Margey’s humble home was crowded. Several old men and women, their faces brown and wrinkled like apples stored too long, moved silently about the room. The men were dressed in blue suits, the women in black. One by one, they went behind the old screen to pay their respects to Auntie. From Auntie came only an occasional moan; the curative flying lizard had not done its stuff.
In order to accommodate the visitors, the table had been pushed to one side, under the stairs. There sat Fat in his usual posture, a cigarette balanced in his mouth. With him were two men, one of the brown unidentifiable ones, and the scholarly Tiger Balm, spectacles gleaming. He and Fat nodded politely to me. Of Margey there was no sign.
According to my watches, it was about nine o’clock, give or take twenty minutes. I set down on the table the presents I had brought for Margey: a jar of Chivers’ marmalade, a tin of Portuguese sardines, two bars of Palmolive, a tub of Indian-made Andrews’ Liver Salts, and some envelopes.
As Fat seized upon these items and examined them with police-force thoroughness, Tiger Balm said affably, ‘And are the British still preparing for withdrawal?’
‘That’s up to Soekarno to decide.’
My sarcasm was lost on him. He merely asked, taking another whiff of his cigarette. ‘Is that the official British attitude? Now you allow people to have what they want. We read in the papers that London lets Marshal Tito take over Jugoslavia. Poor King Peter, who was your wartime ally, is left out in the cold.’
That this intellectual Chinaman should know so much about things that were going on in Europe …It was none of his business.
‘I came to talk to Rosey. To Margey. Where is she?’
‘Old Auntie sick, tida bagoose,’ said Fat. ‘Margey look see Auntie.’
But in a moment, Margey appeared, smiling, and took my hand. I put an arm round her, squeezing her waist.
‘Second house of the cinema in half an hour,’ I said. ‘They All Kissed the Bride. Joan Crawford. Had you forgotten?’
She laughed in genuine amusement. ‘I forget cinema with you, Horry? Course Margey no forget. First I nurse poor old Auntie a little, then we go. After that, we eat and have fun, yes?’ She smiled her lovely smile. ‘And you bring me more presents, you naughty boy. Now what, this time?’ Fat yielded up the shopping item by item, retrieving each after she had looked at it.
Her slender arms went round my neck. ‘Why you so kind to me, Horry? Poor Margey no good for you. You very good for Margey.’
‘Not a foreign devil rapist soldier any longer, eh? You’re gorgeous, Margey – get a bloody move-on, will you, or we’ll miss the best seats.’
‘Maybe I give some Andrews’ Liver Salt to poor old Auntie. She very ill. Then we go upstairs for very quick time before pictures, okay? You like it? My God, Horry, I will absolutely drag your trousers down and I will make you come your orgasm in fastest rate ever, so be warn!’
After the film, the hordes poured out along the safely lighted thoroughfares, but Margey led me down various unlit and unsavoury alleyways to an area of the town which had only recently been declared safe, following the eradication of a nest of extremists. This was the busiest time of day, with trade brisk and amazing smells of cooking fighting with music in the air. Not a hint of trouble about – though it needed only one pistol shot for the streets to clear instantly. I had seen it happen.
Margey trotted along happily at my side. ‘This restaurant nice pleasant prace. Once was a consulate building, you know. Now British have made a deal with Soekarno, you not get shot at any more times.’
I agreed that this was a good thing.
‘When British troops go away, then begins more shooting, and much trouble for all China people. Right now, Indonesians have your people to worry about. When you gone, then they worry about our people, I think.’
‘Something’s worrying me. Do you ever call yourself Rosey?’
We walked several paces before she said in a tiny voice, ‘Why you ask such a thing?’
‘Answer the question.’
‘I Margey, okay. That my name ever since I go university. English names very smart and fashionable. Who this Rosey? What you mean to say? I no like all so many questions.’ I listened to her working herself up and would not reply.
The restaurant was a two-storey concrete structure, built on stilts overlooking the river. Its name was the Bunga Rampaian. Its façade was scarred by machine-gun fire. As we entered, the sight of customers and the prospect of a meal made Margey chirpy again.
