A Rude Awakening

I could distinguish Margey’s Chinese name, Tung Su Chi.

She called a brief answer, propping herself up on an elbow.

The other woman entered the adjoining cubicle. A faint light showed on the ceiling above the bed where we lay, framed in giant shadows thrown by the top of the partition. The woman sighed heavily as she sank down on her bed. Daisy had come home.

Whispers, faint soggy noises, the smack of a wet breast, told us that she had her baby with her and was nursing it.

Daisy was no relation of Margey’s. She was simply one of the people who found refuge under this particular roof until affairs in Sumatra took a turn for the better. She spoke no English, so there was never any contact between us. All day she left her baby in the care of old Auntie downstairs while she worked on a nearby farm, returning only in the evening. Daisy had no husband and the baby was half Japanese. She and Margey were – in Margey’s words – ‘friendly but no too friendly.’

‘She’s late – it’s nearly curfew,’ I whispered to Margey. ‘How about a drink?’

Margey would not be deflected. Wrapping a sheet round her body, she got up and closed the window against the rain. She had propped it open before joining me on the bed. Then she turned and looked at me, her face in shadow, her eyes dark, the smooth line of her shoulder gleaming in the lamplight.

‘Take me to London with you, Horry. You see, I will be good girl, not tease you or sleep with other man, I promise. London good prace. I dress very beautiful in latest fashion, become great fashion sensation like Rita Hayworth.’

I sat up impatiently.

‘Margey, darling, we’ve been through all this. You know I can’t take you with me.’

‘Is impossible you jus’ vanish next Monday. How can bear that, Horry?’

‘I don’t know how we’ll bear it, Margey. I can’t stand the thought of it even now. It’s just one of those shitty things that will have to happen. My time’s up.’

Rain was falling more heavily. It drummed on the tiles overhead. Water started to splash heavily on the landing beyond our door. Giving me a hard look to keep me going for the moment, Margey padded out barefoot and set a bowl under the drip. Immediately, a steady ping-ping-ping began.

Marching back into the room, Margey took up her position by the lamp, folded her arms, and said, ‘You very deceive your Margey – you got other girl-friend in London, you sweaty swine. Is that girl Sonia you tell me about. The one with the freckles.’

‘I told you, I’ve had one month in England during the last five years. It’s a fucking foreign country as far as I’m concerned. All the girls I once knew are probably married and toothless old hags by now.’

‘Sonia got terrible disease by now.’ She spoke with vindictive pleasure.

‘Yeah, well … maybe. Babies at least – already learning to shave.’

Instead of laughing, she renewed her pleas. A moth came over the top of the partition like a flung duster and settled on her bare shoulder. Margey ignored it.

‘You take me with you London, darling. You and me very good each other, all time have fun and make love. How you think you can live in foreign country without me?’

‘Don’t cry, Margey. Honestly, I think about the problem all the time. I don’t know what to do. Try to understand. My time is up. Christ … All my mates think I’m mad because I don’t want to go back to the Blight. My time is up, I’m time-expired. I’ve served my seven years and I’ve got to return to Civvy Street. That’s orders. I couldn’t live on in Medan even if I wanted to.’

She put her hands up to her cheeks, gazing down at her toes. The moth crawled on to her neck and she brushed it away. Rain fell solidly outside as if it would not be content until it broke down every rotten roof in Medan. Our small lamp-lit drama was wrapped about in liquid sound.

Margey suddenly climbed back on the bed, wrapped the sheet about us both, and tucked my shrivelled prick into the palm of her hand.

She spoke confidentially, as if she did not wish Daisy to hear.

‘One man tell me you can get army discharge in Singapore. Singapore belong Britain. Prenty British in Singapore. You get job in big firm like Cable & Wireless for good pay. I come along too, look after you, like first-class China wife.’

Speaking, her face filled with the vision of us together in a place at peace, and she smiled, showing those delicious teeth. At the same time, she gave my prick a playful squeeze.

I lay back, staring at the lamp on the sill with the packet of Bird’s Custard Powder beside it. If only Margey would shut up …

‘Who told you I could get demobbed in Singapore, Johnny Mercer?’ It was a possibility I had never mentioned to her.

Instead of answering the question, she bent and kissed my idling organ.

