Spit and Polish

by Carl Muller

  ‘You want more? You must be tired.’

  She made no reply.

  ‘I’ll go and tell you can’t wait outside any more.’

  She shook her head. ‘They’ll be angry. Might think you told me to go away. Never mind. Let them come.’

  ‘But they will be really drunk by now. If they make a bloody noise or something . . .’

  She took his hand. ‘Come inside. They’re all singing.’ Carloboy hesitated. The words of the Mary Jane chorus came loud and clear:

  Singing bell bottom trousers

  And coat of navy blue,

  Let him climb the rigging

  Like his daddy used to do.

  ‘Inside? You mean inside the house?’

  ‘Yes. In my bed. It’s easier, no?’

  The Forty-second Army Corps

  Came in to paint the town,

  A band of bawdy bastards

  And rapists of renown,

  They busted every maidenhead

  And staggered out again,

  But they never made the servant girl

  Who lived in Drury Lane.

  Carloboy followed the girl indoors. He was hard as he watched her, naked from the waist down, carrying her damp skirt in her hand.

  ‘Uncle won’t come now, no?’ she said.

  ‘I don’t think so.’

  ‘Good,’ and she lay athwart her bed in the little side room and Carloboy unbuttoned her blouse, squeezed her small breasts. He stood over her, between her knees as she touched him, her fingers tightening on his cock.

  ‘You want the light?’ she asked, ‘the switch is there.’

  He shook his head. He caught her legs, raised them until her knees touched her shoulders. Her vagina glistened as the moon peeped in. He entered her, half crouching, simply gliding in, and he knew that this time he would be very quick. Through the barred window with its half blind, came the saga of Mary Jane:

  Next there came the Fusiliers

  And a band of Welsh Hussars,

  They piled into the brothels

  They packed into the bars;

  The maidens and the matrons

  Were seduced with might and main,

  But they never made the servant girl

  Whose name was Mary Jane.

  Early one morning a sailor came to tea,

  And that was the start of all her misery,

  At sea without a woman

  For forty months or more,

  There wasn’t any need to ask

  What he was looking for.

  ‘I was sent here by my parents,’ Carmencita said when they lay together. ‘They don’t want me. Some boys did it to me in Colombo and I was only fourteen. I got pregnant. My father wanted to kill me. In the hospital they took out the baby and my father said to sterilize me.’

  ‘So that means you cannot get any more babies?’

  ‘Yes. They did something. Turned the womb, they said. They wanted to put me in a home, but my uncle said to send me here.’

  ‘Your uncle is married?’

  ‘Yes, but he won’t bring his family here. Children are in school in Colombo.’

  ‘Then he’s alone ... I thought his wife was here.’

  ‘He’s alone.’

  ‘He’s fucking you, no?’

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘Why else will he bring you here? He’s fucking you, no?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘So you don’t care?’

  ‘What do I care? Let anybody do anything. I’ll never get married. I can’t even have children. What do you want me to do?’

  He asked for a candle

  To light his way to bed,

  He asked for a pillow

  To rest his weary head,

  Then using very gentle words

  As if he meant no harm,

  He asked the maid to come to bed

  Just to keep him warm.

  She lifted up the covers

  Just a moment there to lie,

  But he got his cock inside her

  Before she could bat an eye;

  And though he’d got her maidenhead

  She showed no great alarm,

  And all she said to him was

  ‘I hope you’re keeping warm.’

  ‘I must go now,’ said Carloboy, ‘you want to rest or what?’

  ‘If my uncle is busy then tell anyone else who wants to come. But you must come again. Even in the daytime never mind because whole day my uncle is at the post: He only comes in the evening.’

  Early in the morning

  When the sailor had his grind,

  He gave to her a ten bob note

  To pacify his mind;

  Saying, ‘If you have a daughter,

  Bounce her on your knee,

  And if you have a son, dear,

  Send the bastard out to sea.’

  Now all you servant girls

  This warning take from me,

  Don’t ever let a sailor

  Get an inch above the knee;

  She trusted one, the ninny,

  In his naval uniform

  Now all she wants to do, my boys,

  Is keep the Navy warm!

