Authors: Martin Booth
It was a task to which Sandingham got himself and his small workforce of other ranks delegated. He took it upon himself to bring the water from the barrels mounted on the back of a lorry to the site of the operation as it worked its way along the camp roads. Chinese labourers were used to fill the barrels and they sometimes put small live fish into the tanks, knowing that the prisoners would capture these when the water levels dropped, and eat them. The fish were no larger than sardines and, when boiled gently, could be eaten whole with only the tail and head being cut off, for use later in the making of soup. The bones did not matter.
He stumbled as he picked up a bucket clear of the road surface: his arms were wearying sooner than usual which he attributed to the onset of the next stage of starvation. The bucket tipped on to its side but did not roll over and spill its contents. Instead, a small trickle meandered through the dirt to the side of the road. Looking up, he saw Sally heading back from the camp guards’ quarters. She was trotting along with the boundless optimism dogs have when they are intent on doing something of which they are ignorant. As she drew level with Sandingham, something caught her eye towards the wire. She stopped and stood stock-still in the way fox terriers have, her pointed nose twitching slightly and her eyes and ears alert.
By the wire was a rat, standing in broad daylight. It was near a patch of ground used for the emptying of the night soil from the sanitation buckets, and it was engaged in eating something on the ground, pressing the hard brown object down with one of its hand-like forepaws that its teeth might get a better hold.
The terrier turned slowly. The rat, sensing it but not seeing it, stopped eating and looked up.
Sandingham said, ‘No, Sally, no!’ in a small voice but with what he hoped was an imperious tone.
The dog ignored him, the rat returned to its meal and the dog started to edge towards it. Even at forty feet, Sandingham could see the rat’s grey fur glistening in the sun and could not help himself thinking that the rodent was in a far healthier condition than he was.
Speedy as her kind can be, Sally rocketed forwards, her pads grabbling for an initial purchase. Sandingham shouted for her to stop, heel, sit. The rat looked up, saw death closing rapidly upon it and abandoned its repast to flash towards the wire with the sensual fluidity of motion that rats can muster.
Eagerly, the terrier was after it. Sandingham was powerless.
The rat flicked through a run under the wire. The dog sped straight to the run and started to squeeze herself through after her quarry.
There was a hum, barely audible, like a bumble bee fondling a tower of lupin blossom. The dog jerked, her legs scrabbling once more on the ground without pattern to their movements. Then she was still. An alarm bell rang. A patrol of guards doubled at the ready along the road to where Sandingham was standing sadly. Their canvas and rubber boots slapped on the concrete. They could see no escapee.
Sally was dead. The power in the fence was momentarily switched off so that one of the guards could drag the dog clear by her hind leg. He carried her pendulously into the camp safety area and dropped her on the earth. She fell loosely, the bones and flesh already disconnected from the life.
The guards formed up in double file and marched back the way they had come. No one else moved.
* * *
‘Willy’s back.’
He heard the word passed secretly down the row of bunks in the twilight.
It was with an innocent and almost child-like joy that he anticipated the dusk every day. It was the only time when there would be no roll-call, no disturbance and no work, the ten minutes when he let his fatigued body settle on to the bamboo mat and the boards, his head resting on the firm pillow that was stuffed with rice straw, leaves and torn shreds of cloth. Around him would eddy a softened murmur of voices and, if he closed his eyes and ignored the itching on his shins, he could transport himself back to his school dormitory. The only effective means of escape that they had was the one that took them into sleep.
The news that Willy Stewart had been recaptured and returned to Sham Shui Po drove all thoughts of peacefulness from Sandingham’s head. He said nothing but hoisted himself on to his elbow and listened.
‘Apparently, they caught him over a fortnight ago. Out on the Sai Kung peninsula, in a village called Tai Mong Tsai. He was living near there with Communist guerillas who were going to get him over the border into China and up the lines to Chungking. They were heading for the cove of Kau Tong Hau where there was going to be a junk waiting. The partisans were ambushed, though. Hell of a fight. Quite a number killed on both sides. Some taken and executed there and then on the beach. Revenge killing. Beheaded. By the sword, as usual. Willy was brought back.’
‘Where’s he been held since?’
‘In the cells under the Supreme Court, I heard. Now he’s in solitary … Tsutada’s been in on the questioning. And Cardiff Joe. Fujihara, too.’
