Highways to a War (14 page)

 

MARCH 28th

—Very weak. Should I let Mr. Wu call a doctor? Can’t afford to pay one.

—Voices in my head sometimes; voices outside it. Talking into this machine helps keep my head clear; keeps things real.

—Giant red cockroaches walking up the walls, and even on my table. They’re bloody monsters: never saw any of such a size. Had a dream of being locked in a room even worse than this one, and the bastards were crawling everywhere, eating me. Horrible: I woke yelling out, like Ken used to do.

—The sounds down on Boat Quay are very distinct: especially the rustling pods on the trees. There goes my mate the tap-tap boy, tapping on his bamboo cylinder. Woks. Radios. This room feels like a coffin, but most of the sounds here are good sounds, and I concentrate on feeling better. Singapore outside is like a good taste in my mouth. I think about the spaces of the harbor and the Malacca Strait, and it keeps me cool. Sometimes I think about the hop fields at home; but that’s not such a good idea.

 

MARCH 29th

-Weak. Have been very bad, and can hardly get downstairs to empty the bucket and fetch more tea. Must have liquid. No food for days: how many? Delirious. Dreamed about Luke Goddard. Hunted him down and shot him in the chest with a .303, but he wouldn’t die: he went on running through the bush in his black overcoat, toughing at me.

—The
makan
woman went by through the room, pushing her cart, the wheels squeaking. Her smile. Wanted her to stay.

—
Tiger Balm:
the sign winking out the door. Would it help? What is it? Do you drink it? Rub it in?

—Diana was here.

 

 

MARCH 30th

—Better; head clear, but can’t eat much. Wu Tak Seng brought me tea and some rice. Still urges me to get a doctor.

—Dreamed of Diana again. Does she still go to Quigley’s for coffee, at four in the afternoon? I saw her sitting there, in her gireen tartan dress. And saw her on the corner of Tamar Street, her face white under the dark beret, saying goodbye. Strain making her eyes big, tears making her mascara run.

—Goodbye. Behind us in the dark was that two-storied, red-brick building with bay windows that I never used to notice much, where Har wood the dentist has his surgery. Now I remember every bloody detail.

—Mum was here for a while, too. She sat quietly on the steel chair, looking sad. She spoke only once.

—Take care of yourself, Chick. I’ve lost Ken-I don’t want to lose you.

I could not believe how he was living, Jim said. Like a poor Chinese. Letting down a basket for his food from the
makan
cart. Crazy! I didn’t know then that he could have written home for money-that he was too proud to do it. Well, the only thing Mike ever cadged was cigarettes.

A Chinese boy took us to him: a street kid. Mike was a Pied Piper for such kids, from the beginning.

 

 

The sun had gone down behind Sumatra. The silent, orange and white tingling of hundreds of ships’ lights had broken out in the roads and the Singapore Strait: in that space beyond the city’s heated mazes that was cool in Langford’s head. His doors framed spicy darkness, and a night he couldn’t join; a neon tiger leaped and leaped again above a godown around the Quay, a sign beneath it winking on and off, saying:
Tiger Balm.

He dwells on this sign a lot: it seems to have mesmerized him, as he fought to hold reality in focus.

“Mr. Mike? Here are friends.”

He opened his eyes. The tap-tap boy with the crooked gaze stood in the open doorway, grinning as usual. Behind him stood Jim Feng and Donald Mills. Langford struggled to sit up, and couldn’t.

A conversation seemed to have begun; he didn’t take in the beginning of it, he says.

“You can’t stay here,” Jim Feng was saying. His long, ivory face was sober yet concerned.

The boy had gone, and Donald Mills was examining the room—which Jim Feng was too polite to do. Someone had switched on the weak electric bulb, and Mills glanced sharply about at the sordid fittings, his expression both inquisitive and appalled; he wrinkled his nose at the bucket with its lid, his perfect safari jacket shining in the gloom like phosphorescence. Finally he looked back at Langford, who lay under a sheet on the narrow mattress with the grimy Donald Duck slip.

“Christ,” Mills said quietly. “We’ll have to get you out of here, mate.”

It wasn’t their responsibility, Langford told them. He’d be all right; he was getting better. He asked them how they’d found him.

