The Plantation Part 17

Julie joined the women in the river, and they giggled as she s.h.i.+vered in the cold water. One handed her a spare sarong to dry herself and when she hurried back to the longhouse the smell of the wood fire and the blue curl of smoke coming from the kitchen was a welcome sign that breakfast was underway.

David looked bleary eyed as he sat cross-legged in the ruai, a blanket around his shoulders, poking at the remains of the small fire in an attempt to get a blaze going.

'Good morning, David,' said Julie coolly.

He grunted. 'b.l.o.o.d.y tuak. Gets you every time.'

'Not me,' said Julie as she went to dress, thinking how annoyed she was with him. While she could dismiss his drunken pa.s.s at her as the result of too much rice wine, he had, nevertheless, sunk in her estimation and she found she actually didn't like him very much at all. She appreciated his help with her mother's bypa.s.s fight and the fact that he'd opened a door to her family's past, but these actions didn't give him any rights of possession, which he'd been suggesting, not just last night, but for the last few days. Now she wondered how she was going to put up with him for the rest of the week.

Nevertheless the day pa.s.sed quickly and was full of interest. Tuai James, acting as tour guide, took them into the jungle, showing the area that had been cleared for their rice fields and other crops. He gave them a demonstration of hunting with the blowpipe, though he said that it was seldom used these days. By the river they watched the Iban catch fish by herding them into the big woven nets and traps and, finally, a group of men showed them how they cleared the jungle with the large and lethal parangs.

They came to a beautiful, clear stream in a magical setting and waded upstream while Tuai James pointed out plants, monkeys and the paw print of a large animal. Barry filmed it all, including the time spent just sitting and smoking. By the time they trudged back to the long-house it was sunset and Julie found that bathing in the river with the women and children that evening was a cool and welcome relief.

There was no singing and dancing that night. After the meal Tuai Jimbun lay back with his cigarette and everyone settled comfortably, looking expectantly at him.

'Grandfather is telling a story,' Chitra told Julie and she translated as the old man's voice droned on, reciting one of the crowd's favourites.

Later, as Julie walked down the ruai to her bilek to go to sleep, Charles stopped her.

'In case you're interested, I am going downriver tomorrow. I have to return to Kuching. If you wish to come with me, you're welcome. I understand the team has a lot more field work to do. Perhaps you are not all that interested in scientific work.'

Julie leapt at the opportunity. 'Yes, I'd like to. That would be great. Very kind of you. I'll tell the others in the morning.'

Charles nodded. 'In that case we can talk on the journey.'

Julie thought it an odd comment, the way he put it, but when she joined the girls on the mats in the bilek she had no trouble sleeping.

David was surprised by her decision to leave suddenly. He said that he was concerned for her welfare and wellbeing, and was worried about her going back to Kuching with Charles. But Julie thought that he was just miffed that she was taking off.

'Charles seems very competent and Ngali is taking us. I'm keen to get back and spend more time in Kuching. I'd like to meet up with Angie again. This has been a wonderful experience and I can't thank you enough for bringing me along, but you have your work to do and I don't want to get in the way. We'll catch up again,' she said vaguely.

'I feel responsible for you, that's all,' he said. 'I promised your mother ...'

'David! I'm a grown woman and while I mightn't be as knowledgeable about the jungle as you, I'm perfectly safe with Charles. Now I'll just say goodbye to the others.'

Chitra explained the order of farewells and the appropriate expressions of thanks that Julie should say to the Iban, and by the time she had completed them all, the others had left on their field work. A small posse of children and some of the women followed her to the boat where Charles and Ngali were waiting for her.

With fewer people and little gear in the boat, the trip downriver was easier and smoother.

Apart from pointing out a few things of interest as the boat nosed through the cocoa-coloured water, Charles had little to say. But the return journey was as relaxing and as interesting as the trip upriver had been.

It wasn't until they'd got to the village near the old fort, thrown their belongings into Charles's old car, which was 'fully air-conditioned' when all the windows were wound down, and had a sweet kopi susu, the local coffee, at a little shop, that Charles took off his dark gla.s.ses and seemed to relax.

