King Rat

  He knew the Squire would be content to let him stay on even when Reverend Drinkwater came home—there was never any doubt that he would come home from the East—but, “after all, Reverend Trout, he is my sister’s husband, and well, as you know, the parish carries a seat in the House of Commons and all that. Man’s got a lot of responsibility being the Reverend of Tuncliffe, in normal times, you know. And Theo’s such a decent chap. Did all right in Parliament—he’d just made his maiden speech when this blasted war started. If it hadn’t been for that, well, you never can tell. They say he’s got a good chance to be a Minister some day. No telling what position a man of his talent can attain.”

  Then suddenly Reverend Trout stopped. He stared down, filled with the beauty of what he saw. There was a crocus, the first he had seen this spring, growing sturdily from the good earth. And around the slim green shafts was a cowpat, fertilizing the soil. But the Reverend Trout did not see the manure. He only saw the beauty of the crocus, pellucid, and from its beauty, he knew the majesty of the Lord.

  Now, on this sun-kissed Sunday, Peter Marlowe listened as Drinkwater finished the sermon. Blodger had long since gone to Ward Six, but whether Drinkwater had helped him there, Peter Marlowe could never prove. Drinkwater still got many eggs from somewhere.

  Peter Marlowe’s stomach told him it was time for lunch.

  When he got back to his hut, the men were already waiting, mess cans in hands, impatient. The extra was not going to arrive today. Or tomorrow according to rumor. Ewart had already checked the cookhouse. Just the usual. That was all right too, but why the hell don’t they hurry up?

  Grey was sitting on the end of his bed.

  “Well, Marlowe,” he said, “you eating with us these days? Such a pleasant surprise.”

  “Yes, Grey, I’m still eating here. Why don’t you just run along and play cops and robbers? You know, pick on someone who can’t hit back!”

  “Not a chance, old man. Got my eye on bigger game.”

  “Jolly good luck.” Peter Marlowe got his mess cans ready. Across the way from him Brough, kibitzing a game of bridge, winked.

  “Cops!” he whispered. “They’re all the same.”

  “That’s right.”

  He joined Peter Marlowe. “Hear you’ve a new buddy.”

  “That’s right.” Peter Marlowe was on his guard.

  “It’s a free country. But sometimes a guy’s got to get out on a limb and make a point.”

  “Oh?”

  “Yeah. Fast company can sometimes get out of hand.”

  “That’s true in any country.”

  “Maybe,” Brough grinned, “maybe you’d like to have a cuppa Joe sometime and chew the fat.”

  “I’d like that. How about tomorrow? After chow—” Involuntarily he used the King’s word. But he didn’t correct himself. He smiled and Brough smiled back.

  “Hey, grub’s up!” Ewart called out.

  “Thank God for that,” Phil groaned. “How about a deal, Peter? Your rice for my stew?”

  “You’ve got a hope!”

  “No harm in trying.”

  Peter Marlowe went outside and joined the mess line. Raylins was serving out the rice. Good, he thought, no need to worry today.

  Raylins was middle-aged and bald. He had been a junior manager in the Bank of Singapore and, like Ewart, one of the Malayan Regiment. In peacetime it was a great organization to belong to. Lots of parties, cricket, polo. A man had to be in the Regiment to be anyone. Raylins also looked after the mess fund, and banqueting was his specialty. When they gave him a gun and told him he was in the war and ordered him to take his platoon across the causeway and fight the Japanese, he had looked at the colonel and laughed. His job was accounts. But it hadn’t helped him, and he had had to take twenty men, as untrained as himself, and march up the road. He had marched, then suddenly his twenty men were three. Thirteen had been killed instantly in the ambush. Four were only wounded. They were lying in the middle of the road screaming. One had his hand blown off and he was staring at the stump stupidly, catching his blood in his only hand, trying to pour it back into his arm. Another was laughing, laughing as he crammed his entrails back into the gaping hole.

