by Nevil Shute
Utt Nee said: “You got this railway going.”
“Oh well — that’s different,” the pilot said. “That’s just been a bit of bloody good fun.”
The Burman laughed with him. “All work that interests you is bloody good fun,” he said. “And yet, the railway is now running, and it was broken before you had your fun with it.” He turned to the Englishman. “What are you going to do?” he asked. “Are you going back to England, to live there for ever, as an architect?”
“I’ve got a sort of job to go to there,” the pilot said.
“There will be many jobs here for you,” said the Burman, “if you like mending railways and things that are broken.”
Morgan sat in silence for a few minutes, staring out over the river in the gathering dusk. He had seen sufficient since he got out of jail to make him realize that this was not a casual approach. He had been living for the last week with responsible people; old Moung Shway Than was a man of influence in Rangoon in times of peace; Utt Nee held a high position in the Independence Army. This was an offer of a job, or something very like it; a job with people he could work with in a country that he was already much attached to.
He said at last: “You wouldn’t want an Englishman in any important job here. It’s Burma for the Burmans now.”
Utt Nee: “That is true, up to a point. But there are too few of us educated yet to run this country by ourselves, with no help from the British at all. There will always be important jobs for Englishmen in Burma who are not too proud to work on level terms with us and share our life, who would not think it an indignity to work under a Burman if he is the better man. I do not think you need worry about that.”
There was another long silence. Morgan said at last: “There’s another difficulty. If I were to stay here, I should ask Nay Htohn to marry me. I expect you’d rather I went back to England.”
Utt Nee shrugged his shoulders. “I do not want to see my sister with a broken heart. You must know she is very much in love with you.”
“You wouldn’t mind about a mixed marriage?” Morgan asked.
“Why should I mind, if that makes her happy? I should be very glad for her. I know several Englishmen who married Burmese girls and made them very good husbands. This is not India, you know. Our girls marry who they like. Just as in your country.”
“What about your father? Would he mind?”
“I think he would be very pleased.”
“Do you know I’m married already? That I’ve got a wife, back home in England?”
The Burman said: “I know a little about that. Nay Htohn said that she was not faithful to you.”
“That’s about right.” The pilot told him briefly what had happened, and answered a few questions. “So I’m a bit shop-soiled, you might say.”
“I do not think my sister thinks of you like that. So why should you think it of yourself?” He turned to Morgan. “Think it over,” he said quietly. “I know a few Englishmen that I would like to see stay in our country, and I know many that we must get rid of at all costs. You have all the vigour of your people, and you are not too proud to learn our ways. If you marry Nay Htohn she will make you a good wife, and both my father and myself would like to have you with us.”
That night Morgan slept on the floor of one of the trucks covered by his blanket, his head on a gunny sack. Around him lay the Burmese soldiers that were not on guard; he could talk to them a little about very simple things, and understand them if they spoke to him slowly upon simple matters. He had become accustomed to their brown skins and their way of life. They did not seem strangers to him any more, did not seem to be incalculable creatures to be treated with distrust. He found them understandable, thinking along the same lines as he did, and laughing at the same brand of joke. They treated him with genuine liking and respect, the man who could fly aeroplanes and make the railway go.
He lay before sleep came to him, watching the stars beyond a cauliflowerlike banyan tree against the deep blue sky. England to him was represented by school life, war hardships, blitz and death, and a sordid and unprofitable marriage. Burma to him meant fun and games with railways and broken bridges and smashed boats, with people who already liked him and respected him for his achievements; it meant love from a clever girl who, in her own country, was of his own social class, or better. There was no doubt in his mind which he would do; he snuggled closer in his blanket on the hard plank floor, shifted the gunny sack beneath his head, and drifted off to sleep, thinking of Nay Htohn.
They steamed into Henzada about midday, having dropped off the platelaying gang half way down the track, and loaded up with bamboos and palm thatch. They had been careful to announce their arrival by whistling at intervals for the last five miles, and a considerable crowd was there to meet them. Nay Htohn came forward to greet Morgan as he got down from the footplate of the little engine, grimy in his old jungle suit. Moung Shway Than was with her.
The old man said: “Did you meet any Japanese?”
“Not one,” the pilot said. “The line is clear right down to Taunsaw; if it wasn’t for the bridge we could have gone all the way to Bassein.”
He turned to the girl. “It was a joy ride.”
She smiled. “I was imagining . . . all sorts of things.”
He smiled with her. “I was imagining things, too. I was thinking that we had most of the army with us on the train, and that perhaps the Japanese would have come back here while we were away.”
She laughed. “We are still quite all right. They say that one of their motor landing craft went down the river last night full of Japanese soldiers, and that your British gunboats sank it, south of Danubyu. I do not know if that is true.”
He said: “Are the British so close as that?”
“So they say.”
He went back to the house with her, and washed, and had a meal, and slept a little on the charpoy; in the cool of the evening he got up and found that while he had been sleeping she had washed and pressed his jungle suit again. He went out to the veranda; she was there, sitting in the evening light and sewing something, with a flower in her hair. He thanked her for washing his clothes, and then said: “Has anything been heard of the British gunboats?”
