The Burma Legacy (7 page)

Sam skim-read the next section in which Harrison stepped back a decade to dwell on his Burmese childhood. An idyllic upbringing by all accounts, with a mother who spoiled him, partly out of her own
obsessive love, and partly to compensate for the aloofness of his father. Harrison wrote fondly of his early interest in Buddhism. He told of friends he’d made with Burmese of his own age – not common amongst the colonials – and about the attractively gentle customs of the country.

It was a place where children seldom seemed to misbehave. They had an extraordinary tolerance of one another, which even at that young age I found admirable. It proved a rude shock for me therefore, when, at the age of thirteen, I was transported from there and thrust into the mêlée of an English boarding school, where very different standards of behaviour applied
.

Then the narrative jumped forward again to 1942. Harrison had been selected for the Chindits. He described forced marches through mosquito-infested jungles in north-east India, part of a gruelling seven-month training to prepare for survival in the Burmese bush. Their eventual insertion had been by glider, crash-landing onto clearings hacked out of the forests by advance parties of American paratroop engineers.

That first Chindit operation was certainly not short on daring, both in its conception and its execution. The Japs were rattled to discover that we British could fight a guerrilla war as well as them, but teaching them that lesson was done at great cost to us in resources and in lives. The sad truth is that the first Chindit deployment of which I was a part achieved little
.

Sam heard the front door opening. He looked up from the book and glanced at his watch. Nearly six and Julie was back. He stood up and walked into the small hall. Hanging up her coat, she gave a little laugh of pleasure at seeing him.

Julie Jackman had grey-green eyes, shiny brown hair and wide cheekbones. She was wearing dark trousers and a red pullover. He hooked his arms around her waist and kissed her small, soft mouth. She yielded for a moment then pulled away from him.

‘I stink of the lab,’ she whispered. ‘Want to take a shower.’

‘We’ll take one together …’

They kissed again, more slowly this time, savouring each other’s half-forgotten taste.

‘God I’ve missed you,’ she breathed. ‘Like … like absolutely bloody crazy.’

‘Missed you too.’

Julie pulled her head back, her eyes full of questions. But they weren’t the ones she asked.

‘How was it – the flight back? You must be zonked.’

Trivial matters. To buy time. She’d been a little shy of him when they’d had their last reunion after months apart and she was so again. Made worse this time because of the ultimatum she’d given him by email a few days ago.

‘What time of day is it for you?’

‘Bed time.’ He nuzzled her neck, smelling faint echoes of the perfume she’d put on that morning.

‘You need a shave …’ she giggled.

‘Later.’ He guided her to the bedroom. Just inside the door he lifted her pullover, her arms floating up in willing connivance. Then, as he was about to unclip her bra, she shied away, turning for the bathroom. He pulled her back, nudging her towards the bed.

‘No …’ With a shake of the head she extracted herself from his grip. ‘It’ll only take a moment.’

He peeled off his own clothes and followed her into the bathroom. Julie was reaching for the tap in the shower. He ran his fingertips down the ridge of her spine, then slid his hands round to cup her small, soft breasts.

She squirmed away and stepped into the cubicle, pulling him in with her. As their mouths found each other under the warm deluge, he reached down to her hips and lifted her up. She locked her arms round his neck and encircled him with her legs.

He guided himself into her and came within seconds, losing his balance and banging his shoulder against the tiles. Giggling hysterically, Julie clung on with octopus limbs, then with a whoop of alarm released her grip, splashing down into the shower tray.

‘You’ll have us both in A and E, you daft bugger. Broken arms, wet hair and you with a bent willy.’

They soaped each other down then hugged under the jets.

‘Welcome back, my darling,’ she murmured. ‘And you still need a shave.’

When they were dry they poured glasses of wine and Sam ran an electric shaver over his chin. Then they lay on the bed making love again, slowly and
lingeringly. Eventually, they fell back against the pillows. Sam’s eyelids closed. By his body clock it was after midnight.

‘Hey!’ Julie nudged him in the ribs. ‘Hey, you can’t nod off on me! We’re going out to dinner!’

