“After the show I went backstage to see him. There were some others waiting too, and after a while I got the weirdest feeling that these fellows were like the characters you meet at any stage door anywhere—you know, chaps with their tongues hanging out waiting for their girl friends.
“Finally the dressing room door opened and everyone surged in. I tagged along last and stood in the doorway. It was only then that it hit me that the men were all queers! Sean was sitting on a chair and they seemed to pour all over him, fawning on him and calling him ‘darling,’ hugging him and telling him how ‘marvelous’ he was—treating him like the beautiful star of the show. And Sean—Sean was enjoying it! Christ, he was actually enjoying their pawing! Like a bitch in heat.
“Then he suddenly saw me, and of course he was shocked too.
“He said ‘Hello, Peter’ but I couldn’t say anything. I stood staring at one of the bloody queers who had his hand on Sean’s knee. Sean was wearing a sort of flowing negligee and silk stockings and panties, and I got the feeling that he’d even arranged the folds of the negligee to show off his leg above the stocking—and it looked as if he had breasts under the negligee. Then I suddenly realized he wasn’t wearing a wig—all that hair was his own, and just as long and wavy as a girl’s.
“Then Sean asked everybody to leave. ‘Peter’s an old friend I thought was dead,’ he said. ‘I have to talk to him. Go on, please.’
“When they’d gone I asked Sean, ‘What in God’s name has happened to you? You were actually enjoying those scum pawing you.’
“‘What in God’s name has happened to all of us?’ Sean answered. Then he said with that wonderful smile of his, ‘I’m so glad to see you, Peter. I thought you were very dead. Sit down a moment while I clean my face off. We’ve a lot to talk about. Did you come on the Java work party?’
“I nodded, still in a state of shock, and Sean turned back to the mirror and began to wipe the makeup off with face cream. ‘What happened to you, Peter?’ he asked. ‘Did you get shot down?’
“When he started to take off the makeup I began to relax—everything seemed more normal. I told myself that I’d been stupid—that this was all part of the show—you know, keeping up the legend—and I was sure he’d only been pretending to enjoy it. So I apologized and said, ‘Sorry, Sean—you must think me a bloody fool! My God, it’s good to know you’re all right. I thought you’d had it too.’ I told him what had happened to me and then asked about him.
“Sean told me he’d been pranged by four Zeroes and had to parachute. When he finally got back to the airfield and found my plane, it was just a shambles. I told him how I’d set fire to it before I left—I hadn’t wanted the bloody Japs to repair the wing.
“‘Oh,’ he said, ‘well, I just presumed you’d pranged yourself landing—that you’d had it. I stayed in Bandung at headquarters with the rest of the bods and then we were all put into a camp. Shortly afterwards we were sent to Batavia and from there to here.’
“Sean was looking at himself in the mirror all the time, and his face was as smooth and fine as any girl’s. Suddenly I got the strangest feeling that he had forgotten all about me. I didn’t know what to do. Then he turned away from the mirror and looked right at me, and he was frowning in a funny way. All at once I sensed how unhappy he was, so I asked him if he wanted me to go.
“‘No,’ he said. ‘No, Peter, I want you to stay.’
“And then he picked up a girl’s purse that was on the dressing table, dug out a lipstick and began making up his lips.
“I was stunned. ‘What’re you doing?’ I said.
“‘Putting on lipstick, Peter.’
“‘Come off it, Sean,’ I said. ‘A joke’s a joke. The show was over half an hour ago.’
“But he went right on, and when his lips were perfect he powdered his nose and brushed his hair, and by God he was the beautiful girl again. I couldn’t believe it. I still thought in some weird way he was playing a joke on me.
“He patted a curl here and there and then sat back and examined himself in the mirror, and he seemed absolutely satisfied with what he saw. Then he saw me in the mirror staring at him and he laughed. ‘What’s the matter, Peter?’ he said. ‘Haven’t you been in a dressing room before?’
“‘Yes,’ I said, ‘I have—a girl’s dressing room.’
