The Horatio Stubbs Trilogy (27 page)

‘There's no such thing as rights in this man's army. You've had your ration,' Rusk said, waving a ladle indignantly. ‘If you've wasted it, that's your fault, but you aren't getting no more, not from us, you aint!'

‘Come on, man! You saw what bloody happened – give me some more. Please!' For a little while Geordie looked near to tears.

‘Piss off, Jack! That's your lot. No double helpings – this ain't the Ritz.'

‘Give him some bloody more!' Dusty and I said. ‘You stingy buggers; you've got a fucking dixie full of the shit!'

‘There's others beside you, you know. You aren't the only buggers in this man's regiment, if you think you are. Now – shove off, will you?
Jao!
'

I looked about me. ‘Where's the orderly corporal? Why isn't he here? Come on, Geordie, let's get the orderly corporal! He'll soon sort these cunts out. Their fucking feet won't touch.'

Geordie hesitated. He was not the pugnacious type. But Rusk decided the matter.

‘Buzz off and find the orderly dog – he'll tell you same as I do. One man, one ration, that's the rule, and if you're
fool enough to give yours to the shite-hawks, that's up to you!'

‘What were you trying to do? Tame it?' one of the other cooks asked, and they all laughed, their stomachs shaking. By now, more types were lining up for grub, and we moved off. It was useless to get mixed up with the orderly corporal, who was some clot from ‘C' Company.

‘I'll fix those bastard cooks,' Geordie said, as we sat down at the tables. It sounded like an empty boast.

‘Want a bite of my shite-hawk stew, Geordie?' Dusty asked.

We all burst out laughing.

It was marvellous being one of the lower classes, with the particular generalized lower-classness of the Army. You could be your own awful self, provided you observed the unwritten rules. All the hypocrisies of home-life dissolved. Above all, you did not have to pretend to be content; in the Army, it went the other way – the ideal was to complain all the time.

Certainly there was always something to tick about. Our manoeuvres were pure hell – ‘total aggs', as the phrase went. On a nearby foetid lake, we plunged off tethered assault-craft into four feet of muddy water and charged ashore. We ran for miles to attack imaginary machine-gun posts. Through thick jungle we stalked others of our kind acting as Japs. We swung across cables and crawled on our bellies. We made long forced marches at night. We slogged through sea and mangrove swamp. We slept in the open and practised street-fighting in a dummy village. We sweated our guts out. And all the time we grumbled.

We grumbled because this was not the real thing but a stunt laid on by GHQ Delhi; we grumbled because the real thing loomed ahead. We grumbled about the Japs, the war, the Army, the sergeants, the officers, the food, the drink, the climate, the lack of sleep, our feet, everything. I loved every minute of it in retrospect.

Even shitting was fun. The latrines were situated not far from the cookhouse. Wally Page and I were there late one afternoon, balanced with our arses over the pole, crapping into a pit.

‘Another bastarding night march tonight,' I said.

‘I'm covered with jungle sores. Burma will be heaven after this bloody circus!'

‘The wireless set plays hell with your prickly-heat, doesn't it?'

All of India sprawled before us, over low bushes. My trousers were round my ankles. Sweat ran down my chest. You could see a bit of the lake among the dispirited trees. Beyond it rolled the hills. Our turds dropped smack down into the lime-covered mess below. Huge flies zoomed about. The sun was getting low, but even the nights were hot.

Wally reached for a bit of newspaper. ‘At least we're saving money here. My old man and me are going to leave the factory and open up a fish-and-chip shop when I get home.'

‘If you get fucking home!'

‘Yeah,
if
I get fucking home.'

All the pretensions had gone. The complexities of middle-class life, designed to hide what one was really hoping, feeling, enjoying, suffering – all bowed to the Army code. The Army code was designed to be so simple that the thickest intellect could grasp it; it could be summed up in a classical five-word apothegm: ‘Do what you're fucking told!' with its unspoken rider: ‘And get away with what you can.'

We did our night march. Apart from the fact that we should have been asleep, it was wonderful to breathe the night air, so much more alive and mysterious than England's air. We hardly needed a compass to find the next village – you could smell it half-a-mile away.

