fumbled in his pocket and pulled out what change there was, and thrust it into the man’s hand. Then he moved on, not wanting to see those hideous legs again. From behind him came the man’s profuse thanks.
‘Terima kasih, Tuan! Terima kasih …’
His head down, Harry hurried onwards. Lord, this country of mixed experiences. Just when a man was beginning to think that he was inured to shock, along came something like that to put him firmly in his place again. Sometimes he wondered if the white man really had any place out here. Perhaps it was a good thing that the colonial system was finally falling apart … and yet, from his middle youth onwards, it was the only life that Harry had known. He would stay on now. He would have to.
He climbed up the steps by the monsoon drain and onto a raised pavement. This was the area he had been heading for. After a few moments, he came to the particular shop he wanted. He had long ago learned that it was good policy to frequent one particular shop. After a while, the trader got to know you and recognizing that regular trade was a good thing, he would start his bartering at a much more realistic level than he would with the average passing tourist. The shop was packed tight with electrical goods and ranks of glittering watches were displayed beneath glass counters. It was on this selection that Harry fixed his gaze.
In an instant, the proprietor, a tubby bespectacled little Chinese man called Hong, had bustled over to greet him.
‘Hello sir! You look for something special?’ He indicated the watches. ‘Good watches, sir. Best in Trengganu. Best in Malaya!’
Harry smiled. The man was evidently very proud of his shop.
‘Well, let me see now …’ Harry knew that it was best to make the transaction slow. A man who bought on impulse was likely to end up with a bad deal. ‘I am looking for a watch. A good watch, you understand. A gift for a very good friend.’
‘Ah! You want special watch! I show!’ He indicated some beautiful Japanese chronometers. ‘These best in world,’ he announced. ‘Fine made, got two-year guarantee …’ He was already removing them from the glass case, but Harry shook his head.
‘These are, indeed, very good watches. But not what I’m looking for.’
‘No?’ The man looked quite amazed by this revelation. ‘Ah! You want good Swiss watch?’
‘How about an English watch?’ ventured Harry.
Hong grimaced. ‘The English not make good watch,’ he said sorrowfully. ‘Go wrong all time. I not sell English watch. But Swiss very good! See here, twenty-one jewel, shock-proof, water-proof, anti-magnetic …’
‘Hmm.’ Harry rubbed his chin, scanned the ranks of glittering merchandise. ‘It’s still not right. I want something simple, easy to understand. It’s for a young boy, you see …’
‘Ah! Young boy! I got good watch for young boy. This one! Shock-proof, dust-proof, water-proof, anti-magnetic, one-year guarantee …’
‘No. It’s still not quite … ah, now that looks the sort of thing!’ He pointed to a simple silver pocket-watch on a leather fob. ‘Let me see that one,’ he said.
‘This watch, sir?’ Hong could scarcely believe his eyes. ‘You want this one? But this one not show date! This one not carry guarantee, not dust-proof, water-proof …’
‘Yes, well, I’d like to see it anyway.’
‘OK, sir.’ Hong bobbed down behind the counter, extracted the watch, and, as Harry had expected, reemerged with a whole new point of view. ‘Here you are, sir. This very fine watch, very rare. Swiss mechanism. Twenty-one jewel, shock-proof, water-proof, two-year guarantee …’
Harry suppressed a smile.
‘I thought you just said it didn’t have any of those things.’
Hong spread his hands and smiled sheepishly. ‘But sir, that was when I didn’t want you to buy this watch.’
In spite of himself, Harry had to laugh. It was an outlandish explanation, but it held good for all the merchants in this town. He picked up the watch and examined it critically. It looked robust enough, a simple silver pocket-watch that showed the time clearly and looked like it could take some rough handling. ‘Alright,’ murmured Harry. ‘How much?’
Hong gazed at him for a moment with an inscrutable smile on his face.
‘This watch, sir. I sell you for … twenty-five dollars.’
‘Twenty-five!’ Harry registered disgust and made as if to walk off. ‘Hong, it’s time I started going to some of the other shops,’ he said.
‘Just a minute, just a minute!’ Hong smiled again, broader than before. ‘You good man … I good man. I make you special price. Twenty dollars.’
‘Twenty? That’s still robbery. I’ll give you … six dollars for it.’
Now it was Hong’s turn to be outraged.
‘Six? You want watch for six? If I sell for that much, I go out of business. Six … you give me fifteen dollars, I can not go less.’
‘Eight dollars!’
‘Twelve!’
‘Well … alright, ten dollars, my last offer.’
‘Ten dollars! Madness! Twelve my lowest price!’
‘You said that about fifteen. I’ll give you ten.’
Hong shook his head adamantly.
‘Sorry, sir. Twelve. Cannot go lower.’
‘Then I don’t want the watch.’ Again, he made as if to walk away.
‘Alright, alright, alright!’ Hong was tearing at his hair. ‘I give you for ten.’