  Raylins had stared stupidly as the Japanese tank came down the road, guns blazing. Then the tank was past and the four were merely stains on the asphalt. He had looked at his remaining three men—Ewart was one of them. They had looked back at him. Then they were running, running terror-stricken into the jungle. Then they were lost. Then he was alone, alone in a horror night of leeches and noises, and the only thing that saved him from insanity was a Malay child who had found him babbling and had guided him to a village. He had sneaked into the building where remnants of an army were collected. The next day the Japanese shot two of every ten. He and a few others were kept in the building. Later they were put into a truck and sent to a camp and he was among his own people. But he could never forget his friend Charles, the one with his intestines hanging out.

  Raylins spent most of his time in a fog. For the life of him he could not understand why he wasn’t in his bank counting his figures, clean neat figures, and why he was in a camp where he excelled at one thing. He could deal out an unknown amount of rice into exactly the right number of parts. Almost to the grain.

  “Ah, Peter,” Raylins said, giving him his share, “you knew Charles, didn’t you?”

  “Oh yes, nice fellow.” Peter Marlowe didn’t know him. None of them did.

  “Do you think he ever got them back in?” Raylins asked.

  “Oh yes. Certainly.” Peter Marlowe took his food away as Raylins turned to the next in line.

  “Ah, Chaplain Grover, it’s a warm day, isn’t it? You knew Charles, didn’t you?”

  “Yes,” the Chaplain said, eyes on the measure of rice. “I’m sure he did, Raylins.”

  “Good, good. I’m glad to hear it. Funny place to find your insides, on the outside, just like that.”

  Raylins’ mind wandered to his cool, cool bank and to his wife, whom he would see tonight, when he left the bank, in their neat little bungalow near the racecourse. Let me see, he thought, we’ll have lamb for dinner tonight. Lamb! And a nice cool beer. Then I’ll play with Penelope, and the missus’ll be content to sit on the veranda and sew.

  “Ah,” he said, happily recognizing Ewart. “Would you like to come to dinner tonight, Ewart, old boy? Perhaps you’d like to bring the missus.”

  Ewart mumbled through clenched teeth. He took his rice and stew and turned away.

  “Take it easy, Ewart,” Peter Marlowe cautioned him.

  “Take it easy yourself! How do you know what it feels like? I swear to God I’ll kill him one day.”

  “Don’t worry—”

  “Worry! They’re dead. His wife and child are dead. I saw them dead. But my wife and two children? Where are they, eh? Where? Somewhere dead too. They’ve got to be after all this time. Dead!”

  “They’re in the civilian camp—”

  “How in Christ’s name do you know? You don’t, I don’t, and it’s only five miles away. They’re dead! Oh my God,” and Ewart sat down and wept, spilling his rice and stew on the ground. Peter Marlowe scooped up the rice and the leaves that floated in the stew and put them in Ewart’s mess can.”

  Next week they’ll let you write a letter. Or maybe they’ll let you visit. The Camp Commandant’s always asking for a list of the women and children. Don’t worry, they’re safe.” Peter Marlowe left him slobbering his rice into his face, and took his own rice and went down to the bungalow.

  “Hello, cobber,” Larkin said. “You been up to see Mac?”

  “Yes. He looks fine. He even started getting ruffled about his age.”

  “It’ll be good to get old Mac back.” Larkin reached under his mattress and brought out a spare mess can. “Got a surprise!” He opened the mess can and revealed a two-inch square of brownish puttylike substance.

  “By all that’s holy! Blachang! Where the devil did you get it?”
/>
  “Scrounged it, of course.”

  “You’re a genius, Colonel. Funny, I didn’t smell it.” Peter Marlowe leaned over and took a tiny piece of the blachang. “This’ll last us a couple of weeks.”

  Blachang was a native delicacy, easy to make. When the season was right, you went to the shore and netted the myriads of tiny sea creatures that hovered in the surf. You buried them in a pit lined with seaweed, then covered it with more seaweed and forgot about it for two months.

