Acts of Mutiny (34 page)

Barnwell had struck a chord. It reminded them of the war. By his gesture of military candour he had assumed the mantle, almost of commanding officer. In the first class ballroom of a British liner, a man who was obviously an important military spokesman, possibly governmental, too senior even to bother to disclose his rank, and in the presence of the ship’s officers to boot … suddenly such a man was in his element, and everyone knew where he stood. This swing to Barnwell was a legacy of wartime. And all this time, the very soldiery who had once returned, demobbed, vote-happy, were fenced off astern behind steel doors.

I listened, hardly comprehending. Mr Barnwell’s face was white, presumably with fury.

‘How dare you.’ He enunciated slowly, tightly, while appearing to survey the faces before him. The other officers at the table stared stiffly out in front of them, eyes focused on the rear wall, except for the captain who turned his pencil over and over in his hands. ‘Why, I could have you …’ Mr Barnwell’s gaze came to rest on Robert’s own as his speech failed him.

‘Yes?’ said Robert.

The two men stood, some ten yards apart, locked in their inspection of each other’s resolve. But it was Barnwell who broke. ‘I see no further purpose to this.’ He gathered up his papers. ‘I declare the meeting closed. I’ve given all the information I’m required to. I did not come here to be …’ And by his agitation he intimated to his fellow officers that they should wind up and follow him, almost challenging them not to. They did so, and the meeting broke up.

What followed was inconclusive, of course. There were independent disputes and hot debate. One or two people who formerly had cold-shouldered Robert came up to shake his hand. But the majority did not. Thus was the
Armorica
transformed into an unhappy ship.

I did not like the conflict. It reminded me of my attempt at a Turk’s head. With the rope’s end stuck up in front of me all unlayed like a sulky Medusa, and my father getting crosser and crosser. ‘No. Under that one. Under! Of course you can. I could at your age. I told you. There! Under!’ I had burst into tears. The knot was an impossibility.

I moved away from the sounds of disagreement, of which there were by now plenty; the distinct air of menace rose from several quarters. It was at this point I felt I heard the voice of that thing in the hold, whispering to me to let it out. I slipped away from the meeting, and ran as far aft as the pool, where the promenade deck ended in its high steel barrier over the drop to the tourist class. Then I drew back and went to the stairs I had seen Robert on the point of going down that night, and had dared to tell him about the great presence.

I could not make sense of the meeting. Had Robert told the authorities after all? If so, what were they all really talking about, and would anything now actually be done? For they had been very cross with him. Mr Barnwell seemed to be implying that there was no possibility of risk. That was good. That was all I could have asked, really. Mr Chaunteyman was going to Changi.

I found the way down to the heavy door to the pets’ hold. But it was locked. And in any case I had no clear recollection of exactly how it was that I had once moved from that space into the region where the Leviathan was contained. Yet I was so near I could hear the creature right inside my head. I could not but think of the soldering iron, heavy-duty with the rounded end, torpedo-shaped. Love, suggested MrTingay, was not clear-cut. What a fool I had been, then, with my cut-out picture from a women’s magazine. Love, suggested MrTingay, was a matter of bargains and pulls, splits and disintegrations. Then escape was a fantasy.

When I came back on deck the sky had grown dark with a great heap of cloud, as if from nowhere. The molten blue-white that had stared down at us so oppressively for the two or three days of our passage from Colombo had been exchanged for a bruise. I had never seen such a sky, not then; like lead, like solder sweating over a silver pool; and yet it was of many other colours also, of rust in places, and indigo, and yellow, yes, like the trouble of a bruise on pale, overprotected skin.

And even the ship had no breath, though there was the smell of cooking – or maybe rotting, some tinge of dung or decay; perhaps the carcass of a whale lay over the horizon on a beach of the Nicobar Islands, being rendered down. That distinct and horrible smell returns to me. So I slip with the
Armorica
past the Sumatran coast and into the Strait of Malacca, where the water is a vile dead colour and the wrong odours drift out to meet us, hang in our nostrils, and are sucked slowly up into the wrong sky.

Then the rain began. I had not seen rain to speak of since we left England. Even the storm was for the most part a dry blow, bearing only that fine sharp mixture of sleet and spray. Now there was simply an emptying, as of a vast punctured container dragged overhead. I saw it coming. The rain crept across the polished sea, made it one angry fizzle, and then engulfed us with a deliberate and leisurely bite.

