Morris filled a bowl with cereal at a side table and went to sit down with the others. As Tom followed his example and spooned up some limp cornflakes, the swing door from the kitchen crashed open and a small tornado emerged, carrying two plates of fry-up which she banged on the table in front of Percy and Alec. On the way back, she planted herself in front of the pathologist and scowled at him ferociously. He looked down at the small, squat Chinese woman, who had a frizz of jet black hair above her round face.
‘You wan’ egg?’ she demanded loudly.
‘Please — and bacon and beans.’
‘OK, I bring! Now siddown!’ She jabbed a finger at the table and marched back to the kitchen, her morning ritual accomplished.
Tom took his bowl and sat opposite Alf Morris, who grinned.
‘I see you’ve made a hit with Meng. She’s as good as gold, really.’
‘What’s this about seeing the colonel? What do I have to do?’
Morris poured more diluted Carnation on to his cornflakes.
‘March smartly into his office and stand in front of his desk. Give him a salute, then stick your hat under your left armpit and stand at attention.’
Tom stopped his spoon halfway to his mouth. ‘Bloody hell! I thought the medics were a bit more relaxed than that?’
‘Dollar in the box, lad,’ said Alf automatically. ‘No, our CO is a bit of a stickler for the traditions, I’m afraid.’
‘Colonel O’Neill thinks he should have been in the Household Cavalry, not the RAMC, old chap.’
Peter Bright, the subject of last night’s gossip, spoke for the first time. Again Tom noticed his aristocratic profile and the immaculate uniform. He never seemed to sweat like the rest of them.
‘Should have been in the Waffen SS, not the Household Cavalry,’ muttered the man next to him, a thin, beetle-browed Welshman. He was so dark that he always looked as if needed a shave, but David Meredith was handsome in a melancholy sort of way.
Tom was rapidly getting the impression that their Commanding Officer was not the flavour of the month in the Mess. As the colonel had been on leave for a few days, the new arrival had not yet met him and looked forward to the event with some unease.
‘What’s wrong with him, then?’
The loyal Administrative Officer, with twenty-six years of unswerving deference to rank behind him, jumped in ahead of any other replies.
‘Nothing’s wrong with him. He’s just a rather strict disciplinarian.’
There were derisory snorts from around the table, but no one ventured to enlarge on the subject, though one or two looked rather uneasily over their shoulders.
Meng smacked a plate in front of him and the others peered at it.
‘Fried bread and a tomato as well, eh?’ observed Percy. ‘She’s taken a real shine to you, Tom.’
At ten to eight, he was out on the road from the Mess to the hospital. It ran all around the site, parallel to the chain-link perimeter, the wards being inside it. Various other buildings such as the two Officers’ Messes, the ORs’ barracks, Casualty, Sergeants’ Mess, Quartermaster’s stores, mortuary, dental unit and armoury, all lay between it and the boundary fence. The inner square was bisected by the main corridor that ran up from opposite the front gate to the little armoury that lay at the back, between the RAMC Officers’ Mess and that of the Queen Alexandra’s Royal Army Nursing Corps. Cynics had long claimed that they needed the guns to keep the two sexes apart.
Tom Howden walked in the already-warm morning as far as this armoury, watching the steam rise off the wet ground as the sun began to make itself felt. When he looked beyond the hospital fence to the edge of the valley, he could see the jungle-covered hills less than a mile away, wraiths of mist winding through the tops of the trees. The air smelled so different from Tyneside, a cloying mixture of flowers, humid vegetation and stagnant water.
He turned sharp left into the long corridor that was the main artery of the hospital, a place where sometime during the day you could meet every inhabitant of the place. It was a concrete strip edged with deep monsoon drains, each side completely open, with a gabled asbestos roof supported on green-painted posts all the way down to the front of the hospital. On each side, every twenty yards or so, were double doors to the wards, which stuck out like ribs from a spine. They were long green-painted huts, similar to those of the Mess, with slatted doors down most of their length on each side. Just inside the front doors were the sisters’ and doctors’ offices and at the far end, the sluice-rooms.
Halfway down the corridor, he saw that one of the buildings was different. It was shorter, built of concrete and had a few glass windows, which had several air conditioning units sticking out. This was the operating theatre, the domain of the amorous pair, Peter Bright and David Meredith. On the other side of the corridor was the X-ray Unit and further down the corridor was his own bailiwick, the pathology laboratory, opposite the dispensary.
Beyond these, he had to dodge a group of barefoot Tamil labourers, who were energetically scrubbing the concrete with brooms, slopping soapy water from buckets carried on a trolley. Just past them, he came to the end of the corridor, where the first two ribs on the spine were offices, fronting the car park and entrance gate with its guardroom. On the right were the RSM’s cubbyhole and the general office, where several Indian and Chinese clerks filed records and banged away on old typewriters. To the left were the rooms of the QA Matron and the Admin Officer, with the Holy of Holies on the far end — the CO’s office.
Feeling like a fourth-former going to see the headmaster, Tom pulled up his long khaki socks with the red garter tabs, adjusted the lanyard around his shoulder and straightened his cap. Striding to the middle door, he tapped and waited.
A harsh voice commanded him to ‘Come!’
Inside, he found himself in a bare office with a dozen hard chairs lined up against two walls, like a vet’s waiting room. Opposite the door, was a large empty desk, on which were a cap and a bamboo swagger stick, lined up with meticulous accuracy to face the entrance. Behind the desk was Lieutenant Colonel Desmond O’Neill, Commanding Officer of BMH Tanah Timah.
Tom marched across the wide empty space to stand in front of the desk, gave his best salute and whipped off his hat.
‘Captain Thomas Howden reporting for duty, sir.’ He thought this sounded about right for the occasion.
The colonel looked up at him impassively. He was a trim, stiff-backed man of average height with dark short-cropped hair, greying at the temples. His face was thin, the skin stretched tightly over his high cheekbones. Darkly handsome in a horrible sort of way, thought Tom. As a keen cinema-goer at home, he immediately compared the CO with either Stewart Granger or Michael Rennie, the sardonic heroes of many an adventure film. But it was the eyes that made him uneasy, piercing pale globes that never seemed to blink, the kind that inept police artists drew on wanted axe murderers. The colonel now covered them with a pair of steel-rimmed glasses to stare at his new officer.
‘Pathologist, is that what you claim to be, Howden?’
The harsh voice had a strong Ulster accent.
‘Yessir, one year’s experience as a Senior House Officer in Newcastle.’
Tom had hoped for some kind of welcome to the new unit, but it seemed that O’Neill was above such pleasantries.
‘Well, you’ll have other duties here as well — take your turn as Orderly Officer, act as the Hygiene Officer and run the blood transfusion service. That means you also have to act as the medical officer to the MCE next door, that’s where you get your blood.’