ALAN WAS PICKED UP from the Signals School by one of his battalion’s 15-cwt trucks. He took over the wheel, and covered the eighty miles in under two hours, wondering, as he did so, what the hurry was. But as, with an exultant roar, he changed down to take the corner off the main road into the camp, and caught sight of the austerely orderly pattern of the long huts, he realised that this was not at all like coming back to school; it was more like coming home. He climbed down from the driver’s seat, and strolled stiffly, in a hard-bitten proprietary manner, towards the adjutant’s office. A platoon moving past gave him a smart eyes-right, and he accepted it as a matter of course, instead of looking round to find out who was being saluted.
The adjutant was installed behind a precarious-looking scree of papers, talking to the subadar-major, to Harold Hockey, one of the company commanders, and to two clerks simultaneously. He looked younger than ever, although his face was soggy with fatigue, and drops of moisture shone on his moustache. He allowed himself a smile and a jerk of relief as he caught sight of Alan.
‘Thank God something has turned up, anyway; have a good course?’
‘Well,’ said Alan, judiciously, and was prepared to start a judicial and reasoned account of the course’s virtues and failings, but the adjutant cut in:
‘Did you bring the anti-tank rifles?’
That was what the truck had been sent to collect, rather than Alan.
‘Thank God for that. Fine sight we’d have been, disembarking in a theatre of war with those bloody wooden dummies. And now you’ve come as well, we may even have some officers to take with us. Since you went off, let’s see, we’ve lost the second-in-command to the 14th Battalion, now forming, and we’ve lost a very tidy proportion of our best N.C.O.s to the same quarter. We’ve acquired one subaltern Indian gentleman, as Transport Officer, but the M.O. appears to be a doubtful quantity as far as service overseas is concerned. The Officers’ Mess has no cooks. Whole thing’s a shambles.’
‘Where are we going?’
The others looked at each other and roared with laughter.
‘Where, where, Oh, tell me where!’ said Harold Hockey. ‘Nobody knows. According to Brigade, it’s now Basra. According to Scrapings, who seems to have some divine source, it’s still Ceylon. According to Sam Holl, we’re going straight to blood and glory in Malaya or Burma.’
‘Ah yes,’ said the adjutant, ‘and that’s another casualty. Sam’s in hospital with a dose of malaria, and the doctors say he won’t be out for another ten days. By when, you can bet your bottom rupee, we’ll be on the high seas. For wherever.’
‘Sam in hospital,’ said Alan, disbelieving. ‘It’s impossible!’
‘Passed out,’ said the adjutant. ‘On parade, first thing. You should have seen Scrapings’ whiskers go up like thunder ‘cross the bay – but poor old Sam wasn’t tight, just stiff with malaria. Now you’d better hop along and get yourself straight; all personal kit to be ready to travel to the Training Battalion. We’re liable to move any time at twelve hours’ notice.’
Walking back to his room, Alan felt abandoned. It was unthinkable that the battalion should sail without Holl; he did not see how the battalion could function without Holl. Drearily, he unpacked, and started to repack; he was not allowed much luggage to travel with him; he would have to abandon his typewriter. But what did one wear to go to war? He went to the Mess to find out; Harold Hockey, the only person there, greeted him warmly but was not well-informed about the best dress to take to battle, beyond that he personally was not intending to take his mess kit. Alan went back; he packed normal underwear, boots, uniform, etc. He contemplated the bright blue corduroy slacks he had used for riding in, and packed them too; there seemed to be lots of room, so he packed a further four books of poetry, and a very magnificent dressing gown of silk with Chinese dragons on it, that he had bought from a peddler. Also all Lettice’s letters, stuffed into the toes of his slippers. He found his squash racket standing in a corner, and made a few passes with it at the wall, but abandoned it for the Training Battalion. Then it was all done; yet he did not feel equipped.
Restless, he went down to see how his platoon was getting on; he felt able to cope with them, trained to buzz with the best of them. He found the havildar carrying out a kit inspection. Clean, smart, well-pressed and alert, his platoon was admirable; they seemed to have got on admirably too without him, and no doubt would manage somehow to get on with him too. And his havildar, a spare small man with a rich moustache, who seemed always welded into his uniform and was surely old enough to be Alan’s father, greeted him with warm yet respectful pleasure; they talked together, slowly, owing to Alan’s Urdu, but professionally, about the novelties revealed by the Signals Course. Alan told the havildar of the wonders of walkie-talkie wireless sets. The havildar had heard of them, but never seen one. And would they be issued shortly?
‘Ultimately,’ said Alan, quoting his recent instructors, ‘these fine sets will be issued to every battalion in the Indian Army.’ Translating ‘ultimately’ was difficult; the nearest he could manage in Urdu (though it was in fact very near) was ‘in the end.’
‘In the end,’ repeated the havildar, expressionless, looking straight in front of him.
‘Yes,’ said Alan. Perhaps it was a phrase with which the havildar was well acquainted. ‘In the end.’
‘Yes,’ said the havildar, and sighed, and then, catching Alan’s eye, laughed.
The atmosphere in the Mess that night was subdued, vague, but a little grim. People came and went with the abstracted yet concentrated faces of men who have forgotten something vital and are on the brink of remembering what it was. Scrapings appeared for the meal, and, by order, Alan sat next to him answering a series of courteous questions about the course. Scrapings obviously was not listening to his answers. For a few moments in the middle of the meal almost all officers were present, but conversation languished between a sporadic carrying on of regimental business over the table. No one seemed more than half there.
Next day Alan’s duties took him past the local Military Hospital. After a moment’s hesitation, he drove his truck in. He located Holl without difficulty, directed from one flashing Eurasian grin of a nurse to the next; everyone seemed to know Holl. In a small ward he found two empty beds, and a third from which, in maroon-and-yellow-striped pyjamas, Holl protruded giant and captive, aground on his pillows. His eyes were closed, his mouth slightly open, and he was snoring with a calm rhythmical purr like a strong engine ticking over. On his right a large window was open on to the deep shade of a balcony, and beyond the parapet flat and dry and brown, India too stretched inert under the level pressure of the noon heat. With positive envy, Alan remembered how it was to lie becalmed in the hammock of a light fever, unresponsible, floating in a haze of unresolved dreams while warm sleep lapped around, and, every now and then, over. The world was quite still; even the regular purr had stopped. Half-open, but void, Holl’s eyes shone at him, without recognition. Holl’s skin seemed to have shrunk to a size too small, dry and yellowish; the bleak anatomy of bone and muscle threatened to slough it off at any moment. Like a corpse, his presence exhausted the surrounding air of all purpose, and Alan found himself breathing with difficulty, and his mind began to close as within the drawing of blinds. But then the eyes opened a little wider, and the pale slits flickered. Holl exclaimed aloud, and his whole body moved in a long jerk.
