War Baby

by Colin Falconer

  ‘When you leave us, you can never return. You understand this?’

  ‘I understand.’

  ‘Do you really understand what you are doing, Odile? Do you really know this man?’

  ‘I love him.’

  Love! The young fell in love so easily, and placed such store by it, yet they knew least about it. The canonesse had come late to her vocation and knew just how painful an emotion it could be. Ryan’s voice around the courtyard below, over the shouts of the children.

  ‘Would you like to pray with me, Odile?’

  ‘Yes, Mother.’

  And so they knelt together under the wooden crucifix on the wall, but all the while she knew Odile was longing to flee to the door, like a schoolgirl detained to finish her homework. Only the canonesse truly prayed that some good would come from this liaison, but she had known the world too long to believed that such stories ever ended well.

  * * *

  Webb spent two weeks up-country, living out of the Press Centre at Danang. When he got back to Saigon the Hashish Hilton had undergone a radical change. Nixon had gone. Crosby told him that Cochrane’s Vietnamese girlfriend had been sitting in the room alone one night when the monkey began masturbating on the bookshelf behind her. At the inevitable conclusion of Nixon’s performance the girl had felt something wet and warm on the back of her neck. She had screamed, grabbed the animal by the tail and tossed it out of the window.

  He came, she got sore, he was conquered, as Crosby put it.

  Crosby had moved into Ryan’s top-floor room. Ryan’s paraphernalia had all gone: the ashtray made from a shell casing; the NVA pith helmet with the red star; the Leica with the grenade fragment lodged in the lens; the meat safe where he kept his stock of marijuana. Crosby was sprawled on a hard divan chair, a can of Koors in one hand and a large joint in the other. He was stoned as well as drunk, red-eyed and remorselessly solemn.

  He looked up as Webb walked in. ‘The wanderer returns,’ he said.

  ‘Where’s Sean?’ Webb asked, experiencing a cold chill of alarm. ‘He’s okay?’

  ‘Yeah, he’s fine,’ Crosby said. ‘Moved out. Got himself a live-in girlfriend.’

  ‘Sean?’

  ‘Yep. I know it’s hard to believe, but they do say fact is stranger than fiction. We’ve had some changes here while you’ve been gone. Cochrane got his ass transferred back to Washington DC. Hell, he was only here because he wanted it on his CV. Prescott moved on also.’

  ‘Where did he go?’

  ‘Everywhere.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘He was with an ARVN company in the Delta. The guy in front of him stepped on a three-hundred-pound mine, man. They say there wasn’t enough left of him to fit into a helmet.’

  ‘Oh, Christ.’

  ‘He didn’t have to be here. None of us has to be here.’ He blew smoke at the ceiling. ‘Oh, man, I am going to miss him, though.’

  Webb threw his duffel bag and cameras on the bed. He sat down, took the joint from Crosby and drew on it.

  ‘We moved your gear into Cochrane’s pad. If I rotate or step on a mine, the AC is yours.’

  ‘I can live without air conditioning.’

  ‘Easy to say this time of year.’ He leaned forward. Webb could make out the thready streaks of the capillaries in his eyes. ‘Ryan sure was pissed about Prescott. Said he owed him three hundred bucks and now he’ll never collect.’

  ‘Three hundred bucks? What for?’

  ‘The nun, man. That bastard, he really made it with the nun!’

  * * *

  Webb hitched a ride out to Bien Hoa, got there just before sunset. He walked across the compound to the hospital. The tech from Georgia was busy changing wound dressings. Webb asked him where he could find Mickey, was told she was still over at the ER.

  There was an orderly row of body bags outside the Emergency Room, laid out under a scraggly banana palm. Webb felt sullied just walking past them as if they were just so much cordwood. He felt an insane impulse to salute, to bow his head, anything but just ignore them. They should get some respect, he thought, whatever good it would do them now.

  It was quiet inside; the afternoon’s casualties had been processed, two nurses were monitoring the last of the post-ops. Webb found Mickey in another room with the expectants - those too badly wounded to save. There was just one soldier left in there; he still had his fatigues and jungle boots on, his head was swathed in so many blood-soaked bandages that it appeared to be almost twice its normal size. Mickey stood next to the gurney, holding his hand.

