A Gentle Occupation Read online

  He pushed it from him and drank half the beer in one gulp. Pullen came hurriedly into the empty room, signalled the blueturbaned Indian, slumped into the cretonne-covered chair opposite him, and laid his cap and swagger-stick on the news-sheet.

  ‘He’ll be down in a jiffy. Christ!’ he fanned himself with a neat hand. ‘Gin Sling. Much ice. Interviewing women. I ask you. We’re bloody Civil Servants, told you that. Secretaries for a fighting Division, what next, I ask? The Chindwin, Kohima, Imphal … now we’re dealing with lost Mums and Dads, mislaid children, looted property, rights of way, forged papers, indents for everything from shit-house paper to bully beef; didn’t tell us this at Sandhurst. No one prepared, no one armed, not enough small-arms, and the petrol’s a bloody problem. We’re a lot of squalid Quartermasters: until they shoot up the bloody perimeter.’ He sat upright in the cane chair, indignation and, to a certain degree, helplessness forcing his hand to shake as he stirred the knobbly ice cubes in his glass. He took a long pull, wiped his moustache and smiled suddenly. His eyes crinkled at the sides in lines of weariness. ‘Sorry. Getting it off my chest … most boring of me. You’ll settle down soon enough …’

  Rooke took out his cigarette case, offered it across the cluttered table.

  ‘No. Have a pipe when I want a smoke, thanks all the same, can’t stay long … better get that chap What’sisname up to the Mess. He’s a bit of a pill, what? All that chess stuff, the suitcase … sooner he’s bunged off the better, I’ve a feeling, although God knows what they’ll do with him down at Pangpang or wherever they send him. What did he do? Never thought to ask. Intelligence, I wouldn’t wonder.’

  ‘So was I.’

  ‘So is Nettles … brilliant too. Takes all kinds.’ He finished the half of his drink and collected his cap and cane. ‘Must go.’ He rose, pulled down his bush jacket, patted his pockets. ‘Forgot you were Air Photographic. Not a chance here, old boy, you’ll have to re-think your qualifications, as I said. This is not really a fighting war and we haven’t a bloody air force. See you around, I hope? I’ll get What’sisname up to the Mess. Nettles will take care of you after he’s interviewed his ruddy girls …’ He crossed hurriedly to the door, turned suddenly and called to the barman. ‘Chitty, Pram … on me the drinks, tikh hai?’ and with a vague laugh he called, ‘Good luck!’ and left the bar.

  The fans click-clacked mournfully but caused so little disturbance in the still air that the smoke from his cigarette meandered gently about his head.

  ‘Diplomatic perhaps? Would you like that? Interesting job.’ His father straight-backed on the horse beside him.

  ‘No qualifications, Pa.’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know … French and German … bit of Latin. Got the presence. Got that from your mother. Good manners, good school, discretion …’

  ‘Not awfully keen. Politics: not my area really.’ He tapped his thigh with his crop.

  ‘Be a war in a couple of years, you know; you’d just have time, I know a couple of strings I could pull if you liked?’

  ‘No, not Diplomatic really.’

  ‘Well what then? University? Cambridge perhaps …’

  ‘An actor as a matter of fact.’

  His father leant forward suddenly and patted the piebald neck before him.

  ‘Sweet God! What for?’

  ‘It’s what I want to do, I think.’

  ‘But do you know? I mean, when? How?’

  ‘Oh you remember. You saw me. Much Ado, The Merchant, Coriolanus.’

  ‘My dearest boy! School plays, for God’s sake!’

  ‘I was good.’

  ‘Splendid … but not for a lifetime.’

  ‘I think so.’

  ‘It’d be such a frightful waste. Your education, background …’

  ‘Actors need those too, you know.’

  ‘Bobby Howes, Sonny Hale, Jack Hulbert, that sort of thing?’

  ‘No. John Gielgud, Stephen Haggard, Laurence Olivier.’

  ‘Oh. Don’t know ’em. “Not knowing can’t tell”, as Nanny would say … I think you’ve got a touch of the sun perhaps?’ he laughed uneasily.

  ‘No … really not. I’m sure you know, truly. Sorry.’

  The piebald stamped and swished its tail, arching its neck in irritation.

