‘I shall call you love whether you’re bloody to me or not,’ he told her.

‘Oh, George!’ The tears came now and she fought them no longer. ‘Don’t ever let me try to change you,’ she instructed, groping for another handkerchief.

‘You can always try.’ The tone did not match the words, but it stemmed her tears. They reached across and grasped each other’s forearms as if in a mutual act of attempted rescue.

Their glances asked, shall we get through this ordeal? The answers lay only in his white knuckles and her convulsive gripping of his forearms.

‘Go on, my lass,’ George said after a bit. ‘You’ve a lot to do.’

Blanche left in a strange state of vulnerability and resolve.

*

‘Mem! Mem! Oh, Mem!’ Anna came running out of the bungalow as Blanche stepped from the car and the guard-cum-driver took it to the cool of its attap roof.

Blanche stopped on the steps to the verandah, assessing the sound and the urgency of the call. But Anna was smiling. Looking overwrought but happy, she waved an envelope. ‘Mem, the girls, they are safe. There is a message from the army.’

Blanche found herself kneeling on the steps. Pulling Anna down to sit beside her, she took the sealed envelope and asked. ‘But how do you know?’

‘The soldiers in the jeep. One said it was good news, and I made him tell me.’

Blanche tore open the envelope, praying the talk was truth. She read the brief message twice. ‘They should be home in two days.’ She opened her arms and the two women rocked and cried together.

‘Things are coming right, Anna, I sense it. Find Chemor. I’m going straight to KL to see this senior officer.’ She tapped the letter, glancing at the scrawled signature and its typed caption properly for the first time. ‘Oh! I think I may know this man.’

She stopped halfway to the front door, seeing that Anna still stood there, hands cupped as if she contemplated a new problem lying within her palms.

‘What is it?’ she asked.

Anna looked out beyond the wire. ‘What will you say to Lee and Mrs Guisan?’ she asked.

Blanche made a swift and searching review of her conscience. ‘I shall say it was quick and had to be done. As for the rest, I hope she’ll agree with what we decided.’ Both women made review of the burial next to Neville Hammond.

Blanche shook the communication again; this was not the moment for retrospection.

Anna nodded. ‘I fetch Chemor.’

Driving from Rinsey with Chemor, Blanche studied the signature again. Unless there were two Edwin Neillands, this was a man she had known very well before the war. The second son of a local landowner at Pearling, he had made the army his career.

She raised her hands in thankful acknowledgement when a man of prodigious tallness, who had become more cadaverous with the years, rose to greet her with enthusiasm. ‘Blanche, my dear girl, after all these ages! I’ve not long been here, y’know, or I’d have looked you up.’

‘I know, Edwin,’ she told him as they kissed on each cheek, ‘but now I mean you to make up for lost time.’

‘You never were one to lose minutes! Eh, Blanche?’ He tried to engage her in his good humour.

‘Eddie, I’ve no time for pleasantries even with such a dear old friend.’

‘Get on then, m’dear,’ he said briskly.

She told her story and he did not interrupt, though he made quite a few notes on a pad on his desk, spacing them around the page as if making a tactical map for a battle.

‘Hmm! Right! Got the portrait. Tell you what we’ll do. Major Sturgess is coming out at Milestone Thirteen, that’s on the main road just north of Bukit Kinta.’ He paused to consult his watch. ‘Forty-two hours from now.’

‘And they’re all safe, my daughter, her friend ... ?’

‘The whole caboodle, m’dear, all fine.’

‘You don’t know how much I need this news,’ she said quietly.

‘We’ll have the police on the roads. I’ll have an army unit melt into position round the village. Then we’ll roll our survivors — that is, particularly your old manager’s wife and her daughter — straight out of the jungle down to the old kampong and let them have a look round, see if they can see anyone they jolly well recognise. Won’t take long.’

‘Thank God for someone with some drive and some sense.’

‘Come on, old lassie, don’t you remember how I used to organise the hunts? No stragglers and no gossip when you were on picket duty alongside my spinneys!’

Blanche remembered and laughed. ‘I do! You had the youngsters scared stiff.’

‘Use the same methods! Never tinker with anything that still works.’

‘You’re a relief in all senses, dear Eddie. I was beginning to feel entitled to one bit of good luck. I believe you’re it. So by Wednesday ... ’

‘Wednesday evening should see you all home,’ he confirmed.

She left him suddenly determined that whatever happened either before or on Wednesday she was going to be at Bukit Kinta before the army, police and Liz and Lee arrived there. She had spent quite enough time waiting alone at Rinsey.

She would collect the list from George tomorrow, ring Ira in the evening, go to Bukit Kinta the next morning and stay there until it was all over. She’d use Chemor again, take him into her confidence. That would make at least two of them with their ears and eyes open on George’s behalf.

Chapter Twenty-Six

Nothing happened the way Blanche had expected, once she had arrived at Bukit Kinta.

‘I couldn’t send Li Kim to the market, he seems to have disappeared,’ Ira reported when they were both safely inside the bungalow.

This seemed ominous news to Blanche. ‘Has anyone else gone? Anything else out of the ordinary?’

He shook his head, joining her to look down over the complex of lakes, dredgers, flat sunken areas of tin tailings, workshops of bamboo, attap and rusty corrugated-iron sheeting, all closely edged by jungle. ‘No. The men who’ve come in recently I’ve seen this morning shovelling ore near the dredgers ... ’

‘And the girl?’

Ira drew her attention towards the neat vegetable plots to the right where the mine village lay behind the gardens. ‘She’s coming this way now,’ he said, stepping away from the window.

‘So she is.’ Blanche watched her come nearer, noting the black cotton trousers and round-necked blouse the girl had on. She wanted to be sure she could pick the little communist out in any coming affray. ‘We must be careful. Play it as if you’re on her side, as if I’m just an interfering old bat.’

There was no time for more planning. ‘Mr Cook!’ the girl’s voice came from the front door, full of knowledge that he was there and had a visitor. ‘Are you in?’

‘Come through, Li Min,’ he called back.

‘Please to come out. I wish private word.’

Ira glanced at Blanche, who acquiesced with half-lowered eyelids. He left the room and she heard them move across to George’s old office. She slipped off her shoes and walked barefoot into the hall. The door to the study was not quite closed.

Ira was quoting her verbatim. ‘No, no,’ he said, ‘she’s just an interfering old bat. Come to see what’s happening so she can report to old Harfield when she visits him.’

‘Why her car gone?’

‘She’s sent the driver shopping. He’s calling back for her.’

‘Where she take Li Kim?’

‘My cook? She’s not taken him anywhere. I want to know where he is. Have you seen him?’

‘I no see.’

‘Do you know where he might have gone? Has he a girl?’

‘No!’ The tone was scoffing, but then she went on, ‘You have girl ... if you want.’

Blanche held her breath. Ira had got it right up to now, but this might be the greatest test.

‘I want,’ the young manager said gruffly, ‘but I’ll have to wait until — ’

‘Old bat gone!’

‘Sure!’ Ira said, sounding as if he moved in on the girl. ‘Then I’ll come. As soon as she’s gone ... ’