“Yes, sir,” the King said, outwardly calm but cursing himself inside for losing his temper — just what Grey was trying to make him do.
“Look at my clothes,” Colonel Brant was saying. “How the hell do you think I feel?”
The King made no reply. He thought, That’s your problem, Mac — you look after you, I’m looking after me. The colonel wore only a loincloth, made from half a sarong, knotted around his waist — kiltlike — and under the kilt there was nothing. The King was the only man in Changi who wore underpants. He had six pairs.
“You think I don’t envy you your shoes?” Colonel Brant asked irritably. “When all I’ve got to wear are these confounded things?” He was wearing regulation slippers — a piece of wood and a canvas band for the instep.
“I don’t know, sir,” said the King, with veiled humility, so dear to officer-ear.
“Quite right. Quite right.” Colonel Brant turned to Grey. “I think you owe him an apology. It’s quite wrong to threaten him. We must be fair, eh, Grey?” He wiped more sweat from his face.
It took Grey an enormous effort to stop the curse that quivered his lips. “I apologize.” The words were low and edged and the King was hard put to keep the smile from his face.
“Very good.” Colonel Brant nodded, then looked at the King. “All right,” he said, “you can go. But dressed like that you’re asking for trouble! You’ve only yourself to blame!”
The King saluted smartly. “Thank you, sir.” He walked out, and once more in the sunshine he breathed easily, and cursed himself again. Jesus, that’d been close. He had nearly hit Grey and that would have been the act of a maniac. To gather himself, he stopped beside the path and lit another cigarette and the many men who passed by saw the cigarette and smelled the aroma.
“Blasted chap,” the colonel said at length, still looking after him and wiping his forehead. Then he turned back to Grey. “Really, Grey, you just must be out of your mind to provoke him like that.”
“I’m sorry. I–I suppose he — ”
“Whatever he is, it certainly isn’t like an officer and a gentleman to lose your temper. Bad, very bad, don’t you think, eh?”
“Yes, sir.” There was nothing more for Grey to say.
Colonel Brant grunted, then pursed his lips. “Quite right. Lucky I was passing. Can’t have an officer brawling with a common soldier.” He glanced out of the door again, hating the King, wanting his cigarette. “Blasted man,” he said without looking back at Grey, “undisciplined. Like the rest of the Americans. Bad lot. Why, they call their officers by their first names!” His eyebrows soared. “And the officers play cards with the men! Bless my soul! Worse than the Australians — and they’re a shower if there ever was one. Miserable! Not like the Indian Army, what?”
“No. Sir,” Grey said thinly.
Colonel Brant turned quickly. “I didn’t mean — well, Grey, just because — ” He stopped and suddenly his eyes were filled with tears. “Why, why would they do that?” he said brokenly. “Why, Grey? I — we all loved them.”
Grey shrugged. But for the apology he would have been compassionate.
The colonel hesitated, then turned and walked out of the hut. His head was bent and silent tears streamed down his cheeks.
When Singapore fell in ’42, his Sikh soldiers had gone over to the enemy, the Japanese, almost to a man, and they had turned on their English officers. The Sikhs were among the first prison guards over the prisoners of war and some of them were savage. The officers of the Sikhs knew no peace. For it was only the Sikhs en masse, and a few from other Indian regiments. The Gurkhas were loyal to a man, under torture and indignity. So Colonel Brant wept for his men, the men he would have died for, the men he still died for.
Grey watched him go, then saw the King smoking by the path. “I’m glad I said that now it’s you or me,” he whispered to himself.
He sat back on the bench as a shaft of pain swept through his bowels, reminding him that dysentery had not passed him by this week. “To hell with it,” he said weakly, cursing Colonel Brant and the apology.
Masters came back with the full water bottle and gave it to him. He took a sip and thanked him and then began to plan how he would get the King. But the hunger for lunch was on him and he let his mind drift.
A faint moan cut the air. Grey glanced abruptly at Masters, who sat unconscious that he had made a sound, watching the constant movement of the house lizards in the rafters as they darted after insects or fornicated.
“You have dysentery, Masters?”
Masters bleakly waved away the flies that mosaiced his face. “No sir. At least I haven’t for nearly five weeks.”
“Enteric?”
“No, thank God. My bloody word. Just amebic. An’ I haven’t had malaria for near three months. I’m very lucky, an’ very fit, considering.”
“Yes,” Grey said. Then as an afterthought, “You look fit.” But he knew he would have to get a replacement soon. He looked back at the King, watching him smoke, nauseated with cigarette hunger.
Masters moaned again.
“What the hell’s the matter with you?” Grey said irately.
“Nothing, sir. Nothing. I must have …”
But the effort to speak was too much and Masters let his words slip off and blend with the drone of flies. Flies dominated the day, mosquitoes the night. No silence. Ever. What is it like to live without flies and mosquitoes and people? Masters tried to remember, but the effort was too great. So he just sat still, quiet, hardly breathing, a shell of a man. And his soul twisted uneasily.
“All right, Masters, you can go now,” Grey said. “I’ll wait for your relief. Who is he?”
Masters forced his brain to work and after a moment said, “Bluey — Bluey White.”
“For God’s sake, get hold of yourself,” Grey snapped. “Corporal White died three weeks ago.”
“Oh, sorry, sir,” Masters said weakly. “Sorry, I must have … It’s … er, I think it’s Peterson. The Pommy, I mean, Englishman. Infantryman, I think.”
“All right. You can go and get your dinner now. But don’t dawdle coming back.”
“Yes, sir.”
Masters put on his rattan coolie hat and saluted and shambled out of the doorless doorway, hitching the rags of his pants around his hips. God, Grey thought, you can smell him from fifty paces. They’ve just got to issue more soap.
But he knew that it wasn’t just Masters. It was all of them. If you didn’t bathe six times a day, the sweat hung like a shroud about you. And thinking of shrouds, he thought again about Masters — and the mark that he had on him. Perhaps Masters knew it too, so what was the point of washing?
Grey had seen many men die. The bitterness began to well as he thought about the regiment and the war. Damn your eyes, he almost shouted, twenty-four and still a lieutenant! And the war going on all around — all over the world. Promotions every day of the year. Opportunities. And here I am in this stinking POW camp and still a lieutenant. Oh Christ! If only we hadn’t been transshipped to Singapore in ’42. If only we’d gone where we were supposed to go — to the Caucasus. If only…
“Stop it,” he said aloud. “You’re as bad as Masters, you bloody fool!”
It was normal in the camp to talk aloud to yourself sometimes. Better to speak out, the doctors had always said, than to keep it all choked inside — that way led to insanity. Most days were not so bad. You could stop thinking about your other life, about the guts of it — food, women, home, food, food, women, food. But the nights were the danger time. At night you dreamed. Dreamed about food and women. Your woman. And soon you would enjoy the dreaming more than the waking, and if you were careless you would dream while awake, and the days would run into nights and the night into day. Then there was only death. Smooth. Gentle. It was easy to die. Agony to live. Except for the King. He had no agony.