That was how average days in Medan drifted along. Not much achieved; not much harm done either. An easier life than anything I was likely to find at home. A life fit for a fucking hero.
Nevertheless, a certain dissatisfaction followed me back to the lines when I returned there an hour or so before sunset. Boyer had eluded me; I blamed myself for not doing something about him earlier. You never knew where officers were going to be.
Before reaching the sergeants’ mess, I heard the sound of a pump, wheezing like an asthmatic trying to climb the Great Pyramid with his grannie on his back. An Indian havildar was supervising the draining of our ruined cesspit, while the gang of men under him laid freshly sawn planks over the hole.
Charlie Meadows stood watching from the mess steps, smoking his pipe to ward off the stink.
‘Merdeka, Horatio. We’d better not get too pissed tonight, or we’ll be in there head-first. It would be a nasty way to die.’
‘I can think of better ways to go.’
As I came level with him, he turned to face me, pulling the pipe wetly from his big mouth and pointing the end at me. ‘You’re a dodgy bugger, and always have been as long as I’ve known you,’ he said admiringly. ‘Jhamboo Singh has been looking for you most of the bloody day. What have you been doing, flogging more gin-palaces?’
‘The sergeants’ mess this time. Flogged it to Soekarno for a brothel. What’s Jhamboo want, do you know?’
‘You’d better go over to Admin and see.’
‘All this bloody army bullshit – I’ll be glad to escape from it. I’d better have a shower and a change first.’
Charlie stuck the pipe in the other side of his mouth. ‘You don’t know when you’re well off, you young lads …’
For all my assumption of indifference, the summons to Jhamboo worried me. I showered fast, yelling for the Chinese orderly to get out a fresh uniform as I cast the spunk-ridden one aside. Quick dash of powder over foot rot and prickly heat, fast dress, and I was ready.
As I made my way over to Admin, the sun was sloping down the western sky without in any way relaxing its animosity towards mankind. The duty clerk was on me as I entered the doorway, and a moment later an Indian orderly showed me upstairs to Jhamboo’s office.
Captain Jhamboo Singh was a small man. Perhaps that was why he stood up as I entered and saluted him. As ever, he was immaculately dressed in khaki uniform, with razor-sharp edges to his shorts. His belt and boots shone. His little moustache was deadly symmetrical.
‘Ah, good afternoon, Sgt Stubbs. I have been trying to get in touch with you all day. May I ask where you have been?’ His voice was soft, almost pleading.
‘I had some business down in town, sir. I am time-expired, flying out on Monday, and the RSM has excused me duties.’
‘Well, we are very short of men, Sgt Stubbs. We don’t get the replacements, you see. It may be that we shall be forced to call upon you for some duties.’ He smiled. ‘The army always needs us till the very last moment when it releases us. As a regular soldier, you will understand.’
‘What did you want to see me for, sir?’
His fingers drummed on the desk.
‘Perhaps you would be kind enough to wait one moment while I work on some papers. When I learned you were here, I have summoned also Sgt Mercer and Cpl Kyle of “O” Section. I hope they will arrive immediately.’
He came half-way round his desk to offer me a chair. I sat on it in a rigid ‘At Attention’ position.
‘Please, you may smoke, Sgt Stubbs. Perhaps you will take one of mine.’ He extended a sumptuous silver cigarette case; it opened like the jaws of a crocodile as it approached me over the desk. ‘They are English cigarettes. De Reszke.’
I took one and lit up. Rumour had it that Jhamboo’s family were fantastically rich and ate their curries off beaten gold plates while being served by naked slave-girls.
Before I had finished puffing away, the door opened and Johnny and Kyle clumped in. They halted side by side and saluted. I heaved myself up beside them and stared at a spot six inches the other side of Jhamboo’s head.
‘Thank you, gentlemen, no need to be formal,’ Jhamboo whispered. ‘We have a painful subject to talk about. It is the question of why “O” Section did not turn out to dig the field this morning, as you, Sgt Mercer, reported. That is why I have invited you to come here. Cpl Kyle, you are in charge of these men. Why exactly was Agricultural Duty not carried out as per orders?’
Our thin-nosed pale friend said, ‘Sir, I asked the men very reasonably to turn out on parade but they refused. They said that their job did not include digging. They claimed to be skilled tradesmen, sir. They said – I just report what they said, sir – that such a job was a task for the Indian Other Ranks.’
Jhamboo Singh nodded very methodically at all these points, as if meeting them head on. A fly buzzed about and sat on his left ear; he ignored it.
‘So the men refused duty as laid down. Have you anything to add to that, Sgt Mercer?’ He asked the question mildly, putting his head to one side like a family doctor prepared to listen to any description of any symptom, however revolting.
