He walked a few yards out for a piss, into a night still and warm, as if the sky had stopped breathing, it had so many stars around. Anybody hiding in the grass could shoot me while I shake the drops off: the thought turned sweat-cold on his back, though he didn’t hurry to get inside. And just imagine, he don’t know I’m really a friend who’d go into the jungle and help him if he came up and asked me to. All I’d feel is a hot thump at the back of my neck and the next second I’d be dead, listening to the old man say: I told you so.
I could be back in Nottingham earning ten quid a week at the Raleigh instead of wasting time in this hot district, fighting my pals. He fastened the door and listened-out at the set: nothing doing. But on day watches a dozen four-engined bombers were up patrolling the mountain jungle, wanting DF bearings as fast as they could be sent. It got so hot at times that the relieving operator had to jump into the chair and take over sending without a hello or goodbye.
Rifle or not, the first burst of bullets would rip through the hut and write LONG LIVE STALIN on my bony chest. I wouldn’t even have time to rush outside with my hands up and shout: “Don’t fire, comrades. It’s me — Brian. I used to listen to your pals spouting outside the Raleigh only a couple of years back, and I used to buy all their pamphlets and ruin my eyes reading ’em.” His hollow laugh ran round the hut and came chewed up back to him. Why did I let myself get into this? I could have deserted or gone to clink like Colin and Dave. I told Knotman: “I don’t want to do anything against the Communists.”
“You won’t have much choice,” he told me back.
“Maybe I will have. Something might turn up that I can help them with.”
“Don’t be crazy and rush into anything you might regret,” Knotman said, taking another pull at his pint of Tiger. “This whole system will go rotten of its own accord without you risking your neck. It doesn’t matter whether the Communists win or lose in Malaya: they’ll get the whole world sooner or later, peacefully as well. It might not happen in your lifetime, but as Bill Shakespeare said, it’s bound to some day. Too bloody right it will. Let’s drink to it.”
He set a fire going outside, long wood-smelling flames jumping into the darkness like assegais, swallowing the black kettle resting on a crude arrangement of stones. The fire made a circle of light, the darkness a prison into which he couldn’t walk. He realized how illuminated he was against the lit-up backdrop of the hut should some Communist happen to be reconnoitring. A stream of bullets aimed at his silhouetted stick-like figure would finish him off, and bang would be gone the rest of his sweet life with Pauline and the kid: all memories destroyed and expectations nullified; present tiredness, boredom, boots warmed by the flames, his sleepless rimless eyes, obliterated.
Long-range annihilation, a decoy to sponge up bullets. Around the hut was a tin-henge circle, a radius of petrol cans threaded by a piece of invisible string, so that anyone creeping in the darkness would send a resonant warning clatter against stony ground. Should this happen, Brian saw himself switching off lights and dashing into the elephant grass, gripping a rusty bayonet, where he’d stick it out while the hut was ransacked for ammunition or maybe spare wireless parts — though he found it hard to imagine himself not being shot at and killed before witnessing this dramatic scene of plunder.
Mechanics at the transmitter compound had electrified the wire fence and rigged the fire extinguishers with sulphuric acid. Perhaps they’ll get the orderly officer and a couple of sergeants by mistake, because, as Knotman says: “It’s them who shout ‘Charge’ and ‘Up and at ’em, lads’ who are your biggest enemies.”
Guards at the camp had been doubled and armed with rifles — instead of a pencil and book to note anyone coming back late from a good time. Several companies of Malayan Police patrolled the area. A few nights ago two of them ventured as far as the hut and knocked at the door, so he mashed some tea and set them a couple of mattresses on the floor for an hour’s kip, feeling sorry at their boring walkabout in the jungle darkness. Brian stayed awake at the set, to rouse them at dawn and send them back to camp. He remembered also how the same pair had been drummed out of the Malayan Police a week later for being found asleep near the transmitter compound: they walked from the camp after the court martial, dressed again in saris and trilby hats, laughing gaily while lugging cheap suitcases towards the station. If only it could happen to me.
Barbed-wire fences were repaired and patrolled, and road-blocks between ferry and airstrip manned by Malayan and planter volunteers toting clubs and shotguns. The Communists issued an ultimatum that all Europeans in Malaya were to scat within a month, and most of the signals billet wished it could be accepted. Brian was all for it, but Baker replied, calm and studious in such circumstances, that Chinese communists were causing all the trouble, and that if anyone should rule Malaya it should be the Malays. They were already a long way to getting self-government anyway, though of course the Chinese would have to have a hand in it because they outnumbered other races in the peninsula and were the brains of the country. The Chinese Communists, Baker went on, reacting as expected to the emergency, were a small minority who wanted to get rid of the British and set up their own dictatorship. If you believe in democracy you’ve got to do what you can to put down these terrorists.
“You’ve been reading the wrong newspapers,” Brian told him.
“You haven’t been reading any at all,” Baker said.
The kettle boiled, and the ritual mashing and drinking of tea passed a bemused hour. He ate bread and sardines, flipped through a Saturday Evening Post, unable to read any of the stories. Dry-mouthed atmospherics crashed so loud out of the earphones that he wouldn’t have heard a tank roaring by, never mind the feeble warning of a tin falling on stone. “I can’t wait to get back to you,” he wrote to Pauline. “I’ve finished with this joint, even though I did like it at first. I know when I’ve had enough. In a way, I volunteered to come out here, because I’m sure I could have stayed all my time out in England if I’d put in for it. But even though it’s been murder being away from you all this time, I’m still glad I came.” He was going to scrap that paragraph, but left it and went on: “I feel good at the moment. I wish you was here with me now, though. I don’t need to tell you what I’d do to you, and I bet you can guess anyway. It’s stark wicked not being able to be near you.” He paused to chase a spider that winged across the table — red diamond among hairy legs — which he cornered and flattened with a one-pound hammer after it tipped itself in a suicide dive to the floor. It could have bitten me to death: I won’t get back to England if I’m not careful. “Still, it’s only six weeks now, sweetheart, and I’ll be on the boat coming home to you. So keep well for me, and look after the young ’un with a few kisses from me. We’ll have a smashing time.” The envelope was marked with reciprocating cyphers: BURMA; ITALY; SWALK: Be Undressed and Ready, My Angel; I Trust And Love You; Sealed With A Loving Kiss.
By one, he felt his bones melting, senses falling to death. Sending his call-sign to all stations brought no answer, so he spread a mattress over the table and heaved himself on to it, cradled away in seconds to a disintegration of sleep. A metallic hand drew his consciousness together, turned it into a punchbag, and was battering at the fibres of his exhaustion. It began softly and was tolerated, then became like the banging of a drum that he was locked in, increased till it woke him, startled and enraged. He mustered a big voice: “Who’s that?”