‘Christ!’ he said, rather querulous. ‘I thought it was my baby brother.’ He wiped his face with the sleeve of his pyjamas, looked at the sleeve, groaned, and slewed sideways in the bed for a glass of water. Refreshed, he was almost sitting up. ‘You’re like him,’ he said, but still querulous. ‘I suppose you’re much the same sort. Clever boy. Not like me. Booksy, scholarships, university, the works.’
‘Jimmie,’ said Alan. ‘We’ve been through this routine before. What’s he up to?’
‘Heh?’
‘Your young brother Jimmie; what’s he doing nowadays?’
‘He’s dead,’ said Holl, and wiped his brow again. ‘Flipping Frogs got him, in Syria, our gallant allies, in ’40. Clever boy, he was. Hated my guts. We used to fight like cats whenever we met, which wasn’t often, but he was years younger, and lighter, though crafty. He always lost; poor old Jimmie! Yes. He always lost. But a lovely tongue he had; he’d make me madder quicker than anyone I ever met. Now…’ The bed suddenly shook and rattled; Holl was shaking himself like a dog. Then his eyes, fully awake and alert, looked calculatingly at Alan.
‘What does that chart say?’ he said, as an order.
Alan stooped at the end of the bed, and unhooked the temperature chart. It was fairly rugged. ‘Hundred and one this morning, it looks like.’
‘Christ! That means another three days at least. You’re not on the move yet? I’ve never been more than six days on this bloody lark; that’s three gone already. If they don’t murder me with this bloody atabrin.’ He was becoming more animated, with a glittering eye; he leaned sideways to Alan, and said hoarsely: ‘Did you see that peach with a mole by her left eye? That’s a peach. She gave me a bed-bath. A beeyoutiful, play-tonic thing. She swabbed me down as tender as a new car having its first wash, and did I stir? Not a blink. Remarkable; I knew I was pretty far gone then; she ought to try now, I said to her this morning. Caught her a flip on the passing crupper, and it did me a world of good.’
He beamed on Alan for a moment’s silent reminiscence. Then he turned on his back again. ‘And where have those flipping little Japs got to this morning?’
‘Well, they’ve sunk the Prince of Wales and the Repulse off Singapore.’
Holl knew that, but he groaned. ‘Poor sods. Usual stuff, it sounds like. Not a British plane in sight.’
‘Penang looks as though it’s about to go.’
‘Ah.’ Holl sucked at his teeth restlessly. ‘Wish I’d listened to the geography lessons at school a bit harder. Don’t suppose they’ve come clean, where we’re going? No? Not that they need to. We’re going East, my boy, and don’t you believe anyone who says we aren’t. One month from now, or less, we’ll be in action.’ The gold tooth shone brilliantly. ‘Rangoon, or Singapore. Maybe for a change they’ll have stopped withdrawing by the time we get there. But I’ll be with you, boy, you don’t leave without Holl. I’ve got it all laid on; I’ll know when you’re going five minutes after you do.’
He heaved a long sigh, and closed his eyes. Then he gave Alan a series of directives: messages to his V.C.O.s and to the adjutant; he asked Alan to see that his kit was ready to go. ‘And you’d better be off now. If a Sister catches you in here, there’ll be blue murder. They’re a sad lot, the Sisters. I have taken a vow, my boy, that if I get out of here alive, I’m going to take the Sister in charge of this lot of wards out on a bend. They just don’t know, you know; there they are, withering hourly in all that starch, and all they want is a man, if only they had a clue. After all, they sacrifice themselves for us, bless ’em. ’Sonly fair we should sacrifice ourselves for them – just once, if never again.’
In spite of the vivacious wink of Holl’s goodbye, Alan did not really believe that Holl would be with them when they embarked, and indeed, when the order did come through five days later, Holl was still in hospital. Alan did not have time even to get up to say goodbye to him. The departure, entraining, disentraining and embarkation at Bombay took its course with the usual chaos, high temper and boredom. A sudden lull in the turmoil, after uncounted hours, underfed and underslept, had suddenly washed Alan up on the quayside at Bombay; for a moment he stood, disorientated, purposeless. By some unexplained miracle, the battalion was almost completely embarked and settled more or less into its allotted areas aboard. The ship was not a large one, but in normal times it worked the Calcutta-Singapore route in the coolie trade, and had therefore large clear decks forward admirably adapted for what were considered to be the needs of Indian troops.
Over Alan’s head, an obscure burden swung through the air towards the ship. At his side, a voice said, in the lilting Welsh of Indian English: ‘That, in my humble opinion, is conclusive. We go to the Middle East, to the desert.’
It was Alan’s brother officer, Second-Lieutenant Attar Singh, who was in charge of the transport, and he was pointing up at the crane; the object swinging towards the ship was a brand-new 15-cwt truck. ‘Six of them were waiting here for us; all newly painted in desert camouflage. They would not issue them to us if we were going to jungle country. Let alone the fact that they have issued warm battle-dress.’
Alan hadn’t thought of that, but the argument did not seem conclusive; indeed, from his own relatively limited experience of the grinding of the mills of higher command, he would have said that it was equally likely to be evidence that they were going to a bright green country. He was just about to say so when he remembered that his companion was an Indian, and, from some obscure sense of loyalty to British efficiency, restrained himself.
‘But what are these?’ Attar Singh was prying around on the quay; he had found some large cardboard boxes. Alan bent to look, and, shuffling one of the boxes around, discovered that they were wireless sets. He was enchanted, and delighted that he had restrained his cynicism. His belief that some power actually knew that the battalion was going somewhere (and perhaps even knew where it was going), and was brooding over its well-being with love and forethought, flickered into life again. He was just bustling off to ensure that the sets got aboard, and to dazzle his havildar with this fine new toy, when a tall figure came striding along the quay with a huge majestic gait and a flurry of agitated dock officials in its wake.
‘Holl!’ cried Alan, and the world lit up with the flat but breathtaking exhilaration of a flare.
Holl came to a stop. He looked very yellow; his eyes very bright. ‘Nice to see you, Alan. Uh only just made it. Just brush these little bastards off me, if you would; it would be a kindness – they say Uh’ve no authori-tee to take part in this riot. I must find the C.O.’ He snapped smartly at his besiegers, and burst up the gangplank, leaving them wailing.
Some hours later, with his men settled apparently more or less contentedly in their allotted area, Alan bumped into Holl, who was talking with one of the other company commanders.
‘Of course we’re going East,’ he was saying. ‘Any child of six could tell you. Any Japanese child of two could tell you.’
The other man was sticking to the old rumour about Ceylon. ‘It stands to reason you wouldn’t put in a brigade of half-trained troops into a campaign, when you had a trained brigade of some maturity standing by in a place like Ceylon which is on the way; you’d put in the older troops and replace them in Ceylon by the new ones. But anyway, Scrapings’ll be back from the brigadier with the orders any moment now. Then we’ll know.’
Holl had lost interest; he was whispering urgently in Alan’s ear to find out where the bar was. ‘Just a quick one, old boy. I’ll pass out if I don’t have one. Bloody bug seems to have gone to my legs.’