She knew the boss. With wide smiles, we were shown to a table. Fragrant odours filled the air. It would be strange when first the British then the Dutch withdrew; but surely the prophets of doom would be wrong and the political takeover prove peaceful, here if not in Java. Probably I could get a bank job; the Indonesian Republic would need banks. If only I could get in touch with bloody Boyer …
While I fantasised, Margey conferred with the waiter.
‘They have very tasty good sea fish served with ginger, also sweet green bean soup. How you like that, darling?’
‘Sounds great. Bring it on.’ As we lit cigarettes and smiled at each other, a five-piece band began to assemble on a tiny platform. They started up with ‘Terang Boelan’ as our fish arrived. Customers applauded the tune with rapture.
With my knowledge of banking, I could rise to manager … Ah, at the time, at the time, it appeared that the future was simple if only I made up my mind. I did not grasp the fact that I was up against the futility of human relationships.
International affairs met with little understanding in those days. To the crowds who danced in London and other great cities on VE Day, celebrating the death of fascism, Evil appeared vanquished. They lit their bonfires and exchanged their kisses under the impression that the world’s reserves of hatred were exhausted. In the East, matters appeared in truer perspective.
VE Day itself was the occasion for a ten-minute break for a smoke while we got on with the task of dislodging every Japanese installed in thousands of islands and territories which stretched from Tokyo to the very gates of India. After the Japanese surrender, their will to fight smashed by the A-bomb, insurrections sprang up on every side in the territories they had freed from white rule.
No country went back into the box from which the Nipponese tide had spilled it. New breeds of angry men arose, running to new barricades waving new banners. Many leaders like Soekarno rode to power on the backs of Nippon. In the East, the one peace ignited a dozen wars.
Even in Medan, time-honoured fuses of economic interest, of race, of faith, of colour, were spluttering away. We kept our weapons clean, dry, and slightly oiled, and listened to ‘Terang Boelan’.
While we wolfed down the fish, Margey extracted from me the fact that I had spoken to Katie Chae. Only when I swore that she was the ugliest Chinese girl I had ever seen did Margey relax.
‘Miss Chae is no pure China girl,’ she said. ‘That is why she so ugly like you say, and so dark skin. I hear her father is a very bad man who ran away to Penang after a bank robbery. He is half Mongolian man.’
‘What’s the other half?’
‘I tell you, Horry, her father one half Chinese, one half Tibet, one half Mongolian. Maybe another half Negro, I don’t know.’ She burst out laughing, covering her mouth politely.
‘That makes two of her!’
‘Miss Chae girl of many halves. I not bore you with description of her quarters.’ She roared with laughter again, sobering to say, ‘She come from Tibet – not so nice place as Tsingtao. Where you get this Rosey nonsense? One day, how I wish to take you see Tsingtao and the Shantung Peninsula. The people are all good and the landscape so pretty …’ She sighed. ‘Now for the present I must go home and nurse poor Auntie a little more.’
I do not remember asking what was the matter with Auntie. She was old, and old people had a habit of falling ill.
‘Don’t go yet, Margey. Your place is full of people who can look after Auntie.’
She laughed contemptuously, and waved her fingers. ‘They no capable. They poor fish, except Daisy, and Daisy work too much hard. Auntie need me.’ She rose, giving me a smile. I saw the enduring woman I admired, who went about her daily business – the shopping, the cleaning, the tending – however thoroughly the world fell apart round her.
As we left the restaurant, a knot of foreigners – Dutch – were pushing their way forward, talking in loud voices.
‘Orang Blanda!’ said Margey, in low-voiced contempt. As she spoke, I spotted Johnny Mercer in the group. A tall blonde girl, real officer-fodder, had her arm entwined with his. He did not see me, I made no sign, allowing Margey to lead me through the dark alleys.
I gave her a good-night kiss at her door and left her to do her stuff with Auntie. An hour or so before curfew. I took a stroll up the Kesawan, where shops were still open.
Pleasant daydreams filled my mind. I saw the British leaving; the Dutch leaving, the Indonesians allowed to get on with their own business, building the place up again, trading with Singapore and the rest of the world. Why not? The island had coal, oil, minerals, endless timber; anything grew in the marvellous climate. It could become the richest country on earth. This logical development has yet to take place.