Sandingham lay back again. He wondered if Willy had put the willies up Fujihara, and doubted it. Cigarette burns, dislocated fingers and toes, deep bruising, loosened teeth with any cavities fully explored with hot needles, slivers of bamboo and rifle butts: all efficient means of stopping the willies being applied.
‘He’s to come back in here.’
‘How do you know?’
‘Senior Naval Officer told me. He got it passed in from some agent. Seventy-seven mean anything?’
‘All the sevens, seventy-seven. Anyone got a line yet?’ hollered a wit.
‘Shut up, you dumb sod! The Nips can pick up waffle like that and figure it out. You don’t need to play Housey to get the message.’
Silence from the caller of numbers ensued.
So 177 had been in on it. That must have been why he hadn’t been seen of late by Sandingham in the Chinese work teams at Kai Tak.
The conversation changed to a new topic. No one wanted to dwell on the subject of CSM Stewart, for they all knew that when he was finally returned into the hands of his brother officers there would be little left for him save death by disease. He would be so weakened that anything minor, not to mention pellagra or beriberi, would get under his reduced resistance and finish him off.
He was glad the number being bandied about was incorrect, albeit only slightly. It might protect the truth from reaching their gaolers’ ears. There were a few prisoners who were willing stool-pigeons.
‘You’re very quiet at this time of the evening, aren’t you? Everyone else shooting the bull.’
Sandingham stretched himself over the edge of his bunk and peered into the gloom of the one below. Their tier was against an end wall and farthest from a window. It had been warmest in the cold months but now, after a hot day, that part of the hut was the rankest and hottest.
‘I like to think before sleeping.’
‘So do I. What do you think of?’
The previous occupant of the bunk had died the week before. The newcomer was only recently moved in and was welcomed, but had yet to fit into the particular camaraderie of the hut that manifested itself at night, away from the tortures and ills of the day.
‘How do you mean?’ Sandingham rejoined warily. He did not even know the new arrival’s name although they had worked together.
‘Bingham,’ the other man replied obliquely, feeling the suspicion implied by Sandingham’s look in the failing light. ‘Rob Bingham. I was transferred here from Stanley. I’m not services but a civilian. I’m a dentist, hence my arrival here. Dental surgeon. Formerly of Kowloon Hospital.’
Rob, thought Sandingham. Robert. Change the R to a B. All that was needed.
‘I know. I was your table muscle the other day.’ Bingham half-laughed at that, a short, stunted laugh that was unfunny before it began. ‘Sandingham. Joseph Sandingham. Army. I’m called Joe.’
The dentist held his hand up and offered what looked in the semi-darkness like a hybrid between a pencil and a twig.
‘What is it?’
‘Ask no questions. Just chew the end until it frays and then rub your teeth with it. And don’t throw it away afterwards. Re-use it. In lieu of tooth powder, it will do you a surprising service. Chinese use it. Herbal.’
With the delicacy of a man testing for poison, Sandingham did as he was bid. The stick tasted of mild licorice. He worked it over his teeth and, sure enough, it removed the furry scale to which he had grown unpleasantly accustomed. His tongue ran over his polished incisors. His mouth was fresher than for weeks.
‘It’s hell in Stanley,’ Bingham volunteered. ‘Mostly civilians. They’ve a lot of wives and children there, too. In the civilian prison. And Chinese. A lot of the guards are Indians. Mostly friendly, save the head man. He’s called Ramdad. He’s got it in for the British and gone over to the Japs. He’s a right bastard, that one. Hardly any food. I saw one of our chaps – a Hong Kong Bank official who’s not been drafted in to run the colony’s economy – for God’s sake! – for the occupying forces – baking a rat on a spade over a bonfire. Seems he’s quite a chef de rat cuisine.’ He chewed his own tooth stick meditatively before going on. ‘Much illness. Deaths creeping up from diphtheria, children getting measles and one dead from it when I left. A Chinese commits suicide from time to time: they do it by shoving chopsticks down their throats. Seems to be a sort of traditional method. It’s the loneliness. The most terrible thing is the loneliness. And the uncertainty. Some of the wives and girlfriends are lost. But even in there, romance raises its head in the prison grounds. The cemetery. The vegetable plots, so-called.’
