BRIAN ALDISS
A Rude Awakening

Table of Contents

Cover

Title Page

Epigraph

Introduction

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

About the Author

The Horatio Stubbs Saga

Copyright

About the Publisher

My suspicion is that in Heaven the Blessed are of the opinion that the advantages of that locale have been overrated by theologians who were never actually there. Perhaps even in Hell the damned are not always satisfied.

Jorge Luis Borges, THE DUEL

‘The idea of prostitution is a meeting point of so many elements – lechery, bitterness, the futility of human relationships, physical frenzy and the clink of gold – that a glance into its depths makes you dizzy and teaches you so much! It makes you so sad, and fills you with such dreams of love!’

‘But one can live a full life,’ suggested Claudin, ‘without frequenting prostitutes.’

‘No, you can’t,’ thundered Flaubert. ‘A man has missed something if he has never woken up in an anonymous bed beside a face he’ll never see again, and if he has never left a brothel at dawn feeling like jumping off a bridge into the river out of sheer physical disgust with life.’

Robert Baldick, DINNER AT MAGNY’S

‘Remember you were of the Fourteenth Army and never say die.’

General Sir William Slim, disbanding the Forgotten Army

Introduction

A Rude Awakening is the final volume of the Stubbs trilogy. The title I derived from a remark by Gustave Flaubert, who said:

‘A man has missed something if he has never woken up in an anonymous bed beside a face he’ll never see again, and if he has never left a brothel at dawn feeling like jumping off a bridge into the river out of sheer physical disgust with life.’

The Second World War is over; the problems of post-war remain. Nevertheless, the tone here is not as dark as it was in A Soldier Erect, as befits a novel which encompasses the terrible madness of world war.

The action now moves to Medan, the capital city of the island of Sumatra, where the armed forces were engaged with repatriating to Tokyo the disorganised remainder of the Japanese forces.

The overall situation was somewhat problematic. On the British side, now that the war was won, India had to be given its independence as promised. This put all operations east of India into question. At the time that the novel opens, British-Indian forces were deployed a) to ship the surviving Japanese back to their rightful homes and b) to release all Dutch and Chinese prisoners from camps and reinstate the Dutch in the lands they had formerly possessed. But politics had changed. Soekarno, first President of Indonesia, had declared Indonesia an independent republic – this included not only Java and the string of islands to the east of Java, but also the mighty island of Sumatra, straddling the equator.

The British were scarcely eager to reinstate the Dutch into their former colony whilst being so soon to quit their own vast colony, India. Whilst angry native mobs, assisted by fire-power, hardly strengthened the little eagerness that there was.

So the Anglo-Indian divisions stood by. They had, in fact, no choice but to stand by, because there were no aircraft or ships at that stage to guarantee a peaceful withdrawal.

These are the clouds beneath which Stubbs and his fellows make the best of things. In regular army fashion, they grumble but hold their fire.

Holding their semen is a different matter. Within a couple of chapters we witness Stubbs and his Chinese lady, Margey, being amorous and rather playful. Problems naturally predominate, but there is much humour – for instance when Stubbs, riding in an officer’s car, manages to drop his cigar to the floor of the car and set everything there alight. ‘Funny, sexy, and brutal,’ my American publisher described the novel – quite well I think.

Ultimately, Stubbs has to leave his Chinese love. He also leaves Sumatra. It is a time for mild regret. As perhaps we regret leaving Horatio, whose terrifying initiation into adult society is now complete.

Brian Aldiss,

Oxford 2012

CHAPTER ONE

The wild life in Medan was something neither night nor DDT could stop.

Beyond our steamy windows, the darkness held all the breathability of a sailor’s armpit. A winged and nameless shitbag came hurtling in from the murk, full of offence and fury. Its manner was of one intent on shattering – preferably for ever – the world speed record for Tropical Hirsute Insect Nuisance Flying.

It burst across the room at drunken velocity, maintaining an altitude of approximately two inches above the heads of the assembled drinkers. The drinkers were tanking themselves up for the arrival of a lorry-load of unleashed Dutch girls, and failed to notice this freak of evolution. Still accelerating, the shitbag gained height and ploughed its way through a cloud of assorted mosquitoes, flies, moths, and fluttering uglies which had appropriated our central light as a zone for combined aerial combat and propagation of species.

I saw it because I was leaning against the far wall of the mess, listening with Jock Ferguson to Johnny Mercer on War.

‘The generals have done their best, but it’s been a bloody untidy war all along,’ he was saying. ‘Do you wonder we’re stuck here in such a right old cock-up? You can’t say the war is over, even now.’

‘Och, you’re exaggerating, man,’ said Jock Ferguson, straightening up, squaring his shoulders, and pouring a half-pint of whisky down his throat. ‘You’ll be saying next it didn’t begin properly, either.’

‘When did it begin, then?’

‘September, 1939, of course, when Britain went to war against Germany over Poland,’ Jock and I said together, with minor variations.

Johnny shook his head. He had been a teacher in civvy street, and liked to lecture. ‘Wrong. I’m talking about when the World War began – the one we’re still involved with, not the little local European war starring Adolf Hitler. The World War began in 1931, when Japan invaded China. The poor old Chinks have been at it ever since. That was when Japanese aggression started.’

It was at this point that I spotted the winged shitbag, cutting a swathe through the lesser phyla of its kind.

‘Ah, but the real war started in ’39,’ said Jock.

‘If so, then it ended in 1940,’ said Johnny. ‘After the fall of France in the summer of 1940, all of Europe was at peace, unified by Hitler. Nothing else was going on, except the British buggering about on the fringes. The Yanks were reading their comic books. The Russians were frigging around doing nothing in particular. It was only later that the yellow-bellies got things stirred up again.’

Johnny gave his high-pitched laugh and scratched his arse.

Some of us had heard his weird version of history before.

‘Whatever you say. VE and VJ days finished the war, all the separate bits of it,’ I said.

‘Balls. There are wars going on everywhere still, in China, everywhere. What about Spain? What about here? What about Indo-China?’

‘Yes, but they aren’t real wars. They’re not called wars.’

‘Horry’s right, and you’re wrong as usual, Mercer,’ Ferguson said. ‘They’re just local conflicts.’

Mercer was not discomposed. ‘Speaking for myself, I prefer a war like a good book – it’s got to have a beginning, a middle and an end.’ He laughed and tottered off in search of a drink.

‘The feller’s no’ heard of armistices,’ Jock Ferguson said, and also stomped off – leaving me exposed to the drunken mercies of Sgt Wally Scubber, shell-shocked survivor of the Arakan and already as pissed as he was every night of his life. He clutched my arm, cunningly detaining me and supporting himself at the same time. The winged shitbag executed a few crafty Immelmann turns overhead without in any way losing flying speed.

‘Merdeka, Wally, how’re you doing? Time for beddy-byes?’

‘I was shaying to Charlie Meadows, in Blighty you got proper househesh to live in, with proper shanny – with lavatories that flush properly and all that. Not like bloody Medan, Horry – see what I’m getting at. Curtains. Carpiss on the floor …’

I took a deep drag on my cigarette. As Wally rambled on, I tried to listen to other conversations. My old mate Charlie Meadows was saying, ‘… since we are an army of occupation, we must conduct ourselves accordingly. There are certain laws which armies of occupation have to follow, but we are so bloody under strength that –’

The mess gramophone started up. Ron Dyer was playing the well-worn hit-record, ‘Terang Boelan’, and the glutinous words drowned out what Charlie had to say. I took a deep swig from my beer glass and sank into an armchair. Wally perched himself on the arm without interrupting the flow of his talk. He had even invented a way of drinking without swallowing which allowed him to go on spouting while the liquor trickled down.

‘Everyone agrees that Blighty’s the cunt – hup, sorry, the country with the highest culture. Good roadsh. Before the war, I was a member of the Automobile Asshociation. Well, that’sh special to England, the Automobile Asshociation. It’s all part of the shit …’

‘What shit are you on about?’

‘Hup. The shituation as I shee it.’

The shitbag, infuriated by the smoke and heat of the mess, had worked itself up to maximum speed. Making a sudden banking turn, it dived and struck the wall just above my head with a resounding thhhwerr-ujjjkk.

Fast on the wing, slow on reaction time, the shitbag hung there for a moment, its head pressed thoughtfully against the wall, its multitudinous members still vaguely propriocepting. Patches of distemper and odd wing-cases flaked off at point of impact. Then the creaure dropped. It spun tangentially away from the wall and nose-dived into my beer.

Wally noticed nothing. ‘Only the British, Horry, my dear old mate, only the British are truly shiver-shiverlised.’

‘I must go in a minute, Wally. I’ve got a date.’

‘You wouldn’t call the French or the Belgiums shiverlised, would you?’

I stared down at the shitbag. It made vague motions in my direction, either swimming or beckoning.

‘America. They’re shiverlised, Wally. China – there’s a very ancient culture for you.’

Giggling, Wally jogged my arm. My glass slopped. The beer revived the winged shitbag. It caught my eye and made a spunky attempt to heave itself out. I experienced a moment of fear, in case it washed up on my flies and burrowed in before I could check its progress. It looked like the kind of creature that devoured sexual organs every morning for breakfast.

‘Ancient, yes, yes, ancient all right. Too fucking ancient by half. That’s China. No Automobile Asshociation there. I know the Chinks, Horry. RA – the Rickshaw Asshociation, that’s them.’ He laughed, leaking cigarette smoke, and his wrinkles opened and shut like the pleats of an old accordion.

‘Christ, Wally, the fucking AA isn’t the be-all and end-all of shiverlisation. The Chinese were cultured when we were running round naked with our arses painted blue. The AA wasn’t invented then, either.’

He stirred restlessly on the arm of the chair, dropping ash in my lap. ‘Leave the AA out of this. We’re talking about the Chinks, now, and what a dirty lot they are. You’ve only got to look.’

‘Arseholes, chum, they’re a sight cleaner than we are – and more shiverlised …’

‘You only shay that because you’ve got this Chinese pusher down the bazaar. The Chinks shiverlised! They’re a tropical race. Horry, a tropical race, and you can’t name me one tropical race that’s shiverlised. Look at Africa, India and Burma …’

‘Don’t talk to me about Burma, mate. I was there in the thick of it with fucking 2 Div.’

Lighting up another cigarette, I glanced at my wrist. Two watches were strapped there. One was a beauty in a black gunmetal case; it had been made in Holland. Unfortunately, it did not work very well. The other was an expensive Indian watch with a red sweep second hand, which looked good although it kept poor time. Taking a mean reading, I decided it must be eight-fifteen or eight-thirty, or perhaps a little later. I could soon leave politely and go and see Margey.

