by Kim Newman
"Fol-de-reeeee, fol-de-raaaarrgh-my-bollocksr sang Terry.
Butler smiled. Bob couldn't get used to the way Butler and Terry tossed unforgivable insults at each other, yet had become friends for life within days.
Bob wondered if he wasn't getting a bit jealous. He was starting to feel Butler getting in the way of Bob and Terry, just as Terry always resented Thelma.
"Cheer up," Bob said. "It's a half-holiday tomorrow."
After two months, they were finally getting leave to visit the town for Saturday night. Apparently, there wasn't much to do besides visit the pier that almost got blown up in the Real War and hang around Walker's Palais de Danse. Walker's was where the local girls would be. Butler had been talking about it all week. South Coast Girls were legendary in London. Butler was full of stories about knickers lost under the pier.
Bob wondered if he'd be better for Thelma if he were more experienced. He could imagine what she'd think, especially if he caught something. Still, he'd be away for two years.
"You'll never get any birds again, Butler," said Terry. "Not after they've had some proper Northern cock. Me and Bob'll run through 'em like a dose of salts."
"I jus' want to see somewhere that's not this bloody cage," said Casper.
There were moans of assent from up and down the hut.
"Snap inspection," someone shouted.
Grimshaw burst in like the Federal Bureau of Inquisition, flanked by hard-faced corporals, pace-stick under his arm.
Everyone stood to attention by their lockers. Grimshaw started examining gear, passing brusque comments on the state of socks and confiscating copies of Health and Efficiency and Tit-Bits.
Two lockers down from Bob was Frank Spencer, a ticking bomb. His mother, one of those smothering, protective sorts, was always sending him parcels of things like vests, hot-water-bottles, and tracts on the evils of drink. She also sent tins of corned beef. He told them
136
Eugene Byrne & Kim Newman
he'd always liked it, and that his Mum must have assumed they didn't have it in the Army.
Grimshaw opened Spencer's locker, and two tins of Fray Bentos fell out.
"What's this, cuntface?"
"Two tins of c-corned beef, sergeant. From my mother."
"His Majesty's rations not good enough for you, spastic? These foreign objects are an insult to the crown. You are aware of the regulation that says you can only eat Army bully beef?"
"My Mum..."
"I'm not interested in the pox-rotted slag who birthed you between Saturday night shag sessions with Sheffield Wednesday's second team."
Irrepressible anger sparked in Spencer's eyes.
"Don't you pick on my Mum," he squeaked.
In the silence, Bob's spirit shrank. Spencer, the cringing reed, had snapped and talked back. Grimshaw would show no mercy.
"So you're missing your Mum's cooking? Have to do something about that, won't we? How'd you like a 48-hour pass so's you can visit your Mum for a slap-up feed?"
Spencer was as surprised as anyone but still mistrustful. This must be a prelude to a punishment so ghastly it would go in the record books.
Bob prayed Spencer would turn down the offer.
"Nice," Spencer said.
Bob knew the abyss had just opened up,
"Very well, Spencer, your wish shall be granted. Fairy Godmother Grimshaw will see to it that you spend this weekend in the bosom of your family. However, to compensate, all other leave is withdrawn."
Twenty-nine hearts turned to stone. Even Butler's smile vanished.
"While you, Spencer, are eating home cooking, we shall endeavour to change the situation here, so the grub comes up to your high standard of cuisine. The rest of you slags will spend the weekend peeling spuds."
Spencer could still get out of it, and turn down the leave, but he was too addle-headed to see ahead more than a few minutes. Bob knew even Frank Spencer would hardly enjoy his time at home, knowing what was waiting when he got back.
They spent Saturday in a freezing shed next to the cookhouse peeling an Everest of potatoes. Grimshaw insisted each be peeled like an apple, in a single stroke that produced a perfect spiral of peel and a completely skinless potato. Bob's fingers were cut ragged. They were so chilled and
m
Back in the USSA
shrivelled that he couldn't feel them, but he knew agony would set in over the next few days.
Throughout it all, they talked about Frank Spencer. Terry kept up a bitter running commentary, about the warm tea and hot food he was eating.
"That Betty of his'll be giving him one right now," he said. "I bet she has to put the rubber johnny on for him, or he'd get it over his head."