  She saw Webb in the doorway. ‘Another day in paradise,’ she said. She looked down at the boy on the litter. ‘We gave him one hundred and twenty units of blood. In the end he had so much new blood in him it just wouldn’t clot. Now his whole head is leaking.’

  She doesn’t have to do this, Webb thought. The kid would be snowed with so much morphine he wouldn’t even know she was there.

  ‘It’s not long now.’

  ‘I’ll wait outside,’ he said.

  * * *

  When she came out, the quick tropical dark had fallen. There were flashes on the horizon, and Webb could feel the shaking underfoot as the B-52s carpet-bombed the jungle near the Cambodian border. Lights blazed on the apron as a Chinook dropped down from the night.

  ‘Well. Long time no see.’

  ‘Been up at Pleiku and the Highlands.’

  ‘Get around, huh?’

  ‘You know how it is. You have to hustle or you can miss some of the war.’ He had meant it as a joke and it came out sounding hollow. ‘You okay?’

  ‘Sure. Walk me to the mess hall?’ She reached for his hand, gripped it. ‘So. How have you been?’

  ‘Cold and wet and muddy. How about you?’

  ‘Hot and dry and clean. Want to change places?’

  He thought about the young soldier in the expectants’ room. ‘Not really.’

  ‘I got thirty-three days and a wake-up to go.’

  He felt relieved for her, disappointed for himself. He couldn’t see her face in the darkness and he wished he could. She stopped walking. ‘Hugh, this isn’t a good idea.’

  ‘What isn’t?’

  ‘You and me.’

  He felt sick. He knew whatever she wanted to say he didn’t want to hear. ‘I thought... I thought we were kind of good for each other.’

  ‘Yeah, I feel that way too. But you know what’s going to happen next. I’m going to get feelings for you, not just when I’m horny, the other stuff, the stuff guys like you hate. Then before you know it, I’m back in the world, and you’re still here. And I spend the next God knows how long waiting to find out if you’re going to end up like one of these sorry bastards I see in here every day. And you aren’t here just for a tour. Are you?’

  She was right. He had no plans to leave.

  ‘This hasn’t got a future so let’s stop it now before it starts.’

  ‘Mickey . .

  ‘You want to come back with me to the world, I’ll think about it again. But you don’t want to do that, do you?’

  There was nothing he could think of to say.

  ‘A month from now I’m getting out of here and I don’t want to remember a thing about this place. Not one damned thing.’

  ‘So that’s it?’

  ‘Yeah, I guess so.’

  She let go of his hand and walked away towards the mess hall. But then she stopped and turned around. ‘Don’t let anyone ever tell you that you don’t have talent. Okay?’

  ‘Will you send me a reference?’

  ‘You don’t need a reference, scout. It’s written all over you.’

  She walked back to him and for one insane moment he thought she had changed her mind. Instead she stood on her toes and kissed him on the lips. ‘Take care,’ she said.

  And then she was gone.

  What was it the grunts said when one of their platoon died? It don’t mean nothin’ to me. Just forget it. That was just the way it was.

  C
hapter 9

  At night the roof of the Caravelle offered a ringside view of the war. Webb nursed his beer and watched a violet dusk silhouette the palm trees on the far bank of the Saigon River. The first wave of Phantoms roared over the jungle and he heard someone say: ‘Show’s about to start, folks.’

  A magnesium-white flare dropped down the sky. Red and green fingers of tracers probed the jungle, and the orange muzzle flash of heavy artillery danced around the horizon like sheet lightning. The glasses on the table clinked to the earthquake rumble of battle.

  Webb shook his head: it was the most expensive pyrotechnics show on earth.

  Took so many beers to get goddamned drunk these days. Mickey van Himst caught her Freedom Bird that afternoon. Don’t mean nothin’ to me.

  He listened to the conversation around him. Crosby told him you got better intel here than at the Five O’clock Follies. JUSPAO and MacVee boys, as well as Army and Marine HQ staff, came up here with their wives or their Vietnamese girlfriends, to watch the show and talk shop.

  ‘Hey, did you hear we lost eight guys from the 25th to friendly fire in the Delta this morning?’

