Key to the Door (61 page)

“Ger moving,” he said, half afraid the man might be crazy and make another rush. “Piss off”—threatening to kill him should he refuse.

Words as if spoken by another person deep in his own mind told him he was a bandit, though Brian repressed the thought as being the safest thing for the man before him, and for himself. Maybe he doesn't understand English: “Scoot, for——” But the man lost his bewilderment and neutral face of capture, turned and leapt along the level of the jungle, scrambling away fast. Brian stood, still and frozen, then his hand shook, and he held the rifle between his legs while he leaned against a tree to light a cigarette. A plane droned overhead, but he was too shaken to look, could only stare at the soil and undergrowth. The war in Malaya and all he'd heard of it seemed to have no relevance in this forest foreclosed with darkness and humidity, and he told himself that maybe the man had a hut and garden nearby and thought he was someone who had plundered it last week, so had been waiting in ambush for him to come back.

Weakened by legs that seemed turned to rubber, and a sensation of chaos and death—he sure wanted to kill me, by the look on his mug—he made his way towards where he had parted from the others. Maybe the man had been a bandit, but Brian threw the idea away, then drew it back and hung on to it as though, should this be true, it might turn out to mark some saving of his sanity, to be the salvation of his soul in some unpredictable manner. In any case, he wouldn't have been a bandit but a Communist. There was a difference—that much he easily saw. The picture that crossed his mind was of a gloomy autumnal dinner-hour opposite the factory canteen a few years back during the war, a composite memorial of many dinner-hours spent in that way. A Communist speaker stood talking about the Soviet Union bleeding to death in the good fight against the German Nazis and Italian Fascists, saying it was time Britain and America started that second front now, when a voice from the crowd heckled: “Why aren't yo' in the army, mate?” But somebody capped the heckler with: “Why aren't yo'?”—which stopped his gallop with even bigger laughs.

Brian leaned against a tree, screaming with laughter, a mad humorous rage tearing itself out: “And I let him go! Odgeson and all you bastards, I let him go because he was a comrade! I didn't kill him because he was a man.” The certain knowledge that he had been a bandit was a fist that made him lie down in the soil, curl up, and go on laughing, separate from himself yet unable to look on, roaring at the outcome of his own safety, no matter what the man had been. The bastard, though, I should a pulled the rifle up to my shoulder and pinned him to the soil with a bullet like he would have done to me with his kris if I'd given him half the chance. He smoked a cigarette: I'd better get back and see if the others have found the plane. But if any clever bastard says to me: “Why aren't yo' in the army?” I'll give him the biggest mouthful he's ever heard. He walked on, quiet in his tracking for fear that other bandits were about, and that if there was a next time he might not be so lucky. Stone-cold with horror, he suddenly recognized the nacelle where he had parted from the rest, an aluminium case holding a complex aero-engine whose image vividly recalled the click of the safety-catch a few minutes before. He bounded up the bank, beyond the sinister machine-product, towards where he hoped the others would be. Without forethought, he fired off rounds into the treetops and sky, let fly half a dozen rapid shots at what ghosts and remnants of his conscripted mind the sight of the Communist had let loose. He emptied the magazine, lobbing the rest more carefully at manufactured shadows between the trees, each round buried into some distant invisible soil or trunk after a heyday crack that seemed powerful enough to scare and weal the whole range of mountains. “What did you do in the war, dad?” “I caught a Communist and let him go.” “What did you do that for, then?” “Because he was a man.” And not everybody'll look at me gone-out. “Brian, my lad, I'm proud o' you,” the old man would say.

Calmer now, though still bright-eyed (I feel like a paper lantern, all hollow and lit up), he made his way along the hillside. Odgeson, Baker, and Cheshire walked a few paces in front, making so much noise they didn't hear him trailing them. “Hey,” he shouted. “Seen owt yet?”

They gathered into a group. “We heard some shooting over there, so we're heading for it in case it's Knotman's mob.”

“It was me,” he said, lighting a cigarette. “A bloke came for me, a bandit I suppose, because he bolted when he saw I'd got a rifle. I didn't hit him, though.”

“It sounded like a machine-gun,” Cheshire said. “You must a been cross-eyed not to bring him down.”

