Out of Bounds! It was one of those childish phrases that made the Army seem like public school. With their arbitrary rules and the cunning mixture of moral impositions and brute force which const.i.tuted authority, the two inst.i.tutions were much alike: although there was marginally more liberty and less swearing in the Army.

I told the Redcaps that I had not realized I was out of bounds. They were openly contemptuous and disbelieving -that was their profession. They demanded to look at Hanuman. I unrolled the poster and let them sneer at it. Even when I said it had only cost me ten annas, they remained disdainful.

My salvation was that I was fresh to India. My knees weren't brown. I had got no service in. Otherwise my feet would not have touched. They would have had my guts for garters. They had it in for me now. If they ever found me in the brothel area again, I would never know what hit me. I'd be up the creek without a paddle.

After these admonitions, to which I responded by standing mere and more rigidly to attention, the MPs drove me through town and back to the barrack gate. They studied me in silent commiseration as I climbed out and made my way back past the guardroom towards 'A' Block.

The b.a.s.t.a.r.ds! Back in the barrack-room, I was too bra.s.sed off to speak to anyone, or to do anything more than climb into bed and get my head under my mosquito net. We were off to Burma soon - precious little chance we would have of getting a woman there. We should get ourselves f.u.c.king killed and that was all. What right did the Army have to keep me away from that lovely little bibi on the stairs?

It was impossible not to conjure up her face, looking like voluptuousness itself between the bars. Under the blankets, my d.a.m.ned thing rose, the quick-couraged MP-defier. When I clutched its st.u.r.dy shaft and tried to think what it would be like to push it up the imagined v.u.l.v.a of that half-imaginary girl, the necessity for a quick rub overcame me. Each stroke was to be the last but, Christ, what else was there in life? Although I grudged the old five-fingered widow her easy task, there was a certain relief in feeling the blobs of s.p.u.n.k cut a swathe over chest and stomach.

In those days, it was easier to come than think.

Next morning before parade, I stuck the crumpled picture of the monkey G.o.d on the wall beside the bed, next to the pin-ups of Ida Lupino and Jinx Falkenberg.

'You know. Stubby, mate, I'm sure the old sweats as knows India are dead right about what they say about women, like,' Geordie said after parade, waving his hands and his Adam's apple in distress at having to say something to me I might not like.

'What do they say, Geordie?' He had taken care to get me on one side to speak. Word that the MPs had brought me home had evidently seeped through to him.

'Well, you know same as I do-that you can get into trouble, like, if you sort of go with a pusher, like ...'

'Come on, Geordie, you were telling us down in the bazaar that you saw a bit of crumpet you fancied.'

'Oh, I know, but I didn't really mean that. I mean, I wouldn't really ... I mean, we do seem to have everything in barracks as we could want, don't us, like? I mean, quite apart from all the parading and training. They say there's two games of football a week. Well, two or three, I think the notice said. We can work up a sweat, you know, me on inside right and you like on the wing, just like at Aldershot . . .'

'Stire, and then guard-duty at night. Oh, it's a full life okay, a great life if you don't weaken. You aren't trying to tell me I ought to keep myself morally pure, are you?'

'No, no, it's hard to explain. You know I don't want to get at you, but you are my mate, after all, Stubby. I just mean that even without pushers around, it's a pretty full life ...'

Perhaps he ran out of words. Perhaps he saw the look on my face.

'You think I'm a bit of a c.u.n.t, Stubby, don't you? Be honest now!'

' 'Course I don't, mucker! ...'

Poor old Geordie! There was a lot in what he said. Our regimented life was designed to be sufficient in itself. And he hadn't even mentioned our two-day exercises, when we ran and crawled round Central Provinces as we once had round Arras and Somerset ...

This rigorous existence was not enough. Every situation generates its legends, and our legend was Burma. We were attuned to every word about it, to every whisper that trickled through, just as we were to messages from that other distant country of s.e.xuality.

Burma was hundreds of miles away from Kanchapur. Mandalay was as distant from us as Toronto from Miami or London from Kiev, and the route there lay across mountain chains and enormous rivers; but our ears were turned in that direction. At this time, late in 1943, the j.a.panese occupied almost all of Burma and were moving towards a.s.sam. They still had the legend of invincibility round them, which the Chindits were only just denting. They were the fearsome yellow tribes who survived in jungles where n.o.body else could.

Kanchapur had its share of broken-down old men (as they seemed then - I suppose they would be in their mid-thirties) who had come through operations with Wingate, or through 6 Brigade's attack on Akyab earlier in the year. From these men, stories of terror came.

