A Rude Awakening

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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.