Spit and Polish

by Carl Muller

  Days passed swiftly and everyone was gearing for the final passing-out parade. This was the threshold that had to be crossed. It was, to the recruit, the end-all of his training stint, the first pinnacle of achievement. It was, therefore, a dumbstruck intake that was told by CO Dharamdass that there would be no passing-out.

  Carloboy gave a small hiss of disbelief. No passing-out? Had the Navy decided to dump them all into the nearest gash barge?

  Dharamdass stared at them. His hands twitched, much like the attitude of a man who wished to strangle all who stood before him. ‘No passing-out parade! Of all the lucky bastards, you are the batch that least deserves this! You are all to consider yourselves passed-out and ready to serve! You get that?’

  Some nodded, some wagged heads wonderingly, some raised eyebrows while others clicked teeth and braced themselves for the worst. The Navy was doing them no favours. Something was up. Something, they knew, which was not going to fill their lives with sunshine and flowers.

  ‘I have received a signal from Gemunu,’ Dharamdass said, ‘and it says that Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth the second is coming to Sri Lanka. Von Bloss! Stop chewing your lip! Did you hear what I just said?’

  ‘Yes sir. The Queen is coming, sir.’

  ‘The Queen of England, you horrible squirt! As a sailor you will always say Her Majesty the Queen, do you hear?’

  ‘Yes sir.’

  ‘From tomorrow, all of you will consider yourselves the Royal guard of honour!’

  There it was. The sting in the tail. It plunged the camp into disarray. The signal had been quite breathless in content. Would it please the CO Rangalla to drill his recruits until they were, or he was, blue in the face so that the said recruits were rendered unmistakeably seamanlike and incredibly shipshape to be the Queen’s Royal guard.

  The more naïve considered this honour indeed, but it was later revealed that this was a matter of simple naval expediency. Recruits, the boys were told by a worldly-wise leading seaman, were in possession of new uniforms and were thus better equipped to uphold the prestige of the service before a visiting sovereign. QED.

  All other routine was dumped. Life became an endless round of marching, marching, forming rank and presenting arms. They ached. They stiffened in all manner of places—places they didn’t know they had—and Carloboy would fling his rifle down, flop on his bunk and scowl.

  ‘Feel like sending the bloody Queen a letter,’ he said, ‘what, men, you think she knows what’s happening here?’

  ‘This is a hell of a thing,’ Daft Fernando moaned, ‘even make-and-mend cancelled.’

  Make-and-mend was the customary Wednesday afternoon off for all ranks. Sailors were expected to use this weekly half-holiday to darn and sew and repair all items of kit. This was never done, of course. Wednesday afternoons saw everybody cut adrift. Bandarawela dreaded Wednesdays. Even the girls’ schools closed early. Cancelling make-and-mend was a most unkind cut.

  ‘If the Queen knows what’s happening here . . . and all because she’s coming . . . she’ll—she’ll . . . ’ imagination could not encompass this.

  ‘Adai, von Bloss, so what have we got to do? Will have to go to Colombo, no?’

  ‘And march an’ march there also. An’ for what? Just to go to the jetty and present arms!’

  ‘The jetty? You mean the harbour we have to go?’

  ‘Otherwise? She will come by ship, no? Have a Royal yacht or something.’

  ‘Yes, I know,’ Nugawira nodded, ‘called the Britannia. Sure to come to the new jetty they’re making. That’s why they’re going to call it the Queen Elizabeth Pier.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘How the fuck do I know? Government, must be. Who else?’

  ‘Feel like sending a letter. Telling how we are marching, marching . . . and the polishing. How the inspection now? Bloody madness!’

  Todwell chuckled. ‘So when is she coming?’

  ‘Who knows? Didn’t even tell.’

  ‘May give us medals.’

  ‘Bullshit! Medals for what? Because we went and put a salute?’

  Things got worse ... or better, depending on the way the platoon commanders and the recruits looked at it. A guards instructor of the Royal Navy named Brady came to Rangalla to assess potential and proceeded to blow several fuses. His broad Yorkshire accent made him quite unintelligible to the main body of those he had come to persecute.

  This made for rather bizarre and most unreal moments when he waddled up to take command.

  ‘Roy-yell grrth! Ain . . . heh!’

  The boys stared at him nonplussed.

