by Nunn, Judy
‘Oh? And what way’s that?’
‘They teach me not look cheap like bargirl. And they right,’ she said eagerly. ‘Bargirl show too much, you know? Here. Here.’ The way she heaved up her bosom with one hand and slapped her thigh with the other was comical and instinctively he wanted to laugh, but he didn’t, aware that she was intent upon getting her message across. ‘They teach me how look at soldier in street nice way, friendly, you know?’ She offered a demonstration, bobbing her head a little, putting a hand to her face and smiling in a way that was at once demure, provocative and flirtatious. There was no mistaking the signal, and Neil realised yet again how absurdly naïve he’d been. Bobbo’s behaviour in the marketplace hadn’t been crass at all. One of the girls had obviously flashed him the sign and he’d known in an instant the three were prostitutes; so had Phil.
‘Yes, I see,’ he said, ‘very effective indeed.’
‘Yes, yes, is correct way.’ Yen was pleased that she’d made her point so succinctly, and that he agreed she was right. ‘And make more money,’ she said with an efficient nod. ‘No need for pay barman, no need for pay mama-san,’ she counted the benefits off meticulously on her fingers, ‘and soldier no have to buy girl Saigon tea,’ she added, referring to the non-alcoholic drinks posing as hard liquor that the bars sold to the servicemen for exorbitant prices. ‘You see? Is good for soldier too.’
‘What a very astute businesswoman you are, Yen.’
She was gratified by the compliment, but felt compelled to give credit where it was due. ‘Mai and Kim teach me,’ she said. ‘They teach me lot.’ She ran her hand affectionately over her pretty, peach-coloured dress, the fabric of which was far finer than the coarse peasant garb she was accustomed to. ‘They teach me wear nice dress like this. They teach me be nice girl. Soldier like to go with nice girl.’
‘But they didn’t need to teach you that. You are a nice girl.’
No comment he could possibly have come up with could have pleased her more. ‘Thank you,’ she said.
They smiled, the moment resting between them. Then he asked the question he was unable to resist, even though he suspected it was further evidence of his naïveté.
‘Do you like your work?’
‘Is OK.’ Another shrug. ‘My family poor, I make lot more money from soldier than market stall.’
‘So your family know what you do?’
That was when he realised he may have overstepped the mark. Her face lost its eagerness to communicate and went blank as she focused upon a nearby cormorant perched on a piece of driftwood, wings outstretched, feathers drying in the last heat of the day.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said quickly, ‘I didn’t mean to pry. It was rude of me, I’m sorry.’
‘Is OK.’ The cormorant took off, but she appeared not to notice as she continued to look out at the fading light. ‘I must go now.’
‘Please don’t be cross, Yen. I really am sorry.’
She shook her head. She wasn’t at all cross. ‘Market close soon, I go home with sisters. I work only daytime.’
‘Can I see you tomorrow?’ He had a full three days’ leave. ‘Not just to talk,’ he added and, feeling strangely self-conscious, he patted his wallet to ensure there would be no misunderstanding.
‘OK.’ Although barely eighteen, Yen felt far older than the Australian. He is very young, she thought. Then she corrected herself. No, no, he is very innocent. She wondered if he was a virgin. She’d had the occasional virgin soldier in the past. ‘What time you want?’
It was Neil’s turn to shrug – any time that suited her, he didn’t care.
She chose noon. ‘The market, where we meet,’ she said. She would not take him to Kim and Mai’s place, she decided, where often many girls serviced soldiers in the same room. She would take him to her other place. The Australian was nice.
The following day they walked a half a mile to the outskirts of town where wooden huts and tin shanties dotted the countryside.
‘I take you nice place,’ she had said as they’d set off, ‘quiet, you like.’
He enjoyed the walk, although it was no leisurely stroll: Yen strode along at a brisk, business-like pace. They spoke little as they went, but glancing at her from time to time he did not feel uncomfortable or self-conscious as he’d suspected he might. She looks so pretty, he thought, in her blue sleeveless shift, her arms swinging healthily in time with her bare legs and sandal-shod feet as she marched. He found it difficult to encompass the purpose of their assignation, that she was a prostitute and that they’d done a deal, that his ten-dollar note was already folded and tucked away in the pocket of her dress. The situation was somehow bizarre.
