The Horatio Stubbs Trilogy

by Brian Aldiss

  Auntie was not to be seen. One of her full-moon smiles would have gone down well. The screens were still round her sofa, as they had been when I left the house before dawn. Groans issued from behind them.

  The old boy gestured at them and said something like ‘Sakit, sakit’, which I did not understand.

  A Chinese came from behind the screens. His little black bag and serious air marked him out as a doctor. He was sand-coloured and wore sand-coloured shirt and shorts. He started chatting loudly with the old boy at the table.

  If Auntie was ill, it was no business of mine. Margey was my target. Once, not so many weeks ago, I had run, run up those two grotty flights of stairs with her in my arms. Couldn’t wait to get her up there. Strong as a fucking ox, mad as a mosquito.

  ‘Margey!’ I called.

  No reply. I looked at the watches on my wrist. The Amsterdam masterpiece had stopped again. According to the other, it was ten past two.

  No room like hers anywhere. Anonymous yet personal, rapturous yet melancholy. The Bird’s Custard had been stored away. I stared out of the window at cracked roofs running with rain, at broken gutters belching water, at the stones below under flood. Let it piss down, I thought, let it always be extreme.

  On the sagging pediment of a nearby roof, a row of shite-hawks sat. They were drab brown with white heads, scraggy creatures watching for something to salvage from the flood. A rat, an unwary lizard, a fish, a sick dog, a human corpse – all were welcome to the shite-hawks. It was their war, their peace. Whatever happened in Medan, they’d do well out of it.

  Under the low ceiling it was as hot as ever. I took my boots off, removed my belt, set it with the revolver upmost by the head of the bed. I stretched out and closed my eyes.

  Sleep came down, zonk, like the swoop of a shite-hawk.

  A slight noise and I was awake again, right hand on gun butt.

  Someone was coming up the stairs. More than one person, talking in low voices. I sat up and aimed the revolver at the door.

  Logic declared that no extremists would break in to this area of Medan in daylight hours, nor, having broken in, would they tread quietly up the stairs, exchanging pleasantries. However, logic had little power against a mental picture of being killed on Margey’s bed.

  A woman’s voice. Not Margey’s. Daisy’s. It must be Daisy’s! She called, softly, ‘Su Chi!’

  Daisy’s cubicle was dark; since it had no window, such light as it received filtered over the partition. A match scraped in a box, lamplight glowed on the ceiling, throwing a pale wing of shadow above my head. I heard the chink of money. Then came a chuckle and the sound of someone preparing to fuck Daisy.

  ‘The bloody Chinese …’ I thought. ‘Mid-afternoon …’ They were at it all the time. What else was there to do when you were stuck in a country paralysed by revolution, preceded by three years of servitude under the scum of the earth? As banks closed, everywhere thighs were bound to open, the lips of those neat little Eastern twots to unfurl like buds, and fornication to commence. The savoury sounds from next door illustrated my thesis; I clutched my prick and wondered at the laws of the globe.

  Although I had never thought about it before, old Daisy was not a bad screw. Her baby had ruled her out of consideration. True, she was a bit short, and rather podgy in the face, but one could imagine that good things lurked under the striped pyjamas she wore. Most of the good things were getting a hammering now. She was murmuring, making a little crooning noise, erotic enough to bestow erections on any male within earshot, be he soldier, animal, alligator, or chicken.

  Whoever the guy was, he was getting into his stride. A decided slurp came from her socket each time his piston drove home, echoed immediately by the slap of two Chinese bellies coming together. I couldn’t help fantasising about Margey, taking up that same comfortable pace with her, as we lay side by side. Something of the sort would be good even with Daisy. I could imagine her, only a few feet away. They were getting more excited now: those chubby buttocks would be going like a fiddler’s elbow …

  His heels were jammed against the partition, making a regular drumming sound. The sod was grunting and she was going ah-ah-ah to encourage him. She was encouraging me, too. Suddenly – oh, shit! Oh, Jesus wept! I was coming all over my bloody jungle greens.