Gor-Blimey was leading our section during this exercise. I followed behind him, humping the wireless set. We moved into a large stone house set in its own grounds on the edge of the village. It was temporary HQ, and there were already other troops there. I had to stay with the captain and raise Brigade HQ while the other lucky sods settled down for a brief kip.

I sat on a balcony upstairs, passing useless messages. Someone brought us up mugs of tea. India was out there – never silent even at three in the morning. Jackals were yelping and unidentifiable night-birds called.

‘Wake up, Stubbs! Get me Dog Five again, will you.'

‘Yessir.' Here we go again. ‘Hello Dog Five, hello Dog Five. Report my signals. Teapot to Dog Five, over.'

The faint hiss of static and meaningless things, and then a
bored voice I recognized as Handsome Hanson's, coming from perhaps half-a-mile away. ‘Hello Teapot, hello Teapot. Receiving you Strength Five, over.'

I handed the microphone to Gor-Blimey. After some frigging about with the pressel-switch until he got things right, he spoke to Blue Spot. I sat staring out into the night.

There was no chance of anything as worthwhile as a good screw that night. Bloody Gor-Blimey had really got his teeth into the role of Teapot and was working it for all he was worth. Not until after five was I allowed to slink into a corner of a room and stretch out on a length of matting. No mosquito net, no chance of removing boots and puttees. The flies woke me at seven-thirty.

There was Gor-Blimey, striding about as fresh as ever, enjoying himself, radiating confidence. He was a solid man with a heavy face and a little button-nose, Eric Gore-Blakeley. His manner was quietly authoritative, though he could bellow like a bull when he judged the occasion called for it. My mother had once set eyes on him from afar and conceived a great admiration for him. In 2 Platoon he was considered to be a bit dodgey.

It was mid-day before I staggered back into our Mesopotamian tent. Wally Page was lying luxuriously on his
charpoy
smoking, his hands clasped behind his neck.

‘How long have you been there, you cushy bugger?'

‘You want to get some service in, Stubbs! I've been here on my arse the last two hours. Had a shower and got straight on with the
charpoy
-bashing.'

‘You're a jammy sod! I'm going to get an hour's kip in before dinner. Old Gor-Blimey kept me on the hop all night – I never got my head down at all.'

‘You ought to have made your set go dis, same as I did. You want to use your bloody loaf, Stubbs, or we'll never win this war the way you're carrying on.'

‘Shit in it, Page – go and do yourself a mischief!'

‘And you! Do you want to get that dirty water off your chest? I know where there's a woman here. Ginger Gascadden told me. Apparently all of No. 1 Platoon's been through her.'

‘A woman in this bloody dump? You're going
puggle
, Page, that's your trouble! Too much tropical sun.'

He sat up and appealed to Charley Cox who was slumbering in the end bed. ‘Isn't that right, Charley? Didn't
Ginger Gascadden say he'd had a woman down by the lake?'

‘He said she was a proper smasher,' the lance-corporal volunteered.

Wally laughed. ‘Yes, well you wouldn't know much about that, Charley, would you now? You prefer sheep or goats, don't you? Little boys, sheep and goats!'

‘Fuck off, Page!'

‘Fuck off yourself!'

‘Where is this woman, anyhow?' I asked.

Cox told me. ‘According to Ginger Gascadden, she turns up at that little ruined
basha
down by the lake every evening, with a Wog with her to collect the money – her husband, I shouldn't wonder.'

As I peeled my puttees off and sank on to the bed, I asked, ‘Is she any good, Charley? I wouldn't mind a go.'

‘You can't keep away from it, you young lads! They're none of them any good,' Cox said. ‘Rotten with syph. Even the bloody ground's rotten with syph here – that's why nothing grows. Take the advice of an old soldier, Stubby-boy, and keep off 'em. Fuck your fist, same as I do, and you're safe. Honeymoon in the hand.'

Wally laughed. ‘Yes, but you've got Wankers' Doom, cock, you have! Don't care if I do go blind … Mrrhhhh, nothing wrong with me, sergeant, it's just the old Doolally Tap.' Trembling and juddering, rolling his head to one side in imitation of someone in the extremes of deterioration, Wally began to sing:

Cox and I bellowed to him to be quiet, and I crawled under my mosquito net to catch some sleep before dinner. After last parade, I promised myself, I would go down to the lake and see for myself if anything was happening there. Clutching my prick affectionately, I sank into elusive dreams.

