The Horatio Stubbs Trilogy Read online

  ‘Sir, excuse me.’ I got up and forced my way over to Mercer’s table, ignoring the protests of other diners on the way. His rabble gave a cheer as I approached. Just to look at them made you feel slightly drunk. Six empty wine bottles stood or leaned on the table.

  ‘What are you on about, you nutter?’

  Johnny leaned heavily on the shoulders of the girl next to him, forcing her breasts down into a bowl of prawns, and waved four flabby fingers at me. ‘Here, Stubbsy, ’mazing coincidence … You were looking all over for him, weren’t you? Boyer, you tool, it’s Boyer, Boyer! Sitting at your table!’

  ‘Jesus …’ I looked down at him in pity. ‘Pissed again. Mercer. I came in here with him, didn’t I?’ I tottered back to Boyer’s table and took a steadying draught of whisky. An involuntary convulsion seized my digestive tract. Grasping the bottle and my throat, I stared at the blurred print on the label. BLACK TARTAN WOMBAT WISKEY Made in Scottland, Bottled by P. V. Ramakrishnan Bottling Mart, Kuala Lumpur.

  ‘Good stuff,’ said Boyer. ‘Better than that piss we had in the car. Drink up, cheers, salamat datang!’

  ‘I thought you were in Padang, sir,’ I said, shuddering at the dire things happening inside me as the whisky deployed its forces.

  Raddle had finished painting her lips and studying the effect in a small mirror. Now she decided to take some part in the conversation.

  ‘We flew from Padang via the RAF this morning, Stewbs.’

  ‘Did you really, Raddle?’

  ‘Maurice kindly accompanied me since I was scared to flew. I sail for the Netherlands via RAPWI on the ship Van Heutsz tomorrow. Good-bye to Sumatra after four ghastly years. Tonight we celebrate, Stewbs! Medan’s a step nearer civilisation! Cheers! To the Van Heutsz!’ She raised her glass high before drinking.

  The Van Heutsz was a four-and-a-half-thousand-ton symbol of hope to any non-military personnel wishing to escape from Sumatra. Just to be allowed aboard that ancient vessel, to become one of its crowded deck passengers, was to savour the redemptive quality of a new life. Raddle’s eves shone at the prospect.

  ‘Golly, she’s lovely, Stubbs, isn’t she?’ said Boyer, looking from one to the other of us as if trying to decide which was which. ‘Be honest, you can be honest. Isn’t she lovely? Poignant, too. A fine woman, Dutch as they come. Maastrich born.’ He shook his head. ‘I want to marry her but she’s married already. She was raped by the Japs, of course.’ He laughed and belted into the Black Tartan Wombat. ‘That’s life.’

  ‘Talking of marriage, sir, I wanted to ask you something personally –’

  Raddle screamed. ‘This whisky’s mewk! Oooh, Stewbs that fewking aeroplane from Padang, my gosh! What bumping we had. I was so terribly sick, you know.’ She gestured to make the scene more vivid to me, clutching her throat to illustrate. ‘Sick over my seat, sick over the flewer, sick over my frock, sick over my handbag, sick over Maurice – terrible!’

  ‘You were a bit icky, darling,’ Boyer said gallantly. ‘“Per ardua ad nauseam”.’ He laughed and sweated a bit more, splashing more Black Tartan Wombat into our glasses.

  ‘There’s a certain Chinese girl, sir –’

  ‘I can’t wait to get on the Van Heutsz tomorrow, it’ll be the end of four years bad lewk for me.’

  ‘Say you’ll miss me, darling, say you’ll miss your Maurice!’

  She started screaming in a confidential manner. ‘I just want to get back to the Netherlands, to my fewking home in Harlingen. It’s been snewing hard there this winter. Snew! Snew! Holy Virgin, snew and home cewking! Fresh Tampax!’

  As this conversation developed, the restaurant was closing.

  The last of the diners, all fairly tight, were being bundled towards the door. Johnny and his bird went out with the tide. The band offered a final selection from The Merry Widow, during which Boyer sang with ragged vehemence, ‘Though you sweat, Though you shave, They forget what you gave’ – and crept off home to their terrible bamboo beds. Eventually, we also were bundled off the premises with Raddle, practically in mid-stream, hymning her homeland.

  Immediately we were outside, all restaurant lights were switched off. A wall of dark descended. Cries of protest sounded all round as the last of the revellers floundered about in search of vehicles.

