Bernard Knight: Dead in the Dog

‘Time to get back to the Mess, lad. Number One will give us the evil eye if we’re late for his soup.’

Tom had learned a lot in his first few hours at BMH Tanah Timah. ‘Number One’ was the title of the Officers’ Mess Steward — an emaciated Chinese of indeterminate age whose real name was Lim Ah Sok, and who ruled the inmates with a rod of iron concealed behind a deferential manner. He was assisted by his ferocious, if diminutive wife Meng, who wielded her iron rod without any pretence of deference.

The two officers climbed into Morris’s 1939 Hillman Minx and drove the mile back to the hospital. As they crossed the little bridge and came to the junction with the main road, Tom asked about drinking and driving regulations.

‘Good God, lad, the way the locals drive here, the coppers could never spot a drunk driver, unless they noticed he was doing better than the others!’

As the old car ground its way past the ghostly bulk of the old tin dredge, the major offered some further advice.

‘When you get a car — and you can’t get anywhere without one — take my tip. If you hit anyone, for God’s sake don’t stop or the locals will beat you half to death! Just drive like hell to the next village with a police station and report it.’

As Tom silently digested this new variation on the Highway Code, the Hillman turned in through the gates of BMH, the driver getting a ragged salute from the sentry, who sprang erect from his habitual slouch when he saw his Admin Officer behind the wheel.

They drew up outside the Mess and as he walked in, the new doctor had another look at the place in the light of the bare bulbs hanging under the verandahs. The left-hand hut was given over to the dining room and beyond it the lounge, rather grandly called the ‘anteroom’. The kitchen was this side of the dining room and the ablutions were at the far end. The other hut opposite contained about ten small rooms for the resident officers, their row of slatted doors reminding Tom of the changing cubicles in a swimming pool. His room was near the middle, a plywood cell with a single bed inside a sagging mosquito net, a clothes locker, a washbasin, a desk and a ‘chair, easy, officers for the use of, one’, as it was described in the inventory.

For fear of incurring the steward’s displeasure, they went straight to the dining room and sat at the long table just as Number One came in from a door at the other end, where the cooking was being done by his tiny wife. He bore a tureen of soup which he put down between the place settings, then padded out, his flip-flops slapping on the linoleum.

‘Bit thin on the ground tonight, aren’t we?’ said Alf Morris, looking across at the other pair of diners. One of them was Percy Loosemore, a major who specialized in skin and venereal diseases. He was a bony man of about forty, with sparse fair hair, a long nose and a waspish nature.

‘Some panic in theatre, apparently. The sawbones and the gasman are dealing with some MT accident — a REME squaddie who stuck his hand in the fan of a Saracen’s engine.’ He ladled some tomato soup into a bowl and slid the tureen towards Alfred.

Tom’s vocabulary of acronyms was already wide enough to gather that some accident had occurred to a private in the Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers from the Motor Transport section. What a ‘Saracen’ was, he had no idea.

The younger man was Alec Watson, a fresh-faced, gingery Scot only eighteen months out of medical school, who added his two-pennyworth to the conversation.

‘They say that an alternative cap badge for REME should be a crown surmounting a crossed screwdriver and a condom, with the motto “ If you can’t fix it, f- it !”’

Major Morris grinned, but then wagged a finger at the lad.

‘That’ll cost you a dollar in the box, laddie. You know the rules.’

Their Commanding Officer had instituted a strict no-swearing regime in the Mess, the penalty being putting a Straits dollar in the swear-box for the Red Cross. There was even a faded list of words pinned on the anteroom wall, listing the proscribed oaths. There was also a ‘no-treating’ rule, which meant that though a member could invite another to have a drink, each had to sign a chit to go on their own mess bill.

Alec Watson grinned ruefully and promised to fork out later. He was a mere GDMO — a General Duties Medical Officer — which meant that he was too junior to have a speciality and was a medical dogsbody in the hospital. He ran the Casualty Station during the day, as well as the Families Clinic, though there were relatively few of those, apart from the dependants of the Malay-enlisted Other Ranks and some Gurkhas.

They ploughed through the soup course, which came straight out of Campbell’s tins, then a tough piece of local chicken that the sardonic Percy claimed must have died of senility. The best part was the dessert, which was a fruit salad of fresh mango, papaya and pineapple, the first two being a totally new experience for Tom Howden.

After the meal, they went through the door at the other end into the anteroom, which like the dining room, was across the width of the long narrow hut, louvred doors running down each side. Most of these were open, letting in the heavy scent of the tropical night, along with the incessant twitter of the cicadas and monotonous burp of a bullfrog lurking in a nearby monsoon drain.

Number One glided in with a tray of coffee which he put on one of the low tables within the rectangle of easy chairs that filled the centre of the room. Another table at one side carried outdated magazines, the Lancet, British Medical Journal and a few copies of the airmail edition of the Daily Telegraph , as well as the Straits Times . Apart from a faded picture of the Queen on one wall, a clock and a shelf of books abandoned by former residents on the other, the room was bare. All the furniture was uniform Barrack Store issue, plain no-nonsense wood with anaemic fabric on the foam cushions.

There was a sleepy silence while they all sipped their coffee, which was blatantly Nescafe with a dash of Carnation tinned milk. When they had finished, Number One came to collect the tray and take orders for drinks. They all ordered a beer, except for Alec Watson who regretfully shook his head.

‘Sorry, I’m OMO tonight, Number One.’

Two days ago, Tom might have thought that the young Scot was confessing to being queer, but now he knew that it stood for ‘Orderly Medical Officer’, the doctor permanently on duty overnight — which explained why he was the only one in uniform.

Alec must have read his thoughts.

‘Soon be your turn, Tom! Everyone under field rank has to go on the rota. As there’s only five of us lieutenants or captains, it comes round more than once a week.’

Howden grinned. ‘Don’t know that I’ll be of much use. I haven’t seen a live patient for over a year.’ After qualifying, he had been able to delay his call-up for National Service by getting deferment for another twelve months. This allowed him to get a pathology training post in Newcastle’s Royal Victoria Infirmary and come into the Army as a junior specialist on a Short Service Regular Commission.

When the Tigers arrived, there was another long silence. Percy Loosemore, the wiry Essex man with the long, leathery face, studied the Appointments Vacant section of the Lancet , while Alfred Morris dozed in his chair with a handkerchief spread over his upturned face.

The young Scot, who to Tom looked about sixteen, sat immobile, staring out through an open door into the velvet darkness, listening to the cicadas and thinking inscrutable thoughts. The new arrival began to think that the main danger of Active Service was not being shot by terrorists, but dying of boredom. It was hardly eight thirty, but everyone seemed ready for bed. The only socializing influence in TT seemed to be The Dog and in an effort to break the ennui, Tom brought up the subject.