When Holl was sitting in the lights of what was destined to be the Officers’ Mess, Alan saw that indeed he looked odd: yellower than ever, with the twitching tiredness of a very old man. Holl took two large whiskies very fast, and started back at once for his troop-decks. Outside the door, they ran into the adjutant.
‘Have you seen the C.O.? That ruddy M.O. insists on saying goodbye to him personally. As if I hadn’t got enough on my plate without – ’
‘Goodbye?’ said Holl.
‘Yes. Oh, you didn’t know, I suppose. The doctor’s not coming with us. He’s got some special contract in his terms of service; he’s strictly for within India only. No overseas nonsense for him, sensible chap. We were supposed to be having a replacement, but now we don’t get one till we get to the other end.’
Holl thought, visibly as usual when assimilating some difficult problem, his fingers mashing. ‘What you mean is that that bazaar-wallah is welshing on us?’
‘Yes, I mean, no, not really. He’s been very good, actually; he’s entirely within his rights, and he needn’t even have come this far.’
Holl whistled, and rocked rhythmically on his toes. ‘Ah. I think I’ll just have a word with Master Swami-Sawbones. He might change his mind, mightn’t he?’
‘Not he,’ said the adjutant, but Holl had already gone.
The adjutant looked after him, slightly suspicious. ‘Alan, has Sam been drinking?’
‘Two whiskies. He ought to be all right.’
‘Oh. Well, perhaps you might just follow him up and see he doesn’t do anything stupid.’
Alan did not know where the M.O. was, and spent some minutes circling in the dark and narrow corridors of the ship. Someone told him the M.O. was in a cabin, and after some trials he found the right one.
As he opened the door, he saw, opposite him in the narrow cubicle, the M.O. sitting on the bunk. He was a mild, spectacled man, wearing khaki slacks and tunic; his hands rested calmly on his thighs. Beside him on the bunk stood three shiny suitcases and a valise, with his mackintosh and cap on top of them. He was saying, mildly, but with a certain severe firmness: ‘Now that is not an honourable suggestion for an English gentleman to make.’
All that Alan could see of Holl was his back, which was slightly hunched and marked with dark streaks of sweat, and his fists, which were enormous at the end of his slightly bent arms. He had never before noticed that Hall’s hands were at least two sizes too large even for that huge body. Alan slid in sideways and shut the door. Holl’s face was visible now to him, and it appalled Alan. It was swollen, and bright orange, the eyes rimmed with red, the pupils shrunken to black dots in the cold, dilated grey irises; his upper lip was set and straight, and against it the lower lip mashed up and down, emitting a stream of the foulest insults that Alan had ever heard in sequence.
‘Captain Holl,’ interrupted the doctor, not moving and apparently well in control; ‘you are a sick man. You do not know what you are saying. I advise you very earnestly to return to your own cabin and lie down. I will give you a sedative…’
Holl took no notice; the invective proceeded, low, vibrant, and with an unrelenting flat trajectory like a high-pressure hose.
The doctor stood up. He appealed, with a trembling but half-smiling scornful dignity, to Alan: ‘Mr. Mart, I fear that Captain Holl is not only sick but that he has had one go, as you say, too many at the bottle. Perhaps you could help him?’ A little line of sweat shone on his upper lip, and he wiped it off with a handkerchief startlingly white against his brown skin. The gesture seemed to exasperate Holl beyond control.
‘Sam!’ cried Alan. It was the first time he had called Holl by his Christian name, and afterwards he remembered this.
‘You get to hell out of here. This doctor’s coming with us if I have to knock him cold and lock him up until we’ve sailed.’
As Holl took one step forward, his fists coming up, a curious movement, as formal and detached as a ballet sequence, involved the three men, and Alan saw it happening as though he himself were only a spectator of it. The Indian, with an easy and graceful gesture, put one hand on the steel wall of the cabin as if to steady himself and with the other hand took off his spectacles; simultaneously, Alan turned inwards to restrain Holl. Holl handed him off with all his strength, yet caught him by the shirt collar as he did so, so that as Alan fell backwards he was checked, and then heaved up on the reflex against Holl’s body, jolted loose as a rag doll. On the fall backwards, his right hand flung out behind him to break the fall; on the rebound, as Holl heaved him up again, his arm came swinging forward out of control in a swinging arc, and met the Indian’s cheek in a loose, very loud flat smack, just as the door behind him opened, and their commanding officer stood among them. The movement froze. Alan lay off-balance across Holl’s chest, and the Indian stood bent over, leaning on the hand that held his spectacles on the bunk, with the other hand to his cheek, and an expression of pure astonishment in his eyes. Scrapings stood there between them now, almost as tall as Holl, gaunt, his heavy moustache hiding his mouth, his dark eyes blank under the furious clench of his thick eyebrows.
The cabin was so small that all the men were almost touching; from his inclined position, Alan found that he was looking up Scrapings’ nostrils which were armoured with crisp grey hairs. A low panting noise was going on, but beneath that there was a silence opening like a void between a man fallen overboard and his ship.
Into this gap at last Scrapings’ voice moved. ‘Well?’ he said, with a hopeless fluttering motion of his hands.
Tears had started to run down the Indian’s cheeks; he muttered something unintelligible.
Scrapings inhaled, looking round the group, his head moving stiffly like a gun-turret. Then his eyebrows came down, and he roared at Alan: ‘Stand up!’
Alan righted himself, lurching. The collar of his shirt was torn, and flapped loosely, exposing his collarbone; with one hand, he scrabbled at it.
The Indian had found words now, and was voluble. ‘Sir, these men have assaulted me! Disgracefully they came to insult me; having insulted me to their filthy satisfaction, they have assaulted me.’ He waved a hand. ‘See. They have broken my spectacles! Although prudently I removed them, suspecting.’ He held them up; he must have half-fallen on them, and one side-piece was missing. The tears rolled faster down his face; his voice became piteous, imploring. ‘Sir! I ask justice. I have only done my best, always put my best foot forward. Only to be now insulted, beaten up by these hooligans. Sir – ’
‘Holl! Mart! You will return to your quarters and stay there until you hear from me.’
‘But, sir – ’ Alan began.
‘Get out!’
In the corridor, Holl stood still. He shook his head as though a fly were worrying it. He shook it again. Then, without a glance at Alan, he went off towards his cabin supporting himself every now and then with one hand against the wall.
In his own minute cabin, Alan mechanically removed his torn shirt, and got out another one. Then he washed thoroughly in the little folding basin: his hands seemed to reek with an odour like that of crushed nettles. Then he put on his clean shirt and sat on his bunk, his hands dangling, his eyes shut, trying not to remember the doctor’s face of outrage, and trying to banish the thought that this must be the end of Holl. After an interminable time, an orderly knocked at his door, and Alan followed him to the cabin that the C. O. had taken as his office. Holl was already there, standing stiffly to attention; Alan joined him, and they stood looking over the top of Scrapings’ head as he fiddled with a pencil at his desk. The door shut.