A chill breeze sprang up. Rain was on the way again, moving in across the Indian Ocean. I went into the nearest shop and chatted with the shop-owner, while Malayan music twangled from an ancient radio. The old man apologised for the poverty of his stock. Tomorrow, the Van Heutsz would dock in Belawan harbour. It would unload goods for his shop, including Swiss music boxes in cigarette cases, which troops would like. Van Heutsz was very fine Dutch ship. In pre-war days he had sailed as far as Celebes on that ship. It was tranquil to be on the sea and watch day break over the waters.
The rain dried. I returned to the street, smoking a big cigar. Everyone was emerging from shelter. I stood on the worn pavement, watching a road-sweeper who covered the hole where his nose had been with a leaf secured in place by a matchstick pushed into the matter beneath. It was hard to decide whether his trouble was syphilis or leprosy.
Then I saw Captain Boyer farther down the street.
He had a Dutch woman in tow. Impeding each other in so doing, they were climbing into the back seat of a rusty old car. They had emerged from a wine shop, in token of which the officer was clutching a bottle.
I paused a yard or so away and called Boyer’s name. He did not look round. He and the woman had stuck in the door of the vehicle. All I could see of him was a leg, a backside, and an arm holding the bottle frenziedly by the neck, like a cripple trying to strangle a cat. Then the rest of him backed out, the woman fell inside, screaming resignedly, and he began to swear at her. Was it Boyer?
I tapped him on the back as he prepared for another assault on the car. His reaction time was slow. He began to look round only as he heaved himself into the back seat, so that he caught the peak of his hat and knocked it flying into the dark interior. Cuddling the bottle, he glared out at me.
‘Who are you? Where’s my drink? Give me my cap back.’
The light was so bad that I still could not see his face properly.
‘Sar’nt Stubbs, sir, 2nd Mendips.’
His face protruded slowly out of the door, rather like paste oozing from a tube. The woman beat feebly on his back, under the impression that this would pull him back into the vehicle. His face was bevelled so as to climax in a nobly aquiline nose; all adjacent features were subordinate to his nose, with the possible exception of his eyebrows, which emphasised it as acanthus leaves emphasise the height of a Corinthian column. The eyebrow motif was echoed in his small black moustache, which hung sketchily above his lips. ‘Stubbs?’ these lips muttered, blankly.
‘Sah.’ I grinned. It was Captain Maurice Boyer, 2nd Royal Mendips.
‘So it blithering well is …’
Like the passing of a rainstorm out to the Straits of Malacca, blankness faded from his face, replaced by a sort of idiot joy. He had recognised me. He was insanely glad. It might have been his old mother standing there. Laboriously, he heaved himself out of the car on to the pavement. Once on his feet, he slapped my back in the area where prickly heat was at its most gregarious, and tried to force me into the black cavern of the car, where unknown and carnivorous womanhood awaited me. I hung back, breathing cigar smoke into his face. He coughed, and breathed booze into mine.
Coughing in my turn, I said, ‘Can I speak to you, sir? Personal and urgent.’
‘Course you can speak to me, Stubbs. Good to see you, man, always liked you. Burma days. Kohima, the DC’S tennis court – what a nightmare! Climb into this chariot with me and my light o’ love, come and have a drinkies with us. In you go – don’t know anyone else in all flaming Medan.’
He encouraged me forward. As I bent to climb in, the woman was screaming from the back seat, in a Dutch accent, ‘There’s no rewm for any man more in this fewking automobile!’
‘Move over, you difficult bitch,’ snarled Boyer, plunging in and trampling his cap underfoot. He pulled me after him; I followed just behind the bottle.
As I gulped the foetid air inside the car, I could distinguish sweat, cheap perfume, sick, and another aroma which I disliked. Boyer fell across me and slammed the door shut. The unseen woman fell across him, so that I got frowsy blonde locks in my face. They both screamed with what could have been laughter and the driver started the car. I began to laugh, too – I’d dropped my cigar.
Boyer seized the woman with professional ease – not a difficult feat, considering that she was taking no evasive action – and began to talk to her and me at the same time.
