Forgotten Life

by Brian Aldiss

  Poor Mandy! It was not clear to me, thank God, to see at that time that she was much like Eedie, only wanting a good time and a little excitement after the boredom of the previous three years. I was the nearest available male. But love is so often a matter of proximity, and a question of need as much as personality.

  In those days – even in that distant place – adultery was still regarded as a serious affair. The effects of the war in breaking down old moralities had still to be felt; it was hard to live under one creed when one had been brought up in another. This certainly applied to me, who had been educated in an almost Victorian regime.

  We tore ourselves away from each other at last. I loaded a few pieces of furniture into the Jeep, and we drove back into town. I dropped Mandy at the corner of her street and went on to the Rex. That night, Charlie and I went to the Merciers as if nothing had happened.

  Charlie was not immune to the charms of Mandy and Ginny. As we came away before curfew, he frequently said, ‘Cor, those two girls … That Mandy …’ as if words had deliberately failed him. My urge to tell him the truth was very strong. But I dissembled. I dissembled with him, I dissembled with the Merciers. I played the simple, the innocent – the sort of person I had been before that first day.

  Mandy proved ingenious. She and Ginny had an elder sister, a rather formidable lady always referred to as Miss Chew. She was a schoolteacher, and lived several streets away from the others in part of a little Dutch-type bungalow. Mandy arranged for us to meet there in the afternoon, from two-thirty to four-forty-five.

  The bungalow’s front door was sealed up. It was a matter of entering from the rear door. Miss Chew’s single room was stacked with furniture, piled to the ceiling and allowing only a narrow way to walk round the single bed, on which a board could be placed to convert it into a table. A bird in a cage sang on the single window sill.

  It sang to us as we made love. For two afternoons we held off, doing no more than kiss, cuddle, and pour our hearts out to one another. Oh, what we said – the history of our different races, the history of the war, could be extrapolated from our confessions. She had been born in the port of Amoy, and at once Amoy became a place I needed to visit and a name synonymous with pleasure.

  Then we could hold off from each other no longer. It was not to be expected that, in the sumptuous heat, and in that gauzy claustrophobic room with the light filtered through lacy curtains, we could abstain from the feast we so badly needed. The external world was nothing to us. Even the faint sounds of Chinese opera, played on a distant gramophone, served only to emphasize our distance from others, and our delicious proximity. It was a delightful paradox that to this retiring and quiet girl – ‘rather a mouse,’ the unobservant might have said – there was no coyness. Indeed, she led me, this experienced married woman. Standing up abruptly, with a smile which perhaps implied some kind of apology or permission asked, she pulled her cotton dress over her head, slipped out of brassiere and panties, and stood before me naked.

  ‘Take your clothes off,’ she said.

  Doing so, removing my damp shirt and trousers, flinging them aside, I had a chance to gaze at the generous breasts on the delicate figure, the dark nipples, and the mound of Venus lightly thatched with dark hair. After years had passed, I recognized how we took it for granted that we were both so thin, so under-nourished. Now we were to provide each other with the nourishment of our embraces.

  ‘I’m ashamed to be so skinny for you.’

  ‘The nearer the bone the sweeter the meat, my love.’

  And so it was.

  Four-forty-five arrived so swiftly.

  ‘I will see you this evening.’

  ‘I can’t face it.’

  ‘You must pretend.’

  ‘But they’ll guess—’

  ‘No, they won’t. You must not say a word to Ginny. Pretend! Look so innocent as you always do.’

  And in the sergeants’ mess at teatime, I underwent more pretence. Most of the sergeants were, as they put it, ‘fixed up’ in the RAPWI. My predilection for the two Chinese girls had not gone unnoticed.

  ‘They’ll land you in trouble, Joe, boy, you’ll see. They’ve all been sleeping with Jap soldiers. You want to fix yourself up with a Dutch bibi.’

  ‘Leave him alone, he’s an old soldier, aren’t you, Joe? The longer you stay out here, the whiter they look. The great thing is to get it regular.’

  ‘You’re having it off with both of ’em, aren’t you, mate?’ said Bragg.

