Halfway down the corridor, he saw that one of the buildings was different. It was shorter, built of concrete and had a few glass windows, which had several air conditioning units sticking out. This was the operating theatre, the domain of the amorous pair, Peter Bright and David Meredith. On the other side of the corridor was the X-ray Unit and further down the corridor was his own bailiwick, the pathology laboratory, opposite the dispensary.
Beyond these, he had to dodge a group of barefoot Tamil labourers, who were energetically scrubbing the concrete with brooms, slopping soapy water from buckets carried on a trolley. Just past them, he came to the end of the corridor, where the first two ribs on the spine were offices, fronting the car park and entrance gate with its guardroom. On the right were the RSM’s cubbyhole and the general office, where several Indian and Chinese clerks filed records and banged away on old typewriters. To the left were the rooms of the QA Matron and the Admin Officer, with the Holy of Holies on the far end – the CO’s office.
Feeling like a fourth-former going to see the headmaster, Tom pulled up his long khaki socks with the red garter tabs, adjusted the lanyard around his shoulder and straightened his cap. Striding to the middle door, he tapped and waited.
A harsh voice commanded him to ‘Come!’
Inside, he found himself in a bare office with a dozen hard chairs lined up against two walls, like a vet’s waiting room. Opposite the door, was a large empty desk, on which were a cap and a bamboo swagger stick, lined up with meticulous accuracy to face the entrance. Behind the desk was Lieutenant Colonel Desmond O’Neill, Commanding Officer of BMH Tanah Timah.
Tom marched across the wide empty space to stand in front of the desk, gave his best salute and whipped off his hat.
‘Captain Thomas Howden reporting for duty, sir.’ He thought this sounded about right for the occasion.
The colonel looked up at him impassively. He was a trim, stiff-backed man of average height with dark short-cropped hair, greying at the temples. His face was thin, the skin stretched tightly over his high cheekbones. Darkly handsome in a horrible sort of way, thought Tom. As a keen cinema-goer at home, he immediately compared the CO with either Stewart Granger or Michael Rennie, the sardonic heroes of many an adventure film. But it was the eyes that made him uneasy, piercing pale globes that never seemed to blink, the kind that inept police artists drew on wanted axe murderers. The colonel now covered them with a pair of steel-rimmed glasses to stare at his new officer.
‘Pathologist, is that what you claim to be, Howden?’
The harsh voice had a strong Ulster accent.
‘Yessir, one year’s experience as a Senior House Officer in Newcastle.’
Tom had hoped for some kind of welcome to the new unit, but it seemed that O’Neill was above such pleasantries.
‘Well, you’ll have other duties here as well – take your turn as Orderly Officer, act as the Hygiene Officer and run the blood transfusion service. That means you also have to act as the medical officer to the MCE next door, that’s where you get your blood.’
This was one acronym he’d not come across yet and he had no idea where he was to get his blood, but had the sense not to query it from this peculiar man.
‘Yessir, of course, sir.’
O’Neill continued to glare at him, his narrow lips compressed into a thin line. Then he spoke again, the Belfast accent strange to Tom’s Geordie-tuned ears.
‘Short-Service man, aren’t you? Well, you’ll have to be a good example for these National Service fellows! Smartly-dressed, strict discipline, understand? Then you’ll not fall foul of me too often.’
He sat with his hands on his empty desk, fingers flat on the wood, with an immobility that reminded Tom of a snake, ready to strike. The new arrival stood stiffly, unsure whether to make any response, but the decision was made for him.
‘Right, Howden, dismiss. Daily Orders at eight fifteen, every day except Sunday.’
The skull-like face gave a jerky nod of dismissal and Tom managed one of his salutes again, which he had been practising before the mirror in the washroom – ‘hand furthest way up, shortest way down’, as they had been instructed in the Depot at Crookham.
He swivelled to his left and marched out, closing the door behind him. Outside, he sagged against the adjacent wall and took off his cap to wipe the sweat from his brow, generated both by the heat and the stress of meeting the man who theoretically had the power of life and death over him for the next few years.