‘Eight?’ ventured Harry with a grin, but Hong’s look of horror told him that this was clearly not playing the game. ‘Alright, only joking.’ He counted out the notes and put the watch into his pocket.
‘Now sir, you want anything else? Binocular? Got very nice, very cheap. Radio, pick up all English station? Record player, new from Japan? Good. Identity bracelet? Cassette recorder …?’
Harry retreated from the onslaught with a brief wave and set out again into the crowds. News of his kindness to the deformed cripple had evidently got around, for suddenly there seemed to be an awful lot of beggars in evidence – lame men, people missing limbs, women with tiny howling babies. Harry slipped smartly around the corner and strode quickly away in the other direction. When he was in Kuala Trengganu, he usually sought one little luxury that was not readily available at home. He went to a small barber shop where he had a haircut and a beautifully close shave that was administered with a horrifying looking cutthroat razor. As he sat back in his chair, he brought out the silver watch and examined it carefully.
‘Nice watch,’ observed the barber. ‘How much you pay?’
‘Ten dollars.’
‘I can get watch like that for six dollar.’
Harry nodded.
‘This shave is costing me one dollar,’ he said. ‘If I were a Malay, I could get it for twenty-five cents.’
And the barber threw back his head and laughed merrily, his dark eyes twinkling. Harry laughed along with him. No further explanation was necessary.
The afternoon sun was still fierce. Bob Beresford felt the heat of it on his neck as he brought the Land Rover to an abrupt, squealing halt on the stretch of road that ran alongside Kampong Panjang. He clambered out of the vehicle, collected his rifle from the back seat, and slinging the weapon carelessly over his shoulder he headed into the village. The kampong was a jumble of rattan and corrugated iron dwellings, all of them supported three or four feet above the ground on a series of stout posts, a practical necessity in a land that swarmed with venomous snakes, scorpions, and centipedes. The village seemed to have been constructed with no particular sense of order, one building encroaching close upon the next, with just a well-trampled muddy walkway in between. As Bob approached, he was quickly spotted by groups of children who flocked around him excitedly, pointing to his gun, and jabbering in Malay. As soon as they divined that he had some purpose in coming here, they fell in behind him like a platoon of miniature troops. Bob could barely speak their language and could only gaze at them enquiringly and repeat over and over, ‘Penghulu?’ Somebody had told him that this was the Malay word for the village headman. Perhaps his pronunciation was bad, because it took some considerable time to make his wishes known. At last, with wild exclamations, the laughing children took the lead and drew him deeper and deeper into the village. Finally, they deposited him outside a dwelling that looked no grander than the others and the children began to shout and yell, until a little, wizened monkey of a man, dressed in a red sarong, emerged from the interior of the house and clambered down the stairs. He growled something at the children and their noise subsided abruptly. Then the penghulu smiled apologetically at Bob and lowered his head in a polite bow.
‘Good day, Tuan. Can I be a help?’ His English was surprisingly fluent. The children began to giggle. The penghulu gave a shout and stepped menacingly towards them, at which point the children scattered in every direction, leaving the two men to their own devices. The penghulu turned back and raised his eyes briefly heavenwards, an expression that said, ‘Ah, these children! What can a man do with them?’ Then he enquired politely, ‘Will the Tuan take some tea?’
‘Ah … no, thanks very much. But I could use some help. I came about the tiger …’
The penghulu looked puzzled. Evidently, he had not come across the word before.
‘Harimau,’ prompted Bob, who had taken the trouble of finding out a few easy terms from some of his pupils.
‘Ah!’ The penghulu nodded gravely. He eyed Bob’s rifle curiously. ‘You want shoot him?’ he murmured.
‘If I can. Can you show me the place where he took the cow?’
The penghulu smiled, nodded. He turned back to the house and shouted something in his native tongue. After a moment’s silence, the sound of a scolding woman’s voice emerged from within, a long stream of words that seemed to contain not one pause for breath. The penghulu grimaced, winked slyly at Bob, and then chuckled.
‘Women,’ he murmured. ‘Why do we marry them? Come!’ He led Bob away from the house, ignoring the barrage of invective that was still emerging from there. They could hear the woman’s complaining voice for some distance.
Bob took out a packet of English cigarettes, offered one to the old man, who accepted it gratefully, and then put one between his own lips. He lit both cigarettes with his silver Ronson. The penghulu gazed at this admiringly and then strolled happily beside the Australian, puffing ostentatiously on his cigarette, aware that people in the surrounding houses were observing him. He was a curious-looking fellow. No more than five feet, three inches high, his legs were quite short in proportion to his body and rather bandy, emphasizing the apishness of his appearance. As well as the sarong, he was wearing a grubby white short-sleeved shirt and a pair of blue rubber flip-flops. His large, rather discoloured teeth were liberally dotted with bright gold fillings that tended to reflect the sunlight whenever he grinned. It was impossible to guess at his age. His tiny, excessively lined face suggested an octogenarian but he was as agile and wiry as a gibbon as he trotted along through the village.
