The Horatio Stubbs Trilogy (70 page)

The jaw angle became more pronounced. ‘Now is our island. You go into
opis, lekas
, chop-chop, like I say.'

As I moved, he moved, kicking my revolver to one side
with his boot. It was a good heavy kick. The weapon went scuttling to the far end of the concrete floor.

Unable to think of anything else, I walked over to the office and entered, turning quickly in case the lieutenant shot me in the neck. I backed against a desk and we confronted each other across the intervening space.

He raised the machine-pistol and levelled it at my eyes, glaring at me across the barrel. He came nearer, each step a threat. His mouth became smeared across his face.

‘You wait here and no make move or I shooting you to pieces. Okay?'

I nodded.

The sentence was important to both of us. He repeated it with some relish. ‘You wait here and no make move. I shooting you to pieces.'

‘Yes, understand.'

He shook his head, scowling. ‘
Ingris
army finish at Medan.'

He moved out and shut the office door. The key turned in the lock. There was a frosted glass panel in the door, covered in dust. I had an impression of his retreating back, then could see nothing. I stood with my thigh against the desk, waiting as ordered, trembling, fuck it.

I could hurl myself through the window and run for the river, but they would be outside and firing before I made it. Besides, anything I did would only make the position of Sontrop and Co. more perilous. The lieutenant had all the power. We were helpless.

A discussion began on the other side of the go-down. It took place in Malayan, but I recognised the tones of Ernst Sontrop's voice, caught the anger in it. The lieutenant started shouting. I caught the word
merdeka
repeated several times.

Looking back, I cannot recall that I held anything more than a simple soldier's viewpoint of the political situation. The Dutch ‘owned' Sumatra, and the Indonesians who were making trouble were ‘extremists'.

Parallel cases exist in Palestine and Northern Ireland and other countries today, though parallels, like analogies, never
prove cases. But in those simple early days after the war, when the shutters of international business had only just gone up, the notion of colonial populations being fit to govern their own countries – or entitled to govern whether fit or not – had barely penetrated.
Merdeka
could not really mean
freedom
, since it was a native word – which was why the British troops used it among themselves, with their customary surly cheer, as a comic password.

The Indonesian state has survived for many years. On the whole, it prospers. It is remote from Britain. Our mutual trade is negligible. As for Sumatra itself, little is ever heard of it in Britain.
The Times
, only a week or two ago, reported an earthquake in West Sumatra without mentioning any names or reporting casualties. It was a four-line filler. Sumatra has sunk beneath the greater abstraction of ‘Indonesia' and we know and care less about the island than we did a century ago. As a nation, we have largely lost interest in the world.

As I grow older, I regret that what was good and liberal in the British Empire is dead, and that the little, having largely overcome the great, remains obstinately little. Well, it is proper that my generation should regret – we were among the sods who shrugged our shoulders and laughed it all away. Like Steve Kyle, we forgot how to give or take orders.

Three shots rang out. They rattled about the harsh confines of the go-down with petrifying din. As they died, one more shot re-awoke the echoes. Then silence fell, thick and dismaying.

As I crouched down against the desk, arms round my head, a rusty rain of dust fell from the ceiling. I thought of the great silences of the forest, of that awful neutrality.

For an unreckoned time, I sheltered against the desk.

There was no further sound.

Finally, I tiptoed to the window and looked out. My body shook with fear. Through the dusty glass lay a view of wharf and river. The launch we had used for our fool crocodile hunt had gone. The half-sunken boat still lay at its last
anchorage. The door to its wheelhouse hung open; that was where the lieutenant and his men had hidden, waiting craftily until we returned.

On the wharfside lay our crocodile. Twenty or more kite-hawks fed on it, tearing shreds from its body and gobbling them down. They jostled and fought for positions in the carcass. The picture was picked out in sharp detail in the blazing sun. Of the
TRI
there was no sign.

The landscape lay there, impaled by sunlight. In the background, the felled trees and the standing trees reflected in the calm river. In the foreground, the terrible feast.