‘Good morning, captain, are you our new pathologist?’
A gentle voice came from behind him and he turned to find that he had been leaning against the edge of the open window of the next office.
Inside, standing against a table on which she was arranging bright tropical flowers in a vase, was a large woman dressed in grey-blue QARANC uniform with a triangular headdress of starched white linen hanging down her back. Her scarlet shoulder tabs carried a Major’s crown, so this must be the Matron, he thought. Uncertain of protocol, he slapped on his cap and gave her a salute, but she smiled benignly.
‘Only need do that when he’s around,’ she hissed in a stage whisper, jerking her head towards the office he had just left. Coming to the low window sill, she offered her hand.
‘Welcome to the madhouse. Hope you’ll be happy here. Keep your sense of humour and you’ll survive.’
He shook her hand and introduced himself, glad to find someone who made him feel welcome. She was almost motherly in her manner and Tom felt a sudden pang of homesickness again, as she was almost as old as his mother. Large and rather ungainly, she had a big, placid face and a ready smile. Her upper lip carried a faint moustache and he suspected that this was her last tour before retirement.
‘Are you married, captain?’ she asked, unashamedly gathering essential gossip to carry back to the Sisters’ Mess.
Tom grinned and shook his head. ‘Got a girl or two back home, but nothing serious yet.’ He thought he’d better keep his options open for a bit.
After a little more chit-chat, he wandered away to wait for this mysterious Daily Orders. His wristwatch told him there were a few minutes left and he stood at the bottom of the main corridor, watching hospital life pass by. Vehicles came and went through the gate. A Bedford ambulance lumbered up to Casualty, which was a large hut over on the right-hand side of the parking lot. The driver and an orderly from Casualty went to the back door and helped out a dishevelled trooper in high jungle boots, one arm in a bloodstained sling.
Next was a ramshackle Chinese truck delivering to the Quartermaster’s Stores further up the perimeter road. A Land Rover with the flash of a New Zealand battalion sped out after delivering patients to the STD, the ‘Special Treatment Department’ which was a euphemism for Percy Loosemore’s ‘clap and pox’ clinic, housed in a large khaki tent on the open area beyond the ward blocks. Next to this was a small shed-like structure with another mysterious acronym painted above the door – PAC. Later Tom learned that this was the unit’s Personal Ablutions Centre, where squaddies going out for a night on the town could obtain a free condom and a tiny tube of mercuric chloride; if they had signed the record book to prove their attendance, then they escaped being disciplined for ‘self-injury’ if they later reported sick with ‘a dose of the clap’.
From the other side of the hospital frontage, the RSM appeared, a burly red-faced man, who seemed all chest and boots. His Warrant-Officer’s badge of rank was on a leather wristlet, the same hand holding a cane with which he approached the quaking private on gate duty outside the guardroom. Tom couldn’t catch what the problem was, but the private seemed to shrink at the same rate as the RSM appeared to get larger.
At that moment, a clutch of medical officers appeared at the end of the corridor and swept up Tom on their way to the colonel’s office, Alf Morris joining them from his own room. There were several that Tom had never seen before and headed by Peter Bright, they all filed into the CO’s room. After saluting, each went to stand by one of t
he chairs against the side walls. Tom followed suit and at a barked command from Desmond O’Neill, they all sat down, with their caps on their knees, peak facing forwards.
‘Orderly Medical Officer’s report!’ snapped the colonel, his cold eye fixing on Alec Watson. The youngest officer shot to his feet and consulted a piece of paper, on which were recorded his activities during his twenty-four hour shift.
‘Two patients on the SIL, sir, no change in their condition. No one on the DIL. Three minor injuries treated in Casualty, nothing else to report, sir.’
O’Neill continued to fix him with his cobra-like stare. ‘What are these men on the SIL, Watson?’
‘One leptospirosis, one malaria, sir. The malaria came off the DIL on Tuesday.’ Tom was to discover later that these new initials meant ‘Dangerously and Seriously Ill Lists.’