The party was nominally in my honour, since I was flying home in only four days’ time; but there would be another party in the sergeants’ mess on the following night, just as there had been one the night before.

The winged shitbag was a terrifying mass of claws and antennae and legs, not to mention four stubby wings, with which it was whipping my lifeless Indian beer into foam. Its body comprised a chunk of chitin and armour-casing, from which a mass of pubic hair burst in all directions. It was a perfect scale model of a tank squashed in a bramble bush. Fixing two dull black eyes on me, it redoubled its efforts to home in on my flies or throat.

‘The Chinks are really beaten, schmashed, just like the Dutch … I mean, the Dutch are practically a tropical race too, they’ve lived here for centuries …’

The ‘Terang Boelan’ record finished. I was able to hear Charlie Meadows again, still talking about army conduct. A good man, Charlie, and an old Burma hand. But Jackie Tertis kept butting in.

‘That’s okay as far as it goes, Charlie, but take it from me that no native population has ever yet been kept down by leniency. You must show ’em a firm hand. That’s all they respect. By God, if I had my way …’

‘Thank heavens, you aren’t going to get your way, Jackie,’ Charlie said mildly. Jackie Tertis was a slightly built man; unlike the rest of us, he was always dapper, his uniform always smartly pressed. Tertis was different, leading his dark sexless life under another star. The sun which baked most of us a solid brown had turned Tertis a hot foxy hue. He was always stoked to furnace temperature.

Wally was the temperature of cold Irish gravy. Blowing cigarette smoke over me, he continued his lecture.

‘Horry, you’ve been away from home too long, talking about getting demobbed here! There isn’t a man in this mesh tonight that wouldn’t give his head to go home next Monday in your place. I’m telling you this for your own good, Horry … These little Chink hoors with all their dirty shexual habits …’

Just for a moment, Wally Scubber interested me more than the winged shitbag. The latter had dived to the murky depths of the Indian beer to see if glass-drilling operations would get it anywhere. ‘What dirty sexual habits do you happen to fucking well have in mind, Wally?’

His mottled face was lopsided with reproof, as if he suspected that we were talking at cross-purposes.

‘There I think you know better than me, Horry, isn’t that right? I don’t wish to be spesh – speshicif – give details, but Chink girls aren’t brought up like English girls, are they? No churches or schools or – general discipline. No knickers. Bloody slant-eyed hoors – it’ll spoil you, Horry, onnis, going with your Chink bit down in the bazaar. When you meet up with some nice English girl …’

I belched and heaved myself out of the chair.

‘Finish up my beer, Wally, there’s a good lad.’

I handed him my glass, which vibrated with the enraged activities of the shitbag. I wove my way across the room. ‘You cunt, they do wear fucking knickers,’ I announced to the assembled company.

Johnny Mercer’s laughing face loomed into mine. Johnny was shorter than I, a red-faced, rat-faced Cockney who made an indifferent RASC sergeant.

‘I was watching you catch that bit of wild life in your beer, mucker,’ he said. ‘It reminded me of what the old Venereal Bede said about human existence, that it was like some horrible hairy flying abomination belting in through one window of a great hall straight into some poor cunt’s wog beer.’

He started howling with his homemade brand of laughter, and I joined in. Smiting him on the shoulder, I pushed through the crowd towards the mess door. It stood open to let the heat and smoke out. I blundered through, emerging almost at a trot into the steaming night.

You could tell blindfold that Medan was just one degree off the equator. The air suppurated like primaeval broth. A million monstrous little things unknown in England expressed their beings in sound so urgently that it was hard to know what was air, what noise. I stood there, swaying slightly, and flipped my fag-end away into the night. Its parabola was cut short in mid-air. Something had gobbled it up before it fell.

The headlights of a battered fifteen-hundredweight truck penetrated the darkness and moved down the road from the direction of the guardhouse.

They turned uncertainly in at the mess gates, revealing themselves as two eyes the colour of mule urine. They backed away to one corner of the enclosure. There was a smashing sound, sustained and quite leisurely, as the fifteen-hundredweight struck our old wooden summerhouse and ignored it. RSM Dickie Payne was returning, drunk as always.

I stood there listening with remote pleasure as Payne drove forward and then, presumably more by accident than in a spirit of revenge, back again, continuing the demolition of the summerhouse. Johnny Mercer staggered out of the mess to see what was going on.

‘Merdeka! Our beloved RSM still battering his way through life … I need a pee …’

He turned to a nearby bush. The sound of his urine streaming on the grass reminded me of similar needs. As I moved to one side of the building, lobbing my tool out, the RSM’S vehicle swerved forward again. The glow of his headlights swept the ground ahead.

Two frogs lay clasped together, one on top of the other, in a shallow puddle – it had rained heavily at sunset. The frogs were motionless, staring ahead into a cold Nirvana of amphibian copulation. I directed a scalding jet of piss on them with such force that they were flipped over, showing their death-yellow bellies. I laughed as I pissed, churning them up, watching them struggle.

The damned truck was nearly on me. I was so taken up with the frogs that it almost ran me over.

‘Payne, you pissy-arsed fuck-pig!’ I yelled, jumping backwards as the ghari reared forward.

Payne had the truck door open, holding it with one hand while he steered with the other. He was half falling out of the cab as he backed the truck towards one side of the mess. He shouted something incoherent as he shot by, sweaty face gleaming.

And then the amazing happened. At the time, standing there clutching a dripping prick, I thought only how appropriate it was that the rear end of the truck should begin to sink slowly into the ground. The RSM’S response was to rev his engine. The ground collapsed. The truck settled down on its haunches, cab rearing into the air. Mud splattered from its still-spinning front wheels.

Cursing, Dickie Payne fell clear, landing on hands and knees in my pissy puddle among the frogs. He scuttled away into the bushes while the engine died. As the truck sank backwards still further, the yellow beam of the headlights swung upwards till it illuminated the top branches of a nearby tree. With avian imprecations, a terrible feathered thing took flight and clattered into the darkness.

Johnny was at my side, laughing as if his ribs were trapped in a suit of armour. ‘The bloody cesspit’s caved in!’ he kept saying. ‘The bloody cesspit’s caved in! Isn’t that just like life?’

This statement, no less than the truth, somehow settled the question of whether or not I should hang around the mess. Politeness had kept me there; after all, they were standing me a farewell party. But there had been a similar thrash the night before, and another was planned for the day after, all three being designed as a wet run for a grand party on Saturday night – which, it was foreseen, would be traumatic enough to require a succession of tailing-off parties, continuing long after I had flown to Singapore to catch the troopship.

For the moment, enough was enough. I checked to see that my revolver was in my holster and my old man in my trousers, and slipped away into the night. Margey, I told myself, meant more to me than all the sergeants in the British Army laid end to bloody end.

CHAPTER TWO

At the far end of the road from the sergeants’ mess stood an MP’S guardpost. It marked the official entrance into the perimeter of our lines. There, the redcaps underwent their primitive life-cycles, lowering barriers across the road after dark, arresting drunks, and generally making themselves obstreperous.

Inside the perimeter was a heterogeneous collection of soldiery: a small detachment of the Royal Mendips, of which I formed part; several squads of 26th Indian Division, comprising both British and Indian troops; some sinister Dutchmen belonging to PEA Force; and a few other odd bods, including some Japanese troops, who were too useful for nasty jobs to be sent home to Nippon, and a solitary Chinese major who spent his days searching for unmarked Chinese graves. This miscellaneous rabble formed part of the occupying force; we were billeted in varying degrees of comfort in what had been a Dutch suburb, before war overcame the Netherlands East Indies four years previously, early in 1942.

The perimeter defences, like our duties, were ill-defined. Despite many alarms and shoot-ups, we could not get it through our thick heads that the Indonesians meant us harm. After all, we had come to liberate them from the rule of the Japs. The general fucking-about meant that a curfew was imposed between midnight and seven in the morning. During that period, those of the occupying force not on duty were supposed to remain snug within their own lines. The redcaps on the gate knew me better than that.

A searchlight burned above their post, drawing a tangle of ghastly winged life into its net. As I entered the lighted zone, a motor-bike zoomed up behind me. I jumped to one side, fearing another drunken driver. Jackie Tertis pulled his heavy old BSA to a halt a few inches from my Number Elevens, pushed up his goggles and grinned evilly. He left the engine roaring. ‘Want a lift into town?’

‘What about the piss-up?’

‘Like you, I skipped it. Better things to do with my time. Climb on – haven’t got all bloody night.’

He flashed a pass at the redcap who challenged us. Despite my reservations concerning Tertis, I climbed on the pillion and latched my hands under his belt. He was a dangerous bugger in every way, not least as a driver.

Back in our unsophisticated days in India, Jackie Tertis had been a pale little squaddie with wanking problems, afraid to enter a brothel or say boo to a gobble-wallah. Burma had changed all that; after Kohima, Jackie had become tough and nasty, closed to his mates. Promotion had come his way and he remustered as Intelligence. Now he worked on Dutch detachment, prising confessions out of Indonesian prisoners for Prevention of Enemy Activity Force. In truth, I was partly afraid of him.

Beyond the MP post was a sinister dark stretch of road, with empty houses standing on either side. Tertis accelerated through that bit.

‘You going to have a poke?’ he shouted over his shoulder.

‘Yes. You?’

The noise of the engine drowned part of his answer. I caught only the last part. ‘… bloody British Army … no discipline any longer.’

Ahead was a level crossing, made melancholy by a solitary light burning above the gates in the darkness; the railway lines glinted like oiled rifle barrels. Two Dutch officers had been ambushed and shot dead at this spot only the week before. We bounced across the track. To one side lurked the dark shape of the railway station. Beyond it was a small market. After that, street lighting began, each light surrounded by a sphere of illuminated insects; after that, you were in the centre of Medan. The great thing was to be alert, and drop like a stone if you heard anything. (Some weeks later, I made a fool of myself in Winchester High Street, by falling flat on my face when a car backfired.)

We sped over cobbles. There were two or three pedicabs moving about; otherwise, anyone going anywhere went on foot, walking purposefully. Medan was dangerous after dark.

The centre was rather picturesque. Succeeding occupations by Japanese and British troops had not altered the arrangement of modest Dutch buildings, among them the Hotel De Boer, Reserved for Officers, which stood round four sides of the large open green. The green was fringed with European-type trees, while in its centre stood a fine Batak house, all timber, perched on stilts, its steep roofs curling like sails up to the sky.

Beyond the green Kesawan, the main street began. The Chinese quarter lay to the right. There lived my lovely Margey.

Tertis pulled in to the curb when we reached the square.

I climbed off. I did not ask him where he was going.

‘Watch it,’ he said.