  ‘Shoot, I heard it was an F-4 dropped short.’

  ‘No, it was a Dakota, man. I was there. The pilot had the grid numbers screwed up. They lost two officers from Alpha company. Eight dead, fifteen wounded. Abrams went apeshit.’

  Interesting, Webb thought. At the JUSPAO briefing the press officer had acknowledged that the 25th had taken losses from friendly fire, but described casualties as ‘light’. But then, in this war, ‘light’ and ‘heavy’ were all a matter of perspective.

  ‘Spider,’ someone said. He looked up. It was Ryan; the sling and bandages were off his shoulder and he was hand in hand with a beautiful Eurasian woman in an ao dai of violet silk. She was one of the most exotic, exquisite creatures he had ever seen

  He stood up and held out a chair for her.

  Ryan grinned. ‘Christ, you’re such a gentleman, Spider. Is that for me?’

  The woman smiled. ‘Thank you, monsieur,’ she said and sat down.

  ‘Watch me, you could learn something,’ Webb said.

  ‘Odile, this is a friend of mine. Hugh Webb, one of Saigon’s celebrated press corps. A pom, but never mind. Hugh, this is Miss Odile Ngai.’

  Webb shook her hand. ‘Pleased to meet you,’ he said.

  Heads were turned their way, a lot of the men were ogling her. Christ, typical of Ryan to get a woman like this.

  He ordered another round of drinks.

  ‘How’s the shoulder?’

  ‘Aches like buggery, but I’m back into the traces tomorrow. Thought I’d head down to the Delta for a couple of days, see how I go. I’ve had enough bludging around in Saigon. I’m bored out of my mind.’ Webb saw a shadow of hurt pass across the girl’s face. Ryan must have realized what he’d just said, and he reached for her hand. ‘Only Odile here has kept me sane.’

  ‘Odile. Pretty name. Is that French?’

  ‘Bui doi,’ she said. Dust of life, the name the Vietnamese gave abandoned Eurasian children.

  The deprecation hung in the awkward silence. A waiter brought two more beers, and a citron pressé for Odile.

  ‘I’ve organized to go into the Cradle,’ Ryan said. The Cradle; an area in the Mekong Delta totally controlled by the Viet Cong, infested with booby traps, rarely patrolled by government or American troops. ‘The ARVN Seventh Division HQ is at My Tho. Probably take me a couple of days to get there. I’ll have to get down by road the rest of the way to Ben Tre, then out on a chopper to Kien Hoa province.’

  Webb listened to this madness without comment. Ryan made it sound so simple. To get to Kien Hoa itself would mean travelling by jeep through Viet Cong territory.

  He saw the girl touch Ryan’s hand, a proprietary gesture.

  ‘How was Danang?’ Ryan asked him.

  ‘It’s a beach resort. The Highlands are a little more interesting.’

  ‘You are photographer also?’ Odile asked him.

  Ryan grinned. ‘He reckons he is. He’s still wet behind the ears. It was his fault I got this.’ He patted his wounded shoulder. ‘This black Marine sergeant shouted “Everybody get down!” and Spider stood up and started dancing.’

  ‘Perhaps someone is watching over you,’ Odile said. ‘You believe in God, then, Monsieur Webb?’

  ‘Mostly just when it suits me, I’m afraid.’ He noticed the gold crucifix at her throat. ‘You’re Catholic, Miss Ngai?’

  She looked away. ‘Not such a good one, I think.’

  ‘She’s being modest,’ Ryan said. ‘She was one of Rome’s stormtroopers till I rescued her from the convent.’

  He saw another flicker of pain on the girl’s face, but Ryan did not notice. He’s like a big dog in a china shop, Webb thought. He blunders about, meaning no harm, destroying everything just by wagging his tail.

  Suddenly the pieces fell into place. This was Ryan’s nun.

  ‘You all right, mate?’ Ryan said.

  ‘You’re unbelievable.’

  ‘What’s wrong?’

  ‘Did you ever get your three hundred dollars?’

  The smile froze on Ryan’s face.

  ‘That was a joke, Spider,’ Ryan said, his voice hard. ‘Let’s leave it out.’

