An Indecent Obsession

  At first she had put his back up a little, but he was fair enough to admit the fault lay in him rather than in her; why shouldn’t women have authority and rank if they could cope with it? She could, yet she was a womanly woman, and very, very nice. Without seeming to exert any obvious wiles, she held this motley collection of men together, no doubt about that. They loved her, really loved her. Which meant they all saw sex in her somewhere. At first he hadn’t seen sex, but after only one day and two private talks with her, he was beginning to. Oh, not throwing her down and having her; something more pleasant and subtle than that, a slow and delicious discovery of her mouth, her neck and shoulders, her legs… A man switched off when he was unable to avail himself of anything save the guilty misery of masturbation, but having a woman around all day started the juices flowing again; his thoughts began to stir beyond the level of an unattainable dream. Sister Langtry wasn’t a pinup poster, she was real. Though for Michael she did have a dreamlike quality—nothing to do with the war, or its scarcity of women. She was upper crust, a squatter’s daughter, the kind of woman he would never have met in the ordinary sequence of civilian life.

  Poor Colin, he would have hated her. Not the way Luce hated her, because Luce wanted her at the same time, and loved her to boot. Luce could pretend to himself that what he felt for her was hate because she didn’t want him back, and he couldn’t understand it. But Colin had been different. Which had always been Colin’s trouble. They had been in it together since the beginning. He had gravitated toward Colin very soon after enlisting, for Colin was the sort of bloke other blokes picked on, not really understanding why he irritated them, just lashing out because the irritation was perpetually there; like horses pestered by flies. And Michael had a strong protective streak which had plagued him since early childhood, so that he had always accumulated lame ducks.

  Colin had been girlishly skinny and a little too pretty and a demon soldier, as handicapped by the way he looked and how he felt as Benedict probably was. Burying the butt of his cigarette in the sand, Michael rested his eyes thoughtfully on Benedict. There was a lot of trouble packed down inside Ben’s narrow frame, torment and soul-searching and a fierce rebellion, just as there had been inside Colin. He would have bet any sum an onlooker cared to name that Ben had been a demon soldier too, one of those unlikely men who were the picture of mildness until battle euphoria got into them, when they went mad and behaved like ancient heroes. Men with much to prove to themselves usually were demon soldiers, especially when spiritual conflicts gingered up the mixture of troubles.

  Michael had started in pitying Colin, that protective instinct very much to the fore, but as the months went on and one country succeeded another, a curious affection and friendship had grown between them. They fought well together, they camped well together, and they discovered neither had a taste for whoring or getting blind drunk when on leave, so that to stick together at all times became natural, welcome.

  However, proximity can blind, and it blinded Michael. It was not until they reached New Guinea that he fully came to understand the extent of Colin’s troubles. The company had been saddled with a new noncommissioned officer, a big, confident, rather blustering regimental sergeant major who soon displayed a tendency to use Colin as his butt. It hadn’t worried Michael too much; he knew things could only go so far while he was there to draw a line over which no one stepped. The RSM had got Michael’s measure too, and wasn’t about to step over the line. So the pinpricks directed at Colin were minor, confined to comments and looks. Michael waited placidly, knowing that as soon as they went into action again the RSM would see a different side to the flimsy, girlish Colin.

  Therefore it came as a complete shock to Michael one day to discover Colin weeping bitterly, and it had taken much patient probing to learn what the problem was: a homosexual overture from the RSM which tormented Colin on many levels. His inclinations lay that way, he confessed. He knew it was wrong, he knew it was unnatural, he despised himself for it, but he couldn’t help himself, either. Only it wasn’t the RSM he wanted; he wanted Michael.

