The Glass Palace (62 page)

He'd left his pack in the jeep, on the river: it hadn't occurred to him that he'd be running for his life within minutes of climbing out. All he had on him now was his .45 Webley, his water bottle and his belt with its small pack of odds and ends.

He looked around. Where was Hardy? Where were the CO and Captain Pearson? He'd caught glimpses of them earlier, as he was running into the plantation. But now in the gathering gloom it was hard to tell what lay ahead.

The Japanese infantry would almost certainly be mopping up behind their tanks, combing the plantations. It was possible that he was being watched even as he stood there, through any one of the hundreds of sightlines that converged on the precise spot on which he was standing.

What was he to do now?

thirty-four

T
o drive to Gunung Jerai was Alison's idea. She and Dinu left the house well before sunset, in the Daytona, taking the road that circled around the mountain. The kampongs seemed deserted now, the daytime panic having yielded to a watchful quiet. In the markets there were hardly any people in sight. Alison was able to drive through at high speed.

They made good time and turned on to the summit road while there was still plenty of light. When they began to climb, the sound of the car rose to a shrill, steady whine. It was twilight on the slopes, because of the thick forest cover. Alison had to switch on her headlamps.

The turns on the road were very sharp. They came to a bend that switched back on itself, rising upwards at a steep angle. Alison had to stop and reverse the car in order to make the turn. As they were coming out of the corner, they both looked up at the same time. The sky above the northern horizon seemed to be darkened by a stain—a cloud of tiny, horizontal brushstrokes. Alison stopped dead, and they stared— several moments passed before they realised that they were looking at a flight of planes, heading directly towards them, from the north. They were facing the aircraft head-on and in profile the planes seemed stationary, their advance signalled only by a gradual thickening of their outlines.

Alison started the car again, and they went speeding up the
road. The lodge loomed ahead, in the gathering darkness. It was empty, deserted. They parked under the porch and walked up to the veranda that ran around the building. Tables were placed along its length, draped in white cloth, weighted down with heavy ashtrays. Plates had been laid out, as though in expectation of a crowd of diners.

They could feel the roar of the approaching bombers under their feet, in the vibrating planks of the wood floor. The planes were very close now, flying at low altitudes. As they stood watching, the flight suddenly separated into two, parting round the mountain, like a stream flowing past a boulder. Banking steeply one wing veered off towards the seaward slope of the mountain, on a flight path set for Butterworth and Penang. The other wing headed for Sungei Pattani, on the landward side.

Alison reached for Dinu's hand and they began to walk along the balcony, making their way between the dining tables. The tablecloths were flapping in the breeze and the plates were covered with a thin film of dust.

There were no clouds today. Far below, in the dimming twilight, the island of Penang appeared as a dark shoal afloat on the sea; to the south-east lay Sungei Pattani, a small raft of habitation, marooned in an ocean of rubber trees. They could see roads and rail-lines, glimmering in the last flicker of daylight. The landscape was like a map, lying unfurled at their feet.

The planes were losing height in preparation for their bombing runs. Sungei Pattani was the nearest of the targets and it was the first to be hit. Bursts of flame appeared on the dark landscape, strung closely together in straight lines, like rows of bright stitches on an inky fabric.

They went around the veranda, picking at the tablecloths and running their fingers over the dust-filmed plates. They saw yet another cloud of planes approaching; on the seaward side, the bombers were diving low over the port of Fort Butterworth. Suddenly a great tower of orange flame shot up from the coast reaching hundreds of feet into the sky; the
blast that followed was of such magnitude as to make itself felt all the way up the mountain.

‘Oh my God!' Alison threw herself on Dinu. ‘They've hit the oil-tanks at Butterworth.'

She buried her face in Dinu's chest, snatching at his shirt, bunching up the cloth in her fists. ‘I drove past them, just that day.'

Dinu held her fast. ‘Alison, you still haven't told me why you went . . .'

She wiped her face on his shirt and pulled away from him. ‘Give me a cigarette.'

Dinu lit a cigarette and put it between her lips. ‘Well?'

‘I went to see a doctor, Dinu—a doctor who doesn't know me.'

‘Why?'

‘I thought I might be pregnant.'

‘And?'

‘I'm not.'

‘And what if you had been pregnant, Alison,' Dinu said quietly. ‘Would you have wanted the child to be Arjun's?'

‘No.' She threw her arms round him, and he could feel her sobbing into his shirt.

‘Dinu, I'm sorry. I'm so, so sorry.'

‘About what?'

‘About everything, Dinu. About going away that day— with Arjun. It was a mistake—a terrible, terrible mistake. If you only knew, Dinu . . .'

He silenced her by putting a finger over her lips. ‘I don't want to know . . . Whatever happened . . . I don't want to know. It'll be better that way . . . for both of us. We don't need to talk about Arjun again.'

He was cut short by a flash of light, an explosion that illuminated the whole town of Sungei Pattani. A series of lesser explosions followed, one after the other, like a string of fireworks.

‘The armoury,' Alison said. She lowered herself to her knees and stuck her head into a gap between the veranda's rails,
holding on to the wooden bars with her fists. ‘They must have hit the armoury.'