‘Is it far away?’ enquired Bob.
‘Not far, Tuan. Si-Pudong take cow on road, out by kampong. Then he carry ’way. No man know where to. Herd-boy very frighted, but Si-Pudong not touch him. He read words on boy here!’ The penghulu tapped his own forehead and smiled. ‘So, Si-Pudong ’fraid to eat boy. Take cow ’stead.’
Bob did not understand this at all and resolved to ask somebody else to explain it to him in the near future. The two of them moved out of the outskirts of the village and onto the road. Several children ventured to follow them, but the penghulu shouted for them to stay put, which they did, rather reluctantly, staring glumly after the two men as they strode away.
They walked for some distance in silence, glancing occasionally into the thick jungle that flanked the road. It was oppressively hot at the moment, and Bob felt the tickle of sweat as it ran down his neck, beneath his khaki shirt. After a surprisingly short distance, the penghulu announced, ‘Cow killed here!’ He pointed to some scrape-marks in the hard dirt surface of the road and, peering closer, Bob could see some patches of dried blood. Now the penghulu pointed to the right, where behind a screen of ferns and scrub, the ground declined sharply into a monsoon ditch. ‘Ha – Si-Pudong, he come up out of ditch, attack from behind,’ explained the penghulu. Bob glanced at him suspiciously. He had the distinct impression that the old man had been about to say harimau, the normal Malay word for tiger, but he had stopped himself, almost as though he was afraid to say it. Just exactly what Si-Pudong meant, he would have to check up later. Bob moved over to the ditch and slid down into it, closely followed by the penghulu. The ground was comparatively moist here, and after some searching about they found a series of pugmarks.
‘Ai!’ exclaimed the penghulu, pointing. ‘There were two of them! See, Tuan.’ He indicated a pair of large, squarish prints. ‘Man-cat stand here. Go up bank to kill.’ Now he pointed out some smaller tracks, a little distance back. ‘His woman wait here, while he do all work.’ He thought to himself for a moment, then added, ‘Just like my wife.’
Bob smiled, scratched his head. He certainly hadn’t expected two tigers. He moved along the ditch a little way until he reached the place where the cow had been dropped down the bank. The grass was visibly crushed and flattened and there was a long deep furrow, presumably where one of the creature’s horns had gouged deep into the soil. There was a little dried blood matted into some tufts of grass, and from here a distinct trail led off through the undergrowth. Bob gazed after it for a moment, then turned to the penghulu and indicated that he intended to follow. The old man looked far from eager, so Bob took out his cigarettes and lighter, handed them to the penghulu and suggested that he should wait up on the road. With a grateful nod, the penghulu scrambled up over the bank and Bob set off into the jungle.
It was as though somebody had switched off the sun.
The instant he passed into the shadow of the trees, it seemed that the heat had simply evaporated, and he was immersed in a chilly world of green-dappled mystery. As he moved further onwards, the trees high above his head formed a thick dark canopy through which the rays of sunlight could only occasionally stab. But the trail he was following was easy enough to find. The drag marks led through the midst of lush ferns and tangled vines, around the gnarled roots of balau trees, along winding cattle trails, and deep through the heart of seemingly impenetrable bamboo thickets. Bob followed silently, glancing nervously this way and that. It was his first experience of entering real jungle and the dank humidity of it made him feel very claustrophobic. He started once when a pig-tailed monkey scuttled away from his advance with a shrill shriek of alarm, but he kept doggedly onwards, even when the trail stretched on much further than he would have believed possible. He marvelled at the sheer brute strength of the tiger. From time to time, he came across the chafed roots of trees and bushes, where the horns of the cow had evidently lodged for a time. The torn shredded bark suggested that the cat had exercised prodigious power in pulling the carcass free, and Bob began to wonder if the penghulu had been right about the second tiger. Surely it must have taken two strong animals to move the body this far.
Bob had no impression of time. He had forgotten to put on his wristwatch that morning and now it seemed like hours that he had been walking in this way. The trail led on through green shadow. Bob’s nerves began to get the better of him. On two distinct occasions, he had the vivid impression that something was gliding intently along behind him. Each time, he snapped fearfully around, his rifle ready to fire, only to find nothing but the empty jungle mocking him. He was on the verge of giving up and retracing his steps, when unexpectedly, the trail culminated at the edge of a sluggish-looking stream of water. It was a disappointing end to his search, for there was nothing here but a sorry-looking pile of bones and offal. It was obvious that no tiger would bother to return to this particular meal.
Bob came to a halt, mopped at his brow, which was sweating profusely despite the comparative cool of the jungle. Instinctively, he reached into his pocket for cigarettes and then remembered that he had given them to the penghulu. He swore vividly, shrugged his broad shoulders and turned back, retracing his steps.