Mercer stood rigidly at attention as he spoke. ‘The men would not budge from their charpoys, sah. When not descending to the level of common abuse, such as telling Cpl Kyle to get knotted, sah, their argument ran that they saw no point in the proposed agricultural activity. Sah.’
Johnny loved to parody the military manner.
‘The whole point of the proposed agricultural activity, Sgt Mercer,’ said Jhamboo suavely, ‘is that we can become a little independent of the hostile local community by growing a vegetable crop for ourselves. Do you personally like fresh potatoes, Sgt Mercer?’
‘Sah. Particularly with a little butter, sah. But, begging your pardon, sah, my culinary tastes don’t enter the issue at hand. The gist of the argument as presented by the BORS, sah, in among their epithets to Cpl Kyle here, was that, supposing the field was dug and the potatoes planted, 26 Div would have evacuated Sumatra before the aforesaid root crop was ripe enough to benefit the military cuisine. In other words, sah, they claimed that digging that field would benefit the Indonesians and not the troops. Hard to produce a counter argument to that, sah.’
Jhamboo looked as if he agreed with every word that had been said, and was prepared to agree with many more; but he said, ‘Unfortunately orders are issued from GHQ as instructions to be carried out and not as arguments to be discussed. Similarly, your duty was to implement those instructions, and not play any socratic role.’
Kyle stuck his nose forward at this and said, ‘With respect, sir, I can’t think that remark really represents your private views. I’m sure you feel as I do that wrong orders have in this instance been issued. It is an injustice that the British Army should be here at all, suppressing the freedom of Indonesians, as you, sir, as an Indian, must be aware; so it must be unjust that we should dig fields which probably belong by rights to Indonesian farmers.’
‘I see.’ Jhamboo’s face betrayed nothing. He lit a De Reszke, never removing his gaze from Kyle. Then he said, softly, ‘I will not listen to criticism of the British Army from a conscript. In any case, such policies have nothing to do with us as soldiers. We are discussing an order that has been defied and what we should do about it.’ He stubbed out his newly lit cigarette.
‘The war is over, sir, we should be trying to build the peace.’
‘Corporal, 26 Indian Division is unfortunately on Active Service. For us, we have a war. It is difficult to command if nobody obeys … Impossible, to be frank.’
Kyle ignored these remarks.
‘If we went to the GOC, sir, and complained of flagrant injustice, all the lads would be behind you, believe me.’
That was too much for me. As Kyle spoke, I saw terrible anger flash in Jhamboo’s eye, then his countenance was again lamb-like. For one second some ghastly bloody-minded ancestor had been glimpsed, swinging a two-bladed battle-axe.
I said, ‘What Kyle is saying is beside the point, not to mention a right load of nonsense. An army exists by following orders even if it thinks them idiotic. That’s how we won the Great War and the war against the Japs and –’
Kyle interrupted. ‘And look at the millions who got killed obeying fool orders issued by stupid generals. It’s more courageous to defy an order you know is nonsense – like this rubbish about planting potatoes.’
‘Don’t you talk to me about courage, Cpl Kyle. What do you think these medals are? NAAFI fruitcake?’ I thumped my chest before turning to Jhamboo. ‘There’s no problem here, sir. The only problem is that you’re stuck with a corporal who can’t or won’t give orders. You heard what he said – he went into “O” Section billets and he asked the men reasonably to turn out. Of course they told him to piss off. I guarantee that if you give me the job, I’ll have ’em on parade and digging away, tomorrow at sunrise.’
Jhamboo gave me a straight look and said, ‘Tomorrow is Saturday, Sergeant. In any case, remember that you are excused all duties, as you were telling me.’
There was a sort of silence while we looked at each other. Jhamboo got up and paced a bit behind his desk. He took another cigarette from his silver case, selecting and lighting it with care.
Johnny said, ‘Permission to ask a question, sah. I gather that it is pukka that 26 Div will pull out of Sumatra and return to India in September?’
‘The GOC wants the field dug this month, not in September,’ Jhamboo said curtly.
‘Would you like me to get up a petition among the lads, sir?’ asked Kyle. ‘They’ll all sign if I ask them to. We feel that you are being victimised, too, having to enforce such a silly order. This is a test case, as I see it.’
Jhamboo smoked rather heavily but said nothing, so I spoke.
‘Sir, with respect, would you like me to fetch RSM Payne? What we have here is a case of mutiny on our hands. Clear infraction of army regulations.’
Jhamboo gave me a tender smile, as of bride to groom.