‘Now,’ said the C.O., ‘this is a miserable business.’ His eyes remained miserably on his pencil, and Alan saw, for the first time, that he was going bald on the top of his head, with some thin grey hairs dispersed inadequately over a sheen of vulnerable skin. ‘The M.O.’s story is that Holl came to his cabin, was drunk, and started to insult him; he was joined by you, Mart, and you both insulted him and then assaulted him, breaking his spectacles. What have you to say to that?’ He looked up at them; he was obviously very tired.
‘Well, sir…’ said Alan and Holl together.
‘Holl, first.’
‘Well, sir, that’s all perfectly true. Up to a point. I understood from the adjutant that the M.O. was ratting on us, sir – ’
‘That is not correct. He was perfectly within his legal rights.’
Holl leaned forward with a bright flush, and an emphatic forefinger. ‘Ah, sir, but his moral rights? What about – ’
‘I’m not asking for an apologia, Holl. I want to know what happened.’ For the first time his voice had an edge to it.
Holl recoiled to attention. ‘Sir. I thought it to be my duty to attempt to dissuade the M.O. from leaving the ship. So I called on him, sir, and tried to reason with him, quite calmly, sir, to try – ’
Alan suppressed a gasp.
‘To make him understand that a man with any guts, let alone any conscience just could not – ’
‘Holl! I want to know what happened.’
‘I was arguing with him, sir, when Alan here came in. And Alan must have mistaken something I said, and have thought, sir, that I was going to hit the little ba – I mean, sir, he seems to have tried to stop me. Then I’m afraid I lost my temper, and quite inadvertently hit the swine – I mean the M.O. – with Alan. It was entirely accidental, sir.’
Scrapings put his head between his hands, and groaned aloud. Then he looked up again. ‘Had you been drinking?’
‘Only two whiskies.’ He appealed to Alan for confirmation.
‘Yes, sir. Only two whiskies.’
The C.O. looked helplessly round the cabin, and then back to Holl. ‘You were properly discharged from hospital this morning?’
After a perceptible pause, Holl launched his lie as gracefully as a clay pigeon. ‘Yes, sir. They all thought I’d made a remarkable recovery.’
Alan thought Scrapings must burst now, but instead he put his head into his hands again; then he looked up.
‘Have you anything to add to that, Mart?’
‘No, sir.’
‘But it was you who hit the M.O.?’
Holl interrupted. ‘No, sir. It was I; I hit the M.O. with Alan.’
Without warning, Scrapings blew up. ‘Hold your bloody tongue!’ For a few moments he simply shouted at them, as his face warmed from grey to a very reddish purple. His voice cracked, and he had to pause for breath. Taking almost visible grip on his rage, he summed up, still shouting, but on a low register. They had disgraced themselves – the battalion – the Indian Army – the whole service. They had committed a grave offence; of its gravity not only was he, Scrapings, well aware, but he had reason to think that the M.O. was equally well aware of its gravity. The M.O. had demanded a court-martial, and a court-martial there would certainly have to be, with ensuing repercussions, not merely local – the politicians would certainly get hold of it. At this thought, the tirade ceased; Scrapings’ head rocked to and fro with the horror of it, his eyes shut. Then he said, quietly, that they were to consider themselves under open arrest and to withdraw to their cabins; he would have to think out whether they could sail with the boat or not.
Here Holl broke in; standing like a bound prisoner, his head straining forward on its neck, he said: ‘Sir, I must insist that Alan had nothing to do with this.’
‘Hold your tongue!’
‘Also,’ continued Holl, drawing his head back, and his voice suddenly mild as milk and almost coy; ‘with the deepest respect, sir, but if you mean to get me off this boat before it sails you’ll have to have me carried off in chains.’
Scrapings jerked violently, and the purple in his cheeks began to mantle again. He gasped, but havered, so taken aback, and his moustache, as if endowed with a life of its own, twitched and bristled along the line of his mouth. He lowered his head again so that they could not see his face.
‘That’s enough, Holl.’ He was looking at his watch. ‘You will return to your quarters, but before you do so, there is one thing that must be done. The M.O. will be leaving the ship at any moment, and you will apologise to him before he goes. I shall have to thrash out this wretched business later.’
Holl started forward again, his eyes popping. ‘Apologise!’ He was profoundly shocked.
‘Apologise,’ agreed Scrapings, hard and level. ‘It’s about your only hope, apart from any other considerations. I don’t suppose for a moment that it’ll have the least effect. But you will, by God, apologise forthwith. That is an order.’
Dumbfounded, Holl looked at him. Then he saluted.
‘Mart,’ said Scrapings. ‘You wait one moment.’
The door shut behind Holl. Scrapings was now looking round and over Alan with an expression of concentrated but incredulous distaste. Then he said, in a ringing, raging but baffled shout: ‘When I was a younger man – !’ He stopped.
He proceeded, his voice mild now as Holl’s had been, with also an almost wistful undertone. ‘Perhaps there is no more honour left. I saw you slap that wretched Indian, with my own eyes I saw you, so help me God. Has it not occurred to you, you filthy little puppy, that to take advantage of another man’s weakness – a brother-officer’s sickness – that to shield behind his… his…’ Scrapings’ voice wavered, and sunk even softer. His purple had faded to an ashen-grey. He found the word. ‘To take advantage of his generosity…’ His voice faded altogether.
Alan stood with his mouth open, but speechless. The blood roared in his head.
‘Well?’ said Scrapings after a time. ‘Have you nothing to say for yourself?’
Alan’s mouth shut with an audible snap. ‘No,’ he said.
Scrapings’ eyes roved in contempt over him. ‘In that case you’d better get after your victim fast, and apologise. Having done that you will return to your quarters and not budge until you are told.’
Alan turned to go.
A roar halted him. Scrapings was standing now behind his desk, an enraged trembling hand flung out towards Alan. ‘By God, don’t you ever condescend to salute your senior officers, you guttersnipe? Salute, damn you!’
Alan turned, shaking, and saluted rigidly.
‘Get out,’ observed Scrapings, baring his teeth, and turned his back on him.
Alan fled down the narrow steel passageways, bumping off bulwarks and people indiscriminately. The cabin where they had interviewed the doctor was empty. Alan stumbled on up a companionway on to the shrouded darkness of the deck. He sighted the M.O. just turning on to the gangway down to the quayside. He caught him by the sleeve.
The doctor half-turned, and shook Alan’s hand indignantly from his sleeve as if it were unclean. ‘First one and now the other,’ he moaned, and then, hissing: ‘Don’t touch me! Go away. I do not wish to speak to you, Jao!’ he added urgently to the two orderlies who were preceeding him down the gangway with his bags. ‘Go! Go quickly!’
‘I want to apologise,’ said Alan, fawning. ‘To apologise.’
