A Rude Awakening

‘The back?’ I crossed to the kitchen area. A door with cracked glass panels led into a cluttered little yard surrounded by other yards and premises. I could make out puddles on the stones. My expert eye told me that in case of trouble in the front one could escape out the back. It also noted a platoon of cockroaches reconnoitring round Margey’s sink. I tried the lock on the door. Although it was secure enough, an armchair had been pushed against the door, another indication of Fat’s commendable concern with security.

‘Who is this man with your brother-in-law?’ I asked Margey, pointing the gun at the man with the gold-rimmed spectacles.

At this point, Margey showed extreme embarrassment, and put the refreshments down on a cupboard to recover herself. I stared at her in surprise, never having seen her behave like this before. I was immediately suspicious.

‘Come on then, sod it, who is he?’

‘He is only journalist …’

At this juncture, the man in spectacles spoke up for himself. He said, ‘You have no need to shout or shoot, sir, I am only a journalist, as Tung Su Chi says.’

Acting heavy, I walked slowly over and looked at him. He countered by rising from the table as I approached and regarding me with a half-smile.

‘You speak English. What’s your name? Do you live here?’

‘I live in Medan. Not particularly through choice.’

I moved a pace nearer. ‘Do you live in this particular fucking building?’

‘I live nearby, sir.’

‘Is he a relation of yours?’ I asked Fat.

Fat had been devoting his attention to smoking and blinking. He continued to blink as he said, ‘No, sir, no rela’. On’y fren’. He Tiger Balm, run China newspaper.’

The other man produced a grubby visiting card. ‘You see, sir, I am known by my journalist’s name of Tiger Balm. My name is Chae Lieng Sing, and I am acting editor of New South China Times, published from Boulan Way, where I also live.’

Glancing hopefully at my two watches, I said, ‘It’s nearly curfew.’

Tiger Balm nodded. ‘I shall be on my way soon. Meanwhile, why don’t you sit down with us? Su Chi, please bring over your friend’s beer.’

There was something mocking in the way he spoke. I mistrusted his flawless English, and the point he made by addressing Margey by her Chinese name. She came forward with the beer and the fruit. Fat immediately seized on an apple and began to munch before his sister-in-law could fade into the background. I looked for a signal from her but she gave none.

Lifting his glass, Tiger Balm said, ‘It is a pleasure to talk with you. Shooting sometimes makes for friendliness. May I offer a Singapore cigarette?’

Perhaps it was time to make amends. I sat down opposite the two Chinese and pulled out the field-dressing tin which I used for a cigarette case. ‘Have an English fag.’

All three of us lit up. Margey stood watching in the background, saying nothing.

‘Let me ask you why the British authorities do not stop all the shooting,’ said Tiger Balm. ‘Surely they could do so if they wished.’

‘It’s only a few extremists. They live in the kampongs and come into town to cause trouble. Things are far worse in Java, as I expect you know.’

He shook the match until it went out, in an idly contemptuous gesture.

‘Of course I know it. Nevertheless, what happens in Java and what happens here is all part of one process, the endeavour of the Soekarno Freedom party to rid NEI of colonial rule. It is not just a matter of a few extremists, as you represent.’

‘Bang, bang, bang, “stremis”,’ echoed Fat. We ignored the man, and he gradually disappeared behind a wreath of cigarette smoke.

Swigging down the beer, I said heavily, ‘As you probably realise, the Japs here started handing out their weapons to the natives as soon as they were defeated, to stir up trouble for their victors. The British mission when we arrived here last October was simply to pack the Japs off to Japan and let the Dutch resume their rule. What you might call restoring the status quo, eh? But nobody wants the Dutch back, so we have to hang around and keep the peace as best we can.’

As I peeled a mangusteen, Tiger Balm pressed his argument.

‘Excuse me if I say so, but you do not keep the peace so very well, sir. In Sourabaya, your troops fight pitched battles with the extremists. You bomb towns, kill innocent people. You also use the defeated Nipponese to help. Why are you allowed to ally yourself with a defeated and disgraced enemy in that way? It brings unpopularity.’

‘The real wars are over, in case you’ve forgotten. We had Hitler to fight as well, you know. Now we want to pack up and go home. We’re short of men, owing to the demob programme, so we – well, the trouble is that the local population encourages the extremists. You have to inflict peace on them.’ I laughed.

Silence reigned, inside and out.

He smoked his cigarette concentratedly and made a comment in Chinese to Fat. To me he said, ‘You see, sir, what you have to say about the situation is not at all exact. You must face one fact, that the old world of the nineteen-thirties is totally shattered. None of us can go back to those times. Demons are loose.’

