by John Harris
As the bus stopped in the centre of the town, the Malalan soldier got off, and Ginger, his money burning a hole in his pocket, invited him to have a drink. When they left half an hour later, everybody in the bar followed Ginger into the street, laughing and waving. The sheer inexplicability of it might have worried the experts but it never entered Ginger’s mind that anything unusual had happened.
Parting finally from his new friend, he made his way to the home of Sulfika Achmet, a clapboard house in the Mohammedan quarter at Passy Town, completely undaunted by the dark streets and the fires that threw the low palm-thatched houses and the tufted trees behind into silhouette like a fragile stage set against the threatening sky. Standing Orders stated quite categorically that the native quarter of Pepul was out of bounds and reiterated the danger to white men appearing there after dark. Ginger’s behaviour would have given the Station Administration Officer something to think about, however, for, with a strange immunity to disaster, he moved among the crowds, grinning at the black faces that seemed to appear and disappear in the shadows as they passed, drinking in the spicy air, stopping occasionally to sink a warm beer at bars where no white man in his senses would have been seen dead, and, still unharmed, arrived at Sulfika Achmet’s house.
Sulfika greeted him with a fluttering caress of her small thin hand on his arm, laughing in a cajoling tinkle as her family quietly withdrew. When he left, he ran his fingers along her naked shoulder and neck and against the long oval of her cheek, and told her he’d be back the next night. Then he slipped a pound note into her hand and walked back to the centre of the town.
Beyond the town and over the mountains, as he moved between the crowds, Ginger could see the sky lighting up from time to time with purple flashes and he guessed a storm was coming. The air seemed to be growing more closely packed, as though the clouds, like great felt blankets that blotted out the stars, were holding the heat in, so that the palm fronds about him seemed weighted.
The heat and the electric atmosphere seemed to have affected the crowds, and he was surprised in Victoria Square to see a great number of white soldiers and an unexpected number of sailors thronging the bars that crowded together under the heavy foliage of the cotton trees. There were a few Military Policemen about, but there didn’t seem to be enough of them to be a threat, and none of them seemed anxious to get involved. Then he saw that all the men in the bars had pamphlets in their hands and, as he stopped at the Moyama Café for a beer, someone thrust a sheet of yellow paper into his hand.
‘The Right of Reply,’ it said across the top. ‘All men have the right of reply. All men have the right to demand a say in the affairs of their country.’
‘That’s it,’ Ginger said, his enthusiasm engendered by the beer he’d drunk. ‘That’s the stuff.’
‘All men,’ he read on, ‘are entitled to a union or society to represent their demands and if a man has no union or society then he is a deprived individual.’
It was strong stuff that made Ginger’s head swim, though he didn’t for a moment recognise it as the gospel he himself had preached not so long before.
A group of sailors came into the bar, their hatbands bearing the legends Ladybird and Hawthorn and Beagle and Duck, and he noticed then that there also appeared to be dozens of them in the street outside, all surging from the same direction into the town with soldiers and airmen and a few of General Aswana’s troops. Held incommunicado to a certain extent by his detention and pursuing his own activities out of camp, he had not been aware of Leach’s activities and he had missed the meetings. And Private Leach had decided that since he had a habit of consorting – willingly or unwillingly – with the Military Police, there was always a chance that he might accidentally give the game away, and he had been told nothing of what was in the wind.
‘Been a football match or something?’ he asked.
The sailor he addressed stared hostilely at him.
‘All right then,’ Ginger said helpfully. ‘A girl guide rally?’
‘You want to keep your bloody ears open, mate,’ the sailor said. ‘Then you’d know, wouldn’t you?’
Ginger shrugged and turned away. There was an atmosphere of distinct hostility in the bar. In one corner the arguments were already beginning to grow a little noisy, and a bottle was knocked over and a table up-ended with the crash of glasses. A couple of Military Policemen who were passing moved forward but they were halted at once by the barrage of catcalls and yells of derision that came in their direction.
The two policemen glanced at each other and, deciding they were in too much of a minority, contented themselves with picking up a couple of bottles and administering a warning that was greeted with more catcalls.