“Mr. Wu let us come up,” Jim Feng said. “One of the jockeys told me you lived along Boat Quay, so we asked around. When you stopped showing up in the York, we got a little bit concerned.”

“You weren’t hard to find,” Mills put in. “You seem pretty popular around here. The boy knew who we meant straightaway.”

“Sorry about crashing in,” Jim Feng said. “You don’t mind?”

No, Langford said, but he couldn’t offer them much hospitality.

Mills picked up one of the metal chairs, turned it around, set it close to the bed, and straddled it. “Listen, Mike. You may think this is just Delhi Belly you’ve caught, but it’s obviously not. If you get much weaker, there are nastier bugs.”

Langford told him he wasn’t worried; he’d had his shots.

“Against everything? Hepatitis? Meningitis? No. So be sensible,” Mills said. “I don’t want to pry into your affairs, but I assume you’re pretty broke.”

He was expecting a check, Langford said.

“And after that?”

Langford said nothing. He’d begun to find it difficult to talk, and was drifting off again.

“Okay, this is none of my business,” Mills said. “If you like, Jim and I will walk out of here. But if you go completely broke, or get seriously ill, it’ll probably become our business, at the embassy. We’ll have to get you home.”

No, Langford said. That wouldn’t arise. He had enough money to survive, and he wasn’t going home.

“All right,” Mills said. “But it’s reasonable your embassy should look after you through this. Later, you can pay us back. Meanwhile, I’ve brought you some good news.” He folded his arms on the back of the chair. “My friend Aubrey Hardwick believes he can help you. But first we’ve got to get you on your feet.” He looked at Diana’s picture in its vinyl frame, propped against the flask of tea. “Your girlfriend?”

Just a friend, Langford told him.

“Very beautiful woman. You must miss her.” Mills stood up. “I can be back here with an embassy car for you inside an hour. Jim’ll help you pack. We’ll take you around to the Cockpit, and settle you in there. Tomorrow I’ll get our doctor to have a look at you.”

Looking at Langford over Mills’s shoulder, Jim Feng nodded, and seemed to wink.

Langford lay back on his single pillow, staring at them both. He was still light-headed.

—I wondered whether they were actually in the room at all.

 

He woke to find himself in Singapore of the 1930s.

He was lying back on pillows that smelled sweetly of ironing: the linen of the Cockpit Hotel, whose gates he’d peered through wistfully on his wanderings. Somewhere, an air-conditioning unit throbbed softly, maintaining the climate of a cool-temperate zone. Last night, Mills had given him a battery of tablets that had evidently been effective: he was still weak, he says, but his fever and the griping pains in his gut were gone.

Beyond red curtains that stood open at the foot of the bed, windows with glass louvers framed a tropical garden of great beauty. Purple bougainvillea blazed, making him blink; banyan trees, fan palms and jacarandas cast shadows on a green lawn, and an old Indian gardener in an orange turban and black waist-coat was sweeping up blossoms from the grass. Strayed onto the lawn out of 1935, he seemed to inhabit some territory of memory rather than the present, and Langford watched him, hypnotized.

This garden (now gone into history, with the old Cockpit itself), extended behind the main building. A small row of tile-roofed bungalows stood there, with front doors painted Chinese red, and Langford had been put into a suite in one of these bungalows. Apart from the air-conditioning unit, its decor belonged entirely to British Singapore of the pre—World War Two period. There was a good deal more Chinese red in the room: a red-‘ lacquered writing desk, a glossy red door to the bathroom; black-lacquered Chinese chairs with red upholstery. There were prints on the walls of fox-hunting scenes, and English easy chairs with chintz covers and cushions.

A phone rang on the red-lacquered table beside his bed.

He jumped; he’d been drifting off. The brisk, loud voice that came from the instrument sounded like that of a British military officer, and brought him fully awake.

“Good morning. Am I speaking with Michael Langford? Excellent. My name is Hardwick-Aubrey Hardwick. Donald will have spoken to you about me. How are you this morning?”

Langford said that he was better. Collecting his wits, he made a speech thanking the Australian embassy for its generosity. He apologized for the inconvenience.