  What a bloody fool, what an ape! I had not even realised I had the damned thing in my hand. It had fitted in there of its own accord. Now it lay looking smugly up at me, relaxing, heaving slightly, like an old bull elephant seal on the rocks. Leaving its trail all over my flies and jacket.

  Dead silence next door. From my pocket I fished a sweat rag – something I’d been issued with in Burma – and mopped myself up. But the effects remained obvious.

  I lay back in disgust, conscious of a tropical headache gathering like thunderclouds behind my forehead. A revolting ginger object with perspex wings and countless legs or mandibles belted in through the window. It homed in on the come-stains, vibrating a great curled tongue with glee. It could have passed for either a new evolutionary brand of hornet or the innards of a Javanese watch. I struck it away with fear and loathing and it commenced to gyrate upside-down on the floor with loud whirring sounds. It was the innards of a Javanese watch.

  They had finished next door. The old chap was panting and wheezing. He could be the sand-coloured doctor I had seen down below, attending old Auntie. Standard fee: One Visit, One Bunk-Up. He was getting paid. Daisy said something in a low irritable voice, then the baby squeaked. It was on the bed with them.

  I lay where I was until they went downstairs again, propping myself on one elbow and resting my head on my hand.

  Life is a knocking-shop, nor am I out of it … It followed from this degrading experience that Margey was also just a little whore. Whatever was happening on the political front, whoring – like the business of the shite-hawks on the roof outside – never ceased to prosper. How else could she pay her way through life? From everyone, a price was exacted.

  For a while I thought of Margey with hatred. She had been so bloody secretive about the other side of her life ever since we met. But the hatred went fast, like a storm blowing out to sea. You couldn’t hate Margey. She had only been tactful protecting me from the rottenness that surrounded her. She had to keep old Fat in cigarettes in exchange for this billet. Perhaps that was the arrangement.

  When I had arrived in Medan to take delivery of my gin-palace, before the horrible event of the ‘arms deal’, Johnny Mercer was going out with Margey. He introduced me to her apologetically, and the three of us had a drink in a little Malayan shack on the edge of town.

  Margey said so little that evening that I scarcely realised she could talk English. She looked small and not particularly interesting; her European-style dress did not suit her.

  As we walked down the road afterwards, Margey trailing behind us, Johnny said, ‘Do you want to take her on, Horry? She’s very nice, though she doesn’t say a lot. Her talents lie in other directions.’

  I didn’t know, and said as much.

  ‘Look, she really is smashing, though she was acting a bit thick back there. Trouble is, she always wants to eat Chinese grub and it doesn’t suit my stomach.’ He was silent for a moment, then he added, quietly, ‘It’s no skin off my nose. I’m going to jack her in; I’ve got a bit of blonde crumpet up the RAPWI whose husband’s been shipped home with his chest shot up.’

  I looked back at the girl behind us. She sauntered along so innocently, her eyes directed to the ground. She was plump; the European little-girl dress was unsuitable and did nothing for her figure. As she caught my eye, she smiled as at some secret but rather shameful joke. I always remember that moment.

  ‘Does she dance?’ I asked.

  The very next night I took her to the sergeants’ mess Saturday hop. Johnny faded gracefully out in the direction of the RAPWI, and thereafter was always tactful in his references to Margey. Although Margey was tactful about Johnny, I soon found out that she had not been fond of him –
he had not behaved ‘politely’.

  Margey had been open and affectionate towards me from that first dance. Such was her nature. Such was the nature of the political situation that she had to pay her way with her one natural resource, just like Daisy and Margey’s enemy down the street, Katie Chae.

  I devoted a lot of psychic energy to denying the fact to myself.

  You always paid more than you could afford. When I got back to the Blight – only a few days to go – I would lose my freedom, while pretending not to lose it, and would vanish into Barclay’s Bank like my father, lost for ever to the world of wider possibilities. Surely it was better to stay in Medan.

  But there were few possibilities here either. That was why Daisy and Margey were screwed regularly by whoever had a few guilders. Or a can of bully beef.

  I sat up and wiped furiously at the patches on my trousers, almost ruining my matrimonial hopes in the process.