‘Men’s welfare, my dear, don’t grumble. Drinkies ahoy! Good old Signaller Stubbs, now Sergeant well-deserved, one of the best lads in the regiment. Both under fire together. Fire! Fire!’
‘Not fire, only smewk,’ she said, fanning at the nauseating clouds which were drifting about as we gathered speed. I had ignited the floor mat. I was fumbling at their feet for the cigar butt, pretending to be drunk in case Boyer suspected me of feeling the woman’s legs.
‘Dear God, the privations! Never forget it. Drive on, driver, damn you, faster, faster. Drinkies ahoy! Need a pee.’ Cough, cough, cough. ‘What’re you doing here, anyway, Stubbs? What’s the name of that restaurant, my dear? Christ, I need a pee – step on it, driver, damn you!’
We soon found ourselves at the Bunga Rampaian, where I had eaten with Margey scarcely an hour earlier. We tumbled out of the car amid clouds of billowing smoke. The upholstery was inarguably on fire, though it had not enough strength, given the humidity of the night, to burst into flame. Boyer uttered the cry of one bringing forth young and relieved himself against the concrete stilts of the building. Like his cap, his bottle of drink lay forgotten in the car.
Staggering up the restaurant steps behind Boyer, I found myself next to his Dutch light o’ love. Her name was Raddle, or so I received it from Boyer. She was fat yet withered, two undesirable attributes infrequently found together. Her hair was blonde, and curled wherever possible. Her ample trunk was encased in a dress of navy blue which shone like the seat of old trousers. The looks she gave me were either of animosity or amorousness; both possibilities scared me. Three Margeys could have found refuge in her blue dress.
Inside the restaurant, the five-piece band was in full charge. None of your native muck at this time of night. Gone was ‘Terang Boelan’; instead, we had genuine airs from European operettas:
All the world’s in love with love,
And I love you …
The music appeared to upset Boyer, who twirled about a bit in the entrance, knocking over some flowers. Raddle skipped forward and grabbed his arm, saying, ‘Attempt not to lewk so fewking drunk, you twirp.’ Her English was very fluent.
Up came the manager who knew Margey. He did not recognise me. Waving his hands, he announced that no more food could be served because of the imminence of curfew. It was the fastest bit of character-reading I had seen in a while.
‘Bring me a bottle of whisky, then,’ said Boyer immediately. ‘Or I’ll have your restaurant closed down for good.’
‘Sairtainly, sair, and maybe I bring you some nice kebabs, sair, for you and the lady and gentleman.’
Having shown himself so responsive to threats, the manager led us to a table by a window overlooking the river. Boyer waved expansively, threading his way between tables and leaving Raddle to take her chance – being corpulent, she had to make many a detour among the diners. ‘Grab yourself a seat, Stubbs. Drinkies ahoy!’
‘Sir, I’d be glad to have a word with you, if you can spare me just a moment. I didn’t ought to sit down at the table with you, sir.’
He hammered on the table with his fist. ‘Damn it, man, take a seat. I said – haven’t seen you for months, what’s the matter with you?’
I stood at attention to remind him of his position in society.
‘Regulations, sir, NCO and officer, sir. No familiarity. No offence, sir.’
He made such a violent gesture of contempt that he swept a sauce pot into Raddle’s lap just as she was sitting down. Unable to find lodgement on that convex surface, it fell to the floor and rolled under an adjacent table. ‘To the devil with regulations, Stubbs, I’m giving you an order. Sit yourself down.’
Still I hesitated – to be truthful, there was a gob of sauce on the vacant chair – but the woman, who was fairly well oiled herself, said in a high voice, ‘Sergeant, unless you are a complete fewl, will you sit in that fewking chair and keep this drunken horse’s arse in quietness.’
I sat.
A waiter presented himself, carrying a bottle of whisky, three glasses, a small flower in a small vase, and a plate of steaming kebabs with chunks of pineapple and mangusteen nestling between chunks of skewered meat, covered in a hot sauce. Uttering shrieks of various magnitudes, we forgot our similarities and tucked in.