'So have you found this little adventure useful?' he asked.

'Interesting but for me it's not like I'm researching, filming or writing anything. I was just trying to get a sense of how things used to be. I feel very privileged.'

'How things were when your aunt visited the Iban?' he said.

'I suppose so. I don't imagine a lot has changed since then.'

'I spoke to my father and he thinks he knows about your aunt. She was married to a rich Chinese trader and came with him to Sarawak. Later she came by herself and stayed with some local people. I asked my father many questions but she didn't stay at our longhouse so he doesn't know very much. She stayed closer to the Kalimantan border. I gather she was also interested in the orangutans.'

'That's amazing,' said Julie. 'I wish I could ask Tuai James and Tuai Jimbun more questions.'

'I don't think they know any more. Have you been to the museum in Kuching?'

'Yes, the lady there was very helpful.'

'Mrs Ping,' said Charles.

'That's right.'

'If anyone can find out anything more, she will. Summum bonum. Hang on to the idea of good luck falling on you.'

'It seems to be,' said Julie.

Charles rose. 'We must go.'

When Julie walked into the Sarawak museum, Angie Ping looked up and smiled at her.

'The traveller returns from the jungle. Was it all right? I thought you'd be away longer.'

'I didn't want to hold up the team, they had work to do. So when there was a chance of a lift back with Charles, the grandson of the old headman, I grabbed it,' said Julie.

'Ah Charles, Tuai James's son, and Tuai Rumah Jimbun's grandson.'

'He did give me some exciting news on our way back. His father and grandfather remember my Great Aunt Bette.'

'That is exciting for you,' said Angie. She shuffled some books and papers on the counter. 'Here, I found this.' She handed Julie a small bound booklet with a faded photograph of an orangutan on the cover. Above it was the t.i.tle, In Peril the Lost World of the Orangutans In Peril the Lost World of the Orangutans, Bette Oldham.' Angie smiled. 'I've photocopied it for you. She sounds quite a woman, your aunt.'

Julie took the stapled, photocopied copy of her great aunt's booklet. 'This is amazing. I'll read it as soon as I can, and thank you so much for finding it.'

'I'm so glad I could help. Come along, I'll take you to my favourite place on the river for a coffee. It's called the Rajah Brooke's Cafe. More history,' laughed Angie as she closed the museum shop and hung a sign, 'Back in 15 mins' on the door.

7.

CURLED IN A DEEP rattan chair after a swim in the pool, the chick blinds lowered against the late afternoon sunlight, a gin and tonic in her hand, Julie felt relaxed and very at home. Shane, Peter and Martine, Shane's beautiful wife, were eager to hear about her trip upriver in Sarawak. rattan chair after a swim in the pool, the chick blinds lowered against the late afternoon sunlight, a gin and tonic in her hand, Julie felt relaxed and very at home. Shane, Peter and Martine, Shane's beautiful wife, were eager to hear about her trip upriver in Sarawak.

'I haven't been to a longhouse and when we went to see the orangutans, there weren't any,' said Martine in her musical French accent. 'I must try again. What do you think, Shane?'

'It was fascinating,' said Julie. 'I fell in love with the orangutans. They have the most wonderful personalities. And the Iban are lovely people. They might have been headhunters once, but they have a very polite and caring society. I can see why Great Aunt Bette was so intrigued with their culture.'

'We didn't expect you back so soon,' said Peter. 'We thought you'd be gone for at least a week with the research team.'

Julie s.h.i.+fted in her chair. 'Oh, well, they had work to do and the living conditions were very primitive.'

Martine smiled at her. 'And? I sense there is something else?'

Julie returned her smile. 'Trust a woman! Actually I was a bit uncomfortable, no, annoyed, actually, with David Cooper. He overdid the tuak, the rice wine, and made a pa.s.s at me ...'

'That stuff's lethal. But you can't really hold that against him, can you?' said Peter.

'That's such a male thing to say,' said Martine. 'You can't use tuak as an excuse, especially if one doesn't reciprocate the feelings.'