  If I took Margey back to England, that would be okay. For her and me. And yet … Even here, even in Medan, even in the bloody Indian Army, even ten thousand miles from home, I still met with that stupid British prejudice from my fellow sergeants, a racialism that it would take a million years to wipe out. They would screw the local girls of any shade or persuasion. But to love them, to treat them as human beings, that was not to be thought of.

  These comments set down now are inevitably coloured by all that has happened since those distant days when the warmth between Margey and me was a real breathing thing. They are coloured by memories of the welcome Britain gave to the West Indians, the Indians, and the Pakistanis, who fought beside us against Jap and German alike in World War II. They came to work here in what they called their Mother Country. Only to find the milk had gone sour.

  Grunting about my headache, I climbed back into socks, boots, puttees. I stood up and put the ginger machine-thing out of its agony with the heel of a left Army Boot Size Eleven. Then I clomped downstairs. I was going back to the billet. A strategically held bush hat concealed the mess on my trousers.

  I left the corned beef, all thirty guilders’ worth, on the window sill, in payment for my sterile pleasure. If it had been pleasure. And I closed the window. Maybe shite-hawks liked corned beef.

  At the top of the alley-way, Margey appeared. She carried her little purse, her parasol, and a small parcel wrapped in newspaper.

  ‘Oh, hello, Horry, darling. How nice I see you. You wait for me?’

  ‘I’d given up waiting. I was going back to the billet.’

  ‘Come in, sit down, and I make you nice coffee, darling. Today coffee again.’ She linked her chubby arm in mine. ‘I been shopping a long way, to get some medicine for poor Auntie. She no well today and doctor come, poor Auntie. When I go down Chuah Street, I see in a shop real lovely little hat from Paris or some prace like that. Just is right to wear in London and look smart but costs much price. Tomorrow I take you and show, and you can see me wear it, okay?’

  ‘I’ll buy it for you, Margey.’

  ‘No, is costing too much price. Just you see me wear it.’ She grinned up at me saucily. ‘Then you think you dear Margey very sexy, want make love to her in shop.’

  I laughed. ‘I’ll buy it for you as my parting present.’

  Her smile vanished immediately. ‘It impossible us to part, Horry, now we found each other.’ She clung to my arm.

  We went back in. She started scolding the old man at the table, who stood up and started explaining something to her with a maximum of gesture. Margey became very angry and animated. I sat down at the table to watch her and keep my flies hidden. Fat appeared from the rear of the building, said something irritably, and immediately became a second object of Margey’s fine scorn. She stood there, beautifully moulded, with her eyes wide, letting them have it about something or other. Daisy also appeared, lolling against the wall and enjoying every word of it as she cradled her baby. Her manner was indolent.

  When the men trooped dejectedly into the kitchen, Margey unwrapped her parcel on the table. I started back in alarm. A disgusting oily creature was revealed which looked like a fish with legs. It was black; it leaked an oily substance on to the table. Daisy came up to admire it.

  Margey burst into laughter at my expression, her anger vanishing.

  ‘Don’t be frightened, darling. Is only medicine make Auntie better.’

  ‘What is that revolting thing?’

  She explained that it was a common Sumatran animal which lived on the plantations. She held it up by its tail. It looked like a baby dinosaur, ripped palpitating at foetus-stage from some stygian archaic womb. It had frogs’ eyes. Along its body was a folded membrane which Margey pulled out, revealing wings rather like bats’ wings. The head was blunt, with curious flaps instead of ears. I had never seen anything like it before. It was a flying lizard, believed by the Chinese community to have medicinal powers. Margey trotted it out to the kitchen to cut it up. The old man went behind the screen to fan Auntie. Daisy made little crooning noises to her baby. Fat brought me a bottle of Red Fox. Life was going on more or less as usual, scraping by.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  That was how average days in Medan drifted along. Not much achieved; not much harm done either. An easier life than anything I was likely to find at home. A life fit for a fucking hero.

  Nevertheless, a certain dissatisfaction followed me back to the lines when I returned there an hour or so before sunset. Boyer had eluded me; I blamed myself for not doing something about him earlier. You never knew where officers were going to be.