  ‘Every night,’ I said.

  ‘Chinese bints are useless in bed,’ Bradbury said. ‘No passion. Just lie there and let you do all the work. You’d be a lot better with a Sumatra pusher.’

  ‘Leave him alone. He’s getting it free. He doesn’t have to pay like you, Brad. You’re getting it free, aren’t you, Joe?’

  ‘A few cigarettes occasionally,’ I suggested.

  Curiously enough, it was not until afterwards that the full realization dawned on me that I had loved Mandy deeply. Oh, I knew at the time that I was ‘crazy’ about her; I simply failed to take account of how deep it went. Perhaps many lovers suffer from the same peculiar torment. After the affair is finished, they waken to the realization that the one they loved was more precious than they knew, and irreplaceable.

  I also suffered guilt. I was aware that I had left her in a dangerous situation and that possibly – with a little more effort – we might have come to a happier ending.

  The longing I experienced, which I cannot say has ever died entirely over the years, was for Mandy herself and all that she represented, and also for that delicate, lithe body of hers which, because it was the first female body to which I had unlimited access, still retains its delightful intimacy in my memory. I longed for it fiercely at the time, and later tried to drown its sovereignty over me with the imprint of other bodies.

  With Mandy I crossed the thresholds which have no definite name. There is after all more than one kind of bridge across from boyhood to manhood. And in those age-old satisfying rhythms we practised, while our bodies made their funny noises together, we signified another safe crossing, a trans-racial crossing which took us beyond language into a different kind of world of which we never spoke, I suppose because the words were not there. I sometimes thought that Mandy really envied her more lively sister, who had won herself a European; now that Mandy had her own European, she had in some way gained equality.

  And I – I was defying all the colour prejudices of my fellows. I had made a definite choice. My friends I had not chosen; they just happened to be in the army, as I was. Mandy I had chosen, and had defied moral laws as well as prejudices to have the secret enjoyment of her.

  The Indonesians, when they held the Rex, had erected a look-out hut on the flat roof of the cinema, since the position commanded a good view of the surrounding area. I got my two orderlies to clear the rubbish out of this room and slept there. In Padang, the nights had been as stuffy as the days, but in Medan after dark came a merciful cool breeze. It was pleasant to lie up there on the roof, to fall asleep in a reverie of Mandy.

  Below my room was an administrative office which I converted into a living room with the furniture from my previous billet. Not that I anticipated doing much living there.

  While the doors of the cinema were being repaired, I got busy sorting out the films held on the premises, with the aid of a casual and chain-smoking captain from Army Ciné, who came round in the mornings. There were some Indian and Chinese films, which we planned to hand over to our friends in the Rajput Rifles. Also, such Hollywood products as – I recall – By Candlelight, Dawn Patrol with Errol Flynn, Victoria the Great – the only English film, with Anna Neagle – Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm, Man Hunt, with lovely Joan Bennett, The Man in the Iron Mask, The Bank Dick, with W. C. Fields, and other rather fusty stories from the thirties. But we knew we had a grateful audience, and the chain-smoking captain promised more up-to-date films from Singapore in a week or two.

  ‘Ever seen Ci
tizen Kane, sergeant?’

  ‘No, sir. Who’s in it?’

  ‘It’s an Orson Welles film. The men wouldn’t like it.’

  ‘I don’t know, sir. They certainly liked Sergeant York.’

  He laughed and strolled away, still smoking.

  Medan, stagnant Medan, immovably unquiet, remained as it was while the weeks went by. The fighting continued in Java, but Sumatra was spared such bloodshed; it appeared to be a rule that matters were always decided in Java, where political power resided. Our local extremists remained torpid, doing little more than bombard us with an irregular news-sheet called Merdeka Times. The British, for their part, stayed put, and refrained from importing more Dutch troops. The Japanese Army was slowly sent in small parcels to Singapore, and thence by – we hoped – uncomfortable troopship home. And the RAPWI was slowly emptied as its occupants took their longed-for passage on the old but seemingly reliable Van Heutz. Prostitutes were never allowed on the streets of Medan, but I noticed with superior satisfaction that more and more local girls, a flower neatly woven into their hair, called on the sergeants, leaving their little wooden sandals at the doorstep when they arrived.

