Highways to a War (15 page)

“Ah, but perhaps it need
not
be advertised.” Aubrey smiled and leaned forward. “Do you know much about Telenews? It’s a London-based newsfilm company. It offers stuff to the television networks that gives them a different angle from the American one. The BBC are shareholders—and so is the Australian Broadcasting Service. And here in Singapore, Telenews shares the ABS office, which is administered by ABS’s Southeast Asian chief. Arthur Noonan has the power to hire and fire; and Arthur happens to be a
^p
al of mine.”

He sat back, smiling with an air of innocent pleasure, brows raised, watching Langford’s face; and Langford began to see that he stood on the brink of everything he’d ever wanted: that he had only to walk through the door.

“Jim Feng will train you,” Aubrey was saying. “Great guy, Jim: the son of a mandarin. The family fled to Hong Kong just after the War, when the Communists were coming to power. As well that they did—or they would have been liquidated. So our Jim’s a member of a vanished class of people. Sad, don’t you think? But he’s good at his job—and he’ll show you all you need to know about covering combat.”

He smiled, and raised his glass. “To your future as a combat cameraman.”

Most of the correspondents had gone now; the room was half empty. Softly, on the piped music system, Gertrude Lawrence was singing “Someday I’ll Find You.” Aubrey sipped his brandy, nursing the balloon in both hands and studying Langford openly. He was now a little drunk, and so was Langford.

“You look Irish. Is that your ancestry? Sorry, I’m being rather personal, but these things interest me. I flatter myself I can pick people’s origins.”

Langford told him that his ancestors were English and Norwegian. One great-great-grandfather was Protestant Irish.

“Ah-ha! The Ascendancy,” Aubrey said. “Yes, I see it now: the elongated face, and the less flamboyant charm than the Paddies exert. Now I
am
being personal. A strange lot, the Anglo-Irish ; a bit fey and decadent. But look who they gave us. Swift; Wilde; Shaw; Yeats. But I doubt that you’re interested in literature. Action’s more your line, isn’t it?” He didn’t wait for an answer, but went on. “When I hear you talk, Michael, I hear myself at your age. In my day, as soon as we’d come of age, we hopped onto a ship to Europe to make direct contact with history. You’ve come to Asia instead; you’ve sensed that the vortex is here. You’re right, and I admire you for that—especially since you seem to have come with no guarantee of survival. History’s a game that’s played for keeps, in my sort of work—and it will be in yours. But for most Australians, it’s a dimension of reality that’s only found on TV—don’t you agree? The reason Australia’s half asleep is that it’s
outside
history. The Japanese nearly woke us up, but they didn’t quite get there. So we went on sleeping. I wonder who
will
wake us up? What do you think? Sukarno? The Communists in Asia? Is the domino theory true or false?”

Langford makes no record of his answers. It’s Hardwick’s talk, not his own, that he obviously wants to record, and the detail with which he does so is evidence of the effect that Aubrey had on him. Despite his amusement at the older man’s dated style and theatricality, he plainly found him intriguing—although he doesn’t record a clear judgment of him. The only direct comment he makes is that Aubrey gave the impression of being close to the sources of events—and perhaps of being able to tinker with their mechanisms. But when he asked Aubrey what work he was engaged in, the answers he was given were very general.

“I was a diplomat—but not any more, alas. I now work for our Department of Defense, based in Melbourne. I’ve been seconded to Foreign Affairs, and attached to the embassy here in a temporary capacity. Examining the ramifications of British military withdrawal from Singapore. Liaising with foreign ministers, discussing policy decisions—that sort of thing.” He took out a packet of cigars, and passed one to Langford. “But let’s get back to history.”

His cigar lit, he drew deeply; then he gestured with it towards a window that framed the tall palm trees at the entrance of the Goodwood. “Consider, Michael. When Britain does pull out of here-when Phoenix Park closes down—that will be the final end of the Empire. Funny: I believe an Australian of my generation finds this more bloody poignant than the Brits themselves do;
they’ve
lost interest, or numbed themselves. But the facts are the facts. The most successful empire since Rome’s: finally gone. And Australia naked: our shield in Asia taken away. It’s only the Brits, really, who are holding back Sukarno. Without the Canberra jets on standby at Kuching, without the British Marines and the Gurkhas in Borneo, he’d have invaded Malaysia long ago. Britain still holds up this part of the world—not America. But it’s almost over: this is the last act. I wonder what the shade of Stamford Raffles thinks—that marvelous man who built this place out of a swamp, and brought British freedom and justice to the eastern seas.”