There were grumbles.
Just now, much as Bob hated Grim, he hated Frank Spencer worse.
"How about a song to cheer us up?" Casper suggested, feebly. "'Boiled Beef and Carrots'?"
He was pelted with potatoes.
Finally, it was done. To one side was a heap of peelings as high as a man's waist. To the other tubs of naked potatoes, streaked with blood.
They sat in the hut, too exhausted to move.
Grimshaw arrived, fresh from the mess, and examined the work.
"A job well done, men."
He picked up a potato and tossed it into the air, catching it again like a cricket-ball. Then, he picked up a peeling and delicately wrapped it around the potato. It didn't quite fit.
"While you've been working, I've given some thought to the matter of your diet. Choosy types like your friend Spencer have made me wonder if the staple fare in our cookhouse is fine enough for your poor delicate tummies. After consideration, I've decided to take potatoes off the menu for a month. Tighten your bellies. Give you variety."
Bob was numbed. He couldn't follow Grimshaw.
"So," the sergeant continued, "we shan't need the fruits of your labours. This mess must be tidied away. Butler, get some flour and some buckets and make up paste. The rest of you, pay attention. By morning, you will have glued the peelings back in place. All neat and tidy. Tomorrow, we shall do the decent thing and bury the spuds with full military honours."
The next night, Butler and Terry held Frank Spencer down while the rest of the squad lined up, raw potatoes in their frostbitten fingers. They forced him to eat the cold, hard spuds. Frank sobbed, mouth bleeding, as he chewed. His teeth cracked on the stringy potato mulch.
Bob held Spencer's chin and forced him to swallow. He felt nothing.
Eugene Byrne & Kim Newman
"Come in, come in, dear boy. We meet at last!"
The Bloomsbury office was just as he had imagined a literary agent's would be: thick carpet, heavy mahogany furniture, a few cardboard boxes (manuscripts, no doubt), an occasional table with a bottle of sherry. The only things out of place were framed pictures, messy collages made of pictures scissored from books and magazines.
Kenneth Halliwell looked the part, too, wearing a silk dressing gown, smoking a pink Sobranje in a cigarette-holder.
He pressed a desk buzzer, "Joseph, could you delight us a moment with your presence."
A man popped in. Joseph wore Russian-style bell-bottoms and a white vest. In his thirties, he was trying to look younger. His glossy hair was down over the tops of his ears.
"Bob and I are in need of some refreshment. Would you procure some tea?"
"Earl Grey, Lapsang Souchong or Ty-Phoo?"
Halliwell's assistant had a thin voice, with a little Leicester in it somewhere. Bob chose Earl Grey. It wasn't Ty-Phoo and was easier to pronounce than Lapsang Souchong. Joseph flounced out.
"I am sorry about the boy," said Halliwell. "Sometimes I think, 'if only I had a hammer...' It's so hard to get the help. Poor Joe fancies himself a writer, but he just hasn't got it. He keeps turning out silly little plays, daft experimental stuff full of obscenities. How does he imagine he'd ever get by the Lord Chamberlain?"
Halliwell picked up what Bob realised was his manuscript
.
"This, on the other hand, is good. Needs a polish, but I think we have something very saleable. It's raw, it's immediate, direct. Above all it's angry, without being unpatriotic. I shouldn't think we'll have too much trouble with the censors, though I hope to Heaven we have a little."
"Why do you want trouble with the censors?"
Even a publishing novice like Bob knew how heavily the Lord Chamberlain could come down on a book. The Lady Chatterley trial had all but bankrupted Penguin, and the upholding of the Obscenity verdict by Lord Chief Justice Goddard had forced everyone to play safe.
"Because, dear boy, every time the papers report that a book worries the censors, it means an extra ten thousand copies."
Ten thousand copies! An extra ten thousand copies! But only if they weren't pulped by the Post Office.
m
Back in the USSA
"I also took the liberty of getting a Roneo of your manuscript sent to Gelbfisch."
"Schmuel Gelbfisch? The Russian film producer?"
"He's Polish actually. Well, Jewish really. Gelbfisch won't read your book himself. He has people to do that for him. Sam dodders into London every year to buy books and plays. I know he's desperate to do a film about the Indo-China War. The Russkies are just as mired in it as we are, and the right story could be terrific box-office."