He paused as if considering what to say, tapping impatiently with long fingers on the table. ‘Myself, I am a wanderer on the earth’s face, but let me give the example of the family who employs me, who owns the New South China Times. They remain here in Sumatra under Dutch rule since five generations. They come from Swatow, a fine port you should visit if ever you would. They are Overseas Chinese, not mere refugees like Fat Sian and I. But who can say what will happen to them before the end of 1946? How can they go back to China, where civil war rages? Sumatra is their place, they understand everything about it …

‘We sit here, you and I, and talk in this poor building. It once housed a spare – what do you say? – an auxiliary printing press of the firm’s. The press was stolen, the mechanic who guarded it is killed. Many unlawful things happen …’

‘Look, the curfew –’

He sighed. ‘I see you do not care to learn. Please give me another cigarette. I mean no harm, I even admire the British in a way. But I wish you understand my meaning. You hear the shooting, you enjoy certain pleasures with Su Chi. You think you are in old Medan.

‘Let me tell you, sir, that you are not. You are in a new place, and the hairs on your head should be standing upright in alarm.’ He laughed with sudden ferocity. ‘You are in a snake’s den. You are in a town of the new Indonesian Republic! You appear not to understand that. Do you know that Dr Soekarno declared the Netherlands East Indies dead and gone in 1945? We now remain in a militant new republic, with its own flag, under which certainly no colonialists will be allowed. They will kill off all white foreigners, ten to one.’

It irritated me to be lectured at. Swigging the beer, I said, dismissively, ‘Well, it’s their bloody country, after all.’

He laughed, and again made a rapid remark in Chinese to Fat, who blinked expertly. ‘My godfather, is that the British point of view, sir, the famous British sense of justice? Murder is okay on home ground, is that what you say? If so, why don’t you clear off, every one of you? Or if you do not clear off, why don’t you send more troops, Indians if necessary, and crush this whole damned Soekarno Merdeka movement once for all? Do one thing or the other, for god’s sake!’

‘Look here, it’s a difficult –’

‘Restore real peace, get business picking up again, introduce a proper legal currency, open up trade with outside world. Then if local discontent dies, support for Dr Soekarno dies.’

‘It’s a difficult political situation for the British. You know the name of Jinnah?’

Tiger Balm leaned back and clasped his hands behind his head, smiling.

‘You refer to Mr Ali Jinnah, the leader of the Muslim League Party of the Indian Central Assembly? Naturally, I am tolerably familiar with the name.’

‘Then you may be tolerably familiar with his noises about the wrongs of the British using Indian troops in a foreign country. If our troops took Jinnah seriously, we’d have a mutiny on our bloody hands. I can’t think why they don’t lock Jinnah up.’ I laughed.

He laughed too, without humour. ‘As you say, your hands are already bloody. You have already locked Jinnah up, and Jawarhalal Nehru, and Ghandi – and it did no bit of good. Your gaols were not oppressive enough. As a result, the days of the British in India are numbered.’

‘That’s all the more reason why we shouldn’t fight for the Dutch in the NEI.’

Tiger Balm got up and walked about, smoking, on the other side of the table. He wore light grey trousers of a local cut, and made a dapper figure. Looking up at the rafters above his head, he said, ‘You will leave a bloodbath here when you quit.’

At this juncture, there was an admonitory cry from behind the screen. Fat wagged his head a few times to check that it was still there and said, in his imitation English, ‘Missa Stuss, Auntie, she say she ha’ bad head, prease you no tor’ so row’, she want go slee’.’

Ignoring him, I banged my fist on the table and told Tiger Balm, ‘If there is a bloodbath when we leave, it won’t be any fault of the British, so stick that in your next editorial!

‘Some Indian was trying to tell me the other day that there would be a bloodbath in India, when the British left there. Okay, then why is everyone so keen to kick us out if they are going to massacre each other when we’ve gone?’

The question appeared to me unanswerable enough to pass for rhetorical, but Tiger Balm merely said, ‘The reasons of course lie in colonialist history. Whatever the price, people want their freedom, as the British in 1940.’

Fat put a finger to his lips, ‘Prease, be mo’ quiet. D’ink a mo’ bee’.’

‘I’m going to bed. And I presume Mr Tiger Balm is going home after curfew.’ I got up and followed the latter round the room. ‘So tell me, whose side are you on? Do you want British or Dutch rule? Or do you want Soekarno and Co. to take over? It isn’t your country any more than it is mine.’

He sighed and helped himself to a cigarette from his pack on the table.

‘History is not that simple, Mr Stubbs, sir. Ask your little “Margey” what she thinks of the British. She could hardly tell you. We Chinese respect and slightly admire the British, although we do not believe that the Far East is your part of the world – any more than we regard Europe as our part. Since you have been beaten so easily by the Nipponese in Malaya and you surrendered so weakly in Singapore and elsewhere, we think it is time you finished your adventures in the East. You have lost face and now you must go home. The lion, let’s say, has its tail between its legs.’