She shook her head. “Only that they are down by Danubyu. They may be here any time.”
He nodded: “I shall have to go on board and report when they come.”
She said: “Will you have to go away with them?”
“I think I shall,” he said. “I think if I don’t I shall be posted as a deserter.”
Her lip trembled, and she said: “It will be very sad for us when you go.”
He said: “It’s better that I should go. I’ve got this matter of the divorce from my wife to attend to, and I’ll have to go to England for that.” He glanced down at her, squatting down upon the mat beside his knee. “But I could come back.”
She glanced up at him quickly. “When you are at home with your own people, you will not want to come back to Henzada.”
“I don’t know about Henzada,” he said. “I should always want to come back to you.”
She said softly: “I could make you very happy.”
He dropped his hand on to her shoulder, and caressed her neck; she turned quickly, and laid her head against his knee. Then she looked up at him and said: “This is very bad. People can see us from the road.” But she did not move away.
He said: “When I come back, will you marry me, Nay Htohn.”
She looked up at him, laughing. “I would marry you now. You know that very well.”
He said: “I’ve got a wife already.”
She tossed her head. “I do not call that being married. She has not given you a child, and when you are away fighting she goes with other men. You are not married at all, really. I would be a better wife to you than that.”
He stroked her hair. “I know. But I am married all the same, and I’ve got to get that straightened out. After that, Nay Htohn, I want to come back, if you’
ll have me.”
She breathed: “Have you . . .” and rubbed her cheek against his knee again. And then she said: “It is eight thousand miles from here to England, and she has another man. Why must you go away at all? I think that you could just forget about her, and stay here with me. We could be married very soon.”
He said: “No.”
He got to his feet, and raised her up; she stood up obediently and went and stood with him at the veranda rail. “I want you to understand,” he said. “I like this place; I like your people and your country, and I love you, Nay Htohn. I think we could be frightfully happy together, living here in Burma. And because of that, I want to start off properly, without any mess in the background. I want everything to be all tickety-boo. I want to marry you properly according to the English law so that your people will know that I’m playing straight with you. If we just married now it wouldn’t be legal, and I could beat it any time and leave you flat, and Utt Nee would know that, and so would Moung Shway Than. That’s not the way I want to start in Burma. I’ll have to go back to England.” He thought for a minute. “Besides, there’s a war on. I think they’ll probably demobilize me now, but if they want me to go on in the RAF I’ll have to do that till the war is over. But after that, I shall come back to Burma. I shall want you very badly then.”
She said softly: “I want you very badly now.” He took her hand and held it, and they stood together for a minute in the dusk.
Presently she said: “I think that you are right. Our people are suspicious of all Englishmen, and rightly so, and although I would marry you tonight and be very happy, I think that you would get on better with my people if it was a legal marriage by your laws. And there is another thing.” She hesitated. “I think you ought to go back home to England and think carefully about this. You Westerners are brought up differently from us, and many of you have very strange ideas about your colour, and mixed marriages. I do not want to rush you into anything. If when you have been at home in England for a little you come back to me in Henzada or in Rangoon, I will marry you the day you land, Phillip. And I will make you a good wife.”
He grinned down at her. “Nay Htohn, would it be all wrong by your standards if I was to give you a kiss?”
She glanced up at him, eyes dancing. “You mean, in the Western fashion, as they do on the movies? I have never done that.”
He said: “Like to try?”
“Not here.” She hesitated. “We do not do that in Burma. Even married people do not kiss in public. We could go into your bedroom.”
“Does that make it all right? It would make it all wrong in England.”
She said demurely: “It would be perfectly all right.” So they went into the bedroom and shut the door, and she came into his arms, and he kissed her mouth and neck, feeling her slim body lissom in his arms. And when at last he let her go she said: “I understand why we do not do this in Burma. It is too exciting.” And they smiled together, and kissed again more gently, and went out again to the veranda, and sat talking quietly in the dim light of the stars over the flame tree. The fireflies flickered about them, and the great noise of frogs made a continuous background to their talk, and they talked on for hours.
At about ten o’clock at night a man came to the veranda and asked for Utt Nee. In the dim light they could see that he wore the brassard of the Independence Army. Nay Htohn said that her brother was down at headquarters.
The man said: “Five British gunboats have arrived.”
The girl translated this to Morgan. She asked: “Where are they?”
He said: “They have not landed. The ships are lying in an ambush by the ferry, anchored close under the bank, in the shadow. We have a picket out around them. Utt Nee has sent a party two miles up the river, to the paddy mill, to watch for Japanese boats coming down the river. Then we are to warn the British by the little radio.”
She said: “You will find Utt Nee at the headquarters.” The man slipped off into the darkness.
Morgan said: “How far off is the ferry, where the gunboats are?”
She said: “About a mile.”
“Like to walk down and see if we can see anything?”
She agreed, and they set out together by the shadowy paths towards the railway terminus upon the river bank. They went rather slowly, hand in hand; it was about a quarter to eleven when they reached the place. Standing upon the bank by the wrecked railway trucks they could see the gunboats just below them, not a hundred yards away, five Fairmile B type motor launches, anchored and silent, their guns trained up the river, without a light of any kind showing. They gave the pilot a great thrill, the first British forces he had seen for seven months. It was with difficulty that he restrained himself from hailing them.
