by JH Fletcher
Now Peter was thirty miles away, in Tampin.
Ruth was anxious to meet him, to see what the army had made of such unpromising material. She wrote, asking him to come to Malacca when he could scrounge some leave.
I am so looking forward to meeting you. I have a mate here, Helen Mason, so if you have a pal bring him as well and the four of us can go out somewhere.
He came, with a friend. Dougie Armstrong from New South Wales. He was gritty, Ruth saw at once, a survivor, with carroty hair and a way with him. He was street-smart, the sort who would know how to rort the system and get away with it.
Afterwards Helen claimed she had not liked him. ‘Thought he was God’s gift …’
It was true he had tried to chum up with her, had put his arm around her. Had even suggested they let the cousins get on with it while the two of them explored the beach; among other things, perhaps. At the time Helen had seemed not unwilling.
‘He is good looking, though,’ Ruth said.
He was, despite his hair. Skin like milk, unaffected by the tropical sun, eyes of emerald, hairless body smoothly muscled …
‘Like a Greek god.’ Ruth remembered how Dorrie had described Lukas. She meant it but hid her feelings behind a laugh.
‘I was never much for Greeks,’ Helen said.
The meeting had been a success, for all that. The swimming club, on a point of land north of the town, was for officers and civilians only but the beach, yellow sand littered with shells as round and thin as biscuits, was free. It was too hot to walk far but they found a patch of shade, swam in the shallow waters of the straits.
Dougie pointed at the horizon. ‘Sumatra over there,’ he said. ‘Can’t see it from here, of course.’ And smiled, as though he had hidden it on purpose.
Ruth and Helen had organised the makings of a picnic: bread, some tinned meat.
‘What are the Poms like?’ Dougie asked.
In Tampin there were very few, apparently. In Malacca they littered the landscape.
‘Too toffee for me,’ Helen said. She struck a pose, attempting without success a toffee accent. ‘My dear, are you from the colonies? How terribly interesting.’ She appealed to them. ‘Know what I mean?’
Dougie looked at her admiringly, red hair glinting in the sunlight. ‘Quite a joker,’ he said. ‘Wouldn’t read about it.’
They finished their sandwiches, shared a couple of beers.
‘Coming for a stroll?’ Dougie suggested to Helen, green eyes hopeful.
‘Orright.’
They wandered away down the beach.
Ruth turned to her cousin. ‘How are you finding it in the army? Really?’
He avoided her anxious eyes. ‘It’s all right.’
He had changed. He was composed, brittle, but Ruth sensed a hint of desperation behind the veneer. It frightened her.
‘Tell me?’
‘You’re treated like a criminal,’ he said. ‘You have to accept that. Every day they’re after you, screaming and yelling. What they call military discipline. They make you do things. Stupid things. It doesn’t take much to get on the wrong side of them.’
‘Do you get on the wrong side of them?’
‘All the time.’ He was silent for a moment, staring at the languid sea. ‘Things aren’t right, you know.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Nobody knows what they’re doing. I’m in the artillery, right? I’m trained in twenty-five pounder field guns. We all are.’
‘What about it?’
‘We had to leave our guns behind. What we’ve got now are mortars. None of us knows anything about mortars.’ He laughed bitterly. ‘Not that it matters. There’s no ammunition for them.’
‘Should you be telling me this?’
‘Probably not.’ But showed no sign of shutting up. ‘It’s the same with everything. Sentries with no bullets for their rifles. Locals aren’t supposed to come into camp but they do it all the time. Nobody stops them. If the Japs ever come …’
‘Nobody here expects them.’
‘They’d better be right.’
She put her hand on his. ‘What’s it like? Really?’
Somehow she had got through to him. He stared at her. ‘It’s terrible,’ he said. ‘Terrible.’ His mouth worked; he looked as though he might cry. ‘Somehow they found out about Franz.’
A brother who was a Nazi. It had made him a marked man.
‘There’s a corporal. Name’s Kruse. He calls me Adolf.’ He tried to smile. ‘He’s quite a Nazi himself.’
