by Brian Aldiss
I can hardly recall now what I expected to happen. I suppose I hoped that the barrier of cash-for-flesh could be broken, that one day I would confront a girl who was genuinely down on her luck, and that we would both recognize in each other someone who was looking for a better life … You believe many things, aged twenty.
Some girls told hard luck stories in their brittle little collection of English words. I was never content merely to fuck; I always wanted to hear from them as well. How stereotyped their stories were! They all came from good homes, most were daughters of maharajahs. One day when they were very small, playing on the steps of the palace or the big house, a bad man had come along (on horseback or bicycle) and stolen them away. They had grown up in much misery, locked away from human eyesight. And only yesterday – or last week, or this very same evening, sir – they had been sold to the terrible man who owned this brothel, and two picture-palaces as well.
Among the items in this much-told story, the picture-palace was rarely missing. All the whores, poor things, were cinema-goers. Which is not to suggest that their fantasies of kidnapping did not have some sound basis in the griefs of their real lives.
Some of the women immediately made their personality felt, even if they did not say a word. Sometimes I would be haunted by the expression with which one had regarded me, or by the quality of her embrace, or by some gesture that betrayed personal feeling. Then I would try to seek her out again. Often I could never find her – could never get back to the pokey street, could never identify the pokey building, or, having found street and building, could never find the girl again. She had gone: gone next door or a mile away: lost among the storm of dark and beautiful flesh that comprised Calcutta’s entrails.
Terrible sensations of desolation would overawe me. A woman and a city! These sensations were hard to bear because I imagined that they would be laughed at by my fellows and because I was haunted by a feeling that I had undergone the same loss before. Yet it was not even a loss! – Just one more bit of cunt shuffling on her way! It was all irrational, and from the irrational there is no redress.
The first evening’s brothel-going in Calcutta with Dave Feather was not a success. Mainly because we could not resist the tide of pimps, whose ranks thickened up considerably as we got to Chowringhee, the grand and overtaxed heart of Calcutta. It was impossible to walk ten yards without being offered someone’s nearest and dearest.
We gave in to a villain with a limp and a turban, wasting our money and semen in an offensive back-street, two floors up, where the whores were crowded five to a room. I was landed with a girl whose doss was actually out on a balcony, and had to bare my bum to the mosquitoes. While I worked away, her face would occasionally turn green, as a tram trundled by. We were virtually grinding on the street.
Feather and I got drunk after that. ‘Here’s to jungle warfare!’ he said.
We arrived back in the Howrah transit camp at some unearthly hour, without a penny in our pockets, only to awaken everyone in the tent with our dreadful curses as we stumbled about. Finally, I flung myself under the mosquito net and fell into a sodden sleep.
I woke with a fearful headache. It took me a long while to stir myself. Only the pain of hearing eating irons clang against mess-tins, as chaps went to breakfast, forced me to move. I put some weight on my right ann. Pain immediately shot up my muscles and knobkerried my skull into a dozen distinct bits. I yelled with anguish.
‘Get out of that fucking wanking-pit, ye drunken bugger!’ McGuffie called cheerily. ‘Soya-links for breakfast, just like Mither makes!’
I did get out, although my arm and hand never stopped hurting. My right leg was not too good either. I limped into the mess tent just in time to get the last cold ladleful of bergoo, and then could not eat it. For me, that was unheard of. After the meal, I had to lie on my charpoy. Everyone else was getting ready for parade. They came over and tried to persuade me to move. Eventually, aided by Carter the Farter and Aylmer, I rose and got my kit together.
Fortunately, parade was a farce, taken by a full corporal in the Pioneer Corps. We dismissed and I hobbled with my buddies to a nearby SSAFA canteen, where I soon began to feel a little better.
Carter and I put our names down for a game of football that afternoon, not knowing whether we would still be there to play. We had the word down from Gor-Blimey via Dutt that some minor hitch had arisen, and that we would be stuck in the camp for another night. So we had our game of football.
