Free The Red Pavilion by Jean Chapman Page B

rattan chair and sipped his second drink. ‘You will know,’ he said grimly, ‘because I shall make sure the Straits Times has the full story. Everyone should know the sort of people we’re up against.’
    Blanche poured a modest brandy each for herself and Liz, wondering if Li Kim had already heard the news, for he had not come in again eager to feed them.
    Harfield sighed deeply and shook his head as if still disbelieving what he had to tell. ‘Most of my people live in a group of houses, just a little hamlet really, Kampong Kinta we called it. My headman, Rasa, was related to most of the Malays there, and the same families have worked the mine for generations.’
    George stopped as he saw Li Kim hovering by the door. He beckoned him in. ‘You’d better hear this,’ he told him. ‘Just before sunset a group of CT’s — communist terrorists — went to the kampong and told Rasa he was to collect one dollar a month from each of the men under him. This would be collected after each payday. He told them he could not do it. They tied him to a tree, and assembled his wife, children, his mother — most of the village, in fact.
    ‘The leader said his name was Heng Hou and to remember that because when he asked for help next time everyone must be sure to give it. He stood over Rasa with a raised parang all this time, but he said he was feeling generous today so he wouldn’t kill their headman. He’d set him free.’
    George drew in a deep breath. ‘He raised his parang higher and sliced it down, cutting off Rasa’s right arm, then his left. By the look on his face the poor bugger died of horror before he bled to death.’
    ‘Aaaah! Hee!’ The sound like a banshee or courting tomcat came from Li Kim. ‘Tuan!’ he appealed. ‘what will we do?’
    Liz would have liked to have joined in the appalling noise as involuntarily she visualised the scene, the man tied to the tree ... ‘Oh, George!’ her mother whispered and lowered herself very carefully into an armchair as the wailing began again.
    ‘Li Kim!’ George said sternly. ‘Do you want to go back to your village or stay here?’
    The Chinese considered. ‘You have guns, tuan? More guns now.’ He looked meaningfully at the two women.
    ‘And I’m going to have barbed wire and lights all around this place and all around Kampong Kinta. The bastards have caught me napping three times now, it’s cost me two payrolls and now the life of my headman. No more!’
    Li Kim cast a glance out towards the teeming jungle night. ‘I stay with you, tuan. You want dinner?’
    George shook his head. ‘Our guests — ’ but both women were shaking their heads now.
    ‘I give it to the — ’ Li Kim began.
    ‘Burn it!’ Harfield ordered. ‘It does not leave this kitchen. I’ll make bloody sure not one grain of rice from this mine finds its way into communist bellies.’
    Much later in her room, when everyone had been retired for hours, Liz took out a sketchpad and pencil and confronted the atrocity that would not leave her. She worked quickly, barely looked at the sketch when she had finished, then turned the leaf and began to rediscover the young soldier. This she took more slowly, the problem more elusive. It was always easy to recreate horror. Horror pictures used a low mental budget.
    There had been a weary tension in the young man’s shoulders, a capacity for endurance beyond the normal in the gunholding pose. He would, she thought, looking at the first sketch, make a good figure for a Far Eastern war memorial. The thought made her rise agitatedly, putting the sketch block aside. She wasn’t wishing death on the man — it was just something she had seen. She strongly denied apportioning death as the unknown soldier’s lot. ‘Oh, God!’ she exclaimed aloud. ‘I must stop this. I need a drink, or coffee or something — mustn’t get like my mother.’
    She went quietly to the lounge and was startled to see a figure at the window outlined by the lights