‘You mustn’t let him get to you.’
‘What I’m really afraid of,’ he told her, ‘is that one of these days I might kill him.’
And meant it, Ruth saw. She could think of nothing to say. This man with his air of barely-controlled desperation was a stranger to her.
‘Doing any writing?’ Peter asked her.
‘Matron caught me the other day scrawling away when I was on duty. Kicked up a fuss. Lectured me on our responsibility to our patients.’ Helen was not the only mimic. ‘As if it mattered. All we get here are cases of prickly heat and tinea. I thought I was going to fight Germans,’ she said, ‘and here we sit, looking at the sea.’
‘You’re well out of it,’ Peter said. ‘Unless the Japs come.’
‘You lot will soon chuck them out if they do.’
Peter shook his head. ‘What I’ve seen, this mob couldn’t stop a runaway sheep.’
‘They hear you talking like that you’ll be in trouble,’ she warned him.
He gave her a cock-eyed grin. ‘I’m Adolf’s spy, remember?’
‘Your mate Dougie seems all right,’ she hazarded.
‘He’s a good bloke. Knows what he’s doing.’
They looked down the beach but of the others there was no sign.
‘Helen seems to be getting on with him all right.’
Later, when the two boys had gone back to Tampin, Helen had a different story. ‘Wanted to kiss me,’ she said.
‘Did you let him?’
She ignored the question. ‘Not the only thing he tried, I’ll tell you that.’
‘Like what?’
‘Know what he said? You got great tits, that’s what he said.’
‘He never.’ Ruth was delighted.
‘Dinkum. His very words.’
‘He’s right,’ Ruth said. She had always been envious of her friend’s breasts.
‘Doesn’t give him the right to say so, does it? A bloke you’ve never seen before?’
‘Words don’t hurt.’
‘Tried to check up, didn’t he? Tried to grab a hold of them.’
Helen seemed to have had a much more exciting time than she yet the phone call, when it came, was for Ruth.
‘I’m in Malacca,’ Dougie said. ‘I wondered if you’d like to go for a stroll.’
In the end they went to the pictures. Deanna Durbin in One Hundred Men And A Girl. The Hollywood schmaltz carried them both far away from the picture palace with its half-walls letting in mosquitoes and the hot night air, the gathering storms of war. Dougie held her hand, warm hand in the warm dark; his fingers traced the veins in her bare arm, up and down, up and down, until her body tingled and she stirred uneasily in her seat.
Afterwards he took her where she had never been before, a row of Chinese foodstalls where she watched uncertainly as he ordered kuay teow soup, oyster omelet, lamb fried in peanut oil and served on thin wooden skewers.
‘Satay,’ he told her.
‘How do you know what to order?’
‘Trial and error. The camp grub is no good so we eat in town when we can.’
They sat on stools under the hissing glare of lanterns strung along the line of stalls. Behind them native people sauntered, soft voices high-pitched in the darkness. Cicadas whistled and from the flowering trees came the fragrant smell of blossom.
‘Do you think anything will happen?’
‘The Japs? Bound to, I’d say.’
His calm acceptanc
e of war’s inevitability chilled her. ‘We’ll chuck them out, won’t we?’
He grinned cynically. ‘The wireless says we will, so I suppose we will.’
The harsh shadows cast by the lanterns hid his eyes from her. ‘But you don’t think so.’
‘Did I say that?’ They had finished eating. He stood, reaching for her hand. ‘C’mon.’
‘Where are we going?’
‘You’ll see.’
She went without question or even doubt. I must be nuts, she thought, remembering what Helen had said about him, wondering whether he would make a grab for her, too. Wondering what she would do about it if he tried. I hardly know the bloke, she told herself but it made no difference. The war had made everything fluid. The old rules no longer applied. Pre-war attitudes, anything that might interfere with her determination to live life while she still had it to live, had no place.
What that might mean in practice she was uncertain. Thought — with hope and some apprehension — that she might be about to find out.