By the time we got out on the field, my hangover had gone, although I was still limping slightly. My hand hurt, but on the wing I should have been able to keep it out of harm’s way.
It was dazzlingly hot – our squalid tents rippled in the heat.
We had only been going about five minutes when the inside right passed the ball out. I was off down the field with the ball at my feet. The winger marking me was nowhere in sight. As the back charged me, I flipped the ball back to the inside right, who was where he should be – it was quite a good forward movement for a scratch team. The back hit me hard, crashing into my right side. Tremendous agony ran through my wrist. The only relief came from walking round in circles, which I did. Or I thought I did.
Faces clustered round me. They all seemed to be insisting that I was helped off the field. Although I swore at them, it did no good. They carted me off and in due course I found myself being examined by a medical orderly.
‘Are you all right, mate?’
‘Let me get back on the field – that fucking sod of a back fouled me.’
‘What have you been up to? You’ve got a broken bone in your hand.’
‘It doesn’t feel too good.’
‘It’s all swollen – look at it! There’s a broken bone there and you must get it seen to. You’ll have to go into Number Five Ambulance Unit on the racecourse. Get your kit together!’
‘What do I need my kit for?’
‘They may have to keep you in for observation – overnight, like. Pack your night things in a small pack and get weaving, while I lay on transport.’
‘Sod my fucking luck!’
‘It’s no good you fucking and blinding, mate. You’ll just have to stop bashing the old bishop, won’t you, now your right hand’s out of action!’
So I found myself on the racecourse in the centre of Calcutta, where a medical unit had been set up. After I had checked in, I was examined by a captain in the Medical Corps, a bald man whose face bore a sceptical expression common to Army doctors. As I explained about my fall from the top of the train, his scepticism escalated until it wore deep grooves on either side of his nose.
‘That may be, but you’ve broken a phalange or two, and probably a metacarpal. You may have torn a muscle as well.’
‘So what do I do now?’
‘You stop “falling off trains”, for one thing.’
‘Yes, but what do I do?’
The grooves bit a little deeper. ‘You don’t do anything, Private Stubbs! You have been done to. You are a casualty. We have an X-ray unit here, and you will be X-rayed in the morning. Your leg seems merely bruised.’
‘I came down on some old rails and lumps of iron.’
‘Very likely.’
I was established in a marquee tent which served as a ward. A few battered relics of the Forgotten Army lay about, exchanging long horror stories about Maungdaw and Razabil, or how their mules had sunk out of sight in the Arakan mud during the last monsoon. With their broken hairy shoulders, faded green vests, and identity discs dangling round their necks from dirty string, they did not even look like Mendips – in whom I always imagined I saw a family resemblance. These old sweats wanted to know how long I had been abroad, whether I’d ever heard a shot fired in anger, and whether I’d ever had to wear a french letter tied to my prick so that the leeches did not get up my pipe. When I disappointed them on all counts, they returned to the discussion of exactly how unreliable the Chinese were in battle.
I passed the time by feeling ill and feverish, an
d watching the bluebottles swarm up at the apex of the canvas above my head.
Delight filled me when, at about nine-thirty, a flow of angry lament reached my ears from outside. Jock McGuffie entered the tent and stood there surveying the scene. The Forgotten Army surveyed him. Instant hostility blossomed on both sides.
‘What, are you fuckers all dying of something or other?’ he asked the ward in general.
‘Jock!’ I called. ‘Over here!’
‘Christ, man, there’s nae hope for ye, stuck in here wi’ this lot!’ McGuffie exclaimed, as he came across to my bed. ‘They might as well bury the lot of ye and have done! Could they no’ put a bit lighting in this pox-eaten dump? Yon sergeant on the gate’s a right one, too, I’m telling you! Bloody big sandy-haired loon! He said to me, “You’ve no got a bottle of drink on ye, have ye?” Sassenach cunt! – What fucking business is it of his? “No, sarge,” I says. “Now what would I be doing carrying around booze at this time of evening?” So he says to me, “There are some seriously sick men here. No drink’s allowed in camp.” No booze, I ask you! So I says, “If they’re a bit down, surely it’s a wee snort they need?” “These men have come straight out of Burma,” he says. “Many of them’s dying.” “Ay, well, it does look a wee bit of a graveyard,” I says.’