The colonel swivelled his eyes to an older man whom Tom had never seen before. ‘Major Martin, what about these patients?’ he snapped.
Martin rose to his feet. He was a big man with a bright pink complexion and a fair bushy moustache. Tom assumed he was the senior physician, the medical equivalent of surgeon Peter Bright. As he had never appeared in the Mess, he presumably lived in the Married Quarters in the Garrison compound. He explained in a deep voice how the malaria victim was from 22 SAS in Sungei Siput and the leptospirosis or Weil’s disease sufferer was from a jungle patrol of the West Berkshires who had had to sleep in rat-infested swamp water.
‘Both are improving, they should pull through well enough,’ he ended.
This is how the meeting went for the next fifteen minutes, with the gimlet eyes of the colonel transfixing each officer in turn, demanding to know what he had been up to during the last day. He left the pathologist until last.
‘Well, Howden, any problems in the laboratory?’
‘Nossir, just settling in,’ answered Tom cautiously, as in fact he had yet to set foot in the place.
‘Better be up to speed by tomorrow, you’ve had almost a day here already!’
He stood up suddenly, the signal for everyone to lumber to their feet, put on their caps and salute, before filing out in silence.
As the door closed behind them, Tom heard Major Martin comment to Peter Bright. ‘The old man was very benign this morning, his few days’ leave must have mellowed him.’
Bloody hell, thought the new boy, what’s he like when he’s in a bad mood?
It was past noon before the news first reached the Officers’ Mess. Most of the residents had drifted back there for their pre-lunch drink and even some of the married officers had forsaken their domestic gin and tonics for a gossip with their colleagues. The table just inside the open doors of the anteroom was scattered with caps and webbing belts, as mess rules demanded that they were not worn inside. Most of the chairs were occupied and Number One was padding about with beers and fresh lime drinks, the drinking of hard liquor being frowned upon in the middle of the day. A couple of doctors were hidden behind newspapers or magazines, but most were lying back, letting the ceiling fans blow some of the sweat off them.
‘The damned Engineers in Garrison have installed air conditioning in their mess,’ complained Eddie Rosen, another Short-Service captain who worked in the surgical wards under Peter Bright. A small Jewish doctor from London, he had done a year’s ‘midder and gynae’, so was the nearest they had to a woman’s specialist, though a senior gynaecologist could be flown in at short notice from BMH Kinrara, near Kuala Lumpur.
‘Well they would, wouldn’t they,’ drawled Clarence Bottomley, a National Service lieutenant, known to all as ‘Montmorency’ for some obscure reason. He was a rather posh young man who, when in civvies, always wore a Marlborough tie and let everyone know that he was a Cambridge graduate. Though he seemed an amiable enough chap, Tom classed him amongst the ‘chinless wonders’ and the garrulous Percy had already reported that Montmorency was only marking time in BMH, until he was posted out to one of the more elite Guards’ battalions as a Regimental Medical Officer. He said they always wanted doctors who knew which fish knives to use at Mess Dinners and the correct direction in which to pass the port.
Before the ventilation iniquities of the Garrison Mess could be debated further, there was an interruption from near the door. Alfred Morris had arrived and after dropping his cap on to the table, rapped on it with his short swagger stick.
‘Chaps, listen a moment, please!’
The blunt authority of his voice was a reminder that he had once been a Regimental Sergeant Major. ‘The Commanding Officer wants me to tell you that more vigilance is required regarding security, especially outside the camp.’
There was a silence, as this was a new one, even given the eccentricities of their colonel.
‘What’s all this about, Alf?’ demanded the physician, John Martin.
‘Looks as if the lull in CT activity around these parts may be over,’ replied Morris. ‘There was an attack on one of the estates last night, only a few miles from here.’
A buzz of interest and concern went around the anteroom. If the area was returned to being a Black Area, it would interfere with their travelling, which meant problems with golf and weekend trips, to say nothing of the possibility of being shot. There was a clamour for more details as the members got up and advanced on the Admin Officer, who held up his hands for some quiet.
