The Horatio Stubbs Trilogy (37 page)

‘Ywwr, bet he had one last bunk-up before they carted her away,' Page said. ‘Dirty bastard …'

After the dollop of bergoo, it was bacon and soya-link, as usual: the diet of the Forgotten Army.

Love and death – how we laughed about them! Yet they made the rest of the business look pretty pale. All the incidentals of that day, occupied by packing up and throwing out, were bleached by them, as if by strong sunlight.

While throwing out old copies of
Picturegoer, Leader
and
Picture Post
– sent from home by my sister – I thought about
leaving India. Had we ever been in India? It was a travesty! Here was the setting for a towering love affair, complete with mighty vegetation and ugly shadows – a country where love,
Love
, could reach a pitch unknown in the pallid UK climate: yet no lover presented herself. Women here went about in dreadful disguises, made-up as whores in rags or officers' memsahibs in pleated tennis-skirts. And all forbidden!

In Burma or Assam, all that sort of thing would be out. War. Even the imagining of love would have to be put away. Nor even Jock McGuffie, with his mad schemes for dodging the column, could save me then.

There are times in a man's life when he is preoccupied almost continually with the promptings of his cock. Those are the times when he should be able to follow the direction in which it points and find out how the pulse of the world beats.

What had there been instead? A couple of quick sniffs inside filthy brothels, and a hell of a lot too much bishop-bashing. I was tearing myself apart, like the Monkey God.

The CO of Kanchapur spoke to us on passing-out parade, neat, heavy, anonymous, standing immobile in the shade while we sweated immobile in the sun to listen to him.

‘ …You have acquitted yourselves well. You must be proud to know that you are now fully trained fighting-machines. Your training in combined operations has not been wasted. It has given you experience of any conditions you are likely to meet in Burma or Assam. You have been a splendid body of men to train, well worthy of the division to which you belong, well worthy of the objective for which you have been trained: the Liberation of Burma from the Japanese. And I only wish I was coming with you …'

‘You can have my fucking place, for one.' That was Dusty Miller.

‘No talking in the ranks,' Charley Meadows said.

Perhaps I hoped that McGuffie's poison was an antidote to the poison of the Army. All these years later, I do not recall what I believed. I can look back on that young Horatio with the same amazement that I then felt for my fellow men.

So it was to McGuffie, down in the scruffy M/T Section,
that I went when the day was over. He seemed to believe still that some amazing trick could be pulled which would save those of us on rear detail from getting farther east than Calcutta; so glib was he about this, I partly believed him. But first there was our last evening in Kanchapur.

‘Och, what you wanne go to Indore for, you dirty lecherous Sassenach? Them mankey whores in yon knocking-shop'll give you a dose as soon as look at you. There's no' a one of them as isn't rotten with siff. It's no' my place to lead a young lad like you into temptation, Stubby! – Besides, the fucking Redcaps would have my guts for garters if they could.'

‘Come on, Jock, you'll be telling me next to stick to the old five-fingered widow, the way the rest of the old soldiers do!'

‘Aye, weel, she'll no' do you much good eether in this fucking stinking climate. It's no' a place for a white man. We've got fucking Churchill to thank for all this, sending us out to this bloody dump … Why not go over to Indore while we're still in the land of the fucking living? At least we can get boozed up.'

‘I promised young Jackie Tertis I'd take him along to a whorehouse some time. Is it
thik-hai
if he comes too?'

‘Christ, man, we don't want bairns along! Tertis is as bad as yon Geordie mucker of yours. If you want to go to Indore, let's
go
to Indore – not muck about wi' a Sunday School. Besides, I've still got yon office desk to deliver … Gore-Blakeley gave me a right bollocking about it.'

So to Indore we went, bumping over the lousy roads through the steaming purple night, and with beating heart I again found myself climbing the stairs up to that ill-lit landing in the knocking-shop. Life continued here as before, had continued here for – how long? Day and night, fucking in the cubicles and domestic conversation just outside. The two old crones were still working at their chores, one hunched over a sewing-machine, cranking away and barely glancing up as Jock and I rather drunkenly gained the landing. We had visited his friend in the hotel down the street.