‘You too.’

He roared off down the Kesawan.

Despite all my mates said, it was fairly safe in the Chinese quarter. The Chinese were neutral in the struggle between the Indonesians, Dutch and British. Also, Holland’s tough colonial troops, the Ambonese, were billeted here, and ready to go into action at any moment. In these narrow side streets was more humanity than in the main thoroughfares. Many Ambonese strolled about the roadway, sat in cafés, relaxed at street-corners, in windows, or on pavements. They played guitars and sang – my god, there was ‘Terang Boelan’ again! – and they never forgot to tote their Yankee carbines. With all those Ambonese about, the forces of Soekarno were not likely to try anything in Chinatown.

On the corner of Bootha Street, near Margey’s house, a café did thriving business, its worn tables and chairs spilling out on to the pavement. Lanterns burned, supplementing the erratic electricity supply. The Chinese who ran the café had set it up as soon as the Japanese surrendered, taking over an old shop whose owners had fled or been killed. From the depths of the shop came the reedy whine-and-throb of Chinese music. Many a time when I took Margey there to eat, mine was the only white face to be seen. As I passed, one of the Chinese waiters smiled a greeting. Horatio Stubbs was known in Sumatra.

I felt good. The heat never bothered me; I was born to roast. I had on my jungle greens, puttees, boots, web belt with service revolver, and battered bush hat which I had worn all the way through India, Assam, and Burma, and which I had refused to change for new-issue berets. At the top of my sleeve was the green flash of the Royal Mendips, with my three stripes beneath it. I wore my four medal ribbons – Long Service, Victory, Burma Star, and Pacific (the latter illegal) – in a bar over my left breast pocket. I was neatly turned out. I had shaved and showered three hours earlier, and applied talc to my prickly heat. I clocked in at thirteen stone one, was twenty-three years of age, circumcised, brown as an Indian, sweating gently, and eminently ready for a good fuck.

The metal tips on my boots clipped on the broken paving of the arcade. If any trouble broke out, I was immediately ready to strike or to shoot. I felt like a real good soldier, and a spot of bother would not have come amiss.

At the next side street, I paused, looking round before proceeding. It was a useful position for an ambush. Numerous yards opened up, from the entrances of which it would have been easy to snipe at an enemy and escape laughing. All was clear this evening but the area remained ill-lit. A sort of service lane led behind Bootha Street, allowing just enough width for lorries; but in these downfallen days, lorries had disappeared. At the far end of the lane, a dim discreet light shone from a doorway. I knocked and looked in.

A flimsy curtain masked the entrance. Behind it, six men sat round a table, smoking and playing cards in shorts and vests. The room had few basic features: a cobbled floor, whitewashed walls, a flight of wooden steps up to a loft against one wall. It had served as a store in pre-invasion times. Now there was nothing left to store and it had been commandeered for human habitation. Table and chairs, an ancient sofa, and silk banners on the walls effected the transformation. An old Chinese lady in blue work-overalls sat on the sofa, stitching, watching over a sleeping baby. She looked up and smiled when she saw me. This was Auntie of the round brown face. I was always glad to see her, though she never said a word.

The men at the table were also Chinese, varying in age from a slip of a youth to an old man with a straggly white beard. They were sharing a bottle of beer between them. They had an air of permanence, but in emergencies people tend to spend a lot of time sitting at tables.

Margey’s brother-in-law called to me; he was a podgy yellow man, Hwan Fat Sian.

‘Harrow, Missa Stuss, how you dis eebnin’? You rike drink one bee’ wit us?’

‘Hello, Fat. Apa khabar? I can’t stop, I want to see Margey. Is she upstairs?’

He made gestures with his hand, as if bouncing a large ball. ‘Yeh, yeh, Margey us stair, she wait you, Missa Stuss. She tink you not come.’

‘Okay.’

I trotted up the stairs to the floor above. Here the empty space had been divided into compartments by sheets of material hung on wires. There were four compartments, each just big enough to house a bed. A further flight of wooden steps, little better than a ladder, led via a hole in the ceiling to the attic. I called Margey. She answered, her face appearing radiant in the gap above, and I went up to her.

We hugged each other on the landing. I lifted her off her feet and kissed her.

From the canteen I had brought her a little present, consisting of a tin of sardines, a tin of gooseberries, a fountain pen, some dates, a bar of chocolate, a bottle of burgundy, and a packet of custard powder. Margey accepted these exotic delicacies with small screams of delight and patted my cheeks. ‘You too kind your Margey! Aei-ya, how I love Bird’s Custard Powder!’

The other day, I came across a photograph I took in Sumatra all those years ago, back in 1946. It shows Margey buying an ice cream from a wooden street stall. Other people loiter about, grinning self-consciously at the camera. There are ruined buildings in the background. Only Margey is elegant. There she stands in a European-style dress, smiling at me. Although I remember her as plump, she looks undernourished. Her face is broad, her eyes large. Her head is slightly on one side, as if mutely appealing to be forgiven some minor offence – or maybe she was just trying to look like Rita Hayworth, her favourite film star. It is hard to realise that Margey is probably still alive, growing older like the rest of us; the present tense lies with that faded snap by the street stall.

She was laughing as we carried the parcel into her little room. She had curled her dark hair. It was naturally straight; now the ends curved upwards like the gables of the Batak house. Her teeth were white and perfect, so that when she smiled, revealing them, corpses stood up and beautiful things happened about her cheeks and the contours of her chin. She put her arms round my neck and nuzzled into my shoulder.

‘Horry, is after nine o’clock and you so late. I think you don’t come. I must eat some supper. You drink too much beer, very bad for you.’

‘Sorry, there was a piss-up in the sergeants’ mess, everyone getting boozed.’ I told her about Dickie Payne driving into the cesspit, and we laughed.

‘You sergeants all drunken filthy men! All soldiers are so horrible. Oh, I hate soldiers! All except you, Horry. You good man. When you don’t come, I afraid you go with that Miss Katie Chae. She very low woman.’ Katie Chae was her pet hate.

I laughed as I handed out cigarettes. ‘I never even saw Katie Chae. I came here straight from the mess.’

No breeze stirred. She kept her window closed at night to shut the insects out and it must have been a hundred degrees under the low roof. She saw I was sweating and said, ‘I go fetch you nice cool beer.’

‘I’ve had enough bloody beer. Make me a coffee and let’s go on the bed.’

She clouted me playfully on the hip. ‘Every day bed, bed – you terrible randy man, Horry. What you think poor Margey’s cunt? Lie down here and have a smoke while I bring you tea. No coffee. Coffee all gone. Why you no bring me more coffee?’

Margey left the lamp with me while she went to prepare the drink.

The attic had been intended for human habitation of a mean order. At the far end of the landing was a cramped area which served as Margey’s kitchen and bathroom. The rest of the space under the roof was occupied by two small rooms separated by wood panelling. The ceiling was plastered; some of the plaster had fallen away to reveal laths beneath.

One of the rooms was Margey’s own. It had a curtained window, the view from which always delighted me with its spectacle of rooftop decay, and a deep sill on which stood a plant and one or two precious possessions. I set the oil lamp on the sill and undressed. Processed beer oozed from my skin as I did so; even the mosquitoes had fainted in the heat.

Margey’s wooden bed was covered with a faded blue quilt, on which I sat to remove my boots. An upturned orange crate standing behind the bed served as a table; on it stood an old alarm clock and a carving of a Balinese dancer which I had given her. Under the bed was a precious metal-trimmed rattan trunk, in which Margey stored her clothes.

On the wall hung a little mirror framed in mahogany with a shelf below. Lipstick stood on the shelf, perfume in a knobbly bottle, and an extravagant manicure set which I had bought Margey whilst on leave in Singapore. A snap of me in swimming trunks was tucked into the edge of the mirror.

The only other items in the room were a towelled bathrobe which hung behind the door and a black and white photograph of Rita Hayworth, wearing an open raincoat and swinging her hips in an inviting way. Margey worshipped Rita Hayworth.

Rolling up my ankle puttees, which I had refused to exchange for gaiters, I tucked them in my boots and set them in one corner. It was good to be in that shabby cubicle, heat or no heat. Yet I, like Margey, had my anxieties. Before stretching out on the bed, I padded over to Margey’s bathrobe and felt in its pockets, dreading to find a french letter or similar incriminating evidence of other men. I found a small tortoiseshell comb, I took it out and turned it over several times. It was something of hers I had not seen before. Who had given it to her?

Slipping it back, I relaxed on the bed, thinking of her, imagining her working by what light came over the top of the wooden partition, boiling water on her tiny charcoal fire. A man’s voice yelled at her in clattering Chinese. She went to the gap and answered. A brief exchange took place before she returned to her stove.

When she entered the room carrying two small mugs of tea, I asked who had called.

‘Is only my brother-in-law, Fat Sian.’ She stood before me, looking down as I sat on the bed, patiently accepting my foreignness.

‘What did he want?’

‘He is only being friendly. Making an enquiry.’

‘Does Fat come up here when you are alone, Margey?’

‘I tell you many time, Horry, but you not believe.’ She stamped her foot. ‘He not come in here, except maybe bring some food. He not fuck me like you think. I not like to fuck Fat Sian – I am good girl with proper education, but you not believe.’

‘But he has fucked you, hasn’t he?’

‘Aei-ya, you damn drunk soldier, how I hate when you make such rude question! Drink your tea.’

In a week, less, all this would be forever beyond my ken. I could never work it all out. The thought made me despair. The muddle of Margey’s psychology and her life-style was at once pain and delight to me.

I knew something of her early history. She loved relating it to me, often with tears running down her face. Margey and her sister, Chin Lim, together with the rest of the family, had lived in a village near to the town of Tsingtao, in Shantung Province, China. That musical name, Tsingtao, ran like a thread through much of Margey’s conversation; it was the place she had loved to visit, the place she longed to get back to, somehow, some time – if she could not get to London, the other city of her dreams, where women were all like Rita Hayworth and everyone lived in gigantic houses complete with cooks, dogs, and horses.

Little did I understand. I was too young. Way deep down inside, I was shallow. I regarded Margey’s vision of Hollywood-London as one more broken dream in a land packed with them. On the other hand, I saw no reason why she could not pack a bag and go back to Tsingtao if she really wanted to.

Margey was not simply a dreamer. She was a practical girl who learned to survive – yes, now I understand. She read the local and Singapore newspapers when she could get hold of them. So she knew that boats and planes went to London regularly. Nothing went to Tsingtao any more. The Japanese had sacked Shantung and now it was in the hands of the revolutionary Communist armies of General Mao Tse Tung. Margey conducted her dreams like her household – practically, and in the midst of chaos.