That magnificent land which has everything – food, cash crops, minerals – that magnificent land of mountains, volcanoes, rivers, jungles – why has it not risen to become one of the most enviable of all countries of the globe. Standing trembling in the office next to the stinking latrine. I seemed to know the answer to the question. The tribes of man became the dominant animal in temperate zones. In the tropics, where man began, his position remains less assured: below Cancer, the fevers of the equator work against him. The heat and its allies make a perpetual war, grinding him down. And some dreadful thing in human nature defeats human nature.

Tears came to my eyes as I stood at the window.

For I was innocent, I whispered. I loved Sumatra. I had been about to leave it against my will, as a soldier must take farewell of his wife. Now, my Dutch friends having been shot down, the guns were being reloaded for my execution. Over and above the fear I felt was an awful depression at the uselessness of everything, the bloody war, the fucking peace.

I stood and listened for them. Only gradually did it dawn on me that the extremists might have gone, that fear of reprisals from the British might have caused them to spare my life. Silence. The buzz of flies nearby; outside, the occasional cries of the scavenger birds.

Sweat burst out upon me. Behind the desk stood a metal waste-paper bin. I picked it up, hurled it through the frosted
glass panes of the office door, and ducked under the desk. After a clatter of falling glass, the noise of the bin rolling over concrete. Then silence again.

Making a great effort, I came out from cover, went over to the door, and located the key on its outer side. I unlocked the door and stepped out on to the floor of the go-down.

Ernst Sontrop, Jan de Zwaan, and Hendrick Nieuwenhuis lay huddled together by the far wall. A communal pool of blood spread under their bodies. Jan still wore his old Jap helmet. He lay face upward, his eyes open, looking sternly at the ceiling. His two friends lay face down. I could not see which of the three had needed the extra shot.

Weakness overcame me. I leaned against one of the old Manchester crates, feebly wiping my face. I broke into enormous sobs which rose from the centre of my guts. They came pumping up in reverse peristalsis, disgorging all that had to be suffered.

After midday in Medan. The city in its trance of sunlight. The smart native cop on duty at the Kesawan crossroads, with little traffic to direct except for a few leisurely bullock-carts making for the railway station.

I stood with Captain Jhamboo Singh by his jeep, in the shadow of the grim Dutch
HQ.
He was all concern.

‘Come back to the lines with me, Sergeant. Have a meal, take a rest, or I will drive you to the Field Ambulance and you can enjoy peace and quiet under observation for a day.'

‘I'm fine, Captain Sahib; thank you. I just need a drink.'

‘No, no, you come back to the lines and have a clean up. At present you are in a bad state, especially with regard to your appearance. Get in, get in.' He tapped the side of the Jeep with one fingernail. He was himself immaculate as usual.

I climbed in behind him and we were driven back to the lines. On the way, I tackled him about my missing revolver: losing it was a chargeable offence. Jhamboo brushed the question aside. He would indent for a new one; no charge would be brought. He was happy that I had come through the incident with my life.

As to what happened, it was best that I spoke to nobody about it, nobody. He would be seeing General Hedley in the morning, when he would report the incident personally. Such events occurred in difficult situations. This was a bad campaign in which nobody had any glory. For the rest, the three killings, that was the business of the Dutch. I must not concern myself. If I had been killed, that was different; then the Division would have been forced to mount retributive
action, with a general hotting up of tension all round. Mercifully, we were spared such unpleasantness. All that could be said was that there must be no breaches of discipline. He and I were old campaigners and had survived in difficult theatres of war; now it was peacetime, despite appearances, and both of us were entitled to retire with honour to our peacetime destinies.

‘Peacetime,' I said, and laughed.

He presented his case and offered me his De Reszkes, pressing them on me when I refused. ‘No, no, Sergeant, take one and smoke later, after your shower. There are different conceptions of wartime and peacetime, as we come now to realise.'

I took a fag and lit up automatically when he did.

‘I let myself be taken by surprise. Asking for trouble … I feel responsible for their deaths.'

‘Yes, yes, I understand, but you must tell yourself that is not so. To survive is not a disgrace, but rather a virtue. Confidentially, give me just one platoon, Sergeant, one platoon, and you and I would wipe out these murdering swine for ever.'