‘When I require the presence of the RSM, I will summon him by my orderly.’ He thought for a moment, pacing, then went and sat down again. He drummed his fingers on the desk. ‘All right. I do not wish this matter to go any further for the present. You three NCOS will not speak to anyone else about it. In particular, Cpl Kyle, you are not to discuss the matter with the men, you understand?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Please do not simply say, “Yes, sir”. Also obey my order. There are still such things as orders, even in a peacetime army. Now you may dismiss. No digging parade tomorrow, being Saturday. I will have the weekend to consider the matter. I want you to keep silence until I speak to you again. What is it, Cpl Kyle?’
Kyle leant forward in his anxiety, resting one hand on Jhamboo’s desk. ‘If I might just make a general point about the overall situation, sir. I would like to offer my personal sympathy for your own particular predicament. As I see it, the British invasion of Sumatra and Java is a rank example of imperialism. This being a predominantly Muslim country, and you, sir, being also of the Muslim persuasion, it must place you in a painful conflict –’
Dropping his cigarette and clutching the edge of his desk until you waited for it to splinter, Jhamboo rose two inches off his chair. From his face, the lamb had fled; the butcher took over. The docile nose became a hawk’s bill. Those lambent eyes blazed like overflowing cesspits. Spirits of rapine and slaughter, which caused the Indian sub-continent to sink knee-deep in blood every century, came galloping out of that trim, tensed figure.
‘Cpl Kyle, you boned fathead, you may dismiss.’
‘Sir, I only –’ But even Kyle’s unctuous heart quailed at the spectacle before him. He clicked his heels and marched out with all the military precision of a pox doctor’s clerk. Johnny Mercer followed him. Jhamboo motioned me to stay behind. When the door slammed shut, we confronted each other.
Jhamboo came out from behind his desk and paced about a bit, still in a tremendous state.
‘What kind of a bloody fornicating pacifistical bugger is this foolish corporal?’ Jhamboo demanded, waving a fist above his head as he paraded. ‘How dare that turd-devouring cocksucker question me about my religion?’
To my astonishment, I found myself blushing. There was a faint insane hope that my deep tan would hide the colour, but my cheeks were bursting with heat. Never had I heard such language from Jhamboo or any other Indian Officer, before.
He was still on the march, smiting his skull with a clenched fist as he went. ‘I tell you, sergeant, if I was a cursing man I would bloody jolly soon say what I thought of such crawling arsehole-creeping vaginaphobes. Jesus Christ Almighty – excuse me – what sort of a pisspoor ninny is that man? Where did he crawl out from? Which arse-crack? More to the point …’ He steadied himself before me, still blazing away, so that I drew myself up to full attention, partly to avoid the rich aromas of vindaloo and De Reszke cigarettes on his breath. ‘More to the point, how do such men come to serve in non-commissioned rank in a once-great army, answer me that if you will.’
‘I understand his family comes from Tonbridge Wells, sir.’
Jhamboo smote his palm with his fist. ‘That is not sufficient explanation. The British Empire is going to the matrimonial old hounds – no backbone any more! I was at Sandhurst, let me tell you, Sgt Stubbs, and in my day any little conjugal toffee-apple-nosed socialist bastards like Kyle would have had their scrotums removed with a blunt instrument. I weep. I weep.’ Indeed, real tears stood in his eyes.
‘What has happened in your country, who can tell it? My private theory is that the death of George V caused the setting-in of the rot. He was a fine man, soldier, fox-hunter, a real monarch, married to a proud queen. Since then, a decadent excrement, Edward VIII, running away with that poxed-up American bitch, Mrs Simpson – it clearly spelt the end of any stable system of fealty, and the loss of respect near and far.’ Overcome by emotion, he steadied himself by clutching the desk.
‘How can you capture – now, I ask you – how can you capture the loyalty of your Indian subjects if your king is intercoursing the orifice off some Yankee cow all the way about Europe? You may think inwardly that I am just one more picturesque Wog, Sergeant – you may, you may – but I have been on leave all round Europe, yes, all round it, even including the Black Forest, in Germany, and it is simply a despicable place, not so beautiful as Britain, and totally without respects for morals. I could tell you some hair-rousing anecdotes about what happened to me in Europe …’
He fished out his cigarette case, thrusting fags between my lips and his own. He lit them with his gold lighter, his hand trembling.
‘I speak as one who has uncontrollably good friends in Hampstead Heath, Sergeant. Well, well, that’s all over now. Good days are over. I have no optimism, none, none. The British Empire is finish, and I suppose it is for the best.’ He patted my arm clumsily. ‘You cannot know what a man of sensibilities like me feels, Sergeant. Split apart absolutely, top to stern. My life finish, and my career. What will India be, alone, after all? … Well, bugger that, and please excuse my outbreak of cursing, but really that familiar lick-spittle little left-wing mastorbationer of a corporal, to lecture me about my religion …’
‘Sir, if I might suggest it, despite the regrettable antics of Edward VIII, we have on our hands a case of mutiny. Cpl Kyle has refused to carry out an order. He should be placed immediately under close arrest, pending further proceedings. Otherwise his sort of attitude will spread, sir.’
