by MARY HOCKING
The two men walked through the camp together. An emergency operation was being performed in the open, by the light of a bonfire and a hurricane lamp. The patient was stretched out on a roughly constructed bamboo table. Three doctors were there and several Japanese guards were watching avidly.
‘Dave Pearson is having his leg amputated,’ Tandy said. ‘The MO borrowed our meat saw. Sterilized it, of course.’
‘I hope you sterilize it when you get it back.’
‘It’s no laughing matter, a saw. At the camp down the river they say the Japs lay about with them whenever they get angry. Decapitation is one of the punishments.’
Ben made no reply. Tandy exaggerated, but he, too, had heard these stories and believed them. Here, the usual punishments were beating, sometimes with barbed wire, or being made to stand in the sun holding a rock above one’s head. Violence was a part of their lives. Yet, even here, they had a little precious time in the evening at their own disposal. Discussion groups had been started, many of a light-hearted nature. A few men preferred to be serious, however, and they passed a group debating the interpretation of the parable of the Good Samaritan.
‘Yours would be an interesting contribution!’ Ben said to Tandy.
‘I might have a few thoughts to offer, at that.’ Tandy strolled across to the group.
Ben went on to his tent, which provided cover for twenty men sleeping on bamboo beds. Here he found Geoffrey, who had returned from the hospital after a bout of dysentery. At first, Geoffrey had suspected that he had cholera, and this had frightened him. The hospital consisted of a few huts in which the sick lay on bamboo slats, many receiving no treatment because, apart from quinine, there was little medicine available. There were few to care for them and in their weakness they frequently fouled themselves. Ben had visited Geoffrey whenever it was possible and had helped to keep him clean. But he had not gone out of his way to reassure him about cholera. A fright would do Geoffrey no harm, in Ben’s opinion. In contrast to Tandy, Geoffrey showed a quirky indifference to his own – and others’ – welfare. It seemed it was not in his nature to take precautions. He was more likely than most to fail to dip eating utensils in boiling water before using them; and Ben had had occasion more than once to snatch meat from him on which a fly had settled. To the angry question, ‘Do you want to get cholera?’ Geoffrey would shrug, ‘I forget.’
The longer Ben knew Geoffrey, the more he realized how infinitely variable a man is. Geoffrey had revealed an unexpected gift as a mime. The Phantom Dog, with whom the prisoners enjoyed mystifying the Japanese, was a game which Geoffrey played with a difference. He insisted on being the dog. Although this destroyed the illusion in so far as the Japanese were concerned (they simply thought him mad), the men forgave him because his performance was so convincing that it was possible to guess the breed of the animal, whether dancing greyhound, lugubrious bloodhound, or brisk terrier. Yet, although he seemed able to keep his spirits up as well as anyone, he had odd lapses when he failed to concentrate on the business of staying alive. Ben, who had respected his steadiness and sobriety, loved the man for his maddening inconsistency.
Geoffrey showed Ben the drawings he had done when he began to recover in the hospital. Most were in his usual style: the sick, lying on their bamboo beds, while two men tried to support one another on their way to the latrine – at least, that was what Ben supposed them to be doing, since there was little else that would rouse them to such effort. There were two drawings which were unlike anything Geoffrey had hitherto done. One was of a tree framed in the door of the hut. It was bare, now that winter was come, and the tracery of branches was fine and intricate as hieroglyphics in an unknown language. In the other drawing, the perspective had changed. The hut was a minute cube, a peripheral area of darkness, beyond which the tree and the mountains were held in the great curve of the sky. Ben thought the effect was of an enormous eye.
‘How am I supposed to find a caption for that?’ He flung the drawing down. ‘They’ve amputated Dave Pearson’s leg. You haven’t got a drawing of an operation.’
‘I haven’t watched an operation.’
‘But I have!’ Ben was shaking with fury because his own experiences were not being recorded. Rage flared easily in these conditions.