  Odile looked at Ryan. The guilt was etched on his face like graffiti. ‘Sean?’ she said, waiting for an explanation. But he would not look at her.

  ‘Thanks a lot,’ he said to Webb.

  ‘I guess you must be bloody proud of yourself.’

  ‘You know how it is, Spider. When Crosby told me Prescott was dead, I didn’t know what to say. He was an old mate of mine. You don’t go bursting into tears, so I said the first thing that came into my head.’

  ‘Qu'est-ce qui ne va pas, cheri? Why is your friend angry at you?’

  ‘Someone bet Ryan three hundred dollars he couldn’t seduce a nun,’ he heard himself say.

  Odile waited for Ryan to contradict this version of events, and when he did not she carefully set her drink on the table and took a deep breath. ‘C’est vrai?’

  Ryan still would not look at her. He stared at Webb, like he wanted to kill him.

  Odile gathered her purse, and then, with the bearing of an aristocrat, stood up and walked away.

  For a long time neither man said a word. The battle was warming up on the other side of the river. The colors of battle were beautiful against the black sky.

  ‘Why did you do that?’ Ryan said.

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘You don’t know,’ Ryan repeated.

  ‘It amazes me what some people will do to stroke their own egos.’

  ‘It wasn’t like that, mate.’

  ‘Wasn’t it? It couldn’t have been the three hundred dollars. Could it?’

  Ryan pushed his drink away. ‘I think it must be your shout. In the circumstances.’

  He got up and left.

  Webb ordered another beer. What the hell made him say that? It had been out of his mouth before he could stop himself. ‘Fuck,’ he said under his breath. Who did he think he was, Crusader Rabbit? Or was it just, you know, he was miserable so why shouldn’t everyone else be?

  Chapter 10

  Seventh Regiment Armoury

  ‘You think he did it for a bet?’ Wendy Doyle said.

  ‘No. He didn’t give a damn about the bet,’ Webb said. ‘It was the prestige, another chapter in the Sean Ryan legend. He devoted his whole life to writing his own epitaph.’

  Crosby helped himself to some more of the Bushmills and then made a round of the table. ‘Now that’s not fair,’ he said. ‘I think he did love her, in his own way. At least, he told himself he did. He made a commitment that he couldn’t live with. Hey, we’re all guilty of that, right, some time or other?’

  Webb frowned. ‘You’re always apologising for him.’

  ‘I liked him.’

  ‘We all liked him,’ Cochrane said. ‘But that’s not the point.’
r />   ‘He was always the great risk-taker,’ Webb said. ‘That was the way he painted himself. But away from the battlefield he was a coward. When he persuaded Odile to leave the convent she was the one with her heart in her hand. What did he have to lose? Nothing.’

  ‘I don’t think he planned it that way,’ Crosby said.

  ‘I don’t want to sound like an echo,’ Cochrane said. ‘But that’s still not the point.’

  Doyle picked up the bottle and looked at the poem that had been pasted to the back of the bottle. ‘Perhaps this is a clue to why he did it.’

  ‘Don’t romanticize him,’ Webb said. ‘He doesn’t deserve it.’

  ‘So how long did it last?’

  ‘How long before he ran the first time? About four months. Then Nixon and Kissinger decided ordered US troops over the border into Cambodia, and the hot news was in Phnom Penh for a while. All the talk in Saigon was about Vietnamization. Nixon wanted out of the whole mess and as more and more US troops went home, Vietnam disappeared off the front pages. We couldn’t film all the B-52 strikes in Laos and Cambodia and with fewer and fewer ground casualties public interest faded away. It was just someone else’s war, even though we were running it. Battles sell newspapers, issues don’t. Some of us relocated to Phnom Penh to pick up the front-line stuff there.’

  ‘That’s what Ryan did?’

  Webb shrugged. ‘It wasn’t his decision. He was working for Time magazine and they just sent him there. It was his way out. Odile told me he left most of his things in the apartment and said he’d be away a week. She didn’t see him again for two years.’

  The men tilted their whiskies and looked at the table. They had come to the part of the legend that didn’t bear close examination. ‘So what happened to Odile?’

  ‘I didn’t find out till later. I didn’t see much of him after the night at the Caravelle.’