Ginger watched them, elated by the excitement that was obvious in everything that was happening. He was not certain what it was all about but, judging by the catcalls, there was a clear defiance of authority going on.
His eyes sparkled. He’d always been one to join in any upheaval in the cookhouse or in the cinema when the projector came to its usual grinding halt, if for nothing else but the laughter and the jeers and the excitement; and he assumed that what was going on around him now must be something of the same kind.
Someone bumped against him and he saw it was Spragg. He looked none too sober and Ginger remembered that it only required the smell of a cork to set him off.
‘Good old Ginger,’ Spragg was saying, indicating the pamphlet in Ginger’s hand. ‘We’ll show ’em, eh?’
‘Sure,’ Ginger said unenthusiastically for he had no love for Private Spragg. ‘We’ll show ’em.’
‘You’re with us, aren’t you, Ginge?’
‘Sure.’ Ginger’s enthusiasm waned even more. He was far too much of an individualist to be happy in a herd.
‘Here, Ginger!’ He caught the smell of mosquito cream as a flag was thrust into his hand, and he saw Leach leaning over his shoulder. ‘Shove this up.’
It was a red square emblazoned with a hammer and sickle, and he put it down as though it were red-hot.
‘That’s Russian,’ he said sharply.
‘We’re all comrades together, aren’t we?’ Leach observed. ‘Just wait for the cheering, then you’ll see.’
‘What cheering?’
Spragg gave him a wink and Ginger stared at him, suddenly a little worried. He jabbed a thumb at the hammer and sickle on the flag.
‘I’m no bloody comrade of them buggers,’ he said.
‘Don’t be daft, brother. This isn’t a time for nationalities.’
‘It ain’t the time for singing The Red Flag either,’ Ginger insisted.
‘Go on, Ginger. You started it.’
‘Me? I only just came in.’
Abruptly, as the crowd surged about them, they were pushed apart and Ginger saw to his startled amazement British soldiers laughing and skylarking as they pulled down Union Jacks and replaced them with the Hammer and Sickle. A few African soldiers were watching them, grinning, their teeth startlingly white against their black faces, and Ginger stared at the scene aghast for a while, deciding that everyone had gone mad, then he swallowed his drink and sniffed the air. There was a storm coming, he knew. The palm fronds which had been so still a short while before had started to move sluggishly and he could feel the faintest stirring in the air.
He decided it was time to head for the harbour. His highly developed instinct for danger indicated that things seemed to be growing a little too hot, and he had had enough of trouble for a while.
The Pepul City Hotel was no Ritz. The drive was pitted with potholes and littered with stones. Trees on either side thrust through the matted untended vegetation, blossoming in luxurious pinks as the parasitic embrace of bougainvillaea choked the trunks.
The dining room was a large sombre hall with a vast picture on one wall of the new Pepul Hotel which had been planned for years but so far had not got off the drawing board because something strange had happened to the funds. It was lit dismally at only one end by the i
nadequate electricity of Pepul Town, and the tablecloths seemed none too clean. The nozzles of the salt shakers were stuffed up, most of the knives had loose handles, and the high moulded ceiling was dark with dust. The furniture looked bedraggled and, over tired-looking potted palms, slow-moving fans stirred the hot stale air. Through the open windows the bark of frogs and the cheep of crickets came in an all-enveloping chorus that was occasionally shot through with the menacing whine of a mosquito.
‘I thought they’d got rid of the mosquitoes.’
Colonel Leggo looked up abruptly as his companion spoke, and realised he had been daydreaming.
‘I thought they had, too,’ he said briskly, as he pulled himself together.
Stella Davies leaned her elbows on the table and stared at him. Wearing make-up and with her hair neat, she looked quite different from when he’d seen her by the harbour in the heat of the afternoon. She was cool in a silk dress and some of the strain seemed to have gone from her face.
‘You were miles away,’ she accused him.
He nodded. ‘Yes,’ he admitted. ‘I was.’
