The lounge was empty apart from Sandingham. Passengers and their guests came and went, but most were congregating to drink out on the deck, where the evening was growing cooler and balmier.
He stirred the green olive around in the martini. There was no hurry to drink the cocktail. And he could have another.
When the olive had soaked up as much as it could of the alcohol, he put it in his mouth on the end of the cocktail stick and sucked its sourness into his throat where it stung pleasantly. Sitting there, he could have been in another life in another place. His fingers twirled the tiny aluminium stick that was shaped like an arrow. In the flights were the initials ‘P&O’ and, on the other side, the name of the ship.
He ordered another drink and the steward served this without questioning the signing of the chit. He also put down before Sandingham two small glass bowls, one full of salted cashews and the other containing small, vinegared gherkins.
What heights of decadence, luxury even! It had been years since Sandingham had last tasted cashew nuts. They were never served in his hotel where the bar food consisted only of peanuts, over-salted and soggy with oil.
A plump European woman in her mid-sixties entered the lounge and sat down heavily at the table next to him. Sandingham watched her from the corner of his eye, studied her heavy make-up and loose-fitting blouse, the pink of her painted toenails sprouting through the openings of her high-heels and the faint blue rinse of her grey hair. The steward came in and she ordered a pink gin. Sandingham let his mind drift away from her, back into the luxuriousness of drinking in the evening, for free, in such cool comfort.
‘Are you going all the way?’ she suddenly asked in a scratchy voice, breaking into his reverie.
‘What!’ he exclaimed, surprised by her sudden words. He was accustomed to be being disregarded. Then, to be less conspicuous by his rudeness, he added, ‘I beg your pardon?’ somewhat brusquely, in keeping with his supposed class status.
‘All the way. Are you going all the way?’ She saw his incomprehension and added for clarity, ‘All the way to UK. To Tilbury. Or are you getting off en route?’
‘Port Said,’ he answered, out of the blue. ‘I’m getting off at Port Said.’
‘Fascinating little town,’ she commented, accepting his information in a patronisingly colonial manner. ‘Quite fascinating. The first one sees of the East coming out, I think. I don’t count Algiers and the Casbah, do you? After all, they speak French there. And as for Alex! Well, there they are positively bi-lingual. English and French. And Arabic, of course. Hardly a burnous to be seen these days. Most of them wear tropical suits!’ She made a noise like a pony sneezing. ‘Alexandria! My husband was there in ’35…’
Sandingham drank on. The martinis were making him drowsy and that was fatal. A sleeping drunk attracts attention; a drunk compos mentis does not; people ignore alert drunks. He strove to pay attention to the harridan’s meanderings: they would keep him conscious if he concentrated. She could serve that purpose, at least.
‘… Port Said in ’45. And the Canal. Full of wrecks. Bombed boats. Awful. Took us hours. My husband said it would have been quicker on bloody camels.’ She drank her gin and angustura bitters. ‘Do you know Port Said well?’
‘I’m in business there.’
‘Really? How interesting! I love those urchins who dive for coins thrown overboard. They keep the money in their mouths, I’m told. Their mouths! I ask you. And the gilli-gilli men – how they pull live chicks and eggs from one’s ears. And one doesn’t feel a thing. Not a thing…’
Jesus, thought Sandingham, she actually thinks those yellow puffball chickens come from westerners’ earholes. He wondered if she realised they could lift a purse or a passport from a pocket with just as much facility.
‘What line are you in?’
‘Curios, antiques, antiquities. That sort of thing.’
‘In that case, I have something of interest to show you.’
He watched, dumbfounded by a mixture of her actions and the martini – the steward had served him with yet another – as she plunged her hand into the space between her sagging bosoms. As she tugged her blouse askew he noticed that her make-up ended just below the start of her cleavage: he felt an instant repulsion ripple through his flesh.
‘Here it is,’ she uttered finally, triumphantly, yanking a thin gold chain free of the frilly top of her slip.
She opened her hand to reveal a small, light blue, oval dot that at first he thought was a small aquamarine or turquoise, dirtied by contact with her talcumed flesh, then took to be a gawdy locket.