He drained his brandy, and signaled for two more. They had both drunk quite a few now, Langford says; Aubrey’s voice had taken on a rhetorical boom, and was very faintly slurred. “Let’s see,” he said. “You’re twenty-nine, didn’t you say?”

Langford hadn’t said; but he nodded.

“Then you’re old enough to remember the maps where most of the world was colored imperial red. Yes? You’re of the last generation of children of the British Empire. Do you remember your Kipling?

He laughed, picked up his brandy, and raised it. “No longer true, alas. Here’s to the Empire on which the sun is finally setting. How can the Brits know what we feel, we children of the old Dominions? It was always like unrequited love; and now the beloved is departing!”

It was impossible to tell whether this was satire or sentiment, Langford says; but he drank the toast. He makes no record of his own sentiments at this point; nor of what he said in reply. But he registers no objection to that “we”; and I believe I catch a whiff of the books in the sleepout.

Hardwick glanced at his watch. “We’ll talk again, Michael.” He stood, swaying. “My God, I’m tiddly. Haven’t the stamina of you young chaps. Oh, for a dose of your lovely youth, that will take you to so many bloody marvelous things.” His hand on Langford’s shoulder, he began to negotiate a path for them towards the door.

Uncle Aubrey was the envoy of the future, smiling at the entrance to the world. He swung the door open and Langford hurried through, without a second’s thought.

The combined Telenews-ABS office was in a ferroconcrete building that Langford describes as smelling of ink and latrines, standing on a rise in Peck Hay Road.

Aubrey’s friend Arthur Noonan, the ABS bureau chief, was an elderly, permanently drunk Australian of huge girth and flaming complexion. He flew the national flag by appearing always in elastic-sided bush boots, and was usually to be found in the bars or at the Tangl-in Club instead of in the office. An efficient Chinese accountant and his staff handled the administration. Noonan took Langford to the York for a long, alcoholic lunch, delivering a hoarse lecture about the conditions of the job; after which, Langford says, the chief had little more to do with him.

Transient Australian and British broadcasting correspondents were the aristocrats here, Langford found: a cameraman was given the use of a small desk in a corner as a favor. But he sat there in a state of bliss, savoring his good fortune. He’d been hired on trial as a stringer, with the freedom to travel to any country in the region.

 

—I’d have taken a table in the toilet, if they wanted. It all seems too good to be true.

—Jim Feng’s teaching me how to use two different cinecameras: the heavy Auricon, which you use with a soundman, and the little, springloaded Bell and Howell. I like the Bell and Howell: it lets you move easily, without a soundman.

—Jim’s very courteous and generous with his time. He went to a British school when he arrived in Hong Kong at the age of fourteen; he speaks English well but a bit too correctly, and he uses American slang as well as British. No sweat, he’ll say, in that Hong Kong-British accent: it amuses me. His real name is Feng Ming Chi: he took the name Jim to Anglicize himself. Remembering what Aubrey told me about his background, I sometimes feel a bit sad for him—but he always seems in good spirits.

—Singapore’s basically a rest place for correspondents: a service station, not a news center. The focus is further east: Saigon, Vientiane; Phnom Penh. There’s a Telenews office in Saigon, and Jim spends most of his time up there, when he’s not in Borneo. He took me to Sarawak lost week, and we filmed some Indonesian prisoners being brought in. But no fighting; it’s all pretty quiet there.

—I’ll be glad when Jim thinks I’m ready to cover in Vietnam : I want to get up there soon. I’m afraid the war there may not lost.

 

 

“They say that revolution’s what’s needed in Southeast Asia—that only Marxist dictatorship will deliver the people from their cycle of misery,” Aubrey said. “This is very sad nonsense, Michael. The lessons of the French Revolution seem to have been forgotten.”