‘I show you many pleasure in Singapore. Is great good city, maybe next best in the world after Tsingtao and Peking and London and Paris. We can have much fun. Horry, you know, all time go many parties, live in big new flats now they build in Bukit Timah Road. I not tease you or look at any other man. Do you hear? No feel any penis except this lovely one all the time.’

It at least began to show enthusiasm for the proposed regime.

‘I’ve got to get back to my fucking family, Margey. Orders are orders. I can’t explain. It’s how things are. I don’t run the bloody world … Listen to that fucking rain …’

‘Fuck the fucking rain!’ Margey looked angrily at me, pulling her ugly Temple Watchdog face. She knew I dreaded her temper. ‘Why you mention about your family? You no care them – you bad drunk son! You never write any letter your mother or papa. We go Singapore, just you and I, then I learn speak much more good English and love you every way, like a slave, okay? That really is best for you, I know.’ She struck her bosom angrily. ‘My god, Singapore is lucky place of the Far East.’

That was a matter of opinion, though it was hardly the moment to argue with her. As far as the British were concerned, the whole disaster of Singapore stood out as a prime example of their failure to understand or care about any race East of India. During the nineteen-thirties, it had been fortified up to the eyeballs so as to be impregnable from the sea; in the nineteen-forties, the Japanese walked in through the back door and the Singapore garrison feebly surrendered. They surrendered to an enemy they had always regarded with contempt, a race of little men hardly worth fighting.

I had personal feelings about Singapore. When 2 Div finally pulled out of Burma, the Mendips had been given five weeks’ rest in Calcutta, and then our brigade had moved to Madras to undergo amphibious training with 26 Div. We were limbering up for the infamous Operation Zipper; our task was to take the impregnable Singapore from the Japanese by seaborne invasion! Bloody madness. Fortunately, Harry Truman got his finger out and dropped the A-bomb in the nick of time. We were spared our seaborne massacre and shipped over to Sumatra to repatriate Japs instead.

The war had been mad enough, with its interlocking maze of arbitrary decisions, but it was merely a consequence of the lunatic peace which had preceded it. What vain hopes Singapore represented in that direction! Its fortifications cost the British taxpayer twenty million pounds sterling, a fortune indeed in the twenties; and in the very week when those fortifications were started and the first stone laid, the financial wizards in London lent the Japs twenty-five million pounds sterling to build a navy with which to destroy Singapore and the rest of Britain’s power in the East. What a masterpiece of imperial idiocy! No wonder we lost the bloody empire!

Well, I write this a long time later, and Singapore, that elegant rat-race, has now gone its own way, free of British control. I have the advantage of hindsight. But it’s easy enough to see how such lunacies repeat themselves. The Soviet powers build up their vast armaments steadily year by year, while the West subsidises them to do so; Poland alone has been given (‘lent’ is the technical term) millions of deutschmarks with which to buy agricultural machinery. When the Warsaw Pact countries attack us, we shall all be astonished and indignant, forgetting how for years we have been sharpening the razors with which they cut our throats. Every decade, the distinction between war and peace becomes less, their yin-yang relationship more obvious.

But all I said to Margey at the time, as she clutched my prick and the moth singed itself on her lamp, was, ‘Fuck Singapore!’

She began to sob – another liquid sound far more noticeable than the others surrounding us.

‘Oh, pack it in, Margey. I love you but my fucking time is up. It’ll break my heart to leave you but that’s the way it is. Kismet.’ Checking my watches, I worked out that it must be eleven o’clock, give or take ten minutes. The rain was dying out.

Margey turned away from me and curled up in a foetal position, still sniffing.

‘You say you love your Margey, so you say. You say you like be in the East, so you say. Then why you go England? Now you must decide! For safety sake, since Medan is so dangerous, we go Singapore short time, okay, you and I? Later time, when Generalissimo Chiang Kai Shek throw out the rebels from China and law-and-order come back, then I take you Shantung, show you Tsingtao. We can go on the railway train! I have a pre-war timetable in my trunk. Is easy journey!’ She sat up, smiling again, stretching out her arms as if to embrace all China. ‘Aei-ya, Horry, just you think! You can see the Yellow Sea and those occasional beaches like I told you, with all the trees with flowers on when spring comes down from the mountains. I bet you like that, Horry, I really bet!’

‘Yeah, I would.’