As a matter of fact, his mind had been resting on the strange phenomenon of the enormous numbers of sailors he’d seen in town as he’d arrived. Sailors had their own strange ways of amusing themselves, he knew, and on the whole, unlike soldiers, they didn’t tend to stick to the main streets. Yet, as he’d arrived from headquarters, he’d noticed what had seemed an abnormal number of them moving along Victoria Street, cheering and jeering and encouraging the Malalan troops to join them.
‘Where were you?’
The words broke into his thoughts again and he realised he had wandered off once more.
He laughed and forced himself back to the present. ‘Hong Kong,’ he said.
She stared at him for a second, a spasm of pain flickering across her face. ‘Food’s rough,’ she said abruptly.
He nodded. ‘Very rough.’
She toyed with her glass for a moment. ‘I was looking forward to tonight, Stuart,’ she said after a while. ‘I even thought it would be like it was in Hong Kong. But it isn’t, is it?’
He shook his head.
‘You’re older,’ she went on slowly. ‘Nicer, though, I think. And I’m older and I guess I’m not so nice. I’ve grown as tough as an old peahen and I’ve been less concerned with the moon tonight than with whether the beer’s cold and whether I’ve got enough cigarettes. I always did smoke too much.’
She began to fiddle nervously with the packet of Camels by her hand, but he moved it away.
‘You could cut it down,’ he suggested gently.
‘I’ve never had any good reason to.’
‘What do you consider a good reason?’
She raised her eyes. ‘Having a home and kids,’ she said frankly. ‘Things like that.’
‘You’ve had plenty of opportunities.’
‘Sure.’ She nodded. ‘But we all have our standards. The only guy who came anywhere near to mine did a disappearing trick on me six years ago in Hong Kong.’
He found it hard to meet her eyes, and she shrugged.
‘Still,’ she said, ‘it was best, I guess. I wouldn’t have fitted into the society you came from.’
‘I’ve never been a believer into fitting into a society,’ he pointed out. ‘The people who fit neatly into an army society would fit just as neatly into a stockbrokers’ society or a big business society.’
‘Stuart…’
He avoided her eyes. ‘It’s no good, Davey,’ he said quickly.
She frowned and lit a cigarette. ‘Why not?’ she asked. ‘Because a goddam big balloon’s going to go up soon, and you’re too much of a gentleman to involve me in it?’
‘If you like.’
‘And because you know damn well that it might grow and turn out worse than anybody ever thought, and that now’s not the time to be stargazing.’
He moved his hand in a swift impatient gesture. ‘Davey,’ he reminded her. ‘We said we weren’t going to talk about why I was here.’
She gazed at him for a moment, with a little frown of frustration. Then her expression softened.
‘Stuart, you’re not breaking any security rules with me,’ she said quietly. ‘You couldn’t. I know most of what’s going on. I know, for instance, that you’ve got pamphlets demanding the surrender of King Boffa Port already packed for dropping, and that currency overprinted “Occupation Khanzi” has been issued to the quartermasters.’
Leggo looked up, startled. ‘Where did you learn that?’ he said sharply.
She shrugged. ‘There are things I can’t say, too, Stu. Not even to you. So don’t ask me. But it’s never hard for a good newspaperwoman to find out. I also know that troops have been practising embarking and disembarking – I saw ’em; that your air force has been flying jet bombers and fighters into Pepul for weeks; and that some of the world’s largest salvage equipment’s on its way here. Would you like me to give you details?’
He frowned. ‘You needn’t bother,’ he said.
‘I know also that American diplomats in London and Machingo and plenty of other places besides have been cut off from all contact with British and Malalan officials. I don’t know what you make of all that, Stuart, but I know what I make of it.’
Leggo struggled to change the conversation, torn between a desire to know the source of her information and a wish to return to the nostalgia of five minutes before. He was desperately aware of the stifling heat and the breeze that came through the window, hot, moist and sticky.
‘Not sure what you mean,’ he said evasively.
