TEN

The sand under the duckboards was soft after the late afternoon downpour, and weightless mosquitos looped puddles of rainwater at Betty’s feet as she waited for Shorty at the hospital, wearing a short white dress, her hair held back with a band.

Shorty, who hadn’t thought to bring a sports jacket to Vietnam, arrived in his best patterned shirt and camel-coloured slacks. He told Betty she looked wonderful. He craned to smell her perfume, but she pressed him gently away.

‘Not here,’ she said.

Shorty tried to take her by the arm as they marched towards the gate. Betty whispered, ‘No . . . wait until we get outside.’

Shorty had imagined he would see Betty every day in Vietnam, and they would walk together most evenings. In fact, they were separated by their ranks, as a second lieutenant was not expected to socialise with a corporal, and their units, since nurses were discouraged from fraternising with the troops.

That night was to be their first dinner in Vietnam – they were going out to eat in a foreign country – and Shorty felt almost like it was their first date, as if he had to charm and impress Betty all over again. This was a problem for him, as he had no idea how he had succeeded the first time.

He explained to Betty how, days before, Nashville had managed to smuggle him back to the camp under a blanket; how he’d passed off his wounds as coming from a tumble in the barbed wire; how he hadn’t reported the robbery because Nashville had assured him that he would be charged for losing his wallet, including his military ID; and how Nashville had been making arrangements to have a new ID printed for Shorty when the original had been handed to him by a street urchin.

‘Ginger Meggs never wanted my wallet,’ said Shorty. ‘He only took it to make the motive look like robbery and throw everyone off the scent.’

Shorty and Betty reached the gate, where the guard was regimental police, an infantryman who was not wanted in the bush. He smiled at Betty and called her ‘ma’am’, and asked Shorty what he thought he was doing. Shorty said he was taking his fiancée to dinner.

The guard said nurses weren’t allowed to leave ALSG without a military police escort. That was okay, said Shorty, because he was actually a provost himself.

But the escort had to be on duty, said the guard, and armed. And, anyway, there needed to be two of them.

‘But we’re engaged,’ Shorty told him, and showed him Betty’s ring.

‘That’s jewellery,’ said the guard, ‘not armour.’

Shorty left Betty at the guard post and sprinted back to the provosts’ section. He asked the sergeant for an escort so he could take out his fiancée.

‘Doesn’t she trust you?’ asked the sergeant.

He explained his fiancée was a nurse. The sergeant had assumed she was a bar girl.

‘No,’ said the sergeant.

He could not spare two armed, uniformed MPs to chaperone a corporal on a date. This was because there was a war on.

Shorty jogged back to Betty, sweaty and dejected. She was joking with the guard at the post, and Shorty couldn’t see why she had to stand so close to him, with her long, brown legs and bare, brushing arms.

Shorty told her they would have to eat on base. But Betty couldn’t take him into the officers’ mess, since he was only a corporal, and Shorty could never invite her to the MPs’ pub, where there were photographs of naked women on every inch of wall.

‘So where can we go?’ asked Shorty.

‘The beach,’ said Betty.

Back Beach was protected by barbed wire and armed patrols.

‘It’s closed,’ said the guard. ‘Off limits at night.’

Shorty didn’t know what to do. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said to Betty.

She smiled. ‘Oh, don’t worry,’ she said. ‘We can get to the beach at the weekend. I wasn’t really hungry anyway.’

‘But I don’t see how we’ll ever have dinner together,’ said Shorty.

‘No,’ agreed Betty, and she didn’t seem particularly upset.

‘We could go to the movies,’ said Shorty.

They screened films every night at ALSG.

‘That would be nice,’ said Betty.

‘I think it’s John Wayne tomorrow,’ said Shorty.

‘Of course it is,’ said Betty.

Betty walked away from the guard post, took Shorty in her arms and hugged him. Why didn’t Shorty go out and enjoy himself, she asked.

Betty was blooming. Shorty, who watched her closely, thought she looked better every day – or, at least, every day he saw her. In Australia, she had walked with her head down, but here she stood her full height. The tropics had been good for her skin, whereas the climate seemed to be rotting Shorty. She was always smiling, although it wasn’t a smile Shorty recognised.