Beckoning his face closer, she held it out to him.
‘What do you make of that?’
‘It’s a scarab,’ said Sandingham, recognising the little beetle set in a gold clasp. ‘Egyptian.’
‘Scarab! Oh, really! You can’t know much. It’s not a scarab at all; it’s a cowroid. Made of faience.’
‘It seems scarab-like to me. But then I’ve left my close-up spectacles in my cabin.’
‘It has a fine set of hieroglyphs on the reverse,’ she boasted, reciting from memory, ‘Suten but nub ankh. “The King of Life is Gold.” My husband bought it in Blanchard’s Egyptian Museum in Cairo. Long before the war. Do you know Blanchard’s?’
‘He is my uncle. Was.’ This untruth rolled out as fluently as the rest. He was an expert liar. He had had to be. He prayed that Blanchard, whoever he was, was dead. The past tense might give him away. Her next sentence calmed his fear.
‘How fascinating! Well, I’ve other things I can show you on the voyage. While away the time.’
Sandingham could not take his eyes off the little Egyptian charm. He knew enough to be well aware that such things were sought after and collected: Francis Leung would pay well for it.
‘Might I see it for a moment? It does seem a fine specimen. Rare these days. Cowroids.’
Without demur, she unhooked the catch of the chain and handed it to him. He looked at the jewel and tried to guess its worth.
The steward approached and requested Sandingham to sign for the last martini.
‘Another, Mr Grover?’
‘Please. And a pink gin for…’
‘Mrs Forsyth,’ she said, nodding her head to one side by way of introduction. ‘Betty Forsyth. Cabin C76.’
Cheaper part of the ship, thought Sandingham. A lower deck. A widow in straitened circumstances going back to Britain to sponge off her son and daughter-in-law.
‘Grover,’ he said. ‘B16.’
The drinks came and he continued to finger the talisman.
‘The war is going rather well,’ she said to change the subject, keeping conversation going.
‘The war?’
‘Korea. There was a most encouraging report in the South China Morning Post today and I heard it repeated in the BBC World Service at noon. A big push…’
‘No war goes well,’ Sandingham muttered, interrupting her. ‘War is a foul thing, a disease upon the nature of men. A wart upon the cheek of humanity that we are forced to kiss as if we love it. War is a degradation of the spirit.’ She was blushing slightly: he could tell by looking at the narrow pouches below her eyes where the sweat had worn thin her face cream and powder. ‘War is an abomination, a stinking, filthy thing. It is a turd excreted by the anus of the human soul.’
‘Well!’ she sputtered. There was more she felt she could say on the subject by way of indignant retort and yet she was not eager to fall out with an obviously compliant audience so soon in the voyage. They had yet to cut free from the pier. ‘I’m sure you’re entitled to your opinion…’
‘I watched the ammunition coming ashore this afternoon,’ said Sandingham. ‘Box after box of the death of young boys, sent by men who know no…’
He stopped. This was not the way to play it.
‘I’m sorry. I get carried away at times,’ he apologised. ‘I was in the war. A prisoner.’
‘I see,’ she said. ‘How awful. I am sorry.’
; He knew she didn’t understand, possibly didn’t even care.
‘Anyway,’ he smiled, ‘you are right. This is a cowroid and a very exceptional one. The inscription is most fine. Still very clear. Not worn at all. Might I examine it with a glass?’
She was pleased her little treasure was being appreciated, and by an expert.
‘Certainly.’
He stood up, draining his martini. Was it the fourth? He had lost count.
‘Will you be here in twenty minutes? I’d like to go down to my cabin: have a book there given to me by my uncle. Blanchard. Catalogue of finds. I might be able to trace it for you, where it was discovered and so on.’
Providence works in strange ways for some men. It had always struggled to do well for him, but that evening had been making amends. Before she could speak either way, a couple entered the lounge and, spying her, called out over-loudly, ‘Betty! There you are. Been looking all over the blessed ship for you. All ready?’