The doctor was stumbling away down the gangplank, one hand holding the broken spectacles on to his nose, the other making a fanning movement before his face like a publicity-shy celebrity. ‘Go away!’ he was repeating shrilly. ‘Go away! I do not hear.’ By the time he reached the quay he was running, almost reeling, out of sight into the darkness.
Alan clung to the salt-damp stanchion at the top of the gangway, motionless. Then he lifted both fists, as though to beat at something. His hands dropped open and empty to his sides. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said, softly. ‘I’m sorry.’
He seemed to have been sitting in his cabin forever. It was a tiny compartment, closed and self-sufficient as a cell, and stiflingly hot. Over the porthole, which he could not open, hung a diminutive curtain of an incongruous chintz. He sat on the narrow bunk, as the doctor had sat, ready to go, with his valise and his suitcase beside him, and on top of them his raincoat, hat and stick.
He had two callers at his door. The first knock had been Sundar Singh’s, a timid, stuttering rap. Alan had told him to go away, without rising or opening the door. The second knock had been firmer, and he had risen from the bunk with no doubt at all that this was the escort to take him ashore, when he heard Holl’s voice, whispering raucously outside.
‘Go away,’ said Alan, to the locked door, and kept on saying it, tired but stubborn as the doctor, until Holl had gone away, swearing but unadmitted. The world seemed full of backs withdrawing into the night, saying: Go away. All round him, echoing the length and breadth of the ship, men moved restlessly to and fro, scurrying like rats’ feet. At last through the muted turmoil instead of the escort’s summons at his door, there came a grinding clanking clamour, with shouts and knocking thuds. The ship shuddered, and a few moments later he realised that it was moving. He did not understand, and sat, still waiting for something else to happen. By his watch, it was 3a.m. He had had almost nothing to eat for over twenty-four hours. Presently the little chintz curtain began to swing in and out from its rail; the quiver of the ship settled to a steadier throb. They must be at sea. He was under way, under close arrest, to an undivulged destination.
Sometime after this, Holl’s voice sounded again outside his door, louder now and more confident, stating that if Alan did not let him in he would break the door down. Immediately, in earnest of this, the door shook before a massive onslaught. Drearily, Alan rose to open it.
Holl came in. He was excited; his eyes overbright, and very high in colour. ‘We’re clear,’ he said. ‘I knew old Scrapings wouldn’t sail without me.’ He stood there looking at Alan, who had relapsed on to his bunk again. Holl cleared his throat. ‘Without us,’ he amended. ‘What d’you think?’
Alan looked up at him and thought. With careful deliberation, he said: ‘I think you are the most contemptible swine I’ve ever had the bad luck to do with. I think you should be handed over bound hand and foot to that wretched little doctor so that he could flog the skin off you with a dog whip. I think – ’
Holl, his eyes popping, put out a hand, patting him down, soothing, as though Alan were deranged. ‘Now look, sonny.’ He stopped, and waved Alan over on the bunk to make room for him. ‘Move over so’s I can sit down.’ Alan snarled at him.
‘Move!’ said Holl, with explosive force, and, automatically, Alan moved.
‘That’s better,’ said Holl. ‘I’m tired!’
They sat in a row: Holl, Alan, a valise and a suitcase. Holl sighed, turned to Alan, and laid a hand on his knee which jerked away as if stung. ‘For God’s sake!’ cried Holl. ‘Anyone’d think you were on his side. Now look, sonny; let’s be reasonable. We don’t want to get all emotional and het-up, do we? All right – the little man had his contract with the government, and he was only to serve in India. All right – though if I hear that word, con-truct, again I shall scream. But what about his con-truct with getting on for a thousand bodies of flesh and blood in his care? What about that? If you were him, would you walk out on a battalion of men going into action and leave them without a doctor?’
‘To begin with,’ said Alan, ‘you are setting up as judge of another man’s conscience. And by what right? Then this doctor is also an Indian. He has no contract legal or moral with the Army beyond the terms he freely agreed to and which the Army freely agreed to. You’re just the sort of bloody sentimentalist and flag-wagging thug that’s going to wreck the noble dissolution of a fine empire before we’ve even saved it from the Japs to dissolve. This man is a mercenary; he’s committed by no ties, not one damn’ tie in the world, to your or my snivelling, selfish patriotism. You’re a press gang, Holl; I thought we stopped using them two hundred years ago, but here you still are beating up and then morally blackmailing that decent little rabbit. For Christ’s sake, did you not see his face! Anyone’d think your hobby was daily rape.’
Holl looked rather dazed. Groping, he began again: ‘Now, look, sonny…’ and again Alan’s knee avoided his hand. Heatedly, Holl said: ‘But he’s an Indian! And ninety-nine per cent of the battalion are his brown-skinned brothers, and you’re saying, if I follow you, that he owes no duty to them?’ His voice tailed off; he looked wildly bewildered, and then another thought struck him. ‘Alan,’ he said, ‘you can’t say things like that – those are dirty thoughts; for God’s sake, it’s sheer defeatism – ’
At that moment the door opened, and the adjutant appeared. He came in, and shut the door behind him with his foot. He was carrying two plates of curry and chapatti.
‘All the criminals sharing the same cell?’ His jocularity rang like a cracked and tired bell. ‘I thought maybe you were hungry; I discovered suddenly I was ravenous myself. Well, Scrapings has taken a risk on you both; maybe you’ll be ordered back straightaway on the next boat; maybe not. Depends on how much stink our medical friend raises with his friends in India. And on where we turn out to be going to. Scrapings has a sealed envelope that he’s got to open tomorrow and then we shall all know.’
‘No need to worry about that,’ said Holl. ‘Where we’re going they will want any able bodies too much to spare them for the luxury of a court-martial.’
The adjutant was saying his bet was Basra, but Holl went on: ‘I’d like to apologise to you for all this blithering fuss. I feel,’ he said generously, with a wide gesture, ‘that in a way it’s all my fault, though with the best of intentions – ’
‘Skip it,’ said the adjutant. ‘Spilt milk, and so on. What I want to know is just what happened; Scrapings has a very weird version, and I felt he must have got something wrong somewhere.’
Holl told him.
When he had done, the adjutant turned in bewilderment to Alan. ‘What in hell’s name did you tell Scrapings? According to him, you were at the bottom of the whole thing, and you hit the man.’
‘What!’ Holl was indignant. ‘But I told him.’
‘It seems,’ said Alan, wearily, ‘that I hit the man, and that now I am shielding, Holl, behind your generosity, thank you, Holl, who is nobly trying to take the blame. But our clear-eyed C.O. saw through your bluff, Holl, because his clear eyes saw my hand hit the poor wretch. I take it that Scrapings thinks you were trying to stop me bashing the M.O. about. You know what I am.’ He was getting a little hysterical.