Betty remembered schoolboys’ whispers, builders’ taunts. She used to be embarrassed for Shorty that she wasn’t prettier or more feminine, a girl a boy could brag about. But here, the men couldn’t believe a woman like her was going out with a corporal. She used to say they were engaged, but now it was ‘going out’. She had started taking off her ring for hygiene reasons.

Betty was backing away from Shorty, although her feet didn’t appear to move. Shorty leaned to kiss her goodbye. She looked around, then pressed her lips near the corner of his mouth, against his chin. It could have been a thank-you kiss, or an old-friends kiss, or a brother-at-the-airport goodbye kiss. If they were French, it could have been a hello kiss, between two strangers meeting in Cap St Jacques.

Shorty told her he loved her.

‘I know,’ said Betty.

She promised to have dinner with him somehow, later in the week.

He wondered when he would feel her hand in the dark again.

Shorty walked into Le Boudin alone. Nashville was at the bar, as Shorty had expected, with Tâm and Baby Marie on his arms.

‘Hey, partner!’ shouted Nashville. ‘Over here!’

He gave Shorty his big, even-toothed smile. Shorty took the seat next to Nashville, and Baby Marie seemed to come with the stool. He could hardly feel her, perched like a wren on his thigh.

Nashville ordered more beer.

Baby Marie rubbed her head under Shorty’s chin.

‘Me and Shorty,’ said Nashville, ‘we protect the streets from crime. Like Batman and Robin. Guess who’s who.’

‘You bad man,’ said Tâm. ‘He robbing.’

‘We’ve had a good few days, ain’t we, buddy?’ said Nashville.

Shorty was sad that Betty wasn’t with him, and puzzled that she hadn’t seemed to care. But he sipped at his Budweiser, and the apple smell of American beer coiled with Baby Marie’s cinnamon perfume, the scent of saffron from the kitchen, the smoke of Virginia tobacco and the spirits of sandalwood joss-sticks and, once he had drunk a six-pack, Shorty realised his partner was right. There had never been a time like this in Shorty’s life.

Nashville, with insuppressible enthusiasm, had introduced him to everyone in town, showed him everywhere he knew, and taught him how everything worked. Nashville had bought him rambutans, a bisque, half a dozen bowls of noodles and a plate of sweet, rummy caneles. They had not caused a single problem for anyone else and, very occasionally, they had even helped someone. Most people in most places seemed reasonably pleased to see them. Nashville, they recognised, meant no harm to anybody.

Here was the thing: Shorty from Bendigo had a mate who was a Yank. He read comic books, chewed gum, called sheilas ‘broads’ and carried a pearl-handled revolver instead of his service pistol, when he remembered to wear a weapon at all. He was big and happy and comfortable in the world.

More than that, Shorty from Bendigo was sitting with his mate the Yank in a French restaurant in South Vietnam, with two beautiful young women who giggled at every word they said. They were all drinking American beer and smoking Marlboro cigarettes, even Shorty, who was serving his country, upholding the law, providing a bulwark against Communism – although he thought the word was ‘bullock’ – and living his youth in a war zone.

They drank toasts to the US Army, the Australian Army, the ARVN and the Guatemalans.

Baby Marie was silently mourning Tommy Callaghan, and their general store in Launceston, the capital of Australia. Baby Marie was beautiful, but not for long. She had watched Quyn age suddenly and completely, and lose her chance of marrying an American. Baby Marie had been born in a village of peach blossom and pomegranates, but she wanted to die in a city of skyscrapers, like Launceston.

She had her arms around Shorty’s neck, but Shorty had his around Nashville.

‘Tell us more about Bendigo, Victoria,’ said Nashville.

Shorty told the American about golden perch and redfin, trout and Murray cod in Lake Eppalock, and how he’d taken Betty fishing the first time they went out. Nashville listened with distracted interest. He enjoyed both women and fishing, but had never thought to connect the two. In a small way, the juxtaposition disturbed him.

‘I wish Betty was here,’ said Shorty.

‘I’ve got an idea for you,’ said Nashville. ‘How about you enjoy what you’ve got’ – he pointed to Baby Marie – ‘instead of moping about what you can’t have.’

