The Horatio Stubbs Trilogy Read online

  ‘Small hole, small hole …’ I was laughing and gasping. Small but all embracing. She seemed to be laughing too, a strange short sobbing. Oh, that had really been good, she had come as well. We were made for each other!

  I lay by her until the boy banged on the door and the girl called out to him.

  ‘You okay, Johnny?’

  ‘Chibberao, son, I’ll be out when I’m ready!’

  But I got up, reluctantly pulling the sodden frenchie off my prick.

  I wanted to do it again.

  My feelings were all soft – happiness and gratitude.

  The girl sat up on the bed, drawing a knee under her chin. She leaned her head back against the wall. The slight sobbing noises still came from her, which seemed rather unnatural – she could not have been that emotionally shaken. I looked at her in the half-dark. I had already observed how deep-set were her eyes. Now a trick of the light made her eye-sockets seem almost hollow. One eye gleamed dully. She appeared to be staring stupidly up at the ceiling.

  Looking away from her, I began to get dressed. Things were okay as they were. She didn’t have to be mentally deficient or sick of a fever or anything. She was just tired, perhaps a bit shy, perhaps vexed with herself that she had no English. She was lovely and I was grateful to her. Shut in this foul dump, anything might happen to you – it was like somewhere out of Victorian London.

  ‘I’m going now, love,’ I grasped her hot little hand. Could I make some arrangement with her mother whereby I – no, she was just another bibi and I was just another fucking squaddie.

  ‘You were really so beautiful …’ Less conviction in my voice than I had intended. What a fool I would feel if Wally or the boys heard me talking to a little whore like that! Reality was creeping in. I was sweating like a pig.

  She remained on the bed, one hand brushing her forehead. I went out, pushed by the chicko, went downstairs past the bundles, past the old fellow still sitting there with his hen, unbolted the door, stood outside in the cooler air. The white blossom by the candle had not withered.

  No Redcaps. I chose my way back into bounds again carefully; but for the rest of the evening I avoided my muckers. There was nothing to say to them.

  ‘You never want to listen to rumours. You want to live on a day-to-day basis.’ So said Bamber, and said it frequently. ‘That’s how you gets through time in jug, see – you never listens to rumours and you lives on a day-to-day basis.’

  Old Bamber spoke true. That was how we had lived at school; that was how I lived now. Day followed day, at Kanchapur as elsewhere. Never look ahead. Why do so? The lists were circulating; somebody else had command over what happened to you tomorrow.

  Such narrowing down of perspectives did not stop rumours circulating. Few of us were as impervious to them as Bamber, for they represented our fears and anxieties in almost concrete form.

  ‘Do you think that 8 Brigade could be posted to Persia next week?’ Carter the Farter and I asked Bamber and Chalkie White, the other old sweat of 2 Platoon.

  ‘Anything’s possible in this man’s army,’ Chalkie said. ‘If we was to be posted to the top of Everest, I wouldn’t be surprised.’

  ‘No, honest, Chalkie!’

  ‘You young lads!’ Bamber exclaimed in his deep and melancholy voice. ‘You run around after rumours like a lot of young tarts! You never want to listen to rumours. We’ll go where we are sent when they want to send us, and there ain’t nothing you or me can do about it.’

  Wise but unsatisfying. The word on Persia sprang up before morning parade, when we were cleaning rifles; by dinner-time, details were emerging. We were going to join up with Russian troops by the Caspian Sea and help them wipe out the rest of the Wehrmacht.

  ‘Persia can’t be worse than this fucking place, can it?’

  ‘Roll on the boat that takes me home!’

  ‘Finest sight in the Far East – Bombay from the back end of a boat!’

  ‘Where is fucking Persia, any road?’

  Since nobody in the squad was dead certain exactly where Persia was, it was hard to determine whether this news represented a promise of improvement in our condition. But Captain Gore-Blakeley was seen talking gravely to Sergeant Charley Meadows, which suggested that something was brewing. Certainly Persia sounded better than Akyab or Ramree Island, on the dreaded Arakan coast of Burma, looking on to the Bay of Bengal, the part of the world on which previous rumours had centred.

