John and Norbert had arrived the previous night at Encampment G. It was a relatively stable place and had developed something of a community feel to it. Toddlers looked up from their mud paddling pool and laughed at the large but rapidly shrinking Englishman on the top step.
Soldiers with damp cheroots in their mouths carried leather rice pouches over one shoulder and automatic weapons on the other. Pretty ladies hid behind powder masks and greeted him with their eyebrows.
He walked around. There was a hut for schooling the children, and a large medical tent. There was a spacious area with a roof but no walls—for meetings he assumed, as there were already a number of people gathered there. The expanse of huts had adopted some of the trappings of permanence: plants in improvised pots; vegetables in polite rows; even, heaven knows where they'd come from, housecats asleep on humble front porches. But it was a deceptive calm. The camp could never get too large or too comfortable. When the rains stopped, it would be gone.
He wondered whether he could be useful somehow. He wandered under the canopied area and immediately interrupted the meeting. He could tell from the turned heads that he had disturbed something strategic. Even the subsequent warm smiles and hellos didn't amount to an invitation to stay.
For an hour he found himself as an impromptu English teacher at the school. He used the language on a daily basis, but it wasn't until that lesson he realized he knew nothing of its mechanics. It would have been easier to explain the process of dreaming. But the children, starving for education and culture and stability, gobbled up whatever they could get. They actually appreciated the value of learning and life, in a way the little buggers disfiguring walls and bus shelters in Kingston never would. Ornery old people were right after all. You do only appreciate things when you have to do without.
"Why. . . ? You mean why does United Kingdom have a 'the' in front of it, but England doesn't?" Stuffed if I know, he thought. It wasn't the only thing he couldn’t answer. He promised he would come back the next day with a real lesson, as well as unlocking the great missing 'the' puzzle.
As he left, they all stood, five and 14-year-olds jumbled together, and politely thanked him for his lesson. It lodged in his heart somewhere, that hutful of manners deep in hostile territory. He really saw how his father had fallen in love with the Karen and had wanted to be more than just a bookkeeper.
He sat for some while drinking tea with a lady almost totally blind. She didn't have a language she could share with him. Just tea. She had beckoned him in, not knowing who he was. She sat him down, poured his drink from a permanently boiling billy, and returned to her work.
He looked at her as she sewed from memory. Her fingers deftly found the bullet holes in the freshly scrubbed fatigues, and darned them away. He didn't feel discomfort at being there. He finished his tea, refused a second cup, and left with a smile she couldn't see but knew was there.
What next. . . ? He walked across to the enormous MASH tent and stood in front of it. The red cross on the roof had been covered with green paint. The Karen had learned dearly what a good target a red cross could be.
Bamboo extensions of various shapes and sizes snaked east and west from the main tent like clumsy afterthoughts. These wards weren't occupied now. The rains had given soldiers time to heal or die from their wounds. For a month, no new battle victims had arrived. So only those with long-term infections or jungle-born diseases were hospitalized, and they were all under canvass.
John walked to the peeled-aside flaps and pushed his nose against the grey mosquito netting that blocked the entrance. It took some time for his eyes to adjust to the shadows.
Shirley, for want of a nurse, had finished divvying out the pills and capsules into the 11 seedpods she used as containers. She lifted the tray and turned to begin her rounds.
There was nothing, she had believed, that could shock her. She was puzzled by the way the world functioned, but none of the headlines she read or the cruelties she witnessed caused any physical, biological reaction in her. But when the ghost stood in the entrance to her tent that morning, her fossilized heart began to pump fit to burst. The nerves in her fingers shook away the tray and all its pills, and her legs turned to water. She fainted for the only time in her life.
31
"I always have that effect on women," John said as Shirley's eyes flickered open. She coughed from the fumes of the smelling salts. She was lying on one of the vacant bedrolls on the ground. Her patients and John were gathered around her like wounded surgeons.
"What happened?" she asked, although even as she spoke she recalled exactly what she'd seen. Without his gauze shroud and halo of bright sunlight, the man looked a lot less like a ghost. But there was an amazing similarity.
"I really didn't mean to frighten you," he added.
The crowd recoiled as the doctor sat up. She snapped at the patients in Karen and they hobbled and limped back to their own spots on the ground like the living dead returning to their graves. She climbed shakily to her feet and chose not to tell the stranger what he’d done to her.
"That really doesn't happen so often, thank goodness," she said. "Lack of sleep I guess."
She caught him staring at her, and looked away. She was used to it. Beautiful women expected such, but Shirley was never flattered by the attention. It was an annoying distraction. She honestly wished she could be plain, or downright ugly, and step back from centre stage into the chorus line.
But when she glanced back into this man's eyes, she saw again her ghost, and lingered longer than she would normally in her stare.
John had no way of interpreting the look, but it rustled his insides just enough to throw him. "I . . . er." And he couldn't think what the 'er' was destined to become.
Shirley too was uncomfortable. "What are you doing here?"
