A Rude Awakening. Brian Aldiss
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for a moment, Wally Scubber interested me more than the winged shitbag. The latter had dived to the murky depths of the Indian beer to see if glass-drilling operations would get it anywhere. ‘What dirty sexual habits do you happen to fucking well have in mind, Wally?’
His mottled face was lopsided with reproof, as if he suspected that we were talking at cross-purposes.
‘There I think you know better than me, Horry, isn’t that right? I don’t wish to be spesh – speshicif – give details, but Chink girls aren’t brought up like English girls, are they? No churches or schools or – general discipline. No knickers. Bloody slant-eyed hoors – it’ll spoil you, Horry, onnis, going with your Chink bit down in the bazaar. When you meet up with some nice English girl …’
I belched and heaved myself out of the chair.
‘Finish up my beer, Wally, there’s a good lad.’
I handed him my glass, which vibrated with the enraged activities of the shitbag. I wove my way across the room. ‘You cunt, they do wear fucking knickers,’ I announced to the assembled company.
Johnny Mercer’s laughing face loomed into mine. Johnny was shorter than I, a red-faced, rat-faced Cockney who made an indifferent RASC sergeant.
‘I was watching you catch that bit of wild life in your beer, mucker,’ he said. ‘It reminded me of what the old Venereal Bede said about human existence, that it was like some horrible hairy flying abomination belting in through one window of a great hall straight into some poor cunt’s wog beer.’
He started howling with his homemade brand of laughter, and I joined in. Smiting him on the shoulder, I pushed through the crowd towards the mess door. It stood open to let the heat and smoke out. I blundered through, emerging almost at a trot into the steaming night.
You could tell blindfold that Medan was just one degree off the equator. The air suppurated like primaeval broth. A million monstrous little things unknown in England expressed their beings in sound so urgently that it was hard to know what was air, what noise. I stood there, swaying slightly, and flipped my fag-end away into the night. Its parabola was cut short in mid-air. Something had gobbled it up before it fell.
The headlights of a battered fifteen-hundredweight truck penetrated the darkness and moved down the road from the direction of the guardhouse.
They turned uncertainly in at the mess gates, revealing themselves as two eyes the colour of mule urine. They backed away to one corner of the enclosure. There was a smashing sound, sustained and quite leisurely, as the fifteen-hundredweight struck our old wooden summerhouse and ignored it. RSM Dickie Payne was returning, drunk as always.
I stood there listening with remote pleasure as Payne drove forward and then, presumably more by accident than in a spirit of revenge, back again, continuing the demolition of the summerhouse. Johnny Mercer staggered out of the mess to see what was going on.
‘Merdeka! Our beloved RSM still battering his way through life … I need a pee …’
He turned to a nearby bush. The sound of his urine streaming on the grass reminded me of similar needs. As I moved to one side of the building, lobbing my tool out, the RSM’S vehicle swerved forward again. The glow of his headlights swept the ground ahead.
Two frogs lay clasped together, one on top of the other, in a shallow puddle – it had rained heavily at sunset. The frogs were motionless, staring ahead into a cold Nirvana of amphibian copulation. I directed a scalding jet of piss on them with such force that they were flipped over, showing their death-yellow bellies. I laughed as I pissed, churning them up, watching them struggle.
The damned truck was nearly on me. I was so taken up with the frogs that it almost ran me over.
‘Payne, you pissy-arsed fuck-pig!’ I yelled, jumping backwards as the ghari reared forward.
Payne had the truck door open, holding it with one hand while he steered with the other. He was half falling out of the cab as he backed the truck towards one side of the mess. He shouted something incoherent as he shot by, sweaty face gleaming.
And then the amazing happened. At the time, standing there clutching a dripping prick, I thought only how appropriate it was that the rear end of the truck should begin to sink slowly into the ground. The RSM’S response was to rev his engine. The ground collapsed. The truck settled down on its haunches, cab rearing into the air. Mud splattered from its still-spinning front wheels.
Cursing, Dickie Payne fell clear, landing on hands and knees in my pissy puddle among the frogs. He scuttled away into the bushes while the engine died. As the truck sank backwards still further, the yellow beam of the headlights swung upwards till it illuminated the top branches of a nearby tree. With avian imprecations, a terrible feathered thing took flight and clattered into the darkness.
Johnny was at my side, laughing as if his ribs were trapped in a suit of armour. ‘The bloody cesspit’s caved in!’ he kept saying. ‘The bloody cesspit’s caved in! Isn’t that just like life?’
This statement, no less than the truth, somehow settled the question of whether or not I should hang around the mess. Politeness had kept me there; after all, they were standing me a farewell party. But there had been a similar thrash the night before, and another was planned for the day after, all three being designed as a wet run for a grand party on Saturday night – which, it was foreseen, would be traumatic enough to require a succession of tailing-off parties, continuing long after I had flown to Singapore to catch the troopship.
For the moment, enough was enough. I checked to see that my revolver was in my holster and my old man in my trousers, and slipped away into the night. Margey, I told myself, meant more to me than all the sergeants in the British Army laid end to bloody end.
At the far end of the road from the sergeants’ mess stood an MP’S guardpost. It marked the official entrance into the perimeter of our lines. There, the redcaps underwent their primitive life-cycles, lowering barriers across the road after dark, arresting drunks, and generally making themselves obstreperous.
Inside the perimeter was a heterogeneous collection of soldiery: a small detachment of the Royal Mendips, of which I formed part; several squads of 26th Indian Division, comprising both British and Indian troops; some sinister Dutchmen belonging to PEA Force; and a few other odd bods, including some Japanese troops, who were too useful for nasty jobs to be sent home to Nippon, and a solitary Chinese major who spent his days searching for unmarked Chinese graves. This miscellaneous rabble formed part of the occupying force; we were billeted in varying degrees of comfort in what had been a Dutch suburb, before war overcame the Netherlands East Indies four years previously, early in 1942.
The perimeter defences, like our duties, were ill-defined. Despite many alarms and shoot-ups, we could not get it through our thick heads that the Indonesians meant us harm. After all, we had come to liberate them from the rule of the Japs. The general fucking-about meant that a curfew was imposed between midnight and seven in the morning. During that period, those of the occupying force not on duty were supposed to remain snug within their own lines. The redcaps on the gate knew me better than that.
A searchlight burned above their post, drawing a tangle of ghastly winged life into its net. As I entered the lighted zone, a motor-bike zoomed up behind me. I jumped to one side, fearing another drunken driver. Jackie Tertis pulled his heavy old BSA to a halt a few inches from my Number Elevens, pushed up his goggles and grinned evilly. He left the engine roaring. ‘Want a lift into town?’
‘What about the piss-up?’
‘Like you, I skipped it. Better things to do with my time. Climb on – haven’t got all bloody night.’
He flashed a pass at the redcap who challenged us. Despite my reservations concerning Tertis, I climbed on the pillion and latched my hands under his belt. He was a dangerous bugger in every way, not least as a driver.
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