  7

  There was at that time a song very popular in the sergeants’ mess, and constantly played on our gramophone, called ‘The Very Thought of You’, in which the lines ‘I see your face in every flower, Your eyes in stars above’, captured much of what I felt about Mandy – and at the same time failed to capture so much. At least her eyes were mentioned, for I was under the spell of those beautiful Chinese eyes as much as her other parts; they seemed to hold all mystery and meaning. I gloried in her foreignness, and felt I could not possibly have loved her so much had she come from any other land.

  She taught me much about love. For her mother had trained her to use her body to best advantage in passion. The muscles of her pelvic floor could move in a way foreign to most women in the West. It is they who afterwards – afterwards – disappoint.

  Often we laughed in the middle of our love-making. The hours of two-thirty to four-forty-five are sultry ones in Medan, and our bodies, oiled with sweat, often made outrageous noises as they pressed together. Perhaps this is why love affairs are rarely kept secret in the East: the bodies involved involuntarily give themselves away.

  One morning after attending to the cleaning of the Rex following the previous night’s show, I strolled down to the bazaar to buy cigars. By no means the least enjoyable feature of life in Medan was the fact that large juicy cigars were to be had very cheaply; had they been boxed, labelled, and exported to the Netherlands, as happened before the war, they would have cost rather more than the equivalent of a penny apiece. I was about to go into the tobacconist when I came face to face with Ginny, out for a morning shop.

  ‘So, there you are! Now perhaps you can keep me company and protect me with that gun of yours.’

  ‘Am I to protect you from the Indonesians or the British?’

  ‘From all men. You’re such a wicked lot.’

  We went into a street where there was a small market, and Ginny fussed over some cabbage.

  ‘I have to go to hospital tomorrow,’ she said, glancing quickly up at me. She was very different from her sister, and her movements were more birdlike.

  ‘Ginny – what’s the matter with you?’

  ‘Oh, my womb is shifting about or something. The specialist is going to take a look at it.’ She spoke lightly but inspected me solemnly. ‘I don’t want you to hurt Mandy. Be careful and kind, eh?’

  ‘Whatever do you mean?’ I felt a blush beginning.

  She took my arm with one hand, swinging a net with the cabbage she had bought in the other, stepping out and saying lightly, ‘You need not pretend with me, Joe. Mandy always asks the advice of her sisters. Miss Chew of course also knows what goes on in her bungalow. You are shocked?’

  ‘Staggered. Ginny, I’m sorry – I mean, I really am sorry when you’ve all been so good—’

  She laughed. ‘You British are so prudish. I always heard it, non? But happily you were not so prudish for long, Mandy says to me. Now don’t be shocked that I know. I will keep your terrible secret, I promise.’

  I could not look at her. ‘I feel so bad.’

  ‘Don’t feel so bad. Come in this shop and you can buy me a duryan ice-cream if you like.’

  We went into the shop she indicated and sat down at a table. It was dark, and a small Chinese girl served us.

  She held my hand. ‘The times are so dreadful. Don’t feel bad. Be happy while you are able, non?’

  ‘Oh, Jesus, Ginny, you don’t understand, I do feel bad, but at the same time I am happy – wildly happy. I love you but I love your sister even more. I know it’s wrong …’

  She shook her head. ‘Yes, it’s wicked. But enjoy it. I just have to warn you – Mandy loves you very seriously. She’s full of wild fantasies about you.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Just fantasies.’

  The ice-cream arrived. I looked at her and smiled. ‘Once I get used to it I know I’ll be delighted that you know. I haven’t told anyone. Not even Charlie.’

  ‘But he’s your friend … And I thought what a good actor he was!’

  ‘You’re speaking out now because you’re going into hospital. Is it serious?’

  ‘No, no, of course not … Listen, Joe, the British will leave Sumatra soon, you realize.’

  ‘Some day, sure.’