At this I felt myself getting extremely angry. I sat down at the table and lit up another cigarette, wondering whether to hit him.

‘You’ve been reading the China Times too much, chum. You forget how the Chinese got mopped up by the Japs, left, right, and centre. Besides, the Japs caught the British unprepared – the Fourteenth Army really massacred them in Burma – I was there. We’ve evened up the score okay now. So do you want British rule or not?’

He leaned against the wall, unmoved by my anger, considering his answer. ‘There’s no question of British rule here, sir. The British contingent leaves in the late summer – as the Dutch certainly understand, even if you don’t. You have failed in your mission. You have made a mess of it. You were too nice. You cared too much for political justice and conserved too much ammunition. That’s fatal. And of course the Dutch cannot hold down the whole republican movement without British and American support.

‘So the new state of Indonesia will come soon into full being, and the red-and-white flags fly everywhere. As you say, it is their country. You quote Jinnah, but you do not understand the meaning of what you quote. Jinnah is a Muslim. Indonesian Republic will be officially a Muslim state. That is one reason why Chinese people fear a bloodbath: Chinese may be Christian, just a few of them, but we are never Muslim. Buddhists never become Muslim, I don’t know why. When you and the Dutch quit, then, in the sacred name of religion, Indonesians may be tempted to kill many thousands of Chinese to get their hands on their property. Who can Chinese people turn to then for protection? Nobody. Nobody.’ He let the word hang in the air before looking pointedly at Margey, who waited silently in the background, and saying. ‘That, sir, is why many Chinese people try many ways to leave Sumatra. And why you are at least moderately welcome on these premises. Our next lot of visitors may have less friendly intentions.’

With these words, he bowed soberly, stubbed his cigarette in the ashtray on the table, and walked out of the door into the night.

Fat and I sat where we were, saying nothing. Margey, too, remained where she was. Auntie sighed behind her screen.

Addressing the remark to Margey, I said heavily, ‘Let’s hope that things don’t turn out as badly as he supposes. Tell Fat that he ought to take you to Singapore as soon as possible.’

Fat had understood. He made a negative gesture. ‘Prenty too much men Sin’apore. Twice so many men, three year. No job. No house. No food. No live. Better we stay here, maybe trouble go ’way.’

He reached out for another apple.

I took Margey’s hand. ‘Let’s get upstairs to bed.’

Without another word, we crept upstairs, past the sleepers on the upper floor, into our familiar attic. We undressed in silence, fearful of waking Daisy and her sleeping babe.

CHAPTER THREE

Spring – an English spring – visited Sumatra for one hour after dawn every day. Even my fellow sergeants, when they got up that early, had been known to scratch their hairy arses and exclaim with pleasure at the morning. Cool breezes wafted through our billets, birds called, and a decent mist lay over the land. The insect population still slumbered.

In that hour, the sun steered close to the horizon, losing itself among shaggy palms. The air was loaded with rosy hues and steaming bars of shadow. Ox-carts moving towards the fields proceeded with a ruminative rhythm. The natives in their sarongs, the women going to the well with bronze pots on their heads, walked slowly, as if in a dream among the trees. Later they would appear more bent, as the load of sunlight became too great.

Nipping back from Margey’s at this good hour, I cut down one of the Out of Bounds roads that bordered a kampong. The thatched bamboo huts, set beside a stream amid tall palms, looked too idyllic to be anything but fodder for some fucking travel poster. Hens clucked among the huts; there were tethered white goats, cats sitting staring at the water, and an old man, bent double, brushing a path with meticulous care, as if each grain of dust were familiar to him. It was hard to believe that anyone wanted to shoot me at this hour.

Too soon, the scene would be different. The sun would be roused from its pleasant lethargy and zoom to the zenith of the sky, showering fire as it went. The fog would vanish; the day would buzz like a saw; every squaddy alive would break out in a muck sweat; monkeys would start to pass out in the trees.

Climbing down into a ditch, I dodged between strands of barbed wire and climbed through a hole in the tall mesh perimeter. The hole had been made by ill-intentioned BORS taking short cuts to town. My way to the sergeants’ quarters lay through the Other Ranks’ lines.

Some BORS were slouching between houses, across their neglected gardens. They looked like apes with towels about their shoulders as they made their way to the wash-ups. As I rounded one of their billets, I came face to face with Johnny Mercer, the day’s Duty Sergeant. An unhappy corporal trailed behind Johnny, explaining something to him at great length.

‘Merdeka,’ I said by way of salute. He responded, but looked no happier than the corporal.

‘Stubby, we can’t get these shagging Other Ranks out of their billets. What do you think we ought to do?’

I looked at my watches. They seemed agreed that it was approximately seven-thirty.

‘Bit early, isn’t it? What’s the drill?’

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.