It became even more so as the town petered out and they were suddenly among rice paddies where peasant workers and farmers were going about their daily business and where the odd water buffalo stood motionless in the fields, baleful eyes staring fixedly at them as they passed.
By now the purpose of their trek seemed quite unreal, lost as he was in the splendour of the surrounding countryside. ‘How beautiful it is,’ he said, gazing across the rice paddies to the distant mountains, but she either didn’t hear or wasn’t listening.
‘There auntie’s place,’ she said, pointing to the tin-roofed hut that stood twenty yards or so from the side of the road. They had arrived at their destination.
Auntie had seen them coming, as auntie always did, she kept a regular lookout for Yen, and as the young couple entered the hut, which was virtually one room, she nodded to her niece and gave a quick bow of recognition to the soldier.
Neil returned a respectful bow to the weathered peasant woman before him and waited for an introduction, but there was none. Before he knew it, auntie had grabbed one of the many bundles of raffia that hung from pegs about the walls and disappeared wordlessly out the back door.
Yen took a dollar coin from the pocket of her dress. It made a tinkling noise as she dropped it into the empty jar on the table.
‘Is nice place, yes?’ She started to undress. ‘Quiet, more nice than town.’
‘Yes, very nice,’ he said. Looking around at the poky little hut where two wooden boxes served as seats and where the bed was a hessian-covered pallet in the corner, he wondered what the alternative would have been.
Following her lead, he sat on one of the boxes and removed his boots. When he’d done so, he rose to discover her standing already naked before him, but he had barely time to admire the pertness of her breasts and the flawless satin of her skin before she embarked upon the ritual that was to follow. Her own disrobing had been quick and efficient, requiring seconds only. Her disrobing of him was to take much longer. As his hands went to the belt of his shorts she stopped him.
He stood motionless, watching her as she undressed him in silence, her eyes not meeting his but focusing rather on each tiny detail. Even the undoing of a button was a daintily performed process. She might have been undressing an emperor. And as she slipped the shirt from his shoulders, her fingers trailed across his naked skin with the same reverence, as if she were serving a lord and master. Neil found the whole process intensely erotic.
Given Bobbo’s reports, he had anticipated a sexual awakening, and he was not disappointed: she served him with her mouth and her body in ways he had never envisaged let alone experienced. But it was her final pleasure in the act that took him completely by surprise. When she sensed he was nearing his climax, she gave herself up to her own release with a spontaneity, unrestrained and abandoned, that excited him beyond measure.
When it was over, she recovered herself remarkably quickly and, as he lay on the pallet still gasping for breath, she rose to wash herself. He watched, somewhat dazed, as she crossed to the bucket of fresh water that sat by the back door of the hut. He’d expected the sexual ministrations of an expert certainly, but the sheer uninhibited pleasure? Did other women behave like that? Had it been an act on her part, had she been faking her pleasure? She couldn’t have surely. It hadn’t felt that way t
o him.
She returned with the wet rag and bathed his penis, chatting happily as she did so.
‘Nice, yes?’ She smiled. ‘Good for me too.’ Yen preferred to orgasm whenever possible, it made work so much more pleasurable, and the soldiers always liked it. ‘You have good time?’
‘Yes,’ she might have been asking if he’d enjoyed a meal. ‘Very good, thank you.’
‘I think you virgin,’ she said and gave a light laugh, ‘but you not virgin, hey?’
‘No not virgin. But not very experienced,’ he admitted wryly.
‘No, I think that too.’ She rose and returned the rag to the bucket. ‘That why I bring you here,’ she said as she started to dress, ‘special place.’
He hurriedly stood and also started to dress. ‘You don’t bring many men here?’
‘Only nice soldier,’ she said. Yen very much preferred the privacy of auntie’s place to Mai and Kim’s, but when a soldier was overly drunk or aggressive she needed the back-up on offer at the girls’ rooms. There was a practical aspect too that further complicated things. ‘Cheaper here,’ she said, ‘pay Auntie one dollar, pay Mai and Kim half money, but take more time bring soldier here from town, so . . .’ She shrugged. The financial issue was indeed a complex one. ‘Still, I like better here.’