  Brady turned to the Platoon Commander with the sort of concern one usually displays on receipt of a hurricane warning. ‘Dahnt these mehn understand Henglish aht ahll?’

  The PC was a very impatient man. Also, he didn’t like this stuffy GI from Blighty at all. ‘Oh, they know their stuff,’ he assured airily, ‘Let me handle them.’ He then swung on the guard thunderously, ‘Royal garrrd! Hough! Stand still! Don’t move a fucking eyelid! Slooooo‘p arrrmz! Head erect! Simmons! Is your mother a bloody Kathak dancer? Now the Queen will step on the saluting dais . . . Roooy’l garrrd! Royal saloooot . . . prezen arrrms! Slap those rifle slings smartly! I want to hear one sharp sound! My Jesus, Fernando, I’ll kick you all the way up Fox Hill!’

  GI Brady looked as though he had just been force-fed with the square root of minus x.

  ‘Well, GI, that’s the way to get things done around here.’

  ‘Ayh . . . very good, sir. Only the quain meh not—ah—approve.’

  ‘Don’t give it a thought. She doesn’t know these buggers.’ He turned on the boys. ‘Slooop armhz! Orderrrr arhms! Now lissen. The Queen will inspect you. She will walk past you accompanied by the Royal Guard Commander and Prince Philip and the Commanding Officer of the guard. You will stand like bloody statues! You won’t twitch. Not a muscle. Not even if the bugger behind is feeling your arse! Did you hear? Now GI Brady will be the Queen and I am the Royal Guard Commander . . .’ he led Brady to a corner of the parade ground, ‘Stand still there! Here comes the Queen!’

  This was too much. Someone muttered, ‘Just look at them. Two bloody lunatics.’

  The Platoon Commander waltzed up, left hand holding an imaginary sword. Behind him minced Queen Rosie O’Brady the First (and hopefully the Last). The Royal Guard tittered. Daft Fernando tried to suppress an insane giggle and went ‘wooof!’ and roars of laughter split the morning air.

  The Platoon Commander lost his last shreds of dignity. ‘Stop it!’ he foamed, ‘Stop laughing!’

  The boys hooted. They slapped each other on the back. They banged their rifle butts on the ground. They cackled the way midnight hags are wont to do. Winnie went into convulsions of a sort and had to be thumped vigorously. Sims pointed helplessly at Brady.

  ‘Here comes the Queen!’ he howled and the eruptions of mirth scared the crows on the yardarm.

  ‘High port arms!’ the PC screamed, executing a sort of Watusi, ‘High port arms! Run, you bastards, run! Run!’

  They ran . . . round and round the parade ground for a long time. There was neither time nor space. Only the pounding of boots in the red dust. There wasn’t a laugh left in any of them when they were finally brought to a dragging halt. Of GI Brady there was nary a sign. The PC stared at them frostily. ‘Take five minutes. And muster back here. I’ve not finished with you yet!’

  Something had to snap. The constant drilling was beginning to get on everyone’s nerves.

  ‘Join the Navy and see the world,’ said Koelmeyer darkly. ‘Huh!’

  ‘Join the Navy and have a girl in every port,’ Todwell snorted. ‘What port?’

  All they had were outlandish .303 rifles with warped stocks. All they did was march, march, carrying said rifles on their shoulders. Every day.

  ‘What the hell is the use of this uniform anyway?’ Sims wanted to know.

  ‘Something,’ said Carloboy, ‘has to be done. Marching, marching, left turn, about turn, r
ight turn . . .’

  They agreed that, worst of all, they had to also listen to a litany of insults from the cretin who pranced behind them with a wild light in his eyes and a very red face.

  ‘If we can get sick or something . . .’

  Yes, the situation could be eased somewhat by reporting sick, but, as Aloy observed, a way of falling ill had to be discovered. And it was Aloy who hit on the idea of swallowing soap and washing it down with a couple of mugs of warm water. It worked, for soon he was a sort of going concern. He was removed to the Army MRS by shocked sick bay attendants.

  This was too good to be true. Soap was swallowed at random and with scant respect to internal tracts, intestines or other such wriggly appurtenances that skulk in the average stomach. Daft Fernando did not throw away his shaving water. He drank it. Sims had to be dissuaded from ingesting washing powder.

  ‘Why? It’s like soap, no?’

  ‘Better not,’ Udurawana advised. ‘Have chemicals in that. Just take bits of bar soap.’