They followed a road that climbed between scattered houses until they reached the summit of a low hill. Lights shone from the crowded streets below them, the noises of the town came faintly on the warm breeze and beyond the clustered buildings the sea shimmered silver to the horizon.
An expanse of grass surrounded a wall that glowed white in the moonlight.
‘What is it?’ Ruth whispered; this was no place for loud voices.
‘The old fort. The Portuguese built it in the sixteenth century.’
The crenellated walls were about ten feet high, massively built in stone. They would have been a formidable obstacle in their day but now the fortress stood open, the gates gone centuries before. They went inside. A flight of stone steps led to the parapet. They climbed and looked out through an embrasure at the town, the bridge spanning the narrow river, the sea shining like a coat of silver mail.
Ruth’s heart jumped as she felt Dougie’s arm encircle her waist. His outstretched fingers lay quietly against her ribs below her breast. Her breathing was funny but the fingers did not move and slowly she relaxed.
She felt the need to make conversation. ‘Which way will they come, d’you think, if they do come?’
‘I didn’t come up here to talk about the war,’ Dougie told her.
‘Oh?’ She looked up at him. In the moonlight his eyes shone white. ‘Why did you come up here, then?’ As though challenging him.
I am mad, she thought.
He laughed. ‘Want me to spell it out, do you?’
He turned her towards him, easily, a man who knew how to handle his body and her own. He kissed her. Briefly she let him.
He released her. ‘No.’
She was puzzled; more, she was disappointed that that might be all there was to it. ‘What’s wrong?’
‘That’s no good. I want you to kiss me back.’
‘Oh.’ Not knowing what to say. But obeyed him when he kissed her again, pressing her lips against his, feeling her knees weakening, a soft surge gathering in her body. Her arms went around his neck and her lips opened, just a little, and his tongue flickered into her mouth, withdrew, returned.
She waited for him to make a grab but when his hand moved it was gentle, a stroking pressure that moulded her breast, lingering, squeezing gently but so knowingly, flashes of feeling that centred and grew.
His hand was inside her blouse on her bare flesh, she made no attempt to stop him, feeling her nipple throb against his fingers, but when he moved his hand to her leg she twisted her mouth away from his.
‘No.’
He took no notice, the hand, smooth and warm, climbing the outside of her thigh beneath her skirt.
‘No,’ she said more emphatically.
The hand paused. Ruth was not sure whether she was relieved or disappointed but in any case Dougie had not taken it away. It lay against the swell of her thigh, the fingers gently stroking her skin. The weight of that hand, the electric soft probing of those fingers. She wondered what they would feel like if …
‘No,’ she said loudly. ‘That’s enough.’ Hoping he had not sensed her uneven breathing, the unsteadiness of her knees.
Dougie withdrew his hand, his body, his feelings. She felt him go away from her and was, momentarily, bereft. He stood beside her looking over the battlement at the sea.
She felt a need to apologise, but did not.
‘That’ll be the finish of it if the Japs come.’
‘Finish?’ She was uncertain what he meant.
‘Of us. They won’t let us have any leave.’
Secretly she smiled. ‘They haven’t come yet.’
‘That’s true.’ He turned back to her, slowly traced the outline of her face with a fingertip that lingered on her lips, gently. ‘I like you,’ he offered.
She smiled up at him. ‘I like you, too.’
‘I want to see you again.’
‘You know where to find me.’
‘I’d like to take you somewhere smart,’ he said, ‘but I haven’t got the money.’
‘Where we went tonight was fine,’ she told him. She looked around at the old fort, then back at him. ‘This place has been here four hundred years. I reckon it’ll still be here next time I see you.’
Which might have been a promise but of what she could not have said, even to herself.
‘Annie wants to see you,’ Helen Mason said.
She had not been too pleased when she discovered that Ruth had been out with Dougie Armstrong, had made one or two oblique remarks about blokes looking for what they couldn’t get elsewhere, and now passed on the message with what Ruth suspected might be a fair degree of satisfaction.