‘I’m glad I’m one of the nice soldiers,’ he said. He wasn’t sure why or how he qualified, but the thought somehow pleased him.
‘Oh yes, you very nice. You very, very nice soldier.’ She smiled as if he was something special, and Neil’s heart seemed to foolishly skip a beat. ‘You first uc dai loi I bring here,’ she said. ‘Other nice soldier come here all American.’
Uc dai loi, literally meaning people from the south, was the local term applied to Australian soldiers, and Neil supposed he should be complimented that he was the first Australian she’d brought to auntie’s place, but he felt vaguely disappointed.
‘We go now,’ she said.
‘Yen.’ He halted her at the door and she looked up at him questioningly. ‘Would it be all right,’ he said feeling extraordinarily gauche but unable to resist asking, ‘I mean would you mind awfully if I kissed you?’ He wondered if it was true what they said, that prostitutes didn’t kiss – he had no idea, having never been with a prostitute. He only knew that he desperately wanted to kiss her.
She gave the matter a moment’s consideration. ‘OK,’ she said, and closing her eyes she leant her head back, lips dutifully pursed.
He cupped her face in his hands and bending down gently kissed her. ‘Thank you,’ he said as they parted.
His tenderness impressed her. ‘You are gentleman,’ she said.
‘Neil.’ He wasn’t sure if she remembered his name. ‘My name’s Neil,’ he said.
‘Yes. You are gentleman, Neil.’
*
Over the next several weeks, every single day’s leave Neil could scrounge saw a trip to auntie’s place. He discovered a great deal about Nguyen Thi Yen. As the oldest of three sisters and with no brother in the family, she had taken it upon herself to be the principal breadwinner. Each morning she and her sisters would wheel the big wooden barrow the two miles from their village into the marketplace, stopping off regularly at their widowed auntie’s hut on the outskirts of town to collect the raffia craftwork she made for sale.
Once in town, Yen would change into one of the pretty dresses she kept at Kim and Mai’s and while she worked the streets with her friends, her sisters would sell the vegetables their father grew, together with the sandals and mats and bags woven by their auntie. At dusk, Yen would change again into her work clothes and the three girls would trundle the barrow back to their village.
Yen’s auntie and sisters knew of her double life, but apparently her parents did not. Or so Yen said. Neil found it odd they shouldn’t question the radical improvement in their market sales; more probable, he thought, that they suspected the truth, but would not admit it even to themselves. He never questioned Yen on the subject, however, as she clearly wished to believe in her parents’ ignorance.
The more he grew to know her, the more Neil came to realise that he genuinely loved Yen. At first he’d tried to convince himself that his obsession with her was due to no more than a newly awakened lust. Bobbo had been quick to warn him of such a danger.
‘Geez, mate, you’re mad to get involved with the first hooker you sleep with,’ Bobbo had said, not unreasonably. ‘Try another one. They’re as sexy as all get out, the whole lot of them.’
But Neil didn’t want to ‘try another one’, and before long he was forced to admit the fact that he was in love. That he’d quite possibly been in love from the first day he’d met her.
‘I want to look after you, Yen,’ he said one afternoon. They’d had sex and she was bathing him in her ritual manner. How many other cocks does she bathe like this? he wondered as he watched her efficient ministrations. He was plagued by such images lately and had been for some time. Unrealistic though he knew he was being, he loathed the thought of her with other men.
He took the cloth from her and eased her down beside him on the pallet, propping on his elbow to talk to her. ‘I don’t know what you earn and I’m sure I couldn’t match it, but I could help you support your family. I could do that if you would let me.’
‘You want look after me?’ No one had ever looked after Yen before. As the oldest in a family of three girls, she had always been the one to do the looking after. No soldier had ever treated her like Neil did either. Neil treated her in an honourable way, with respect. And now he wanted to look after her? She was overwhelmed.
Neil’s love was possibly predictable, perhaps even inevitable, but the far less predictable had happened. Yen too was in love, in her own way, a way that would prove fiercely loyal.