Retreating behind his desk, Jhamboo looked out of the window at the weary plane trees, smoking furiously as he did so. Then he turned back to me, giving no sign of having heard what I said.
‘Sergeant, I have behaved disgracefully in front of you. Forgive me. Perhaps you are my enemy, I don’t know, but that is not what I wish. You see, I admire the British regular soldier to the highest degree, the very highest … Well, there is a saying, “A rotten fish stinks from the head.” Corruption spreads very quickly and the end of everything is in sight.’ He appeared wretched, and bowed his head.
‘Sah.’
‘Stubbs, man, make an effort, will you, to treat me just as another man, not as a bloody black officer simply.’
‘Kyle did that, sir, and it narked you a bit.’
He sat down and became very mild, going so far as to toy with a ruler.
‘I must explain so you will understand. India is about to achieve independence. When independence comes, and the Union Jack is hauled down and burnt, it will mean war between Muslim and Hindu populations and much blood will be spilled. Nevertheless, in policy we shall be pacifistical, and who knows what will become of the excellent British-trained army? I am trained only to be a soldier. Without an army, I am nobody …’ Suddenly, he brought a bottle of gin out of the cupboard in his desk, followed by two green-tinted tumblers. He filled them to the brim and pushed one of them towards me.
‘Drink it, drink it, and good health.’ He waved his hand, dismissing ceremony. ‘You see, I am a rotten Muslim also, to touch this alcohol …’
‘Your good health, sir, and best wishes for the future, sir, whatever it brings.’
‘Thank you, Stubbs, thank you!’ His eyes went misty as we raised glasses to each other and drank.
‘You see, what the future will bring is uncertain. The time is out of joint. But at least I stand a fighting chance. Very excellent phrase, that, “a fighting chance”. I can possibly survive in the forthcoming Free India if I am retired with a perfect military record. Now, Stubbs, if I have a case of mutiny under my command, then the military record is not perfect by a big chalk. So it is important that this matter of “O” Section and this nasty corporal is kept quiet. You understand?’
‘Perfectly, sir.’ The gin took a bit of getting down.
‘Excellent. You see how I would be obliged if you stepped outside this room and never mentioned it again. After all, you go back to Blighty next week, so why should you worry? But it is important to me that my perfect military record is not blotted in the few months left before everything breaks up.’
‘I see how you feel, sir, but discipline will go to pot if the blokes find they can defy orders and get away with it.’
He drained his glass. ‘Yes, yes, perfectly so. But between you and I, the GOC must have been pissed when he thought up the idea of the men planting potatoes. I don’t think British troops should have to do such menial things.’
Evening was coming down. The sun bobbed along a line of distant palm trees on the far side of the disputed potato field; it had lost all power to wound, and mosquitoes were already a-wing. An Indian sweeper was sweeping the road, bent double with his little bundle of twigs. In the office behind me, a clerk was singing. His song floated through the open window.
We don’t know what’s coming tomorrow,
Maybe it’s trouble and sorrow –
But we travel along
Singing a song,
Side by side …
I took a couple of minutes off to light a fag and stroll about under the plane trees. The gin had made me feel squiffy.
‘Vaginaphobe,’ I said, wonderingly.
Poor old Jhamboo was in a bad way. He had almost broken down in front of me. He was going to return to what would be a new nation, and I could not muck up his chances, not when he had made a direct appeal to me. Sontrop was in as bad a position – it really hit me when he referred to Sumatra as home; but home for him was going to be a stormy place for a long while, if he didn’t get killed first.
The fag tasted good. I rolled down my sleeves as the sun ploughed behind the palms; dusk fell almost at once. After the day’s abortive performance, better not to think of Margey’s future: nobody knew what was happening in her home of Tsingtao. India, Sumatra, China – from that point of view, England was preferable.
As for all my muckers, crying aloud to get back to Civvy Street, there I reckoned I showed more sense than they. I could not see anything wrong with Sumatra, apart from the fact that we were also in the army. After seven years in the army, three and a half of them abroad, home was an unknown quality … War had changed the whole bloody world.
‘Cushy for some,’ said a deep voice, and the clerk from the orderly room, a little stunted chap called Wallace, went by. He had been out from the Blight about five minutes. With his terrible low hairy brow, his glistening nostrils, his blubber lips and stooped gait, one shufti at him would have saved Charles Darwin ten years of intensive research. His greeting – a shorthand way of saying ‘Good evening, Sgt Stubbs, you bronzed veteran of the toughest campaign of war’ – was an envious comment on my prospective return home. Yet what could Britain offer that ape which he could not get more of here?
