‘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 a
s 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.)