From where I sat, I could observe Johnny Mercer, his bird, and the rest of the Dutch contingent gathered round a corner table; Mercer was signalling frantically at me through a haze of tobacco smoke. One by one, the rest of his party joined in the gesticulation, pointing, shaking heads, and behaving so wildly that I began to suspect they had detected a bomb under my seat. I looked. There wasn’t. They shook their heads and renewed their pointing. I shook my head in return, gestured questioningly at myself. Nodding from them. Blank looks from me. I turned to see Boyer staring nonplussed at my performance.
‘Are you pissed, old chap?’ he enquired, pointing his kebab accusingly.
‘Sir, excuse me.’ I got up and forced my way over to Mercer’s table, ignoring the protests of other diners on the way. His rabble gave a cheer as I approached. Just to look at them made you feel slightly drunk. Six empty wine bottles stood or leaned on the table.
‘What are you on about, you nutter?’
Johnny leaned heavily on the shoulders of the girl next to him, forcing her breasts down into a bowl of prawns, and waved four flabby fingers at me. ‘Here, Stubbsy, ’mazing coincidence … You were looking all over for him, weren’t you? Boyer, you tool, it’s Boyer, Boyer! Sitting at your table!’
‘Jesus …’ I looked down at him in pity. ‘Pissed again. Mercer. I came in here with him, didn’t I?’ I tottered back to Boyer’s table and took a steadying draught of whisky. An involuntary convulsion seized my digestive tract. Grasping the bottle and my throat, I stared at the blurred print on the label. BLACK TARTAN WOMBAT WISKEY Made in Scottland, Bottled by P. V. Ramakrishnan Bottling Mart, Kuala Lumpur.
‘Good stuff,’ said Boyer. ‘Better than that piss we had in the car. Drink up, cheers, salamat datang!’
‘I thought you were in Padang, sir,’ I said, shuddering at the dire things happening inside me as the whisky deployed its forces.
Raddle had finished painting her lips and studying the effect in a small mirror. Now she decided to take some part in the conversation.
‘We flew from Padang via the RAF this morning, Stewbs.’
‘Did you really, Raddle?’
‘Maurice kindly accompanied me since I was scared to flew. I sail for the Netherlands via RAPWI on the ship Van Heutsz tomorrow. Good-bye to Sumatra after four ghastly years. Tonight we celebrate, Stewbs! Medan’s a step nearer civilisation! Cheers! To the Van Heutsz!’ She raised her glass high before drinking.
The Van Heutsz was a four-and-a-half-thousand-ton symbol of hope to any non-military personnel wishing to escape from Sumatra. Just to be allowed aboard that ancient vessel, to become one of its crowded deck passengers, was to savour the redemptive quality of a new life. Raddle’s eves shone at the prospect.
‘Golly, she’s lovely, Stubbs, isn’t she?’ said Boyer, looking from one to the other of us as if trying to decide which was which. ‘Be honest, you can be honest. Isn’t she lovely? Poignant, too. A fine woman, Dutch as they come. Maastrich born.’ He shook his head. ‘I want to marry her but she’s married already. She was raped by the Japs, of course.’ He laughed and belted into the Black Tartan Wombat. ‘That’s life.’
‘Talking of marriage, sir, I wanted to ask you something personally –’
Raddle screamed. ‘This whisky’s mewk! Oooh, Stewbs that fewking aeroplane from Padang, my gosh! What bumping we had. I was so terribly sick, you know.’ She gestured to make the scene more vivid to me, clutching her throat to illustrate. ‘Sick over my seat, sick over the flewer, sick over my frock, sick over my handbag, sick over Maurice – terrible!’
‘You were a bit icky, darling,’ Boyer said gallantly. ‘“Per ardua ad nauseam”.’ He laughed and sweated a bit more, splashing more Black Tartan Wombat into our glasses.
‘There’s a certain Chinese girl, sir –’
‘I can’t wait to get on the Van Heutsz tomorrow, it’ll be the end of four years bad lewk for me.’
‘Say you’ll miss me, darling, say you’ll miss your Maurice!’
She started screaming in a confidential manner. ‘I just want to get back to the Netherlands, to my fewking home in Harlingen. It’s been snewing hard there this winter. Snew! Snew! Holy Virgin, snew and home cewking! Fresh Tampax!’