Ah, Margey …
If only every screw could have taken place on a broken altar among orchids before a great grinning prostrate idol in marble – that would have been perfect.
I knew she felt something of the same thing about me as I did about her. She loved and wanted me because I was the wrong colour and had funny-shaped eyes and came from England where my father was a bank manager and Winston Churchill a famous old warlord. When we got together, two exotic miscegenies thrashed about in harmony.
As I ground my cigarette-end under my boot, Jackie Tertis came along, moving among the billets, whistling. I knew what he had been doing.
‘Stubbs. You eating?’
‘Good idea. I’m bloody starving. I’ve had nothing but a cheese sandwich all day.’
We walked along in step together. His face worked in a peculiar way which I tried not to notice.
Again I recalled Tertis as a young innocent private back in India, breaking out in a muck sweat at the thought of his first gobble-wallah. Now he had three stripes on his arm and belonged to PEA Force, a dodgy action column which worked in liaison with the piratical Dutchman, ‘Turk’ Eastermann. Tertis was a freckled man with wiry hair; he had supplemented his uniform with brown Yankee ankle-boots, a band of yellow chiffon round his bush-hat in place of a pugharee, and Dutch flashes on his shoulder – all highly contra regulations, of course. At his waist dangled a big Gurkha kukri. He really fancied himself these days, did Tertis.
He slapped me on the shoulder and walked along with his hand still resting there. ‘We’ve got a right bloke in clink today, a bugger called Luat, a captain in the TRI.’ The TRI was the Indonesian Republican Army.
‘I don’t want to know, Jackie.’
Tertis cackled. ‘Do you know what he was saying, in his bloody krab English? He was appealing to the Atlantic Charter that Churchill and Roosevelt invented back in ’41 or some time. We told him that the Atlantic Charter had nothing to do with black bastards like him.’
He pointed out some blood, drying on the leg of his uniform. ‘I was practising my golf on him. Very good shots with a mashie-niblick.’ More cackling. ‘And there was a cow and another bloke – we half-drowned him in one of those Dutch bath-things. I mean, really … Wwrrrrr, he bobbed up with the water streaming off him all purple in the face, then down, you bastard, down, drown, drown!’
He went through the motions as he spoke, laughing and half-choking. Once Tertis had been known as Baby-face; since then, his little pudgy cheeks had grown heavy and foxy red.
‘It’s torture. It should be bloody fucking stopped.’
He gave me a sneering look. ‘Well, just you fucking try to stop it, mate. They deserve it – I’ll give them fucking Merdeka … You’d lick the arses of these fucking murdering blacks. You’re too bloody squeamish to live, you are, Stubbs, you and your bloody arms-deals.’
‘I can remember when you had the decency to be squeamish too, Tertis.’
‘Piss-off! Since then, I’ve fucking come of age. No soap behind my arse, mate. You’ll never know. I swung that fucking golf club to good effect this afternoon, must have broken every stinking rib in that cunt Luat’s black body. plus a few kicks in the goolies for luck. Teach these bastards to shoot us up. Wwrrrrr …’ The noise he made was a compound of derision and vomit, as if he could not bear his own secret feelings.
‘You’re sick, you bastard! I don’t want to hear.’ I got away from him and walked rapidly ahead towards my billet.
‘You’d love it, too, once you fucking well tried it!’ he called out. That flat laugh again. ‘Wrrrrrr … Drown ’em, rape ’em, hole in one!’
Thank God he wasn’t in my billet. I slammed the door behind me and went upstairs. The terrible thing was that I knew the violence in my own nature. I believed in part as he boasted, that I might love it if I tried it.
It was almost getting dark. Up in my room, Ida Lupino’s smile was just a blur. I left the light off so that the windows could remain open without too much wildlife bursting in. I stripped down bollock-naked. From my billet, I could see Tertis’s torture house in the distance, or part of it, at least, glimpsed between other houses. Indonesians were beaten up there regularly. No one said anything. A perverted part of me always wanted to watch. It wasn’t every day you got the chance to see some poor naked sod bashed to death with golf clubs.
In his cups, Jackie Tertis loved to talk about it. Many of the sergeants claimed he was making it all up. That was their defence. I stomped into the shower and leaned against the slate wall. Cold water descended like nutmeg-graters upon my prickly heat.
When I got to the sergeants’ mess for a bite to eat, there was Tertis, boozing and holding forth, his face dark. Charlie Meadows pitched into him, others put their oar in from time to time, but nothing stopped Tertis. He had a long story about a young Malayan girl and two men who had been caught in an ambush the previous evening, one of them the Luat he had mentioned to me earlier. He was very excited and drinking heavily. I tried not to listen as I attacked my soup.