  Then, in another day or two, Gore-Blakeley was seen talking to Charley Meadows again, and the Arakan was reinstated as Number One destination. Persia vanished. Combined Ops, some said. Combined Ops, with 2 Div leading the invasion of Burma from the sea. Before Christmas!

  ‘You never want to listen to rumours,’ Bamber said.

  We had one consultant to whom we could always turn for advice. That was Ali, our char-wallah. In mid-morning, during late afternoon, and all evening until lights-out, Ali sat in or patrolled our barrack-block, selling his thin sweet tea at two annas a mug, dispensing his little sweet cakes for four annas each. He would make his last round before ten o’clock, his urn perched on top of his turban, giving out his low cry, ‘Lovely cake, and char, lovely cake and char! Last round of the evening, gentlemen, before finish!’ Chaps who rolled in late would ask, ‘Where’s Ali?’ and fuck and blind if they had missed him. Ali was a landmark.

  Ali was respected. He had seen countless new intakes through Kanchapur, and knew how to deal with them. He was regarded as a sharp old bastard. He ran a limited credit system, which is to say that he would occasionally let you have a mug of tea or cake when you were completely skint, on promise of payment the following Friday pay-day. He never wrote anything down, and could remember countless petty sums. By Thursday, all the boozers would be penniless and stay in barracks, playing pontoon for match-sticks and getting mugs of char to be paid for on the following day.

  Apart from Ernie Dutt, our corporal, the oldest bod in 2 Platoon was Chalkie White. Chalkie was a real old sweat, with a leathery face and perfectly blancoed equipment and polished boots. He was the goalie of our team. On guard parades, Chalkie always fell out as stick-man. He spoke very quietly and was a deadly shot, like Bamber. Chalkie had been out in India before, way back in 1935; the very first day that 8 Brigade had arrived at Kanchapur, Ali came up to him and humbly demanded five rupees.

  It turned out that Ali had been a char-wallah, or perhaps just a char-wallah’s mate, up in Peshawar in 1935. Chalkie had then run up a debt of five rupees. Eight years and many intakes later, Ali lived to collect the cash. He never forgot a debt or a face. Chalkie, of course, paid up like a gent.

  This feat of memory on Ali’s part raised his stock very high in our company. It also raised Charlie’s stock; he became famous as the only man who had escaped from India without paying his char-wallah. To Ali we went for confirmation or denial of all rumours, and for obvious reasons: Ali, mindful of Chalkie’s long debt, kept himself informed on all possible troop movements. He did this through the network of sweepers, bearers, and traders who worked in the camp and the company office.

  It was Ali who informed us we were going to Belgaum for training in amphibious operations.

  This information was greeted with groans, especially from those who had at first thought they heard Belgium mentioned.

  ‘I’m going fucking sick, me, mate,’ said Wally Page, rolling his sleeves up his fleecy yellow arms and striking me three inches above the elbow. ‘How about you? Belgaum! Bugger that! They aren’t getting this boy on any amphibious operations.’

  ‘Perhaps it’ll just sort of be for a week or two like,’ suggested Geordie. ‘A week or two wouldn’t be too bad, would it?’ He looked anxiously at Wally and me.

  ‘I’d rather go to the Arakan and see a bit of action,’ I said.

  ‘Me too, Stubby! We can leave Geordie down in fucking Belgaum. Willie Swinton wants his fucking head looking at!’ Willie Swinton was Lieutenant-Colonel William Swinton, Officer Commanding the 2nd Royal Mendip Bo
rderers. ‘He’s just letting Mountbatten fuck him about. We could have done amphibious ops in bloody Blighty, couldn’t we?’

  ‘Not in bloody Belgaum, you couldn’t,’ Geordie said.

  ‘Shit in it, Geordie! I’m not splashing through mangrove swamps with a wireless set strapped to my back for Willie Swinton or anyone, I tell you straight.’

  ‘Bollocks! You’re off your fucking rocker, Page! You’ll bloody splash when they say splash, and you know it!’

  ‘You think so? You want to bet?’

  But as usual we all splashed when they said splash, the protesters like Wally as well as the non-protesters like Geordie.