  By late morning they were all crowding the medical reception station of the Army hospital.

  ‘Purging,’ said an Army medical orderly to the staff sergeant, ‘the whole bloody Navy is purging.’

  ‘So why are they here,’ growled the staff, ‘there are no lavatories in their camp?’

  The Captain, Ceylon Army Medical Corps, did not like them either. ‘Sailors I don’t like,’ he said, ‘and shitting sailors 1 can’t stand! You!’ to Ordinary Seaman Deen, ‘what did you eat this morning?’

  Deen began to count off on his fingers. ‘Half a loaf bread, two sausages, four eggs, four mugs tea, tomato sauce, three boiled potatoes, a packet of cream crackers, glass of orange juice and a mango, sir.’

  ‘Jeeeesus! You have a bloody tub for a stomach? Who the fuck issues victuals in your mess?’

  ‘I get two extra eggs,’ Deen pointed out, ‘because I am Muslim and I don’t eat sausages, sir.’

  ‘But you said you ate two sausages.’

  ‘Yes, sir. They were beef sausages, so I ate.’

  The Captain closed his eyes. ‘No wonder you buggers are purging,’ he breathed, ‘I’ll be in the loo for a week if I ate like that.’ He turned to the staff with a grimace. ‘I want to examine their stools,’ he said. ‘Four bloody eggs . . .’ he looked at Deen in near wonder, ‘cream crackers, sausages . . . Jeesus! Give them black coffee. No sugar, no milk, like bloody tar!’ He stomped away, then turned at the door. ‘There are only six lavatories here. I don’t want a bloody stampede. And if any of you bastards soil this place, I’ll—I’ll run you out with a fucking bayonet!’

  Each sufferer was given a dinky little ceramic bedpan and ordered to present samples of naval waste when the urge was next upon them. This they did docilely enough. Being in the MRS was relief enough. They thought of the others, marching in the sun, and smirked.

  There were disadvantages, however. No food. The staff was quite emphatic. ‘If you buggers eat lunch on top of all that breakfast we’ll have to build new lavatories!’

  Nobody questioned his judgement. They felt quite drained and, as is usual of the condition they had induced, there was some bodily dehydration. But the soap had done its worst and the rumbles in their bellies had dropped to hoarse whispers. Like a floor polisher being used in a far corner of a room.

  It was two in the afternoon when the bomb walked in, stood among them and went off.

  A very volatile captain stormed into the ward. He foamed. Yes, foamed, as though he had swallowed a bar of soap himself.

  ‘Malingerers!’ he howled, and stamped his feet. Both feet, very quickly. Like the mating dance of a prairie hen. A spellbinding performance, more so with the bedpan in his hand. What he next said was with such croaking fury that nobody could understand a word. Then, dropping the vaudeville, he advanced on them with a wild light in his eyes.

  ‘Who is A-5550?’ he hissed.

  Carloboy sat up and gave him a look of piteous long-suffering. Even da Vinci could not have captured that expression.

  ‘What did you eat this morning?’

  ‘Bread and eggs, sir.’

  A long intake of breath. ‘I see . . . only bread and eggs?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Not soap?’

  ‘Sir?’

  ‘Soap! Soap! S-o-p-e—soap!’

  ‘Oh, soap?’

  ‘Whadd’youmean oh soap! Yes soap or no soap?’ He fought for air, then burst out, ‘did you eat soap?’

  ‘Soap, sir?’

  ‘Will you answer my question? You—you—cunt of misery!’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Well?’

  ‘I didn’t eat soap, sir.’

  ‘So you didn’t, eh? Get out of that fucking bed! Come here! Look at this!’ pointing a finger into the bed pan, ‘what is this?’

  ‘Shit, sir.’

  ‘I know that! And whose shit is it? Yours! And do you know what’s in it? Soap! So you didn’t eat soap—but you shit soap! You’re a cute little bunch of bastards you are. Eat soap, start purging and come here to lie on my beds. On my beds! Out! Out! All of you out!’

  They were all out of bed anyway. The big scheme had come unstuck. Worse still, they were still somewhat loose around the sphincters.