In the drench I was instantly soaked through. It was made of enormous warm globes, full of weight. They exploded around my feet and flooded my sandals. The deck streamed and steamed. All the painted steel tops of the superstructure beside the pool appeared to give off a fine spray. It sprang out in every direction as if piped with sprinklers.

I went inside and found a place from which to watch. We sailed for two hours through curtain after curtain of the densest rain I had ever seen.

‘A
H, THERE YOU
are, Bob, old mate. A rare visitor to these shores. A welcome one, though, I hasten to add. It was your move, by the way. I think you’ll be surprised by the little teaser I’ve had the leisure to line up for you.’

Robert laughed. ‘And g’day to you too, Joe. Did you go ashore last night, after all?’

‘Course I did, Bob.’ He indicated two large brown paper packages.

‘What are they? What did you buy?’

‘What do you think?’

‘How the hell should I know, Joe? Something for Mrs Dearborn?’

‘Yes, for sure.’ Joe tapped another bundle lying on what should have been Robert’s bed. ‘Kimono for the missus. The full works. Top-quality stuff. But these …’ He indicated once more the first two items. ‘Open them.’

Robert did as he was asked. One of the packages revealed a new twin-lens reflex camera, similar to the one he had already used to take Robert’s picture.

‘But you got a camera on the way out.’

‘Can’t have too much of a good thing, Bob.’ Joe chuckled. ‘Go on.’

Robert unwrapped an ornate box, quite large, made of a japanned hardwood cunningly inlaid with mother-of-pearl. It opened to become a superb chess set with the stark ivory and ebony pieces mounted on platforms of the same hardwood. It was a medieval Japanese army. ‘This is astonishing.’

‘Quite smart, isn’t it?’

Robert was stumped. He peered closely at Joe’s face, in which there lingered, he thought, an oddly mischievous light. ‘How many of these have you got?’

‘Altogether? Could be fifteen. Could be a couple of dozen. Two more this trip. Under the bunks. D’you want to see?’

Robert held up his hand. ‘You could show me later. In fact, I’d be very interested to see. But we’re planning to go ashore, Mrs Kendrick … Penny and I. I just came to find my …’

‘I’m going myself. Show you around, if you like.’ He stopped, embarrassed. ‘Except you two probably don’t need some gooseberry tagging along.’

Robert, too, stopped for a moment. Then: ‘But of course. We’d be delighted. And I’m sure that would go for … That is, if you’re sure you want to be seen abroad with the likes of us.’

‘Really admired what you said at the meeting, mate. Wanted to speak myself but couldn’t get the words when it came to … came to the crunch, if you know what I mean.’

‘Of course.’

‘No bastard there supporting. No bastard with the guts to stand up and say: Yes that’s right. Self included, I’m afraid.’

‘It doesn’t matter. I suppose they’ll unload it while we’re here, anyway. I suppose that’ll be that.’

‘Not all of it. You heard what the bloke said. There’s still the bloody Kittens and Vixens and God knows what.’

‘Well. We’re going ashore quite soon. Shall we meet you …’ Robert looked at his watch.

‘No worries. I’ll just get into my Fletcher Joneses and find my jacket. I’ll come right along with you.’

‘As long as we don’t have to go looking for any more chess sets.’

Joe made a wry cackle. Robert turned discreetly away for him to finish dressing. When he turned back he found he had misjudged the timing and his cabin-mate was still in the act of changing his shirt. The older man hurried to arrange the gape of his cuff. But it was too late.

‘Christ! What have you done to your arm?’

‘It’s nothing.’

‘It’s certainly not nothing. Let me have a look. Have you seen the nurse? How the hell did you do that?’

The horrible, angry-looking thing that snaked down Joe’s arm ended in the blueish twist Robert had thought was a tattoo. And indeed, if you had not seen the rest of the wound with its pepper of stains and leaky lacerations, you might still have mistaken the twist for something artful and contrived. But the arm was mangled.

‘Just something I got in the war.’

‘But it’s been bleeding.’

Joe met his gaze with a hostile glare. ‘No, it hasn’t.’

‘But, Joe. You should get some treatment for that. I saw. It’s been … It’s dried on your arm. Look!’ He moved to hold the other man’s wrist and show him the damage.

Joe snatched back his arm. ‘I’m telling you, it’s all right!’ His voice took on the crushed Australian vowels. The two men eyed each other, stonily. Robert held his ground.