'You don't want to listen to them,' Charley c.o.x said. 'Now Mountbatten's arrived, things are going to be different out here. The British have never been permanently beaten yet. That's how we won our Empire.

Ain't that right, Dusty?'

Miller, who was the platoon funny man, a.s.sumed a blase officer's voice to say, 'You're bally right, Lance-Corporal c.o.x. We'll give these little yellow bath-tubs what for, eh, what?'

'There's more men out here now to fight the j.a.ps, you see,' Charley explained.

The Fourteenth Army - in which the Mendips found themselves - was gathering strength and preparing to knock the j.a.ps right out of Burma. But a feeling of misgiving persisted. The Russians were beating back the 'Germans on the Eastern Front, the Americans were beating back the j.a.ps in the Pacific, our own Eighth Army were pushing up Italy -Nelson was with them - and the Italians had chucked it in and come in on our side. The war in Europe looked as if it would be over one day. The war in South-East Asia had hardly begun.

Between the route marches, the football games, the evenings in the canteen, were s.p.a.ces with which the Army could not cope. In those intervals, whispers of combined operations and landings on the h.e.l.lish Burmese coast worked in us like yeast.

The other ferment I was able to deal with personally.

It happened that, two or three days after the MPs ran me back to barracks, No. 2 Platoon was on riot exercise. As usual, there were rice famines in parts of India, and rioting against the British in some of the big cities, Indore included. Riot exercise was a matter of marching about in Kanchapur, not letting the Wogs into the main street, and so on. We were equipped with pick helves for the purpose.

In the crowd, I saw the quiet young man who had led me to the girl. He was clutching a book under his arm. Either he did not see me or did not recognize me, but I took the sight of him as a guarantee that the girl.- possibly his sister - was still available. For the rest of the day I could not stop thinking of her. Oh, she was beautiful! It was so much more than a f.u.c.k I wanted! To pour my heart out - my ambitions - my dreams ... and to hear the dreams of that exotic creature!

I was determined to have it in before we left Kanchapur. Neither MPs nor Geordie should stop me.

That evening, I had a shower, changed into a freshly dhobied suit of jungle greens, and buzzed off down to the bazaar on my own. The sky was purple, with bars of gold at the horizon, and the fruit-bats were stirring in the tallest jacarandas. I headed for where the tonga-wallahs idly waited.

The quiet young man was not on duty yet. Very well, then I would find my own way to my beloved! This time I would make b.l.o.o.d.y sure the Redcaps did not nab me. I slipped behind the trees and down the side lane, and at once a different awareness overcame me. No longer was I alone and lonely, a mere debased squaddie; my life was the stuff of romance and I walked in exotic and oriental paths to meet my sumptuous love!

There again was that other crowded street, packed with people, filled with delicious smells. Now to find that little back court! And if I didn't, there must be plenty of adventure in other courts, so - so fecund was life and circ.u.mstance here. Fecund! My G.o.d, yes, the place was fecund, so fecund it was impossible to understand how everyone did not respond to it! I thought briefly, with contempt, of the constipated little GO with his silly speech about being morally pure. The sod was dead from the b.a.l.l.s up!

After only one wrong turning, I found myself standing again in the amazing courtyard, where the twisted tree died against the twisted houses. Which door? Of course, the candle and the flower! The candle burned there within its niche, the blossom was fresh: a white flower lying on its side, without a stem. In an hour, it would be withered.

I knocked on the door. I was almost s.h.i.tting myself. Perhaps n.o.body would come. A bolt clanked, the door opened slightly, A grunt within. The door closed again. I stood there. It opened again, again closed.

Could they be going to phone the cops? Phone? In this dump!

I had half made up my mind to leave when a chiko emerged from the door. It was the kid who had run on ahead last time I was here.

'You like lady, Johnny?'

'Yes - the one I saw the other night!'

'Police, Johnny. Many trouble, police come, many hit, all cry!' He went through a pantomime suggesting that the Battle of Bannockburn had been fought on his doorstep.

'The police didn't see me coming here, I promise. Where's the bibi?'

'Thirty rupee, Johnny.' He held out his hand.

'Thirty rupee - you're off your f.u.c.king head, Johnny! Look, me no pips, no stripes, just BOR, malum?

Poor man!'

'You rich man! Give thirty rupee, get lady.' He might not speak English as well as his big brother, but he was a tough little sod in argument. Eventually I knocked him down to ten rupees for a short time. Only when he had the notes in his hand did he let me through the door. When we were inside, he bolted it behind us.