  Before reaching the sergeants’ mess, I heard the sound of a pump, wheezing like an asthmatic trying to climb the Great Pyramid with his grannie on his back. An Indian havildar was supervising the draining of our ruined cesspit, while the gang of men under him laid freshly sawn planks over the hole.

  Charlie Meadows stood watching from the mess steps, smoking his pipe to ward off the stink.

  ‘Merdeka, Horatio. We’d better not get too pissed tonight, or we’ll be in there head-first. It would be a nasty way to die.’

  ‘I can think of better ways to go.’

  As I came level with him, he turned to face me, pulling the pipe wetly from his big mouth and pointing the end at me. ‘You’re a dodgy bugger, and always have been as long as I’ve known you,’ he said admiringly. ‘Jhamboo Singh has been looking for you most of the bloody day. What have you been doing, flogging more gin-palaces?’

  ‘The sergeants’ mess this time. Flogged it to Soekarno for a brothel. What’s Jhamboo want, do you know?’

  ‘You’d better go over to Admin and see.’

  ‘All this bloody army bullshit – I’ll be glad to escape from it. I’d better have a shower and a change first.’

  Charlie stuck the pipe in the other side of his mouth. ‘You don’t know when you’re well off, you young lads …’

  For all my assumption of indifference, the summons to Jhamboo worried me. I showered fast, yelling for the Chinese orderly to get out a fresh uniform as I cast the spunk-ridden one aside. Quick dash of powder over foot rot and prickly heat, fast dress, and I was ready.

  As I made my way over to Admin, the sun was sloping down the western sky without in any way relaxing its animosity towards mankind. The duty clerk was on me as I entered the doorway, and a moment later an Indian orderly showed me upstairs to Jhamboo’s office.

  Captain Jhamboo Singh was a small man. Perhaps that was why he stood up as I entered and saluted him. As ever, he was immaculately dressed in khaki uniform, with razor-sharp edges to his shorts. His belt and boots shone. His little moustache was deadly symmetrical.

  ‘Ah, good afternoon, Sgt Stubbs. I have been trying to get in touch with you all day. May I ask where you have been?’ His voice was soft, almost pleading.

  ‘I had some business down in town, sir. I am time-expired, flying out on Monday, and the RSM has excused me duties.’

  ‘Well, we are very short of men, Sgt Stubbs. We don’t get the replacements, you see. It may be t
hat we shall be forced to call upon you for some duties.’ He smiled. ‘The army always needs us till the very last moment when it releases us. As a regular soldier, you will understand.’

  ‘What did you want to see me for, sir?’

  His fingers drummed on the desk.

  ‘Perhaps you would be kind enough to wait one moment while I work on some papers. When I learned you were here, I have summoned also Sgt Mercer and Cpl Kyle of “O” Section. I hope they will arrive immediately.’

  He came half-way round his desk to offer me a chair. I sat on it in a rigid ‘At Attention’ position.

  ‘Please, you may smoke, Sgt Stubbs. Perhaps you will take one of mine.’ He extended a sumptuous silver cigarette case; it opened like the jaws of a crocodile as it approached me over the desk. ‘They are English cigarettes. De Reszke.’

  I took one and lit up. Rumour had it that Jhamboo’s family were fantastically rich and ate their curries off beaten gold plates while being served by naked slave-girls.

  Before I had finished puffing away, the door opened and Johnny and Kyle clumped in. They halted side by side and saluted. I heaved myself up beside them and stared at a spot six inches the other side of Jhamboo’s head.

  ‘Thank you, gentlemen, no need to be formal,’ Jhamboo whispered. ‘We have a painful subject to talk about. It is the question of why “O” Section did not turn out to dig the field this morning, as you, Sgt Mercer, reported. That is why I have invited you to come here. Cpl Kyle, you are in charge of these men. Why exactly was Agricultural Duty not carried out as per orders?’

  Our thin-nosed pale friend said, ‘Sir, I asked the men very reasonably to turn out on parade but they refused. They said that their job did not include digging. They claimed to be skilled tradesmen, sir. They said – I just report what they said, sir – that such a job was a task for the Indian Other Ranks.’

  Jhamboo Singh nodded very methodically at all these points, as if meeting them head on. A fly buzzed about and sat on his left ear; he ignored it.