“He looked at me a long time. Then he straightened his negligee and crossed his legs. ‘This is a girl’s dressing room,’ he said.
“‘Come off it, Sean,’ I said, getting irritated, ‘it’s me, Peter Marlowe. We’re in Changi, remember? The show’s over and now everything’s normal again.’
“‘Yes,’ he said perfectly calmly, ‘everything’s normal.’
“It took me a long time to say anything. ‘Well,’ I managed to get out at last, ‘aren’t you going to get out of those clothes and clean that muck off your face?’
“‘I like these clothes, Peter,’ he said, ‘and I always wear makeup now.’ He got up and opened a cupboard and by God it was full of sarongs and dresses and panties and bras and so on. He turned around and he was perfectly calm. ‘These are the only clothes I wear nowadays,’ he said. ‘I am a woman.’
“‘You must be out of your mind,’ I said.
“Sean walked over and stared up at me, and I couldn’t get it out of my head that somehow this was a girl—he looked like one and acted like one and talked like one and smelled like one. ‘Look, Peter,’ he said, ‘I know it’s difficult for you to understand, but I’ve changed. I’m no longer a man, I’m a woman.’
“‘You’re no more a bloody woman than I am!’ I yelled. But it didn’t seem to touch him at all. He just stood there smiling like a madonna, and then he said, ‘I’m a woman, Peter.’ He touched my arm just the way a girl would, and he said, ‘Please treat me as a woman.’
“Something in my head seemed to snap. I grabbed his arm and ripped the negligee off his shoulders and tore off the padded bra and shoved him in front of the mirror.
“‘You call yourself a woman?’ I shouted. ‘Look at yourself! Where are your bloody breasts?’
“But Sean didn’t look up. He just stood in front of the mirror with his head down and his hair falling over his face. The negligee was hanging off him and he was naked to the waist. I grabbed him by the hair and jerked his head up. ‘Look at yourself, you bloody deviate!’ I yelled. ‘You’re a man, by God, and you always will be.’
“He just stood there saying nothing at all, and finally I realized he was crying. Then Rodrick and Frank Parrish rushed in and shoved me out of the way, and Parrish pulled the negligee around Sean and took him in his arms, and all the time Sean just went on crying.
“Frank kept hugging him and saying, ‘It’s all right, Sean, it’s all right.’ Then he looked at me, and I knew he wanted to kill me. ‘Get out of here, you bloody bastard,’ he said.
“I don’t even know how I got out of there—when I finally came to I was wandering around the camp, and I was beginning to realize that I’d had no right, no right at all, to do what I’d done. It was insane.”
Peter Marlowe’s face was naked with anguish. “I went back to the theater. I had to try to make my peace with Sean. His door was locked but I thought I heard him inside. I knocked and knocked, but he wouldn’t answer and he wouldn’t open the door, so I got angry again and I shoved the door open. I wanted to apologize to his face, not through a door.
“He was lying on the bed. There was a big cut on his left wrist and there was blood all over the place. I put a tourniquet on him and somehow got hold of old Doc Kennedy and Rodrick and Frank. Sean looked like a corpse, and he didn’t make a sound all the time Kennedy was sewing up the scissor slash. When Kennedy finished, Frank said to me, ‘Are you satisfied now, you rotten bastard?’
“I couldn’t say anything. I just stood there hating myself.
“‘Get out and stay out,’ Rodrick said.
“I started off, but then I heard Sean calling me, in a kind of weak, faint whisper. I
turned around and saw that he was looking at me not angrily, but as if he pitied me. ‘I’m sorry, Peter,’ he said. ‘It wasn’t your fault.’
“‘Christ, Sean,’ I managed to say. ‘I didn’t mean you any harm.’
“‘I know,’ he said. ‘Please be my friend, Peter.’
“Then he looked at Parrish and Rodrick and said, ‘I wanted to go away, but now,’ and he smiled his wonderful smile, ‘I’m so happy to be home again.’”
Peter Marlowe’s face was drained. The sweat was running down his neck and chest. The King lit a Kooa.