'Exactly,' said Julie. 'He's one of those men who's always touching you and being overattentive. If you like the guy fine. But he's just not my type, not that it registered with him. I certainly didn't want him looking after me. It became unpleasant, so I came back under my own steam, and here I am.'

'Well, you timed your return well. We were planning a quick trip and thought you might like to come along and now with your early return from Sarawak, the timing is perfect,' said Shane.

'Where were you planning to go?' asked Julie.

'Langkawi Island. Friends of ours run a resort there, which is rather fun. There'll be several of us going. Do you think you'd like to join us?'

'I'd love to, if it's not wildly expensive. What's at Langkawi?' asked Julie. She thought that an island resort would be a nice change from the jungle setting she'd just experienced.

'There is a series of islands north of Penang, bordering Thailand. The main island is Langkawi and it has rainforest, resorts and some nice eateries.'

'And very lovely spas,' added Martine.

'We're planning to share a house for a few days at a resort which is made up of old traditional Malay houses ... but they are done up with comfortable furnis.h.i.+ngs,' said Shane.

'So maybe there'll be seven or eight of us. I wish my girlfriend was here,' said Peter. 'Do you like fis.h.i.+ng, Julie? We can hire a boat. Chris is coming. You met him here. The RAAF chap. He's mad for fis.h.i.+ng. And we can always climb up to the lake, if you're feeling energetic.'

'I love the spa and relaxing by the pool,' said Martine. 'It's a very stylish place.'

'That sounds good to me, too,' said Julie. 'I like fis.h.i.+ng but I'd like to explore too, as I might never get back there again.'

After dinner that evening, Shane took Julie into their great grandfather's library. She tried to ignore the gla.s.sy-eyed mounted animal heads and watched as Shane opened a drawer in the large, elaborate old desk in the corner. He pulled out a bound notebook and handed it to her.

'Roland's memoir. It's the original. I thought you might prefer to read it in his hand.'

'How wonderful.' She fingered the old notebook. 'I don't think that I've ever held anything that belonged to him before. Can I read it here?'

'Yes. It's not a diary, it's really a short account of his war years. It wasn't meant for publication or anything like that. I don't even think that it was for the family. I know that many men who served wrote some account of their time in the war,' said Shane. 'It may have been the highlight of their lives. In our grandfather's case, his whole life was quite eventful, but when you read this, you realise that he revelled in his years fighting in special operations behind the lines.'

'I'll look forward to reading it.' She glanced at the handwritten t.i.tle neatly underlined in red ink and when Shane left her, she began to read.

Behind the Green Curtain. A Memoir. By Roland Elliott.

On reflection, one wonders how more people didn't see it coming. The war. The invasion. The rise of communism. I suppose hindsight is a wonderful thing. We thought that we were important to England, but found that we weren't. Whitehall had more important priorities in Europe and we were betrayed. Even after the j.a.panese war was over, the times have changed and the mood is no longer complacent in our neck of the woods. Life on our plantation appears to have returned to normal, but the scars run deep. Even now, I realise that the halcyon prewar days will never return and I am doubtful that Malaya can become united. Too many races, cultures, creeds, too much betrayal. But, as my dear father was wont to say, 'twas ever thus.

But that is now. The days before the war were carefree. The word of the white man was obeyed without question and we had the best of times, the best of whatever was available from here and from abroad, and, along with the sense of privilege, we also had the freedom to do as we wished. We were treated as honoured guests in the villages, given a meal that could have cost a family a day or more of hard toil. And we took it as our due. And when the war came, when we were reduced to being no better than coolies in the eyes of the invaders, when the loyalties of those we'd looked down upon came to save us, to help us shelter or escape, and inevitably, at the end, we let them down.