The next day, great good fortune befell Ben and Geoffrey. They were detailed off to guard a truck which had broken down in the hills some five miles from their camp. They were to remain with the truck until such time as the Japanese had made arrangements for its removal. Geoffrey was by no means fully recovered – the Japs did not allow men to stay sick for long. This special duty was a godsend for him.
They set off in high spirits: stripped of clothing, save for a piece of cloth which covered the genitals, their jerky movements gave them the appearance of marionettes carved in bone. Ben wore a rattan coolie hat. Geoffrey, who never seemed able to prolong the life of his possessions, had lost his own hat but had been fortunate in inheriting an Australian felt hat. Beneath its shade, Geoffrey’s eyes were sunken and his skin fell in withered, papery folds.
The rainy season had ended, but the tracks through the jungle were still a morass of glutinous mud which concealed the vicious bamboo spikes. Ben, whose feet were already lacerated, sometimes stumbled and cried out in pain. In a small clearing they came upon a group of Thais sitting around their bullock carts. Geoffrey wanted to communicate with them because he was always trying to find materials with which to do his drawings, and hoped they might have a dye which he could use. ‘After all,’ he said to Ben, ‘they paint their own bodies.’ But in spite of Geoffrey’s miming, which was entrancing, they only succeeded in alarming the Thais, who thought they were after food.
When they reached the truck, two Japanese guards were there. They had got a fire going of logs and bamboo sticks. ‘No let out!’ they said as they prepared to depart. ‘Many tiger.’ But they left no matches to rekindle the fire if necessary. As soon as they had stumped off down the track, Ben went over the truck thoroughly to see whether there was anything worth purloining. There was nothing. The truck was weighed down with heavy equipment, and had developed a mechanical fault which it would take more than muscle power to correct. ‘With any luck, we’ve got a couple of days’ rest cure before they come back with engineers who can do anything about this!’
They set about preparing their evening meal, which consisted of a tiny piece of dried meat and the inevitable rice. They fetched water from the stream which ran some way below the track and boiled it thoroughly before cooking the rice and meat in it. Both ate sparingly, thinking of the morrow.
They sat cross-legged, looking down at the swift-flowing stream, so crystal clear that Geoffrey said he was tempted to run down and drink its waters. Ben told him not to be a fool. Nevertheless, the stream was good to look upon. The thought of several days with no one to shout at them or to belabour them was pleasant. They relaxed warily, anxious to get as much as possible out of every moment.
Geoffrey threw a stone into the stream. The water rippled, just as the Welsh Border streams of his childhood had rippled. ‘A snare and a delusion,’ he said sadly. ‘I would give anything for a drink of pure mountain water.’
Ben looked at the jungle with its teeming life of plants and creatures. A vivid crimson flower was thrusting through the bamboo bush; and nearer, a snake, brilliant green mottled with red, slid from the base of a tree stump and disappeared in leaf mould. The monkeys set up a clamour in the swaying branches. There was something destructive in the very livingness of the jungle; and the constant smell of rotting vegetation made it seem impregnated with death.
That night they talked by the light of the fire, on which they had heaped more bamboo sticks. ‘I’ve only met one fellow who said he saw a tiger,’ Geoffrey said. ‘And I’m not sure I believed him.’ The night was velvet, pricked with stars. Geoffrey told Ben about the Border country. ‘We’ll do a walk along Offa’s Dyke when we get out of here. We’ll start at Prestatyn and do the whole length of it
.’ He described the country through which they would pass so vividly that Ben could imagine himself lost on Denbigh Moor, wet and cold in the Black Mountains, but rewarded by his first glimpse of the Wye winding through wooded hills.
‘It’s lush, the Wye valley,’ Geoffrey sighed. He began to talk about women, which was unusual, as the sensual images which tended to come most readily to prisoners’ minds were connected with food. He was engaged to a girl named Jean. Although he spoke warmly of her, it seemed that his capacity for fidelity was limited. As in the matter of hygiene, he lacked discipline; the stolen waters beckoned and Geoffrey yearned for their refreshment.