  ‘Horse flies, bloody brutes.’ His father turned swiftly in his saddle. ‘Talk about this at dinner, shall we? Race you to the brook …’

  He watched him canter down the slope, the wind billowing in the back of his shirt as a tall, elegant figure in jungle-green paused in the open doors. He rose instantly to meet him thinking him to resemble, facially at any rate, a splendid horse. Or was it just that he had been thinking of horses? A long face, long nose, high brow and when he smiled, as he did now, long white teeth. The hand, when he took it in greeting, was also long, strong: supple fingers, a firm pressure. The grey eyes which appraised him swiftly, were good, clear, deep-set.

  ‘You must think me wildly dilatory. I’m frightfully sorry … such a wait for you …’ They moved to the untidy table, the barman already there, hands clasped, a golden smile flashing, head bobbing at familiar pleasure. ‘Another beer, was it? And my usual, Pram, steady with the Worcester Sauce. Do sit … too exhausting this morning.’ He crossed long thin legs and placed his cap on the table where Pullen’s had been. ‘Geoffrey Nettles. And you’re Rook with an “E”. Am I right? I’ve got all your bumph here somewhere …’ He patted a neat black leather case and flicked the locks open, rummaging about in a scurry of papers. Unable to find what he wanted he snapped the case shut, placed it on the floor, folded his arms and smiled the white-toothed smile. ‘Too boring. Can’t find it all now … we’ll sort it out later. Oh! I die for my Bloody Mary, I really do. You’ve come from Calcutta, I gather?’

  ‘Sort of. Via Cox’s Bazar and every other port down the coast.’

  ‘Too boring … Oh!’ He reached up with long blunt fingers for his drink, raised it briefly in a toast, and sipped. ‘How delicious! I’m totally drained.’ He set the glass carefully on the table and fished for a cigarette in his pocket, accepting one from Rooke who had anticipated the thought. ‘Thank you … the whole morning interviewing the most idiotic girls. All Chinese and all swearing blind that they can speak, type and write English perfectly. None of them can, all nice and willing but utterly peasant. Did you see them? Legs like Indian Clubs and frightfully hairy arms.’

  Rooke nodded. ‘Saw them when we arrived. I wondered who they were.’

  Nettles examined his cigarette with care. ‘Secretaries. For a civil war. Pullen told you, I suppose? The whole Island is in ferment. We’ve landed in a kind of hornets’ nest. Maddening really. Those damned Americans gave us Java, Borneo, Sumatra and this Paradise Island in a sort of job-lot. No one was prepared for any of it, least of all us, as usual. What we really need are some nice bright Dutch ladies to help out, they all speak English and write it. But …’ he sighed sadly and took up his glass.

  ‘Won’t they help?’ Rooke carefully poured his second beer.

  ‘Most of the poor dears are still locked up in the camps at Pangpang or up north at Butan Pahang. Can’t get them out. The ones in the city here, which we control, thank God, won’t work for us because we are the enemy, they think. Too idiotic. We spend all the time trying to get them out of the camps and back to Singapore or Holland or wherever they want to go and they hurl abuse at us because we aren’t fighting the bloody extremists and they feel we are just handing the islands over to the Indonesians without a by-your-leave. Which,’ he said with a blinding white smile, ‘…which, of course, we are. Independence. Freedom from Colonial Rule. Not our affair. Frightfully British really … we’re just about to lose our Empire so why should the Dutch have theirs? Tit for tat really. Or logic. In any case it is all most frightfully tiresome, dangerous and antisocial. Absolutely no fun at all. What do you think of our little journal?’ He picked up the crumpled sheet and read the headline aloud.’ “Dakota Passengers Massacred”. Perfectly frightful
. Kill anything white that moves. And that old goat with a spinning wheel in India bleating, “Quit India”! Does he even dare to think what they’ll all do to each other if we do? The world is mad.’

  ‘And in the middle of it all,’ said Rooke wryly, ‘what’s going to happen to me?’

  Nettles looked at him thoughtfully over his half-raised glass.

  ‘What indeed?’ he sighed.

  ‘I was Air Photographic, you know …’

  ‘I do, I do … it’s all here,’ he patted the little black case at his side, ‘and Pullen told me briefly but, you know’—he spread one elegant hand wide in a helpless gesture—‘no air force … no planes … nothing for you here. I’m rather afraid to tell you but you’re a replacement, I believe.’

  ‘Replacement? For what?’