‘We are?’ He opened one eye. The look of bitter disappointment on her face told him he was in trouble.

‘We discussed it, remember? On the phone a couple of days ago.’

‘Oh Christ …’

Today was Julie’s thirtieth birthday. He’d failed to buy her a present, forgotten to book a restaurant, even, in his eagerness for sex, omitted to congratulate her on this landmark day in her life.

‘You forgot,’ she said limply.

‘I’m terribly sorry. The jet lag …’

She turned away.

‘Happy birthday, Julie.’ He put a lame hand on her shoulder but she shrugged it off. ‘Shit, look I’m sorry. Before I left Singapore I had it firmly in my head. But what with the journey back and my meeting …’

‘Oh sure …’ She gave him a look of petulant disdain. ‘You haven’t even got me a present, have you?’

He knew why she was so upset. This was what her absent father had done throughout her childhood – turning up to visit when the mood took him, forgetting birthdays, oblivious to what was important in
her
life.

‘Wasn’t sure what you wanted,’ he mumbled, knowing it was a lousy excuse.

‘Only what
you
wanted …’ she muttered, getting off the bed.

‘Look. I’ll fix something.’

He sat up, but his head was a mess. If they went for a meal he’d nod off at the table.

‘Julie …’

‘Forget it.’ She could see the state he was in.

‘We’ll celebrate tomorrow. I’ll be better company when I’ve got my time zones sorted.’

She forced a smile and began to put some clothes on. ‘It doesn’t matter. Sorry I made such a fuss.’ She stuffed her feet into slippers and began shuffling towards the kitchen. ‘I’ve got some supermarket curry in the fridge.’

Sam massaged his temples, racking his brains for a way to make amends. Time was his biggest problem. In a very few days the operation to find Peregrine Harrison would take him away from her again.

Then he had an idea. A way of combining business with pleasure. He got dressed and made his way to the kitchen.

‘Tomorrow’s Friday,’ he announced.

‘Ten out of ten.’

‘Followed by the weekend.’

‘Now you’re heading for a double first.’

‘What I meant was, why don’t we go away somewhere? Oak-beamed hotel in the country. Crisp walks and log fires. Three rosette cuisine.’

Softening instantly, Julie looked up from the worktop. ‘I’d have to see if mum can cope with Liam.’

‘I’m sure she can.’

‘Did you have anywhere in mind?’

Sam rubbed his chin.

‘Well, yes, actually. Cambridgeshire.’

Friday, 7 January

The next day Sam was wide awake at five, his body clock still out of kilter. He got up quietly without disturbing Julie, made himself some tea, then got stuck into Harrison’s book again.

The descriptions of the Chindit operations in Burma were gruelling. Jungle marches with massive packs on their backs. Perilous crossings of swollen rivers. Unreliable radios putting airdrops of fresh supplies in jeopardy. Then brief, bloody skirmishes with a foe best known for its willingness to die.

The name for Wingate’s 3,000-strong guerrilla force was a corruption of
chinthe
, he learned from the preface – a Burmese word for the mythical stone creatures that guard Buddhist temples. Half lion, half dragon. One of the beasts featured in a chapter entitled ‘Capture’. In it Harrison described how, after weeks of no contact with the enemy, his platoon had come under machine-gun fire from an undetected Japanese position.

We were at our lowest ebb and desperately short of water. The last two supply drops had failed. We were having to buy
food from villages, which put us at great risk, since many of the local people were informers for the Japs. But, despite the poor state we were in, the men reacted well to the attack, despite several of them being immediate casualties. I called for volunteers to go with me in a flanking manoeuvre to try to flush the gunners out. We set off under covering fire from the rest of the platoon, but my section did not get far before we were spotted and attacked with grenades. Four of my men were mortally wounded and I sustained a nasty shrapnel wound in my side. Despite that, those of us who survived managed to withdraw to safe ground and regroup
.

The following day they’d been ordered south to meet up with another battalion. Harrison had lost a lot of blood and was too weak to march, so his commanding officer had been forced to leave him behind.