  When you opened the pit, the fishes had decayed into a stinking paste, the stench of which would blow your head off and destroy your sense of smell for a week. Holding your breath, you scooped up the paste and fried it. But you had to stay to windward or you’d suffocate. When it cooled, you shaped it into blocks and sold it for a fortune. Prewar, ten cents a cube. Now maybe ten dollars a sliver. Why a delicacy? It was pure protein. And a tiny fraction would flavor a whole bowl of rice. Of course you could easily get dysentery from it. But if it’d been aged right and cooked right and hadn’t been touched by flies, it was all right.

  But you never asked. You just said, “Colonel, you’re a genius” and spooned it into your rice and enjoyed it.

  “Take some up to Mac, eh?”

  “Good idea. But he’s sure to complain it’s not cooked enough.”

  “Old Mac’d complain if it was cooked to perfection—” Larkin stopped. “Hey, Johnny” he called to the tall man walking past, leading a scrawny mongrel on a tether. “Would you like some blachang, cobber?”

  “Would I?”

  They gave him a portion on a banana leaf and talked of the weather and asked how the dog was. John Hawkins loved his dog above all things. He shared his food with it—astonishing the things a dog would eat—and it slept on his bunk. Rover was a good friend. Made a man feel civilized.

  “Would you like some bridge tonight? I’ll bring a fourth,” Hawkins said.

  “Can’t tonight,” Peter Marlowe said, maiming flies.

  “I can get Gordon, next door,” suggested Larkin.

  “Great. After dinner?”

  “Good-oh, see you then.”

  “Thanks for the blachang” Hawkins said as he left, Rover yapping happily beside him.

  “How the hell he gets enough to feed himself and that dingo, damned if I know,” Larkin said. “Or kept him out of some bugger’s billy can for that matter!”

  Peter Marlowe stirred his rice, mixing the blachang carefully. He wanted very much to share the secret of his trip tonight with Larkin. But he knew it was too dangerous.

  Grace Ewart clung to life with the tenacity of her heritage, the tenacity that had spawned her forebears through the years, keeping them alive through the evils and degradations that people call history and Industrial Revolution. Grace Ewart grew up in Birmingham, in the Black Country. It was called the Black Country because the soot and touchable-smoke from the furnaces and factories settled on the landscape and roofs and walls and inside the houses of the seething mass of slums that stretch north, town joined to town and to Manchester and beyond. From the Black Country came the industrial wealth of England—knives, guns, capital equipment, buttons, toys, grenades, chemicals, plates and cups and saucers and pottery, glass, everything and anything. A busy hive of ants laboring on the produce of the world. Chains and ships and airplanes and guns and explosives and now all the war tools, little and big.

  Grace Ewart’s forebears—the Tumbolds—had always lived and died in the Black Country. They were proud of their heritage in pottery. Tumbolds had always been in pottery. Her father was a foreman, like his father before him. And his father before him. Old Bert Tumbold, her father, had said many times, “You listen, Grace, me girl. Wun day, your son’ll be in the shop, an’ a good life it is.” Bert had disapproved greatly of Harold Ewart. “Don’t hold with them white collar workers, nothin’ but pansies, I’ll be bound.”

  But Harold had a dream, a crazy, and sometimes Grace thought, an evil dream. To get out in the world, to see the world. And he had got his position in the Singapore Bank and they had left the Black Country with Bert’s curse on their heads and his promise of the evil that would befall them in the lands of the heathens.

  The heritage that had kept the foreman alive in the black early death region protected her in the prison. The generations had implanted a stoicism deep within her. Wire hard of flesh, a sense of humor, a knowledge of the passing of bad times, and utter, utter strength of certainty that “we English’ll beat these little yellow bastards, come hell or high water and won’t that be a grand day!”

  “Percy, leave your sister be,” she called out nasally. “Go to sleep.”

  “Yes, Ma” the boy replied, twisting in the top bunk again and kicking his sister for good measure.

  When Grace had settled the argument to the shrill chorus of “Keep those damned brats quiet, how are we going to get some sleep?” she settled back once more on the lower bunk and scratched patiently at the bedbug bites.