  Nettles uncrossed his legs slowly. ‘The term is better applied as “for whom”. We’ve had a terrific amount of casualties, you know, in the battalions … Company Commanders. Especially down at Pangpang where the fighting has been quite horrid. I rather think you’ll go trotting off down there to help out, so to speak. To 14 Brigade.’

  Rooke sat white with shock.

  ‘But I’m not Infantry … Intelligence … I don’t know anything about Field Work … I’ve never fired a shot in anger in my whole career. I wouldn’t know what the hell to do and especially with Indian Troops, I can’t speak Urdu even … I mean, for God’s sake, it’s impossible!’

  Nettles finished his drink slowly and placed his glass on the table signalling for a refill over Rooke’s head.

  ‘The British Army,’ he said gently, ‘has been founded and staffed by impossibilities; you will be no exception.’ And seeing Rooke’s ashen face, he added, ‘I’m awfully sorry, really, not my decision, you and the other chap were sent down here as replacements … six more of you expected next week. It’s not my fault! One chap copped it and the other is due for Repat in a week unless he cops it too. I mean, really … that’s how it goes. The fact is that you are surplus and they need an extra body.’ He stopped suddenly and placed his hand to his mouth. ‘I’m most awfully sorry. That was frightfully bad taste. I do apologize.’

  Rooke shrugged resignedly and took his glass. ‘I think … I’d better get pissed.’

  ‘Not too pissed … it’s early yet,’ said Nettles. ‘I’ll take you up to the Mess shortly, there’s a spare room for you, and you can have a glorious glass of real champagne. Looted by courtesy of the Japanese ex-Commander. What did you do before the war, University I expect?’

  ‘No. Actor.’

  ‘Oh! Really? What fun … were you good?’

  ‘Goodish … only had a couple of years at it before this job.’

  ‘What did you do? “Who’s for tennis” and the handsome juvenile in boots and breeches, that sort of thing?’

  ‘And Shaw … Wilde … Shakespeare too. Rather catholic really. Repertory stuff.’

  ‘Romeo and Dorian Gray!’ Nettles laughed happily, rubbing his long nose with a long finger.

  ‘Mercutio and Ernest actually.’

  ‘I don’t suppose that you’ll believe me, or perhaps you will alas, but I was in Publishing. Educational books. Anything from Virgil and Herodotus to that boasting bore Catullus: rather good at my Latin and Greek, stuffed into a cellar off Russell Square breathing the dust of ancient wisdom, burrowing about in a sea of quite dire translations and the Chairman’s old galoshes. Too frightful. I was damned glad that I joined up when I did.’

  He paused and looked musingly into the dim, table-scattered room. ‘More scope too,’ he said, and smiled.

  ‘Scope for what? I mean exactly … languages, promotion, you mean?’

  Nettles drained his glass and clinked the melting ice cubes. He shook his head, still smiling to himself. ‘No. Not particularly. Let’s just say … umm … this and that, shall we? I say … finish that off and we’ll get you up to the Mess, I expect you’d like a shower and a change, wouldn’t you?’ He got up and took his case and cap and walked across to the Bar to sign his chit. Rooke collected his hold-all and cap and went over to the doors thoughtfully. Replacement. Company Commander. Christ almighty! He felt slightly drunk on two pints of Tiger beer. It had, he considered calmly, been a bitch of a morning. Surplus was perhaps the worst part of it all. He shrugged to himself and turned to watch Nettles cross the room towards him with his light, neat steps.

  ‘Thanks for the beer,’ he said. ‘I’m afraid I left you to deal with them … Pullen did the other. I’m becoming a scrounger already.’

  Nettles patted him kindly on the shoulder. ‘Absolutely not. You’re the guest today. It gives us great pleasure, I can assure you. I say: those shorts of yours,’ he tucked his little black case tightly under his arm, ‘… not exactly Regulation, are they? At a guess I would say they were the shortest shorts in the Division!’ He laughed lightly to indicate that there was no overt criticism in his remark. Rooke looked down at himself worriedly. ‘Oh God. Too short? Can’t stand those frightful bloomers flapping about … so hot. Tailor in Calcutta.’

  ‘Quite right too.’ Nettles settled his cap firmly on neatly clipped auburn curls. ‘You can always tell the real Regular by his shorts, sort of khaki kilts, too awful. I imagine the Old Man will have a bit of a fit, our General … he’s fearfully Regular Army, or likes to think so. Actually up from the Ranks, transferred with his commission to the Indian Army, now very ’Pindi and Poona, all that sort of nonsense: desperate to be part of the Establishment but hasn’t quite managed to deal with the vowel sounds yet. He’ll make some comment, you wait and see … bound to. But after all,’ he pushed his crimson lanyard deeper into his left breast pocket, ‘you were an actor once, and everybody expects actors to be vain and, I must confess, if pressed, that you have every excuse.’