Two oil lights were burning on the floor, beside an old man who sat in a ragged turban nursing a hen. A stick lay beside him. Hen and man regarded me with mistrustful eyes as the boy, with a muttered word, took up one of the lamps and moved to the stairs.

I looked about me. What a ruinous place it was! Bare as a barn! A small door at the foot of the stairs had a grill in it. I peered through the grill. I was staring into the interior of a dim-lit shop. Perhaps it was a tailor's of sorts, for bundles of fabrics stood on the stairs, impeding our progress. I looked eagerly ahead, tripping up as I climbed.

The boy led me to a door and stopped.

'Lady in here, Johnny.'

Gently - nervously - I thrust open the door. There was a woman inside, the end of her sari over her head. The lamp, another small wretched thing, stood behind her, so I could only see that she was beckoning me. I grabbed the boy's light and held it up so that its beams fell on the woman's face.

This isn't her, you little b.a.s.t.a.r.d! Who's this old bag?'

It was probably his mother. She was aged and wrinkled, her gesture of welcome a grotesque parody of seductiveness. In a fury of disappointment, I began to bellow at them both. They grew alarmed and screamed at each other.

'Okay, Johnny, I get. You no make shout, police come, many hit, all cry!' He went through a repeat of the Bannockburn ma.s.sacre.

'You'll f.u.c.king cry if you don't get the girl!'

He came back with her along the landing. She was barefoot. She looked fearfully at me, and my anger went at once. Christ, she was young!

The mete sight of her was enough to wake desire in me. How long had it been! Those liquid eyes again!

She looked absolutely terrified - indeed, they all did. The old woman was plucking at my clothes and saying something incomprehensible to me which the boy did his best to translate.

'She say, you no f.u.c.k, she suck.'

'Look, Johnny, you've got the ten rupees, thik-hai? Then p.i.s.s off, will you, f.u.c.k off!'

'No, no, no f.u.c.k off, Johnny. This girl she small hole, you understand? Small hole?' He showed me with two fingers. 'She call out, police come, many hit, all cry!' Bannockburn re-fought.

'I'm not going to hurt her!' What sort of place was this? I grabbed the girl by a fragile arm and pulled her into the room. I slammed the door, yelling to everyone to stay outside. Without any further hesitation, the girl undressed. When she was naked, she saluted me with both hands together and motioned to the bed.

'You first,' I said, gesturing. I could hardly speak. Had she got any hair on it? Her b.r.e.a.s.t.s were so small and sweet - the size of mangoes. As I pulled my uniform off, I could feel my p.r.i.c.k come-up and knock against my belly. The heat was stifling in the little room - it was no more than a cupboard; there was no window to it. I began to sweat.

Watching me, the expression of fear still on her face, the girl climbed on to the bed, which was a hard wooden platform with a rug over it. She went on hands and knees and waggled her b.u.m at me as I approached.

'Don't be filthy, you little cow,' I said tenderly, sliding my hand between her thighs. 'I don't want your a.r.s.e.' I crawled beside her.

In those days, I was so ignorant about positions that I never thought it possible to have intercourse like the animals; I mistakenly a.s.sumed that she wanted me up her back pa.s.sage. So I turned her over and looked at her face. Her cheeks were burning; perhaps she was blushing.

'You're beautiful!' I said. She did not answer, just looked helplessly at me, her lips slightly parted, her hair combed neatly back, and tied so that a tail of it hung over her shoulders, oiled jet black. I stroked her b.r.e.a.s.t.s, her hips, and a twinge of anxiety took me in case I shot my bolt before I got in. I slid my arm down into her crotch. Her little twot was burning hot and became juicy as I rubbed it.

She said something in a whisper, sighed, and made one or two little voluptuous movements, as if to herself. The scent of her was delirious. I smelt the coconut oil or whatever it was as she leant forward and rolled the French letter I had brought down the length of my p.r.i.c.k.

I had the image of her c.u.n.t in my mind-my fingers supplied it - and I longed to gaze on it, but l.u.s.t was spurring me on. I pressed her back and lay for a moment with my body against her. She was so small and so hot, and the whole atmosphere of her, merged with my dreams and desires -even the intense fantasy-like strangeness of our surroundings - was so overpowering that I did not actually realize that I had slid into her and that we were tangled together f.u.c.king until her slight pelvic thrusts made me aware of the fact That mere awareness - or the blazing heat of her, which ran through and through me - or the sheer delight of clasping a female body - or the joy of getting it in at last - or the blossoming of life itself into c.u.n.ts and flowers and orifices -was enough to slip me into a spurting world of o.r.g.a.s.m.