  There had been no revulsion, no outraged propriety on Michael’s part; only an enormous sorrow, the tenderness and pity long friendship and genuine love permitted. How could a man turn away from his best mate when they’d been through so very much together? They talked for a long time, and in the end Colin’s confession had made no difference to their relationship, save perhaps to strengthen it. Michael’s preferences didn’t lie in that direction, but he could feel no differently toward Colin because his did. That was life, that was men, that was a fact. The war and the existence it had forced upon him had meant Michael had learned to live with many things he would have rejected outright when a civilian, for the alternative to living with them was literally to die. Choosing to live simply meant learning tolerance; so long as a man was let alone, he didn’t inquire too closely into the private activities of his fellows.

  But it was a burden to be loved as a lover; Michael’s responsibilities toward Colin had suddenly multiplied. His very inability to return Colin’s love the way Colin wanted it returned laid additional care upon Michael, increased his urge to protect. Together they had seen death, battle, hardship, hunger, loneliness, homesickness, illness; too much by far to abandon. Yet to be unable to return love fully was a burden of guilt only to be expiated in what help and service he could permit within the bounds of his own nature. And Colin, though the ultimate joy of a sexual relationship was always unattainable, bloomed and brightened immeasurably after that day in New Guinea.

  When Colin died Michael hadn’t been able to believe what his eyes were showing him, one of those fluke kills from a tiny splinter of metal driven faster than sound through the close-cropped hair between neck and skull, so that he just lay down and died, so very quietly, without any blood, without disgust. Michael had sat beside him for a long time, sure that his clasp on the stiff cold hand would eventually be returned; in the end they had had to prise the two hands apart, living one and dead one, and persuade Michael to come away, that there was absolutely no hope of ever seeing life in that calmly sleeping face. It looked noble, at rest, sacred, inviolate. Death would have changed it in some way. It always did, for death was slack and emptied. He still found himself wondering whether in truth Colin’s dead face had seemed to sleep, or whether his eyes had wrought a change in it that made it seem simply to sleep. Grief he had often known, but not grief like this.

  Then after the first shock of Colin’s death had evaporated Michael was horrified to discover in himself, living, there appeared right alongside that intolerable grief, a wonderful sense of release. He was free! The incubus of duty toward one more helpless and less capable than himself was gone. As long as Colin had lived he would have been tied by that duty. Perhaps it would not have prevented his seeking love elsewhere, but it would certainly have hampered him, and Colin would not have been strong enough to resist trying to retain exclusive possession of him, he knew. So death after all came as a reprieve, and that tormented him.

  For months afterward he kept to himself as much as he could given his peculiar status in the battalion; there were demon soldiers aplenty in a unit as illustrious as his, but Michael was more than a demon soldier. His CO called him the quintessential soldier, meaning by that a degree of military professionalism rarely found in any man. To Michael it was a job, and he never failed in it because he believed not only in himself but in the ultimate goodness of the cause. He conducted himself without passion, no matter what the provocation, which meant that he could be relied upon at all times to keep his head, do what had to be done without dwelling upon the consequences even in terms of his own life. He would dig a trench, a road, a dugout or a grave; he would take an untakable position or take it upon himself to retreat if he so judged; he never complained, he never made trouble, he never questioned an order even if he was already making up his mind to circumvent it. His effect on his fellow soldiers was calming, steadying, encouraging. They thought he bore a c
harmed life, and saw in him their luck.

  After the landing on Borneo settled down, he was sent on a mission which appeared quite routine; since the battalion was short of officers, the RSM who had badgered Colin was put in charge of the sortie. It consisted of three barges of men. Their instructions were to proceed to such-and-such a beach, take possession of it, and infiltrate. Earlier reconnaissance had revealed no Japanese within the area. But when the exercise began the Japanese were there all right, and more than half the company died or was wounded. One barge had got clean away, its men not yet landed; one barge was sunk under fire; Michael, another sergeant and the RSM among them had managed to rally and collect the unwounded or lightly wounded men, and all together they had carried the seriously wounded on board the third barge, still afloat. Halfway home they were met by a relief party bearing medics, plasma, morphine; the unharmed barge had got home and sent them timely aid.