  Looking at the situation in cold blood, our vehicle was simple to detect, since a cloud of unpleasant smoke drifted from it; we had but to follow our noses to be home and dry. Unfortunately, an inner compulsion made us move with undersea sloth, bumping into palm trees as we went. Black Tartan Wombat is, in one respect at least, superior to any other wiskeys made in Scottland: it can ferret through the stomach lining, up the jugular vein, and into the cerebral hemispheres like a fit of greased lightning destroying anything it meets.

  A suspicion came to me through the murky liquid that Boyer, having survived his aerial ordeal by vomit, was so far sunk in love of the fair Raddle that he would probably smuggle himself aboard the Van Heutsz with her on the morrow. It was essential he give me permission to marry Margey before he disappeared. As this thought percolated, I became very crafty, winking and nodding to myself in the dark.

  Bumping into him accidentally-on-purpose, I grabbed Boyer’s tunic and would not let go. He in turn seized a nearby chunk of Raddle’s anatomy and she led us to the car. The driver materialised. He shone a torch. He was Japanese. He wore the uniform of a Jap officer from which the insignia of rank had been removed, although he retained his revolver. This struck me as immensely ironic. I began to laugh uproariously. The Jap pushed me into the back seat, heaving Raddle and Boyer after me in quick succession. It was fumey in the car; the back seat consisted of springs and hot patches. I choked and laughed.

  Mistaking chuckling for cadging noises, Boyer passed me the wiskey bottle, saying, ‘You aren’t going to miss your poor old Maurice, you cow. ’Strue, every word of it. “Though you sweat, though you shave …”’ He began to sing into my ear, not wisely, but too well.

  ‘Sir, sir, I want to talk privately to you about a Chinese girl,’ I said, as we drove through the narrow streets. Boyer took no notice.

  ‘Don’t speak to him, Stewbs, he’s drunken. Jewst give me a cuddle.’

  In the confined space, it was rather easier to cuddle Raddle than not. I put my arm as far round her waist as it would go, which was somewhat less than half-way. She was fun, I thought, and really not bad-looking. Her hair was pretty. And curly. She was very animated. Her accent was attractive. As she moved my hand to her breast, Boyer cut off the supply of Lehar to announce, ‘I could tell you something about Chinese girls, Stubbs, believe me. They’ve got no blithering passion, no passion at all.’

  ‘You think so, sir?’

  ‘No blithering passion. Utterly submissive, brought up since birth to be utterly submissive. It’s an akkis – an accident of history. The sayings of Confucius – analects, I believe they are really. Analects, Stubbs.’

  ‘Sir.’

  ‘Why, in China proper, where the feet of the women are still bound –’

  ‘Oh, shewt up about the blewdy Orientals, can’t you, Maurice, mmm, I like it; more … What do you know about it really? Oh, yes, more of that. Harder. I’ve had my teeth full of Orientals. Oh, ooh, you brewt, ah …’

  ‘Darling, what I’m saying – I’m only saying the women have no passion, no response. Christ, this car’s abnormally smoky … They just lie there, flat as a pancake, no interest, no initiative. Analects. Not like you, darling. Where are we?’

  ‘Medan, sir.’

  ‘I know we’re in bloody Medan …’

  The world beyond the car was a world away. I was vaguely conscious of darkness, trees, a glimpse of sky, and lanterns burning in huts of kampongs. Raddle pressed against me on one side, Boyer on the other, and we sipped at the Black Tartan Wombat in turns as my free hand slid up her skirt. Boyer and I began to sing unpremeditatedly as one.

  I love a lassie,

  A bonny black Madrasi,

  She’s as black as t
he fucking ace of spades …

  We collapsed into giggles. Silence fell. I was there. Her lips clamped themselves to mine. We sped on through the thick night as if the driver intended taking us back to Tokyo and was not stopping till he hit the Ginza. My hand was trapped deep in Raddle’s oleaginous organ, which felt endless. Boyer dropped into a slumber on my shoulder. Existence struck me as extremely comical, if smoke-filled.

  ‘Something tells me I can’t stop feeling your vagina,’ I murmured, indistinctly.

  Raddle removed her tongue from my mouth in order to remark, ‘Maurice, I think I’m going to be sick again …’

  Pulling my hand away with a mighty slurp, I grabbed Boyer and shook him in fear, ‘Maurice, Maurice, sir, for fuck’s sake, wake up – she’s going to pewk again.’