If it had taken him a long time to come this far, the return journey seemed to take twice the time. He saw not a living thing on the way back, save for a brilliantly coloured tree snake hanging from an overhead limb. It had a glossy black body marked with a series of green and red spots, and he gave the creature a wide berth, not being sure whether it was poisonous or not. After what seemed like an uneventful eternity of trekking, he emerged into sunlight again.
The penghulu was sitting beside the road, smoking a cigarette and humming happily to himself. He glanced up in surprise as the Australian’s head appeared above the bank. Then he smiled, his gold teeth throwing out a dazzling welcome.
‘Ah, Tuan! You find Si-Pudong, yes?’
‘No.’ Bob clambered up onto the road and flopped down to rest for a moment. He accepted his lighter and cigarettes gratefully. Opening them, he found that there were only three left. He glanced disapprovingly at the penghulu, who smiled sheepishly and spread his arms in a gesture of regret.
‘You gone long time, Tuan,’ he said defensively.
‘Aww, that’s alright.’ Bob lit himself a smoke and inhaled deeply. ‘The cow was all eaten up,’ he announced. ‘If I’m going to shoot that tiger, I need to be onto the kill much quicker than this.’ He thought for a moment and then reached into his pocket and pulled out a notebook and pencil. ‘I tell you what,’ he said. ‘I’m going to write the address of my house down here. Can you read some English? It’s only a mile or so away from here on the Kuala Trengganu road. Now, this is what I’m going to do. I’m going to give you twenty dollars …’
The penghulu’s eyes lit up.
‘Now, the next time you or any of your people hear of a tiger killing a cow anywhere in Trengganu, you come and let me know, understand? So you see, it’s in your interest to help me out.’ He reached into his pocket, drew out his wallet and handed a twenty-dollar bill to the penghulu, who accepted it eagerly. ‘Another thing, you got any friends who can work with wood? Savvy? A carpenter, you know …?’ He mimed the action of sawing and hammering wood, and the penghulu nodded.
‘My cousin,’ he said with conviction.
‘Alright, let’s go and see your cousin. I want him to make me a special seat that I can rope up into the trees, a seat I can shoot from, you understand? I’ll meet his price, whatever it is! And look, I’m going to need men to help me later on, and they all get paid too. You’ll be able to buy a lot of cigarettes before we’re through. I’m a good man, chief, I always look after my friends. What do you say, are you going to help me out?’
The penghulu crumpled the twenty-dollar bill in his hand.
‘I good man too, Tuan! You not worry, I keep ears open, all over. I hear something, I send word, never fear!’ And he grinned, a wide golden grin. ‘Now, you come talk my cousin. He best woodman in all kampong. He make you good shooting seat, you will see.’ And he led Bob back in the direction of the village.
On the way back, to seal the bargain, they smoked the last two cigarettes.
Chapter 8 (#ulink_7defdd85-2725-5f31-bbec-c7be426aba3e)
It was a little after eight o’clock and Harry had already been up for something like three hours. He sat in his favourite rattan chair on the verandah remembering how, when he was younger, he had possessed the ability to sleep like a proverbial log. But as a man got older, his capacity for sleep seemed to dwindle. Now, the advent of the night was no longer a pleasure to him, but an irksome task that had to be endured in a seemingly endless fit of tossing and turning. More often than not, he would arise with the dawn and pace about his home, searching for little jobs to occupy himself while the hours slowly creaked past.
It was with a feeling of elation that he heard the metal garden gate clang open, telling him that Pawn had arrived to make the breakfast and, what was more important, today was the day she always brought Ché with her. They advanced slowly up the drive, an incongruous couple, she small and creaking in her sarong, he, a spindly hyperactive twelve-year-old, dressed in shorts and a torn T-shirt. He bounded up onto the porch ahead of his grandmother, his dark eyes flashing in merry greeting.
‘Good morning, Tuan!’ Like most young Malay boys, his English was excellent, and he had long ago lost any bashfulness that he might originally have possessed.
‘Good morning, Ché … Pawn …’ The old woman clambered up the stairs, grinning as always.
‘I am late, Tuan?’ she enquired fearfully.
‘Oh, I hardly think so! Anyway, I think we’ll leave breakfast for an hour or so. I haven’t much of an appetite yet.’
‘Yes, Tuan.’ She bowed very slightly and moved on into the house.
‘Ché, come and sit with me,’ suggested Harry. ‘Tell me all the news!’
Ché pulled up the spare seat and sat himself down on it, lifting his bare legs up so that he could rest his chin on his knees. Then he sat regarding Harry with a good-natured grin on his face.
‘The Tuan is well today?’ he enquired.
‘Oh, well enough, Ché, well enough. A little old, but there’s not much I can do about that is there? Now then, what’s been happening over in Kampong Panjang?
Ché’s face became very animated.
