RUTH WOKE UP very early the next morning. She lay quietly on the reclining chair listening to the morning sounds: a cacophony of frogs croaking, cocks crowing, dogs barking and then, from a distance, the Adhan, the Mosque’s call for prayer. Inch by inch light began to filter through the thin curtains. She wasn’t going to get much sleep. She got up and walked to the back of the house. She could hear faint sounds from the kitchen. Fu Yi was up. Ruth stood outside the kitchen for a moment and then pushed open the door. Fu Yi was squatting down in front of a pestle and mortar, pounding. The smell of onions, chillies and the strong aroma of belachan hit Ruth’s nose. “Fermented prawn paste,” Fu Yi had explained the previous evening, “a local ingredient added to most Malay cooking. Master likes it very much. I cook it for you too?” she had asked.
Quelling her initial reaction to the pungent fumes, Ruth decided there and then that she would like it as well. “Let’s have it tomorrow,” she had said.
The sight of Fu Yi bent over a mortar and pestle so early in the morning touched her. “I didn’t expect that you would have to wake up so early to prepare this,” Ruth apologised, stricken that once again she had made a faux pas.
“No Ma’am. I do everything early before sunrise. It is not so hot. Breakfast?” she asked, rising to her feet. She took the bowl of chilli mixture that she had scraped from the mortar and placed it on the wooden counter. Then she grabbed a papaya from a basket nearby. “Papayas and lime from the garden. If you wish, also toast with kaya. It is a jam made with eggs, sugar and coconut cream. Master likes it too.”
“Thank you. That would be lovely.” Ruth was beginning to see Mark through these small domestic arrangements. It would appear, as Hugh said, that Mark was truly adapted to the local way of living. She must do the same. He would expect it when he returned. She had always thought of her husband as a quintessential Englishman. She was being proved wrong. She sat on a wooden stool to watch the cook. Fu Yi was beginning to open up. There was so much Ruth wanted to ask. She refrained; she shouldn’t force the momentum by pressing for information as she had done the first evening. She bottled her impatience. The sound of cabinets opening and cups clinking floated around her. Gradually, her mind turned once more to her worries. Her resolution to be positive fell by the wayside. Where was Mark? How was she going to find him? What if he could not be found? She took a deep breath and forced herself to push aside these thoughts. She tried to focus on problems that she could and should address. How was she going to pay Fu Yi’s wages at the end of the month? Could she ask for help from the Company? Almost a week had passed and she had not been able to find a job. “Not here in Tanjong Malim,” she was told, “perhaps in Kuala Lumpur and other bigger cities. No schools here would be able to afford to employ a white school teacher.” She might have to let Fu Yi go. She might not be able to stay on in this house for much longer. Her head grew heavy. She did not notice the sliced papayas set before her.
“Ma’am, eat! Don’t worry,” said Fu Yi setting a steaming cup of black coffee and a small tin of condensed milk on the table.
Ruth realised that she had been frowning and that her jaws were hurting from being clenched tight.
Fu Yi went back to the washbasin. She pitied the young mistress. It couldn’t be easy to be alone in a strange land and to find her husband vanished into thin air. No wonder she did not sleep night after night. She could hear her prowling around the house and pacing up and down in her bedroom. What good would it do to tell her about May? Fu Yi shook her head. She shouldn’t load her young mistress with more worries.
***
People were queuing up to leave the New Settlement. Rolls of barbed wire rose six feet high, isolating the camp from the outside world. May crouched down behind a bush. She waited to catch a glimpse of her parents and to see if Chun would be amongst those lining up to leave for work. She would plead with him again to release Mark. This time, she would go to the police if he were to refuse.
Four armed guards stood at the gate. A wooden sentry box rose high above the barbed wire fencing with another armed guard within it. The workers were meticulously searched. They thrust their hands up in the air as guards groped through their clothes and belongings. No food was allowed out of the camp or into it. To stop food finding its way to insurgents, rice rations for New Settlements had been reduced by forty per cent. Who, May asked herself silently as the gaunt half-starved faces of her parents came to mind, would have any food to give to others? The thought of food brought her own hunger pangs to the fore. She had not eaten since leaving Mark’s house; she wanted to go back to Fu Yi but the sight of a white woman stopped her. Instinctively she knew it was Ruth. So she stayed on the fringe of the estate, hiding her face from the world with a scarf tied round her head and a wide coolie hat, just like those worn by other coolies. She became one of the faceless people in the rubber estate.
The queue moved slowly; people shuffled forward with faces devoid of expression. All emotions had to be curbed, resentment bottled inwards and tempers held. The sun rose high up in the sky. A warm breeze stirred up leaves and yellow dust from the dirt road. There were still no sign of her parents. Suddenly she spotted Bee Ying. She was hunched forward with the baby strapped behind her back and a basket of laundry in each hand. Guards began to rifle through her laundry, crushing the freshly ironed sheets. May saw Bee Ying open her mouth to protest only to close it immediately when the guard scowled at her and pushed her back into the compound. “Go back! You can’t leave,” he shouted as he shoved her once again.
May shifted on her haunches. Her legs were sore and she was thirsty. People were passing her now. They whispered amongst themselves. May stood up and joined them, shuffling forward like they did. No one looked at her; they did not wish to see anything. She heard a couple whisper. “They won’t let her come out of the camp now. Her husband is wanted. Soon they will cart her away for questioning. What will become of the baby? The whole family will be arrested. That young woman May who worked for the estate manager is also wanted. I saw her picture on the Post Office wall.”