Peter Marlowe half shrugged, helplessly, then got up and walked away, deep in his remorse.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
“Come on, hurry up,” Peter Marlowe said to the yawning men lined up bleakly outside the hut. It was just after dawn and breakfast was already memory and the deficiency of it served only to increase the men’s irritability. And, too, the long sun-hot day at the airfield was ahead of them. Unless they had the luck.
It was rumored that today one detail was going to the far west side of the airfield where the coconut trees grew. It was rumored that three trees were going to be cut down. And the heart of a coconut tree was not only edible but very nutritious and a great delicacy. It was called “millionaire’s cabbage,” for a whole coconut tree had to die to provide it. Along with the millionaire’s cabbage there would be coconuts as well. More than enough for a thirty-man detail. So officers and enlisted men alike were tense.
The sergeant in charge of the hut came up to Peter Marlowe and saluted. “That’s the lot, sir. Twenty men including me.”
“We’re supposed to have thirty.”
“Well, twenty’s all we have. The rest’re sick or on wood detail. Nothin’ I can do about it.”
“All right. Let’s get up to the gate.”
The sergeant got the men under way and they began streaming loosely along the jail wall to join the rest of the airfield detail near the barricade-gate west. Peter Marlowe beckoned to the sergeant and got the men herded together in the best position—near the end of the line, where they were likelier to be chosen for the tree detail. When the men noticed that their officer had maneuvered them just right they began to pay attention and sorted themselves out quickly.
They all had their rag shirts tucked into grub-bags. Grub-bags were an institution, and took many forms. Sometimes they were regulation haversacks, sometimes suitcases, sometimes rattan baskets, sometimes bags, sometimes a cloth and a stick, sometimes a piece of material. But all the men carried some container for the plunder to be. On a work party there was always plunder, and if it wasn’t millionaire’s cabbage or coconut, it could be driftwood, firewood, coconut husks, bananas, oil palm nuts, edible roots, leaves of many types, or even sometimes papaya.
Most of the men wore clogs of wood or tire rubber. Some wore shoes with the toes cut out. And some had boots. Peter Marlowe was wearing Mac’s boots. They were tight, but for a three-mile march and a work party they were better than clogs.
The snake of men began marching through the gate west, an officer in charge of each company. At the head was a group of Koreans and at the tail was a single Korean guard.
Peter Marlowe’s group waited near the rear for space to join the march. He was looking forward to the trek and the prospect of the trees. He shifted his shirt more comfortably in the rucksack strap and adjusted his water bottle—not the bottle, for to take that would have been dangerous on a work party. You could never tell when a guard or someone else might want to take a drink.
Finally it was time to move, and he and his men began to walk towards the gate. As they passed the guardhouse they saluted, and the squat little Japanese sergeant stood on the veranda and returned their salute stiffly. Peter Marlowe gave the number of his men to the other guard, who checked them against the total already tallied.
Then they were outside the camp and walking the tarmac road. It curled easily, with gentle hills and dales, then sped through a rubber plantation. The rubber trees were unkempt and untapped. Now that’s strange, thought Peter Marlowe, for rubber was at a premium and a vital food for war.
“Hello, Duncan,” he said as Captain Duncan and his group began to pass. He fell into step beside Duncan, keeping his eyes on his own group, the next ahead.
“Isn’t it great to have the news again?” Duncan said.
“Yes,” he replied automatically, “if it’s true.”
“Must say it sounds too good to be true.”
Peter Marlowe liked Duncan. He was a little Scot, red-haired and middle-aged. Nothing seemed to faze him. He always had a smile and a good word. Peter Marlowe had the feeling that something was different about him today. Now what was it?
Duncan noted his curiosity and grimaced to show his new false teeth.
“Oh, that’s it,” said Peter Marlowe. “I was wondering what was different.”
“How do they look?”
“Oh, better than none at all.”
“Now that’s a fine remark. I thought they looked pretty good.”
“I can’t get used to aluminum teeth. They look all wrong.”
“Went through bloody hell to have mine taken out. Bloody hell!”
