King Rat Read online

  The guard jerked the bottle out of his hands and sniffed it suspiciously. Then he poured some of the water onto the floor and shoved the bottle back at Peter Marlowe and cursed him again and pointed at the men on parade below.

  Peter Marlowe bowed, weak with relief, and ran to join his group in line.

  “Where the hell have you been, Peter?” Spence asked, dysentery pain adding to his anxiety.

  “Never mind, I’m here.” Now that Peter Marlowe had his water bottle he was giddy. “Come on, Spence, get the bods lined up,” he said, needling him.

  “Go to hell. Come on, you chaps, get into line.” Spence counted the men and then said, “Where’s Bones?”

  “In hospital,” Ewart said. “Went just after breakfast. I took him myself.”

  “Why the hell didn’t you tell me before?”

  “I’ve been working in the gardens all day, for Christ sake! Pick on someone else!”

  “Keep your blasted shirt on!”

  But Peter Marlowe wasn’t listening to the curses and chatter and rumors. He hoped that the colonel and Mac had their water bottles too.

  When his group was accounted for, Captain Spence walked along the road to Lieutenant Colonel Sellars, who was in nominal charge of four huts, and saluted. “Sixty-four, all correct, sir. Nineteen here, twenty-three in hospital, twenty-two on work parties.”

  “All right, Spence.”

  And as soon as Sellars had all the numbers from his four huts, he totaled them and took them up the line to Colonel Smedly-Taylor, who was responsible for ten huts. Then Smedly-Taylor took them up the line. Then the next officer took them up the line, and this procedure was repeated throughout the camp, inside and outside the jail, until totals were given to the Camp Commandant. The Camp Commandant added the figures of men inside the camp to the number of men in hospital and the number of men on work parties, and then he passed the totals over to Captain Yoshima, the Japanese interpreter. Yoshima cursed the Camp Commandant because the total was one short.

  There was an aching hour of panic until the missing body was found in the cemetery. Colonel Dr. Rofer, RAMS, cursed his assistant, Colonel Dr. Kennedy, who tried to explain that it was difficult to keep a tally to the instant, and Colonel Rofer cursed him anyway and said that that was his job. Then Rofer apologetically went to the Camp Commandant, who cursed his inefficiency, and then the Camp Commandant went to Yoshima and tried to explain politely that the body had been found but it was difficult to keep numbers accurate to the second. And Yoshima cursed the Camp Commandant for inefficiency and told him that he was responsible—if he couldn’t keep a simple number perhaps it was about time another officer took charge of the camp.

  While the anger sped up and down the line, Korean guards were searching the huts, particularly the officers’ huts. Here would be the radio they sought. The link, the hope of the men. They wanted to find the radio as they had found the one five months ago. But the guards sweltered as the men on parade sweltered, and their search was perfunctory.

  The men sweated and cursed. A few fainted. The dysenteric streamed to the latrines. Those who were very sick squatted where they were or lay where they were and let the pain swirl and consummate. The fit did not notice the stench. The stench was normal and the stream was normal and the waiting was normal.

  After three hours the search was completed. The men were dismissed. They swarmed for their huts and the shade, or lay on their beds gasping, or went to the showers and waited and fumed until the water cooled the ache from their heads.

  Peter Marlowe walked out of the shower. He wrapped his sarong around his waist and went to the concrete bungalow of his friends, his unit.

  “Puki ’mahlu!” Mac grinned. Major McCoy was a tough little Scot who carried himself neatly erect. Twenty-five years in the Malayan jungles had etched his face deeply—that and hard liquor and hard playing and bouts of fever.

  “’Mahlu senderis,” Peter Marlowe said, squatting happily. The Malay obscenity always delighted him. It had no absolute translation into English, though “puki” was a four-letter part of a woman and “’mahlu” meant “ashamed.”

  “Can’t you bastards speak the King’s English for once?” Colonel Larkin said. He was lying on his mattress, which was on the floor. Larkin was short of breath from the heat and his head ached with the aftermath of malaria.

  Mac winked at Peter Marlowe. “We keep explaining and nothing can get through the thickness of his head. There’s nae hope for the colonel!”