May shuddered. This was news that she did not know. She bowed even lower, hiding her face under the coolie hat. She had been wrong. By disappearing she had become a suspect. What should she do? Would the authorities believe her if she gave herself up now? She was torn. To give herself up would implicate Chun. She would have to tell the authorities about him. To implicate Chun, would drag her innocent parents into the mess. To anger Chun further would definitely mean Mark’s death. Despite Chun’s threats, she had hoped and prayed that he would spare Mark once he came to his senses. For hadn’t she explained that she loved Mark? How she wished she had not made the blunder of revealing her pregnancy to Bee Ying. She blamed herself for the mess, for getting Mark into trouble. Never in her wildest dreams would she have imagined that this would happen.
***
“Let me have the file on May.” Bill was curt with Hugh. “How is it possible that you had no idea of her connection with this guy, Chun? There must be a connection between the two.”
“I did not vet May personally. The highest authority recommended her to us. She worked as clerical support staff in the Malacca office and was found efficient and loyal. There was nothing to suggest that she was subversive.”
“Huh!” snarled Bill. “Don’t you think it strange that she took a job as housekeeper.”
“I believe she was desperate. The post she held in Malacca was a temporary one; she was filling for someone on maternity leave.”
“And her relationship with Mark?” Bill lifted one brow in question. His nostril flared with disapproval. Hugh did not answer. Bill tapped his fingers on the table. He reached into his shirt pocket and fished out a pack of cigarettes. He lit one up, the end flared red like a warning to Hugh. He dragged deeply on the cigarette and then blew out a smoke ring. Through the cloud of smoke, he appraised Hugh in silence. His eyes were thoughtful, weighing Hugh’s discomfort. To him, Hugh’s silence said it all. Bill did not approve of inter-racial relationships. The outcomes were half-breeds, ‘stengahs’ they called them here. Neither of one race nor of the other and always with these half-breeds bearing English names. The fathers were inevitably Englishmen rather than the other way around. He wondered if Ruth knew about her husband’s relationship with May. He would bide his time; he would choose the right moment to tell. He should not reveal everything up his sleeve. He hid his smile. He was attracted to Ruth. She was an interesting woman. Beneath her naivety was a headstrong character. He was always partial to strong-willed women with a bit of fight in them.
He picked up the files and riffled through the papers. The file on Chun was thick. Chun Yee Poh, a union man responsible for a series of strikes in tin mines and unrest in Perak. Born in the province of Fukien in China and educated in Chinese, he moved to Malaya when a child. He disappeared during the Japanese occupation and went underground as a member of the Malayan People’s Anti Japanese Army, an organisation now regrouped as an anti British organisation, the Malayan National Liberation Army. How, he wondered, could the British army, Major Hugh in particular, miss this? Or had they? Had he?
Bill was certain that Hugh was not cooperating fully with him. He could feel it in his bones. His eyes narrowed as he took another drag on his cigarette. If he could find evidence of negligence, he could have Hugh dismissed, court-martialled even. He picked up the files and flipped through the papers. He couldn’t find any connection between Chun and May from the papers. She was born in Malaya. Both parents were Hakkas; the father had come from Guangxi twelve years ago and her mother was local born. Before the Japanese occupation, the father had been a teacher. During the war, he was imprisoned in a camp. They lived originally in Malacca, moving to Tanjong Malim after May took up employment here. Whatever contact they had with this Chun must have started when they were rounded up and put into the New Settlement.
Bill rose from his seat and went to the window, leaving the files opened on the table. He stood with legs astride and both hands clasped behind his back. Someone must know. He was frustrated. The harder he pushed, the more resilient the squatters became, resilient and silent.
Hugh watched. He sensed Bill’s anger and waited. He had already said too much. He must keep his personal feelings and his antipathy towards Bill quiet. He had Chun on their radar for some time, even before Bill’s arrival. He had not arrested Chun because he had wanted him to lead them to Chin Peng, the leader of the insurgents. He had not known of May’s connection with Chun, if indeed there was a connection.
Bill spun around. “Over the next few days, we will be bombing north of this area, deep into the jungle. Our reconnaissance points to two guerrilla camps within a five-mile radius to the west. We’ll be using five-hundred-pound fragmentation bombs and equal-sized nose-fused bombs. You should make sure that your officers stay clear of the area. We’ll flush those bastards out or kill them.”
“What if Mark is in one of the camps?”
Bill strode to the desk and picked up his hat. “Then he will be collateral damage.” He had no sympathy for a Commie lover.
***
The body lay inert on the ground. Seven men clustered around it, wiry men with loincloths that barely covered their buttocks. They talked amongst themselves; their voices rose like the shrill chatter of birds in the forest. One, no taller than five feet, stooped down. Feathers hung like a garland around his girth partially covering the loincloth beneath. His chest was dark, smooth and bare and his hair reached his shoulders. Holding a blowpipe with one hand he prodded the inert body with his bare feet. He sprang back. His bare feet sank deeply into the soft rain soaked soil as the body rolled over, revealing wounds and cuts that covered almost every inch of the bare torso. The face was covered with open sores. The man’s eyes, sealed by the pus oozing around the rims of his eyelids, were swollen and bruised.
“He is alive!” he pronounced. “Orang putih,” he said gesturing at the blond hair matted with blood, “a tuan that must have incurred the wrath of the Chinese fighters. What shall we do?”
“They must have left him to die.”
“Shall we warn them that he is alive?” another asked.
“No. We’ll take him back with us. Our chief will tell us what we must do.”
“What about the Chinese fighters?”
“Let them believe that the tuan is dead. At least until our chief decides which side of the war we should be on. We have helped them enough. The tide is changing. The white man might be useful.”