As he spoke, he pulled a bottle of beer from under his bush jacket and handed it to me. I thanked him and he opened it for me with the hook on the knife he always carried. We took it in turns to swig.
‘I’m bloody glad to see you, Jock! I was afraid you lot might move out and I’d be stuck in Calcutta on my own.’
‘Those poor gits wouldn’e play pontoon tonight – just because I fleeced them last night – so I thought I’d look you up!’
He winked at me. ‘We’ll no be moving out yet awhile!’ He bent lower, looking furtive in the way he had done when threatening to sort out old Spunk Bucket. He had been as good as his word. Spunk Bucket was in the fertilizer right up to his Adam’s apple, even if he did not realize it yet. McGuffie had fixed him good and proper.
‘I told you I’d got a mucker up at Division, didn’t I? Well, he was a good mucker – he helped me do the trick! I’ve shafted old Spunk Bucket right up the gonga!’
His story emerged in the form of total recall. His mucker at Division had slipped McGuffie a stencil kit and yellow paint. When we were stuck in the railway siding at Indore, Jock had got into one of the military bogie trucks full of stores, while we were asleep and he was supposed to be on guard. He had painted out the 2 Div flashes and identifications on the boxes and had readdressed them to 36 British Division, then involved with the Japanese somewhere up in the north of Burma. By now, these stores would be out of Howrah station and heading for the great blue yonder!
‘You’re shitting me, Jock! You never did it!’
He passed me the bottle. ‘I fucking did, Stubby, lad, just like I say – what you take me for? And I took care to chuck away the stencils afterwards. Spunk Bucket will fair be for it now and no mistake!’
I took a swig of warm beer, stunned by the thought of this sabotage.
‘But why did you do it, Jock?’
He extracted the bottle from my grasp and took a leisurely pull at the beer. ‘Neither you nor I have any talent for active service in Burma. It’s a mug’s game! As long as that consignment of equipment is travelling round India, Burma, Assam, and China, rear detail’s chances of staying put right here in Calcutta is good. The war in Burma’s hotting up again and it’s no place for gentlemen. Norm and me fixed this trick up before we left Kanchapur. Now, you’ve got to swear blind never to say a word about this bit of subversion to a soul, understand? There are plenty of dodgy bastards in this man’s Army as would like to see old Jock McGuffie in the glasshouse for keeps!’
I swore blind.
‘No’ a word, mind! And now there’s that bloody big sandy-haired sarge blowing off his mouth again!’
We could hear the sergeant shouting outside the tent. All visitors had to leave at once. Visiting time was over.
‘I’d best be on my way!’ Jock said, rising and draining the bottle of beer. ‘You want to watch this lot here, too, I’m telling you, or they’ll have that duff hand of yours cut off as soon as look at it, right up to the elbow. Here, I brought you another present – Jock looks after his mates!’
He fumbled in his capacious hip pocket and pulled out a crumpled paper-covered book, which I recognized as he tossed it to me. It was our prized copy of The Night Times of Micheal Meatyard.
‘I made fucking sure that didn’t get stencilled off to China!’ Jock said.
It would be fair to say that McGuffie’s news left me with mixed feelings. I had no wish to be in on his awful secret; he was surely guilty of sabotaging the war effort under the Defence of the Realm Act, or something equally unpleasant, while I was now an accessory who could be punished accordingly.
Whether or not his move would save us from the promised hells of Burma and Assam was another matter. For those hunting grounds I had developed something between fervent curiosity and the death wish; none of the Forgotten relics in the ward could alter that. Scared though I was by the thought of going into action, I had now begun to long for it.