‘I think of romance,’ admitted Sandingham. ‘In the minutes before sleep.’
‘I’ve a photo.’
The dentist moved his hand up and down the lining of his tropical-weight jacket, extracting a passport-sized picture of a woman in her middle age with a flower-print dress on, holding a cocktail and smiling. Her hair was fashionably permed. He passed it up to Sandingham.
‘My wife. She’s dead.’ His voice dulled.
Offering a platitude, Sandingham hoped it sounded sincere. It was hard to feel sincere about anything except the rigours of being cooped up and the unholy bloodiness of camp life.
‘One good thing, at least,’ said Bingham. ‘She died three months before the … Well, before this. Cancer.’
From a specially fashioned pocket in his blanket, Sandingham took out his photo and held it for Bingham to see but not take. There was just enough light by which to see the inscription on it: ‘Bob: Penang 1939’.
‘Your brother?’
‘No, not exactly.’ Sandingham spoke cagily and Bingham realised the under-meaning. ‘More my brother officer. We were very close. He was killed…’
Somewhere in the room, in the deepening shadows, he thought he could hear a man say, ‘I and you’ll … I and you’ll…’
‘I understand, son.’
An outside light came on and Sandingham refocused his eyes and was surprised to see that Bingham was an elderly-looking man in his mid-fifties. He had not taken much notice of him as he stood his turn levering molars free and disregarding the grunts and mews of agony. His voice was younger than his years, but he was not. He had thinning sandy hair that had not been cut to a stubble, freckles around his liquid brown eyes which were ready to laugh or show sadness. He could see that the man’s wrists were wiry and very strong, the ligaments standing out like tensile steel straps under the skin.
Their fellow occupants of the surrounding bunks were at the far end of the room where there was a game of cards in progress.
‘There’s nothing like company,’ Bingham said. ‘When I was a young lad, about your age, in my last year of university, I had a friendship like yours. Maybe not quite, but … Nothing like having someone to talk to.’
‘Is it true dentists are trained doctors?’
‘Not quite. Why?’
‘Do you keep professional confidences? Like priests? Is the dentist’s surgery sacrosanct like the doctor’s?’
‘If you like, yes. If I can help you.’
Sandingham suddenly, without demur, wanted to talk, to ask someone with potential knowledge about something that had been worrying him greatly.
In the camp, there was a young boy soldier. Indeed, there were a number of lads – bugle boys from regiments, young stewards on merchantmen or mess stewards from warships – but one had caught Sandingham’s attention early on. He was a slight youth of about seventeen, blonde-haired with a very fair skin. He was ragged a good bit by his fellows and the other ranks in his barrack, but he had the strength of character to stand up to it and he gave as good as he received. From the start, Sandingham had fallen in love with him. At first, he thought of this merely as a reaction against Bob’s death, but he found after a few weeks that this was not so, that there was more to it. He had not spoken to the boy, but he had wanted him. Several times, he had gone to the latrines when there were few about and masturbated, the boy in his mind, his velvet belly and soft neck against Sandingham’s mouth. Every morning for days, he woke with his hand on himself and the boy in his waking thoughts. Now, he was still there as vividly as ever but Sandingham was unable to get an erection to go with the thoughts. This horrified and scared him.
‘I can’t get a hard on,’ he said to the dentist. ‘I used to…’ he reverted to the schoolboy idiom to make it easier to say ‘… toss off when I was first in here. Just a few times. But now I can’t.’
‘It worries you?’
Sandingham nodded.
‘Don’t let it. You’re not the only one, you know. I’ll bet half the men in here can’t get a grip on the old chopper.’ He too used slang to save Sandingham’s embarrassment. This wasn’t a medical matter, anyway. It was a friend counselling a friend. ‘It doesn’t mean you’re losing your manhood. It’s a vitamin deficiency allied to tiredness and the circumstances of imprisonment. A mixture of all three. Cut out Vitamin E and that’s one of the results.’
He slept restlessly after that, half-afraid that his confidence would be betrayed yet knowing simultaneously that it would not.
At morning
tenko
the next day, they were kept waiting after the count was taken. An atmosphere of apprehension hung over them as they stood in the cool air, the sun deliciously warm on their backs. The Japanese officer of the day kept them standing in silence, in their rows, at ease but not standing easy.