  The RSM had taken the loss of so many good men hard, blamed it upon himself, for it had been his first independent command. And Michael, remembering New Guinea days and Colin, felt obliged to do what he could to comfort the man. It backfired spectacularly; the RSM had literally welcomed his attentions with open arms. For five hideous minutes Michael went mad; the quintessential soldier who never allowed his passions to become involved was consumed by passion. He saw the whole hideous cycle beginning again—an unwanted love, a painful servitude, himself the victim and the cause at one and the same time—and he suddenly hated the RSM as he had never in his entire life hated anyone. If this man had not made advances to Colin in the first place, none of it would ever have happened, for Colin would not have found the courage to unburden himself.

  Luckily Michael’s hands were all he had, but training, rage, and the advantage of surprise would have proven more than enough had the RSM not managed to scream for help, and had that help not been very near.

  Once the madness lifted, Michael found himself destroyed. In all the years of his service in the army he had never hungered to kill, never got any satisfaction from it, never actually hated his adversaries. But with his hands around the RSM’s throat he felt a pleasure akin only to sexual heights, and with his thumbs pressing down on the hyoid cartilage he had gloried in the sheer feeling of it, was driven on by the same sort of mindless carnality he had always despised in others.

  Only he could know how he felt during those brief and violent seconds; and knowing, he elected not to fight the consequences. He refused to justify his actions, refused to say anything except that he had intended to kill.

  The CO of the battalion, one of the best commanding officers men were ever lucky enough to have, collared Michael in a private interview. The only other man present was the RMO, an excellent doctor and a strong humanitarian. Together they informed Michael that the matter had been taken over their heads to divisional HQ; the RSM was determined on a court-martial, and was not prepared to be blocked at battalion level.

  ‘The stupid bloody bugger,’ said the battalion CO dispassionately.

  ‘He’s not himself these days,’ said Michael, who was still occasionally shaken by a fit of something perilously close to tears.

  ‘If you go on like this they’ll convict you,’ said the RMO. ‘You’ll lose everything you should come out of the war wearing proudly.’

  ‘Let them convict me,’ said Michael wearily.

  ‘Oh, come off it, Mike!’ said the CO. ‘You’re worth ten of him, and you know it!’

  ‘I just want to be out of this,’ said Michael, closing his eyes. ‘Oh, Johnno, I’m so bloody fed up with the war, men, the whole bloody lot!’

  The two officers exchanged glances.

  ‘What you obviously need is a good rest,’ said the RMO then, briskly. ‘It’s all over bar the shouting anyway. How about a nice comfortable bed in a nice comfortable base hospital with a nice comfortable nurse to look after you?’

  Michael had opened his eyes. ‘It sounds like heaven,’ he said. ‘What do I have to do to get there?’

  ‘Just go on acting like a dill,’ said the RMO, grinning. ‘I’m sending you to Base Fifteen as suspected of unsound mind. It won’t appear on your discharge papers, you have our word on that. But it will force our noncom friend to pull his horns in.’

  So the pact was sealed. Michael handed in his Owen gun and his ammunition, was loaded into a field ambulance and taken to the airfield, and thence to Base Fifteen.

  A nice comfortable bed in a nice comfortable hospital with a nice comfortable nurse to look after him. But did Sister Langtry fit the definition of a nice comfortable nurse? He had rather imagined someone fortyish, stout, motherly in a no-nonsense sort of way. Not a whippy, fine-boned little thing scarcely older than he himself, with more aplomb than a brigadier and more brains than a field marshal…

  He came out of his reverie to find Benedict staring at him unwinkingly, and he had smiled back with unshadowed affection before the alarm bells could prevent him. No, never again! Not even for this poor, miserable bastard with the half-starved wistful look of a homeless mongrel cur. Never, never again. Still, forewarned was forearmed, and he could make sure this time that what friendship he offered remained limited. Not that Michael took Benedict for a homosexual. Ben just needed a friend badly, and none of the others were the slightest bit interested in him. No wonder. He had that disconcerting stoniness Michael had seen in other men from time to time, and it always rendered them friendless. They didn’t so much rebuff overtures as react peculiarly, would start spouting religion or talk about things most men preferred to ignore. He probably frightened girls to death, and they probably frightened him to death, too. Ben struck him as the sort of man whose life had been an emotional desert, with the juicelessness starting inside. No wonder he loved Sister Langtry; she treated him so normally, where the rest of the men regarded him as a kind of freak. What they sensed without understanding it, though maybe Neil had had enough experience to see it, was the violence. God, what a soldier he must have been!