The Japanese shelled and invaded Tsingtao. Many of Margey’s family were killed, including both parents, her brother, and a rich uncle who had financed the despatch of Margey south, to be educated at Shanghai University. Chin Lim, the elder sister, had just got married to Hwan Fat Sian. Fat had a car. When the Nips were on the march, Fat cunningly exchanged his car for a cart and an ox, which does not need petrol. He loaded both sisters and a few household goods on the cart, and headed for Nanking.

Terrible mishaps befell them. They had to survive both snow blizzards and drought, as well as bands of robbers. After many months of travel, often on foot, they caught a refugee boat sailing down the coast for Singapore. The boat was loaded to the water line. Progress was slow. They arrived in Singapore only a few hours before the British ignominiously surrendered and the Nips took over. The plague of civil disruption pursued them.

Everyone was in a panic, knowing exactly how the Japanese treated the Chinese. Some Chinese gangsters shot dead the captain of the refugee ship, slung him overboard, turned the vessel around, and steamed for Java. There was fighting aboard, with more people flung to the sharks. In the middle of a storm in the Berhala Straits, they ran out of fuel. Some days later, the ship drifted on to a mudbank off the coast of Sumatra. Everyone was starving by then.

‘Oh, I never go on any ship again!’ cried Margey.

Her stories were exciting and confusing. To ask for an explanation merely complicated the issue. Her English was like a half-built house. The kitchen was complete and you were safe in the bedroom; but most of the other offices existed only as foundations.

She could bear to tell me only one episode at a time. So the stories arrived randomly, prompted by chance recollections, recreating in themselves the disorder Margey had lived through. Her confusion became mine. I liked the chaos of her life, thought of it for hours, with admiration, even with envy. My simple experiences were nothing beside hers. She had had more adventures than I’d had NAAFI suppers.

The survivors of the shipwreck waded ashore somewhere near a place called Muaratungkai. By Margey’s account, it was a trecherous strip of coast, and the party she was with became separated from a group which included Fat and his wife. They were arrested by Dutch officials and imprisoned in the town of Palembang, feeling lucky not to be shot as part of an expected Nip invasion. Margey’s party became lost in swampland. Several of them fell ill of fever, some died. The survivors eventually reached a kampong on the banks of the River Hari, where they were able to persuade two Eurasians with a small motor launch to take them to the local equivalent of civilisation. Margey fell sick on the morning of embarkation and so was left behind. She was still stuck in the native village when the Japs, as long expected, invaded the NEI. The Fates had made a mighty journey after Margey, not less than the distance from Morocco to Lapland – which is nothing to a ravening young Fate.

Palembang is an oil town. The Dutch garrison put up some resistance and was annihilated. The Japanese went on a triumphal spree of looting, shooting, and raping. Chin Lim was raped and bayoneted but Fat escaped both fates. Weeks later, he and Margey met up again almost by accident; they reached Medan dressed as coolies, travelling mainly by bullock cart. In Medan, they met other people from Shantung who helped them, and there they weathered out the rest of the war and the time that followed.

The world’s great storm had blown and was still blowing round the globe, a strong Force 6 breeze. Just for a while, there was a lull which becalmed Margey and me, both far from home, in this little stuffy room on the equator.

I had undressed and climbed under the blue cover. She put her tea cup on the window sill before beginning to slip unceremoniously from her clothes. The shadows of the bars of her lamp curved across her naked back as she pulled her blouse off. Away came her European-style brassiere with its red polka-dots (French, all the way from Saigon). Her tender breasts with their little sharp tips swung free as she stooped to remove her peasant-style trousers and then the dainty pair of silk knickers. In the treacly light, that beautiful pale body conquered me. How far beyond all computation that it should be this particular body, shipped all the way from Tsingtao – as unattainable as a figure in a painting – which was snuggling in beside me!

We lay still for the moment, staring innocently up at the swagger of Rita Hayworth.

‘Margey, you are so bloody gorgeous!’ I put an arm round her and made her feel the hardness of my prick.

She giggled.

‘You evil bad man, Horry! All soldiers so terrible randy men, I don’t know. What you think I do with this big terrible thing you have? Where I can put it?’

I showed her.

She screamed with pretended laughter. ‘Aei-ya, I am too small girl for that monster thing! Is like a deformity. First I drink my tea, then maybe we try.’

As we sipped our tea, I egged her on with sexy talk in her ear. ‘You just have to concentrate very hard and then it will slip in easily, you’ll see. You may be only a little girl but you have a lovely big slippery hole, haven’t you, all juicy and soft inside, like a tropical fruit?’

‘I am no tropical girl. I am from almost a cold climate just like London. Sometimes in Tsingtao snow falls in winter and makes it beautiful when I am a baby. So I have only small cold hole.’

‘Well, I can warm it up for you. If there’s any snow up there, I guarantee to melt it.’

She pretended to become indignant. ‘Oh, you speak so filthy! What you do in my bed here, you foreign devil rapist-soldier? Get out or I call my auntie! I do not want that dirty big thing up my body or I catch a filthy disease and die, all my flesh fall off my bones.’

What are you talking about? I gave it a wash before I came out, scrubbed it with a scrubbing brush. It’s as clean as could be. I soaped it very carefully under the shower and told it that it would be seeing you this evening – at which news it pricked up its ears immediately.’

She smothered a laugh in her hand. ‘You are mad, you know, really? A grown man to talk with his penis like that. Twenty-three years old! I bet I know what you did, I bet! You gave yourself a good hand-wanking in the shower, isn’t that right?’ By way of illustration, she ran her fingers down my stem as if playing a flute.

‘Is that what Chinese men do?’

‘All the time, all Chinese man, and they don’t care who sees, hand-wanking every day, even inside the fields and paddy-fields. Is disgusting, yes?’

‘I don’t believe a word of it. Only Europeans and Americans wank themselves off. So I’m told. You are a liar, Margey! What about Chinese girls? Do they get up to the same dirty tricks, tickling their sly little clitorises? I believe you told me but I’ve forgotten the details.’

She set down her cup and waved a finger at me. ‘You are typical absolute foreign devil, always thinking every bad thing is invented in London. Gunpowder and writing and hand-wanking are all invented in China, every bit – in Shantung Province, very likely. But China girls they no do hand-wanking.’ She laughed, flashing her beautiful teeth and eyes. ‘They have other naughty habit. I tell you what they do …’

She put her arms round my neck and snuggled down with me until our heads were on the pillow, and her tits on my chest, when she began whispering hotly in my ear – ending by jabbing her tongue into it. The essence of her rude little story, which she liked to tell me, often with amazing embellishments, was that girls in Shantung Province, from an early age, resorted to gherkins, graduating to successively larger and more knobbly ones as they grew up. Grabbing my fingers, pretending they were gherkins, she demonstrated to me exactly how the manoeuvre was carried out, giggling and squirming as she did so.

That was one of Margey’s favourite ploys and, before it became too much for me and I flung myself upon her, she was off in the series of delighted writhes and squeaks which marked her orgasm. To plunge into that sumptuous hole while it was in the throes was my pleasure. Margey squealed and locked her legs round the top of my thighs, under my buttocks. Our bodies became one plunging machine which worked without our volition, powered by sweat and magic. Joy, joy, the whole spirit was bursting upwards like a waterspout!

We lay in each other’s arms, breathing easily and sweating together.

Despite all the hardships she had undergone, Margey was quite plump. Still round her meaty little waist were the marks of the elastic of her knickers.

As I lay with my head on her belly, I caught the aroma of that little bivalve between her thighs. It reminded me of fresh-caught lobster, of the tang of the primordial ocean in which first life was born. With its salts and chemicals, here was where sentient things gave their earliest twitch, long before land took shape.

I could see her face in the half-dark. The bridge of her nose was flat, but the wings of her nostrils, the chiselling of her mouth, the curve of her eyes as they moulded into her cheeks – these things moved me and filled my thoughts with their perfection. Never had I known an English girl I thought half as lovely.

The potence of her attraction lay in her not being English: in her being, not only Margey, but Cathay, far Cathay.

Gazing up at the mottled ceiling, Margey said in a level voice, ‘Nex’ Monday morning, you go Singapore – leave Medan for ever, and catch the big steamer for London. Your poor dear Margey will be broken-hearted. How you think she live in Medan without you?’

I slapped a mosquito which had zoomed in on my arm.

‘My soldiering days are done. I have to go home … I don’t want to leave Medan or you.’

‘Then why you go?’ she asked sulkily. It was a question she had asked before, a question I had endeavoured to answer before.

This time I was spared, at least for the moment. A footfall sounded, the ladder to the attic creaked. I became aware of the world outside; rain was falling, breaking through the oppressive heat. The climber emerged on the landing beyond our room, and a cautious female voice called in Cantonese.

I could distinguish Margey’s Chinese name, Tung Su Chi.

She called a brief answer, propping herself up on an elbow.

The other woman entered the adjoining cubicle. A faint light showed on the ceiling above the bed where we lay, framed in giant shadows thrown by the top of the partition. The woman sighed heavily as she sank down on her bed. Daisy had come home.

Whispers, faint soggy noises, the smack of a wet breast, told us that she had her baby with her and was nursing it.

Daisy was no relation of Margey’s. She was simply one of the people who found refuge under this particular roof until affairs in Sumatra took a turn for the better. She spoke no English, so there was never any contact between us. All day she left her baby in the care of old Auntie downstairs while she worked on a nearby farm, returning only in the evening. Daisy had no husband and the baby was half Japanese. She and Margey were – in Margey’s words – ‘friendly but no too friendly.’

‘She’s late – it’s nearly curfew,’ I whispered to Margey. ‘How about a drink?’

Margey would not be deflected. Wrapping a sheet round her body, she got up and closed the window against the rain. She had propped it open before joining me on the bed. Then she turned and looked at me, her face in shadow, her eyes dark, the smooth line of her shoulder gleaming in the lamplight.

‘Take me to London with you, Horry. You see, I will be good girl, not tease you or sleep with other man, I promise. London good prace. I dress very beautiful in latest fashion, become great fashion sensation like Rita Hayworth.’

I sat up impatiently.

‘Margey, darling, we’ve been through all this. You know I can’t take you with me.’

‘Is impossible you jus’ vanish next Monday. How can bear that, Horry?’

‘I don’t know how we’ll bear it, Margey. I can’t stand the thought of it even now. It’s just one of those shitty things that will have to happen. My time’s up.’

Rain was falling more heavily. It drummed on the tiles overhead. Water started to splash heavily on the landing beyond our door. Giving me a hard look to keep me going for the moment, Margey padded out barefoot and set a bowl under the drip. Immediately, a steady ping-ping-ping began.