  ‘You took your bloody time,’ Van Heer growled, ‘I’m off. How was she?’

  ‘Good,’ Carloboy nodded. He reached for the beer.

  And then came Able Seaman Nathali, strutting in to join the frolics, a beatific smile on his face. He walked with the slow, deliberate care of a man who was pickled to the eyeballs. He seemed to be oozing toddy, and he carried a large tin dish piled high with whole roast chicken. He entered the circle of revellers unsteadily and stood there as if waiting for someone, preferably the Queen, to pin a medal on him.

  ‘Hey! Percy’s brought roast chicken,’ Sims said, ‘you’re going to eat all that?’

  ‘Dishish mine,’ Percy said.

  Carloboy stared. The man had to be crazy. Those were the chickens he said he would bury. ‘You can’t eat that! Those fowls died, no? Sick birds. You want to get some poisoning or something?’

  Percy cackled and sat down with a thump, the stack of done-to-a-turn birds spilling out to the sand. He closed one eye and regarded Carloboy solemnly. ‘They’re OK. Already—alraydyate two.’

  ‘Bloody mad bugger! Those birds purged an’ died!’

  ‘Sho? Showatt?’ Percy waggled a finger. ‘Sholedem to the tavern. Thash what I did—dood—did . . . pluckemmed an’ sholedem to tavern. Good ole Percy no? Goo’ ole tav’n alsho. Gave some rossefowl to bring. Where’s the beer?’ He took a bottle and swigged deeply. ‘Blurry good eating,’ he said happily, tearing a drumstick off a bird. ‘Purgean die. Ho, ho,’ he waved the drumstick as though he was conducting an orchestra, ‘purgean’ die. Dasher good one.’ He guzzled more beer and rubbed at the froth on his upper lip. ‘So why did the buggers purgean’die? Arsk me ‘n’I’ll tell.’ Another cackle.

  He was drunk as two lords —with some information he wished to impart. It suddenly dawned on Carloboy that Percy had had a hand in the untimely death of those thirty birds. ‘You damn shit! What did you do?’

  ‘Do? Do to who?’

  ‘You did something to those chickens.’

  He began to laugh. It was contagious. Soon, everybody was laughing which wasn’t a pretty sight at two in the morning. A board meeting of hyenas. Percy lay in the sand, pedalled his legs and howled.

  When the spasm passed, he pointed a shaking finger at Carloboy. ‘Canvas needle,’ he crowed, ‘pokeder canvas needle. Straight up the arse’ole!’

  Even the upright RPO Thomas almost fell off his bench. The night erupted. Maddo sobbed helplessly on Van Dross’ shoulder. This called for a celebration. If the drinking was in foxtrot, it now had to quickstep. Gradually, the men of Elora slipped into oblivion. Across the fence, Carmencita had had her last encounter of the naval kind. That last man had been too woozy to make any sort of mark. He had mumbled and mumbled and jerked himself silly against her stomach and then gone to sleep. It had been qu
ite an effort to raise him, lead him to the barbed wire and push him through. She then went to bed and did not stir even when her uncle blundered in, pulled the sheet off her and fell upon her heavily. He could not perform either. He just lay on her, dead to the dawn that was but a short time coming.

  Carloboy tottered to a tree, surveyed the wreckage blearily. Poopala lay on the galley steps, a customs officer’s cap on his head. The Army was comatose. Navy caps and Army berets lay in a happy jumble.

  Thomas swayed into the regulating office, trying to grin through a yawn. ‘Look at those buggers. They’ve exchanged uniforms. And who is that naked bugger? An Army sergeant? Have to sort them out in the morning.’

  Carloboy slid to the roots of the tree. His head dropped. He knew no more.

  A week later, when stomachs had been blotted and wrung dry and the CO was told of the wonderful time he had missed, the village headman came calling. It was Poopala who caused the stir because he never liked this headman who he considered was nothing but a major pain in the gluteus. The headman had like feelings, not particularly for Poopala but for all sailors. For one thing, these sailors were methodically working through the goats in the village! There could be no other explanation, but his appeals to the police had fallen on deaf ears.