‘Oh, Jesus,’ said Holl. ‘I don’t understand; say it all over again slowly. And shut that door; there’s the hell of a draught.’ He wiped his forearm across his forehead, and blinked, and prepared to concentrate on Alan again. But Alan and the adjutant had glanced at the door. The door was shut, and glancing back at Holl, they both recognised at once the fever brilliant in his eyes and burning in cold sweat on his face.
‘Shut it!’ said Holl. ‘And get a move on, Alan.’ He swayed backwards, and righted himself with an effort, looking angrily round.
The adjutant and Alan looked at each other. ‘You’d better run and find the ship’s doctor,’ said the adjutant.
A few minutes later, under the irate and sleepy eye of the ship’s doctor, they were supporting gingerly an almost unconscious Holl along the passages towards the sick bay, where they left him.
‘Christ!’ said the adjutant. ‘What a send-off! Wish us good luck as you wave us goodbye.’ He looked closely at Alan. ‘Don’t worry, Alan, it’ll all come out in the wash. I’ll prise the truth into Scrapings somehow, though I’d keep as clear of him as you can manage for the moment, if I were you. You’d better try and get a couple of hours’ sleep.’
Outside Alan’s door they paused. The responsibility of the administration of the battalion seemed to come down on the adjutant like a sudden weight. He muttered confusedly about seeing to this and seeing to that, swaying on his feet, almost asleep as he talked. Coming to for a moment, he looked in puzzled and distressed accusation at Alan. ‘All the same,’ he said, ‘you might have taken a bit better care of him; he’s a sick man, you know.’
He turned on his heel, and wavered off to his office.
Alan had shut himself in his room before he realised that Sundar Singh was already in there too. In the brief interval that Alan had been out the orderly had managed to get most of his master’s belongings out of their travelling cases, but not to dispose of them anywhere.
Alan groaned, and told the boy to go away; to go to bed.
‘But, sahib…’
Alan repeated his request, but the boy still bumbled about the little room. Alan said the confusion could keep till the morning. But still Sundar Singh did not go; he seized in triumph a pair of Alan’s boots, holding them aloft. Could he clean them?
‘Yes, of course. But go; it is after four o’clock. Sleep.’
The boy hung on at the door, still reluctant.
‘What is it?’
‘Sahib, sahib, that doctor sahib is a badmash; no good.’
In the’ midst of his weariness, Alan was so surprised by this that he sat down on his bunk with a jerk. The orderly’s round face looked at him with serious wonder.
‘No,’ said Alan. ‘You must not say that for it is not true. The doctor has done nothing wrong; he has done his duty.’ Sickly, he realised that the whole ship must know already – but how much did they know, what version did they know? And above all, what did they feel about it? He dared not ask.
‘Ram ram,’ he said. ‘Thank you; now get along and sleep.’
‘Ram ram, sahib.’ The orderly’s departing grin lingered like a flickering buoy-light in the sweating, sleepless nightmare, throbbing in time with the ship’s engines, into which Alan gradually lowered himself in his bunk.
The next morning, all officers were summoned to conference by the C.O. at eight o’clock. Alan, slinking along the ship’s corridors, was the last to arrive. Everyone was there except Holl.
‘Gentlemen,’ said the C.O., ‘I have just opened the orders handed to me by the brigadier yesterday.’ He paused. Alan glowed towards him with a steady hatred.
‘Our destination, gentlemen, is Malaya.’ The assembled officers swayed slightly, but made no sound. ‘We should disembark, in ten days’ to a fortnight’s time, at Singapore. Every effort will be made (I quote) to afford the brigade time to acclimatise, but each unit must be fully prepared to go into action against the enemy upon embarkation if necessary.’
Somebody deflated with an audible phew.
Scrapings tossed the paper on to the table, and looked round the company. ‘Now that is all I know. I need not remind you that is neither what we hoped for nor what we have been trained for, but in war few things turn out as one expects. I have every confidence in you and in the men that I am fortunate enough to command: that you will bear yourselves in accordance with the traditions of this regiment and of the Indian Army. We may be young troops, but if so, the better perhaps our wind and the fresher our courage. Now, I have a few general points to make. Firstly, morale. It is vital on a voyage in cramped quarters like this, and particularly a little later when we shall certainly have to face the threat of air attack, to keep the men busy and cheerful…’
Grudgingly, Alan thought that the old man was putting it across with remarkable dignity. Composedly, with due gravity and decorum, the voice continued. Now, Scrapings was indicating with a pencil a large atlas propped open on a sideboard. ‘There is Malaya.’
The pendulous peninsula, painted red for Britain, drooped from Asia into the scattered islands of the East Indies. Alan thought that it looked like a large blood-stained cosh.
‘According to this morning’s news, the enemy are…’ The outlandish names clanged like tin-pot gongs – Kelantan, Taiping, Grik – and then were absorbed into the familiar jargon of bulletins: ‘…driven off with heavy casualties to the enemy.’ Then, ominously overfamiliar: ‘British forces south of Kedah were successfully disengaged during the night.’
Scrapings cleared his throat, and summed up. ‘The British line seems therefore to be held from east to west some – hum – some fifty to seventy miles from the southernmost part of the Thailand frontier.’ He peered at the map.
‘How far is that from Singapore?’ said a voice.
Scrapings fixed his eyes on the ceiling, and frowned.
The voice rephrased the question. ‘I mean, sir, what is the size of this country?’
Scrapings glanced at his notes. ‘About 450 miles from north to south.’
Alan thought that sounded quite a long way; he had had an uncomfortable notion it was only about 200 miles.
Scrapings was going on. ‘Elsewhere the Japanese appear to have made successful – momentarily successful – landings in North Borneo’ – the pencil swooped over the map – ‘and – in Sarawak.’ The pencil looped about the south of Malaya, and Alan wondered, hollowly, what resistance there was in Borneo, Sarawak, Java, Sumatra, to stop the completion of that arc into the encirclement of Malaya.
Scrapings said that they now knew as much as he did, but that he was open to questions, before proceeding to routine matters.
‘The country; sir – I take it that it’s fairly heavily wooded?’
Scrapings grinned; it looked more like a snarl. ‘I believe you take it correctly. Rubber plantations; palm; swamp; jungle; rivers. I’m afraid our desert training will be somewhat supernumerary; we may, however, have the consolation that doubtless when we have knocked the Japanese out of the jungle, we shall then be sent as jungle experts to the Sahara.’
At this simple joke, the uneasy tension in the crowded room broke. Suddenly united in confidence, the officers nudged each other, and laughed. Smiling, Alan too turned warmly to share the joke with his neighbour. He found that he was standing next to the Sikh transport officer, and smiled on him. The Indian’s face closed; his nostrils dilated slightly, and under the silken moustaches his mouth curled. With a faint pfui of disgust, he stood away from Alan.
Red-faced, Alan stood alone in the joking and now loquacious crowd. Scrapings was moving about amongst them, talking almost lightheartedly. He came up to the Sikh. ‘I want you,’ he said, ‘to take over D Company for the time being. Captain Holl, as you know, is sick, though he will be back in the near future. In the meantime…’
The Sikh stood rigidly to attention; his eyes shone mildly, with gratified self-confidence and authority. All the officers suddenly hushed, and they glanced briefly sideways, not at the Sikh, but at Alan, before resuming their conversation.