He knew he was being a prat, but Bob couldn't help but imagine Albert Finney playing him, and Larushka Skikne as Terry, with Michael Caine maybe as Stan Butler. Julie Christie as Thelma, William Pratt as Grimshaw, Jack Hawkins as Molesworth, Peter O'Toole as Fotherington-Thomas. A Royal Film Premiere, with the King and the Tsarina. Queues outside the Regal, with his name up in lights.
"We're going to have to think of a title. Joseph suggested It Airit Half Hot, Mum. I quite like it. Conjures the insolent cheeriness of the ordinary soldier, but also suggests sentimentality and yearning for home. What do you think?"
"Actually, Mr. Halliwell..."
"Kenneth, please..."
"Actually, er, Kenneth, I don't like that at all. It's the sort of thing a Londoner would say. I'm from the North-East."
"Oh. Pity."
"Mortar!" yelled Bob "Hit the deck!"
A second shell fell with an ill-tempered crump into a paddy field. A ten-foot tall column of water rose.
Everyone yelled at everyone else to take cover. Bob threw himself at the dirt next to a wooden hut. He took the safety off his SLR and chanced a peep over a low wall of baked mud. Lieutenant Gurney paced up and down about thirty yards away, right out in the open, scanning the treeline with binoculars.
"Bloody toff," said Terry, crawling up beside Bob.
"He's trying to draw their fire so's we can get some idea where they are.
"He's showing off is what he's doing," said Terry. "He's a belted earl. He has to prove he's got more guts than us proles."
A ball of oily flame engulfed the lieutenant.
"Christ in Heaven," said Terry. "I didn't mean thatT
Eugene Byrne & Kim Newman
Burning pieces of Jack Gurney filled the air. They were breathing him, choking on him.
Casper squirmed up next to them.
"See any small-arms?"
"Nowt yet. Only mortars. They just hit Lieutenant Gurney."
"That was no mortar. He trod on a mine."
Bob's stomach clenched. This wasn't a chance encounter with the treens. The platoon had been drawn into a trap.
He flinched as a machine gun opened up from the treeline about three hundred yards away. Tracers churned up the ground a comfortable distance beyond the wall. Earth pattered on them.
"Aye, this spot'll do," said Casper.
He unslung a long leather case from his back and drew out a lovingly-oiled Lee-Enfield. From one of his ammunition-pouches, he took a telescopic sight wrapped in oilcloth. Neatly, he fixed the sight to the rifle.
Casper was the platoon sniper. He'd been in Indo ten days when he took the brigade trophy for skill-at-arms.
Butler came over.
"Snudge says we're to set up along here with whatever cover we can. He's put one of the Brens over to our right. He says you're to set up here too, Casper. If you clock anything wearing pyjamas, slot it and pray it's Ho Chi Mekon himself."
"Willco," Casper breathed. His mind was already miles away, willing victims to wander into his cross-hairs.
Bob was starting to be afraid of little William Casper, with his hawk-eyes and ever-mounting kill score. He was an ancient child, more bird of prey than man.
Bob, Terry and Butler sat with backs to the wall and heads well down. If Vic tried to come at them across open rice paddies, they'd hear about it soon enough.
"What are we in for?" asked Terry.
"Dunno," said Butler. "Snudge is dialling 999."
A shell burst very close to the wall. Bob's ears hurt. Nobody said anything for a while.
At the morning briefing, Captain Fisher, the battalion intelligence officer, had said this would be a routine Bryant and May raid. Everyone home in time for tea and the football results on the Forces Broadcasting Service. It was only as the platoon was rattling along a dirt road in a
Kl
Back in the USSA
couple of old Matadors that Butler told Bob why the old sweats groaned when Captain Fisher walked into the tent.
Bob had liked Fisher. He had a soft West Yorkshire accent, not a wireless announcer drawl like Gurney. He seemed an ordinary bloke. But behind his back, he was called Billy Liar. The Indo-China War in his head was long over and he was mopping up before the Victory Parade. Nothing he said bore any relationship with the truth. The way Fisher told it, all they had to do was come out here and burn down this village.