He squatted down upon the bank, with Nay Htohn by his side, watching the ships. They stayed for half an hour, and were about to walk back to the house when things began to happen. There was a movement on the vessels, and a faint jangle of bells, and then a deep rumble as the engines started up; ship after ship started engines all down the line. The leading two weighed anchor and moved silently out into the middle of the stream; the other three also weighed and moved a little way upshore, keeping close in to the bank. All five lay there silent, just stemming the stream, making a great L across the river.
“Christ,” breathed the pilot. “They’ve given us a grandstand seat.”
They waited tensely. There was a faint rumble of engines from up river. From the furthest of the Fairmiles a searchlight blazed out, swept a little, and focused on three landing craft about a thousand yards away, and coming down the river. A spurt of small arms fire came from them and the heavier beating of a 37 millimetre automatic gun; Morgan pressed Nay Htohn down on to the grass beside him and they lay flat, watching a naval battle. It was over in a couple of minutes. The Fairmiles turned their broadsides to bring all the guns to bear and opened fire with Oerlikons and Bofors in the glare of their searchlights; one by one the landing craft were hit and went on fire, and headed for the shore. Two came to the Henzada bank and one to the far side. At Henzada the Independence Army were lining the bank; there was much shooting, which presently died down; the fires died out upon the craft, and the Fairmiles slipped back and anchored in their old stations, to watch again.
Morgan and Nay Htohn walked back to the town, tense and alert. The walk was not without danger, for the pilot was in his jungle suit and might have been mistaken in the darkness for a Japanese, or fired at by a fugitive from the boats. They went to the headquarters and found Utt Nee there, in the centre of a group of officers; he detached himself to talk to Morgan.
“What happened to the Japs?” the pilot asked.
“We have two prisoners,” the Burman replied. “Two, who were so badly wounded that they could not do their hara-kiri. The rest were either killed, or else they killed themselves. I do not know anything about the other boat, that landed on the other shore. They have got away.”
The pilot said: “Mind if we walk down and see the boats?” An idea was already forming in his mind.
Utt Nee sent a young officer with them, and they walked down to the shore with a hurricane lamp. There were many bodies of dead Japanese where the battle had taken place; Morgan looked at them with curiosity; these were the first dead Japanese that he had seen. They picked their way between them, going warily with pistols in their hands in case any of the corpses came to life and took a shot at them, as Japanese will do. The boats were separated by about three hundred yards.
They were twin hulled, flat bottomed landing craft, with a ramp forward and a Diesel engine aft; they mounted one 37 millimetre gun as their sole fixed armament apart from small arms and mortars carried by the troops. The first one they went on board smelled badly of stale food and excrement and burning oil; casks of Diesel oil upon her deck had been on fire, but the fire had not reached the engine, which was flooded. She was holed in three places by the Bofors, and considerably punctured by the Oerlikon fire.
Morga
n said quietly to Nay Htohn: “We could repair this one.”
She stared at him in wonder. “Repair it and use it?”
“That’s right. The engine hasn’t been hit. It’s probably full of water, but we could get it going again. And we could patch up the hull with concrete until we can get it done properly.”
She said: “Could you do that?”
The pilot said: “I’d have a stab at it.”
They went on to the other landing craft. This one was in a worse state, for the engine compartment had been on fire, and that engine was probably done for. The hull, however, was not so bad as the first one.
Morgan said thoughtfully: “I wonder what the one over on the other side is like?”
In the morning he sat in conference with Moung Shway Than, Utt Nee, and Nay Htohn. “This is goodbye for the moment,” he said quietly. “I’ve got to go and report myself on board these gunboats now, and go down to Rangoon with them; from there I shall be sent to England. I want to come back here, as soon as ever I can. I want to come back and marry Nay Htohn, if she’ll have me.”
Moung Shway Than said: “I should be very glad for you to do so. How long do you think it will be before you can get back to us?”
“I don’t know — it may be three months. It should not be longer than a year. But I shall write every two or three days, and let you know what is happening with me.” He paused. “Before I go, there is one important matter that we must discuss. These Jap landing craft can be repaired. The one down the river is the best of the two, but they must all be pulled up out of the water, and above high water level at the monsoon. If you can get them going they’ll be something to replace all the sampans that have been sunk.”
Moung Shway Than said: “I will take them over, and see that they are salvaged as much as we can. We can use the sampan builders on the work.”
The pilot said: “Get somebody to go up and down the river and look at every one of them that you can find. Get the engines taken out and kept in a dry place, and greased; there’s plenty of grease up with the locomotives, in the shed. Get the sampan builders to patch up the hulls if they can do it. I shall hope to be back here directly after the monsoon, and I’ll get down to it myself then. I’m quite sure we can get some of those boats running again, if we tackle it the right way. We might get two or three going out of the lot, putting the best engines into the best hulls. If you find that we need tools, write to me in England by air mail and tell me what we need, and I’ll bring them out with me.”