‘We questioned the girl all morning,’ he said. ‘She was guilty all right – confused in her answers. We stripped her off and tied her to the table with her legs open. Wwrrrrr … Fought like a tiger, she did. We tore every strip of clothes off of her and then raped her, all four of us, and then we mashed her tits and head in with golf clubs. Wwrrrrr …’ He coughed and laughed, striking at the air before him.
Johnny Mercer gave his high nervous laugh, then looked down at his plate.
‘You’re a criminal, Tertis, a thug,’ said Ferguson, the Scots colour-sergeant. ‘The GOC ought to know what’s going on at yon Eastermann’s place. I willne drink in the same room wi’ you.’ He set down his glass angrily and got up.
Tertis rose, too. ‘Forget it, Jock. That’s the sort of treatment these people expect – don’t forget they’ve been under Jap rule all these years.’
‘Aye, well, we’re not Japs, thank the living Christ, and your talk turns my stomach, treating the other sex so shameful.’
Tertis began to show flecks of spittle on his lips. ‘You bloody hypocrite, Jock! Wasn’t it you telling us how you’d had a knee-trembler with some bloody Malayan cow in Singapore, up against the fucking walls of the cathedral? Where’s the fucking difference?’
‘All the fucking difference,’ said Ferguson. He turned to Dickie Payne, who as usual sat there saying nothing, sipping on a beer. ‘RSM, how come you tolerate such filth in our mess?’
Dickie made a slurred but expansive gesture. ‘Jackie could be right at that. Murdering buggers.’
‘Ach, that’s no’ the issue,’ said Jock. He marched out of the mess, slamming the door behind him.
‘You’ve got to civilise them somehow,’ said Wally Scubber. It was his sole contribution to the discussion.
In the silence that followed, Charlie Meadows motioned to Tertis. ‘Let’s have no more of this kind of talk. Sit down and keep your trap shut. You talk as if you’d gone over the top.’
‘Don’t bloody lecture me,’ Tertis said. He lurched to the bar, sticking his tumbler out to the mess orderly. While it was being filled with Indian Scotch, he said over his shoulder, ‘You’re all a lot of old women, that’s what. Face facts. Like a pack of fishwives hiding behind your mothers’ aprons waiting for Saturday, believe me. Up your pipe! Them two blokes were in possession of Jap machine-pistols, Luat a captain in the TRI. That’s not bullshit, you know. Well, is it, it’s not bullshit.’
He wandered back towards the table, where we all sat in embarrassed silence.
‘The RSM’S right, they’re murdering bastards. Kill you. They were going to chop us, shoot us. They chop you up with knives, malum, that’s what the Malays do, chop you up. What were we supposed to do? Catch ’em, let ’em go, like it was some fucking kid game? Butterscotch, marbles?’
He paused to stare at us. Dickie muttered, ‘They do chop you up. Run amok, everything.’
The remark triggered Tertis off again.
‘You chicken bastards, look at your fucking faces! “Report me to the GOC,” he said. You think the old general doesn’t know about PEA Force, doesn’t know, doesn’t laugh? He’d have liked to stuff her himself. Wrrrrr … “Here’s a medal for you, Jackie Tertis, boys, Sgt W/s, medal for gallantry, help yourself, kidder, VC, DSO, DSC, DSM, DDT, you name it, thanks of a grateful nation, upholding the old traditions of the regiment, Ypres, Somme, Dunkirk, Kohima, Mandalay, all the shagging rest.”
‘Rape ’em all, kill the fucking lot. Why, even my bastarding father …’ He turned suddenly on Mercer, who was eating silently. ‘You laugh – okay, you think it’s funny? Stuck here, us or them? We’re sitting on a powder-keg, hundreds of thugs like Luat, all Jap weapons, you think that’s funny you’re round the twist, not me.’
Looking down at his plate, Johnny said, ‘The powder-keg will be exploded by your sort of mentality.’
‘Ah, that intellectual crap, Mr Schoolmaster, another one. Helping primitive races, I know, don’t tell me! You forget there’s murder, fucking murder, going on in Sourabaya and Batavia right now. Right, our turn next, our turn for the high jump – women trained to kill and all, stab in the back. You, if you’d seen her, Stubby – you’re always poking some bloody Chink bitch or other – you’d seen her stripped, legs open wide, wwrrrr, all helpless, Christ, don’t tell me, one more bloody savage bint, you’d have fucking jammed it all the shitholing way up same as us. Well, come on now – yeah? Split the bitch in two. Admit it.’
I stared at the so-called beef on the plate before me. ‘Shit in it, for crying out loud, will you? You’re as sick as a dog. I can’t listen to any more or I’ll throw up.’