Marching back into the room, Margey took up her position by the lamp, folded her arms, and said, ‘You very deceive your Margey – you got other girl-friend in London, you sweaty swine. Is that girl Sonia you tell me about. The one with the freckles.’

‘I told you, I’ve had one month in England during the last five years. It’s a fucking foreign country as far as I’m concerned. All the girls I once knew are probably married and toothless old hags by now.’

‘Sonia got terrible disease by now.’ She spoke with vindictive pleasure.

‘Yeah, well … maybe. Babies at least – already learning to shave.’

Instead of laughing, she renewed her pleas. A moth came over the top of the partition like a flung duster and settled on her bare shoulder. Margey ignored it.

‘You take me with you London, darling. You and me very good each other, all time have fun and make love. How you think you can live in foreign country without me?’

‘Don’t cry, Margey. Honestly, I think about the problem all the time. I don’t know what to do. Try to understand. My time is up. Christ … All my mates think I’m mad because I don’t want to go back to the Blight. My time is up, I’m time-expired. I’ve served my seven years and I’ve got to return to Civvy Street. That’s orders. I couldn’t live on in Medan even if I wanted to.’

She put her hands up to her cheeks, gazing down at her toes. The moth crawled on to her neck and she brushed it away. Rain fell solidly outside as if it would not be content until it broke down every rotten roof in Medan. Our small lamp-lit drama was wrapped about in liquid sound.

Margey suddenly climbed back on the bed, wrapped the sheet about us both, and tucked my shrivelled prick into the palm of her hand.

She spoke confidentially, as if she did not wish Daisy to hear.

‘One man tell me you can get army discharge in Singapore. Singapore belong Britain. Prenty British in Singapore. You get job in big firm like Cable & Wireless for good pay. I come along too, look after you, like first-class China wife.’

Speaking, her face filled with the vision of us together in a place at peace, and she smiled, showing those delicious teeth. At the same time, she gave my prick a playful squeeze.

I lay back, staring at the lamp on the sill with the packet of Bird’s Custard Powder beside it. If only Margey would shut up …

‘Who told you I could get demobbed in Singapore, Johnny Mercer?’ It was a possibility I had never mentioned to her.

Instead of answering the question, she bent and kissed my idling organ.

‘I show you many pleasure in Singapore. Is great good city, maybe next best in the world after Tsingtao and Peking and London and Paris. We can have much fun. Horry, you know, all time go many parties, live in big new flats now they build in Bukit Timah Road. I not tease you or look at any other man. Do you hear? No feel any penis except this lovely one all the time.’

It at least began to show enthusiasm for the proposed regime.

‘I’ve got to get back to my fucking family, Margey. Orders are orders. I can’t explain. It’s how things are. I don’t run the bloody world … Listen to that fucking rain …’

‘Fuck the fucking rain!’ Margey looked angrily at me, pulling her ugly Temple Watchdog face. She knew I dreaded her temper. ‘Why you mention about your family? You no care them – you bad drunk son! You never write any letter your mother or papa. We go Singapore, just you and I, then I learn speak much more good English and love you every way, like a slave, okay? That really is best for you, I know.’ She struck her bosom angrily. ‘My god, Singapore is lucky place of the Far East.’

That was a matter of opinion, though it was hardly the moment to argue with her. As far as the British were concerned, the whole disaster of Singapore stood out as a prime example of their failure to understand or care about any race East of India. During the nineteen-thirties, it had been fortified up to the eyeballs so as to be impregnable from the sea; in the nineteen-forties, the Japanese walked in through the back door and the Singapore garrison feebly surrendered. They surrendered to an enemy they had always regarded with contempt, a race of little men hardly worth fighting.

I had personal feelings about Singapore. When 2 Div finally pulled out of Burma, the Mendips had been given five weeks’ rest in Calcutta, and then our brigade had moved to Madras to undergo amphibious training with 26 Div. We were limbering up for the infamous Operation Zipper; our task was to take the impregnable Singapore from the Japanese by seaborne invasion! Bloody madness. Fortunately, Harry Truman got his finger out and dropped the A-bomb in the nick of time. We were spared our seaborne massacre and shipped over to Sumatra to repatriate Japs instead.

The war had been mad enough, with its interlocking maze of arbitrary decisions, but it was merely a consequence of the lunatic peace which had preceded it. What vain hopes Singapore represented in that direction! Its fortifications cost the British taxpayer twenty million pounds sterling, a fortune indeed in the twenties; and in the very week when those fortifications were started and the first stone laid, the financial wizards in London lent the Japs twenty-five million pounds sterling to build a navy with which to destroy Singapore and the rest of Britain’s power in the East. What a masterpiece of imperial idiocy! No wonder we lost the bloody empire!

Well, I write this a long time later, and Singapore, that elegant rat-race, has now gone its own way, free of British control. I have the advantage of hindsight. But it’s easy enough to see how such lunacies repeat themselves. The Soviet powers build up their vast armaments steadily year by year, while the West subsidises them to do so; Poland alone has been given (‘lent’ is the technical term) millions of deutschmarks with which to buy agricultural machinery. When the Warsaw Pact countries attack us, we shall all be astonished and indignant, forgetting how for years we have been sharpening the razors with which they cut our throats. Every decade, the distinction between war and peace becomes less, their yin-yang relationship more obvious.

But all I said to Margey at the time, as she clutched my prick and the moth singed itself on her lamp, was, ‘Fuck Singapore!’

She began to sob – another liquid sound far more noticeable than the others surrounding us.

‘Oh, pack it in, Margey. I love you but my fucking time is up. It’ll break my heart to leave you but that’s the way it is. Kismet.’ Checking my watches, I worked out that it must be eleven o’clock, give or take ten minutes. The rain was dying out.

Margey turned away from me and curled up in a foetal position, still sniffing.

‘You say you love your Margey, so you say. You say you like be in the East, so you say. Then why you go England? Now you must decide! For safety sake, since Medan is so dangerous, we go Singapore short time, okay, you and I? Later time, when Generalissimo Chiang Kai Shek throw out the rebels from China and law-and-order come back, then I take you Shantung, show you Tsingtao. We can go on the railway train! I have a pre-war timetable in my trunk. Is easy journey!’ She sat up, smiling again, stretching out her arms as if to embrace all China. ‘Aei-ya, Horry, just you think! You can see the Yellow Sea and those occasional beaches like I told you, with all the trees with flowers on when spring comes down from the mountains. I bet you like that, Horry, I really bet!’

‘Yeah, I would.’

Yeah, I would like it. Sweat rash apart, yes, I loved the East: I loved the extraordinary people, the muddle, the failure, the hope, the climate, the ghastliness, the perennial courage, the lack of pretension. Everything was much more real and exciting than anything I had known in England. But …

And Margey. Temper apart, yes, I loved Margey. She was so vulnerable, yet so bouncy, oppressed yet serene. She embodied in her frail plump self the whole teeming confused Chinese nation, that extraordinary half of the globe, that secret and alluring half, which existed almost like a female counterpart to the gun-toting, overcoat-clad West. Passionately, I longed to know her and, through her, her people better. I longed to dive deeper and not be jerked suddenly out of context like a carp out of a pool. But …

‘Oh, you so insc’utable! You say nothing!’ She kicked her savage little feet under the cover. ‘You say you love me, you no love me – jus’ because I China girl, I got yellow skin, you fool ignorant soldier!’

‘That’s all balls, Margey. Look, you are far paler than me.’ To make her look, I stripped the sheet back. There lay our bodies, soon to be divided for ever unless I got a fucking move on, lying together on the same bed, knees touching. I struck out angrily at a mosquito feasting on my leg, and left a smear of blood. Years of sun in India, Burma, and Sumatra had toasted my torso to a dark mahogany. From the waist up, I would have passed for a Dravidian on his annual holiday in Bermuda. By contrast, Margey’s soft figure was as tallowy as the sheet beneath us. I slid my hand between her legs, clutching the lips of her twot. ‘China girl skin like ivory. Horry love his China girl.’

With spirit, she said, ‘You no go with Katie Chae or I die. That girl got bad terrible disease.’

‘Horry love this China girl.’

‘Stink-pig, no make fun how I speak! If you try speak Shantung dialect, I make fun you, you foreign devil, you take your filthy disease hand out my cunt fast, or I scream for Daisy.’

Laughing, I overcame her resistance and kissed her. You were full of hope in those days, dear Margey, as I was. Have you lost it all by now, and the years ground you down?

At the time, I told myself that I still had a chance to make up my mind and to plan accordingly. Matters could be arranged. I would have to get military permission to marry Margey; otherwise, there was no way in which she could leave Sumatra. ‘Do you, Horatio Stubbs, take this China girl, Tung Su Chi, to be your lawful wedded wife?’ Then we could get to Singapore at least. Not that I wanted to stay in Singapore … There was India, but India was passing from British hands. And in England – I flinched to think of the cretinous reception Margey might receive there; the attitude of my mates in the mess gave me warning enough on that score.

In order to arrange anything, I had to get in touch with Captain Maurice Boyer, my company officer. I had left it a bit late, because Boyer was not in Medan. He was in Padang, on the other side of the island, and I would have to speak to him over the air.

There was another difficulty, which I had often tried to explain to Margey, who steadfastly refused to believe a word of all the unlikely formalities which constituted army regulations. I was in Medan on detachment from the Mendips. My battalion was stationed down in Padang, four hundred or so miles away, the other two battalions of 8 Brigade having been shifted to Batavia in Java, where the British and the Dutch were having more trouble than in Sumatra. Major Inskipp had recently been repatriated. Now it was the eccentric Boyer I had to speak to, and I knew how difficult it was to hold personal discussions over a wireless link.

One other possibility existed. I could talk to Captain Jhamboo Singh, the dandified officer under whose supervision I came officially whilst in Medan. He was perfectly capable of taking decisions, being Commanding Officer of the British personnel of 26 Div and such odd bods as me. But I failed to visualise how I could talk to an Indian about my chances of marrying a Chinese girl.

Too violent to last, the rainstorm was fading away. The dripping into the landing basin became more slowly spaced and deeper in tone. Daisy could be heard singing softly to her baby on the other side of the partition.

‘There’s a good film showing at the Deli Cinema tomorrow evening. Shall we go and see it?’

‘I don’t want see any films. Why you change the subject? Why you are ashamed to be see’ with me in London if you don’t mind in Medan? You think I not pretty enough for Mayfair or something, you bastard? Anyhow, what is this rotten film you mention?’

‘Melvyn Douglas and Joan Crawford in They All Kissed the Bride. Comedy.’

‘Aei-ya, I love Joan Crawford. Really great, though not so hot as Rita. Will you take me along, in spite my bad temper, honest?’