  “Too right, cobber,” Peter Marlowe said, aping Larkin’s Australian accent.

  “Why the hell I ever got in with you two,” Larkin groaned wearily, “I’ll never know.”

  Mac grinned. “Because he’s lazy, eh, Peter? You and I do all the work, eh? An’ he sits and pretends to be bedridden—just because he’s a wee touch of malaria.”

  “Puki ’mahlu. And get me some water, Marlowe!”

  “Yes sir, Colonel, sir!” He gave Larkin his water bottle. When Larkin saw it he smiled through his pain.

  “All right, Peter boy?” he asked quietly.

  “Yes. My God, I was in a bit of a panic for a time.”

  “Mac and me both.”

  Larkin sipped the water and carefully handed the water bottle back.

  “All right, Colonel?” Peter Marlowe was perturbed by Larkin’s color.

  “My bloody oath,” Larkin said. “Nothing a bottle of beer couldn’t cure. Be all right tomorrow.”

  Peter Marlowe nodded. “At least you’re over the fever,” he said. Then he took out the pack of Kooas with studied negligence.

  “My God,” said Mac and Larkin in one breath.

  Peter Marlowe broke the pack and gave them each a cigarette. “Present from Father Christmas!”

  “Where the hell you get them, Peter?”

  “Wait till we’ve smoked them a bitty,” Mac said sourly, “before we hear the bad news. He’s probably sold our beds or something.”

  Peter Marlowe told them about the King and about Grey. They listened with growing astonishment. He told them about the tobacco-curing process and they listened silently until he mentioned the percentages.

  “Sixty-forty!” exploded Mac delightedly. “Sixty-forty, oh my God!”

  “Yes,” said Peter Marlowe, misreading Mac. “Imagine that! Anyway, I just showed him how to do it. He seemed surprised when I wouldn’t take anything in return.”

  “You gave the process away?” Mac was appalled.

  “Of course. Anything wrong, Mac?”

  “Why?”

  “Well, I couldn’t go into business. Marlowes aren’t tradesmen,” Peter Marlowe said, as though talking to a child. “It’s just not done, old boy.”

  “My God, you get a wonderful opportunity to make some money and you turn it down with a big fat sneer. I suppose you know that with the King behind the deal, you could have made enough to buy double rations from now until doomsday. Why the hell didn’t you keep your mouth shut and tell me and let me make—”

  “What are you talking about, Mac?” Larkin interrupted sharply. “The boy did all right, and it would have been bad for him to go into business with the King.”

  “But—”

  “But nothing,” Larkin said.

  Mac simmered down immediately, hating himself for his outburst. He forced a nervous laugh. “Just teasing, Peter.”

  “Are you sure, Mac? My God,” said Peter Marlowe unhappily. “Have I been a fool or something? I wouldn’t want to let the side down.”

  “Nay, laddie, it was just my way of joking. Go on, tell us what else happened.”

  Peter Marlowe told them what had happened and all the time he wondered if he had done something wrong. Mac was his best friend, and shrewd, and never lost his temper. He told them about Sean, and when he had finished he felt better. Then he left. It was his turn to feed the chickens.

  When he had gone Mac said to Larkin, “Dammit—I’m sorry. I’d no cause to fly off the handle like that.”

 
“Don’t blame you, cobber. He’s got his head in the sky. That boy’s got some strange ideas. But you never can tell. Maybe the King’ll have his uses yet.”

  “Ay,” said Mac thoughtfully.

  Peter Marlowe carried a billycan filled with scraps of leaves that had been foraged. He walked past the latrine area until he came to the runs where the camp chickens were kept.

  There were big runs and small runs, runs for one scraggy hen and a huge run for one hundred and thirty hens—those that were owned by the whole camp, whose eggs went into the common pool. The other runs were owned by units, or a commune of units who had pooled their resources. Only the King owned alone.