Ben, looking up at the spangled sky, saw the form of Daphne, glowing with a soft inner light. A strange place, this, in which to celebrate the beauty of the human form! And yet, was it so inappropriate, here, where he had seen the body’s endurance tested as never before? He remembered that moment in Daphne’s bedroom as clearly as if it was the Ben of now who had felt so humble, so overawed. She had said to him when they parted, ‘You helped me.’ Now it seemed that it was he who had received something of which she was unaware, in which she was, in a sense, a random participant. In that moment of incandescent loveliness Daphne’s form had been the instrument through which the gift was passed to him. The gift of what he hardly knew. He looked at Geoffrey sitting beside him, ulcerated legs folded about his hollow belly. The sense of awe was not diminished. For a few brief moments, sitting here very nearly at peace, Ben was grateful.
Geoffrey said, ‘It’s cooler already. Maybe we’ll be out of here before the next rainy season. I heard a rumour the Japs were going to move us south.’
Judith wrote to Alice telling her that she had heard that Ben was a prisoner of the Japanese. She gave an address. ‘We must all write to him and hope that at least some of our letters will get through.’
Alice read the letter when she came off-duty, sitting on her bunk in the dormitory. She read it through several times without taking in its contents.
‘Alice!’ The Wren quarters assistant stood at the top of the stairs and called. When Alice did not reply she stamped angrily along the landing, thus breaking two hallowed rules in as many seconds – no raised voices, no heavy footsteps. She stood in the doorway, sweat streaming from her bright pink brow.
‘You might answer when I call.’ She was breathless with heat and annoyance.
‘I’m sorry.’ Alice lifted her head and contrived to look both contrite and attentive.
‘There’s an Army officer downstairs asking for you. I couldn’t get my tongue round his name.’ She turned and went back along the corridor, soft-footed, muttering under her breath that this sodding place would be the death of her.
Alice, who had spent some time wondering if the room would somersault were she to put weight on her feet and stand up, now performed this feat without ill-effect, other than the gentle swimming of her head which went on all the time. Guy! It must be Guy: Immingham was indeed not a name to trip lightly off the tongue.
She put her mother’s letter to one side and crossed to the mirror. She raked a comb through her dank hair and hastily coiled it into a knot at the nape of her neck. The result was to make her look like a Bronte heroine who has lost herself on a bleak upland and emerged in the wrong century. But, Alice thought, as she tried to make the best of herself so that Guy would not be shocked, at least I know I have a bone structure now! When she had finished her brief toilet, dabbing her face with cologne, she stood for a moment breathing deeply. Tears came only too readily of late, and the thought of seeing Guy threatened a deluge if she was not in firm control of herself.
She went down the stairs, holding tight to the banister rail. Her heart thumped so strenuously it seemed she must burst apart. The quarters assistant had asked him to wait in the little sitting-room which the nuns had kindly set aside for the Wrens. As Alice went into the room, tears were already dimming her vision. She could see well enough, however, to realize that the man standing with his back to her at the window was not Guy. She halted, desolate. Then he turned and held his arms wide with the most unmilitary theatricality.
The quarters assistant, who had been watching from her desk, was surprised to see what she took to be a passionate embrace. ‘All that refusing to go out with anyone because she couldn’t trust men any more!’ she said dourly to the quarters PO. ‘She was just waiting for something exciting to come along.’
The something-exciting held Alice back from him and studied her with interest. ‘You are very thin, Alice. Is it the heat? I think I liked you better plump. And you’ve grown your hair again.’
‘Oh, Jacov!’ The tears came. He accepted them without embarrassment, apparently seeing them as a fitting tribute to his arrival.
‘How long have you been in the Army?’ she asked when she was calmer. ‘Since we’re being honest, I liked you better out of uniform.’
‘The uniform is a disguise. I am engaged on work of national importance.’ He put a finger to his lips and whispered, ‘I am here with a company that is entertaining the troops. Guess what we are doing.’
‘Hamlet.’
‘Don’t be so gloomy, Alice. The Barretts of Wimpole Street. Now, don’t you think that is splendidly inappropriate? But they all enjoy it; and they hiss Papa Barrett as if he was the villain in Maria Martin! Especially the sailors. Sailors are very emotional men. I remember that once in Portsmouth they stormed the platform to prevent Othello from killing Desdemona.’