I fully accepted the decision. The injury had sapped me of my strength. I hoped that if I could rest up for a few days I might have the energy to follow. Fortunately for me, Burrif Kyaw Zaw (Burma Rifles) volunteered to stay with me. He knew the area well and believed he could find us shelter in a friendly village. He hid me as effectively as he could in the ruins of an old Buddhist temple, guarded appropriately by a weather-beaten
chinthe.
Then he set off, promising to return within six hours. A full day passed however, and I began to fear he had been taken prisoner, a fear that was confirmed when a Japanese search party pulled back the stones concealing my hiding place and captured me too
.

His treatment by the first Japanese soldiers hadn’t
been too bad. A medic had dressed his wound and apart from a few face slappings he wasn’t harmed. But after being transported up the line to a field headquarters, things had taken a sharp turn for the worse.

My captors were determined to make me reveal where my unit had moved on to, but I said I would tell them nothing other than my name, rank and service number in accordance with the Geneva Convention. This made them very angry. At first they set about me with bamboo poles, beating me all over my head and body, including the area of the unhealed shrapnel wound. It was appalling and the attacks only ceased when I blacked out from the pain. Worse was to come, however. The Japanese Lieutenant in charge ordered me to be stripped and strapped to a bench. Then a hose was turned on my face. I could not breathe. Water filled my mouth and nose. I had a particular horror of being submersed. The origins of this fear were no mystery to me. At the age of six my well-meaning but ill-advised father had thrown me into a river in the hope that nature would teach me to swim. I had very nearly drowned
.

As my chest and stomach filled with water I felt total panic and I am not ashamed to admit that. There came a point when I would have told them anything to end the torture. The irony was that because of the water in my lungs I was unable to speak. I remember beginning to hallucinate. I saw my mother walking towards me with her arms outstretched, walking on water like Jesus Christ. Then, when I was on the verge of unconsciousness, they turned the hose off, untied my bonds and rolled me over so I could cough and vomit everything from my insides. I was in a very bad state
by then, so much so that the Japs decided there was no point in interrogating me again that day
.

My lasting memory of that awful experience was the expression on the face of the Lieutenant in charge. It was not pleasure I saw there as the hose was directed at me. I do not even know for sure that the man was a sadist. What I saw was total disregard for my suffering. To him I was a creature with no more significance than an ant. And as a defeated enemy he felt he was entitled to do with me what he wanted. Long after that period of my captivity was over, his face would come back to me in my dreams. It does to this day. At the end of the war when I was finally freed from Rangoon Central Gaol I made myself a promise. That if I could ever identify and find that man, I would make him understand what he had done to me, whatever it took
.

Sam read the last sentence again. This was the threat from a quarter of a century ago which his masters believed was finally to be carried out. He still wasn’t entirely convinced, however. Tens of thousands of POWs must have made the same promise to themselves at the end of the war.

He heard the shower pump running. Julie was awake. The sky was brightening outside and the bracket clock said seven. He picked up his empty mug, then padded to the kitchen.

Deciding it would be a tactful gesture to make breakfast for Julie, he opened the fridge. The almost bare shelves reminded him she wasn’t the most domesticated of women. He tried in vain to remember what she ate in the mornings, then began looking in cupboards for clues. Inside one was an unopened
pack of muesli which he placed on the section of the worktop used as a breakfast bar. A carton of milk from the fridge, a bowl and a spoon completed his preparations. After an extended search he located some sliced brown bread for himself.

‘Making yourself at home,’ Julie remarked, coming into the kitchen in a towelling robe and wet hair. She went straight for the kettle. ‘Oh good. Just boiled.’

‘I’ve laid your breakfast,’ he told her, feeling slightly smug.

She craned her neck from stirring an instant coffee and stared at the worktop. Her brow wrinkled. ‘I don’t,’ she told him. ‘You know that. Just a coffee in the mornings.’

‘But the packet of Alpen …’

‘I bought it for
you
.’

Sam swallowed. ‘I never touch the stuff.
You
know that.’

They looked uncomfortably at one another, realising that the catching up they had to do wasn’t merely in bed.

‘This evening …’ he began.

‘I’ll try to get off early, but don’t expect me before five.’

‘No problem. We can still be there for dinner.’