Everything changed from that moment on. As evidence of her fidelity, Yen gave her pretty dresses to Mai and Kim, proof of the fact that she had no wish to attract the attention of other men. She worked in her peasant garb at the market alongside her sisters, and when Neil was granted leave they spent the day together.
‘You want I keep pretty dress just for you?’ she asked the next time they went to auntie’s place.
‘I like you exactly as you are,’ he said. When he’d arrived at the marketplace to find her in her work clothes he’d been deeply touched, realising in an instant the statement she was making. ‘You are beautiful, Yen, in whatever you wear.’
It had seemed a more or less routine patrol – at least that’s what the men had first thought. For some time the Australians had been aware through radio intercepts and sightings that a sizeable enemy strength was operating not far from Nui Dat, but patrols sent out in search of the Viet Cong had not encountered the force. Then a barrage of enemy mortar was fired upon the base, and in the mid-afternoon of 18 August, D Company, 6RAR was sent on patrol into the rubber plantation of Long Tan to discover where the shells had been fired from.
At quarter past three, 11 Platoon encountered a small group of Viet Cong and a skirmish ensued, leaving one enemy dead and the others fleeing. Clearly the enemy was in the area, but as the Australians continued their patrol they still believed themselves the numerically superior force. They were soon to learn otherwise. 11 Platoon was unaware it had encountered the forward troops of a full-force regiment.
Shortly after four o’clock, the men of D Company, 6RAR were met by the main body of the Viet Cong 275th Regiment.
The battle conditions were horrendous. Heavy monsoon rain broke out, reducing visibility to barely fifty yards and breathing became difficult as men literally sucked in water. All about them, the ground turned to a boggy mess, but 10 and 11 Platoons fought valiantly on, still ignorant of the full force they had encountered.
The advancing battalions of Viet Cong attacked with mortars, rifle and machine-gun fire in an attempt to encircle and destroy the Australians. As assault followed assault it became evident that the enemy force was far stronger than had at first been envisaged and 12 Pla
toon was ordered through from the rear to support 11 Platoon, which was by now all but surrounded.
Neil and Bobbo fought side by side. Blinded by rain and dragged down by mud, the men of 12 Platoon faced a barrage from all directions, forcing a path through the fire to defend their comrades. The noise was horrific. The explosion of enemy mortars joined the boom of heavy artillery support that was now being fired from Nui Dat, several miles to the west, and all about was the constant rat-tat of machine guns, the whistle of bullets and the unnerving bugle calls of the Viet Cong.
Despite the cacophony, Neil heard the murderous screams begin nearby. So did Bobbo. Through the blanket of rain they saw them appear from out of the rubber trees barely twenty yards away: three Viet Cong charging directly at them, firing at random and screaming like madmen.
The Australians raised their rifles and fired. Neil’s bullet found its mark. A headshot. One of the Viet Cong dropped instantly and Neil turned his sights on the next.
Rattled by the surrounding mayhem, Bobbo’s aim had been erratic and wildly off target. He fired again frantically. The soldiers were by now virtually upon them. His second bullet proved successful, as did Neil’s, and the two Viet Cong all but collided with them as they fell, each shot through the chest. But Bobbo had paid a price for his inaccuracy. He lay on the ground beside the enemy soldiers, also felled by a shot to the chest.
Neil halted momentarily, presuming his friend dead. The Viet Cong certainly appeared to be. But then he saw that Bobbo was not dead. His mate’s eyes were alive, fearful and bewildered, but signalling him nonetheless. Go on, Bobbo was saying, go on. Neil knew there was no alternative. Others of 12 Platoon were surging ahead through the chaos. He had no way of carrying him to safety. There was no safety zone anyway.
‘Hang in there, mate,’ he said, ‘you’ll be right. They’ll come and get you later.’
He left his friend and ploughed on through the mud and the rain and the bullets. He didn’t believe for one moment they’d come and get Bobbo. How could the wounded be evacuated from this bedlam? If anyone was to get Bobbo it would be the Viet Cong. But Bobbo would probably be dead by then. At least Neil hoped so.