‘Mebbe tonight I'll give the old granny an airing,' Jock said, pointing to the crone working the sewing-machine.

Beside the old granny stood a girl of about eight, shy and quiet and pretty, peeping at us. The hag in charge appeared
and we began to argue about money, while the little girl watched.

I was befuddled and angry. I began to shout and wave my fists about. The hag was saying something I could not understand, stroking my arm to soothe me. The gesture maddened me more. I yelled at her not to paw me. A man in creased white trousers came up the stairs and stood about inconspicuously.

Eventually Jock cooled her and me down. We went through to the room we had visited before. It looked as ever, a long stuffy room, cluttered and dark – perhaps never lit except by the cheesy glow of a lamp in the street, which did little more than make the window-panes shine like clouds.

A woman rose up from a bed, a dark silhouette.

‘Hello, sweetheart!'

‘Hello – who are you?'

‘Hello, sweetheart. You like jig-jig?'

‘I want a look at you first.'

I grabbed hold of her – at least I was touching a woman, however loathsome she might be. Was it the same one I had grappled with before? I felt incredibly pissed and not in the mood to be fucked about.

I smacked her to keep her quiet.

She was wearing an ankle-length garment, perhaps an old nightdress. I stuck my hand up it and felt a crisp knot of pubic hair. Immediately, something in me realized its intentions, and my prick struggled erect inside my trousers. I got the woman down on the bed – no hesitations this time about how filthy it might be – and half-knelt beside her, feeling for matches in my pocket with one hand, while holding her down with the other. She was struggling. I would stand no nonsense. We were off tomorrow.

I got the matches out, let go of the
bibi
, struck one. She cried out and slapped at the light before it had a chance to grow. Swearing, I tried to light another. They were wretched Indian matches – one in three was a dud. Someone was behind me, trying to stop me striking a light.

‘No, sir, you disturb other customer make jig-jig!'

‘I want a fucking dekko! Let me alone!'

Elbowing them off, I got a match alight and stared down at the woman I had paid for. She stopped writhing as the light fell on her, merely putting her hands up defensively, so
that their shadows fell across her face in bars. I dragged her hands away.

She was young, her teeth were white, her skin smooth! I let the match die and lay down beside her, catching the smell of her as I tore my trousers off. My hands ran over her plump arms, over her body. I could hear myself groaning, while the hag by the bedside was trying to get two rupees off me for a french letter. Cursing, I gave her two half-rupee pieces and told her to fuck off.

The girl's body was slightly oily. She was co-operating now. I inhaled its odours, natural and artificial, letting the musky smell work down to my parched roots while my fingers probed into her hot, tacky little crutch. She peeled the french letter on to my weapon in a prosaic housewifely manner while I – in what animal past was I, tunnelling through a dense familiar element, triumphant, cock-a-hoop?

When you're having a shag, you must be in touch with all your ancestors right back to the Jurassic. It's
the
moment – an escape into all the imagined freedoms of past matings. This girl wrapped her legs round me like a stone-age lass, and pummelled me with her heels on my bum as I shot my row with considerable force and splendour into what was probably a secondhand french letter.

She got up at once and started fiddling with something she dragged from under the bed – a towel or a rag. Her business was over, she had felt nothing. The deal was closed. And we were off in the morning!

She was really quite young and pretty. Suddenly I remembered the last night of my embarkation leave, when I'd nearly managed a knee-trembler with Our Syl in the air-raid shelter. It came back to me clear as could be – and how I had failed to get my oats.

‘I'm going to bloody have you again!' I said. I grabbed the towel from her, pulled her sari away, got her vest right up under her armpits. Then I could see her body in the cloudy light, shining like milk, her breasts and the narrow thighs. I kissed her on the lips. She struggled, but I held her head in my hands and kissed her, pressing my tongue into her mouth, forcing my body against hers.

My hard-on came swinging up again, red in tooth and claw, positively suppurating inside its french letter. I slid it in and had her against the wall, slap up against the cockroach stains. She made no protest as I thrust away, beyond
avoiding my mouth. Perhaps the taste of beer and fags didn't appeal to her. I came almost as fast as I had done the first time, surging with joy. It was absolutely exhausting, and I collapsed on to the bed, my legs shaking, chuckling a bit.