  His rage had known no bounds when he came upon Poopala dragging the carcass of a kid into camp one day. Poopala had seen the animal, whooped ‘dinner!’ and seized it. It was the work of a moment to lop off the creature’s head and drag it across the road. That he left a broad trail did not matter at all.

  The irate headman confronted Poopala with a barrage of Tamil. His jaw dropped when he was treated to a salvo of equally furious Tamil into which more nasty words had been added than the headman had ever dreamed of. Poopala exhorted him to do all manner of things, things that would have tried the soul of the world’s greatest contortionist. He was also urged to go home, fuck his mother, his wife, his daughter and his goats—in that order. The headman fled, mouthing terrible curses and returned with a shotgun.

  The first shot sailed over Poopala’s head and broke the regulating office window. RPO Thomas dived under the table and proceeded to have a fit—quietly.

  ‘Repel boarders!’ Maddo yelled, and the men stormed out, charged the headman who dropped his gun, turned to flee. He was grabbed and lost his sarong in the mêlée. He was then frogmarched into the mess, a picture of gasping Tamil nakedness which was not a pretty sight, any road.

  Gunasakes rushed in to sort out matters and Poopala was sent on immediate draft to Colombo. He was displeased.

  ‘But sir—’

  ‘But nothing! You were a menace in Colombo. You were sent here. You have become a super-menace. Go back to Gemunu and be an ordinary menace!’

  Before taking the mail train to Colombo, he got roaring drunk and engaged in a giant barefist battle with Nathali. One peach of a blow blew Percy off his feet, spreadeagling him across the carrom board which split down the middle—naturally.

  They sobbed and hugged each other on the railway platform.

  26

  History—Pacific Operations and the Problem of Ships

  When American Army bombers appeared out of the blue over Tokyo on April 18, 1942, it made the Japanese realize that they didn’t have it all their own way. The Americans bombed Tokyo while, from the California coast, US carriers and cruisers began to move towards the Coral Sea. The Japanese had threatened Port Moresby and the approaches to Australia and this had to be stopped at all costs.

  By the beginning of May, the American fleet was in the waters south of the Solomons. They could pinpoint the Japanese on radar and had no wish to get too close. After Pearl Harbour, many damaged battleships were still in Californian dockyards.

  It was a strange battle to be sure. Neither fleet ever saw the other, but they could still hit out at each other with their torpedoes and launch their aircraft from their carriers. Even as the contending ships’ big guns remained silent, heavy losses were inflicted by each side on the other and Japan had to abort her advance on Australia. For the Americans, that was victory enough.

  Still, while this vast game of hide and seek was being played over vast stretches of air and water, Corregidor fell—the last American outpost in the Philippines.

  Wavell kept worrying about India. On May 1, the chiefs of staff met to discuss his protest that land, sea and air forces for the defence of India were not being despatched quickly enough. The trouble, as everyone knew, was ships. Both Britain and America were facing a disastrous shortage of ocean transport. Also, the distances of sea over which troops and aircraft had to be carried were vast. America lacked escort vessels and the ability to organize convoys.

  This was something the Allies had no instant answer to. German U-boats and Japanese submarines were sending thousands of tons of shipping to the bottom. In May and June, 1942, over a million tons of shipping was sunk by U-boats. By the end of the half year, the figure was more than four million tons.

  Also, there was the loss of tankers—prime targets for enemy submarines. Oil was vital, and when in the first quarter of 1942 more than 600,000 tanker tons were sink in the Atlantic, the mood of the Allies was one of desperation. On June 19th, US General Marshall told Admiral King that the losses in the Atlantic and the Caribbean was a threat to the entire US war effort.

  The US had launched an immense shipbuilding programme at the beginning of the year, but the loss and damage to Allied vessels stubbornly exceeded replacements. Supplies of war—supplies to help Russia as well—were piling up in British and American ports. Even ships that were loaded couldn’t set out for lack of convoys. The situation was hopelessly grave. The commitments were heavy, the means to carry them out, skeletal.