After disposing of routine daily orders, Scrapings announced adjournment until after breakfast. The officers cleared from the room so that the stewards might prepare for the meal. Hockey was the last of them out. ‘How anyone could be crass enough,’ he was saying, ‘to let poor old Sam within a mile of a whisky bottle. I mean there he was, I don’t suppose he’d eaten a crumb all day and with a temperature of 104; why even one small peg would bowl anyone over in that state.’
Alan found that he was alone in the room.
With slow deliberation, the little convoy, shepherded by bounding frigates, pushed southwards in the bright blue sea. At frequent, irregular intervals each ship seethed with boat drills and A.R.P. exercises. Unwontedly large and rich meals came and went in the Officers’ Mess. Alan busied himself with his new wireless sets; after abandoning the attempt to initiate his platoon in the theory of wireless communication (for his Urdu could not grapple even with elementary phrases such as ‘wave length’), he devised a drill. Soon his men were sitting about crooning the formulae of communication, assembling the sets, running up aerials, clicking switches, adjusting knobs and watching dials with a reverence all the more profound because the magic boxes remained forever silent. Alan had been forbidden to send any live signals in case they should reveal the convoy’s position to enemy forces.
Christmas Day came, weirdly stifling. The weather had congealed into a hot humidity; moving about, even on deck at night, produced a strong impression that the body was clad in damp woollen combinations. With the sweat lolling in open pores, the officers ate turkey and Christmas pudding, and wondered where they would spend next Christmas, and spoke, meandering, a little feverish, of past Christmases of peace.
That evening Alan went up on deck in the hot clinging dark that smelled of oil and salt. Forward, he found one of the ship’s officers leaning over the rail; as a great favour he was asked into the wireless cabin to hear the news. So he heard that Hong Kong had fallen.
‘Why the hell they ever tried to hold it is past belief,’ said the ship’s officer.
Then they heard, crackling, fading and surging through the thick air, the voice of the King as he gave his Christmas message. ‘Be strong and of good courage,’ said the King. ‘Go forward into this coming year with a good heart.’
The ship’s officer said that he thought the old boy’s stammer was hardly noticeable now, didn’t Alan agree?
Churchill was in Washington.
The ship’s officer, personally, was not at all sure that the risk in ferrying Winnie to and fro across the Atlantic was worth it, just for a lot of gup with the Yanks. Alan had no views on this.
The wireless officer switched off. ‘Well,’ said Alan’s friend, ‘there we all are. There we all are. And a very happy Boxing Day to you all.’ He had a thin, wedge-shaped face like a cut of Cheddar cheese. ‘Still, we might be in Hong Kong. Being raped, I dare say. Got to count your blessings. And I dare say I’m better off, in this stinking old kettle, than you’re likely to be a fortnight from now. I would, however, take it as a personal favour if you would refrain from staging another Dunkirk. I done that job. Let’s have some air.’
They went, for a change, to the stern. It transpired that the sailor had been sunk three times already.
‘Go on,’ said Alan. ‘You’re showing off.’
‘Fact. But a man gets nervous.’ They watched the phosphorescent oily swag and swirl of their wake floating out behind them; on each side, almost invisible, the vague shapes of the convoy slid in silent concord with them as if drawn by wires across the flat sea. The sailor spoke with relish of his sinkings. The North Atlantic one was the worst he said: cold; bitter.‘
After a time, Alan though he would go below.
‘That schemozzle before we left Bombay,’ said the officer. ‘Funny business. Never have guessed you were the battling type; couldn’t really make it all out myself, but I dare say you had your reasons?’
‘Yes.’
‘Oh well, don’t we all? Good night.’
‘Good night.’
Stretched in his bunk, Alan lay flat on his back. The narrow bunk in the narrow room was like an open iron coffin, though wadded in an open iron crypt. He lay with his hands tucked underneath him; they had developed recently, if left to themselves, a habit of spidering all over the place. He thought carefully of his home, but the iron coffin, though wadded, refused transformation into a cradle or even into the narrow iron bed in the attic where he had slept as a boy, with the sheepdog Irma across the door; and, however careful he was, he ended up by finding himself confronted by his parents; there they were listening to his explanation of the truth behind the court-martial; he had, he was saying, been unjustly cashiered, and yes, darling, of course, they said, looking at him with eyes like Irma’s, full of loving condemnatory forgiveness. He turned on his face, and thought, instead, resolutely of Lettice.
He escaped with her; they were in a punt, slithering up the dark odorous river. She would lie with her face to the stars, shadowy, her feet pointing towards him as he stood, the boatman, stooping on the thrust, erect to lance the pole down, and stooping to thrust again.
‘Lettice’ he would say into the magic dark, as he almost walked the waters, ‘Lettice. Who am I? Who are you?’
She would conjure names up to the sky, decorating the stars with labels. Belshazzar; Alcibiades; Anthony; Faust; Lucifer; Rimbaud; Harpo; Errol Flynn.
‘No, no. I’m not an ambitious man. Who are you?’
‘Lettice.’
‘Who am I?’
‘Alan Al-lun.’ The way she spoke his name, the last syllable was perfect and final; it nailed his identity and established it like a butterfly within a showcase for eternity. With her voice alone she could so shape him, that the rider to the definition that later they would have to grope towards, with mouth on mouth, searching hands, body upon body, seemed always incomplete by comparison.
Hopefully now, lustfully almost, he listened for his name as she would say it. He mouthed it into the pillow and the pillow stifled it. He turned on his back and said her name. Lettice. It was ridiculous. Salad; a dish. His hands escaped, and one crept up the ship’s wall at the side of his bunk, finding rivets there like boils; the other hand trailed, groping over the edge of the bunk. He could not even remember her shape. There remained the ache that did not know what it ached for, beyond a large blonde shape; her eyes again refused his memory.
His terror roused him to sit up, groaning. She had not answered his letter. The reasons why she had not answered fought a tired battle against his fear in the hot dark; when they had died down, there remained only the hot dark, and the perpetual throb of the ship’s engines again insistent. He lay back again, void, as sweat ran from his body; he seemed to be evaporating, as a jellyfish evaporates on sun-cooked rock; to leave presently only a shadow, a stain, for the next tide to cover.
Grimly, he rallied to think again. He sat up and switched his light on; when the dazzle had subsided, his eyes rested on the clothes he had taken off: shirt, shorts, stockings, shoes. They lay confused on the floor, yet here and there, moulded or crinkled, they remembered his shape. A small relief stirred in him, and he was distracted by the dreamy thought of the ship about him moving through the ocean, littered with anonymous bodies, yet each body with its husk beside it. He thought of them; the troops on the hot decks, packed, poleaxed in that prostrate Indian sleep; the ship’s crew, the captain, his brother officers, Holl in the sick bay. Then, vividly, he saw Holl as he had seen him in hospital before they sailed: bursting out of his skin, the small head almost the same width as the huge muscular neck.