After tiffin, I took a stroll which led me to the shores of the lake. I had combed my hair and washed my face and
shaken off Geordie, saying I would meet him at the canteen.

In my mind, I saw it all. The girl stayed in the hut and I had to pay the bloke first – a hard financial transaction! My mystery girl had cost me ten rupees; outdoors, it should be cheaper. Once I stepped into the hut, all would be right. Our eyes met. She was beautiful – demure and rather shy, brown and shining, with slender legs and a bracelet round her ankle. Without speaking, we established a sort of rapport. I took her in my arms very gently, we kissed, and I learnt for the first time how to remove a sari. Then we made love outside in the sand, while a silver moon rose over the lake.

But reality was a poor crude thing – no wonder so many refuse to accept it! I grew more nervous as I moved round the lake. The realization dawned on me that there might even be a queue for her. What was that about all of No. 1 Platoon having her? Also, the edges of the lake weren't always too enjoyable. I had to make a long detour round a thicket, and cross over a bed of dried mud in which water buffaloes had left hoof-prints and droppings.

Eventually, I had in view the
basha
Charley Cox had mentioned. It stood under a few ragged trees nearby, where gaunt goats nibbled. By the water's edge, a man squatted, looking ahead at nothing. I had no realization of the lengths to which people could be driven by poverty; all I could think of was Ginger Gascadden's verdict that he was selling his wife. How sinful he looked, squatting there by the water while his wife was being shafted by some dirty big Mendip only a few feet away! What a country this was!

Preoccupied by gloomy thoughts and gloomy lust in equal quantities, I was taken by surprise by a small boy who materialized at my elbow. He was a beautiful child, perhaps ten years old, wearing old khaki pants and a ragged vest, and he said brightly, ‘You want fuck girl, Johnny?'

‘No.' I didn't know. It was all so ghastly. To take but one point, could I even
do
it, knowing her husband and – her – her son, was this? – were within earshot? How could I face them after? ‘No, thanks, no girl.'

He smiled and gestured at my flies. ‘You like gobble, Johnny? I give you nice gobble? Two rupee, very lovely, very quick.'

I knew how the monkey god felt, tearing himself apart.
Life seemed to be crushed between the grindstones of earth and sky.

‘How much the girl?'

‘Short time ten rupee, Johnny. If she like you, eight rupee. You come see! My sister. Very pretty lovely girl of pale face.' He took my hand and I went along the path with him. My impulse was to say to him, ‘We don't do this sort of thing in England', but it was not the place for small talk; also, I was burningly curious to see the girl. Just curious. It was such a foul set-up. Perhaps we should have let the Japs take over running the country.

The man at the water's edge rose now and stood still, watching us approach. There was activity at the hut too. A man emerged, ramming a bush hat on to his head, a bulky man in trousers, puttees, and boots, wearing no shirt. I watched eagerly to see if the girl would come out after him.

As the other Mendip and I were about to pass each other, I saw that it was Rusk, the cook. His identity discs were bouncing between his fat hairy breasts. He gave me a dirty grin.

‘So you're getting a bit of service in at last, then, Jack, are you? Get in there, it's your birthday! I've warmed her up proper for you!'

As he passed, I could smell his rancid body. The boy was still half-tugging me along. I got almost to the hut, and then I could go no further. The thought of fucking anything after Rusk had been at it was too much for me; I couldn't do it. Lust had fled – I just wanted to go back and take a shower. I did not even want to see the cow.

‘No fuck,' I said.

‘Gobble, Johnny? Super quick time!' He reached for my flies.

‘Fuck off! you little bastard!
Jao!
'

‘You fuck off! And fuck off fucking you!' He jumped away, spitting anger, waving his fist at me, backing towards the old man, who still stood motionless at the water's edge. I turned and ran.

The misery of it! Sex was as squalid as everything else here. Directly I was away from the
basha
, the filthy images hovered about my head again like shite-hawks. I had never
seen the
bibi.
Of course she was a raddled old whore … yet the image of rutting, of depraved acts, of the total degradation that seemed to creak out of the parched soil had me in its grip. A torment of lust overcame me.