“Thank God my teeth are all right. Had to have them filled last year. Rotten business. You’re probably wise to have had all yours taken out. How many did—”
“Eighteen,” said Duncan angrily. “Makes you want to spit blood. But they were completely rotten. Doc said something about the water and lack of chewable material and rice diet and lack of calcium. But my God, these false ones feel great.” He chomped once or twice reflectively, then continued, “The dental chaps are very clever the way they make them. Lot of ingenuity. Of course, I have to admit it’s a bit of a shock—not having white teeth. But for comfort, why, lad, I haven’t felt so good in years, white or aluminum makes no difference. Always had trouble with my teeth. To hell with teeth anyway.”
Up ahead, the column of men moved into the side of the road as a bus began to pass. It was ancient and puffing and steaming and had seats for twenty-five passengers. But inside were nearly sixty men, women and children, and outside another ten were hanging on with fingers and toes. The top of the bus was piled with cages of chickens and baggage and mat-rolls. As the asthmatic bus passed, the natives looked curiously at the men and the men eyed the crates of half-dead chickens and hoped the bloody bus would break down or go into a ditch and then they could help push it out of the ditch and liberate a dozen or so chickens. But today the bus passed, and there were many curses.
Peter Marlowe walked alongside Duncan, who kept on chattering about his teeth and showing them in the broadness of his smile. But the smile was all wrong. It looked grotesque.
Behind them a Korean guard, slouching lethargically, shouted at a man who fell out of the line to the side of the road, but the man merely dropped his pants and quickly relieved himself and called out “Sakit marah”—dysentery—so the guard shrugged and took out a cigarette and lit it while he waited, and quickly the man was back in line once more.
“Peter,” said Duncan quietly, “cover for me.”
Peter Marlowe looked ahead. About twenty yards from the road, on a little path beside the storm ditch, were Duncan’s wife and child. Ming Duncan was Singapore Chinese. Since she was Oriental, she was not put into a camp along with the wives and children of the other prisoners, but lived freely in the outskirts of the city. The child, a girl, was beautiful like her mother, and tall for her age, and she had a face that would never wear a sigh upon it. Once a week they “happened” to pass by so that Duncan could see them. He always said that as long as he could see them Changi was not so bad.
Peter Marlowe moved between Duncan and the guard, shielding him, and let Duncan fall back to the side of his men.
As the column passed by, the mother and child made no sign. When Duncan passed, their eyes met his, briefly, and they saw him drop the little piece of paper to the side of the road, but they kept on walking, and t
hen Duncan had passed and was lost in the mass of men. But he knew they had seen the paper, and knew that they would keep on walking until all the men and all the guards were gone; then they would return and find the paper and they would read it and that thought made Duncan happy. I love you and miss you and you are both my life, he had written. The message was always the same, but it was always new, both to him and to them, for the words were written afresh, and the words were worth saying, over and over and over. Forever.
“Don’t you think she’s looking well?” Duncan said as he rejoined Peter Marlowe.
“Wonderful, you’re very lucky. And Mordeen’s growing up to be a beauty.”
“Ay, a real beauty that one. She’ll be six this September.”
The happiness faded, and Duncan fell silent. “How I wish this war was over,” he said.
“Won’t be long now.”
“When you get married, Peter, marry a Chinese girl. They make the best wives in the world.” Duncan had said the same thing many times. “I know that it’s hard to be ostracized, and hard on the children—but I’ll die content if I die in her arms.” He sighed. “But you won’t listen. You’ll marry some English girl and you’ll think you’re living. What a waste! I know. I’ve tried both.”
“I’ll have to wait and see, won’t I, Duncan?” Peter Marlowe laughed. Then he quickened his pace to get into position ahead of his men. “I’ll see you later.”
“Thanks, Peter,” Duncan called after him.
They were almost up to the airfield now. Ahead was a group of guards waiting to take their parties to their work areas. Beside the guards were mattocks and spades and shovels. Already many of the men were streaming under guard across the airfield.
Peter Marlowe looked west. There was one party heading for the trees already. Bloody hell!