‘You're a good girl – good girl …
Boht acha bib, malum
?' I was just about panting. So much for amphibious training!

She stood where she was, saying nothing. She pulled her vest down, waiting by the window.

‘Don't be afraid …'

She put out her hand. ‘Five rupee, Johnny. Give five rupee!'

The frenchie felt disgusting, I pulled it off and slung it under the bed. My prick I wiped on my handkerchief. As I was dragging my trousers on, I heard Jock calling me.

‘Coming, Jock!'

‘Five rupee! Give me!'

‘Sorry, sweetheart, I'm broke!'

‘You give five rupee, sweetheart! Two rupee!'

On the landing, the little girl watched us as we went by. The old crone kept on stitching.

‘Goo'-night!' I called to them grandly, feeling light-headed, no doubt because I'd got so much dirty water off my chest.

As we stumbled down the wooden stairs, I said to Jock, ‘By Christ, I just about raped that fucking
bibi!
'

‘Balls, man, ye canna rape any woman ye find in a knocking-shop! It's going against the laws of nature. Be your bloody age!'

Directly, I woke next morning, the dread of syphilis was on me. To think I'd stuck my tongue into her dirty mouth! – That was what disgusted me most. ‘Never kiss a whore!' I had often heard old Dave Feather say that. ‘Do you what you like with them, but never kiss their lips.'

I knew that I was doomed to go through that routine of glancing at your prick every morning, scrutinizing it as it cowered in your palm, searching for spots, sores, pus, imagining the whole thing as diseased as the loathsome knobs on the posters the authorities stuck up in shithouses.

Meanwhile, all my innocent mates were humping their packs on. It was 17th March, and at last the Mendips were leaving Kanchapur behind them.

‘Honey pears! I've had enough of square-bashing! Lead me to the Japs!' Enoch cried.

‘Hope we see you again soon, mate,' Geordie said, his Adam's apple bobbing with the emotion he was never quite up to expressing.

‘Don't worry, Stubby, me old mucker! You'll be catching us up soon,' Wally said, giving me one last affectionate bash on the biceps. ‘My slit-trench is the first on the right, next to the cookhouse. Cheerio, Ali, you old robber!'

‘Good-bye, sah'b! Come back to Kanchapur when you kill all the Japanese soldier, have some more tea for to drink!' Ali managed to look genuinely sorry to see us go.

Bamber, the old lag, clapped me on the shoulder. ‘Chin up, Stubbs, me lad. Remember – when you're travelling, you ain't doing anything worse!' This was a sort of catchphrase of his, which we all enjoyed quoting.

What a lot of good bods they were! We were all in the shit together and it was madness to try and escape it. Much better to die together, if necessary!

Charley Cox came up with Dusty Miller. They would soon be manning the Bren gun together.

‘We'll drop you a card when we get there, Stubby!'

‘Fuck off, we'll only be four days behind you, doing all the dirty work as usual.'

‘That's all right for you,' Dusty said, ‘but we don't even know where we're going for sure, do we, Charley?'

‘We're going to Calcutta, but we shan't get much chance to stay there, worse luck. We might be sent to Chittagong – some of 2 Div is there. Or we might go north. Depends where they want us in Burma – in the Arakan or somewhere else. Who knows, perhaps they've found up a few LCTs for us that didn't get sent to the Mediterranean! Seeing that the Japs are now closing in on Imphal, we might get sent there – or Kohima, which used to be quite a nice little peace-time station.'

That was the first time I heard Kohima mentioned as a possible destination.

Dusty Miller swung his kit-bag on to his shoulder and said, ‘Look, Stubby, here's a precious item for you – the squad copy of
Micheal Meatyard.
Best book ever written after the Bible! I can't get it in my kit, so you'd better hang on to it!'

‘The bastard will flog it,' Carter the Farter said.

‘Oh, no, I won't! Not on your Nelly!'

Our kit-scale had been reduced. Without a qualm, I had got rid of a whole kit-bag full of kit and personal possessions, including my dress-hat in the Mendip colours, which I presented to Ali. Perhaps it is still being worn in some unheard-of Indian village, to this very day. But
The Night Times of Micheal Meatyard
was obviously too precious to be discarded.