  The Captain phoned the CO Rangalla. ‘Send a truck for your lot. There’s nothing wrong with them . . . yes . . . yes . . . they need extra drill, extra work, extra fatigue and an extra kick each in the backside. What’s that? Oh no, I’m not going to kick them for you. Some of them are still going loose . . . okay, no sweat . . . only watch out for this lot. They’re hell on wheels . . .’

  He turned on the boys with a face that twisted repugnantly. ‘Get dressed and get out. And don’t ever come here again. Not even if you’re dying. So help me God, I’ll give the first one who comes here a thousand cc’s of formalin. You know what will happen?’

  They could have guessed. Carloboy frowned slightly. There was no need, he thought, to rub it in.

  ‘He gets stiff. Like a bloody waxwork! A well-kept corpse! That’s what I’ll do if I see any of you here again! And you know how the formalin is given? Injected up your arse!’ He swept out with bedpan-rattling force.

  Todwell shrugged. They filed out sheepishly and stood in the sunshine, waiting for the truck.

  ‘Bloody mad doctors they have here,’ Carloboy said.

  The motion was passed unanimously.

  The reception at Rangalla was worse. Left nothing to be desired. After the cyclone had done its worst, leaving several popping eardrums in its wake, they settled to the decreed punishment.

  ‘Hard labour,’ Dharmadass carolled. ‘That’s the medical recommendation. Follow me. Left turn. Quick march.’

  They were taken to the edge of a long, sloping ground. Yonder lay the married quarters. The CO rubbed his hands. ‘Always wanted a road from here to there,’ he told no one in particular. ‘Go on. Get to the bosun’s stores. Picks, shovels, spades, barrows. There is a pile of road metal at the front gate. Get it moved. Cut the road, lay the metal, use the heavy roller. I want a good road, do you understand? Warrant Officer Seraphin will Supervise. Go on! Get moving! Picks and shovels first.’

  WO Seraphin was not very enthusiastic. The boys laughed at him, called him Whispering Smith. Oh, he had what was generally accepted as a ‘mouth almighty’ but he also had his problems and looked on the recruits as a means to an end. The man had a lot on his plate, everyone knew, and to some extent, sympathized. But what does one do when the man stands dumbly by, accepts that his wife finds Petty Officer Rashid the better bedfellow? Seraphin had thought that he should woo his wife with all he could lavish on her. He showered her with gifts, which she thanked him prettily for, then hummed a popular tune of the times.

  ‘Why are you singing that song?’ Seraphin would ask.

  ‘So what? I like it. Lovely, the words,’ and she would sing:

  ‘You were in my arms last night about this time . . . ’

  ‘Stop that
!’ Seraphin would shout, then grow tearful. ‘Why are you torturing me like this? After all I’m doing for you and giving you. Next year I’ll be sub-lieutenant also. We will have officer’s quarters. Even now we can go to wardroom parties and all. Why are you doing this to me?’ ‘Oh shut up,’ wife Dora would scream, ‘just because you are a warrant officer you think you’re big? What do you want? To salute you in the bed also?’

  ‘If that Rashid comes here again—’

  ‘So what will you do? He comes to see me, not you.’

  ‘And what about the others? That Morell in Colombo. You think I don’t know? And that Yeoman Ranawaka. I thought if come here you will behave . . .’

  ‘Behave! What is so bad if I have some friends? You think you own me? What can you do? Borrowing money left and right. Even asking the recruits for money. Think I don’t know?’

  ‘Yes, asking,’ Seraphin would snarl, ‘borrowing for what? To buy for you things, that’s what.’

  ‘So who’s asking? Why are you just bringing? Did I ask?’

  ‘So why can’t I buy anything for you? I’m your husband!’

  Dora would sniff. ‘Husband!’ She would say it as though she were referring to the bubonic plague. ‘Four years now I have put up. Can’t do anything properly.’

  ‘Oh, I can’t?’

  ‘You can’t! Vain I married you. Can’t even do the job properly.’

  Seraphin would flop into a chair, a stricken, beaten man. He knew that it was useless to argue. Those others in Colombo, this Rashid, they obviously knew how to keep Dora humming. He just could not.

  ‘You were in my arms last night about this time . . .’

  ‘Stop that! Stop singing that song!’

  Poor Whispering Smith. The recruits paid him scant respect too. He had this irritating habit of sidling up to his quarry at working party. ‘Eh, von Bloss, how ‘you off fercash?’ This was said sotto, usually through the teeth, making the words sound like the love-call of a cobra.