Her brusqueness brought him back to reality. "I was wondering whether there was anything I could do to help."
"Are you a doctor?"
"No."
"A nurse?"
"Actually I'm a policeman."
She laughed. "Oh. Good. Perhaps I could get you to frisk these patients for illegal weapons."
Her ghost smiled at her. "I'm here on business for a day or two. There isn't very much I can do until my friend comes back. I wanted to be useful. I picked up a couple of hours at the school, but they've already exposed my limitations. I was wondering if there was something I could do here."
Very much against her better judgement she said, "Well, you can start by rescuing those pills you made me drop. We don't have that many we can leave them buried here in the dirt."
*
He helped out for the rest of the day. It wasn't exactly his commitment to medicine and the plight of the sick that kept him there. Dr. Shirley was enchanting him. He knew only too well that women weren't particularly interested in him. He'd long given up grooming himself in any attempt to entice the opposite sex. He was the type who could rob a bank happily knowing the witnesses wouldn't be able to describe him. They couldn't even say he was overweight anymore, just nondescript.
But, to his surprise, he found this attractive doctor staring at him on a number of occasions. Even though it was a look of query rather than pent-up passion, it wasn't an altogether unpleasant experience. It unsettled him enough to make him say stupid things for most of the afternoon. He didn't dazzle her once with his wit or intelligence. In fact, by the time the soldier came to invite him for dinner with the elders, he was certain he’d rendered himself ineligible as either a mate or a cerebrally functioning human being.
But it had been so stimulating to feel the activity inside his chest. He wasn't dead after all.
When he'd finally left, Shirley breathed a sigh of relief. His being there had been so infuriating. He hadn't told her the truth about why he was there or who he was with. He’d given her no clues as to his background, but she knew. Her ghost had returned to her somehow, and she was determined to discover how it was possible. She wouldn't let him get away again.
John whistled his way to the general's house. The general was never there, but they called it the general's house anyway. This new, improved John was welcomed warmly by the old men he'd met the previous evening. The group was light one or two who had probably gone off with Norbert to collect data on Jim's final mission. The meal was tasty and the atmosphere cordial. John waited for a discrete juncture at which to inquire about the doctor. He didn't have to wait long.
"I hear you were helping out at the clinic today," said one.
"I don't think I saved any lives."
"There probably weren't any men in there sick enough to die. It's funny how many mystery illnesses we've had since Dr. Shirley arrived."
"What. . . ? Oh, you mean. . . .Yes. I see." He had a long forgotten ache of jealousy. Perhaps sobriety turned men into emotional wrecks. This woman was already making a mess of him. "Perhaps she's just a good doctor."
The men laughed at his unintentional joke.
"Right. Good to look at."
"Nice little figure."
"Good enough to eat."
If they hadn't been so old, he would have punched them. How dare they talk about her like that? It occurred to him what risks there would be for an unattached woman out here in the jungle. At least he assumed she was. . . .
"Does she have a husband? Boyfriend?"
"No, son. She's all yours. She's as free as a bird."
"And hard as a rock," said another.
"Hard?"
"She lives alone, eats alone, sleeps alone. Doesn't mix."
"She does her job and that's it. If you aren't sick, she has nothing to do with you." He dished out and passed around a course of unidentifiable stew mixed with instant noodles. It didn't taste nearly as bad as it looked. "She isn't here to make friends, I know that."
"The brigadier here has a . . . what do they call it. . . ? A conspiracy theory."
The white-haired brigadier's spoon hovered in front of his mouth like a hummingbird Stew dripped onto his lap. "I don't trust her. That's all. I happen to know. . . ." He lowered his voice: "That she asks questions to the patients about SLORC placements and troop movements. She wanted to know about one of their majors last week. What business is that for a doctor? And she asks them when they're drugged and drowsy so they won't remember her asking. But they do."
"You see, Jim," said the man to John's right. "Every group of eternal optimists has its pessimist to keep things balanced."
"Every Seven Dwarfs has its Grumpy," laughed another.
As there were exactly seven of the old soldiers, that was particularly hilarious. It took some while for the choking to stop and decorum to be maintained. The brigadier still hadn't docked his spoon.
"You won't be laughing when they find out she's a SLORC informer."
"Naturally she must be a SLORC spy. She doesn't talk to anyone here, and the only questions she asks are about the enemy."
"I must confess, that has confused me. Perhaps she's a spy for us.”
This caused more laughter, washed down with lumpy, grey rice whisky. John gratefully passed up the offer of a taste.
All through the meal and the evening of deliberations that followed, John's mind was firmly tuned to Dr. Shirley. Without a generator and with the rationing of candles, bedtime at Encampment 8 was at 6:45. Of course, you could stay up and find faces in the moon, or join up the stars to make an animal, but most people went to sleep, particularly on cloudy nights such as this.