  Ali was right. Belgaum, down on the west coast below Bombay, it was – there we were destined to spend Christmas, and many other weary days besides.

  We marched out of barracks very early one morning in December, wearing FSMO, with exhortations from the sergeants to show bags of bull as we approached the town. As we went down the road, sturdily singing The Old Red Bags That Mary Wore, dawn flooded in behind the Parsee tower of silence. The night clouds were torn apart and despatched, turning from slate to gold as they went, in less time than it would take to rip through a Wagner overture, and then fading to nothing before you could tune up for the next number. There was a sort of thrilling terror in the way the sun struggled up into its sky – you knew what a pasting it was going to give you before it set.

  Farewell, Kanchapur! And farewell – but I never knew her hot little name!

  All that Prestatyn had ever been as a name of hatred, Belgaum became. There was no other similarity between them.

  We were not in Belgaum itself – a sleezy military town which we came to look upon as a comparative haven – but in an area much nearer the coast called Vadikhasundi. Here we lived in tents for two months on a freak stretch of red desert, while all about us were jungle, rivers, creeks, hills, the sea, and the mangrove swamps predicted by Wally Page. Here we could fall off LTCs into five feet of stinking water and attack thorn-covered high ground to our heart’s delight. We were often so shagged by the end of the day that we could hardly stagger back to camp.

  ‘Never mind, lads,’ said Charley Meadows, mopping his big red face. ‘After this, Burma will be a piece of cake.’

  Vadikhasundi was what they called a permanent camp. Others had suffered there before us. There we passed Christmas, singing I’m Dreaming of a White Mistress with heavy relish for our own wit. Traces of the other poor buggers who had trained in Vadikhasundi lay in the parade ground, where its red sand was discoloured by patches and streaks of yellow – signifying the site where hundreds of BORs had pretended to swallow the morning mepacrine tablet and instead had ground it underfoot, happily risking malaria in the exercise of their own free will.

  The whole place was prehistoric. Centipedes and scorpions cantered about by night, snakes skittered under every stone and the mosquitoes were almost big enough to mate with the blue-bottles which stormed through our latrines. The standing tents in which we lived were ancient and rotten; Jack Aylmer, our all-knowing orderly, claimed they had been left over from the Mesopotamia campaign in the first world war. Our mess was just a big native basha, a rattan-screen affair with a roof thatched with palm leaves.

  Geordie Wilkinson, Dusty Miller, and I strolled over to this mess for tiffin on the day after Boxing Day, discussing the latest rumour, which was that our training was to be cut short, that we were returning to Kanchapur to pick up stores and M/T, and that we were then going straight across India to join a Burmese invasion force at Madras. A nice juicy rumour to get the teeth into, unlike the food we were offered.

  The cooks stood in a row outside their cookhouse – three big fat greasy men. One of them, the biggest and greasiest, a goon called Ron Rusk, was cordially disliked by all for his cheerful cry of ‘Get in, pigs, it’s all swill!’

  They dished us out with a chunk of bread, meat stew, mashed potato, and a mug of scalding char. It was only a few yards to walk from the cooks into the mess.

  As we strolled along chatting, there was a sudden rush of air and a great bird, flying from behind us, dived between Geordie and me and scooped a double claw-full of the stew out of Geordie’s mess-tin, which went skittering out of Geordie’s hand along the ground. He jumped back yelling, his Adam’s apple bobbing in alarm.

  ‘Fuckin’ hell, mate! I’ve been fuckin’ attacked! That’s my bloody fuckin’ grub, that is! I bloody earnt that grub!’

  By now, the shabby bird was alighting on top of the cookhouse roof, next to its buddies. The three cooks were roaring with laughter, rolling about behind their counter.

  ‘You’re in fucking India now, mate,’ one of them said. ‘Did you think that was a canary? Haven’t you ever seen shite-hawks before?’

  ‘I have,’ I told him. ‘They’re what you put in this fucking stew, aren’t they?’

  ‘I don’t want any lip from you either,’ Rusk told me. ‘You want to get your bloody knees brown before you speak to me.’