  He started laughing stupidly, saying in a Scots accent, ‘Aye, weel, she was aye a passionate wee woman …’

  Fortunately, at that moment a green wire double gate materialised in the dark before our bonnet. We stopped with a tremendous jerk. Raddle was ejected out of the side door, a parabola of vomit springing from her lips to disappear beyond human ken into the equatorial night.

  ‘I think I’ll have a pee,’ said Boyer, ‘but remember what I say about the analects. Bloody stupid word, when you come to think …’

  I jumped out and had a pee too. Only in the middle of it did I take in the scene. We had arrived smoking at a Dutch enclave entirely surrounded by a high wire perimeter. On the other side of the gate was a guardhouse, complete with business-like guard with rifles and searchlights. Both rifles and searchlights were turned on us and our various bodily fluids. An electric generator hummed in the background, adding to the general obscene noises of the jungle close at hand.

  When Raddle had recovered sufficiently from her gargantuan vomiting operation to start swearing at the guard in Dutch, the gate was opened and we drove in, surrounded by our private smoke-screen.

  The realisation struck me that we must be some way out of town. To my saturated senses, it appeared strange that there were bungalows here with bright lights burning, and music playing on verandahs, and people dancing both indoors and under the trees. Such gaiety was paradoxical after the ride through darkness, as if one went back in a time-machine through the Jurassic and arrived at Las Vegas.

  The car stopped right in the middle of the revels. We tumbled out, coughing. A band was playing, a man’s voice bawled, ‘It brings back a night of tropical splendour, It brings back a memory –’, and then we were submerged in laughing faces which shone in the dark.

  Huge Dutchmen, all six foot seven, pressed Amsterdam beer and sausages into our hands. A barbecue party was in progress; figures ran insanely among low trees. Someone I recognised. He waved. Oh, yes, that chap, Sontrop. I flung him a salute and nearly fell over.

  Boyer and Raddle started dancing to the music, entrusting what was left of the Black Tartan Wombat to me. I sat down at a trestle table and lit a cigar, fighting off dizziness. People were talking to me, but I took no notice.

  Some while later, Sontrop came up with a friend. Although he carried a can of beer, he spoke with his usual sober courtesy. ‘It’s pleasant to see you here, Horatio. The Dutch are always delighted when their allies, the British, are personally friendly. This is my friend Hendrick. Hendrick Nieuwenhuis. May we enquire what you do here so late and so far from home?’

  Hendrick bowed to me, smiling politely.

  I gestured with the cigar. ‘You see, it’s simple really, I mean life’s only complex on the surface, because underneath it’s – well, it’s a lot more complicated, but we won’t go into that, but I want to marry Rosey – I mean, Margey. I want to marry Margey.’

  What else was said escapes me; I was trying to puzzle out why I felt unable to rise from the bench. I ate five sausages for their medicinal value.

  The conversation perhaps went on for some hours. The next bit I remember was Hendrick saying, ‘We are planning a little crocodile-shoot tomorrow. Perhaps you will care to come with us?’

  ‘Don’t know how to shoot crocodiles, don’t be silly.’

  ‘It’s just like shooting people. We give you a carbine – your revolver is no good for crocodile-shooting.’

  ‘Okay, thanks. Fun. I’d like to bring Margey along. Hey, Ernst, you taking a girl with you?’

  Sontrop looked at me and said, without anything you could call a change of expression, ‘I am a practising homosexual.’

  I did not know what to say to that.

  ‘Practice makes perfect,’ I said.

  With a violent crash, Captain Boyer landed almost at my feet. I went on hands and knees, bending over him, trying to listen to his heartbeat. His shirt was wet with sweat. Ernst and Raddle pulled me up. I still had the bottle.

  ‘He’s not dead, you fewl, Stewbbs,’ she said to me, looking red-eyed, ‘only dead-drunk. So much for the fewking analects. Help me get him to bed, if it’s all the same to you.’

  With a certain amount of aid from Sontrop, mainly of an advisory kind, Raddle and I heaved Boyer into a nearby bungalow. He came round sufficiently to make declarations of love and sing in a phlegmy voice as the three of us tottered into a rear bedroom. The room contained little more than a wooden double bed, the statutory mosquito-net, and a bare lamp bulb which glared down on the scene, making the eyes ache.

  Boyer lay back and opened his eyes. Full of innocence, they seemed to look for protection from the bastion of his nose. He started to take his trousers off.