Odgeson looked serious: “We'd better stay close and watch out. There aren't enough stretchers for all of us.”

“Knotman shouldn't be too far away, with the army,” Baker called from behind. “Shall I get them on the blower?”

Odgeson thought not. “They won't be listening anyway, so let's get moving and not have so many questions.”

“He's coming out of his shell on this trip,” Brian said to Baker as they trekked on. “These pally bastards allus turn out to be the worst.”

Baker was close behind and replied: “My old man says that in the Great War they used to shoot about ten officers a month. The Germans got the rest of them.”

“It didn't mek much difference,” Brian said. “They kept scraping 'em up from somewhere.”

“The reason the war ended, though, was because they were running out of officers, not because they didn't have enough bods like us. I've been to a public school, Brian, but I'm just a slave like you are.”

“Belt up,” Brian said.

“That's no argument.”

“It's an answer, though. I might be a slave this minute but I'm going to stop being one soon.”

“Only because they're letting you go.”

“That ain't what I mean. I don't care if it takes five years: I'm going to stop being a slave.”

“Close up,” Odgeson shouted back. “Here's some more of the plane.”

“It's like a jig-saw puzzle,” Cheshire said. “Three-and-six from Woolworth's.”

“You'll never stop being a slave to something,” Baker said.

A tail elevator of shining aluminium lay in their path like a gate barring their way to an abundant and well-cultivated small-holding. They stepped over it one by one, as if afraid to damage it and have to pay the farmer for its repair: Baker had the sense to kick it fiat. Brian took the radio from him: “I didn't try and hit that bandit I saw back there. I fired plenty, but hoped I wouldn't get him.”

“I wouldn't be able to stop myself,” Baker replied, not believing. A clearing had been brewed out of the jungle by the main wreck of the plane: it had come to rest against the far end of a plateau, a cigar-shaped fuselage, a priceless accomplishment hanging dead and derelict halfway down between the trees, pieces of wing and wood and glittering fabric scattered all around. It was inaccessible without ropes, ten or fifteen feet up, looking like the victim of an unsuccessful attempt to decorate a Christmas tree. They stood fifty yards off, speechless after having searched for what seemed like weeks. The fuselage was scattered with rips along its frame where branches had impeded its clumsy uncalled-for descent, some foliage seeming to grow out of the plane itself as if it had been there far longer than forty hours. There was no movement, noise, or cries of life from it. On the underbelly by the pilot's cabin, as though some great hand had given it a nosebleeder, was a broad crimson mark, dried and hardly noticeable in the first look. “O Christ,” Brian said, unloading the radio.

“What a way to die.” Baker slung down his pack.

“Poor bastards,” said Cheshire. My stomach's hard, but my heart's as sick as a dog's, Brian felt, while Odgeson blew his guts out on the jungle-rescue whistle, hoping to reach Knotman and the army. Its dull throat-notes filled the air, low and warbling, the sort of alarm-noise that during the war sent Colin and Dave scurrying from their fireside cups of tea into the backyard and cold November streets to avoid the coppers they imagined after them. When Odgeson had no breath left, he asked Brian to have a go.

It was accepted, and he flexed his lungs so that both God and the Devil would hear, only to be startled by the solid lead-heavy crack of what seemed a tree bough, as though the plane had weighed sufficiently and long enough to snap one down. Baker ducked, as if, Brian thought, the whistle unblown between his lips, the bough was right above their heads and threatening to fall. Another sharp crack revealed this and the first as rifle shots—now they were all down, pressed into the undergrowth as, from the direction of the plane, in the thick bush under its stranded body, leapt a wide-toothed saw of bullets, flying close around, burning into tree bark or burying their noses into soft clammy soil. It wasn't difficult to find cover: Brian moved back, dragging the wireless set, to shield his face, towards a length of tree trunk that kept his guts secure, though he felt his feet exposed at the mixture of twigs, leaves, and random bullets scattering about them like the butt-end of a typhoon thunderstorm. The incredible noise numbed him with a feeling of helplessness, as if the bullets came from such an army that it was no use fighting back, like an uneven rattling against the palings of hell that left only the impulse to press hands to each ear. “It's the army,” Cheshire said. “The bastards think we're bandits. Hey!” he shouted. “It's us. Nark it, for Christ's sake!”