  The universal kite-hawks – universally known as ‘shite-hawks’ – had been plentiful in Kanchapur; in Vadikhasundi, they were two a penny. Like the fly, the shite-hawk was one of India’s essential scavengers, and always advanced as a prime item in the squaddie’s oft-repeated proof of India’s filthiness.

  ‘Never mind our fucking knees, I want some more stew,’ Geordie said, holding his mess-tin out. ‘I mean, I’ve got a legal right, like, to some more.’ I saw that the bird had raised two bloody weals on his flesh, stretching from near his elbow right down to the ball of his thumb.

  ‘There’s no such thing as rights in this man’s army. You’ve had your ration,’ Rusk said, waving a ladle indignantly. ‘If you’ve wasted it, that’s your fault, but you aren’t getting no more, not from us, you aint!’

  ‘Come on, man! You saw what bloody happened – give me some more. Please!’ For a little while Geordie looked near to tears.

  ‘Piss off, Jack! That’s your lot. No double helpings – this ain’t the Ritz.’

  ‘Give him some bloody more!’ Dusty and I said. ‘You stingy buggers; you’ve got a fucking dixie full of the shit!’

  ‘There’s others beside you, you know. You aren’t the only buggers in this man’s regiment, if you think you are. Now – shove off, will you? Jao!’

  I looked about me. ‘Where’s the orderly corporal? Why isn’t he here? Come on, Geordie, let’s get the orderly corporal! He’ll soon sort these cunts out. Their fucking feet won’t touch.’

  Geordie hesitated. He was not the pugnacious type. But Rusk decided the matter.

  ‘Buzz off and find the orderly dog – he’ll tell you same as I do. One man, one ration, that’s the rule, and if you’re fool enough to give yours to the shite-hawks, that’s up to you!’

  ‘What were you trying to do? Tame it?’ one of the other cooks asked, and they all laughed, their stomachs shaking. By now, more types were lining up for grub, and we moved off. It was useless to get mixed up with the orderly corporal, who was some clot from ‘C’ Company.

  ‘I’ll fix those bastard cooks,’ Geordie said, as we sat down at the tables. It sounded like an empty boast.

  ‘Want a bite of my shite-hawk stew, Geordie?’ Dusty asked.

  We all burst out laughing.

  It was marvellous being one of the lower classes, with the particular generalized lower-classness of the Army. You could be your own awful self, provided you observed the unwritten rules. All the hypocrisies of home-life dissolved. Above all, you did not have to pretend to be content; in the Army, it went the other way – the ideal was to complain all the time.

  Certainly there was always something to tick about. Our manoeuvres were pure hell – ‘total aggs’, as the phrase went. On a nearby foetid lake, we plunged off tethered assault-craft into four feet of muddy water and charged ashore. We ran for miles to attack imaginary machine-gun posts. Through thick jungle we stalked others of our kind acting as Japs. We swung across cables and crawled on our bellies. We made
long forced marches at night. We slogged through sea and mangrove swamp. We slept in the open and practised street-fighting in a dummy village. We sweated our guts out. And all the time we grumbled.

  We grumbled because this was not the real thing but a stunt laid on by GHQ Delhi; we grumbled because the real thing loomed ahead. We grumbled about the Japs, the war, the Army, the sergeants, the officers, the food, the drink, the climate, the lack of sleep, our feet, everything. I loved every minute of it in retrospect.

  Even shitting was fun. The latrines were situated not far from the cookhouse. Wally Page and I were there late one afternoon, balanced with our arses over the pole, crapping into a pit.

  ‘Another bastarding night march tonight,’ I said.

  ‘I’m covered with jungle sores. Burma will be heaven after this bloody circus!’

  ‘The wireless set plays hell with your prickly-heat, doesn’t it?’

  All of India sprawled before us, over low bushes. My trousers were round my ankles. Sweat ran down my chest. You could see a bit of the lake among the dispirited trees. Beyond it rolled the hills. Our turds dropped smack down into the lime-covered mess below. Huge flies zoomed about. The sun was getting low, but even the nights were hot.

  Wally reached for a bit of newspaper. ‘At least we’re saving money here. My old man and me are going to leave the factory and open up a fish-and-chip shop when I get home.’