‘What do I get if I do?’

‘You so kind man, Horry. Though you do not love me, you so sweet man.’ She rubbed her face against mine so that one wing of that night-black hair swept my cheek, while her naughty little hand teased my prick again. As I began to respond, she rolled over so that she was half on top of me, opening her legs and gently chafing her fanny against my thigh.

Her titties swung into my grasp like two mangoes, her nipples became imprisoned between my thumb and first finger. In the heat, we were juicy together. She had that beautiful clear scent, which was in part an artificial aid but mainly emanated from her body. As we started to stir, the covering slid from us on to the floor. Shadows lay across our flesh. Part-seen, Margey was wholly lovely.

She had my prick in a curious grip, her thumb pointing up its stem. Up came her right leg and – pwop! – she’d slipped cock and thumb – yet it was the tiniest little delicate petalled hole you ever saw – up that succulent passage and was immediately working on my knob, while smiling impudently into my face, as if determined to sharpen the blunt end to a fine point. Sliding over on the bed, I pulled her right on top of me, grunting at her in encouragement.

‘Aei-ya, you muscle-brute!’ She bounced away so positively that I was afraid, as I counter-thrust from below, that I would lose her. Her legs were spread wide now, she clutched at my torso. Working my hands down between her little tight buttocks, I nailed her in place with one finger up her bumhole. As ever, that induced tremendous voltage on both sides. She always came when I did that. ‘Illegal, illegal!’ she cried. We went over the top.

We were having a smoke. The downpour ceased. Margey got up and opened her little window. Draughts of cool air blew in, tickling our flesh. Outside, water dripped from innumerable broken gutters. From Daisy in the next compartment came only silence; she and her baby were asleep. Checking with my watches, I found the Amsterdam one had stopped; I wound it vigorously. The Indian one indicated a time somewhere near eleven-twenty, but the hour hand looked a bit loose. It was time I thought about getting back to the billet.

A shot sounded only a couple of streets away. It was answered almost immediately by rifle fire. The first weapon replied, then a sten opened up, firing bursts. I stubbed my fag out and jumped to the window, pushing the lamp and custard powder away so that I could lean out.

‘Horry, you get shot, come in!’ Margey called.

In the alley, all was quiet. The action was taking place in the street beyond.

Running feet could be heard. A dog was barking. The sten opened up again for one brief burst, then a vehicle engine started – a Jeep by the sound of it. Whatever vehicle it was, it belted up Bootha Street from the direction of the Kesawan, and I caught sight of the wash of its lights as it shot past the entry to the side street in which we were ensconced. Then silence. A minute later, I could hear its engine distantly, still going like the clappers. No more shots.

Night airs moved against my cheek. Wild dogs yelped dispersedly from the direction of the Deli River. Incredible to think that next Monday night – only next Monday night – I would be away from here for ever, waiting in Nee Soon stinking transit camp for the boat to take me home. It was like a sentence of death; all this would exist only as something shrivelling slowly in memory, flowers in an empty vase.

Margey smacked my haunches.

‘Why you must stick your head out there, you foolish soldier? Why they shoot so close here? Never before so close, I think. Aei-ya, never any peace, nowhere! After the Nips are beaten, now come these terrible Indonesians under Dr Soekarno, to make new troubles. Will they shoot again, Horry?’

‘That’ll be it for tonight.’ I drew the curtains and put the lamp back. ‘Probably just some trigger-happy MPS, or some nut trying something … I’d better get on back.’

She clung to me with fierce strength.

‘Damn you, why you have no proper feeling? What do men think, blast them? Listen to me, Horry, I no speak more of coming to live London with you. Not London, not Singapore, not Tsingtao, not any place on this round globe. But I much hurt in my heart, okay. You know I am educated girl with Shanghai degree. I understand more than you how us two live different places – me here, you there – only – no, I no can find words, my Horry, tell you all things … Fuck it, forget what I say … Just stay here with me in this humble room tonight, all night. Just sleep and love, no more jig-jig, just stay in Margey’s arms, my English love.’

I looked down at her, half in anger.

‘You know I could lose my tapes if I was found staying out all night with no pass.’

She waved her arms above her head, and then had to clutch at the sheet.

‘What’s that answer? Oh, you time-expired man, you not care what army do – how often I hear you say that? Yet for Margey not one thing you do, not one single thing! You think I utter fool because I no can speak English so proper!’

‘Sorry, Margey, I’ll stay the night if you want. You never asked me before, that’s all.’

I clung to her, feeling all her strength and energy. Her arms went round my neck. ‘I get you fruit,’ she whispered.

‘You are a terrible girl, Margey. I love you more than anything.’

As I sat down on the bed, she looked dubiously at me, smoothing down her silky black hair. Now she saw that she was to have her immediate wish, she was calm. Her lips came together, her forehead wrinkled in a thoughtful frown.

‘Now stay here, Horry, you devil. Not look out window. I go get you fruit and bread and beer. Then we smoke cigarette and sleep all night together.’

Still frowning, she slipped into her knickers and the towelling robe.

From her finger, a cautionary wag before she disappeared. I heard her carry the bowl of rainwater from outside our door and fling it out of a window.

As soon as she was gone, anxiety possessed me. I pulled the curtains over the window and began to dress with immense haste.

It was not that I distrusted Margey. But I suddenly felt myself alone in the heart of a hostile city. Even in the peaceful Chinese quarter, army training warned me to remain alert for danger. Of all the races churning about in Medan, the Chinese had least reason to hate the British, but they had their survival to see to, and I was one man on his own.

Silence from the other side of the partition. I stood for a moment, then buckled on my belt and revolver. I took the gun out of its holster, walked out to the landing, started to descend the ladder, peering through the shrouded dimness as I went.

As for Margey’s despair … How could she exist without resorting to prostitution, penniless and unprotected as she was? Fat was little use to her, except as a pimp. She must be a whore, however desperately she tried to hide the truth from me; why else her perpetual obsession with disease? Besides, Johnny Mercer had been slipping her a length before I arrived in Medan. If Johnny, many others, white, brown, yellow. Some of them would have a personal interest in this house, and would know when I, Margey’s current purchaser, was in occupation. The bitch could get me shot.

Dear Ghost of Margey, that was how I calculated then. I shied from the thought of your whoredom, I understood little. I was a cold young man from Europe, brought up with a traditional middle-class suspicion of sexuality. I thought I had renounced all that crap, but it lay under my surface like permafrost, even when the spring of your body was on mine.

On the floor below, people were already in bed, horizontal behind their dividing curtains. Their presence could be felt. The air was thick with a sweet Chinese smell, a mixture of cooking, sweat, perfumed soap, and revolting Jap cigarettes. Taking courage from my revolver, I continued on down to the ground floor.

It was very dark, one naked bulb burning in the living area, a small oil lamp dim in the kitchen area. Night had changed the almost changeless scene. The card-players had gone. A battered bamboo screen had been drawn round the sofa; behind the screen, Auntie slept restlessly, dreaming of faraway lands.

Two men sat at the table. One was Fat Sian himself, still in greasy string vest and shorts, smoking with his cigarette almost vertical in his mouth. The other was a Chinese I had noticed about the place before. They had been talking quietly together over a bottle of Red Fox; now they lapsed into silence and watched me.

I went over to them, ostentatiously holding the revolver and enjoying my role.

‘Man shoot,’ Fat said. ‘Bang, bang, bang.’ He raised his plump right hand and fired it three times in order to get his meaning across. In addition, he smiled and nodded.

‘That’s right,’ I agreed. ‘Merdeka, bang, bang, bang …’ Merdeka was the Malayan cry for freedom, the slogan of the Indonesian campaign.

I gave Fat’s companion a hard look. He returned it. He was a slender man, neatly dressed with a white shirt, the sleeves of which were rolled down against mosquito bites. He wore gold-rimmed spectacles. His hair was brushed to the back of his head.

Margey came out from the rear, carrying a plate of apples and mangusteen and a glass of beer. She looked tense, smiling at me without speaking.

‘I’m checking to see that the place is properly secure,’ I said. ‘Ground floor windows all shut.’ Walking across to the door into the lane, I found that it had no lock and the bolt was broken. There was only a simple catch. Fat said something, laughing, and Margey translated. ‘Fat Sian sleep in his bed so no man ever break in here. He pull bed in front this door. China people all very scare Malayan murder-thief.’

‘The back?’ I crossed to the kitchen area. A door with cracked glass panels led into a cluttered little yard surrounded by other yards and premises. I could make out puddles on the stones. My expert eye told me that in case of trouble in the front one could escape out the back. It also noted a platoon of cockroaches reconnoitring round Margey’s sink. I tried the lock on the door. Although it was secure enough, an armchair had been pushed against the door, another indication of Fat’s commendable concern with security.

‘Who is this man with your brother-in-law?’ I asked Margey, pointing the gun at the man with the gold-rimmed spectacles.

At this point, Margey showed extreme embarrassment, and put the refreshments down on a cupboard to recover herself. I stared at her in surprise, never having seen her behave like this before. I was immediately suspicious.

‘Come on then, sod it, who is he?’

‘He is only journalist …’

At this juncture, the man in spectacles spoke up for himself. He said, ‘You have no need to shout or shoot, sir, I am only a journalist, as Tung Su Chi says.’

Acting heavy, I walked slowly over and looked at him. He countered by rising from the table as I approached and regarding me with a half-smile.

‘You speak English. What’s your name? Do you live here?’

‘I live in Medan. Not particularly through choice.’

I moved a pace nearer. ‘Do you live in this particular fucking building?’

‘I live nearby, sir.’

‘Is he a relation of yours?’ I asked Fat.

Fat had been devoting his attention to smoking and blinking. He continued to blink as he said, ‘No, sir, no rela’. On’y fren’. He Tiger Balm, run China newspaper.’

The other man produced a grubby visiting card. ‘You see, sir, I am known by my journalist’s name of Tiger Balm. My name is Chae Lieng Sing, and I am acting editor of New South China Times, published from Boulan Way, where I also live.’

Glancing hopefully at my two watches, I said, ‘It’s nearly curfew.’

Tiger Balm nodded. ‘I shall be on my way soon. Meanwhile, why don’t you sit down with us? Su Chi, please bring over your friend’s beer.’

There was something mocking in the way he spoke. I mistrusted his flawless English, and the point he made by addressing Margey by her Chinese name. She came forward with the beer and the fruit. Fat immediately seized on an apple and began to munch before his sister-in-law could fade into the background. I looked for a signal from her but she gave none.

Lifting his glass, Tiger Balm said, ‘It is a pleasure to talk with you. Shooting sometimes makes for friendliness. May I offer a Singapore cigarette?’