‘All right. It was the Japs.’

‘What?’

‘I’ve got a few more to match.’ He shrugged.

‘You opened it yourself.’ It was an intrusion. Robert regretted the words the moment he said them.

Joe shrugged again. ‘Singapore. Can’t keep away from the fucking place. Each trip I tell myself I’ll stick this one out in the cabin. But once we’ve tied up I’m off and away come rain or shine.’ He laughed and gestured helplessly at the packages. ‘Once I’m there I just hang around in the city. End up buying these. Chess. And the cameras. Can’t get over the cameras the Japs turn out. Best fucking cameras in the world all of a sudden. Out of nothing. Out of nothing. Makers of knick-knacks for Christmas crackers and paper flowers – for the foreseeable future. So we were given to believe. Isn’t that so, Bob?’

Robert watched his companion bite his lip.

‘D’you want to tell me? Joe?’

‘Give us a hand, mate. We’d better be getting along.’

The Chinese driver stopped and leaned round. ‘Boat Quay.’ He pointed through his open window to the street name, written in English on a low wall beside the prospect of the river. The crowds of people swirled around them making a pattering sound with their sandals. The day was hot, humid. Creamy sun poured out of the sky, picking up the colours of the river, the soft, thin clothes of the Chinese, and the grand, white buildings on the opposite bank.

They got out. ‘Lion dance,’ Joe said contemptuously. He was referring to the entertainment which had been planned to greet the ship the previous afternoon. A Chinese activity of some kind was to have occurred on the dockside, but had been defeated by a torrential downpour, as had most people’s will to go ashore too soon.

They strolled a short distance. ‘Got my stuff from a joker ready with his own car,’ Joe remarked after some time. ‘Whisked me off in the dark; in front of the noses of his mates. Took me to his shop. Nothing more than a big shed, really. But you name it, he had it.’ His efforts at conversation lapsed into a moroseness at odds with the bright daylight. Despairing of him, Penny linked arms with Robert. The day wore on. They made constant efforts to engage him. Joe, however, merely tagged along, punctuating their chatter enigmatically. He would respond neither to direct question nor to gentle hint.

It was not until the afternoon, when they had eaten the
Armorica’s
packed lunch – Joe’s own idea, for parcel-wrapped reasons of his own – that he stopped them meaningfully before a shop-window. Its owner, by the characters on the blazon outside, was plainly Japanese. Words began, slowly, to spill out of Joe.

‘OK.’ he nodded at the shop sign. ‘You want to know? This is what I don’t get.’

The owner, visible behind the array of bowls and kitchen equipment stacked on the other side of the window, peered out at them.

‘What I don’t get, Penny, mate … and Bob, is how these fellers are allowed to be here, untouched. You see?’ Without looking in he gestured through the shop-window. ‘And how we three English faces can walk about here and never a word said, apart from: Yes sir, no sir, and: Can I get you cup of tea, sir, while you make up your mind which dirt-cheap optical you want to buy most. See.’ He glanced sideways at last. ‘My knees are knocking at the sight of that bloke.’ Robert peered at the owner, who peered back and smiled.

‘The violation of a city. See? After that, how can life go on? See? These streets were full of bodies.’ He gazed around blankly. ‘People’s heads were hung from lampposts. People’s heads. And other bits and pieces. Can you imagine that? There’d been bombing all the time before. See?’ He indicated with his arm as if the disaster he conjured were still present. ‘The Japanese Empire, eh? Imagine sitting here waiting for that to arrive. Ruthless as Romans, eh? Bob? Romans, eh? And just as efficient.’

‘Joe,’ Penny said gently. ‘Were you here?’

‘No, love. Not me. It’s just common knowledge. Me, I ended up in Rangoon. Rangoon gaol. No, it was that bloke at the meeting, Bob. That Barnwell, talking about strategic importance. All that bull he was giving us. Strategic importance. I should say so.’

‘Joe,’ Penny said again. ‘Was it someone close to you?’

‘What I can’t get, you see, is these. These blessed things.’ He indicated the new camera slung in its brown leather case from his neck. ‘It keeps coming back to these unbelievable things. Jokers on bicycles. Jokers out of the Middle Ages. Jokers who think a beautiful city is a kind of …’ He looked up at Penny and smiled helplessly, glazed. ‘These are the best cameras in the world, you see. Not just cheap rubbish. No. Cheap best. What only the Germans used to be good enough, clean enough, up to date enough to do. Out of nothing. How’s that done?’