'Small hole, small hole ...' I was laughing and gasping. Small but all embracing. She seemed to be laughing too, a strange short sobbing. Oh, that had really been good, she had come as well. We were made for each other!

I lay by her until the boy banged on the door and the girl called out to him.

'You okay, Johnny?'

'Chibberao, son, I'll be out when I'm ready!'

But I got up, reluctantly pulling the sodden frenchie off my p.r.i.c.k.

I wanted to do it again.

My feelings were all soft - happiness and grat.i.tude.

The girl sat up on the bed, drawing a knee under her chin. She leaned her head back against the wall.

The slight sobbing noises still came from her, which seemed rather unnatural - she could not have been that emotionally shaken. I looked at her in the half-dark. I had already observed how deep-set were her eyes. Now a trick of the light made her eye-sockets seem almost hollow. One eye gleamed dully. She appeared to be staring stupidly up at the ceiling.

Looking away from her, I began to get dressed. Things were okay as they were. She didn't have to be mentally deficient or sick of a fever or anything. She was just tired, perhaps a bit shy, perhaps vexed with herself that she had no English. She was lovely and I was grateful to her. Shut in this foul dump, anything might happen to you - it was like somewhere out of Victorian London, I'm going now, love,' I grasped her hot little hand. Could I make some arrangement with her mother whereby I - no, she was just another bibi and I was just another f.u.c.king squaddie.

You were really so beautiful ...' Less conviction in my voice than I had intended. What a fool I would feel if Wally or the boys heard me talking to a little wh.o.r.e like that! Reality was creeping in. I was sweating like a pig.

She remained on the bed, one hand brushing her forehead. I went out, pushed by the chicko, went downstairs past the bundles, past the old fellow still sitting there with his hen, unbolted the door, stood outside in the cooler air. The white blossom by the candle had not withered.

No Redcaps. I chose my way back into bounds again carefully; but for the rest of the evening I avoided my muckers. There was nothing to say to them.

'You never want to listen to rumours. You want to live on a day-to-day basis.' So said Bamber, and said it frequently. 'That's how you gets through time in jug, see - you never listens to rumours and you lives on a day-to-day basis.'

Old Bamber spoke true. That was how we had lived at school; that was how I lived now. Day followed day, at Kanchapur as elsewhere. Never look ahead. Why do so? The lists were circulating; somebody else had command over what happened to you tomorrow.

Such narrowing down of perspectives did not stop rumours circulating. Few of us were as impervious to them as Bamber, for they represented our fears and anxieties in almost concrete form.

'Do you think that 8 Brigade could be posted to Persia next week?' Carter the Farter and I asked Bamber and Chalkie White, the other old sweat of 2 Platoon.

' Anything's possible in this man's army,' Chalkie said. 'If we was to be posted to the top of Everest, I wouldn't be surprised.'

'No, honest, Chalkie!'

'You young lads!' Bamber exclaimed in his deep and melancholy voice. 'You run around after rumours like a lot of young tarts! You never want to listen to rumours. We'll go where we are sent when they want to send us, and there ain't nothing you or me can do about it.'

Wise but unsatisfying. The word on Persia sprang up before morning parade, when we were cleaning rifles; by dinner-time, details were emerging. We were going to join up with Russian troops by the Caspian Sea and help them wipe out the rest of the Wehrmacht.

'Persia can't be worse than this f.u.c.king place, can it?'

'Roll on the boat that takes me home!'

'Finest sight in the Far East - Bombay from the back end of a boat!'

'Where is f.u.c.king Persia, any road?'

Since n.o.body in the squad was dead certain exactly where Persia was, it was hard to determine whether this news represented a promise of improvement in our condition. But Captain Gore-Blakeley was seen talking gravely to Sergeant Charley Meadows, which suggested that something was brewing. Certainly Persia sounded better than Akyab or Ramree Island, on the dreaded Arakan coast of Burma, looking on to the Bay of Bengal, the part of the world on which previous rumours had centred.

Then, in another day or two, Gore-Blakeley was seen talking to Charley Meadows again, and the Arakan was reinstated as Number/ One destination. Persia vanished. Combined Ops, some said.

Combined Ops, with 2 Div leading the invasion of Burma from the sea. Before Christmas!