‘Well, Tuan, such excitement in the kampong two nights ago! A great tok belang killed a cow on the road just beyond the village. The cow belonged to my best friend, Majid, and he stood as close to the beast as I am to you!’
Harry smiled. He noted that like many Malays, Ché had a terrible reluctance to say the word ‘tiger.’ This stemmed from the old superstition that the very mention of the creature’s name was enough to bring its wrath down on one’s head. In most areas of Malaya, the superstition had faded except amongst the very old, but here in Trengganu it persisted amongst many of the inhabitants and may well have been passed on to Ché by his parents or grandparents.
‘A big tiger, you say? How big?’
‘Majid described him to me. He was fifteen feet long and stood as high as a fully grown deer. His eyes blazed like hot coals and his teeth were like great white daggers, this long!’ Ché held the palms of his hands six inches apart. ‘A truly terrible beast, Tuan. Poor Majid was fixed to the spot for a moment, but of course the beast did not attack him, for he was facing it.’
Harry nodded. He knew all about the fervent Malay belief that every good man had a verse from the Koran written on his forehead that proclaimed mankind’s superiority over the beasts of the jungle. Whenever confronted with this, a tiger is incapable of attacking its intended victim; and that was why, of course, nine times out of ten, a tiger would attack a man from behind. Beliefs like this were indelibly printed in the Malay consciousness and no amount of reasoning could shake that kind of faith. Harry could quite easily explain that Majid had probably been in no danger whatsoever; that a tiger only ever attacks a human being if it is very old or badly wounded, unable to catch its usual prey; moreover, that it would be quite natural for a tiger to attack from the rear, simply to maintain an element of surprise, but none of these arguments would make Ché cast off his own beliefs. So Harry simply asked, ‘Where do you think this tiger came from?’
The question was more complicated than it might seem to Western ears. To a Malay’s way of thinking, no tiger could just be there, a native cat wandering out of its jungle home. Ché thought for a moment before replying.
‘Some people in the village say that it might be a weretiger. There is an old bomoh who lives along near Kampong Machis and he claims to have the power of turning into a h – tok belang. But more likely, it goes the other way about. A beast from Kandong Balok has been living amongst us for some time and now is seeking his old ways.’
Harry nodded, knowing better than to laugh and cause offence. He knew all about Kandong Balok, the mythical kingdom of tigers that lay far beneath the earth in a secret place. There ruled Dato Uban, the king of all tigers, in a home made of human bones and thatched with human hair. From time to time, one of Dato’s subjects would yearn to live as a human and then this particular tiger would leave Kandong Balok by means of a secret tunnel. En route, a mysterious transformation would occur, the tiger would take human form and would go to live in some kampong, the other inhabitants never dreaming that such a creature dwelled amongst them. Sometimes, the changeling would become homesick and would visit Kandong Balock occasionally, reverting to its original form as it moved through the tunnel. Other times, the beast would simply hunger for raw flesh and, like the troublesome weretigers, would change its shape and kill cattle or even human beings.
The kampongs were rife with stories about weretigers, which were usually told to a huddled family audience late at night, in the glow of a solitary oil lamp. Details varied, but the basis was always more or less the same. A woman would be married happily for years to a man who was a good provider, a gentle sensitive husband. A tiger would start to prey on luckless villagers at night and the poor woman would never suspect a thing, until she awoke early one morning to see her husband’s head coming up the short ladder into the house, a head that was supported by the crouching body of a tiger! This was her husband, caught in mid-transformation. What happened to the marriage at this point was generally left as a matter of conjecture. Another popular story involved a brave man, lying beneath the slain body of his wife with a kris in each hand and stabbing the tiger when it came to eat. In the morning, a well-respected villager would be found with two daggers stuck in his ribs. There were countless other stories of course, all so similar that it was a wonder the Malays believed in them as faithfully as they did. Harry had his own particular favourite and he now asked Ché to recount it for him, for he loved to observe the boy’s excitement whenever he told such a tale.
‘Well Tuan, since you like the story so much, I will tell you it again. In the days before the tok belang looked as he does now, he was nothing more than a wild little boy, wandering in the jungle. One day, he was befriended by a strange old man who lived in a hut alone. The old man was very kind to the boy and taught him the ways of man, how to eat properly, how to speak and wear clothes, for, of course, up to this time, the boy had been quite naked. Well, the people in the nearest kampong soon came to hear about all this and they sent a man to insist that the wild boy must go to school. The old man was sad to lose his friend, but at last he agreed and the boy was sent to the kampong school. Now, the teacher there was a very stern man and he quickly lost patience with the wild boy, for he was always fighting with the others, biting, and scratching them most cruelly. The teacher had a strong cane which he used to punish bad boys, and he warned the wild one that he must be quiet or he would suffer. But after a little while, the wild boy began to fight again and the teacher snatched up the cane, shouting, “Now I shall beat you, for you are truly nothing but a wild animal!” And he hit the boy very hard with the cane. At this instant, the boy dropped onto his hands and knees. The teacher hit him again and the boy growled. He hit him a third time and whiskers grew from his cheeks. A fourth time and a tail grew between his legs. The teacher was in a rage and he kept striking the boy, so hard that the cane scarred his body with black stripes and then, suddenly, the creature leapt to the door and ran away to the jungle, where it has remained ever since. And to this day, he carries the stripes on his back to remind him of that terrible beating.’