In Chiang Mai, Norbert had lent him a hurricane lamp as a night companion. Without it, he knew the darkness would grow over him like a vine and strangle him. But here he was again, alone with the blackness, a tadpole in ink. He couldn't see his own feet. But these evenings, with his father's courage, he was learning to appreciate the beauty of night. He had time to think. Something was coming to him out of the dark; some message. But it wasn't yet plain enough to read. He knew he had to be open to it, and enjoying the darkness was part of that openness.
He put his palms behind his head and indulged in a fantasy. It wasn't a particularly clean one, but he was able to introduce a surprisingly romantic undercurrent. He liked the image so much that he played it again and again until his insomnia got bored with trying to haunt him and allowed him to sleep. . . .
In his dream, their—his and Shirley's—wood-panelled bungalow was being bombarded with mortars and machine-gun fire. She leaned across to him in their bed. Her hand was heavy on his chest. Her voice was deep and gravelly. "Jim Junior. We have to leave now."
*
"Jim Junior. We have to leave now. . . .
"The hand shook him awake, and he was startled to see—or rather, feel—the black shape looming over him. The voice came from somewhere inside it. "Pack everything you brought with you. Everything. Every paper, every map, every stitch of clothing. Don't leave a thing. We're pulling out."
The weapon fire was crisp in the blackness, and close. Physically and mentally confused, John fumbled around in the darkness to collect his and Norbert's few possessions. The warning, 'this is not a drill' kept sounding in his head. This was real and frightening.
He couldn't tell whether the owner of the voice was still with him. He offered an "Okay" into the darkness.
"This way."
He followed the reply into the ink. At the top of the ladder, the blackness was spoilt from time to time by flashes of fire from beyond the trees. Explosions rocked the hut as he lowered himself to the ground. Silent shapes scurried past him with surprising assurance and a lack of fear.
The brigadier's calm face was lit by the flashes, light that came from very close now. At his feet were two huge bundles.
"Can you take one of these?" The bangs were all around them.
"Of course." John hoisted it over one shoulder, then the other. It weighed a ton, and had been packed hurriedly. It jabbed painfully into his back. He tested his balance with a few steps. Then it came. It was too fast to see whether his name was on it. A warm spit of fire creased the air by his head.
Nine years in the police force and he'd never used or carried a gun. He'd never been fired at. If he'd been an inch taller, or had better posture, he would now have been dead. That thought stayed with him.
"Stay always no more than two yards behind me," the brigadier yelled above the din. "Come."
The man's pack was larger and bulkier than John's, but he carried it as if his legs grew out of it. He set off at a trot. John was so intent on keeping the black mass ahead within sight that his feet stumbled clumsily over roots and mounds. Twice he fell to his knees. A light rain was falling and the ground was slimy.
From where they'd come, there were cries of pain; final screams preceding death. John thought about the school and the kids, the clinic and Shirley. And here he was running for his life. What was he to do for them? He was helpless himself; blind, panicked. How was he to help anyone? On they went. Deeper into nowhere. . . .
Then, without words, the old man stopped, and they stood silently. The bursts of fire made a threat of every tree, every shadow. Just as suddenly, they'd be plunged back into blindness. Still the old man stood motionless.
The torchlight came from behind John, and highlighted the white hair on his companion's head. The brigadier turned in an instant. He pushed John to one side, and lifted an automatic weapon John hadn't noticed him holding. He fired at the source of the light and to either side of it. The beam slowly swept to the sky and was gone.
"Come," said the brigadier, and continued on his way as if this were no more than a pause for a piss. John, amazed, stumbled on after him.
Long tongues of fire licked at the sky, and the smell of cordite overtook them. The camp had been razed. There was sporadic gunfire as the invaders and the incumbents battled. There was no way to tell which had been victorious.
John's ears strained to catch footsteps behind them. The further they went, all the natural sounds of the place seemed to have been erased. There was just the huff of their breaths, their own stamping
feet, the whisper of branches clawing at their clothes and their skin.
The trot settled into a march, then a hike, then a realization that they would probably survive. Exhaustion was replaced by a mechanical rhythm. Just as thought can be replaced by the recitation of tables, so John recited his legs away from death. . . .
"One. Left, right. Two. Left, right."
*
How they reached the rendezvous point, or how many hours it had taken them, John couldn't begin to guess. Neither could he fathom how others had got there before them: children, pregnant women, the old blind sewing lady. They were all there. Some were sleeping, some being treated.
The sun, still below the horizon, was beginning to beat a mauve bruise into the sky. A bird began to sing irreverently, ignorant of the tragedy behind them. Nature went on as if nothing had happened.
The brigadier lowered his pack to the ground and smiled. John did the same. They hadn't spoken at all on the journey. John walked over to the old man and stood empty before him. He held out a weak hand and the man grasped it warmly in both of his.
"Welcome to the humdrum world of the Karen," he said.
"Thank you for my life," John replied.
"You're welcome."
"I hope everyone made it out. I don't see anyone from the hospital."
"They were all evacuated to a closer meeting point. I saw them leave. I'm sure they're safe. By the way, do you intend to wear your hair that way permanently?"
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