Perhaps it was time to make amends. I sat down opposite the two Chinese and pulled out the field-dressing tin which I used for a cigarette case. ‘Have an English fag.’

All three of us lit up. Margey stood watching in the background, saying nothing.

‘Let me ask you why the British authorities do not stop all the shooting,’ said Tiger Balm. ‘Surely they could do so if they wished.’

‘It’s only a few extremists. They live in the kampongs and come into town to cause trouble. Things are far worse in Java, as I expect you know.’

He shook the match until it went out, in an idly contemptuous gesture.

‘Of course I know it. Nevertheless, what happens in Java and what happens here is all part of one process, the endeavour of the Soekarno Freedom party to rid NEI of colonial rule. It is not just a matter of a few extremists, as you represent.’

‘Bang, bang, bang, “stremis”,’ echoed Fat. We ignored the man, and he gradually disappeared behind a wreath of cigarette smoke.

Swigging down the beer, I said heavily, ‘As you probably realise, the Japs here started handing out their weapons to the natives as soon as they were defeated, to stir up trouble for their victors. The British mission when we arrived here last October was simply to pack the Japs off to Japan and let the Dutch resume their rule. What you might call restoring the status quo, eh? But nobody wants the Dutch back, so we have to hang around and keep the peace as best we can.’

As I peeled a mangusteen, Tiger Balm pressed his argument.

‘Excuse me if I say so, but you do not keep the peace so very well, sir. In Sourabaya, your troops fight pitched battles with the extremists. You bomb towns, kill innocent people. You also use the defeated Nipponese to help. Why are you allowed to ally yourself with a defeated and disgraced enemy in that way? It brings unpopularity.’

‘The real wars are over, in case you’ve forgotten. We had Hitler to fight as well, you know. Now we want to pack up and go home. We’re short of men, owing to the demob programme, so we – well, the trouble is that the local population encourages the extremists. You have to inflict peace on them.’ I laughed.

Silence reigned, inside and out.

He smoked his cigarette concentratedly and made a comment in Chinese to Fat. To me he said, ‘You see, sir, what you have to say about the situation is not at all exact. You must face one fact, that the old world of the nineteen-thirties is totally shattered. None of us can go back to those times. Demons are loose.’

He paused as if considering what to say, tapping impatiently with long fingers on the table. ‘Myself, I am a wanderer on the earth’s face, but let me give the example of the family who employs me, who owns the New South China Times. They remain here in Sumatra under Dutch rule since five generations. They come from Swatow, a fine port you should visit if ever you would. They are Overseas Chinese, not mere refugees like Fat Sian and I. But who can say what will happen to them before the end of 1946? How can they go back to China, where civil war rages? Sumatra is their place, they understand everything about it …

‘We sit here, you and I, and talk in this poor building. It once housed a spare – what do you say? – an auxiliary printing press of the firm’s. The press was stolen, the mechanic who guarded it is killed. Many unlawful things happen …’

‘Look, the curfew –’

He sighed. ‘I see you do not care to learn. Please give me another cigarette. I mean no harm, I even admire the British in a way. But I wish you understand my meaning. You hear the shooting, you enjoy certain pleasures with Su Chi. You think you are in old Medan.

‘Let me tell you, sir, that you are not. You are in a new place, and the hairs on your head should be standing upright in alarm.’ He laughed with sudden ferocity. ‘You are in a snake’s den. You are in a town of the new Indonesian Republic! You appear not to understand that. Do you know that Dr Soekarno declared the Netherlands East Indies dead and gone in 1945? We now remain in a militant new republic, with its own flag, under which certainly no colonialists will be allowed. They will kill off all white foreigners, ten to one.’

It irritated me to be lectured at. Swigging the beer, I said, dismissively, ‘Well, it’s their bloody country, after all.’

He laughed, and again made a rapid remark in Chinese to Fat, who blinked expertly. ‘My godfather, is that the British point of view, sir, the famous British sense of justice? Murder is okay on home ground, is that what you say? If so, why don’t you clear off, every one of you? Or if you do not clear off, why don’t you send more troops, Indians if necessary, and crush this whole damned Soekarno Merdeka movement once for all? Do one thing or the other, for god’s sake!’

‘Look here, it’s a difficult –’

‘Restore real peace, get business picking up again, introduce a proper legal currency, open up trade with outside world. Then if local discontent dies, support for Dr Soekarno dies.’

‘It’s a difficult political situation for the British. You know the name of Jinnah?’

Tiger Balm leaned back and clasped his hands behind his head, smiling.

‘You refer to Mr Ali Jinnah, the leader of the Muslim League Party of the Indian Central Assembly? Naturally, I am tolerably familiar with the name.’

‘Then you may be tolerably familiar with his noises about the wrongs of the British using Indian troops in a foreign country. If our troops took Jinnah seriously, we’d have a mutiny on our bloody hands. I can’t think why they don’t lock Jinnah up.’ I laughed.

He laughed too, without humour. ‘As you say, your hands are already bloody. You have already locked Jinnah up, and Jawarhalal Nehru, and Ghandi – and it did no bit of good. Your gaols were not oppressive enough. As a result, the days of the British in India are numbered.’

‘That’s all the more reason why we shouldn’t fight for the Dutch in the NEI.’

Tiger Balm got up and walked about, smoking, on the other side of the table. He wore light grey trousers of a local cut, and made a dapper figure. Looking up at the rafters above his head, he said, ‘You will leave a bloodbath here when you quit.’

At this juncture, there was an admonitory cry from behind the screen. Fat wagged his head a few times to check that it was still there and said, in his imitation English, ‘Missa Stuss, Auntie, she say she ha’ bad head, prease you no tor’ so row’, she want go slee’.’

Ignoring him, I banged my fist on the table and told Tiger Balm, ‘If there is a bloodbath when we leave, it won’t be any fault of the British, so stick that in your next editorial!

‘Some Indian was trying to tell me the other day that there would be a bloodbath in India, when the British left there. Okay, then why is everyone so keen to kick us out if they are going to massacre each other when we’ve gone?’

The question appeared to me unanswerable enough to pass for rhetorical, but Tiger Balm merely said, ‘The reasons of course lie in colonialist history. Whatever the price, people want their freedom, as the British in 1940.’

Fat put a finger to his lips, ‘Prease, be mo’ quiet. D’ink a mo’ bee’.’

‘I’m going to bed. And I presume Mr Tiger Balm is going home after curfew.’ I got up and followed the latter round the room. ‘So tell me, whose side are you on? Do you want British or Dutch rule? Or do you want Soekarno and Co. to take over? It isn’t your country any more than it is mine.’

He sighed and helped himself to a cigarette from his pack on the table.

‘History is not that simple, Mr Stubbs, sir. Ask your little “Margey” what she thinks of the British. She could hardly tell you. We Chinese respect and slightly admire the British, although we do not believe that the Far East is your part of the world – any more than we regard Europe as our part. Since you have been beaten so easily by the Nipponese in Malaya and you surrendered so weakly in Singapore and elsewhere, we think it is time you finished your adventures in the East. You have lost face and now you must go home. The lion, let’s say, has its tail between its legs.’

At this I felt myself getting extremely angry. I sat down at the table and lit up another cigarette, wondering whether to hit him.

‘You’ve been reading the China Times too much, chum. You forget how the Chinese got mopped up by the Japs, left, right, and centre. Besides, the Japs caught the British unprepared – the Fourteenth Army really massacred them in Burma – I was there. We’ve evened up the score okay now. So do you want British rule or not?’

He leaned against the wall, unmoved by my anger, considering his answer. ‘There’s no question of British rule here, sir. The British contingent leaves in the late summer – as the Dutch certainly understand, even if you don’t. You have failed in your mission. You have made a mess of it. You were too nice. You cared too much for political justice and conserved too much ammunition. That’s fatal. And of course the Dutch cannot hold down the whole republican movement without British and American support.

‘So the new state of Indonesia will come soon into full being, and the red-and-white flags fly everywhere. As you say, it is their country. You quote Jinnah, but you do not understand the meaning of what you quote. Jinnah is a Muslim. Indonesian Republic will be officially a Muslim state. That is one reason why Chinese people fear a bloodbath: Chinese may be Christian, just a few of them, but we are never Muslim. Buddhists never become Muslim, I don’t know why. When you and the Dutch quit, then, in the sacred name of religion, Indonesians may be tempted to kill many thousands of Chinese to get their hands on their property. Who can Chinese people turn to then for protection? Nobody. Nobody.’ He let the word hang in the air before looking pointedly at Margey, who waited silently in the background, and saying. ‘That, sir, is why many Chinese people try many ways to leave Sumatra. And why you are at least moderately welcome on these premises. Our next lot of visitors may have less friendly intentions.’

With these words, he bowed soberly, stubbed his cigarette in the ashtray on the table, and walked out of the door into the night.

Fat and I sat where we were, saying nothing. Margey, too, remained where she was. Auntie sighed behind her screen.

Addressing the remark to Margey, I said heavily, ‘Let’s hope that things don’t turn out as badly as he supposes. Tell Fat that he ought to take you to Singapore as soon as possible.’

Fat had understood. He made a negative gesture. ‘Prenty too much men Sin’apore. Twice so many men, three year. No job. No house. No food. No live. Better we stay here, maybe trouble go ’way.’

He reached out for another apple.

I took Margey’s hand. ‘Let’s get upstairs to bed.’

Without another word, we crept upstairs, past the sleepers on the upper floor, into our familiar attic. We undressed in silence, fearful of waking Daisy and her sleeping babe.

CHAPTER THREE

Spring – an English spring – visited Sumatra for one hour after dawn every day. Even my fellow sergeants, when they got up that early, had been known to scratch their hairy arses and exclaim with pleasure at the morning. Cool breezes wafted through our billets, birds called, and a decent mist lay over the land. The insect population still slumbered.

In that hour, the sun steered close to the horizon, losing itself among shaggy palms. The air was loaded with rosy hues and steaming bars of shadow. Ox-carts moving towards the fields proceeded with a ruminative rhythm. The natives in their sarongs, the women going to the well with bronze pots on their heads, walked slowly, as if in a dream among the trees. Later they would appear more bent, as the load of sunlight became too great.

Nipping back from Margey’s at this good hour, I cut down one of the Out of Bounds roads that bordered a kampong. The thatched bamboo huts, set beside a stream amid tall palms, looked too idyllic to be anything but fodder for some fucking travel poster. Hens clucked among the huts; there were tethered white goats, cats sitting staring at the water, and an old man, bent double, brushing a path with meticulous care, as if each grain of dust were familiar to him. It was hard to believe that anyone wanted to shoot me at this hour.