Ché sat back with a smile of satisfaction, for he felt that he had told the story well. Harry applauded him gently and thought to himself, ‘Lord, how I’d miss this boy if I ever decided to go back to England.’ He sighed gently.
‘You are sad, Tuan?’ asked Ché, ever sensitive to the old man’s moods.
‘Why do you ask that?’
‘Oh … suddenly your face changed, as though a cloud had passed over the sun.’
Harry chuckled. ‘You don’t miss much,’ he observed. ‘I was just thinking that many of my friends … will be going away soon.’
Ché looked alarmed.
‘You will go with them?’ he cried.
‘No. I don’t think so.’
‘Good. There are many of your friends here, too. You belong here.’ Ché said this with conviction and seemed to dismiss the idea completely. Of course, the Tuan would stay. The thought of him going anywhere else was unthinkable.
‘I … went into Kuala Trengganu yesterday,’ announced Harry slyly.
‘Oh …?’ Ché tried to sound casual, but he knew that the Tuan was leading up to something. ‘It is a fine place. I have been there myself, twice.’
‘Yes indeed. Many fine shops …’
Harry took a small leather box out of his pocket. Ché’s eyes lit up.
‘What have you there, Tuan?’ he enquired.
‘Oh … just something I bought.’
‘For yourself?’
‘No. For a friend of mine. I wonder if he’ll like it.’ He opened the box, removed the watch, and let it dangle on its leather fob before Ché’s eyes.
‘Oh, Tuan! It shines like the sun! I think your friend will like it very much.’ He gazed at Harry suspiciously for a moment. ‘Who is this friend you speak of?’ he demanded.
‘A very special friend of mine. A friend who tells me marvellous stories.’
‘Me? It is for me, Tuan? Oh, thank you!’ Ché stretched out his hand for the gift, but a sudden rush of perversity took Harry and he moved it away a little. ‘But I cannot give it to my friend yet,’ he continued.
‘Why not?’
‘First, he would have to say something else for me.’
Ché laughed merrily. ‘What must I say, Tuan? Another story?’
Harry shook his head.
‘Just one word. Just to prove to me that he has his wits about him. I want him to say “tiger.”’
Ché’s face fell.
‘But Tuan, I cannot! It is unlucky …’
‘Oh well.’ Harry feigned disappointment. ‘If you can’t say that one word …’
‘But Tuan …’ Ché glanced at his feet. ‘You don’t understand. It is an unlucky word. It brings down the t – the creature’s curse onto your head. Of course, I don’t really believe the old stories, but …’
‘You mean … I’ll have to take this marvellous watch back to the shop?’
‘No, I … uh … I …’ Ché fixed his gaze stubbornly to the floor, then glanced up at the glittering silver watch in Harry’s grasp. ‘Tiger …’ he mumbled, in a voice that was barely a whisper.
‘Oh, you’ll have to say it louder than that,’ chided Harry.
‘Tiger! There, Tuan, I’ve said it.’
‘So you have,’ admitted Harry. And he gave the watch to the boy. Ché’s misgivings were swept aside by the rush of his delight as he held the watch to his ear and listened to its ticking.
‘Oh, Tuan, it is a beautiful watch, the most wonderful watch ever! I can hear it ticking so loudly! Thank you, Tuan, thank you!’ He rushed to hug Harry, tears of gratitude in his eyes. ‘May I take it to show my grandmother?’
‘Of course!’ Harry was every bit as delighted as the boy was. Perhaps more so. Ché rushed into the house, yelling for Pawn to come and witness for herself the incredible watch. But once he was gone, Harry felt vaguely annoyed with himself. Why had he taxed the poor little devil so cruelly? Surely, in all the years he’d lived here, he’d learned that the one thing you shouldn’t fool around with were the beliefs that people held dear, no matter how ridiculous they might seem. He had enjoyed giving the present and he had simply wanted to prolong the enjoyment, but it had been a rather thoughtless method of doing so. Still, there was no harm done, he was sure of that. He settled back in his chair and closed his eyes, feeling a deep contentment settle over him. Perhaps he might manage a little nap before breakfast. Yes, why ever not? It had been a good day, so far.
He slept and dreamed of tigers.