The jeep dropped me before my billet in Djalan Sennal Road. I climbed out, drew myself up, and ripped Jhamboo off a smart salute. He returned it, his expression lamb-like again as he regarded me.

As I peeled off my filthy uniform and climbed into the shower, recent events kept returning vividly before my mental gaze.

After I left the go-down, I had to make my way back through the jungle alone. The Indonesians had removed Jan's truck from its place of concealment. I walked on through the burnt-out
kampong
and eventually emerged on a road where a Dutch patrol found me. Good old Dutch, they never gave up!

They drove me straight to their grey Medan
HQ
, where Ernst Sontrop's office was. There I was given a cup of coffee, a ham roll, and a cigar, while four officers assembled to question me. One of them was a grey-haired man with mild
gold-rimmed spectacles and a brutal mouth. He belonged to
PEA
Force and introduced himself as a friend of Jackie Tertis.

The room filled with smoke. More coffee was brought. A good deal of phoning went on.

Jhamboo arrived. I greeted him with relief. A friendly face! The Dutch had tried to contact the elusive Boyer, without results. Throughout the interviews, the Dutch – even the villain from
PEA
Force – were unfailingly courteous, unrolling their faultless English like stair-carpet down each step of the enquiry. All the while, I felt like a prize shit; I knew they thought I should have died with my pals.

From my description, they identified the
TRI
lieutenant with the scar as a man called Hamil.

‘He's just returned from Java, we happen to know,' said
PEA
Force. ‘He's not a good man, but we shall get him.'

‘Hamil's a tough egg,' agreed one of the other officers, with a cool mastery of English slang.

By not executing me, by refusing even to take me captive, Hamil had avoided a possible confrontation and snubbed both Dutch and British authorities. He showed that he knew we were withdrawing, and that that withdrawal meant the beginning of the end for the Dutch. The
TRI
wanted us out of the way with as little fuss as possible. Their battle was half won.

All of which must have been gall for the Dutch, but they just made a few more serious phone calls. The questioning was over. They rose and thanked me for my co-operation, apologised for my misadventure, congratulated me on my escape from death, and hoped that I would return to Medan after the uprising had been quelled, when they would be happy to see I had a pleasant visit and could shoot crocodiles in a more congenial atmosphere. I shook hands all round and left with Jhamboo.

By now, as I stood wearily under the cold shower, an armed escort would be out at the go-down. If the three bodies weren't collected quickly, the shite-hawks which had feasted on the crocodile would be greedying it in the building.
How do you eat people? It's just like eating crocodiles …

Iwa? No doubt the terrible men in
PEA
Force would sort out his role in the ambush – to their satisfaction if not to Iwa's.

When I had dried myself, I stretched luxuriously on my
charpoy
and reached for my tin of cigarettes. I never made it.

Some maniac, some vaginaphobe, with his hand on my shoulder was asking me if I wanted to buy a battleship.

Groaning, I heaved myself up and looked blearily round.

‘You want to lay off the kyfer before it kills you! I thought you were bloody dead, mate. I've brought you a late lunch.'

There was Johnny Mercer; behind him, the Chinese mess servant, standing grinning with a tray of food and a beer.

My Indian watch told me that I had been asleep for only twenty-five minutes. All the same, I felt better. Putting a towel round my middle, I sat on the edge of the bed and began shovelling the food in the top. Johnny took it for granted that I had been with Margey, and proceeded to go into great detail concerning his adventures of the previous evening, which revolved about the twin axes of alcohol and women. It appeared that he had had a good time.

It was impossible to concentrate on what he had to say. Before my eyes floated a picture of three bodies lying against the wall of the go-down, while ants meditatively inspected their life-blood. I wondered how I could behave naturally before my friends, now that this terrible knowledge was in me. Coming back alone through the great forest, with nature at its most luxuriant all round, I had been startled by a chain of monkeys swinging in the branches high overhead, screaming as they went. Perhaps the monkeys knew death. But monkeys were innocent. They did not know Harm. It was Harm that I had discovered, and instinct demanded that I should conceal that discovery from my friends.