Of course, many never expected the war with the j.a.panese to come anywhere near us in Malaya or Borneo. Life went on at its indulgent pace with parties, dances, hunting and tennis, love matches, courts.h.i.+ps, and the business of making money. If you were rich, influential, educated, no matter what your skin colour, you mixed with us. My father occasionally commented that Malaya was run by the British for the benefit of the Chinese or, depending on your viewpoint, Malaya was a country run by the Chinese to benefit the British. The Malay elite had a sense of ent.i.tlement, which perhaps is not surprising. It was their country, the other races were immigrants. But, of course, if you have money, position, power, you can enter any of the worlds of Malaya. But the poor, the Chinese coolies, the Indian plantation workers and the native Malays, with neither wealth nor influence, were overlooked or dismissed by the ruling powers. This was the Malaya I lived in before the war, which changed it all.

Although war had erupted in Europe in 1939, it was thought, especially in England, that the European war would never touch the Pacific. Indeed Whitehall thought that the strategic defences of Malaya could be kept minimal. The belief was always that 'Singapore will be held', an invincible island fortress, we were told. And who would attack us? The j.a.panese had already invaded Manchuria and then China and it was well known that they wanted to control the oil fields of the Dutch East Indies, but Father thought that was all very unlikely. So life went on, keeping up appearances, a stiff upper lip, and worrying about family back in the old country. My mother was living there with her elderly parents and my father was concerned for her safety.

But some of us, myself included, were worried about the j.a.panese. We knew that the j.a.p community had been busy for years, poking about in the jungle around the estates. They also had holdings at important rail and road junctures, in mining areas. One could hardly avoid noting the ore that was being s.h.i.+pped to j.a.pan those past years, undoubtedly to be put to use in making armaments. Later we found out that their business organisations were not only sharing important information with their government, but were a cover for spying and intelligence gathering and other political activities. Small businesses were established at convenient locations where they could observe the activities or lack thereof happening at the aerodromes, ports, around the bays and coastline, in the jungles and the swamps. We had been carefully observed, measured and our metier taken since the 1930s. Too late we learned of secret caches of arms and bunkers hidden in rubber estates owned by the j.a.ps. We had been complacent to our cost.

Blame for this ignorance can be placed at many feet, for when information was being collected by natives, telling planters of j.a.panese activity in the jungles and the remote coast and islands, along with the observations by fishermen, rangers and miners, and sent to the authorities in Singapore, it was, sadly, ignored. Even when I raised the subject with other planters about the rumours swirling around Malaya, my views were considered to be alarmist.

But little did we know that the defence of Malaya had been scaled down by the heads in Whitehall. The war in Europe was considered far too serious to give any thought as to what might happen in their far-flung eastern empire. However, we, in Malaya, pressed on, doing our bit with petrol rationing, rising prices and the inconvenience of routine blackout trials. Even when the j.a.ps moved into Indo-China, the administration did not feel unduly threatened. The feeling was that, 'They wouldn't dare! And if the Nips made any move, we would be ready for them.'

Why did they say that? We had so few defences which, we later learned, were in all the least strategic positions. But anyone who dared to question was pooh-poohed. Everyone with any authority, any connection with the military, became so puffed up with their own importance, so petty minded, bureaucratic and downright insufferable, that the tokenism of our war efforts were laughable. Sometimes I really did indeed think that our society was becoming rather like something from a Noel Coward play or from the pages of a novel by that dreadful Somerset Maugham. Nonetheless I felt I had to do something constructive and I joined the Perak Volunteers. My father wanted to do his bit, but I talked him round. Staying put, I thought, was the best thing for him to do.

Then on December 8th 1941, we were stunned to hear that not only had the American fleet been destroyed at Pearl Harbour, but that the j.a.ps had landed at Kota Bharu in northern Malaya. They were also bombing the main airfields in the north-west of the country, destroying half of the Allied aircraft stationed there. Three days later we heard news that was considerably worse. The battles.h.i.+p Prince of Wales Prince of Wales and the cruiser and the cruiser Repulse Repulse, which had been sent to reinforce the British defences only days before, had been sunk with a huge loss of life. Morale dropped.

The consequences of these j.a.panese actions were catastrophic. As the disaster continued to unfold, my father and I sat in the evening peacefulness at the end of another balmy day, enjoying a stengah on the verandah as flowers fell lightly to the gra.s.s in front of us. My wife and her visiting sister gossiped quietly while they sat and knitted for the war effort, which had once seemed so far removed from us and yet unmistakably was coming closer.