They approached her. Sandingham took a step behind the newcomers, held up his hand with the chain dangling from it as if to show her he had it and pointed to his feet, indicating that he was going below. She just waved to him. Or to her friends. It might have been acceptance of his borrowing the piece or it might have been an affectation of welcome. Whichever: it did not matter.
In the corridor, he turned right and went into a small smoking room. From a writing desk that faced out on to the deck he took an envelope with the shipping line’s badge on the flap. Dipping the pen into the inkwell, he addressed the envelope to himself at the hotel and slipped the cowroid on its chain inside, wrapping it first in several layers of ship’s writing paper to give it protection. From there he went to the purser’s office and purchased a Hong Kong postage stamp. There was still time to mail a letter: the ship’s agent would take any last-minute letters ashore with him in just over half an hour. He slipped the envelope into the post box. Now it would not matter if he did meet the old witch again. As far as she was concerned the washed blue cowroid would be secure in his cabin, safe amidst the chaos of departure.
Avoiding the lounge, he went below decks to see what else he might release from its original owner. There were a few cabins left open and unattended but these were also unoccupied and offered nothing. Then on D deck, in the second-class, stern end of the ship, he came upon a baggage coolie knocking on the door of a cabin, trying the handle and getting a refusal of entry. The coolie replied through the door, received a curt answer and left a small leather suitcase in the corridor outside the cabin.
Someone shafting his lover for a last time, thought Sandingham.
He picked up the case and made his way towards one of the communal bathrooms on the other side of the ship. In a cubicle, he opened the case and rifled through the contents. Luckily, it was a man’s. Some silk and woollen underpants took his fancy so he removed his trousers, took off his own grubby cotton shorts, and put on four pairs of luxury garments. Next he unbuttoned his shirt and tugged on three cotton vests. Then he exchanged his shirt for one hand-tailored in cream cotton and still in its tissue wrappings. He slipped seven handkerchiefs into his jacket pockets, then tried on the trousers lying folded in the bottom of the case. Far too big. Even with a belt, they would be loose and baggy. He had lost a lot of weight. The opium helped. Finally, he took an ivory-handled hair brush, two pairs of gilt cufflinks – he inwardly cursed because they were not hallmarked gold: Francis would know the difference – and a matching tie pin, three pairs of socks (one worn, two in his inner pockets); then paused. If he were caught he’d be in for the high jump so he left the brush and loose socks. No one would notice his surfeit of underwear. He flushed his own underpants and shirt down the toilet, rammed the case behind the pedestal and left, jamming the door of the cubicle closed with a square of lavatory paper so that it looked as if it were still occupied.
Without much hurry, he made his way through the ship to the second-class gangway and disembarked. He acted slightly drunker than he was and got away from the bottom gangway steps, but only just.
On the dock was a throng of people waving to a family on the boat deck. As he looked up to follow the gathering’s gaze he saw Mrs Forsyth. For her part, she was looking down and directly at him. Then she saw him. He could not hear her, a fact for which he was not a little grateful; but he could see her.
She grabbed the arm of the elderly man standing next to her at the ship’s rail, the same one who had mercifully interrupted her prattle. It was comical: he jumped at her grasp, dropping his glass. It toppled over on itself, spilling its contents, and fell to an inaudible splash in the water between the hull of the ship and the dock. She pointed towards Sandingham. He, to be friendly and in keeping with the mood of the occasion, waved back. He did this partly out of a sense of ironical humour and partly as an act of camouflage in the middle of the crowd. Swiftly, he walked the fifty yards to the dock gate and out into Canton Road. Breaking into a jog, he turned left then right into Peking Road. He was safely away. As he turned the corner, he looked back. At the dock gates stood the elderly man, a Chinese dock policeman by his side. They were hopelessly scanning the crowds.
* * *
The jeep was parked at the kerb outside the hotel when he returned from Francis Leung’s house in Kowloon City.
In his pocket were two hundred and ninety dollars, obtained without any bargaining whatsoever. Either Leung had been feeling untypically generous or the cowroid really was worth more than he had suspected even in his more optimistic moments. What was certain was that Leung had not made a mistake; indeed, he had made Sandingham wait over an hour while a wizened Filipino with a gold-capped front tooth was sent for, who arrived and was able to judge the pendant’s antiquity and attest to its being genuine.