Yeah, I would like it. Sweat rash apart, yes, I loved the East: I loved the extraordinary people, the muddle, the failure, the hope, the climate, the ghastliness, the perennial courage, the lack of pretension. Everything was much more real and exciting than anything I had known in England. But …

And Margey. Temper apart, yes, I loved Margey. She was so vulnerable, yet so bouncy, oppressed yet serene. She embodied in her frail plump self the whole teeming confused Chinese nation, that extraordinary half of the globe, that secret and alluring half, which existed almost like a female counterpart to the gun-toting, overcoat-clad West. Passionately, I longed to know her and, through her, her people better. I longed to dive deeper and not be jerked suddenly out of context like a carp out of a pool. But …

‘Oh, you so insc’utable! You say nothing!’ She kicked her savage little feet under the cover. ‘You say you love me, you no love me – jus’ because I China girl, I got yellow skin, you fool ignorant soldier!’

‘That’s all balls, Margey. Look, you are far paler than me.’ To make her look, I stripped the sheet back. There lay our bodies, soon to be divided for ever unless I got a fucking move on, lying together on the same bed, knees touching. I struck out angrily at a mosquito feasting on my leg, and left a smear of blood. Years of sun in India, Burma, and Sumatra had toasted my torso to a dark mahogany. From the waist up, I would have passed for a Dravidian on his annual holiday in Bermuda. By contrast, Margey’s soft figure was as tallowy as the sheet beneath us. I slid my hand between her legs, clutching the lips of her twot. ‘China girl skin like ivory. Horry love his China girl.’

With spirit, she said, ‘You no go with Katie Chae or I die. That girl got bad terrible disease.’

‘Horry love this China girl.’

‘Stink-pig, no make fun how I speak! If you try speak Shantung dialect, I make fun you, you foreign devil, you take your filthy disease hand out my cunt fast, or I scream for Daisy.’

Laughing, I overcame her resistance and kissed her. You were full of hope in those days, dear Margey, as I was. Have you lost it all by now, and the years ground you down?

At the time, I told myself that I still had a chance to make up my mind and to plan accordingly. Matters could be arranged. I would have to get military permission to marry Margey; otherwise, there was no way in which she could leave Sumatra. ‘Do you, Horatio Stubbs, take this China girl, Tung Su Chi, to be your lawful wedded wife?’ Then we could get to Singapore at least. Not that I wanted to stay in Singapore … There was India, but India was passing from British hands. And in England – I flinched to think of the cretinous reception Margey might receive there; the attitude of my mates in the mess gave me warning enough on that score.

In order to arrange anything, I had to get in touch with Captain Maurice Boyer, my company officer. I had left it a bit late, because Boyer was not in Medan. He was in Padang, on the other side of the island, and I would have to speak to him over the air.

There was another difficulty, which I had often tried to explain to Margey, who steadfastly refused to believe a word of all the unlikely formalities which constituted army regulations. I was in Medan on detachment from the Mendips. My battalion was stationed down in Padang, four hundred or so miles away, the other two battalions of 8 Brigade having been shifted to Batavia in Java, where the British and the Dutch were having more trouble than in Sumatra. Major Inskipp had recently been repatriated. Now it was the eccentric Boyer I had to speak to, and I knew how difficult it was to hold personal discussions over a wireless link.

One other possibility existed. I could talk to Captain Jhamboo Singh, the dandified officer under whose supervision I came officially whilst in Medan. He was perfectly capable of taking decisions, being Commanding Officer of the British personnel of 26 Div and such odd bods as me. But I failed to visualise how I could talk to an Indian about my chances of marrying a Chinese girl.

Too violent to last, the rainstorm was fading away. The dripping into the landing basin became more slowly spaced and deeper in tone. Daisy could be heard singing softly to her baby on the other side of the partition.

‘There’s a good film showing at the Deli Cinema tomorrow evening. Shall we go and see it?’

‘I don’t want see any films. Why you change the subject? Why you are ashamed to be see’ with me in London if you don’t mind in Medan? You think I not pretty enough for Mayfair or something, you bastard? Anyhow, what is this rotten film you mention?’

‘Melvyn Douglas and Joan Crawford in They All Kissed the Bride. Comedy.’