  ‘I’ll leave you two now,’ I said. ‘Good-night, sir, sleep well. Bon voyage, Raddle, tomorrow.’

  ‘Wait outside,’ she said urgently as I passed her. Sontrop went out. I went out and slammed the door. It was dark in the hall. I leaned against the door, drawing on my cigar, trying to gather my wits. From their various points of dispersal, they told me that I was stuck in this parody of a concentration camp for the night, that most of the Dutch here were in festive mood because they were leaving on the Van Heutsz on the morrow, and that if I was not careful I would get a lot more of Raddle than a fistful of pubic hair and labia.

  Through the flimsy door, I heard her trying to rouse Boyer.

  ‘Come on, you bastard, darling, never mind the words, show the action.’

  ‘Oh, Raddle, darling, darling Raddle, you know I love you devotedly but I can’t, I just can’t … too much alcohol … putteth off from the performance … drown my sorrows …’

  ‘If it’s our last night, don’t mewk about, then. Lewk, lewk, I strip off! Rouse yourself! Observe my figure, fewk you!’

  ‘Oh, lovely, let me feel, oh, Raddle, how I’ll live without you …’

  Pounding, sucking noises, as of two goldfish colliding in anger. ‘Rise up, you blewdy tiddler!’

  ‘Oh, oh, too far gone …Black Wombat …’

  ‘Oh, you sod, you British sod, you fewking drunkard sod from Roehampton! How you like if I go and get your hulking great Sergeant Stewbbs to make love by me if you are incapable?’

  ‘No, no, darling, my precious, listen, Stubbs – good man, good chap in Burma, you weren’t in Burma – blithering nightmare – Stubbs doesn’t love you …’

  He muttered something about ‘Chink girls’, to which Raddle replied impatiently and jumped off the bed.

  I moved. Another door led off the cramped hall. I opened it and slipped in fast. Deep breathing. Someone was asleep close by my right elbow. A person – not a cobra, thank God. Cobras don’t grunt as they exhale.

  Darkness. I began to cough and had to smother my mouth with my hand; the fingers and thumb smelt strongly of something semi-delectable. Peering back through the door, which I held ajar, I saw Boyer’s door flung open with a crash. Raddle emerged, her face black with frustration. The navy blue dress was open all the way down, to reveal secrets of nature at their most titanic. Ida Lupino would never have appeared in such a state.

  As Raddle moved from the room at a canny trot, she seized some of the wiring which ran down the wall to the light swi
tch and pulled hard. The wiring came away in her hand, bringing the overhead bulb down with it. The light sparked and went out. She charged along the hall, scattering wires, and disappeared into the clamorous night, for all the world like a bull leaving a china shop after having tasted porcelain for the first time in its life.

  Instinct suggested that Raddle would not be back. Leaving the heavy sleeper to continue his act, still thoughtfully sniffing my hand, I tiptoed into the other room. Woozy sleeping noises emerged from Boyer’s huddled shape. I climbed on the bed beside him, my boots to his face; I pillowed my arms beneath my head, shut my ears to the racket outside, and was enclosed by a suffocating sleep in which cars, planes, and towns burned down all round.

  CHAPTER SIX

  As the years of the war continue to float downstream, releasing themselves from memory into history, it becomes increasingly easy to sentimentalise them. The antidote is to recall one marked aspect of war years everywhere: how often one was awakened from deep sleep by someone shouting or someone shaking, or by a combination of the two.

  Whoever was shaking me was not shouting. His silence was compensated for by sheer rudimentary vigour; I might have been a coconut palm in the grip of a starving Neanderthal. Groaning, I sat up and was motioned to keep quiet. I did not know where I was or what time it was. Both my watches had stopped. It was still dark, or barely light, and I could not recognise the man who stood over me.

  Now that I was awake, he released me, bending to whisper in my ear.

  ‘Coffee, two minute,’ he perorated, and crept out of the door.

  I instantly lay down to sleep again; the swine had the wrong man. Then a perfume caught my senses. I opened one eye. A woman’s head lay close by mine.

  With a certain sense of déja vu, I heaved myself up again and this time came more fully awake. Orientation returned. I was on Captain Boyer’s wooden bed. He was there and the woman Raddle was with him. They were both tucked inside the mosquito-net. I was outside the net. They had changed ends, either out of respect for my feelings or because they could not stand the smell of my feet. Gingerly, I climbed off the bed. It was obvious that some well-intentioned Dutchman was going to take me back to my billet in Djalan Sennal Road.