Alan was out of his bunk, fuddling in a muddled way with his clothes. He hadn’t been to see Holl once while he was in the sick bay. Everyone else had paid a visit. Holl was of course quite all right; the relapse had proved only momentary, and the sole reason that he was still confined within the sick bay was because Scrapings had persuaded the ship’s captain, and the ship’s doctor, that it would be politic for all concerned if Holl were kept in bed for the time being. But Holl would be upset that Alan hadn’t come to see him.
Alan stopped fumbling with his clothes, and slowly took them off again. ‘I’m going mad,’ he said aloud. ‘The bastard,’ he said, peevish, and fell backwards into his bunk and a profound sleep.
In fact, Holl did not appear for another three days. Then, returning exasperated from a long session with his signallers and the silent wireless sets, towards lunch, Alan heard a familiar high roaring along the deck. Thoughtfully he changed direction, and withdrew to his cabin. He fed at noon, and again in the evening, from curry provided by Sundar Singh from the troops’ galley, and managed, in spite of two action station exercises, to avoid Holl. But it could not last very long.
He went to bed early, so that Holl, bursting into his cabin, caught him with his trousers down. Alan became involved in an enraged and complex dance with his pyjama trousers, while Holl watched, swearing that it was good to see him again. At length, from a position of slightly less weakness, his pyjama trousers firmly knotted, Alan found voice, and suggested that Holl might leave.
Holl looked hurt. He picked Alan’s clothes off the stool and dropped them on the floor and sat on the stool. He looked very fit; richly robust, and of quite good colour. He had done something to his hair, which was smoothed thinly and lustrously across the narrow skull under grease.
‘You never came to see me, lad,’ he said, his face sorrowfully perplexed. ‘That wasn’t good. That wasn’t nice.’
‘Go away.’
Holl looked him over scrupulously, still frowning. ‘You’re not looking well. You’re worrying; I was afraid you’d be worrying. I got worrying myself lying in that antiseptic bin thinking of you worrying; you ought to have come and seen me. You’re not used to these things, like I am. They just slip off; water off a duck’s back.’
‘What the hell have you done to your hair?’ The question was wrung reluctantly, in spite of himself, from Alan. ‘Oh, skip it. Just go.’
Holl blushed, and ran his hand over his head, avoiding actual contact. ‘I got dandruff,’ he said, shameful. ‘One of the matelots passed me some brilliantine, to help it.’ He was embarrassed as if he had been found guilty of some major uncleanness. He shook his head as if to dislodge it; he shook it again. Then he frowned earnestly on Alan.
‘I’ve been thinking about you, as I said. They all seem to think it was you that hit that rat. Now, I don’t like that. I hit him, and if you hadn’t got in the bloody way, I’d have knocked him so cold he’d still be out. And I’d do it again. But that’s not the point.’ He lowered forward, breathing heavily and giving off a thick cloud of concern. ‘Have they been getting at you in the Mess? By God, if they’ve been – been bullying you, I’ll lay them out one by one. I’m not standing for it.’
‘Thank you, nurse.’
‘What d’you say?’
‘Nurse. Nanny. Perambulator in starched cuffs. Perambulate off!’
Holl brushed this aside with a large meat-coloured hand, and settled his haunches more squarely on the stool. ‘Have they been getting at you; that’s all I want to know.’
‘No. For God’s sake, no! They’ve all been very gracious.’ After the first day, indeed, so they had, if with a somewhat self-conscious expansiveness, making a rather larger place for him in the conversation than was necessary. Every now and then their faces would close in the high blank incomprehension of an established society into whose midst an uninvited stranger had strayed with unerring clodhopping faux pas and clad in outrageous clothes. But they had been very correct; he on the other hand probably tried to keep himself to himself too much.
‘Of course,’ he said, more to himself than to Holl, ‘Attar Singh won’t speak to me.’
Holl laughed. ‘The poor lad had to hand my company back to me today. He wouldn’t look at me. He’s a grand lad. There’s a fighter! If that medical baby had had a tenth of old Attar’s guts, he’d be with us yet.’
Holl now relaxed, sticking one leg out in front of him, his hands on his hips. ‘Well then, that’s all right. I had a session with Scrapings today, and told him he’d got the wrong angle on things. He tried to shout me down, of course, but I sorted him out all right. He’s all right. And I don’t want you to worry, Alan, about this court-martial business: that’s all my eye and Aunt Fanny. In a few days when we get off this boat, no one’s going to have time to worry about a court-martial. They’ve got other business. Our business.’
He hitched the stool confidentially closer to the bunk. ‘Now. These Japs. You know where they’ve got to? Not much short of 200 miles they’ve got inside three weeks. That’s not bad. Looks to me as if we’ve got the most ivory-headed set of brass at the top in Singapore we’ve had yet, which is saying something, but even granted that, these little yellow Japanese men certainly are moving.’ He paused; he shook his head with the dislodging movement; he reached forward, and tapped Alan’s knees with a firm forefinger. ‘We’ll stop that. By God, I won’t have utt!’ he pronounced with massive conviction, and took over the conduct of the Malayan campaign into his own hands. He dealt sorrowfully with irrevocably past strategic decisions; he dealt with the present strategic situation; he dealt with tactical aspects of jungle warfare. With some reluctance, he conceded the possibility of the Japanese overrunning the whole country by sheer force of numbers, only to withdraw himself in lone triumph, at the head of a compact, selfsufficient guerrilla force, into the jungle. It could go on forever, he said. Singapore itself would never fall, and thence the striking forces in the jungle could be supplied by air.
Alan thought he had got far enough. ‘Where’s Scrapings?’
‘Heh?’
‘Where’s Scrapings? You’ve taken over the battalion; not to mention the division, or the Army. You Tamburlaine.’
‘Oh, Scrapings’ll be all right. And if only those boys can hold where they are a couple of months, I’ll have knocked this battalion into such a collection of murderous Tarzans as the world has never seen.’ His face clouded. ‘But the sooner we’re off this boat the better. They’re getting soft, the troops. Even softer than they were. As they are now, God knows what they’d do to the enemy, but by God, they frighten me.’
‘Wellington.’
‘What?’
‘That’s what Wellington said about his troops.’
‘Did he now? Did he? Well, I’m damned.’ Holl looked very pleased. ‘Just goes to show. So Wellington said that, the old buzzard! And just look what he did to old Boney with those troops!’
Delighted, Holl departed, to ‘get his head down.’ ‘Cheer up, laddie. We’ll be off this boat in a couple of days and all feel better.’ He brooded for a moment in the doorway. ‘It’s getting good and personal,’ he said.
Alan sat for a little after Holl had gone, cracking his fingers. They cracked well and cheerfully. He got into bed, and went to sleep.