He shook a fist at me as I pushed my chair back. ‘Fine mates you are! Throw up, then, go on, you fucking pansy, faint, fall over, spew, piss on your frock –’
I left him to it. Mercer barged out of the mess with me. We charged into the open air so fast that we nearly fell over the cesspit, now covered with loose planks.
‘He should be sent home. He needs a trick cyclist.’
‘Remember him in Kanchapur, back in India?’ I said. ‘He was the baby of the platoon.’
‘Fear of death versus death-wish, pulling him apart. The way he drives around on that bike of his … The Indonesians will pick him off one day. One sniper, that’s all it needs. He drove out to Belawan on Wednesday, all on his Jack Jones, just for the hell of it. Bloody madman … Coming down the RAPWI? I need a drink and we ought to have a bit of a talk.’
‘Okay. I’d as soon miss the piss-up if Tertis is going to be there. Besides, I need some khana, I’m starving. I’ve been trying to get in touch with Boyer all day. Let’s walk. We’ll cool off.’
‘Let’s do that. I’ll hitch a lift back.’
‘Just let me grab a couple of things I have for Margey.’
He was standing smoking a cigar by the gate, keeping the mosquitoes off, when I returned. He said immediately, as if it was a sentence he had been rehearsing. ‘I think we should let the mutiny issue drop if Jhamboo wants it that way.’
‘Why do you say that? Jhamboo’s only a bloody Wog.’
He laughed; it was his usual meaningless noise. ‘Work it out for yourself, Horry. To use Tertis’s phrase, we’re sitting on a powder-keg here. If the TRI found out what Tertis and that bloody mob was up to, they would attack here with the mess as Target No. 1. We’re way under strength, blokes leaving, no reinforcements coming out from ALFSEA or the Blight. If we raise a stink about mutiny, all of “O” Section would have to be shipped to Changi for trial and imprisonment, leaving us even more vulnerable.’
As I thought that over, I lit one of my cigars.
‘You realise that that sort of argument leads to the collapse of the army and the discipline on which it’s built. It was fucking mutiny, aided and abetted by Corporal Steve Bloody Kyle.’
Johnny looked askance at me.
‘You’re a vindictive bastard at times, mate. What do you care about army discipline? You just have it in for Steve Kyle. He’s not a bad bloke. It wasn’t mutiny. The lads were all stoned on cheap carioca last night – they just felt unable to get up.’
‘Okay, let’s walk …’
Although I saw there was sense in what he said, I would not tell him what Jhamboo had told me; and a sort of delicacy in Johnny made him refrain from asking.
With my package for Margey under my arm, we strolled past the MP post and along the Serdenweg. Bats were wheeling above the lamp-post, making Stuka raids on the insect population in orbit there.
It was a wonderful evening. Blossoming trees overhung the road. Soon this evening and the others like it would be mere ghosts. We walked in silence until Johnny said, ‘This Dutch pusher I’m going out with was telling me that the local branch of the TRI has us all marked – all the British officers and NCOS, a dossier on each of us. Frightening thought, isn’t it?’
‘Better wind up in a dossier than on a slab.’
More silence. But I had to say it some time.
‘Johnny, you know I really am sweet on Margey. That’s why I need to speak to Boyer. Would you think I was fucking puggle if I went ahead and married her?’
At length, he said, ‘There’s a book in our billet you ought to read, by Joseph Conrad. About a white man marrying a native girl.’
‘I read it. But Margey’s not a savage, she’s a Chinese.’
‘Horry, old pal, don’t do it, don’t think about it. Just have a good time while you can. You’d rot, stuck in a place like this.’
‘I meant take her back to the Blight.’
He cast a glance at me.
‘Her face wouldn’t fit, would it. What would your Ma do if you turned up at home with a yellow girl on your arm? I know what mine would do. What would the kids be like?’
‘Well, they’d be bloody smashing. You know how cute Chinese kids are. Besides, Margey isn’t yellow. She’s paler than I am.
He sighed. ‘The longer you’re out here, the whiter they get …’
‘You think she’s just a whore, don’t you?’
‘Let’s put it this way, Horry, old mate. In the long run, it’s just as well you didn’t manage to locate Boyer.’
We got to town, and strolled into the restaurant on the corner of Maggalaan and Bootha Street. The big fat smiling Chinese who ran the place appeared, addressing me as Missa Stubbs. We ordered beers and five eggs and chips each. I planned to take Margey out to eat later, but I was hungry now.
A trader came in from the street and sold us some black market Yankee Chesterfields. We lit up and looked round at the talent. It was an all-male, all-native clientele, except for three women sitting at a table in an area to the back of the shop which was screened off. One of the women I recognised as Margey’s old enemy, Katie Chae.