As this conversation developed, the restaurant was closing.
The last of the diners, all fairly tight, were being bundled towards the door. Johnny and his bird went out with the tide. The band offered a final selection from The Merry Widow, during which Boyer sang with ragged vehemence, ‘Though you sweat, Though you shave, They forget what you gave’ – and crept off home to their terrible bamboo beds. Eventually, we also were bundled off the premises with Raddle, practically in mid-stream, hymning her homeland.
Immediately we were outside, all restaurant lights were switched off. A wall of dark descended. Cries of protest sounded all round as the last of the revellers floundered about in search of vehicles.
Looking at the situation in cold blood, our vehicle was simple to detect, since a cloud of unpleasant smoke drifted from it; we had but to follow our noses to be home and dry. Unfortunately, an inner compulsion made us move with undersea sloth, bumping into palm trees as we went. Black Tartan Wombat is, in one respect at least, superior to any other wiskeys made in Scottland: it can ferret through the stomach lining, up the jugular vein, and into the cerebral hemispheres like a fit of greased lightning destroying anything it meets.
A suspicion came to me through the murky liquid that Boyer, having survived his aerial ordeal by vomit, was so far sunk in love of the fair Raddle that he would probably smuggle himself aboard the Van Heutsz with her on the morrow. It was essential he give me permission to marry Margey before he disappeared. As this thought percolated, I became very crafty, winking and nodding to myself in the dark.
Bumping into him accidentally-on-purpose, I grabbed Boyer’s tunic and would not let go. He in turn seized a nearby chunk of Raddle’s anatomy and she led us to the car. The driver materialised. He shone a torch. He was Japanese. He wore the uniform of a Jap officer from which the insignia of rank had been removed, although he retained his revolver. This struck me as immensely ironic. I began to laugh uproariously. The Jap pushed me into the back seat, heaving Raddle and Boyer after me in quick succession. It was fumey in the car; the back seat consisted of springs and hot patches. I choked and laughed.
Mistaking chuckling for cadging noises, Boyer passed me the wiskey bottle, saying, ‘You aren’t going to miss your poor old Maurice, you cow. ’Strue, every word of it. “Though you sweat, though you shave …”’ He began to sing into my ear, not wisely, but too well.
‘Sir, sir, I want to talk privately to you about a Chinese girl,’ I said, as we drove through the narrow streets. Boyer took no notice.
‘Don’t speak to him, Stewbs, he’s drunken. Jewst give me a cuddle.’
In the confined space, it was rather easier to cuddle Raddle than not. I put my arm as far round her waist as it would go, which was somewhat less than half-way. She was fun, I thought, and really not bad-looking. Her hair was pretty. And curly. She was very animated. Her accent was attractive. As she moved my hand to her breast, Boyer cut off the supply of Lehar to announce, ‘I could tell you something about Chinese girls, Stubbs, believe me. They’ve got no blithering passion, no passion at all.’
‘You think so, sir?’
‘No blithering passion. Utterly submissive, brought up since birth to be utterly submissive. It’s an akkis – an accident of history. The sayings of Confucius – analects, I believe they are really. Analects, Stubbs.’
‘Sir.’
‘Why, in China proper, where the feet of the women are still bound –’
‘Oh, shewt up about the blewdy Orientals, can’t you, Maurice, mmm, I like it; more … What do you know about it really? Oh, yes, more of that. Harder. I’ve had my teeth full of Orientals. Oh, ooh, you brewt, ah …’
‘Darling, what I’m saying – I’m only saying the women have no passion, no response. Christ, this car’s abnormally smoky … They just lie there, flat as a pancake, no interest, no initiative. Analects. Not like you, darling. Where are we?’
‘Medan, sir.’
‘I know we’re in bloody Medan …’
The world beyond the car was a world away. I was vaguely conscious of darkness, trees, a glimpse of sky, and lanterns burning in huts of kampongs. Raddle pressed against me on one side, Boyer on the other, and we sipped at the Black Tartan Wombat in turns as my free hand slid up her skirt. Boyer and I began to sing unpremeditatedly as one.