‘Aei-ya, I love Joan Crawford. Really great, though not so hot as Rita. Will you take me along, in spite my bad temper, honest?’

‘What do I get if I do?’

‘You so kind man, Horry. Though you do not love me, you so sweet man.’ She rubbed her face against mine so that one wing of that night-black hair swept my cheek, while her naughty little hand teased my prick again. As I began to respond, she rolled over so that she was half on top of me, opening her legs and gently chafing her fanny against my thigh.

Her titties swung into my grasp like two mangoes, her nipples became imprisoned between my thumb and first finger. In the heat, we were juicy together. She had that beautiful clear scent, which was in part an artificial aid but mainly emanated from her body. As we started to stir, the covering slid from us on to the floor. Shadows lay across our flesh. Part-seen, Margey was wholly lovely.

She had my prick in a curious grip, her thumb pointing up its stem. Up came her right leg and – pwop! – she’d slipped cock and thumb – yet it was the tiniest little delicate petalled hole you ever saw – up that succulent passage and was immediately working on my knob, while smiling impudently into my face, as if determined to sharpen the blunt end to a fine point. Sliding over on the bed, I pulled her right on top of me, grunting at her in encouragement.

‘Aei-ya, you muscle-brute!’ She bounced away so positively that I was afraid, as I counter-thrust from below, that I would lose her. Her legs were spread wide now, she clutched at my torso. Working my hands down between her little tight buttocks, I nailed her in place with one finger up her bumhole. As ever, that induced tremendous voltage on both sides. She always came when I did that. ‘Illegal, illegal!’ she cried. We went over the top.

We were having a smoke. The downpour ceased. Margey got up and opened her little window. Draughts of cool air blew in, tickling our flesh. Outside, water dripped from innumerable broken gutters. From Daisy in the next compartment came only silence; she and her baby were asleep. Checking with my watches, I found the Amsterdam one had stopped; I wound it vigorously. The Indian one indicated a time somewhere near eleven-twenty, but the hour hand looked a bit loose. It was time I thought about getting back to the billet.

A shot sounded only a couple of streets away. It was answered almost immediately by rifle fire. The first weapon replied, then a sten opened up, firing bursts. I stubbed my fag out and jumped to the window, pushing the lamp and custard powder away so that I could lean out.

‘Horry, you get shot, come in!’ Margey called.

In the alley, all was quiet. The action was taking place in the street beyond.

Running feet could be heard. A dog was barking. The sten opened up again for one brief burst, then a vehicle engine started – a Jeep by the sound of it. Whatever vehicle it was, it belted up Bootha Street from the direction of the Kesawan, and I caught sight of the wash of its lights as it shot past the entry to the side street in which we were ensconced. Then silence. A minute later, I could hear its engine distantly, still going like the clappers. No more shots.

Night airs moved against my cheek. Wild dogs yelped dispersedly from the direction of the Deli River. Incredible to think that next Monday night – only next Monday night – I would be away from here for ever, waiting in Nee Soon stinking transit camp for the boat to take me home. It was like a sentence of death; all this would exist only as something shrivelling slowly in memory, flowers in an empty vase.

Margey smacked my haunches.

‘Why you must stick your head out there, you foolish soldier? Why they shoot so close here? Never before so close, I think. Aei-ya, never any peace, nowhere! After the Nips are beaten, now come these terrible Indonesians under Dr Soekarno, to make new troubles. Will they shoot again, Horry?’

‘That’ll be it for tonight.’ I drew the curtains and put the lamp back. ‘Probably just some trigger-happy MPS, or some nut trying something … I’d better get on back.’

She clung to me with fierce strength.

‘Damn you, why you have no proper feeling? What do men think, blast them? Listen to me, Horry, I no speak more of coming to live London with you. Not London, not Singapore, not Tsingtao, not any place on this round globe. But I much hurt in my heart, okay. You know I am educated girl with Shanghai degree. I understand more than you how us two live different places – me here, you there – only – no, I no can find words, my Horry, tell you all things … Fuck it, forget what I say … Just stay here with me in this humble room tonight, all night. Just sleep and love, no more jig-jig, just stay in Margey’s arms, my English love.’

I looked down at her, half in anger.

‘You know I could lose my tapes if I was found staying out all night with no pass.’

She waved her arms above her head, and then had to clutch at the sheet.

