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Tiger, Tiger

Philip Caveney

Copyright

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

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

HarperCollinsPublishers has made every reasonable effort to ensure that any picture content and written content in this ebook has been included or removed in accordance with the contractual and technological constraints in operation at the time of publication.

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

MARION BURNS.

ROBBIE ROBINSON.

Good friends both, sadly missed.

This book is for them.

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

One

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Two

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Glossary

Keep Reading

About the Author

By Philip Caveney

About the Publisher

ONE

Chapter 1

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

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

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 …