Too soon, the scene would be different. The sun would be roused from its pleasant lethargy and zoom to the zenith of the sky, showering fire as it went. The fog would vanish; the day would buzz like a saw; every squaddy alive would break out in a muck sweat; monkeys would start to pass out in the trees.

Climbing down into a ditch, I dodged between strands of barbed wire and climbed through a hole in the tall mesh perimeter. The hole had been made by ill-intentioned BORS taking short cuts to town. My way to the sergeants’ quarters lay through the Other Ranks’ lines.

Some BORS were slouching between houses, across their neglected gardens. They looked like apes with towels about their shoulders as they made their way to the wash-ups. As I rounded one of their billets, I came face to face with Johnny Mercer, the day’s Duty Sergeant. An unhappy corporal trailed behind Johnny, explaining something to him at great length.

‘Merdeka,’ I said by way of salute. He responded, but looked no happier than the corporal.

‘Stubby, we can’t get these shagging Other Ranks out of their billets. What do you think we ought to do?’

I looked at my watches. They seemed agreed that it was approximately seven-thirty.

‘Bit early, isn’t it? What’s the drill?’

He gave an abridged version of his laugh. ‘Agricultural Duties. They’re supposed to be up and out digging the field for planting potatoes from seven till eight. They refuse to get out of their charpoys.’

While I was mulling this news over and having a good yawn, the corporal – addressing Mercer but plainly repeating for my benefit a remark he had made before – said, ‘You can see why they object. They claim that digging fields is not part of their duties. They also maintain that even if a crop of potatoes resulted, the Dutch would get it and they would gain nothing.’

The corporal was 26 Div Signals. I had seen him before. His name was Kyle. He was typical post-war material, a thin specimen with pale skin and no service behind him, young, inexperienced, and cocky as you please.

They both looked hopefully at me as I rubbed my stubbly chin. A faint grin showed on Johnny’s face.

I plucked a few leaves off the nearest bush, asking casually, ‘Are your sympathies with the men, Corporal?’

‘Yes, very much. They are not farm hands. I don’t see why we should work for the Squareheads, do you?’

I scattered the leaves. ‘Never mind what you don’t see, Corporal. Your job is to carry out Standing Orders. As you bloody well know, the Indonesians are refusing to supply us with fresh rations, so the GOC has ordered that, where possible, units shall grow their own food. Reasonable, isn’t it? Get your men out of their bloody charpoys and on that stretch of miadan at the double! Give ’em five minutes, after which any man without a shovel at the ready is up on a fizzer.’

Corporal Kyle looked at Johnny. Johnny looked at me. Johnny started to grin more openly.

‘Don’t give that old bull, Stubby! Fat lot you care about Standing Orders. I know where you’ve been all night.’

‘This “O” Section shower is very shit-or-bust,’ the corporal said, apologetically. Yet I caught an undercurrent of boastfulness which set me off.

‘Shit-or-bust, is it? You’ve not earnt the right to be shit-or-bust, Corporal. You jump off the last boat with six months’ service in Clacton to your name and think you can swing that one, you’re sadly mistaken. Christ, three or four years’ soldiering in the Fourteenth Army and then you’re entitled to be shit-or-bust. Ever heard of the Fourteenth Army, Corporal?’

‘It’s disbanded.’

‘It’s before your time, when soldiering was pukka soldiering, let me tell you. So don’t start answering me back. I don’t know what bloody Britain’s coming to! Now – get in those stinking fucking billets, stop playing with yourself, and order those admis at the top of your voice to get fell in on the road with their shovels, in five minutes flat or else.’

‘Yes, you’d better do that,’ Johnny said, turning to Kyle. ‘Stir the buggers up. Otherwise it’s a case of mutiny, and we’ll have to report it to the CO.’

That was the first time the dread word ‘mutiny’ was mentioned.

Kyle’s expression went blank.

‘You two are coming the Old Soldier on me.’

‘What are you waiting for?’ I asked.

Ignoring me, he addressed Mercer.

‘They’ll only tell me to clear off. They say the IORS should do the job. Will you come with me, Sarge?’

Johnny grinned at me and then said to the corporal, ‘Thik-hai. I’ll threaten to shoot the bleeders if they don’t move.’

‘They won’t take any notice, I warn you,’ said the corporal. He tailed off with Johnny Mercer. I headed for my billet. My time was up.

Breakfast restored some of my depleted energies. I was shaving in my room when Johnny Mercer entered. He took a look at the Chinese servant who was obsequiously cleaning round, and told him to get out.

‘Merdeka! You’re a krab sight, Horry. Getting it up too much, that’s the trouble. Take my advice and pack it in a bit or you’ll be dead before you reach Blighty.’ These were standard pleasantries and I ignored them.

‘Did you get “O” Section out digging spuds?’

‘No. They said they weren’t a bunch of wogs, and that digging was a job for the Indian Other Ranks.’

‘Who’s that feeble tit of a corporal?’

‘Steve Kyle? He’s not a bad bloke. It’s the situation. The NEI isn’t Burma.’

I dried my face and prepared to brush my teeth. ‘Do you know how much this bloody toothpaste cost me? You realise that the “Q” stores is out of toothpaste? And the NAAFI. It’s all going to the Dutch.’

‘I’ve got a bit of Dutch crumpet who works in the RAPWI shop. She’ll get you a tube cheap. There’s plenty up the RAPWI.’

‘Six bloody Dutch guilders I had to pay for this toothpaste. That’s eleven bob, eleven and a kick. Daylight robbery. So what did you do?’

‘They agreed to parade at 8.30 hours for Arms Inspection, and you should have heard them ticking about that. But I couldn’t get them out for digging. They wouldn’t bloody well go.’

He went and stood on the balcony, gazing morosely at the distant jungle. Johnny Mercer was solidly built, with a big red neck and thin brown hair. He had been in Burma and knew what was what, but this morning he was not his old self. He clutched at his big red neck.

‘I’ve got a hangover,’ he said moodily. ‘I hate this fucking dump. What are we doing here, anyway? The NEI isn’t our pigeon. We should have left this spot of trouble to the Dutch. I suppose you realise that we handed Sumatra over to the Dutch at the end of the Napoleonic Wars – now here we go again … Privately, my sympathies are with the BORS. Why should they go out digging the fields at seven in the morning, like a lot of coolies? Still, their refusal is serious, isn’t it?’

Spitting and wiping my mouth, I said, ‘Very serious. Mutiny. We’re on Active Service still – they could be shot for mutiny. You’d better go and talk to Jhamboo Singh – he’s the officer i/c. Perhaps there’s some way round it.’

‘Jhamboo. Yes, I suppose I had … What a bloody position.’ He sauntered back into the room, still clutching his neck. ‘What’s going to happen to your furniture when you’ve gone? I like that cabinet.’

In my room, tastefully arranged, I had an ornate mahogany cabinet, a fine mahogany table, a little brass side-table, and a heavy sideboard on which my collection of Balinese carvings stood. All the gear was looted, except for the carvings, which I bought with cigarettes in the bazaar. The cabinet had come with me overland from Padang.

My room gave me a lot of pleasure, although I was so rarely in it. On my walls I had bright posters of Hanuman, the Monkey God, and little pink Parvati on her lotus leaf. Over the head of my bed hung a large pin-up of Ida Lupino, slender, browbeaten, ever courageous.

‘What’ll you offer for the job lot?’

He laughed. ‘Nothing. I’ll wait till you’re gone and then I’ll commandeer it.’

When Johnny left, I scrutinised my face narrowly in the glass, prodding at its pimples and folds. A blank sort of face, I thought, yet not undistinguished. What was it going to look like, perched over a suit, collar, and tie? And what was I going to do in Civvy Street? Follow father’s footsteps into the bank, no doubt. Now I was a hero, tough, pretty independent; there, I’d be just one more pale-faced clerk. Now I had a smashing bird; and then …

The first heat of the day was getting through. I went to lie down on my bed, putting my hands behind my head and staring up at the cracks on the ceiling.

The Chinese cleaner came bowing himself into the room. I shouted to him to get out until I called.

Like a bird to a pool, the image of Margey’s face came back to me, that mysterious oriental face with those slanted eyes, that perfect mouth, the lips in repose like something carved. Only two hours ago I had awakened to find her beside me, and my arm full of cramps because she was lying on my wrist. I lay absorbing the sight of her, the curl of her hair round her ear and neck, the inexplicable curve of her shoulder.

Margey’s room with all its grotty detail was revealed to me in monochrome. Beyond the curtains were a thousand broken rooftops, all with tiles missing. Medan, falling apart at the seams …

My happiness had lasted only a moment. Came the pain, the knowledge that it was Friday, that in three days I would be swept away in one of those directives issuing from the Company Office. I sat up, and she awoke.

Then I’d left her, clung to her and left her, feeling so sick on my way back to the lines that I’d almost have welcomed a few extremists rising before me in the dawn-light and shooting me down into some stinking ditch.

I fell asleep for an hour. But circumstances were already at work to ensure that this was my last peaceful day in Sumatra …

The roofs of Medan were broken and the town was tumbling. Its occupying force was also in ruinous condition.

I had arrived in Medan only six weeks ago, having previously been in Padang or on detachment at Fort de Kock. During those six weeks, I had removed myself as far as possible from the army. It had ceased to have functional point; the closing down of the Fourteenth Army had been the final blow.

Despite my feeling of severance, emphasised by the detachment from my own unit, I could no more visualise myself as a civilian than I could visualise Margey away from Sumatra. The army had bred in me a contempt for the cushy civilian life; perhaps I clung to Margey as part of a more heroic existence.

However that might be, I woke from my sleep with an urgent resolve to marry the girl. Why fucking not? I’d show my mates how independent I was. At least I would see what the score was – and today, before the weekend set in. I would speak to Captain Boyer over the wireless link and discuss the situation with him. With that done, I would face Margey and settle her complaints one way or the other – for her complaints carried weight with me – and then we could go and swim.

I washed the sweat off my face and neck and dressed myself. The billet I lived in was beautiful. The rooms downstairs were high and cool, the staircase had an elegant curl, and there was a carved front door. Before the war, the place had belonged to a prosperous planter who headed for Australia when the Japs arrived and got himself killed in a bar-room brawl in Darwin. Under Jap rule, the building formed part of the Neutrals Camp, where Swiss and Swedes and their assorted women had been confined for the duration. Now it was a sergeants’ billet. I tried out a quick daydream about Margey’s and my living here when the British troops left, complete with bearers to wait on us; but the bearers would not stay still, and became petty officials in the new Indonesian order instead.

Конец ознакомительного фрагмента.

Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес».

Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию на ЛитРес.

Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом.