Dead in the Dog (6 page)

Tom took his bowl and sat opposite Alf Morris, who grinned.

‘I see you've made a hit with Meng. She's as good as gold, really.'

‘What's this about seeing the colonel? What do I have to do?'

Morris poured more diluted Carnation on to his cornflakes.

‘March smartly into his office and stand in front of his desk. Give him a salute, then stick your hat under your left armpit and stand at attention.'

Tom stopped his spoon halfway to his mouth. ‘Bloody hell! I thought the medics were a bit more relaxed than that?'

‘Dollar in the box, lad,' said Alf automatically. ‘No, our CO is a bit of a stickler for the traditions, I'm afraid.'

‘Colonel O'Neill thinks he should have been in the Household Cavalry, not the RAMC, old chap.'

Peter Bright, the subject of last night's gossip, spoke for the first time. Again Tom noticed his aristocratic profile and the immaculate uniform. He never seemed to sweat like the rest of them.

‘Should have been in the Waffen SS, not the Household Cavalry,' muttered the man next to him, a thin, beetle-browed Welshman. He was so dark that he always looked as if needed a shave, but David Meredith was handsome in a melancholy sort of way.

Tom was rapidly getting the impression that their Commanding Officer was not the flavour of the month in the Mess. As the colonel had been on leave for a few days, the new arrival had not yet met him and looked forward to the event with some unease.

‘What's wrong with him, then?'

The loyal Administrative Officer, with twenty-six years of unswerving deference to rank behind him, jumped in ahead of any other replies.

‘Nothing's wrong with him. He's just a rather strict disciplinarian.'

There were derisory snorts from around the table, but no one ventured to enlarge on the subject, though one or two looked rather uneasily over their shoulders.

Meng smacked a plate in front of him and the others peered at it.

‘Fried bread and a tomato as well, eh?' observed Percy. ‘She's taken a real shine to you, Tom.'

At ten to eight, he was out on the road from the Mess to the hospital. It ran all around the site, parallel to the chain-link perimeter, the wards being inside it. Various other buildings such as the two Officers' Messes, the ORs' barracks, Casualty, Sergeants' Mess, Quartermaster's stores, mortuary, dental unit and armoury, all lay between it and the boundary fence. The inner square was bisected by the main corridor that ran up from opposite the front gate to the little armoury that lay at the back, between the RAMC Officers' Mess and that of the Queen Alexandra's Royal Army Nursing Corps. Cynics had long claimed that they needed the guns to keep the two sexes apart.

Tom Howden walked in the already-warm morning as far as this armoury, watching the steam rise off the wet ground as the sun began to make itself felt. When he looked beyond the hospital fence to the edge of the valley, he could see the jungle-covered hills less than a mile away, wraiths of mist winding through the tops of the trees. The air smelled so different from Tyneside, a cloying mixture of flowers, humid vegetation and stagnant water.

He turned sharp left into the long corridor that was the main artery of the hospital, a place where sometime during the day you could meet every inhabitant of the place. It was a concrete strip edged with deep monsoon drains, each side completely open, with a gabled asbestos roof supported on green-painted posts all the way down to the front of the hospital. On each side, every twenty yards or so, were double doors to the wards, which stuck out like ribs from a spine. They were long green-painted huts, similar to those of the Mess, with slatted doors down most of their length on each side. Just inside the front doors were the sisters' and doctors' offices and at the far end, the sluice-rooms.

Halfway down the corridor, he saw that one of the buildings was different. It was shorter, built of concrete and had a few glass windows, which had several air conditioning units sticking out. This was the operating theatre, the domain of the amorous pair, Peter Bright and David Meredith. On the other side of the corridor was the X-ray Unit and further down the corridor was his own bailiwick, the pathology laboratory, opposite the dispensary.

Beyond these, he had to dodge a group of barefoot Tamil labourers, who were energetically scrubbing the concrete with brooms, slopping soapy water from buckets carried on a trolley. Just past them, he came to the end of the corridor, where the first two ribs on the spine were offices, fronting the car park and entrance gate with its guardroom. On the right were the RSM's cubbyhole and the general office, where several Indian and Chinese clerks filed records and banged away on old typewriters. To the left were the rooms of the QA Matron and the Admin Officer, with the Holy of Holies on the far end – the CO's office.