All next day was spent hanging about between the ward, the X-ray unit, and the clinic, with a couple of visits to the orderly room thrown in for light relief. My hand and arm were growing more painful. Although my temperature was lower I felt too feeble even to read the exploits of Micheal Meatyard. In fact, I was off sex, and checked my tool once or twice, to see if it wasn’t really the pox that had got me. At three in the afternoon, an orderly came round and told me to undress and get into bed. At five-thirty, I had a visitor. This time it was Captain Eric Gore-Blakeley.
I endeavoured to come to attention in the bed. Had he found out about the stencils?
‘Sorry to hear about the broken bones, Stubbs. They tell me you have a temperature of a hundred-and-three. It’s nothing in this heat, of course. Plenty of perfectly fit men are walking about with temperatures of a hundred-and-five. You’ve always been too fond of fighting.’
‘Beg pardon, sir, this wasn’t fighting. I fell off the roof of the train at Indore!’
He looked at me. ‘That’s what the MO told me you had told him … Well, Stubbs, you’ve done yourself some damage. I’ve recommended you stay here for a few days and recover fully before you are discharged.’
Such solicitude! I knew there must be something behind it, and his next words confirmed my suspicions.
‘As it happens, there has been a misunderstanding about some of our gear at Howrah station, so you are better out of the way.’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Would you still be prepared to go on a wireless operator’s course, Stubbs?’
‘I suppose so, sir.’
‘Good. I can’t promise anything, of course, but there might be a course going locally.’
He was very neat in his officer’s uniform, sweating slightly, and for once without his military air.
‘And what about Burma, sir? Would the rest of the unit, the company and everything, go into action without us?’
‘They might be forced to. You probably know that a Jap offensive is building up and, although their lines of communication are pretty much stretched, they still have plenty of punch behind them. If the offensive is coming, it will be at any time, since the monsoons are only two or three months away.’
‘I’d rather join the company, sir, than be left behind.’
He did not answer that directly. ‘General Slim, the Commander of the Fourteenth Army, is in the area now. The various units of 2 Div are also coming together. It could be that word to move will come through in a very few days – even a few hours.’
‘What about our missing gear then, sir?’
He stood up. ‘There’s a war on. Perhaps the Army Command would forget the idea of an investigation.’
He paused as he turned to go. ‘The rest of the rear detail is being tr
ansferred from the transit camp to a better camp nearby. We shan’t lose touch with you, though. You won’t get mislaid like the gear at Howrah!’
What did all that mean, I wondered, when he had left. Did he suspect me? Was he in fact planning to get rid of me in some way? Did he know Jock had visited me the previous evening? What was this fresh nonsense about a course?
All I could do was what one does most of in the Army: wait and see. But the waiting proved long and the visibility poor.
Next day, I was considerably better. The Forgotten Army jeered and spoke of malingerers who should get some service in when my temperature was pronounced to be down to normal. The sceptical medical captain informed me that I had cracked two bones and torn a flexor, whatever that was. My hand was bound up and my right arm put in a sling. I was excused fatigues and told to hang about camp.
The big sandy-haired sergeant of whom McGuffie had fallen foul proved to be perfectly friendly. He sought me out to give me advice. ‘You don’t want to listen too hard to Bedpan Bertie – he’d have every malaria case shipped home to the Blight! There’s nothing to do here all day – you go into town and enjoy yourself. As long as you’re back through the main gate by ten-thirty nobody is going to worry what you’re doing.’
‘Thanks, sarge, but I’ve not got a rupee to my name.’
‘We can’t have that. Go to Corporal Harrison in the orderly room and tell him I sent you. He’s a genius at causing money to circulate.’
Corporal Harrison was a chubby man with spectacles and fierce moustache. He polished the one and pulled the other, and produced fifteen rupees from a drawer, which sum he entered in my paybook. It was a week’s pay.
Two days later, I was broke again – fifteen chips did not go far in Calcutta. The redoubtable Harrison paid me another week’s pay.