  Mac had built the chicken run for Peter Marlowe’s unit. In it were three hens, the wealth of the unit. Larkin had bought the hens seven months ago when the unit had sold the last thing it possessed, Larkin’s gold wedding ring. Larkin had not wanted to sell it, but Mac was sick at the time and Peter Marlowe had dysentery, and two weeks earlier the camp rations had been cut again, so Larkin sold it. But not through the King. Through one of his own men, Tiny Timsen, the Aussie trader. With the money he had bought four hens through the Chinese trader who had the camp concession from the Japanese, and along with the hens, two cans of sardines, two cans of condensed milk and a pint of orange-colored palm oil.

  The hens were good and laid their eggs on time. But one of them died and the men ate it. They saved the bones and put them into a pot with the entrails and feet and head and the green papaya that Mac had stolen on a work party and made a stew. For a whole week their bodies had felt huge and clean.

  Larkin had opened one can of the condensed milk on the day they had bought it. They each had a spoonful as long as it lasted, once a day. The condensed milk did not spoil from the heat. On the day that there was no more to spoon, they boiled the can and drank the liquor. It was very good.

  The two cans of sardines and the last can of condensed milk were the unit’s reserve. Against a very bad run of luck. The cans were kept in a cache, which was constantly guarded by one of the unit.

  Peter Marlowe looked around before he opened the lock on the chicken coop and made sure there was no one near who could see how the lock worked. He opened the door and saw two eggs.

  “All right, Nonya,” he said gently to their prize hen, “I’m not going to touch you.”

  Nonya was sitting on a nest of seven eggs. It had taken a great amount of will for the unit to let the eggs remain beneath her, but if they were lucky and got seven chicks, and if the seven chicks lived to become hens or cocks, then their herd would be vast. Then they could spare one of the hens to sit permanently on a clutch. And they would never have to fear Ward Six.

  Ward Six housed the sightless, the men blinded by beri-beri.

  Any vitamin strength was magic against this constant threat, and eggs were a vast source of strength, usually the only one available. Thus it was that the Camp Commandant begged and cursed and demanded more from the Overlord. But most of the time there was only one egg per man per week. Some of the men received an extra one every day, but by then it was usually too late.

  Thus it was that the chickens were guarded day and night by an officer guard. Thus it was that to touch a chicken belonging to the camp, or to another, was a vast crime. Once a man had been caught with a strangled hen in his hand and had been beaten to death by his captors. The authorities ruled it was justifiable homicide.

  Peter Marlowe stood at the end of his run admiring the King’s hens. There were seven, plump and giants against all others. There was a cock within the run, the pride of the camp. His name was Sunset. His sperm grew fine sons and daughters and he could be had for stud by any. At a price: choice of litter.

  Even the King’s hens were inviolate and guarded like the others.

  Peter Marlowe watched Sunset nail a hen into the dust and mount her. The hen picked herself off the dust and ran about clucking and pecked another hen for good measure. Peter Marlowe despised himself for watching. He knew it was weakness. He knew he would think of N’ai and then his loins would ache.

  He went back to the henhouse and checked to see that the lock was tight and left, holding the two eggs carefully all the way back to the bungalow.

  “Peter, mon,” Mac grinned, “this is our lucky day!”

  Peter Marlowe found the pack of Kooas and divided them into three piles. “We’ll draw for the other two.”

  “You take them, Peter,” Larkin said.

  “No, we’ll draw for them. Low card loses.”

  Mac lost and pretended sourness. “Bad cess to it,” he said.

  They carefully opened the cigarettes and put the tobacco in their boxes and mixed it with as much of the treated Java weed as they had. Then they split up their portions into four, and put the other three portions into another box and gave the boxes into Larkin’s keeping. To have so much tobacco at one time was a temptation.

  Abruptly the heavens split and the deluge began.

  Peter Marlowe took off his sarong, folded it carefully and put it on Mac’s bed.

  Larkin said thoughtfully, “Peter. Watch your step with the King. He could be dangerous.”

  “Of course. Don’t worry.” Peter Marlowe stepped out into the cloudburst. In a moment Mac and Larkin had stripped and followed him, joining the other naked men glorying in the torrent.

  Their bodies welcomed the sting, lungs breathed the cooled air, heads cleared.

