Dead in the Dog (11 page)

That night, in the twilight before dinner, Peter Bright sat morosely in his room in the Mess, drinking a small whisky from his toothglass. He was no secret alcoholic, but kept a bottle of Black Label in his cupboard for the occasions when he preferred his own company to that of the anteroom across the way. Tonight he was in one of his antisocial moods and slumped in his unlovely easy chair after writing his monthly duty letter to his father, a family doctor in Sussex. His mother had died some years ago and he faithfully kept in touch with the old man, though tonight his letter was not up to his usual cheerful standard.

With the whisky getting warm in his hand, he glowered at the wall of the spartan room, his eyes fixed on a garish calendar supplied by the Chinese garage that serviced his MG, though the image of the simpering girl in a cheongsam failed to reach his brain. He was thinking of Diane Robertson and of all the unspeakable things he would like to do to that bastard James to get him out of her life.

As he had done at intervals for the past couple of months, he fantasized about ways of disposing of the husband, from poison to running him down with his car. He had fallen for the blonde very heavily indeed and though their flirting had progressed to energetic consummation, Diane had so far refused to consider a divorce. In fact, she seemed to have cooled off appreciably these past few weeks and the little red devil of jealousy that sat on his shoulder kept whispering that she had found someone else – possibly in the plural.

Peter threw down the rest of the spirit and unusually for him, got up to pour another. As he walked to the wall cupboard, few of his patients would have recognized their senior surgeon. Usually his major's uniform was immaculate, with razor-edged creases down the sleeves and legs of his smartly tailored ‘jungle greens'. Tonight, after his shower at the end of the block, he had wrapped a cotton sarong around his waist, a red and white chequered tube that looked like a kitchen tablecloth. With bare chest and feet, he looked like some desert-island castaway, but the waved blond hair and the classical features made him look more like a Hollywood Tarzan than Robinson Crusoe.

He took his drink over to the desk and sat on a hard chair to drum his fingers restlessly on his writing pad. In two months' time, his three-year tour in the Far East would be over and he had been promised a posting to the Royal Army Medical College at Millbank. After ten years in the army and having endured the first half of this tour in Korea, it was likely that after London, he would be promoted to lieutenant colonel and either given a senior post in the surgical hierarchy or even offered command of a hospital. But two months from now, he would be five thousand miles from Diane and all chance of securing the beautiful and passionate woman for a wife would be lost for ever. He deliberately thrust away any niggling doubt that she might no longer want him for a husband and concentrated on what action he could take.

Throwing down the last of the scotch, he made his decision.

Something drastic must be done or he might regret it for the rest of his life.

As the surgeon was mentally beating his bare breast and cudgelling his brains in the Officers' Mess, his surgical teammate, anaesthetist David Meredith, was sitting in the stifling heat of a cinema in the garrison compound across the fence from the hospital. He was in the inflatable auditorium of the AKC – Army Kinematographic Corporation – which looked like the top half of a silver barrage balloon tethered to the ground.

With no air conditioning, the fug from a hundred sweating bodies, most of them smoking their free-issue ciggies, was almost unbearable, but his discomfort was balanced by the fact that he was holding hands with Lena Franklin in the near darkness. The QA sister had wanted to come to see this particular film, rather than go down to Ipoh where there was one air-conditioned picture house. The attractions of Humphrey Bogart in
Beat the Devil
outweighed the near-asphyxia of the AKC and the dark-haired Lena was gazing with rapt attention at the screen where ‘Bogie' was romantically chatting up Gina Lollobrigida, to whom Lena bore more than a passing resemblance. In fact, her absorption in the film worsened David's gnawing concerns about her feelings towards him, as although his moist palm was enfolding her fingers, she made no effort to respond, not even an occasional squeeze. The gasman was almost oblivious of the flickering screen and of the scratchy soundtrack that could just be heard above the chugging of the air-pump that kept the bulbous structure inflated. His mind was on Lena's fading interest in him, at a time when he was becoming so infatuated with her that he had been getting ready to pop the big-M question to her. A month ago, they had managed a weekend away at a beach hotel in Penang and two nights of passion had convinced him that come hell or high water, she must be his soulmate for the rest of his life. Then the rot seemed to set in and though she was still willing to go out with him now and then, he felt that something had changed. Her eyes roved elsewhere when they were together and his hyper-acute senses, inflamed by jealousy and injured pride, told him that Jimmy-bloody-Robertson was behind it. Ten days ago, he had been desperate enough to follow her in his car, when he saw her setting off in a taxi from the Sisters' Mess. She had been dropped at the further end of Tanah Timah's main street where she made a show of inspecting rolls of silk in one of the Chinese fabric shops. Within minutes, an armoured Buick had rolled up and whisked her off in the direction of Ipoh.