The civilians and their livestock had already been moved to a protected compound (which was what Fisher insisted they call concentration camps). This was in keeping with the policy in the British sector of depriving the Viet-Cong or any NVA infiltrators of help from the civil population.
The tactic had worked in Malaya in the 1950s, prompting Anthony Eden, the Saviour of Suez, to commit himself to the Relief of Indo-China. Eden hoped to replay World War II, with himself as Churchill and Ho Chi Minh, "that little Indo-Chinese Upstart" cast as Hitler. When France went communist after the War, they pulled out of their former colonies, leaving a few idealogues—Red Jesuits, they called them—behind. A "democratic" regime sprouted, puppeteered by French colonial die-hards who refused to follow the Paris line, but that collapsed after the humiliation visited on all those battle-hardened Maurices at Dien Bien Phu. It fell to Britain and her Empire and Commonwealth to disinfect Indo on behalf of the free world. Naturally, Russia couldn't let that happen, so Premier Kissinger got up in the Duma and pledged to match the Brits man for man and gun for gun. Eden and Kissinger both claimed to have made the first commitment to South-East Asia. The British and Russian armies each referred to their allies as "reinforcements"
It had been bloodless enough to start with, merely a matter of sending a few technicians and instructors to help the regimes in the Republic of South Vietnam. Now the commies were on the march again, with the support of plenty of folk fed up with the corrupt and incompetent succession of governments in Saigon. What had started as a "limited police action" with a few Gurkhas had in seven years become so popular it was keeping 100,000 British and 20,000 Anzac troops in work, not to mention the 150,000 Russians (and rising) who'd come along, too. Enoch Powell, Eden's successor as Prime Minister, would gladly give the whole bloody shooting-match to the Ivans, anyone dammit!, and get Britain out. But a British Government's word was its bond, and the Russians couldn't be allowed win the war on their own.
Fl
Eugene Byrne & Kim Newman
The British were supposed to be fighting American-backed communists, but strategists spent more time jockeying for position with the Russians. A Punch cartoon showed King Edward VIII and Tsarina Tatiana in full state uniforms standing over a map of Indo-China, squabbling about who woul
d administer which regions "when the victory was won", while a tiny, ragged Ho said "what do you mean when'?"
The treens found their range. One of the eggs landed somewhere behind them, in the village. Someone yelled "first aid!"
It all happened in slow motion. Bob reckoned he should have been deafened by the racket from the explosions. Somehow, he wasn't. He was in mortal danger here and realised he was enjoying it, savouring it. It was something to write home about. This was making a man of him.
"The condemned men are entitled to a last smoke," said Terry, offering round Capstans.
They all lit up. Someone scurried over at a low crouch.
"Put those fuckers out you stupid fucks!" shouted Sergeant Snudge. "Fucking treens can see your fucking smoke a fucking mile away. Then you fuckers'll be fucking fucked."
Bob stubbed the cigarette. He knew Snudge—bloody silly name— didn't like him. None of the old lags did. They were new bugs, the sprogs, and as such bad joss. Regulars despised National Servicemen, claiming that they tended to get themselves and others killed, but the one time Bob snapped and declared himself as a volunteer, he was scorned even more openly.
"The Mekon's got us pinned," said Snudge. "We can't rush him because we don't know where he is or how strong he is, and it's over nearly-open ground. We can't do a runner because the little bastards have cut the fucking road as well. I've radioed for help, but we've to wait here until Billy Liar finds the bottle to tell Lieutenant-Colonel Windrush he's fucked up afuckinggain. Then we have to wait until Windrush finishes dithering and gets Brigade's permission to call for assistance. Just pray it's the dropshorts and not the fucking Raf. If you see any aircraft, then for fuck's sake, fucking hide. Now get dug in. If a firework comes your way before you've got a hole, flatten yourself on the dirt face-down. And keep your gob open. It'll stop you going deaf. Butler, report to Popeye, collect some spare ammo, and a crate of gold-tops and pineapples. Get yourselves nice and fucking comfy. It's going to be a fucking long day."
Bob wasn't enjoying this anymore.
Terry had the spade, a crummy little thing with a handle no longer
B
Back in the USSA
than his forearm. Eighteen inches down and he hit water. Not surprising, with a paddy field not close by.