‘What’s that answer? Oh, you time-expired man, you not care what army do – how often I hear you say that? Yet for Margey not one thing you do, not one single thing! You think I utter fool because I no can speak English so proper!’

‘Sorry, Margey, I’ll stay the night if you want. You never asked me before, that’s all.’

I clung to her, feeling all her strength and energy. Her arms went round my neck. ‘I get you fruit,’ she whispered.

‘You are a terrible girl, Margey. I love you more than anything.’

As I sat down on the bed, she looked dubiously at me, smoothing down her silky black hair. Now she saw that she was to have her immediate wish, she was calm. Her lips came together, her forehead wrinkled in a thoughtful frown.

‘Now stay here, Horry, you devil. Not look out window. I go get you fruit and bread and beer. Then we smoke cigarette and sleep all night together.’

Still frowning, she slipped into her knickers and the towelling robe.

From her finger, a cautionary wag before she disappeared. I heard her carry the bowl of rainwater from outside our door and fling it out of a window.

As soon as she was gone, anxiety possessed me. I pulled the curtains over the window and began to dress with immense haste.

It was not that I distrusted Margey. But I suddenly felt myself alone in the heart of a hostile city. Even in the peaceful Chinese quarter, army training warned me to remain alert for danger. Of all the races churning about in Medan, the Chinese had least reason to hate the British, but they had their survival to see to, and I was one man on his own.

Silence from the other side of the partition. I stood for a moment, then buckled on my belt and revolver. I took the gun out of its holster, walked out to the landing, started to descend the ladder, peering through the shrouded dimness as I went.

As for Margey’s despair … How could she exist without resorting to prostitution, penniless and unprotected as she was? Fat was little use to her, except as a pimp. She must be a whore, however desperately she tried to hide the truth from me; why else her perpetual obsession with disease? Besides, Johnny Mercer had been slipping her a length before I arrived in Medan. If Johnny, many others, white, brown, yellow. Some of them would have a personal interest in this house, and would know when I, Margey’s current purchaser, was in occupation. The bitch could get me shot.

Dear Ghost of Margey, that was how I calculated then. I shied from the thought of your whoredom, I understood little. I was a cold young man from Europe, brought up with a traditional middle-class suspicion of sexuality. I thought I had renounced all that crap, but it lay under my surface like permafrost, even when the spring of your body was on mine.

On the floor below, people were already in bed, horizontal behind their dividing curtains. Their presence could be felt. The air was thick with a sweet Chinese smell, a mixture of cooking, sweat, perfumed soap, and revolting Jap cigarettes. Taking courage from my revolver, I continued on down to the ground floor.

It was very dark, one naked bulb burning in the living area, a small oil lamp dim in the kitchen area. Night had changed the almost changeless scene. The card-players had gone. A battered bamboo screen had been drawn round the sofa; behind the screen, Auntie slept restlessly, dreaming of faraway lands.

Two men sat at the table. One was Fat Sian himself, still in greasy string vest and shorts, smoking with his cigarette almost vertical in his mouth. The other was a Chinese I had noticed about the place before. They had been talking quietly together over a bottle of Red Fox; now they lapsed into silence and watched me.

I went over to them, ostentatiously holding the revolver and enjoying my role.

‘Man shoot,’ Fat said. ‘Bang, bang, bang.’ He raised his plump right hand and fired it three times in order to get his meaning across. In addition, he smiled and nodded.

‘That’s right,’ I agreed. ‘Merdeka, bang, bang, bang …’ Merdeka was the Malayan cry for freedom, the slogan of the Indonesian campaign.

I gave Fat’s companion a hard look. He returned it. He was a slender man, neatly dressed with a white shirt, the sleeves of which were rolled down against mosquito bites. He wore gold-rimmed spectacles. His hair was brushed to the back of his head.

Margey came out from the rear, carrying a plate of apples and mangusteen and a glass of beer. She looked tense, smiling at me without speaking.

‘I’m checking to see that the place is properly secure,’ I said. ‘Ground floor windows all shut.’ Walking across to the door into the lane, I found that it had no lock and the bolt was broken. There was only a simple catch. Fat said something, laughing, and Margey translated. ‘Fat Sian sleep in his bed so no man ever break in here. He pull bed in front this door. China people all very scare Malayan murder-thief.’