  Rooke followed him out into the bright sunlight. ‘I’ll change as soon as we get to wherever we’re going,’ he said.

  Nettles ran lightly down the steps, ‘You’ll want a cool shower, I’m sure … but don’t worry too much; after all, I don’t suppose you’ll be with us for all that long, the way things stand, at least. This all your gear?’

  The city lay, a compact grid-iron, in the plain halfway between the sea and the mountains. No curves, no crescents: each street at right angles to the other and the whole neat agglomeration quartered by two wide thoroughfares, Wilhelmina Boulevard running north and south, and Nassau Boulevard, running east and west. These intersected in the centre of the city at Rembrandt Plein, a vast, ruined, scabby grass square in the middle of which stood a bronze shell-pocked statue of the painter himself, beret and palette, shoulders mantled with the droppings of gulls and pigeons. The streets were wide, tree-shaded, running into distant vistas of brilliant sky or, to the south, the vague blur of mountains. Villas, shops, banks, small stalls; here and there a church with tin or tiled spire; a not unpleasing mixture of Dutch-Colonial-Gothic and Folkestone-Edwardian. As they went swiftly round the Plein heading west to Nassau Boulevard, Rooke was mildly surprised to see an Opera House proud with crumbling portico and four Doric pillars from which the plaster had fallen long ago revealing bright pink bricks. One entire wall of the building was covered with a giant, crudely painted sign. A clenched fist holding a ripple-bladed dagger, drops of blood spilling, the legend Merdeka! in high letters above. Just as Pullen had said. He saw the sign constantly as they drove; on walls, the sides of gutted villas, a burned-out bus, the shutters of abandoned shops.

  Away from the city centre the traffic grew less, the gardens larger, the villas grander and the feeling of desolation greater and greater. Here there was no traffic, a ’cycle or two, once a lone rickshaw. Here the lawns and hedges had reverted to jungle: weeds sprung luxuriantly from cracked pavements, trusses of rampant Dorothy Perkins tumbled, tossing blobs of cheap toothpaste—pink among the neglected casuarinas and palms; gates hung ajar, rusting on broken hinges, roofs lacked tiles, windows were either shuttered or gazed blankly through their fringes of vine and bougainvillaea. Lo
oted, empty for the most part, secret and silent in their wilderness gardens. Kites wheeled and swooped in the still blue morning sky.

  Rooke’s beers had lost their impact and lay sour in his gut. His mouth was stale, he was uncomfortable hunched in his seat and wanted to pee. He cursed himself for not having thought of it before he left the Club. The cloak of depression which Nettles had folded about him smothered any real attempt at conversation. Glumly he sat, arms folded, legs braced against the metal of the jeep and the strain of his bladder.

  ‘Frightfully quiet,’ said Nettles suddenly. ‘You feeling all right?’

  ‘Yes, fine. I want to pee, actually.’

  ‘Well, hop out here in the gardens, no one will see you.’

  ‘No, I’ll hang on. Is it much further?’

  ‘Up the road a bit, not far. Tell me,’ he added, to change the topic, ‘Public School, weren’t you? Wellington?’

  ‘Wilmington … not quite the same.’

  ‘Still, not bad. Odd for an actor, isn’t it?’

  ‘No … we’re not all from the lower orders.’

  ‘Sorry. How rude. And an ADC too, I gather. From your papers.’

  ‘ ’41 to ’43. Brigadier Wade, North Grampians. Quite irregular, I’m afraid.’

  ‘Ah! Another Brigadier with ideas above his station, what? Not at all unusual. Did you enjoy it?’

  ‘Yes. Very much. Why?’

  ‘Oh, no reason. I was just thinking, that’s all. Funny job. Splendid, I imagine, for an actor however … quite at home. Our ADC, Tim Roberts, is dreadfully dull. Very nice, very efficient too, I know … but, you know what I mean? Dull. No fun, no sort of …’ he spread his long fingers flat across the steering wheel, ‘no kind of jollity. He goes on Repatriation next month, lucky devil … I say! Do cheer up! You look most frightfully depressed, you know.’