‘But … aren’t we going to play on again, in a minute or two?’
Dennis didn’t answer, he just walked away, leaving Harry to brave the glare of two hundred sympathetic eyes. Harry could imagine what they were thinking.
‘Poor old man. Poor old man. Poor old man …’
And he knew in his heart that he would never have the courage to come to this place again.
Bob Beresford threw his kit bag carelessly into the back of his beaten-up old Land Rover, climbed into the seat, kicked the engine into life and drove away from the sports club, chuckling to himself. Honestly, these bloody old majors who thought they were still fighting a bloody war! Malaya seemed to be full of them. Bob still wasn’t quite sure what to think about Malaya. He missed the social life he had back in Oz, but it was plain that he’d landed himself a cushy number here with the repatriation scheme. The pay was excellent, considering that he only actually worked three mornings a week. The rest of the time was his own and though there wasn’t a great deal to do, he certainly couldn’t complain that he was overworked. The Gurkhas were a likable bunch of blokes who followed their various courses with quiet dedication. They never complained, though, of course, they had every reason to. After fighting Britain’s wars for the last twenty years, they were being surreptitiously swept under the carpet. In similar circumstances, Bob would have been fighting and yelling every inch of the way, but in this instance it was simply none of his business.
As he drove, his eyes kept scanning the screens of secondary jungle on either side for signs of life. It was his old man’s influence that had turned Bob into a keen amateur hunter; Roy Beresford had been an obsessive animal hunter most of his life. He was forever undertaking extensive hunting trips to New Zealand, after deer and boar mostly. Bob had never been old enough to accompany his father, but his earliest memories were of being in Roy’s trophy room, standing beneath the gigantic spread of antlers belonging to a fine stag. Roy had told him the story of that particular hunt a hundred times. Where most children got fairy stories last thing at night, Bob got true-life adventures from his dad and thus, it was easy to see how the hunting bug had bitten him. Bob’s greatest regret was that his father had died of cancer, long before he was big enough to accompany him on an expedition. Since then, Bob had been doing his utmost to wear his father’s boots and the need to do so had become a singular obsession with him. As yet, he had not organized himself into hunting in Malaya. For one thing, the territory was completely new to him and he felt that he would first have to find himself a good guide, someone who knew how to track in such a difficult environment. The land here was, for the most part, covered in thick inaccessible jungle and Bob didn’t much fancy the idea of wandering in there unaccompanied. But most of the locals he had talked to had displayed an astonishing ignorance of their native wildlife. Oh indeed, the Tuan was quite correct. There were tigers and rusa and wild pigs and even the occasional elephant out there somewhere, but why any man should be interested in going after the creatures was quite beyond them. It was part of the Malays’ simple, happy-go-lucky policy to get on with their own lives and leave the beasts of the jungle to do likewise. Bob lived in hope of finding a Malay with a more adventurous policy.
He turned left off the coast road and entered the small estate of houses where the army had allotted him a bungalow. He lurched the Land Rover unceremoniously into the drive, clambered out, grabbed his kit, and entered the house through the open door. Lim hurried into the room at the sound of his arrival.
Lim. Now there was one of the benefits of living in Malaya. Lim was his amah, slim, pretty, eighteen years old and Chinese. Bob had been quite particular in his instructions to the agency. In the few weeks that he had been at Kuala Hitam, his relationship with Lim had developed beyond that of mere servant and master. She lived in full time, and when the nights were long and lonely, which they invariably were, it was not her tiny room to which she retired, but the Tuan’s. Bob was careful to keep the situation well under control, showing little outward emotion for her. He was well aware that a large percentage of Chinese girls aspired to nothing more than marriage to a white man, shortly followed by a oneway trip out of the country of their birth, preferably to Britain or best of all, America. It was a part of the Chinese preoccupation with all things Western. Lim’s full name was Pik Sen Lim, but for reasons best known to herself she preferred to be called Suzy Lim. Most young Chinese girls had Western versions of their names and were anxious that they should be used in place of their existing ones. Lim knew too that once his work was finished, the Tuan would be heading home, not to Britain or the United States, but to Australia. Even so, she seemed to have resolved in her mind that anywhere would be preferable to her current home and never lost an opportunity of telling him how much she would love to see the Sydney Harbour Bridge or a kangaroo or an aborigine. But unfortunately for her, Bob was planning to remain a bachelor for many years to come.
She stood now, a smile of welcome on her face, attentive to any needs he might have.
‘Bob want drink now?’ She insisted on calling him by his first name, which had proved embarrassing on the few occasions when he had had company.
‘No thanks.’
‘You take these clothes off,’ she advised him. ‘I wash.’
‘Alright.’ He stripped off his tennis gear without further ado, ignoring Lim’s giggles as he strode naked to his bedroom. ‘I’m going to have a shower,’ he announced.
‘There is letter for you in bedroom,’ Lim called after him.
It was lying on the bedside table, airmail from Australia. He recognized his mother’s laborious handwriting. He picked it up, looked at it blankly for a moment, and then turned to gaze thoughtfully out of the slatted window. He could see next door’s amah, dressed in a brightly coloured san fu, pinning out ranks of billowing washing on the line. Above the rooftops behind her, a lushly forested hillside was framed against a sky that was cloudless turquoise. Bob looked back at the envelope and frowned. He pulled open the drawer of the bedside table, slipped the letter inside with four others, none of which had been read. Then he closed the drawer again and, turning, he went to the bathroom to take his shower.
Harry prepared himself for bed. He felt fine now, as good as ever. He regretted all the fuss he’d caused at the tennis court earlier that day. The trouble was that the grapevine was so efficient here. Word would soon get around that old ‘Tiger’ Sullivan had had a bit of a turn. Well … let them talk! Why should he let it bother him?
Dennis hadn’t helped matters much, he’d fussed around like an old hen, trying to get Harry to promise him that he’d see a doctor. The very idea! Harry had never bothered with doctors in his life and he didn’t intend to start now. Leeches, the lot of them! Eventually he’d managed to persuade Dennis to push off home and leave him in peace. He felt sad, for he realized that the games of tennis would have to be crossed off his agenda and he did so look forward to them. But pride was a fearsome thing and it would never allow him to revisit the scene of such a humiliation. At any rate, Dennis would be far from keen to get him out on a court again, so there was little to be done in that direction. He would have to take up chess, something a bit more suitable for his declining years.
After all, that was the general belief, wasn’t it? That anyone over the age of fifty was ready for the scrap heap, obsolete, of no use to anybody; what did it matter how much they had achieved in their lives? Let them retire to a grim silent home somewhere and eke out their lives playing chess and doing crossword puzzles.
Harry frowned. My God, he was feeling bitter! Everybody went through it eventually, why should he be any exception? He undressed slowly, hanging his clothes in neat ranks over the back of a chair. Then turning to look for his pyjamas, he caught sight of his naked reflection in the wardrobe mirror. He froze, momentarily horrified by this vision of stark skinny manhood. Lord, the ravages that time made upon flesh and bone! It turned muscle to folds of saggy flesh, etched itself