Melissa gazed critically at her reflection in the hand mirror, as she methodically ran a brush through her long dark hair. She had been sunbathing on the lawn with her mother for most of the morning and had become bored to distraction. Nothing ever happened here. Sometimes she felt moved to screaming, such was her dissatisfaction. It was ridiculous, here she was, a free agent, able to do just whatever took her fancy; yet what use was such freedom when life consisted of nothing but interminable bouts of boredom? Social life in Malaya tended to consist of long periods of lounging. Of course, the background varied from time to time. One could lounge on an idyllic beach, or beside the glittering waters of the local swimming pool … well, for that matter, one could simply lounge in the back garden and have done with it.
For the more athletically inclined, there was always tennis or squash … good wholesome exercise, nobody could argue with that, but offering little in the way of frivolity. There was really no ‘action’ here. Melissa glanced thoughtfully at a couple of newspaper articles pinned to the wall beside her desk, both of them torn from British periodicals, which were widely available here, but typically several weeks out-of-date. The first cutting showed a photograph of a hippie girl dancing stark naked at an English pop festival. THE GIRL WHO LET IT ALL HANG OUT! blared the headline, while the editorial ran on to describe an orgy of rock music and hallucinogenic drugs outraging the inhabitants of a little village near Glastonbury. The other cutting had a similar theme: TOP POP GROUP IN DRUG ORGY ARREST! and a couple of very familiar faces were pictured being escorted from the doorway of a country house by a pair of burly policemen. Melissa sighed. Britain sounded like a much more interesting place than Malaya and she could hardly wait to experience it for herself. She put down the hand mirror, got up, and strolled to the slatted bedroom window. Peering out, she could see her mother stretched out on a sun-bed, apparently asleep. She lay in the midst of a large empty garden and beyond that lay the silent, sun-baked street and not a soul moved along it in the heat of the afternoon.
Melissa felt a great silent wave of emotion welling up inside her, but as she had on numerous occasions before, she willed herself to take control of it. There was at least one area of hope on the horizon: the shooting contest in two days’ time. Of course, she had not the remotest interest in shooting, but Bob Beresford would be there, and that particular young man was beginning to receive more and more of her attention as time went by. She constantly found herself thinking about him; worse still, in bed during the long hot sleepless nights, her thoughts turned into the most torrid fantasies, in which he figured prominently. She began to wonder if she was not becoming a little obsessed with him. Her concept of men was still surprisingly girlish, nurtured by the overprotective lifestyle she had experienced in the girls’ boarding school in which she had but lately resided. The fact that she was still a virgin at eighteen was frankly not from choice. She had simply not been given the opportunity of being with boys, right from the age when she was first interested in them, and now that she had ‘done her time,’ that was one matter she intended putting right at the earliest opportunity. At boarding school, nobody would ever admit to being a virgin so great was the shame of it. Free time was often spent recounting lewd adventures with the opposite sex, and though eighty percent of them were undoubtedly pure fiction it was not done to accuse the author of being a liar.
As a consequence of all this, sex, to Melissa, had taken on the form of a terrifying hurdle over which she must scramble before she could ever hope to enjoy herself. She was not so hardened that sex with just anybody would suffice; but Bob Beresford was lean, attractive, and very manly. She could quite easily visualize herself going to bed with him.
She felt suddenly ashamed by the openness of her own thoughts and she blushed, glancing around nervously, as though afraid that somebody might be observing her. She moved back to her desk, sat down again, and picked up the hand mirror. She was pretty, there was no doubt of that … but Bob did not seem to be very forthright. It might be up to her to make the first move …
‘Melissa? Aren’t you coming out again? It’s beautiful out here.’ Her mother’s voice shrilled from the garden.
‘Coming,’ she replied wearily. She put the mirror down on the desk and stood up; but the mirror, dangerously close to the edge of the wood, overbalanced, and fell with a crash onto the tiled floor. With an exclamation of anger, Melissa stooped and retrieved it. There was a wide diagonal crack running across its surface. When Melissa examined her reflection, the two halves of her face did not fit together properly, giving the impression that she was horribly deformed.
‘Just what I needed,’ she muttered darkly. ‘Seven years’ bad luck.’
She dropped the mirror into the litter bin on her way out of the room.
Haji hugged the darkness to him like a second skin as he advanced cautiously on the sleeping kampong. He was wise enough to know that what had worked before would work again. He was also clever enough to realize that he must not strike in the same place. So, through the early evening, he had haunted the roads and secondary jungle nearer to Kampong Wau, and as the hours passed by he had moved progressively nearer to the buildings, taking breaks to listen and watch. Now, the very last lamps had been extinguished for over an hour and the only movements came from within a flimsy wooden stockade, where several skinny cows had been herded for the night. They were quite settled at the moment, but occasionally one would stamp a foot or rub an irritating itch against the stockade, and at such times Haji would freeze, hugging the ground and gazing all around to ensure that no Upright had come out of his home to investigate.
