‘I’ve loved you, my darling, since birds began to fly
Since apple-loaves baked in my oven’s eye
When fires begin you can’t put them out
With anything less than a waterspout’—
Well, that was the first verse and it wasn’t bad, being made up on the spot, even though I do say so myself. I’m not a Limey so don’t expect any false modesty from me. But after three more verses it wasn’t so much that my education (or lack of it) began to show as that my upbringing and dirty mind came through, so that, old buddy, I ended up with such a mouthful of barrack-room filth that she fled from me clutching her skirt, and the last thing I saw of my dark little nurse was two tri-shaw wheels going round a corner. I was broken-hearted and still am. I got myself a few drinks to drown my sorrows, because I’m sure I’ll never see my living doll again, and who can blame her? But out of the rotten carcass came forth sweetness, as they say in Sanders of the River — or was it Das Kapital? — and I’m going to start writing poetry as a life of penance. I’m going to be a real poet, even though I do say so while I’m as stoned as an iguana. I’m going to be a writer, get spot cash for deep thoughts. So when you see me tomorrow, remind me of what I say, because if you don’t I’ll forget all about it.”
Brian guided him to his billet, tipped him fully dressed on his bed, and pulled down the mosquito-net.
When Brian laughed at his own self-pity the bark of a pariah dog made a duet with him. The music ended and so did his sadness, and with a blank mind he walked to the door and booted it open, shivering as cold air blew into his sweat-ridden shirt. I want to get out of this, he said. Another three months and I’ll be on the boat, thank God. Five hundred yards towards the airstrip was another similar hut where pal Jack, not having to keep an all-night watch, had spent the last eight hours with his head down; and eastwards black humps of forest rolled up to the highest ridges of Malaya. He pissed a tune against a petrol tin to keep himself company, then went back and slammed the door.
He listened out on frequency: nothing. The whole night sky of South-East Asia was empty of planes as far as he was concerned, but he didn’t want to go to sleep. As soon as I get my head down, some no-good crippled kite will start belting out an SOS — and then where would all of us be? They’d be dead and I’d be in the glasshouse, but I wouldn’t let them down anyway. He called Singapore and got no answer: five o’clock. They’re asleep, but I don’t want to be, though the only thing that would waken me now is a woman, succulent and willing and fiery, burning for me as much as I would be for her. It doesn’t happen unless you get her that way yourself, though I know Pauline was marvellous, when I’ve got the heart to think back clear enough, adept and full of love when both of us were properly wanted. Well, I could read for a while, but what’s the use of reading a book? They lull you into a false sense of security, as Len Knotman says.
His head went down on the desk, and in half a minute he was walled-up in sleep.
Morse came marvellous and sudden-quick, a circular saw out of some rip-roaring operator fresh on the job, singing into the earphones still noosed around Brian’s neck and waking him. Sunlight cut under the hut door like the flame of a blow-lamp, a knife-glare that swamped his brain and pinned him to the foul interior air. Only the morse was clear, piercing beyond tiredness and cold sweat, and without thought he wrote it in the log, ran fingers through untidy hair as other notes jerked into the mêlée at varying scales and strengths. Stations were tuning up, filling the wavelength with staccato importunate utterings of good morning — as if every operator had smelt sunlight at the same time, or sat at his key only waiting for the first one to tap out his call sign before taking a running-jump in with his own rhythmical identity.
He fastened the door open. Sun, visible above palmtops, pushed an ache of sleep back into his eyes, flooding warmth over him. Long-poled, sparsely set trees stretched thickly to jungle on mountainsides still purple in morning light, while clouds from seaward cast islands of shadow along the wide black canal of the airstrip, leaving a whiter reflection in paddy fields already shimmering to the south. A Dak revved up at the control tower, gleaming silver and going slowly along the runway. It gathered speed with a great belly roar, turned and stood as if for a final indraw of breath. A green light from the tower eased it forward, and it was a few feet off the ground by the time it came level with the DF hut, was soon heavy and slow over the sea towards Pulau Timur, then swinging back low over the trees, heavy with supplies for some distant outpost.
It would soon be sending weather messages from along its route, so Brian set sticks over a copy of the Straits Times in his outside fireplace and dosed it well with paraffin, putting a match under the kettle so that flames exploded and hid it completely. He spoke by field telephone to the other hut: “That you, Jack?”
A yawn sounded in his ear: “Yeh. Making tea?”
“Just put the kettle on. I’ll put a mug by for you.”
Jack’s voice became clear: “Thanks, Bri. Be over in five minutes.” He lobbed spit at the fire and watched it do a quick-change act into steam, answered by the kettle throwing water from its spout as if competing against him.
He saw Jack coming along the path, an ex-collier from Abertillery, a slim-built, thin-faced youth whose grey eyes had been used all his life to the murk of his home valley and later to the dust and grime of the pitface. Often in the billet he would be lying asleep under his mosquito-net, dead to the world and dreaming maybe of his welcome in the hillsides, yet with his eyes wide open. “I’ve always slept like that,” Jack told him, grinning to show his uneven teeth. “Can’t help it, man. My sister back home used to try and make me close them, but couldn’t. And I didn’t fancy letting her stitch them together every night.” He carried the Sten gun slung high on his shoulder, every inch the bantamweight, dark hair curly at the front and falling on to his brow. He took great delight in the Sten, feeling twice the man as he walked out with it to the DF hut from his own post, advancing at the ready as if a black mamba might uncoil and strike at the grimy toes of his sandals, or a tiger slouch from the higher elephant grass bordering the monsoon ditch. Buying a box Brownie from his saved pay, he asked Brian to take photos of him holding the Sten like any film star on active service, and both admitted that the reproduction certainly made him look fierce and tough.
Brian slid a mug of tea over. “Get that in your guts.”
“Get much sleep?” he asked from the radio table.
Jack drank half before he’d speak, lolled in a basket chair near the door, and gave a disgruntled reply: “I would have, only those bloody dogs howled all night. It’s enough to send you to chapel. You hear ’em?”
He sipped his tea: strong, sweet, and scalding. “They didn’t bother me. I had to be awake anyway.”