Feeling like a fourth-former going to see the headmaster, Tom pulled up his long khaki socks with the red garter tabs, adjusted the lanyard around his shoulder and straightened his cap. Striding to the middle door, he tapped and waited.

A harsh voice commanded him to ‘Come!'

Inside, he found himself in a bare office with a dozen hard chairs lined up against two walls, like a vet's waiting room. Opposite the door, was a large empty desk, on which were a cap and a bamboo swagger stick, lined up with meticulous accuracy to face the entrance. Behind the desk was Lieutenant Colonel Desmond O'Neill, Commanding Officer of BMH Tanah Timah.

Tom marched across the wide empty space to stand in front of the desk, gave his best salute and whipped off his hat.

‘Captain Thomas Howden reporting for duty, sir.' He thought this sounded about right for the occasion.

The colonel looked up at him impassively. He was a trim, stiff-backed man of average height with dark short-cropped hair, greying at the temples. His face was thin, the skin stretched tightly over his high cheekbones. Darkly handsome in a horrible sort of way, thought Tom. As a keen cinema-goer at home, he immediately compared the CO with either Stewart Granger or Michael Rennie, the sardonic heroes of many an adventure film. But it was the eyes that made him uneasy, piercing pale globes that never seemed to blink, the kind that inept police artists drew on wanted axe murderers. The colonel now covered them with a pair of steel-rimmed glasses to stare at his new officer.

‘Pathologist, is that what you claim to be, Howden?'

The harsh voice had a strong Ulster accent.

‘Yessir, one year's experience as a Senior House Officer in Newcastle.'

Tom had hoped for some kind of welcome to the new unit, but it seemed that O'Neill was above such pleasantries.

‘Well, you'll have other duties here as well – take your turn as Orderly Officer, act as the Hygiene Officer and run the blood transfusion service. That means you also have to act as the medical officer to the MCE next door, that's where you get your blood.'

This was one acronym he'd not come across yet and he had no idea where he was to get his blood, but had the sense not to query it from this peculiar man.

‘Yessir, of course, sir.'

O'Neill continued to glare at him, his narrow lips compressed into a thin line. Then he spoke again, the Belfast accent strange to Tom's Geordie-tuned ears.

‘Short-Service man, aren't you? Well, you'll have to be a good example for these National Service fellows! Smartly-dressed, strict discipline, understand? Then you'll not fall foul of me too often.'

He sat with his hands on his empty desk, fingers flat on the wood, with an immobility that reminded Tom of a snake, ready to strike. The new arrival stood stiffly, unsure whether to make any response, but the decision was made for him.

‘Right, Howden, dismiss. Daily Orders at eight fifteen, every day except Sunday.'

The skull-like face gave a jerky nod of dismissal and Tom managed one of his salutes again, which he had been practising before the mirror in the washroom – ‘hand furthest way up, shortest way down', as they had been instructed in the Depot at Crookham.

He swivelled to his left and marched out, closing the door behind him. Outside, he sagged against the adjacent wall and took off his cap to wipe the sweat from his brow, generated both by the heat and the stress of meeting the man who theoretically had the power of life and death over him for the next few years.

‘Good morning, captain, are you our new pathologist?'

A gentle voice came from behind him and he turned to find that he had been leaning against the edge of the open window of the next office.

Inside, standing against a table on which she was arranging bright tropical flowers in a vase, was a large woman dressed in grey-blue QARANC uniform with a triangular headdress of starched white linen hanging down her back. Her scarlet shoulder tabs carried a Major's crown, so this must be the Matron, he thought. Uncertain of protocol, he slapped on his cap and gave her a salute, but she smiled benignly.

‘Only need do that when he's around,' she hissed in a stage whisper, jerking her head towards the office he had just left. Coming to the low window sill, she offered her hand.

‘Welcome to the madhouse. Hope you'll be happy here. Keep your sense of humour and you'll survive.'