  Singapore was very hot tonight. Very hot. And dusk had just settled. And little food today, and precious little tomorrow. But that doesn’t matter, she said to herself contentedly. We’ve stayed alive so far, and these little yellow buggers weren’t about to make her lose her mind like they had a lot of the women. Praise the Lord that Percy had got over his dysentery, and Alvira hadn’t had malaria for weeks now. She could just see herself telling old Bert when the war was over and they were back in England, with her drinking a foaming pint of stout with good cheese and the pickle bottle—oh how I miss good English pickled onions—open on the kitchen table.

  “Now don’t take on, Dad” she’d be saying simply, telling the whole story. “It wasn’t so bad for me and Percy and Alvira. We got by with a bit of this and a bit of that.”

  She wouldn’t tell him about the strange things they’d had to eat or the fever or the blood sickness or how some of the women had lain with the guards to get food, or how she had cursed herself that she wasn’t pretty but mousey and undesirable when Alvira had been sick unto death and she would have done anything to save her. But the sickness had passed and, all in all, Alvira was growing up to be quite a young lady. “Uv corse she’s short for ’er age, but that don’t count for nothing. I never did like the tall ones,” she’d say complacently.

  Grace mentally tallied her gains—her losses.

  Percy was all right. For six years old he was doing fine and the best thief in the camp. That’ll stand ’im in good stead when we get out. Alvira was a good ’un, too. Her with her little blue eyes and innocent expression and thin as a rake for her four years of life, she was the decoy. Yes, she thought happily, my kids are all right. They had worked out the system themselves, and my word, weren’t the little buggers proud when they came back with something. They knew every inch of the camp. All the dirty atap huts and the two streets of houses that were barb-wired off from the rest of Singapore which the women also lived in and were also part of the camp. And they were like two of the wogs, burnt and brown and they spoke the language so well, they were just like wogs themselves. Sometimes one of the native kids’d get near the wire and give them something and they’d bring it straight back to her. Honest, they were, and brought up to know what’s right and what isn’t. They always brought it straight back to her. Then she’d always divide it up and make sure that they got the most.

  She was glad that she didn’t need much food. But oh my, what I wouldn’t do for a pickled onion and a huge slice of nice rich cheddar cheese and a bottle of stout and more pickled onions.

  So the kids were healthy. And she was all right. Of course it wasn’t good when the fever came, but you get used to that, and then she knew that old Mrs. Donaldson, the one who looked after her hut, would look after the kids when she wasn’t up.

  Feeling the surrounding women, bunks upon bunks, she decided that she hated women. At first it’d been almost fun, trying to get set in this new life jailed up. But the women with their aches and pains and hair and “lend me this and lend me
that” and the screaming and tears and things that make women cry which don’t make men cry and most of the children. Having to guard your own at the expense of others. Oh well, that’s what we’ve had to do since the Garden of Eden.

  On the loss side there was herself. She knew she had never been pretty, but now, with all the sores from some unknown bug or microbe, covering her, that was not good. And how her pretty gold hair had thinned and turned lank and gray and she was only thirty. Perhaps the doctors will put the sores away when we get out. Tropical sores. Horrid. But they’re sure to have a cure.

  Down the shed, atapped and bugpooled above, one of the women was weeping in her sleep. That’d be Mrs. Font. Still worrying about the disease she’d caught from the guard to get food to keep Georgie alive, but the medicine didn’t keep him alive and now all she had was the disease and the hurt of it. Poor woman. Well, they’ll get her well too when we get out.

  Grace wouldn’t ever think of Harold. No. Harold was sacrosanct. He was in Changi and someday they would be together again and they would go back home for a visit, but never, never, never would they ever live in Birmingham. Oh my dear no! Somewhere in England perhaps, but never in a city. In the country. Somewhere small and nice and open. No more smoke and dust and dirt. No. Over her dead body.

  Grace turned over and tried to sleep. She was content and knew that while her children were alive, she would live to guard them. And if they died, they died, and she would still live because a woman can always have more children and must live for the husband who was still alive. And even if her husband died, then she must still live for there are always people to take care of and look after and this was the world, the whole meaning of a woman’s life.