  ‘They cannot just sit here, non? It’s impossible. When all the Japs are gone, then you also will go. In a matter of weeks. What about Mandy then?’

  ‘That’s all in the future …’

  She sighed and took a dainty sip of the ice-cream. She was thin, even by the standards of the day. Her arms looked so fragile.

  ‘Ginny, I have great respect for your husband and should not say this, but I do think you are an absolute darling.’

  I received one of her sunny, mischievous smiles. ‘“An absolute darling …” Well, that’s nice. And for my part, you know, I quite envy my little sister. There – that’s what you wish me to say, non?’

  ‘It’s what I like to hear, non?, but it’s too late to try and seduce me.’ She laughed with me.

  The films discovered in the stores of the Rex proved to have Dutch subtitles. No one minded that. We had to show Dawn Patrol and The Bank Dick several times. We had good attendances; the cinema was marginally more comfortable than the worn Deli. And the Indonesians made no attempt to recover their lost ground. Perhaps they were prepared to wait for us to go.

  Newer films from Singapore never arrived. Singapore was now regarded as the great Land of Plenty. To get leave there was bliss, according to all accounts. We continued to be short of almost all supplies. It was said that the only nutritional quality in our bread was the small beetles found in every loaf. The 26th Indian Division was more forgotten than the Forgotten Army had ever been.

  Nor did replacements come through when men left for repatriation. It became apparent that, as Ginny forecast, we were going to withdraw from the island sooner or later, leaving the Dutch to manage as best they could. It was their quarrel, not ours, and someone higher up – probably Slim or Lord Louis Mountbatten – had recognized the fact.

  Ginny lingered for several days in hospital. As the wife of a Swiss, she qualified for a bed in the British Field hospital. I went with Mandy to see her, pale and large-eyed against the pillow.

  ‘My God, we are all so fragile,’ Mandy said, as we left.

  A week after her operation, Ginny was discharged. She had had cancer of the womb, and a hysterectomy had been performed. She lay on a couch, smiling and pleasant with everyone, but unable to nurse little Sammi, and scarcely able to move from her cushions.

  I noticed that Sammi was beginning to form words. It was a puzzle to imagine what language he would speak, since he was addressed regularly in Cantonese, French, English, and – by several of the people living in the house with the Merciers – Malay. That linguistic
uncertainty reflected the general uncertainty under which we lived. Every so often, our CO would have us on parade and give us a pep talk, or the sergeants would be sent for and told to tighten up the discipline of the men. But the rot had set in. Stalemate had been reached and there was no disguising it. Britain was getting out of India and Burma; she could hardly be expected to hold the N.E.I. for another power.

  Mandy and I still clung to each other. Behind our barricades of furniture we kept the world at bay. But gradually a new note entered our conversation, embodied in that inscrutable question, What was going to happen to us all?

  She pressed, I evaded.

  ‘Why don’t you say anything? I suppose you don’t care what will happen to us soon enough.’

  ‘Don’t say that, Mandy. I care, but what can I say? I’m in the bloody army. I have no control over my fate. I do what I’m told.’

  ‘So you say! You never have any orders, just a good life.’

  ‘I can’t explain the army to you. I am not as free as you think. One day I’ll get my marching orders and then I’ll have to go, same as anyone else.’

  ‘And what you think happens to me, please?’ Great eyes regarding me.

  ‘Everyone wants us to go. Things will be better for you once we’ve left. You’ll be free to return to Palembang with Wang. Life will get better again.’

  She stifled a sob and sat up, turning her pale damp back.

  ‘Yes? You like to think me back in Wang’s bed again? My God, is that all you care?’

  ‘We’ve had a happy time – we’re still having it, but soon things must change. Then I have to go my way and you yours. You know old Wang is very kind, really.’

  ‘You Europeans are all alike. You lead an Eastern girl on then you just leave her when it will suit you. How many thousand times I hear that same story?’

  We began meeting at Miss Chew’s every other day.

  ‘I’m so busy,’ I explained. ‘We’re going to have a proper beer bar in the foyer. The carpenters are in and I have to watch them.’