“Oh, you’ll make it up to us,” the voice said. “Don’t worry about that.” There was a throaty laugh. “Meanwhile, just relax and get better. You
sound
all right, I must say: you must be a very fit guy to come back so fast. May I offer some advice? When you put this phone down, pick it up again, dial room service, and order black tea and dry toast. The Cockpit will provide. Our doctor should get to you around midday. Obey his orders.”

Langford told him he appreciated all that was being done, but that he couldn’t stay here. The accommodation was out of his range.

“Do what you’re told, please, until you’re cured,” Hardwick said. “Don’t worry about the bills-you’ll be well able to pay for them soon. That’s what you and I have to discuss. Meet me for dinner at the Goodwood Park Hotel on Friday evening: are you free? Good. The Gordon Grill Room: seven-thirty.”

Langford tried to ask Hardwick what he had in mind. But the military voice cut him off. “Patience. All will be explained, old fellow, as soon as you get to the Goodwood.”

The phone was abruptly hung up.

 

 

“How is the Scotch fillet?” Hardwick asked. “Done as you wanted?”

 

—told him it was perfect. My first steak in months was a pretty intense experience.

 

The audio diary entry describes the Gordon, Grill Room in appreciative detail: tartan wallpaper, soft light from tartan-shaded table lamps, starched white tablecloths, and a platoon of Chinese waitresses in navy tunics, every one of them pretty. A number of British and Australian correspondents were dining at other tables, and Hardwick pointed out some of the well-known identities.

The entry also goes into some detail in describing Hardwick himself. He’d asked Langford immediately to call him Aubrey, and he’s referred to as Aubrey from this point on. He wore a single-breasted, lightweight khaki suit, and a striped tie that Langford assumed was a regimental one, since Hardwick’s style and appearance suggested a military past. But Langford began to revise the notion as an almost theatrical vivaciousness emerged: he couldn’t quite see Aubrey as a soldier; despite the martial erect-ness and the blond-white, brutally crew-cut air—which he describes as resembling the fur of a short-haired dog. He also makes mention of Aubrey’s light, unwinking eyes, calling them “watchful.” The word’s apt, from what others have told me. No photograph of Aubrey exists.

 

—I thought he was a bullshit artist, at first. No wonder Mills calls him Uncle Aubrey. But I humored him—and I was bloody glad I did. There’s a lot more to him than that.

 

“Have a little more Bordeaux,” Aubrey said. “I’ll say this for the French, they do get it right with wine. We go on about those Barossa and Hunter River reds of ours, but really! No. There’s no comparison, in my mind. But I’m a Francophile; I spent a good deal of my youth there.”

This speech surprised Langford; he’d assumed Aubrey to be British, not Australian, and he asked what years Hardwick had been in France.

“Ah-ha, Michael, you’re trying to find out how antique I am. Well, the answer is:
very
antique. I was there before the War, at about your age, doing postgraduate study at the Sorbonne.”

This was another surprise, Langford says. He’d assumed Aubrey to be around forty; but it seemed he was over fifty.

“Then it all blew up,” Aubrey was saying, sawing neatly at his steak. “The Krauts made their tank-dash to Paris, and that lovely time was over. An age was over, as you probably dimly know. Interesting times began for me then, as they did for quite a few others. But enough of my youth. Here you are with your youth on the wing, and we have to do something for you.”

Chewing, he put down his knife and fork and looked directly at Langford for some fifteen seconds before continuing. “I understand that you want to work here as a news cameraman. What I propose to do is to get you started with British Telenews, working with Jim Feng. They’re looking for an extra man, since there are now two big stories escalating at once: Indonesia’s confrontation of Malaysia, and the conflict in Vietnam. This means you’d be covering battle.”

He examined Langford with a questioning expression, pausing again as though to give him an opportunity to object. When Langford merely waited, he picked up his knife and fork and went on.

“Now that President Johnson has begun this bombing campaign against the North Vietnamese, and American forces are coming into the South in serious numbers, the demand for coverage will grow. The Vietnam War’s at a new stage: a very interesting one. Does this appeal to you?”

At first, Langford seems to have been disbelieving. Yes, he said, it appealed to him very much. But there’d be dozens of trained news cameramen running after a job like that when it was advertised: why should Telenews give it to him?