  And the stench of Changi was washed away.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  After the rain the men sat enjoying the fleeting coolness, waiting until it was time to eat. Water dripped from the thatch and gushed in the storm ditches, and the dust was mud. But the sun was proud in the white blue sky.

  “God,” said Larkin gratefully, “that feels better.”

  “Ay,” said Mac as they sat on the veranda. But Mac’s mind was up country, at his rubber plantation in Kedah, far to the north. “The heat’s more than worthwhile—makes you appreciate the coolness,” he said quietly. “Like fever.”

  “Malaya’s stinking, the rain’s stinking, the heat’s stinking, malaria’s stinking, the bugs’re stinking and the flies’re stinking,” Larkin said.

  “Not in peacetime, mon.” Mac winked at Peter Marlowe. “Nor in a village, eh, Peter boy?”

  Peter Marlowe grinned. He had told them most of the things about his village. He knew that what he had not told them, Mac would know, for Mac had lived his adult life in the Orient and he loved it as much as Larkin hated it. “So I understand,” he said blandly and they all smiled.

  They did not talk much. All the stories had been told and retold, all the stories that they wanted to tell.

  So they waited patiently. When it was time, they went to their respective lines and then returned to the bungalow. They drank their soup quickly. Peter Marlowe plugged in the homemade electric hot plate and fried one egg. They put their portions of rice into the bowl and he laid the egg on the rice with a little salt and pepper. He whipped it so that the yolk and white were spread evenly throughout the rice, then divided it up and they ate it with relish.

  When they had finished, Larkin took the plates and washed them, for it was his turn, and they sat once more on the veranda to wait for the dusk roll call.

  Peter Marlowe was idly watching the men walk the street, enjoying the fullness in his stomach, when he saw Grey approaching.

  “Good evening, Colonel,” Grey said to Larkin, saluting neatly.

  “’Evening, Grey,” Larkin sighed. “Who’s it this time?” When Grey came to see him it always meant trouble.

  Grey looked down at Peter Marlowe. Larkin and Mac sensed the hostility between them.

  “Colonel Smedly-Taylor asked me to tell you, sir,” Grey said. “Two of your men were fighting. A Corporal Townsend and Private Gurble. I’ve got them in jail now.”

  “All right, Lieutenant,” Larkin said dourly. “You can release them. Tell them to report to me here, after roll call. I’ll give them what for!” He pau
sed. “You know what they were fighting about?”

  “No, sir. But I think it was two-up.” Ridiculous game, thought Grey. Put two pennies on a stick and throw the coins up into the air and bet on whether the coins come down both heads, or both tails, or one head and one tail.

  “You’re probably right,” Larkin grunted.

  “Perhaps you could outlaw the game. There’s always trouble when—”

  “Outlaw two-up?” Larkin interrupted abruptly. “If I did that, they’d think I’d gone mad. They’d pay no attention to such a ridiculous order and quite right. Gambling’s part of Aussie makeup, you ought to know that by now. Two-up gives the Diggers something to think about, and fighting once in a while isn’t bad either.” He got up and stretched the ague from his shoulders. “Gambling’s like breathing to an Aussie. Why, everyone Down Under has a shilling or two on the Golden Casket.” His voice was edged. “I like a game of two-up once in a while myself.”

  “Yes, sir,” Grey said. He had seen Larkin and other Aussie officers with their men, scrambling in the dirt, excited and foul-mouthed as any ranker. No wonder discipline was bad.

  “Tell Colonel Smedly-Taylor I’ll deal with them. My bloody oath!”

  “Pity about Marlowe’s lighter, wasn’t it, sir?” Grey said, watching Larkin intently.

  Larkin’s eyes were steady and suddenly hard. “He should’ve been more careful. Shouldn’t he?”

  “Yes, sir,” Grey said, after enough of a pause to make his point. Well, he thought, it was worth trying. To hell with Larkin and to hell with Marlowe, there’s plenty of time. He was just about to salute and leave when a fantastic thought rocked him. He controlled his excitement and said matter-of-factly, “Oh, by the way, sir. There’s a rumor going the rounds that one of the Aussies has a diamond ring.” He let the statement linger. “Do you happen to know about it?”