The moon was full and he could see quite plainly every detail of the village before him. Somewhere, hidden from his view, a dog yapped briefly and Haji licked his lips, for he had eaten dogs on several occasions and knew what tender morsels they were. But tonight he had fixed his sights on one of the occupants of the stockade, and nothing would dissuade him from his choice at this late stage. He crept nearer, placing his feet with delicate precision. His wounded forepaw had passed the point of pain and had lapsed into a semi-numbness, which he found even more irritating because it might cause him to act clumsily at a critical moment. Earlier that same day, it had caused him to stumble as he began to run at an unsuspecting wild pig. Haji had recovered quickly, but the mistake cost him precious moments and the pig had escaped by a hair’s breadth, plunging into the jungle with nothing more than a few claw marks across its rump.
It was necessary now to cross a stretch of open ground flanked by houses, and he moved over it as fleet and silent as a shadow, until he was no more than a few yards from the stockade. Abruptly, the cows became aware that something was wrong. They snorted, began to mill around uncertainly in the centre of the small pen. There was little room for them to move and certainly nowhere for them to run to. Haji closed the final distance and took the five-foot fence in a single bound, coming over the top of it like a terrible striped shadow. He came down in the midst of the cattle and then all hell broke loose. Their eyes bulging in fear and lowing at the tops of their voices, the cows reeled away from him, their combined weight connecting with the flimsy fencing and shattering the roughly nailed wood. In the same instant, Haji selected his kill, a large leggy calf that was bawling frantically for its mother, and with one, well-aimed spring he had dragged the luckless infant into the dirt and was tearing at its throat. In a confusion of dust and legs and noise, the calf was slaughtered and then Haji was dragging it to the breach in the wall that the other cows were now spilling out of. In the kampong, oil lamps were being lit and the voices of nearby Uprights were shouting out in anger and surprise. For some reason, the cows’ panicked senses made them whirl around and come thundering back at Haji, whereupon he relinquished his hold on the calf’s throat and let out a blood-chilling roar that halted them in their tracks. They milled about again and lit out in another direction. Haji grabbed the still-quivering calf, jerked it around the edge of the stockade, but its legs became entangled in some lengths of fallen wood and wire and he was stuck for the moment. He became aware of Uprights emerging into the night, jabbering excitedly. With a snarl of rage, he took a firmer grip on the calf and heaved it with all his strength, tearing the carcass away and leaving one of its rear legs behind, neatly torn off at the knee. Then with a prodigious effort, he hefted the creature just clear of the ground and raced across the clearing.
The kampong was now in pandemonium, shouts and curses spilling from every house. But to the bleary eyes of people stumbling from their beds, Haji was little more than a shadow, disappearing into the secondary jungle that bordered the village. The man who owned the calf quickly discovered his loss and began to exhort his friends into forming a rescue party. Hardly surprisingly, nobody seemed very keen on the idea of following the tiger into the jungle and anyway, they were more concerned with rounding up the other cattle and repairing the stockade. By the time anybody was organized enough to think of doing anything, Haji was half a mile away in the deepest jungle, enjoying a late but very satisfactory supper.
Chapter 9 (#ulink_00292eb9-45bb-5468-addd-6701a3d92705)
On Wednesdays, it was Harry’s custom to meet up with Dennis at the Officers’ Mess for a lunchtime drink. The ever-faithful trishaw driver would turn up at Harry’s doorstep around twelve o’clock and whisk him over to the barracks. No spoken agreement had ever been made about this. Harry was just grateful that he was saved the inconvenience of arranging transport on a weekly basis and he was careful to ensure that the old man was kept in a steady supply of cigars, which he evidently prized much more than extra money.
On this particular morning, however, the trishaw was uncharacteristically late. It was twelve-thirty, and Harry was just beginning to think about walking out in search of a cab when he saw the old man pedalling wearily up to the garden gate. Harry hurried out of the house and was concerned to see that the driver looked rather ill. His thin face was more haggard than ever, his eyes were ringed with redness, and there was an overall weariness about him that suggested he was far from healthy.
‘Sorry for lateness, Tuan,’ he croaked.
‘Sorry nothing! You look terrible. Are you ill?’
The old man shrugged. ‘It is nothing, Tuan … come, climb in. You are late …’
Harry shook his head.
‘Don’t be ridiculous!’ he retorted. ‘You can’t drive me anywhere in that condition.’ He stepped forward and put his hand on the old man’s forehead. ‘Good lord, you’ve got a fever. You should be in bed.’
‘No, Tuan, I must work. Please, we go now, yes?’
Harry frowned, thought for a moment. Then a solution occurred to him.
‘Here, come along, off the bike.’ He grasped the driver by the elbow and helped him down. ‘Now, you climb in,’ he insisted.
‘But Tuan … what …? Surely, you cannot …?’ Harry pushed him firmly but gently into the passenger seat and then climbed astride the bicycle.
‘Let me see now,’ he murmured. ‘There can’t be all that much to it …’
‘Tuan, you cannot do this! It is not proper,’ protested the driver, but Harry waved him to silence.
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