  At which moment Benedict stirred; his face began to squeeze in on itself, nostrils pinched, eyes glassy. It turned to stone under Michael’s eyes. Curious, Michael turned his head to see what Benedict had seen. And there was Luce in the distance, parading up the beach from its far end toward them, and parade he did. Stepping high in a mincing parody of a lifesaver’s strut, superbly aware of his own superbness, the sun lighting up his golden body, the length and the thickness of his penis mocking every other man on the beach into sullen inadequacy and secret loathing envy.

  ‘The bastard!’ said Neil, long cobbled toes digging into the sand as if this were but the commencement of a mole process which would end in burying him. ‘God, if only I had the guts to take a Bengal razor to that load he’s carrying!’

  ‘Just once I wish I could see him,’ said Matt wistfully.

  ‘A sight to behold,’ said Michael, looking amused.

  Luce reached them and swung round gracefully to stand above them, one hand absently caressing his hairless chest. ‘Tennis, anyone?’ he asked, the other hand swishing an imaginary racquet.

  ‘Oh, is there a court here?’ asked Michael, ingenuously surprised. ‘I’ll have a game with you, then.’

  Luce stared at him suspiciously, the realization that the offer wasn’t meant seriously dawning slowly. ‘You’re pulling my leg, you sarcastic bastard!’ he said, astonished.

  ‘Why not?’ asked Michael, grinning. ‘You’ve got three.’

  Matt and Neil laughed uproariously, and Benedict succumbed to a self-conscious titter, which the group nearest to them on the beach echoed, ears tuned guiltily. Luce stood for a moment flabbergasted, uncertain how to act. It was an infinitesimal pause; he shrugged and moved away toward the water as if such had been his intention all along.

  ‘Very good, Mike,’ he said over his shoulder. ‘Very good indeed! I’m glad to see you noticed.’

  ‘How could a bloke not notice a donger like that? I thought at first it was a bit left over from the Sydney Harbor Brid
ge!’ Michael called after him.

  The next group down the beach abandoned all pretense at disinterest and burst out laughing; Luce’s grand moment had become a farce. Neil picked up a handful of sand and threw it at Michael joyously. ‘Full marks, old son,’ he said, wiping his eyes. ‘God, how I wish I’d said that!’

  When Sister Langtry came on duty a little after five, to discover that the rest of her charges had resoundingly decided to like Michael, she felt like cheering and waving flags. It mattered tremendously to her that they should like him, wished on them at the very last moment as he had been. Just why it should matter so much she had not quite worked out, but she suspected it was more on his behalf than for the sake of the others.

  At first he had stirred her curiosity, then her sense of justice and fair play, then her frank interest. If she had doubted how he would settle into ward X, her doubt lay not so much with him as with Neil, the ringleader of X. For Neil had not been warm in his welcome; he might mock himself, but he was a leader, a naturally autocratic personality. The other men looked to him, even Luce, so it lay within his power to make ward X as much heaven or hell as limbo.

  To discover Neil treating Michael as a full equal made her profoundly thankful. Michael would be all right from now on, therefore the rest of them would be too.

  Then Benedict appeared and was delighted to learn that Michael played chess. Chess was apparently Ben’s one fleshly weakness, but it bored Neil and frightened Nugget; Matt had liked to play when he could see the board and the pieces, but said he found keeping a visual image in his mind all the time too much of a strain. Luce played well, but couldn’t resist turning black against white into a metaphorical struggle between good and evil, which upset Ben more than Sister Langtry felt was good for him, so she had forbidden him to play with Luce.