Алистер Маклин - South by Java Head

“Can you see it?” Miss Plenderleith repeated urgently. Nicolson was startled, but didn’t show it. He nodded slowly, carefully. The butt of the carbine was less than a foot from his hand.

“It’s cocked,” Miss Plenderleith said quietly. “It’s ready to fire. Foster said it was ready to fire.”

This time Nicolson did look at her, slow astonishment and wonder in his face, his eyes blinking in the driving rain as he tried to read her expression. And then he had forgotten all about Miss Plenderleith, and he was half out of his seat, staring intently for’ard, his hand automatically reaching for the carbine.

Even at that distance of forty or fifty feet the sound of the explosion was deafening and the sheer physical shock of the pressure wave like an invisible blow in their faces. Smoke and flames belched out through a great hole blown in the starboard side and almost at once the torpedo boat was heavily on fire amidships. The guards, their charge completely forgotten, had swung round to face for’ard, but one of them, caught off-balance by the force of the explosion, stumbled, flung away his machine-gun in a clawing, desperate attempt to regain balance and save himself, failed and fell backwards over the stern into the sea: the other had only taken a couple of running paces forward when the blast of the carbine in Nicolson’s hand pitched him forward on his face, dead. Even as he was falling, McKinnon was plunging towards the bows, an axe in his hand, and one vicious blow on the tow-rope taut-stretched across the gunwale severed it completely. Immediately, Nicolson pushed the tiller hard over to starboard, and the lifeboat slewed away heavily to the west. The torpedo boat still throbbed north-east on unaltered course, and within half a minute all signs of it, even the flames that twisted high above the bridge, were completely lost in the rain-squalls and the rapidly falling darkness.

Swiftly, and in a strange unanimity of silence, they stepped the mast, hoisted the lug and jib, and bore off into the rain and the gloom with as much speed as they could command from their tattered sails. With the port gunwale dipping perilously low, Nicolson steered a point north of west: when the torpedo boat recovered from the shock and the fire – and it was probably too large a craft to be permanently crippled by an explosion even of that magnitude – it would come looking for them, but it would almost certainly go looking towards the south-west, in the direction the wind was blowing, in the direction of the Sunda Strait and freedom.

Fifteen minutes passed slowly by, fifteen minutes in which there was only the swift slap of the waves against the hull, the flapping of shredded sails, the creaking of blocks and the tap-tapping of the yard against the mast. Now and again someone would be about to speak, to seek out the reason for the explosion aboard the torpedo boat, then he would catch sight of that stiff-backed little figure with the ridiculous straw hat skewered on the grey bun of hair, and change his mind. There was something about the atmosphere, there was something about that little figure, about the upright carriage, about the indifference to the cold and the rain, about its fierce pride and complete helplessness that precluded easy conversation, that precluded any conversation at all.

It was Gudrun Drachmann who had the courage to make the first move, the delicacy to make it without blundering. She rose carefully to her feet, the blanketed form of the little boy in her arm, and moved across the canted bottomboards towards the empty seat beside Miss Plenderleith – the seat where the brigadier had been sitting. Nicolson watched her go, unconsciously holding his breath. Far better if she hadn’t gone. So easy to make a mistake, so almost impossible not to make a mistake. But Gudrun Drachmann made no mistake.

For a minute or two they sat together, the young and the old, sat without moving, sat without speaking. Then the little boy, half-asleep in his wet blanket, stretched out a chubby hand and touched Miss Plenderleith on her wet cheek. She started, half turned in her seat, then smiled at the boy and caught her hand in his, and then, almost without thinking, she had the little boy on her lap and was hugging him in her thin arms. She hugged him tightly, but it was as if the child knew that there was something far amiss, he just stirred sleepily and looked at her gravely under heavy eyelids. Then, just as gravely, he smiled at her, and the old lady hugged him again, even more tightly, and smiled back down at him, smiled as if her heart was breaking. But she smiled.

“Why did you come and sit here?” she asked the girl. “You and the little one – why did you come?” Her voice was very low.

“I don’t know.” Gudrun shook her head, almost as if the thought were occurring to her for the first time. “I’m afraid I just don’t know.”

“It’s all right. I know.” Miss Plenderleith took her band and smiled at her. “It’s very curious, it is really very curious. That you should come, I mean. He did it for you, he did it all for you – for you and the little one.”

“You mean–”

“Fearless Foster.” The words were ridiculous, but not the way Miss Plenderleith said them. She said them as if she were saying a prayer. “Fearless Foster Farnholme. That was what we used to call him, when we were in school. He was afraid of nothing that walked on earth.”

“You have known him so long, Miss Plenderleith?”

“He said you were the best of us all.” Miss Plenderleith hadn’t even heard the question. She shook her head musingly, her eyes soft with remembrance. “He teased me about you this afternoon. He said he didn’t know what the young men of the present generation were coming to and, by heaven, if he was thirty years younger, he’d have had you to the altar years ago.”

“He was very kind.” Gudrun smiled without any embarrassment. “I’m afraid he didn’t know me very well.”

“That’s what he said, that’s exactly what he said.” Miss Plenderleith gently removed the child’s thumb from his mouth: he was almost asleep. “Foster always said that education was very important, but that it didn’t really matter, because intelligence was more important than that, and that even intelligence didn’t count for so much, that wisdom was far more important still. He said he had no idea in the world whether you had education or intelligence or wisdom and that it couldn’t matter less, a blind man could see that you had a good heart, and the good heart was all that mattered in this world.” Miss Plenderleith smiled, her grief momentarily lost in nostalgic remembrance. “Foster used to complain that there were very few good-hearted people like himself left.”

“Brigadier Farnholme was very kind,” Gudrun murmured.

“Brigadier Farnholme was a very clever man,” Miss Plenderleith said in gentle reproof. “He was clever enough to – well, never mind. You and the little boy. He was very fond of the little boy.”

“ ‘Trailing clouds of glory do we come’,” Willoughby murmured.

“What’s that?” Miss Plenderleith looked at him in surprise. “What did you say?”

“Nothing. Just a passing thought, Miss Plenderleith.”

Miss Plenderleith smiled at him, then sat gazing down at the little boy.

Silence again, but a comfortable silence now. It was Captain Findhorn, speaking for the first time, who broke it, who asked the question they all wanted answered.

“If we come home again, we will owe it all to Brigadier Farnholme. I do not think any of us will ever forget that. You have told us why he did it. You seem to have known him far better than any of us, Miss Plenderleith. Can you tell me how he did it.”

Miss Plenderleith nodded. “I’ll tell you. It was very simple, because Foster was a very simple and direct man. You all noticed that big Gladstone bag he carried?”