‘Who was it, Joe, if it wasn’t you?’

Joe’s lip quivered. His eyes filled. ‘You see, Ted married this Chinese girl. Really nice sheila, she was. OK, Bob? Sheilas? Name of Poppy – I don’t know what her Chinese name was, but Ted called her Poppy. She liked that.’

‘Who’s Ted?’

‘Brother. Ted was my brother, Penny.’ Joe buried his face in his hands. His shoulders shook. The shopkeeper peered out now from close behind the glass in his door.

‘What happened to them?’

‘How should I know?’

Penny held Joe by the shoulder and looked at Robert. ‘Do you come here looking for them?’

Joe nodded. ‘Suppose I do. Yeah. You might say that, I suppose. Stupid, isn’t it? Don’t know where to start. Don’t know where to bloody start.’ He raised his face. ‘Sorry. You know what they did? When they’d stopped showing off about capturing the city. And we all know what that means. Well, when they got tired of that they separated out everyone that was left: Whites, civilian and military, Chinese, male and female, Malays, Indians. Took the Whites off one way, and the Chinese off another. And so on. And so on. More English than the English in a way.’ He laughed. ‘How about that?’

Groups of people flip-flopped by, taking no notice, the women in pyjamas or cheongsams, the men in trousers and shirts. A group of peasants in straw coolie hats carrying poles across their shoulders made their way along the pavement opposite.

‘You know I come here … Look around you. Would you ever guess this was the greatest British defeat in history? You folks know that, don’t you? Do you? Gets forgotten. I go back to the old country. Who won the war, they say? Look at the Germans. Might be doing all right. Who won the war, after all, they say, all aggrieved. You were on the winning side, I say, but the British Empire lost the war. The Empire was smashed to pieces. See these folk here.’ He gestured at the street. ‘They took the brunt of it, didn’t they? I want to go up to them and shake them. Why are you so nice to us? Why do you still speak to us? Good camera. Good transistor. You must hate us all, surely.’

Robert stood awkwardly.

‘You shouldn’t blame yourself,’ Penny said, still hugging Joe’s shoulders.

‘I should have been the dead one,’ Joe said. ‘By rights. If I couldn’t be of any use I should have been dead. What was I doing instead? Playing chess. Playing bloody chess, chess, chess in Rangoon gaol.’ He looked meaningfully at Robert.

‘Is that where you got your arm?’ Robert asked.

‘What arm?’

‘Arm?’ Penny looked up at him sharply.

Joe gripped his shirt-sleeve and winced as he did so. ‘Look. I’m sorry about this, you two. Sorry. Unforgivable. Something triggered it off. That meeting. That bastard. Tone of voice. Reminded me of a Nip I once knew.’ He looked back at the shop door where the owner’s face was accompanied, now, by the faces of his family. ‘You don’t want to see this, Penny. Believe me. I go for it sometimes. Pick at it. Open it up. Can’t help it. Bob here happened to catch some nasty little habit not normally on public display. But you don’t want to see it. Of course Ted and Poppy couldn’t get to Australia. They wouldn’t let her in, would they. So when the crunch came they were stuck in Singapore, even though they had nothing to do with the military. And there was I, Australian bloody Imperial Force, and couldn’t do a thing about it.’

‘How did you get to be in Rangoon?’ Penny asked.

‘Long story. They got me in forty-four. We were joined up with some British unit. Stupid mistake, getting caught. And for some reason I ended up there. Not sure why, to be honest with you, Penny. No doubt they had reasons of their own.’

‘What happened to you in the prison at Rangoon?’

‘Ah, nothing much, to tell the truth. Not enough to eat. We used to spend our time playing chess. Nothing much else.’

Later, in Fort Canning park, when Joe had regained something of his old composure, he said, ‘You know, I was so glad when they dropped that bomb. You’ll hear lots of folk say as much, won’t you. I hated the lot of them. I wanted them all to roast in hell. I really did. But when I think of that meeting the other day. And your Prime Minister says to ours, “Mind if we let off a few of ours in your back garden, Bob?” And Menzies says, “My pleasure, Harold. Help yourself.” And I find myself thinking: Wait a minute, exactly for whose benefit is this being done? As the child country might ask the parent. And the answer comes: “Trust me, mate. Affairs of state. Security reasons. We’re the ones doing God’s bidding, after all”.