He and Langford were walking around Boat Quay together, following the curve of the river that the Chinese call the Belly of the Carp. I hear Aubrey pitching his voice above the hubbub: engines; horns; bicycle bells. They met to take these walks often, Langford says, in the early mornings before work; and once again he records Aubrey’s remarks with remarkable faithfulness. Yet he never makes clear the purpose of their meetings—or whether they had any purpose at all. Nor does he make any judgment or comment on Aubrey’s discourses—even though they seem like the discourses of a mentor.

“Revolution does
not
spring from the people, but from power-drunk and obsessive intellectuals who despise the people,” Aubrey said. “Such creatures always move immediately to limit freedom. Yet you can’t create freedom out of unfreedom, can you? The intellectually rigid seem never to take that in.”

Langford pictures Hardwick halting in the shade of a banyan, running a hand over his head’s whitish blond stubble. Musing on the river and its traffic, his well-pressed, faded khaki bush shirt like a relic of colonial Malaya, Hardwick seemed to belong here, Langford says, in a way that most transient Europeans didn’t.

“You should study the French and Russian revolutions,” Aubrey said, “if you’re to cover what’s going on in this part of the world. Revolution: colonizing Europe’s most poisonous departing gift to Asia! The irony is that it’s largely been left to the Americans to deal with the effects of the poison. But the military intervention in Vietnam is only what you see: a good deal goes on under the surface. And the stakes really do matter.”

Now they had turned into Chinatown, and were moving down its narrow, teeming gullies, under strings of paper flowers. The throaty voice grew confiding, competing with the wail of Cantonese singers from radios, and Aubrey took Langford’s arm, guiding him around piles of rotting vegetables.

 

—He talked about a hidden war in Indochina, not known to the public. Cross-border operations; a secret American air war in Laos. And he said that this secret war would decide the outcome of the open one.

 

“There are pretty big changes coming in this part of the world,” Aubrey said. “And they won’t all go our way. I’m speaking of Australia, Michael. We must learn when to adapt and when to resist, or be swallowed up. That’s where you could be involved: you could be very valuable, if you wanted to be. You’ll soon see what I mean when you get to Vietnam. Now thac our troops are arriving to back the Americans, the balloon’s going up there: and I can tell you in confidence, we’re going to be ten times more involved in this war than most people think. You’re off to Saigon soon? Good. I can give you a few contacts there. So can Donald Mills: he’s going there next month as Second Secretary. He’ll be briefing Canberra on the situation in Vietnam as lit develops. You do see the importance.”

He stopped, and let go of Langford’s arm—which Langford says he found something of a relief; he wasn’t used to these old-fashioned intimacies. Aubrey took out a notebook and began to write down an address.

“It’s very important you look up this lady,” he said. “A French Vietnamese friend of mine from Paris days—very dear to me, and a brilliant woman. Claudine knows everyone in Saigon. Her husband runs a trading company, and has connections on both sides: there’s a bit of a mystery about his whereabouts just now. Whatever you do, look her up immediately: she’ll be expecting it. And keep in touch with Mills: he’ll give you a lot of leads. You’ll be able to help him too, if you feel inclined. Let him know from time to time the way you see things going in the country: a cameraman‘s in a wonderful position to do that. Just give him the flavor and feel—I know he’ll be eternally grateful.”

 

—I said I’d try to help where ! could, and that I appreciated all he’d done for me.

 

“You’ll show your appreciation eventually, dear boy, I’ve no doubt of it,” Aubrey said. “There’s a
quid pro quo
for everything in this life: haven’t you noticed that yet?”

I have in front of me a picture of Langford with Jim Feng, taken somewhere in Vietnam in 1965. No details are given on the back. They’re seated in the topless Jeep they called the Big Budgie, pulled over at the side of a highway.

Both men are in combat fatigues. Jim Feng is laughing: long hands resting on the wheel, long head thrown back, long horse teeth gleaming, backswept hair shining and perfect—a Chinese army officer in an old newsreel. Langford is pointing at him, his face in profile miming shock-horror: a lost joke.