Annie was Matron Ann O’Donnell, not one of Ruth’s closest friends. ‘Sister Ballard,’ Matron said, ‘I will not have you scribbling on duty.’
Ruth was in trouble; it was the second time she had been caught with her nose in her notebook. Which was now in Matron’s hand. She turned the pages, staring superciliously down at them.
‘That’s private,’ Ruth said.
The blue eyes skewered her. A ferocious Annie, this one, when she got worked up. ‘What did you say?’
‘I said what I write in that book is private. Ma’am,’ she added. ‘I’m sorry I was writing on duty but it was only a couple of notes —’
‘I don’t understand why you write at all. If you have your heart set on a career in nursing.’
That was the real issue; all else a sideshow. To Matron O’Donnell nursing was a vocation and in her hospital she wanted only those nurses who felt the same. War or no war.
‘I enjoy scribbling,’ Ruth said.
She would never be foolish enough to admit that writing might prove to be her life; even so, Matron’s lips thinned disapprovingly. From the first she had suspected that Sister Ballard was not cut out for a nursing career. Every day reinforced that belief. There was another matter, too. Of which she was not yet prepared to speak. One of her spies had reported that Sister Ballard had been seen wandering the streets of Malacca, hand in hand with a soldier. After dark.
Ballard was — what? — twenty-two. Matron O’Donnell had seen it before. In wartime, moral standards were the first things to go. She would permit no problems of that sort here. There were limits to how much control she could exercise over a nurse’s off-duty time, at least officially, but there were steps open to her. She would have to consider what should be done.
‘I will keep this notebook until your shift is finished,’ she said. ‘You may collect it then. But you will not bring it on duty again. Is that clear?’
‘Old bat,’ Ruth said. ‘We’ve got hardly anything to do, anyway.’
‘I can see her point,’ Dougie said. ‘Why do you want to write, anyway?’
He might as well have asked her why she breathed. She could not imagine life without it. His incomprehension was a disappointment but she did not let it trouble her. She was used to it. That other nonsense, her father had called it. Her mother had
not objected, at least in theory, but had worried that such evidence of eccentricity might damage her daughter’s chances. Her niche in life had been settled by her birth. She was the daughter and granddaughter of farmers, her destiny to become a farmer’s wife, to give birth, God willing, to farming sons. That was reality. To be a writer, especially one who expected to be taken seriously, was fantasy. Her mother had never been comfortable with fantasy.
‘Too classy for me. Reckon I’m too busy living my life to waste time writing about it.’ Cheeky Dougie grinned at her, standing very close. ‘Planning on doing some living with me tonight?’
‘Can’t. I’m on duty again.’
‘But you were on last night. That matron trying to tell you something?’
‘Might be, at that.’
She’d had enough to say that morning, that was for sure.
‘You have been called to a vocation requiring the greatest responsibility and dedication.’ Eyes like razors, a tongue to match. ‘You will not let your attention wander for a single second. You understand me?’
‘We have so few patients at the moment —’
‘All the more reason to concentrate on the ones we have. It would make no difference if the wards were completely empty. I would still expect my nurses to occupy themselves in relevant pursuits.’
Ruth’s eyebrow flickered perilously. ‘Relevant pursuits. I see.’
An inch from insubordination. Less. The narrowed eyes showed that Matron, too, was aware. But chose, for the moment, to ignore it. ‘Be sure you do. This hospital requires appropriate standards of decorum from all its nursing staff.’
It was not a question so Ruth did not answer.
‘Well?’
Ruth did not know what she was supposed to say. She said, ‘That’s good.’
Matron’s cheeks flushed. ‘You dare to be insolent?’
‘I don’t know what you’re getting at. Ma’am.’
Rage gathered. A spit blister glistened on the thin lips. ‘You have been seen. In town. With a private soldier.’
Ruth thought, Helen, said nothing.
‘Is that correct?’
‘Yes, ma’am.’
‘Surely even you can see we have to set a good example to the natives? How can we expect them to respect us otherwise? Walking about holding hands …’