Now he sat in the gloom with her hand in his and a leaden feeling in his chest, as he felt her interest in him melting like snow in the sun. Until that bastard from Gunong Besar had decided to become predatory, life had been wonderful – now it was ashes in his mouth. As he felt the unfamiliar burn of hatred glowing inside him, he knew he must think of some way to sabotage this passing infatuation with that arrogant sod, even if it meant some really drastic action.

Tom Howden missed the dance at The Dog the following Friday evening, as he was doing his first session as Orderly Medical Officer. He should have gone on the rota earlier, but the others thoughtfully gave him a few days to settle down. The OMO spell of duty ran from nine in the morning to the same time next day, though unless there was some emergency, there was little to be done during the daytime, as the regular staff coped with any problems. He spent the day in his laboratory, where he now had had a full week to get the hang of the routine.

After being nothing more than a junior to consultants and registrars on Tyneside, he revelled in his new-found independence. None of the other doctors here knew anything about laboratory practice and he was left to carry on more or less as he wished. True, there were set procedures laid out by the Deputy Assistant Director of Pathology down in BMH Alexandra in Singapore, but that was four hundred miles away and the DADP was said to come up to inspect only once in a blue moon. Tom's real bosses were his four technicians, who knew the business backwards and tactfully allowed their captain to think he was in charge, while they carried on blithely as they had done for the last month, since his predecessor had gone RHE.

There was Sergeant Derek Oates, a smart young Regular soldier with a clipped military moustache, who was a well-qualified medical laboratory technician. The other Brit was Lance Corporal Lewis Cropper, another Regular who had been a full corporal, but had been busted back to private when in Germany and had only recently climbed back to one-stripe. He was an engaging, but rather dodgy character, decided Tom – the type of Cockney from whom you would never buy a used car! He was thin and scraggy, with a lock of mousy hair that fell over his forehead and a uniform that fitted him even worse than most of his comrades. However, he was an excellent worker and prepared the best microscope sections of tissue that Tom had ever seen.

The other two technicians were locally enlisted Malayan Other Ranks – ‘MORs', as they were known, both having been trained by the Army in the FARELF lab down in Singapore. It was a close little family and after this first week, Tom was perfectly happy and enjoyed every minute of his working day. He had a small room off the main laboratory, with a desk and a good microscope, a shelf of books and an oscillating fan – what more could a man want, he asked himself! The window looked out towards the main corridor, so he could watch the comings and goings of the whole hospital – within a few days, he could recognize every QA by their ankles without having to look up at the face under the crisp white headdress.

It was also an early-warning system in case the CO took a fancy to call, other than on the official weekly inspection of the whole hospital, which O'Neill did at ten o'clock every Tuesday morning. Then there was much cleaning and polishing to be done before the procession arrived, protocol demanding that each member entered in strict pecking order. First the RSM would clump in to call the staff to attention, his gleaming nailed boots rattling on the concrete floor. The technicians would stand rigidly alongside their benches, as behind the RSM came the Commanding Officer, stick under arm, followed by Doris Hawkins, the QA matron, blinking benignly at everyone. The Quartermaster was next, an ageing captain with a bulbous nose and a dyspeptic mouth. Though he had a strong Liverpudlian accent, he rejoiced in the name of Robert Burns. Alf Morris, the Administrative Officer, brought up the rear, carrying a clipboard, ready to note down any commands, complaints or pearls of wisdom that might fall from the colonel's lips.