‘You don’t understand,’ said Shorty. ‘I love her.’

‘I love bourbon,’ said Nashville. ‘But that don’t mean I don’t drink rum.’

Shorty shook his head.

‘When I saw Betty,’ he said, ‘I knew she wasn’t the best-looking girl in the world, but that didn’t matter to me. I’m hardly a prize catch myself, am I? I’m no sixteen-pound Murray cod.’

‘No, you ain’t,’ said Nashville.

‘But it wasn’t as if I was settling for a common carp,’ said Shorty. ‘She can do things, you know.’

‘What kind of things?’ asked Nashville, hopefully.

‘She can paint and she can sing,’ said Shorty. ‘She can make her own clothes. She can even fish.’

It was a long story, told slowly, over many drinks, and Nashville was impatient for it to move on. ‘When you got into her pants,’ he asked, ‘was it worth the wait?’

Shorty took a gulp from his beer, rabbit-eyed, sloppy-drunk.

‘Oh my fucking God!’ shouted Nashville.

Tâm slapped him.

‘You’re a cherry boy?’ asked Nashville.

Tâm clapped her hand over his mouth. Nashville licked her palm.

‘That’s fucking amazing,’ said Nashville. ‘I can’t fucking believe it.’

Baby Marie began to grind into Shorty’s lap.

‘We think that making love is something sacred,’ said Shorty.

‘But how do you know, if you’ve never done it?’ asked Nashville.

Shorty nudged Baby Marie off his leg. She climbed onto Nashville, sharing his knees with Tâm. But she sat looking at Shorty, unblinking. She had lovely brown eyes, but Shorty didn’t care.

Shorty ordered drinks. The girls asked for crème de menthe.

‘Look,’ said Nashville, ‘I’m sure you’re doing the right thing, and I’m proud to call you my partner. My cherry partner. I know I would’ve done a lot more in this life if I’d stuck to the straight and narrow. I might’ve climbed Mount McKinley, or learned to play the tenor sax.’

He stroked his chin.

‘Or maybe I wouldn’t,’ he said. ‘Like you ain’t.’

Dr Clarke noticed Betty walking back to her quarters in her short white dress. He asked where she was going, and she said nowhere.

‘Then come to the officers’ mess,’ he said. ‘It’s better than nowhere. That’s all I can honestly say about it.’

Betty didn’t like to stay long at the mess. Men got the wrong idea. They thought she didn’t know how much she was drinking. They pressed themselves against her. Officers engineered situations when they were alone, and rubbed her bottom while acting like they weren’t.

The mess was a timber building and it had an old French piano. Betty loved to play Chopin and the men liked her to do anything, because it gave them an excuse to stare. An officer from the Service Corps, with a cavalry moustache, stood beside her as she played, but it seemed acknowledged she was in the company of Dr Clarke, and she even heard him refer to her as his ‘date’, with a smile. How did she hear that, she wondered, when he was so far across the room?

She tried to guide their talk away from personal topics but since politics, religion and work were all banned from the mess, everything seemed to lead back to sex. The officers were fascinated by the idea that she outranked her boyfriend. They asked, ‘Are you always on top?’ The Service Corps captain asked if she had ever had him punished for a poor performance.

Eventually, Dr Clarke reclaimed her from the mob, and asked how she was enjoying herself in South Vietnam. She told him it was the best time of her life, and he knew what she meant, because he remembered his first months at the BCOF hospital in Seoul, when he was a newly qualified doctor, in love with an English nurse, at the height of the Korean War. All of his career had been an attempt to recapture that feeling, in Port Moresby, Georgetown and Vung Tau.

Betty felt guilty to be having such an intimate conversation – even though it was unspoken – with a man who wasn’t Shorty. She was tremendously sorry for Shorty, and she knew he missed her. She’d thought they’d be together all the time in Vietnam, huddled in a trench, but she was beginning to realise how naïve they’d been about, well, everything.

Dr Clarke asked her if she would like to come with him to a movie. The officers had their own theatre, and it sometimes screened better films. Tomorrow night, they were showing It’s a Wonderful Life with James Stewart.

Of course Betty would go, she said. It was her all-time favourite.

She imagined her hand in his lap in the dark.