He shook her hand and introduced himself, glad to find someone who made him feel welcome. She was almost motherly in her manner and Tom felt a sudden pang of homesickness again, as she was almost as old as his mother. Large and rather ungainly, she had a big, placid face and a ready smile. Her upper lip carried a faint moustache and he suspected that this was her last tour before retirement.

‘Are you married, captain?' she asked, unashamedly gathering essential gossip to carry back to the Sisters' Mess.

Tom grinned and shook his head. ‘Got a girl or two back home, but nothing serious yet.' He thought he'd better keep his options open for a bit.

After a little more chit-chat, he wandered away to wait for this mysterious Daily Orders. His wristwatch told him there were a few minutes left and he stood at the bottom of the main corridor, watching hospital life pass by. Vehicles came and went through the gate. A Bedford ambulance lumbered up to Casualty, which was a large hut over on the right-hand side of the parking lot. The driver and an orderly from Casualty went to the back door and helped out a dishevelled trooper in high jungle boots, one arm in a bloodstained sling.

Next was a ramshackle Chinese truck delivering to the Quartermaster's Stores further up the perimeter road. A Land Rover with the flash of a New Zealand battalion sped out after delivering patients to the STD, the ‘Special Treatment Department' which was a euphemism for Percy Loosemore's ‘clap and pox' clinic, housed in a large khaki tent on the open area beyond the ward blocks. Next to this was a small shed-like structure with another mysterious acronym painted above the door – PAC. Later Tom learned that this was the unit's Personal Ablutions Centre, where squaddies going out for a night on the town could obtain a free condom and a tiny tube of mercuric chloride; if they had signed the record book to prove their attendance, then they escaped being disciplined for ‘self-injury' if they later reported sick with ‘a dose of the clap'.

From the other side of the hospital frontage, the RSM appeared, a burly red-faced man, who seemed all chest and boots. His Warrant-Officer's badge of rank was on a leather wristlet, the same hand holding a cane with which he approached the quaking private on gate duty outside the guardroom. Tom couldn't catch what the problem was, but the private seemed to shrink at the same rate as the RSM appeared to get larger.

At that moment, a clutch of medical officers appeared at the end of the corridor and swept up Tom on their way to the colonel's office, Alf Morris joining them from his own room. There were several that Tom had never seen before and headed by Peter Bright, they all filed into the CO's room. After saluting, each went to stand by one of the chairs against the side walls. Tom followed suit and at a barked command from Desmond O'Neill, they all sat down, with their caps on their knees, peak facing forwards.

‘Orderly Medical Officer's report!' snapped the colonel, his cold eye fixing on Alec Watson. The youngest officer shot to his feet and consulted a piece of paper, on which were recorded his activities during his twenty-four hour shift.

‘Two patients on the SIL, sir, no change in their condition. No one on the DIL. Three minor injuries treated in Casualty, nothing else to report, sir.'

O'Neill continued to fix him with his cobra-like stare. ‘What are these men on the SIL, Watson?'

‘One leptospirosis, one malaria, sir. The malaria came off the DIL on Tuesday.' Tom was to discover later that these new initials meant ‘Dangerously and Seriously Ill Lists.'

The colonel swivelled his eyes to an older man whom Tom had never seen before. ‘Major Martin, what about these patients?' he snapped.

Martin rose to his feet. He was a big man with a bright pink complexion and a fair bushy moustache. Tom assumed he was the senior physician, the medical equivalent of surgeon Peter Bright. As he had never appeared in the Mess, he presumably lived in the Married Quarters in the Garrison compound. He explained in a deep voice how the malaria victim was from 22 SAS in Sungei Siput and the leptospirosis or Weil's disease sufferer was from a jungle patrol of the West Berkshires who had had to sleep in rat-infested swamp water.

‘Both are improving, they should pull through well enough,' he ended.

This is how the meeting went for the next fifteen minutes, with the gimlet eyes of the colonel transfixing each officer in turn, demanding to know what he had been up to during the last day. He left the pathologist until last.

‘Well, Howden, any problems in the laboratory?'

‘Nossir, just settling in,' answered Tom cautiously, as in fact he had yet to set foot in the place.

‘Better be up to speed by tomorrow, you've had almost a day here already!'