We were clearing our plates when I found Miss Chae standing beside me.
Miss Chae certainly was dishy. She wore the traditional dress of Chinese women, tunic and trousers. (‘How are you expected to keep your bleeding hands orf them when they goes around in pyjamas all day?’ as my old pal Bamber asked.) They were of a light blue and white striped material. Where Margey was plump, Miss Chae was slender, though the dress nicely revealed the bulge of bum and breasts.
Her face held those thrilling oriental planes which recall works of art. It had nothing of Margey’s kittenish look. Miss Chae’s face was long and elegant, with a look about it – this was my impression – which could be interpreted by a Westerner as either serenely calm and benign or cruel to a marked degree. It was a dark face, with eyes very large and dark. The lips of Miss Chae were finely chiselled, full, and expressive, though it would be necessary to know the lady better to find out what it was they actually expressed.
She said to me, familiarly, ‘Have you god a Briddish cigarette for an ol’ fren’, Horry?’ Although her powers of expression were good, her accent was more currupt than Margey’s, as if she had learnt all her English off a couple of drunken Dutch longshoremen – a none too remote possibility.
I gave her a Chesterfield and struck a match for her. Johnny and I exchanged winks as she lit up, bending over my hand to steady the light, breathing vapour trails through her delicate nostrils. She also managed to rub a tit against my arm.
‘May I siddown wit’ you, Horry? Won’t you innerduce me your fren’?’
‘Oh, Johnny, this is Miss Katie Chae, she’s a friend, and Miss Chae, this is Johnny Mercer, he’s a friend of mine.’ Despite the ‘friend’ business, we had only spoken once because of Margey’s jealousy – but in Medan one saw people around and about.
They exchanged greetings. I could tell Johnny was interested.
‘You are from Lonnon, Johnny?’ Miss Chae asked him, leaning forward.
‘I’m a Cockney but my home’s in Swindon. That’s in Wiltshire.’
‘Too bad.’ She looked at him under her dark lashes and then leaned back in her chair, blowing out smoke like the very picture of relaxation. Turning towards me and pointing the cigarette, she said, as if hardly asking a question at all, ‘Where’s Rosey toni’?’
‘You mean Margey?’
Miss Chae sipped at her cigarette. ‘Some time she Rosey, some time she Margey. Diff’ent trade mark, same goods.’
She flashed beautiful teeth at me, as if unaware of the havoc her remark caused.
Johnny scraped his chair back and stood up, calling for the bill. ‘I better get on up the RAPWI – they’ve got a dance on tonight and all the birds will be booked if I don’t hurry. Why don’t you come too?’
I was still not looking at Miss Chae. ‘See you tomorrow, Johnny.’
‘You’re a big boy now. Just remember the old powder-keg. Night, Miss Chae.’ He tipped the boss of the café and went out into the street.
My companion looked after him with disdain. ‘Your fren’ he like Orang Blanda girl, yes?’
‘Yes.’
‘Yes, I t’ink. He not wait buy Miss Chae drink. Orang Blanda girl legs very fat. India girls legs very thin. Only China and Malay girl legs very pretty, yes? You buy me drink, Horry?’
‘I must go. Some other evening. I’d love to.’ Saying no played hell with the respiratory system. The effect of having that countenance, with its lustrous eyes, turned upon you, was compelling.
Her conversation was a series of small raids on one’s privacy. ‘You been Sumatra long time, Horry. When I speak Malay, apa mengerti?’
‘I know that Orang Blanda, means the Dutch.’
‘All people hate Orang Blanda, no want come back. Orang Ingris diff’ent, Ingris men nice, I like. When I say “saya kaseh angkau”, can you un’erstan’ what I say?’
What she was saying was, ‘I love you’; Margey had taught me that. Feeling my cheeks redden, I rose from my chair, smiling down at her. ‘You’re telling me that it’s time I went.’
As I put some money down on the table and left, she called, ‘See you, big boy.’ The quote to end all quotes from all the Hollywood flicks of the thirties.
As I strolled along to Margey’s place, other terrible phrases of Miss Chae’s came back. ‘Some time she Rosey, some time she Margey. Diff’ent trade mark, same goods.’ Misery.
The soldiers from Amboina were sitting on the doorsteps and window sills of their barracks, singing to their girlfriends songs of Pacific beaches, moonlit nights, love for ever, fornications past, fornications to come, and fornications in progress, caressing the taut sinews of their guitars as they did so. Among all the delectable smells of hitherto unknown cuisines lay the insidious pong of drains, but it meant only that some gourmet family had just opened a duryan, that delicious fruit whose stink can anaesthetise an entire street when the wind is right.
Ah, nights of Medan. At least I had sense enough to relish your mixed pleasures at the time …