‘It seems that in the early hours of this morning, shots were fired at both bungalows and the workers’ lines at Gunong Besar. No one was hurt, but they drilled a few holes in the walls again, smashed the windscreen of Diane Robertson’s car and scared the shit out of some of the Indian labourers.’
Alf forgot his own swear-box penalty in the babble that followed his announcement.
‘Is that all that happened?’ demanded Percy Loosemore, who had been in TT the longest and remembered the previous more serious terrorist attacks.
‘Seems to be! Couple of dozen shots fired, then they melted away into the ulu.’ Tom had already gathered that this was the common name for the dense secondary vegetation around the edge of the jungle.
‘James Robertson and Douglas Mackay rolled out of their beds and grabbed their guns, but it was all over by then.’
‘The state James was in, in The Dog last night, it’s a wonder he even woke up at a mere few dozen gunshots!’ observed Peter Bright, sarcastically.
‘Where were you in the early hours, Pete?’ asked Percy provocatively, but no one laughed.
‘Did our lot find the bandits?’ asked David Meredith, his dark eyes brooding over the rim of his tankard.
‘Not a sign of anyone by the time the police got there, just ahead of a squad from the garrison. Douglas rang them and they were there within twenty minutes.’
‘Odd, that!’ ruminated Percy Loosemore. ‘The CTs usually cut the phone wires before they go on the rampage. They did last time they hit Gunong Besar, about six months ago.’
Peter Bright looked desperately worried. ‘Alf, are you sure no one was hurt?’
‘The lovely Diane must be OK, or we’ve had heard,’ said Percy, with a look of innocence, as he slipped in what all the others were thinking. With her husband at home, poor Peter would be unable to ring up the estate to see how his beloved was bearing up. The way Diane had reacted after the last attack, when she had been miles away in Singapore, suggested that she would be frantic now that she had actually been on the wrong end of gunfire.
The Admin Officer slumped into the last vacant chair and signalled to Number One for a beer, as the others settled back to listen and debate.
‘We’ll hear all about it endlessly tonight at The Dog,’ he said. ‘No doubt James Robertson will be there, playing the hero.’
In spite of the heat, the atmosphere in the Robertsons’ lounge that afternoon was decidedly frosty. The ice was provided in full measure by the two women present, the wives of the owner and his manager.
Rosa Mackay sat stiffly on the edge of one of the rattan easy chairs, with Diane slumped on the settee as
far away as possible on the other side of the room. Douglas Mackay hovered uneasily in front of one of the verandah doors, while James stood with his back to the rear wall, his hands clasped behind him. The third man in the room thought whimsically that if the climate had allowed for a large fireplace, James Robertson would have stood like this in front of it, to emphasize his dominance as squire of the household.
Steven Blackwell was the Superintendent of Police, based at Tanah Timah, but responsible for a huge tract of country, much of it uninhabited. He was a burly, short-necked man of forty-five, almost completely bald above a rim of iron-grey hair running horizontally around the back of his head. Steven suffered severely from the sun, his face, head and neck always bright pink above his crisply starched khaki uniform. He wore shirt and shorts, with long black socks, black shoes and black peaked cap, which now lay on the piano, along with his leather-covered stick. A black ‘Sam Brown’ belt and diagonal cross-strap supported a holstered revolver.
‘I don’t know what to make of this, James,’ he was saying with a worried frown. He had a deep, pleasant voice, still with a trace of a Midlands accent. ‘It’s not like the last time they had a go at you. That was a much more determined effort.’
‘Well, eight bullet holes in my wall is hardly a Christmas greeting, Steven!’ retorted Robertson. ‘We had two fellows killed six months ago. It only takes one bullet to kill me, determined or not!’
He sounded aggrieved that any doubt should be cast on his heroic role as the besieged planter. Blackwell held up a conciliatory hand.
‘Good God, James, I’m not trying to play down what happened! But it’s so out of character for the bastards to turn up, fire a few shots and then slope off! Last time, we were all very lucky that a patrol happened to catch them in the act. We even managed to shoot one of the sods that time.’
Dead in the Dog Page 5