The jeep was not painted in plain khaki, but was mottled with olive green and brown in an attempt to disguise it in woodland; break up its outline. The headlights were hooded, just as those on the Humber had been long ago.
By the jeep, squatting on the pavement, were three of the mechanics who serviced cars in the hotel garage. They were playing tin kau with thin oblong cards. The stakes for the game were under one of the player’s feet for safekeeping.
‘Whose is this?’ Sandingham asked, jerking his thumb at the vehicle.
‘Tha’ belong Ozzy sodjah. Lot of Ozzy sodjah in hotow’l. Come ’is morning.’
The hotel lobby was busy. By the check-in desk stood an officer. Sandingham recognised the pips on his shoulder as signifying a captain. From his belt hung a webbing holster, recently blancoed and clean. The revolver in it was attached to a pristine cord. The officer’s trousers had neat creases in them, and the brass of his uniform glistened from recent polishing. His boots were black and shone like ebony. He was in his mid-twenties and in full command of the situation bubbling around him.
By the hotel bar was a wall of army-issue kitbags, every one bulging and tied tightly at the neck with thick twine. Black lettering was painted on each and a brown cardboard label strung through the draw holes named the owners. On the settle running along the window was a pile of greatcoats that looked very much out of place in a tropical hotel foyer. Sandingham knew that this was typical of any army. If it looked like snow, issue shorts: if it promised rain, withdraw the umbrella issue. The Japanese had been just the same.
It was not until he reached the foot of the hotel stairs and looked back that he spied what lay behind the kitbags. There he saw, neatly lined up on the mock marble floor, battle packs: the familiar rucksack affairs with an entrenching tool and a groundsheet rolled up on top of it, to one side a water bottle and the other a gas mask – only that was not present here. In each pack he knew what he would find if he were to go over and unbuckle one – mess tin with cover, emergency rations, a bar of dark chocolate, tin of jam, packets of tea and sugar, knife/fork/spoon, socks, cardigan, water-purifying tablets. And a letter from a mother sandwiched between three or four from a girlfriend full of phrases like, ‘wish your hand was’ and
‘I can taste you now’ and ‘Take care, dearest: I love you.’ Maybe a photo or two: self with dog on beach, self and Belinda at picnic near Lulworth. Except that in these packs, instead of Lulworth, would be substituted Brisbane or Adelaide or Whykickamoocow or some other weird-sounding aboriginal placename.
Guarding the equipment was a corporal in a slouch hat. On his upper arm was sewn a cloth badge with a kangaroo on it. In the corner of the bar, the potted palm had been moved to one side and in its place were stacked several dozen .303 rifles. Sandingham could smell the gun oil.
From the dining room came the hubbub of talk. He looked in. Every table was taken by four or six Australian soldiers. Although it was three in the afternoon they were all eating lunch – a ham salad with mayonnaised potatoes and pale tomatoes and lettuce hanging limp with the heat.
Once safely back in his room, Sandingham lay on his back on the narrow bed. He looked blankly at the off-white ceiling and cupped his hands behind his head. His sparse hair itched and, as he scratched, strands came away, caught in his fingernails. Pulling the hairs out, he felt them slice into the quick and he saw that his right thumbnail had purpled like a dense bruise again.
He felt lethargic, tired of breathing and being sad and living and watching and hurting deep in his soul. Physical pain was bearable, but what ached in him was not.
He started to cry. The tears welled out of his eyes and ran down his cheekbones, around his ears and soaked into his scalp or the sweat-stained pillow. He made no effort to rub them away. They were a part of memory, and he could not erase them any more than he could his thoughts. They were there and that was that. Who had said to be is to be? Nothing more, nothing less. I am what I am. I do not know what I do not know.
‘Conversely, God fuck it, I know what I know.’
Speaking to himself again: of that he was conscious, and he immediately shut up. Talking to oneself was a sign of madness. Or just loneliness. Or both.
Hiroshima Joe Page 13