Odgeson and Baker were sending bullets across the clearing in the general line of fire, though this was difficult to pin down, for after the first rush it seemed more scattered and spasmodic. “The army can't be that far off,” Odgeson yelled. “They're bound to hear this racket.”

Brian pressed a clip into his magazine, raised himself to line foresight and backsight through the undergrowth, settled for a hefty yard-wide monster of a tree and let fly—harmlessly. I'd better hold back, he thought. The others'll have nowt left in a bit. Fear and sickness grew into him and he lowered his head, an image flashed from his first life of when he had been in gang-fights, each manoeuvring warrior-band hurling showers of stones and bottle-tops through the blue sky above tips or field. Though every missile was dangerous and shunned as if it carried death, he had stayed fixed on the ground to be held with the rest of them, whether or not he had been frightened of injury at that particular hour.

In such danger he lived on two levels, one of fear, and one of not taking the fear seriously so that the situation seemed a harmless though perhaps foolish kind of game. He looked up, lifted his rifle to fire but could see no one, peered a while at the thick enclosing foliage in the half-darkness of the jungle. There were neither faces nor movement around the wrecked plane, though bullets still came at an uneven rate from it. In a one-second reflection, Brian reasoned that maybe the bandits had difficulty in seeing them as well, though as if to call him liar and point out that this was no game, a bullet went too close to Odgeson's elbow as he was lifting for a cool aim. He swore with shock and the rifle jumped from his hands as if a charge of electricity had gone through it, wounding him so that all he could do, and did, was get the whistle up to his mouth and use what extra strength had been given his lungs due to the incapacitated arm—blowing so that the noise rose even above a renewed burst of firing.

Brian did not want to lift his head and be killed, but when he forgot for a few seconds that to be killed was possible, he drew the butt into his shoulder and failed to see anything worth aiming at. Maybe the bastard that got away from me is busy letting us have it from over there: though when he did press out a trio on rapid fire, he had no desire to kill or wound because the sense that they were caught in some kind of game was still with him. They want to kill us, though, he thought with bitterness, firing into the bushes so that for once, at least, he had as much chance as Cheshire of stopping someone's gallop for good. Bullets came back. They're rich in ammunition, he surmised, as they smacked into iron trees or came fizzing so uncomfortably close that the dam of fear broke and pushed his face into the now sweet-smelling soil.

Baker had finished his ammo and was rifling Odgeson's pack for more clips. The noise, according to each bullet's often accidental trajectory, varied from the snap of giant dead branches to the hollow receding echo singing on a last journey down the mountainside, from the savage and vicious clout against a tree to the dull burial in a pillow of soil; and amid all this was the low moan of Odgeson's whistle signalling for help. Brian filled in the gaps of their firing, making his own noise for survival, though he knew that his bullets were having no effect, and hoped that no one would notice that they weren't.

He laughed, a shattering loud cry that the others were too busy to bother about: I'm making a present for Mimi, he thought. A goodbye gift in not shooting to kill maybe someone who, for all I know, is the old boy-friend she had at high school in Singapore. He lay on the damp earth of the forest, some yards from a rampart of covering tree trunk, reloading with fresh clips dragged out of his pack. His refusal to get caught up in trying to kill the Communists (who were clearly wanting to slaughter them for a rich haul in rifles and wireless gear) held him from the advantages of rage and excitement that might have given him the semblance of courage. As it was, the level of fear stayed with him, burning his face and eyes and causing his guts to creak like the timbers of an old battleship.

When the other two blazed away, he bent his head down, coughing and choking into wet leaves, bringing up phlegm and hurling it from his bone-dry throat, having recalled his father's mad roar: “God? God is a bastard. Bastard God”—though the words did nothing to ease his fear and he pushed them out of his mind to lift himself and take aim once more, at nothing. If they charge, he realized, they'll finish us off. They know there's only four of us, so why are they messing about? If they show themselves in a charge, I'll wing a few and no mistake, though that wain't do any good to why I'm lying here—which is not to fire at my pals. He laughed, and Cheshire stared at him, a brief glance of incredulity before returning to his skilful defence.