I love a lassie,
A bonny black Madrasi,
She’s as black as the fucking ace of spades …
We collapsed into giggles. Silence fell. I was there. Her lips clamped themselves to mine. We sped on through the thick night as if the driver intended taking us back to Tokyo and was not stopping till he hit the Ginza. My hand was trapped deep in Raddle’s oleaginous organ, which felt endless. Boyer dropped into a slumber on my shoulder. Existence struck me as extremely comical, if smoke-filled.
‘Something tells me I can’t stop feeling your vagina,’ I murmured, indistinctly.
Raddle removed her tongue from my mouth in order to remark, ‘Maurice, I think I’m going to be sick again …’
Pulling my hand away with a mighty slurp, I grabbed Boyer and shook him in fear, ‘Maurice, Maurice, sir, for fuck’s sake, wake up – she’s going to pewk again.’
He started laughing stupidly, saying in a Scots accent, ‘Aye, weel, she was aye a passionate wee woman …’
Fortunately, at that moment a green wire double gate materialised in the dark before our bonnet. We stopped with a tremendous jerk. Raddle was ejected out of the side door, a parabola of vomit springing from her lips to disappear beyond human ken into the equatorial night.
‘I think I’ll have a pee,’ said Boyer, ‘but remember what I say about the analects. Bloody stupid word, when you come to think …’
I jumped out and had a pee too. Only in the middle of it did I take in the scene. We had arrived smoking at a Dutch enclave entirely surrounded by a high wire perimeter. On the other side of the gate was a guardhouse, complete with business-like guard with rifles and searchlights. Both rifles and searchlights were turned on us and our various bodily fluids. An electric generator hummed in the background, adding to the general obscene noises of the jungle close at hand.
When Raddle had recovered sufficiently from her gargantuan vomiting operation to start swearing at the guard in Dutch, the gate was opened and we drove in, surrounded by our private smoke-screen.
The realisation struck me that we must be some way out of town. To my saturated senses, it appeared strange that there were bungalows here with bright lights burning, and music playing on verandahs, and people dancing both indoors and under the trees. Such gaiety was paradoxical after the ride through darkness, as if one went back in a time-machine through the Jurassic and arrived at Las Vegas.
The car stopped right in the middle of the revels. We tumbled out, coughing. A band was playing, a man’s voice bawled, ‘It brings back a night of tropical splendour, It brings back a memory –’, and then we were submerged in laughing faces which shone in the dark.
Huge Dutchmen, all six foot seven, pressed Amsterdam beer and sausages into our hands. A barbecue party was in progress; figures ran insanely among low trees. Someone I recognised. He waved. Oh, yes, that chap, Sontrop. I flung him a salute and nearly fell over.
Boyer and Raddle started dancing to the music, entrusting what was left of the Black Tartan Wombat to me. I sat down at a trestle table and lit a cigar, fighting off dizziness. People were talking to me, but I took no notice.
Some while later, Sontrop came up with a friend. Although he carried a can of beer, he spoke with his usual sober courtesy. ‘It’s pleasant to see you here, Horatio. The Dutch are always delighted when their allies, the British, are personally friendly. This is my friend Hendrick. Hendrick Nieuwenhuis. May we enquire what you do here so late and so far from home?’
Hendrick bowed to me, smiling politely.
I gestured with the cigar. ‘You see, it’s simple really, I mean life’s only complex on the surface, because underneath it’s – well, it’s a lot more complicated, but we won’t go into that, but I want to marry Rosey – I mean, Margey. I want to marry Margey.’
What else was said escapes me; I was trying to puzzle out why I felt unable to rise from the bench. I ate five sausages for their medicinal value.
The conversation perhaps went on for some hours. The next bit I remember was Hendrick saying, ‘We are planning a little crocodile-shoot tomorrow. Perhaps you will care to come with us?’
‘Don’t know how to shoot crocodiles, don’t be silly.’
‘It’s just like shooting people. We give you a carbine – your revolver is no good for crocodile-shooting.’
‘Okay, thanks. Fun. I’d like to bring Margey along. Hey, Ernst, you taking a girl with you?’