The pathologist was more fortunate than some other sections of the hospital, as the inspection of the laboratory was relatively perfunctory. Tom wondered if this was because O'Neill, who had been a public health specialist, knew absolutely nothing about pathology – or whether he was afraid of catching something nasty if he rubbed his fingers on the furniture and fittings to look for dirt. The first inspection lasted about two minutes, with a rapid perambulation around the central bench and a quick look into Tom's office and the little histology lab where Cropper cut his sections and made the tea. With a few grunts and throat-clearings, the CO ended by demanding to know if Tom had any problems. Then with a curt nod, O'Neill left the new pathologist to breathe a sigh of relief as he saw the cavalcade leave and march into the dispensary opposite to persecute the staff sergeant who ran the pharmacy.

This was now the routine of his new life and he enjoyed every minute of it, with just an occasional pang of homesickness for faraway Tyneside.

The past week had been enlivened by Christmas, treating Tom to another bizarre experience, seeing hospital staff in tropical kit going around with red Santa Claus caps – and in the children's part of the Families Ward, even a few with cotton-wool whiskers. In the sweltering heat, wards were hung with paper chains and cardboard reindeers. Carols and Christmas pop songs blared out from record players in the barrack rooms and messes. Tom volunteered to help with the decorations in Lynette's ward and even joined the carol singers who paraded the corridor on Christmas Eve, belting out ‘Good King Wenceslas' in competition with the cicadas and bullfrogs.

A few days after New Year was celebrated, the OMO rota again brought Tom on Friday duty. After dinner that evening, Tom sat in the deserted Mess, quite glad of some peace following a busy day. Almost all the others had gone to The Dog, though Peter Bright had left a note to say that he was in the NAAFI library in the garrison, in case there were any major surgical emergencies that couldn't be handled by Eddie Rosen. As well as the OMO, there was always a rota for a surgeon and anaesthetist, which meant that like the Orderly Officer, they had to remain sober for the night. There was another ‘gasman' apart from David Meredith, a Regular captain who lived in married quarters and rarely came to the Mess.

The pathologist lolled in one of the easy chairs, reading yesterday's
Straits Times
, which carried all the British sports news on its back pages, making home seem less far away. As he relaxed, Number One brought him a pint glass of Frazer and Neave's grapefruit soda, a satisfying drink for those temporarily on the wagon. He lay back contentedly to catch up with the recent fortunes of Newcastle United.

When he finally put the paper aside, Tom just sat quietly, listening to the endless chirrup of the crickets outside the open doors and the gentle whirr of the fans overhead. The strangeness of being dumped halfway across the world within a few weeks of leaving a cold, wet England was beginning to fade, though he still had fits of unreality about the whole business. He had rarely before been more than fifty miles from his native Tyneside. During the worst blitzes of the war, his parents had evacuated him to an aunt's farm in rural Northumberland, but apart from rugby trips and some childhood holidays to Scarborough or Whitby, he had been very much a home bird. Even as a medical student in Newcastle, he had stayed in Gateshead, living in the semi-detached with his parents and younger brother. His father was a draughtsman in the huge Swan Hunter shipyard across the Tyne in Wallsend and Mum was a dedicated housewife.

Tom's life had been happy and uneventful until now, the only major excitement being his getting a scholarship grant from the grammar school to go to university, as the family certainly could not have afforded it themselves. His parents were slightly overawed by having a doctor in the house, after generations of unambitious industrial workers in their family. When on his embarkation leave, he dressed up for them in his uniform with his three new pips on each shoulder, they stared at him as if he was a stranger from another planet, unable to recognize their ‘wee Tommy' in this alien being.

Some of this went through his head as he sat alone in the cloying heat of a Malayan night. He had already written home a dozen times and this little attack of nostalgia decided him to start another epistle later that evening. He had a pack of flimsy airmail envelopes in his room, all with strips of greaseproof paper under the flaps to stop them sealing themselves up spontaneously in the humidity. It was little things like that which brought home to him how far away from home he was – along with the egg-cup full of anti-malaria tablets on the breakfast table each morning and the free issue of a tin of anti-foot-rot powder. There was also a free issue of fifty cigarettes each week, but as he had given up smoking at the age of twelve, he gave them to Ismail, the young Malay mess boy who made his bed, cleaned his room and polished his shoes.