cheerful, and lazy.’
‘Sounds just like me!’ Pete quipped.
‘They don’t cut their hair,’ Hunt continued, ignoring the quip. ‘Nor do they dress above the waist – neither the men nor the women – so you’ll have to learn not to let the females distract you too much.’
‘I’m willing to die for my country,’ Alf said, ‘but what you’re asking is too much.’
‘I’m very serious about this,’ Hunt said sharply. ‘Certain proprieties have to be maintained here, no matter how you might feel to the contrary. For instance, the village elders have a tendency to offer their daughters as a gesture of goodwill. You won’t get into trouble if you politely refuse. However, you may get into trouble if you accept.’
‘My heart’s breaking already,’ Pete said. ‘I know just what’s coming.’
‘Although, as I’ve said, the natives are generally cheerful, the young men suffer jealousy like the rest of us mere mortals and could take offence if you take their girls. In short, if you receive such an offer, make sure you refuse.’
‘What kind of gifts should we give them?’ Terry asked, as solemn as ever.
‘You don’t. Generally speaking, the Malay system of giving gifts doesn’t work here, though bartering of a minor nature is enjoyed. Instead, what you do is be mindful of their pride, showing tact, courtesy, understanding and, most of all, patience regarding all aspects of their lifestyle. Also, it’s vitally important that you show respect for the headman, whose dignity and prestige have to be upheld at all times. Obey those few simple rules and you should have no problems.’
‘So when do we start?’ Dead-eye asked.
‘Today,’ Hunt replied. ‘At least one man has to stay here to guard the camp at all times – this will be a rotating duty – while the others go into the kampong. As Corporal Sanderson is already familiar with the Indians, he’ll stay here today and the rest of you can come in with me. Leave your weapons here in Sanderson’s care, then let’s get up and go.’
‘We’re going straight away?’ Terry asked, looking uneasy.
‘That’s right, Trooper. What’s your problem?’
‘He’s embarrassed at the thought of seeing all those bare boobs,’ Pete said, making Terry blush a deep crimson.
‘Cherry-boy, is he?’ Hunt asked crisply.
‘No!’ Terry replied too quickly. ‘I’m not. I just…’
‘Think you’ll get a hard-on as soon as you see those bare tits,’ Pete interjected, giving form to Terry’s thoughts. ‘Well, no harm in that, son!’
‘Just keep your thoughts above the waist – yours, that is,’ the sergeant said, ‘and you should be all right. OK, men, let’s go.’
As Sanderson stretched out on the grassy ground beside his basha and lit up a cigarette, the others extinguished the flames from the burning hexamine blocks in their portable cookers, then followed Hunt into the dense undergrowth. Surprisingly, they found themselves walking along a narrow, twisting path, barely distinguishable in the gloom beneath the overhanging foliage.
Terry, the least experienced in the group, immediately felt oppressed and disorientated by the ulu. He had stepped into a vast silence that made his own breathing – even his heartbeat – seem unnaturally loud. Instead of the riot of birds, wildlife, flowers and natural colours he had expected, he found only a sunless gloom deepened by the dark green and brown of vine stems, tree-ferns, snake-like coils of rattan, an abundance of large and small palms, long, narrow, dangerously spiked leaves, gnarled, knotted branches – and everywhere brown mud. Glancing up from the featureless jungle, he was oppressed even more by the sheer size of the trees which soared above the dense foliage to dizzying heights, forming vertical tunnels of green and brown, the great trunks entangled in yet more liana and vine, disappearing into the darkness of their own canopy, blotting out the sunlight.
Looking up, Terry felt even more dizzy and disorientated. In that great silent and featureless gloom, he felt divorced from his own flesh and blood. His racing heart shocked him.
Though the hike took only five minutes, it seemed much longer than that, and Terry sighed with relief when the group emerged into the relative brightness of an unreal grey light that fell down through a window in the canopy of the trees on the thatched longhouses of the kampong spread out around the muddy banks of the river. The dwellings were raised on stilts, piled up one behind the other, each slightly above the other, on the wooded slopes climbing up from the river. Some, Terry noticed with a tremor, had shrunken human heads strung above their doors. The spaces below and between the houses, where the ground had been cleared for cultivation, were filled with the Iban villagers – also known as Sea Dyaks because they had once been pirates – who, stripped to the waist, male and female, young and old, were engaged in a variety of tasks, such as cooking, fishing, laundering, picking jungle fruit – figs, durians, bananas and mangos – or working in a small, dry padi, where their basic food, rice and tapioca, was grown. This they did with no great expenditure of energy, except when playing odd games and giggling. Their longboats were tied up to a long, rickety jetty, bobbing and creaking noisily in the water. Buffalo and pigs also congregated there, drinking the water or eating the tall grass as chickens squawked noisily about them.
‘They fish in that river,’ Hunt explained. ‘They also hunt wild pig, deer, birds, monkeys and other animals, using traps and the odd shotgun, but mostly blowpipes that fire poisoned arrows. Annoy them and they’ll fire them at you – so don’t steal their women!’
Terry was blushing deeply, Pete and Alf were gawping, and Dead-eye was staring impassively as a group of bare-breasted women, giggling and nudging each other, approached behind a very old, wizened man who was naked except for a loincloth and, incongruously, a pair of British army jungle boots. Obviously the headman, he raised a withered arm, spread the fingers of his hand, and croaked the one word of English he had learned from Sergeant Hunt: ‘Welcome!’
Two weeks later, Terry had stopped blushing at the sight of the bare-breasted women, but felt even more disorientated and removed from himself. This had begun with his first short trek through the awesome silence and gloom of the ulu, but was deepened by his daily visits to the kampong and his increasingly intimate interaction with the Ibans. They were so gentle and good-natured that he could not imagine them as pirates, let alone as the headhunters they obviously were, judging by the shrunken heads on prominent display. Certainly, however, they lived a primitive life of fishing in the rivers, hunting animals with blowpipes, tilling the kampong’s one rice-and-tapioca padi, and constantly maintaining their longhouses with raw materials from the jungle. They also engaged in amiable barter, trading jungle products such as timber, rattan, rice, tapioca, fruit, fish, even the swiftlet’s nests used for Chinese soup, in return for clothes, boots, rifles, tins of baked beans, chewing gum and cigarettes. Bartering, from the point of view of the SAS troopers, was the easiest way to the affections of the villagers, leading to much giggling and backslapping.
Once this had become commonplace, however, the men started winning the hearts and minds of the Ibans in other ways: Pete showed them how to use explosives for various small tasks, such as blowing fish out of the water; Alf ran a daily open-air clinic to deal with their real and imagined illnesses; Terry entertained them by tuning his shortwave radio into various stations, which invariably reduced them to excited giggles; Dead-eye trained some of them in the selective use of weapons; and Hunt and Sanderson took turns with Dead-eye to teach English to the more important men of