Sontrop looked at me and said, without anything you could call a change of expression, ‘I am a practising homosexual.’
I did not know what to say to that.
‘Practice makes perfect,’ I said.
With a violent crash, Captain Boyer landed almost at my feet. I went on hands and knees, bending over him, trying to listen to his heartbeat. His shirt was wet with sweat. Ernst and Raddle pulled me up. I still had the bottle.
‘He’s not dead, you fewl, Stewbbs,’ she said to me, looking red-eyed, ‘only dead-drunk. So much for the fewking analects. Help me get him to bed, if it’s all the same to you.’
With a certain amount of aid from Sontrop, mainly of an advisory kind, Raddle and I heaved Boyer into a nearby bungalow. He came round sufficiently to make declarations of love and sing in a phlegmy voice as the three of us tottered into a rear bedroom. The room contained little more than a wooden double bed, the statutory mosquito-net, and a bare lamp bulb which glared down on the scene, making the eyes ache.
Boyer lay back and opened his eyes. Full of innocence, they seemed to look for protection from the bastion of his nose. He started to take his trousers off.
‘I’ll leave you two now,’ I said. ‘Good-night, sir, sleep well. Bon voyage, Raddle, tomorrow.’
‘Wait outside,’ she said urgently as I passed her. Sontrop went out. I went out and slammed the door. It was dark in the hall. I leaned against the door, drawing on my cigar, trying to gather my wits. From their various points of dispersal, they told me that I was stuck in this parody of a concentration camp for the night, that most of the Dutch here were in festive mood because they were leaving on the Van Heutsz on the morrow, and that if I was not careful I would get a lot more of Raddle than a fistful of pubic hair and labia.
Through the flimsy door, I heard her trying to rouse Boyer.
‘Come on, you bastard, darling, never mind the words, show the action.’
‘Oh, Raddle, darling, darling Raddle, you know I love you devotedly but I can’t, I just can’t … too much alcohol … putteth off from the performance … drown my sorrows …’
‘If it’s our last night, don’t mewk about, then. Lewk, lewk, I strip off! Rouse yourself! Observe my figure, fewk you!’
‘Oh, lovely, let me feel, oh, Raddle, how I’ll live without you …’
Pounding, sucking noises, as of two goldfish colliding in anger. ‘Rise up, you blewdy tiddler!’
‘Oh, oh, too far gone …Black Wombat …’
‘Oh, you sod, you British sod, you fewking drunkard sod from Roehampton! How you like if I go and get your hulking great Sergeant Stewbbs to make love by me if you are incapable?’
‘No, no, darling, my precious, listen, Stubbs – good man, good chap in Burma, you weren’t in Burma – blithering nightmare – Stubbs doesn’t love you …’
He muttered something about ‘Chink girls’, to which Raddle replied impatiently and jumped off the bed.
I moved. Another door led off the cramped hall. I opened it and slipped in fast. Deep breathing. Someone was asleep close by my right elbow. A person – not a cobra, thank God. Cobras don’t grunt as they exhale.
Darkness. I began to cough and had to smother my mouth with my hand; the fingers and thumb smelt strongly of something semi-delectable. Peering back through the door, which I held ajar, I saw Boyer’s door flung open with a crash. Raddle emerged, her face black with frustration. The navy blue dress was open all the way down, to reveal secrets of nature at their most titanic. Ida Lupino would never have appeared in such a state.
As Raddle moved from the room at a canny trot, she seized some of the wiring which ran down the wall to the light switch and pulled hard. The wiring came away in her hand, bringing the overhead bulb down with it. The light sparked and went out. She charged along the hall, scattering wires, and disappeared into the clamorous night, for all the world like a bull leaving a china shop after having tasted porcelain for the first time in its life.
Instinct suggested that Raddle would not be back. Leaving the heavy sleeper to continue his act, still thoughtfully sniffing my hand, I tiptoed into the other room. Woozy sleeping noises emerged from Boyer’s huddled shape. I climbed on the bed beside him, my boots to his face; I pillowed my arms beneath my head, shut my ears to the racket outside, and was enclosed by a suffocating sleep in which cars, planes, and towns burned down all round.