Then events moved more quickly.

The inevitability of the war was brought home to us a couple of days later, when the Winchesters, friends of ours from Penang, arrived at Utopia with just a couple of suitcases. Penang had been savagely bombed and they were fleeing the town, leaving almost everything behind.

'My dear,' said the distraught Mrs Winchester, 'we've had to leave everything. I just want to get to Singapore, where we'll be safe. Hopefully we might be able to get a s.h.i.+p from there to South Africa. I can't believe what is happening. The planes just came over Penang without any warning and bombed the place. There must be thousands killed. We were lucky, as we live on the hill and the j.a.ps only seemed to be interested in destroying the town and the harbour, so we were able to get away, but still, it's all such a disaster.'

(They were never to return. They lost their home and all their possessions in subsequent fighting.) My wife Margaret and her sister Bette comforted Mrs Winchester, but the news that these people were running ahead of the j.a.panese forces unnerved Margaret.

'Heavens, Roland,' she said. 'We just can't sit here and wait for the j.a.ps to get to Utopia. We have to do something.' We have to do something.'

So I decided then and there that my wife, my son Philip, a mere three years old, and my sister-in-law must also try to get out of Malaya and return to their family home in Australia.

'Margaret, you're right. You have to try and get a s.h.i.+p back to Australia. I'm sure that the authorities will be organising some sort of evacuation from Singapore, which I suppose is safe enough. I'm going to have to join my unit straight away, so you'll have to take Bette, Philip and Father and get to Singapore. But you'll be fine. Hamid will drive you as far as KL and you can get the train from there.'

My wife stared at me. 'You can't be serious. You can't just abandon us to take our chances.'

'What choice do I have?' I tried to explain. 'I have to stay and fight the j.a.ps.'

'Margaret, we'll be fine,' Bette, her sister, a.s.sured her. 'We'll have Eugene with us and he knows the country better than anyone, and Gilbert's in Singapore, trying to s.h.i.+p out rubber for his company. He'll organise things for us when we get there.'

But my father had other ideas.

'I'm not leaving the plantation,' he said. 'I have built this place from the ground up. It's been my life's work. Besides I will not leave my people. They have been faithful and I must remain loyal to them. These people trust me, so what would they think if the tuan besar fled and left them to the j.a.ps. No, it's simply not on.'

The decision that neither my father Eugene, or myself would be travelling south threw Margaret into a frenzy of organisation and packing. I tried to persuade her to travel as lightly as possible since time was of the essence and petrol could be difficult to get, but she wanted to take everything. Her sister Bette, a more practical young woman, persuaded Margaret to pack a trunk of her valuables and sentimental possessions, and I quietly buried it in the garden, where I hoped it would remain safe from whatever was to occur.

Before they could leave with Hamid we had two other late-night visitors, also fleeing south from Penang. They told us more about the bombing and the evacuation.

'It has all been such a shambles,' said Ethel Bourke, an old friend. 'We were told that we had to leave secretly. No thought was given to our Asian staff, who were just left to face the j.a.ps. I feel so ashamed that we did that. Surely there must have been some way to help them. Anyway, we came over to the mainland on an old Straits Steams.h.i.+p ferry and then we were supposed to be packed into a train heading south. It was impossibly crowded and I was worried all the time about the train being strafed, but it so happened that my friend Mildred here knew where there was a company car, so we left the train and drove down under our own steam.'

Their story made me rea.s.sess my original plan and, taking Hamid to one side, I told him that he would be driving the women and my son all the way to Singapore. My father briefly laid his hand on Hamid's shoulder, telling him that since he had been a faithful driver for many years, he could be entrusted with the lives of the mems and the tuan kechil.

Philip did not want to leave, and he clung to me when I carried him to the car. I told him he was to be brave, to listen and do what his mother and aunt told him. I said that he had to be a big boy until we were all home again at Utopia, when the war was over. My wife flung her arms around my neck. when the war was over. My wife flung her arms around my neck.