She seemed determined to disturb him. ‘OK,’ she said. ‘I’ll spell it out for you: Braka’s on his way out. This business that you’re up to here’s largely to hide the fact that the Malalan economy’s in a mess. I didn’t think much about it before, but I’ve been wandering round the town a bit. What I found out startled me. They’re as Commie here as they can get.’
Leggo shrugged. ‘It’s not news that they’ve received loans in the past from the Russians,’ he admitted.
‘It’s not loans – or equipment, Stuart. It’s not what they’ve got or what they haven’t got. It’s an emotion. And it’s been going on for some time. And, at the moment, it’s worse than it ever was – because your boys are encouraging it.’
Leggo’s jaw dropped. ‘Our boys?’
‘Yes, your boys. Somebody’s been at them. I’ve always had a quiet respect for the British soldier – for very obvious reasons – but those I’ve seen here aren’t behaving in the normal pattern.’
‘I’ll look into it.’
‘You don’t have to look far. Just go home via Passy and the square. Just drive past the Victoria Statue. You’ll get your answer.’
He nodded silently and she stubbed out her cigarette unsmoked.
‘I hate this goddam world,’ she said harshly. ‘It’s so – dirty.’
Leggo said nothing.
‘Stuart, I thought when you disappeared in Hong Kong that that was the end of it, but it wasn’t. And you know damn well it wasn’t. And now we’re here – the both of us – and there’s nothing we can do because we’re on opposite sides and tied hand and foot by security.’
Leggo still said nothing.
‘So what happens next, Stuart? What happens afterwards?’
When he remained silent, she spoke again. ‘You’re afraid there’ll be no next, aren’t you? That there’ll be no afterwards? Well, I’m optimist enough to think there will be. Can we take up where we left off in Hong Kong, Stuart?’
He managed a smile. ‘I’d like that,’ he said. ‘I’d like it very much indeed.’
She gave a wry laugh. ‘You goddam Englishmen! An American would probably have tried to whip me into bed. You make it sound as though we were going to a symphony concert.’
He looked agonised and she helped him. ‘Stuart,’ she said urgently, ‘don’t talk. Don’t say anything. Just nod at the end when I’ve finished if that’s the best you c
an manage. I know you always did have a knot in your tongue and I know you’re not promising anything, because of what’s in the wind. But I’m getting the hell out of here tomorrow – this is one story that Now won’t get because I’ve got to opt out of it – it’s too personal – and I’ve got to know something before I leave. I know – and I know it as surely as if you’d said it – that what happened in Hong Kong was a mistake. And I know that when this thing is over – this thing we’ve both promised not to talk about – we should try to put it right. OK, nod, like I said. Nod, for God’s sake!’
He grinned suddenly at her anxiety, and nodded, then he put his hand over hers. ‘I’ll do better than that,’ he said. ‘I’ll promise that as soon as it’s over I’ll contact you. We’ll meet. London. New York. Hong Kong. Somewhere. I suppose you could manage that.’
She nodded, unsmiling and grave. ‘I guess I can,’ she whispered.
‘Then let’s leave it at that. I ought to be getting back. The general’s due in at midnight and I’ve got to be there to meet him.’
‘OK.’ She paused and was about to light a cigarette again when she changed her mind and pushed it back into the packet. ‘I’ll start now,’ she said firmly. ‘I’ll cut ’em down from about a million a day to five hundred thousand. Maybe even I’ll eventually cut ’em out altogether.’
She managed a shaky smile and, as she finished speaking, there was a sudden stirring of the heavy leaves outside as a squall swept through the gardens. A shutter slammed and a waiter crossed the room quickly to replace the menus which had blown over. Once again Leggo was aware of the heat and the imminence of a storm. The tension in the atmosphere seemed also to have affected Stella. Her smile had vanished and her face looked strained and tired. She pushed at her coffee cup, her eyes down and hidden.
‘I’m not supposed to do this,’ she said quickly. ‘Because this business between your country and Khanzi’s no affair of mine. In fact, my country’s against it. My president’s hopping mad about it. But if it goes wrong, Stuart, you’re involved. I…’ She paused. ‘I wouldn’t want you to be involved in something that goes that wrong.’