A cloudburst punched and patted the canvas roof of the jeep, like the hands of a masseuse beating on an empty man. The storm passed quickly, the sky cleared, and Nashville woke up. Shorty, who had been studying the Australian Military Forces Pocketbook South Vietnam, asked if they were going to look for Sergeant Caution. Nashville, still drunk from the night before, said he needed a beer. It was nine o’clock in the morning and Shorty was complaining he couldn’t take his fiancée on a date.

‘Where were you going to bring her anyway?’ asked Nashville. ‘A brothel?’

They passed a striptease bar.

‘Dinner and a show?’

Shorty shrugged.

‘You even got a suit?’ asked Nashville. ‘Your girl’s a lewie, ain’t she? If you want officer pussy, you need a suit.’

‘She’s not pussy,’ said Shorty.

‘Not without a suit, she ain’t,’ said Nashville. ‘She’s just two closed curtains and one locked door.’

Outside Le Boudin, they found Moreau supervising a team of Vietnamese boys who were scrubbing the side wall of his bar. The undressed masonry had been sprayed with two large curves in army green paint. The arcs bent outwards, in opposite directions.

‘It looks like a broken heart,’ said Shorty.

‘Looks like a pair of fucking ears,’ said Nashville.

Quyn lounged in the doorway of the bar, remembering the banks of a river lined with mulberry and maize, a bronze incense burner before an ancestral altar, and a sky white with butterflies.

‘Oh, big man!’ she called, when she saw Shorty. ‘Brave soldier! Kill bookoop VC, yes?’

Moreau opened the bar and Tâm made coffee. Nashville always found her most attractive in the mornings. As she put down his cup, he whispered, ‘Want a fuck?’

Tâm looked away. Quyn brought over Shorty’s coffee. She was wearing a tight blue minidress, while the other girls were still in nightclothes. As she put down his cup, she whispered, ‘Want a fuck?’

Shorty smiled, as if it were a joke, which helped Quyn pretend it was funny that a soldier didn’t want her.

Moreau said his wall had been painted in the night. Yes, it looked like ears. But it wasn’t his fault a dead man with no ears had come to his bar, and he was tired of hearing about it. Much worse things were happening in the war, and Moreau didn’t care about them either. And the Mamasan, he said, was sorry about what had happened to Shorty. She understood he’d lost ten dollars. Moreau was prepared to refund Shorty from the cash register, or offer him half an hour with two of his girls, in the interests of keeping the peace.

Two thin, strong arms wrapped around Nashville’s neck, and Bucky jumped high onto his back. He was a small but powerful kid, with violent, clumsy grace. He smelled like a chimp.

‘Americans nambawan!’ shouted Bucky, waving his fist in the air.

Nashville shrugged the kid off, then picked him up and hugged him. He hadn’t seen Bucky for days. Nashville noticed bruising under his eyes.

‘Who did this?’ he asked.

‘Americans!’ said Bucky.

‘Americans?’ asked Nashville.

‘Nambawan!’ said Bucky.

‘Sometimes,’ said Nashville to Shorty, ‘I think this is the only guy in Vietnam who really fucking appreciates us.’

Bucky passed a bag of patisseries to Tâm.

Shorty was surprised how quickly he had grown to enjoy Le Boudin’s croissants, which would have been a poofter’s breakfast in Bendigo, Victoria. He hoped to share them with Betty, who wasn’t yet aware of his French side.

Nashville put on his quizmaster’s voice. ‘What was the highest position in the Billboard charts reached by Sergeant Barry Sadler’s magnificent “Ballad of the Green Berets”?’ he asked Bucky.

‘Nambawan!’ said Bucky.

When Tâm accepted the cakes and passed Bucky his red envelope, the boy panted like a delighted puppy, and Nashville couldn’t help but pat his head. His fingers found the hole that ran all the way through Bucky’s life, and it made Nashville wonder if everyone would be happier if they were stupid.

He imagined Shorty was pretty content.

When Nashville had been roused and calmed by beer, he made to return to the jeep. Bucky followed him outside, and tried to climb on board.

‘I’m sorry, buddy,’ said Nashville. ‘I can’t take passengers no more.’

Bucky, who understood nothing or everything, bowed his head.