‘Are you Browning?’
‘Of course! Who else? No, no, I am the organizer on behalf of HM Forces.’ He ran a finger along Alice’s cheekbone. ‘We shall have to do something about you. Shall I make you drink porter?’
‘You could take me out and make me eat.’
‘This was my whole purpose in coming to Egypt.’
When she had changed into the most becoming frock she had, he looked at her approvingly. ‘That is better. Now, we will eat, and you can tell me all about your exciting life here which has made you so thin.’ He took her arm and linked it through his own. As they passed the quarters assistant, she leant forward and said, ‘I am so sorry, I didn’t get your name.’
‘Jacov Alexei Anton Vaseyelin.’
As they left the convent they could hear her muttering, ‘I still didn’t get it.’
Although Jacov had only recently arrived, he already seemed to belong in Egypt more than Alice. He might, with his dark, curly hair and bright eyes, have passed for an Egyptian, save that the skin, which had seemed dark in England, here was too pale and fine. He was thin as wire still, in spite of a manner increasingly suggestive of opulence. He took Alice to Pastroudi’s, assuming she would never have been there before. He had a long discussion with the waiter, although his requirements would not seem to have presented any problem to the kitchen. Alice, uninterested in food, looked about the crowded restaurant, and saw several people whom she knew, including Madeleine, who was at a table with three naval officers.
When the waiter departed, Jacov produced cigarettes for Alice, who did not smoke, and lit a cigar for himself. She was not sure whether this behaviour was now normal to him, or whether he was hoping to impress her. He said, ‘Tell me about him. He was married, of course.’
Alice stared at him. While she was formulating a reply which would shame him out of this mood of cheerful insensitivity, he went on, ‘It
happens all the time. And to men, too, let me tell you.’ It was obvious he had every intention of telling her; he rattled on without drawing breath. ‘I had a passionate affair with Greta Coburn – you know her, of course?’
‘I have never heard of her,’ Alice said coldly.
‘She was in Diamonds Became Her – and a host of other whimsical light comedies. You would certainly know her – she advertises a hair shampoo. I produced her in Regimental Duties. She was very demanding. Every interval she needed reassuring – in a certain way, you understand – that she was good. I can talk to you like this now, can’t I, Alice? And the
n one day, the dressing room door is flung open and there is this major. A dreadful fellow with butter-coloured hair and a face like an overripe plum. He was supposed to be the last man out of Crete; but, in fact, I have since heard on good authority that he was the first man out of Tobruk! The scene he made! If it had been a play no one would have accepted such a performance from a betrayed husband. And I didn’t even know she was married! They had to call the police or she would have missed her entrance in the second act.’
‘Did he knock your teeth in?’
He stabbed his cigar in her direction. ‘Ah, there’s still some spirit there, then?’
A waiter arrived with champagne, followed by another waiter with lobster in a rich cream sauce.
Alice said huffily, ‘I’m afraid I can’t compete with your performance.’
‘It was just a curtain raiser.’ He waved a hand above the lobster. ‘Now we have come to the important matters.’
The champagne disposed Alice to lenience. She began to speak haltingly about Gordon. But soon the sad truth was borne in upon her that no one understands anyone else. If she had asked for one person to come here to comfort her, it might well have been Jacov that she chose. Dear, lovable, gentle Jacov! And it was only too apparent that he did not understand the first thing about her feelings for Gordon.
‘You are making his motives too complicated, Alice,’ he was saying, as if addressing an incompetent actress at rehearsal.
‘He was a very complicated person.’
‘He had got himself into a complicated situation, that doesn’t make him complicated. It sounds to me as if things just moved too fast for him.’
‘In what way – too fast?’
‘He meets you, likes you, gets to know you. And before he knows where he is, he has let things go on too long without telling you. When it begins to matter, it is already too late. What you might have accepted had he told you at once, had become a deceit. To deceive Alice Fairley!’ He