  But with grit and gum-chewing, iron-jawed determination, the Americans poured into the central Pacific. Ceylon had held out ably enough. India was slowly but surely being reinforced by troops and aircraft; and the Japanese had retreated from the Indian Ocean. The Americans knew that it was now the Pacific or nothing. Battle time was upon them. They were confident. Thirteen fleet carriers and fifteen escort carriers were being readied in US dockyards. They were looking forward to air supremacy in the Pacific.

  This was how, in the first week of June, the dramatic news came in. A US carrier fleet, outnumbered and with no battleship support, had trounced the Japanese at Midway. Four Japanese fleet carriers had been sunk and the supporting battleships and transports had turned back.

  Japan lost a lot. She lost, above all, the chance to expand further. Her days of air supremacy were over.

  27

  Of Soaking Mail and Drowning Jeeps and the Mutton Line to Railway Town

  One thing held much terror for Telegraphist Danny. Sharks. He hated sea patrols in small boats which, he believed, aroused the curiosity of sharks. It was said that as a little boy he used to watch his father being beaten up by irate Afghan moneylenders. His father would rush, panting, indoors screaming for the barricades to go up and gasp, ‘Bloody sharks! They want my blood. Damn sharks, everyone of them!’

  When he learnt that there were such things as sharks in the sea, he had considered the foolhardiness of ever joining the Navy, but things were not as bad as he imagined. One warship and that was all. Mostly, he was ashore and that, as far as he was concerned, was where a sailor should be. Elara put paid to this feeling of security. Elara expected of every man to do his duty, and one of these duties was to make up a whaler crew on sea patrol. He would, on such occasions, grab a central position on a crossplank, shunning the gunwales as though they were poxed.

  Came the day when the Navy’s only ship, HMCyS Vijaya anchored in the Palk Strait while on coastal patrol. The Vijaya had been commissioned to sweep the Strait, show some muscle, because of an alarming rise in the influx of illegal immigrants. Also, the customs johnnies bleated, smuggling to and from south India was rampant.

  The mail for the men of the Vijaya was directed to Elara . . . and Danny was one of the boat crew sent through t
he Pamban Channel to deliver letters to the Vijaya.

  ‘So now we are postmen,’ he moaned. ‘Why must I go? What about Nathali?’

  ‘Because Nathali is mad, that’s why. And because Lieutenant Commander Lawyer hates the sight of him.’ This Lawyer was the Vijaya’s skipper.

  They strung up a sail in a stiff breeze and bowled out merrily enough. Danny sat, biting his lower lip. Very strange he looked as he tried to scan all the water around him from horizon to bow wave all at once. Two furlongs out, and then he tensed. There were fish. Big fish. And they were surely coming towards the boat.

  Porpoise are gentle, playful fish. Also, they like to perform and bow to the applause of mackerels. Like schoolgirls at an eurythmics display. They enjoy finny life to the full. Danny froze, his eyes popped and, suddenly finding voice, screamed, ‘Shark!’

  Carloboy chuckled. ‘Don’t be a silly bugger. Those are porpoise.’

  Danny paid no heed. Anything as sleek and as grey as those fish were, had to be shark. Or close relatives, at best. He began to clamber towards Van Heer. ‘They’re coming. They saw us. Let me go!’

  ‘Go? Go where? You want to climb the fucking mast?’

  Porpoise, let it be said, are friendly fish. The fisherman’s friend. They like humans, and a boat, to them, means company. They came around, arching gracefully out of the water, flipping spray and diving under the boat. Sheer elemental glee. The crew had no time to admire this aquatic display. They were trying, in as restrained a manner as possible, to pin Danny down and hold the boat in trim. One or the other should have been done.

  ‘Ow! Hold him. Bloody bastard kicked my shin!’

  ‘Twist his arms behind him!’

  ‘Here, hit him with this oar.’

  ‘Shark! Shark! Help!’

  ‘Shut up, you bloody lunatic!’

  ‘Let me go! They’re trying to—grooh!—jump into—oof!—the boat!’

  The whaler rocked violently. Carloboy wrenched down the sail. ‘Here, tie the bugger up in this.’

  ‘Help!’

  ‘Will—you—shut—up! Throw you into the sea! That’s what I’ll do. Let the sharks eat you!’