Dinu knelt beside her. ‘Alison,' he said urgently, gripping her shoulders. ‘One thing's for sure . . . You have to go away. With Japan and America at war, you're in danger here. Your mother was American . . . Your brother still lives there . . . There's no telling what would happen if the Japanese managed to push through. You've got to get away.'

‘But where to?'

‘To Singapore; you'll be safe there. It's very well defended. We're too close to the border here . . . and you have to take your grandfather with you. You've got to leave.'

She shook her head, violently. ‘I don't want to. I don't want to go.'

‘Alison, you can't just think about yourself.'

‘You don't understand, Dinu—I'm a territorial animal. I'd rather take a few of them with me than give up what's mine.'

‘Alison, listen to me.' Dinu gripped her hands and shook them. ‘You have to do it . . . For your grandfather's sake, if not your own.'

‘And what about the estate?'

‘Ilongo will run it while you're away . . . You'll see . . . You can trust him, you know that.'

‘And you—you'll come with us, of course. Won't you?' ‘Alison, I should go back, to Burma . . . My family . . . They might need me now.'

‘But you could come to Singapore with us first; you could probably get a ship there. It might even be easier.'

Dinu paused to think. ‘You may be right. Yes . . . I'll come.'

She reached for his hands. ‘I don't think I could bear to go without you. Especially now.'

‘Why now?'

She dug into his chest with her forehead. ‘Because I think I'm in love with you, Dinu—or something like that at any rate. I didn't know it before, but I know it now.'

He pulled her closer. He did not care what had happened
between her and Arjun; nothing mattered but this—that she loved him and he loved her. Nothing else was of any account, not the planes, not the bombs, nothing but this. This was what happiness was—he'd never known it before; this melting away, this exaltation, your guts spilling into your head, filling your eyes—your mind transformed into your body, your body instinct with the joy in your mind; this sensation of reality having met its end.

Although the sunset was still a few minutes away, under the rubber trees it was already dusk. Arjun had heard many complaints about the terrain over the last few days, but it was only now that he became fully aware of the peculiar deceptiveness of his surroundings. He had a strange sense of having stepped into a picture that had been created with the express purpose of tricking the eye. At times the tunnels of foliage around him seemed still and empty, but moments later they appeared to be alive with movement. With every step, figures and shapes seemed to appear and disappear, as rows of trees fell into and out of alignment. Every gracefully arched tree held the promise of cover, yet there was no point that did not intersect with a perfect line of fire.

Arjun knew that many others had taken shelter in the plantation; at times he could sense their presence around him. Every now and again he'd hear whispers, or the sound of footsteps, echoing down the long, straight corridors that stretched away from him in every direction. Sometimes he'd hear a sound, somewhere close at hand. He'd spin around only to find that he'd stepped on a branch that was hidden under the carpet of dead leaves on the ground. It was impossible to distinguish form from shadow, movement from stillness— the real and the illusory seemed to have merged without seam.

Just as twilight was turning to darkness, he heard the click of a safety catch. A whisper followed, from somewhere nearby. ‘
Kaun hai
? Who is it?'

The voice sounded familiar, but Arjun waited until he heard the whisper again: ‘
Kaun
?'

This time he was certain. ‘Kishan Singh?'

‘Sah'b.'

Arjun took a couple of steps to his right and found himself face to face with his batman. ‘How did you find me?' He acknowledged Kishan Singh's salute gravely, trying not to reveal the full extent of his relief.

‘Buckland-sah'b sent me,' Kishan Singh said.

‘Where is he?'

‘Over there.'

It turned out that Kishan Singh had escaped into the plantation with a dozen others from the battalion. They'd succeeded in keeping together through the confusion that had followed the Japanese tank attack. Eventually they'd met up with Hardy as well as Lieutenant-Colonel Buckland. Captain Pearson was still missing. They were now keeping watch to see if they could intercept anyone else.

Lieutenant-Colonel Buckland was sitting with his back against a tree trunk, his right arm cradled in an improvised sling. He acknowledged Arjun's salute with a nod and a slight gesture of his left hand.

‘Glad to have you back with us, Lieutenant.'

Arjun was elated to hear his wry voice again. He grinned.

‘Glad to see you too, sir. How bad's your arm?'

‘Just a graze—and it's been seen to. Fortunately we have a medical chap with us.' Lieutenant-Colonel Buckland gave Arjun a stiff-lipped smile. ‘Do sit down, Roy. No need to stand on ceremony now.'

‘Thank you, sir.' Arjun cleared a place for himself on the carpet of dead leaves.

‘You'll be glad to know that Hardy made it too,' Lieutenant-Colonel Buckland said. ‘I've sent him off to forage for water. We're very short.'

‘It happened so fast, sir.'

‘Yes, it did rather, didn't it?' Lieutenant-Colonel Buckland's voice faded away. When he spoke again, his voice was hoarse, rasping, almost unrecognisable.

‘Tell me, Lieutenant,' he said, ‘do you think I let the side down?'

There was something about his tone that moved Arjun. ‘No, sir,' he said vehemently. ‘There was nothing you could have done, sir.'

‘There's always something one could have done.'

‘But what could you have done, sir? We didn't have any air support. We didn't know about the tanks. It's not our fault, sir.'

‘If you're in command it's always your fault.'