Brian Aldiss - A Rude Awakening

The metal tips on my boots clipped on the broken paving of the arcade. If any trouble broke out, I was immediately ready to strike or to shoot. I felt like a real good soldier, and a spot of bother would not have come amiss.

At the next side street, I paused, looking round before proceeding. It was a useful position for an ambush. Numerous yards opened up, from the entrances of which it would have been easy to snipe at an enemy and escape laughing. All was clear this evening but the area remained ill-lit. A sort of service lane led behind Bootha Street, allowing just enough width for lorries; but in these downfallen days, lorries had disappeared. At the far end of the lane, a dim discreet light shone from a doorway. I knocked and looked in.

A flimsy curtain masked the entrance. Behind it, six men sat round a table, smoking and playing cards in shorts and vests. The room had few basic features: a cobbled floor, whitewashed walls, a flight of wooden steps up to a loft against one wall. It had served as a store in pre-invasion times. Now there was nothing left to store and it had been commandeered for human habitation. Table and chairs, an ancient sofa, and silk banners on the walls effected the transformation. An old Chinese lady in blue work-overalls sat on the sofa, stitching, watching over a sleeping baby. She looked up and smiled when she saw me. This was Auntie of the round brown face. I was always glad to see her, though she never said a word.

The men at the table were also Chinese, varying in age from a slip of a youth to an old man with a straggly white beard. They were sharing a bottle of beer between them. They had an air of permanence, but in emergencies people tend to spend a lot of time sitting at tables.

Margey’s brother-in-law called to me; he was a podgy yellow man, Hwan Fat Sian.

‘Harrow, Missa Stuss, how you dis eebnin’? You rike drink one bee’ wit us?’

‘Hello, Fat. Apa khabar? I can’t stop, I want to see Margey. Is she upstairs?’

He made gestures with his hand, as if bouncing a large ball. ‘Yeh, yeh, Margey us stair, she wait you, Missa Stuss. She tink you not come.’

‘Okay.’

I trotted up the stairs to the floor above. Here the empty space had been divided into compartments by sheets of material hung on wires. There were four compartments, each just big enough to house a bed. A further flight of wooden steps, little better than a ladder, led via a hole in the ceiling to the attic. I called Margey. She answered, her face appearing radiant in the gap above, and I went up to her.

We hugged each other on the landing. I lifted her off her feet and kissed her.

From the canteen I had brought her a little present, consisting of a tin of sardines, a tin of gooseberries, a fountain pen, some dates, a bar of chocolate, a bottle of burgundy, and a packet of custard powder. Margey accepted these exotic delicacies with small screams of delight and patted my cheeks. ‘You too kind your Margey! Aei-ya, how I love Bird’s Custard Powder!’

The other day, I came across a photograph I took in Sumatra all those years ago, back in 1946. It shows Margey buying an ice cream from a wooden street stall. Other people loiter about, grinning self-consciously at the camera. There are ruined buildings in the background. Only Margey is elegant. There she stands in a European-style dress, smiling at me. Although I remember her as plump, she looks undernourished. Her face is broad, her eyes large. Her head is slightly on one side, as if mutely appealing to be forgiven some minor offence – or maybe she was just trying to look like Rita Hayworth, her favourite film star. It is hard to realise that Margey is probably still alive, growing older like the rest of us; the present tense lies with that faded snap by the street stall.

She was laughing as we carried the parcel into her little room. She had curled her dark hair. It was naturally straight; now the ends curved upwards like the gables of the Batak house. Her teeth were white and perfect, so that when she smiled, revealing them, corpses stood up and beautiful things happened about her cheeks and the contours of her chin. She put her arms round my neck and nuzzled into my shoulder.

‘Horry, is after nine o’clock and you so late. I think you don’t come. I must eat some supper. You drink too much beer, very bad for you.’

‘Sorry, there was a piss-up in the sergeants’ mess, everyone getting boozed.’ I told her about Dickie Payne driving into the cesspit, and we laughed.

‘You sergeants all drunken filthy men! All soldiers are so horrible. Oh, I hate soldiers! All except you, Horry. You good man. When you don’t come, I afraid you go with that Miss Katie Chae. She very low woman.’ Katie Chae was her pet hate.

I laughed as I handed out cigarettes. ‘I never even saw Katie Chae. I came here straight from the mess.’

No breeze stirred. She kept her window closed at night to shut the insects out and it must have been a hundred degrees under the low roof. She saw I was sweating and said, ‘I go fetch you nice cool beer.’

‘I’ve had enough bloody beer. Make me a coffee and let’s go on the bed.’

She clouted me playfully on the hip. ‘Every day bed, bed – you terrible randy man, Horry. What you think poor Margey’s cunt? Lie down here and have a smoke while I bring you tea. No coffee. Coffee all gone. Why you no bring me more coffee?’

Margey left the lamp with me while she went to prepare the drink.

The attic had been intended for human habitation of a mean order. At the far end of the landing was a cramped area which served as Margey’s kitchen and bathroom. The rest of the space under the roof was occupied by two small rooms separated by wood panelling. The ceiling was plastered; some of the plaster had fallen away to reveal laths beneath.

One of the rooms was Margey’s own. It had a curtained window, the view from which always delighted me with its spectacle of rooftop decay, and a deep sill on which stood a plant and one or two precious possessions. I set the oil lamp on the sill and undressed. Processed beer oozed from my skin as I did so; even the mosquitoes had fainted in the heat.

Margey’s wooden bed was covered with a faded blue quilt, on which I sat to remove my boots. An upturned orange crate standing behind the bed served as a table; on it stood an old alarm clock and a carving of a Balinese dancer which I had given her. Under the bed was a precious metal-trimmed rattan trunk, in which Margey stored her clothes.

On the wall hung a little mirror framed in mahogany with a shelf below. Lipstick stood on the shelf, perfume in a knobbly bottle, and an extravagant manicure set which I had bought Margey whilst on leave in Singapore. A snap of me in swimming trunks was tucked into the edge of the mirror.

The only other items in the room were a towelled bathrobe which hung behind the door and a black and white photograph of Rita Hayworth, wearing an open raincoat and swinging her hips in an inviting way. Margey worshipped Rita Hayworth.

Rolling up my ankle puttees, which I had refused to exchange for gaiters, I tucked them in my boots and set them in one corner. It was good to be in that shabby cubicle, heat or no heat. Yet I, like Margey, had my anxieties. Before stretching out on the bed, I padded over to Margey’s bathrobe and felt in its pockets, dreading to find a french letter or similar incriminating evidence of other men. I found a small tortoiseshell comb, I took it out and turned it over several times. It was something of hers I had not seen before. Who had given it to her?

Slipping it back, I relaxed on the bed, thinking of her, imagining her working by what light came over the top of the wooden partition, boiling water on her tiny charcoal fire. A man’s voice yelled at her in clattering Chinese. She went to the gap and answered. A brief exchange took place before she returned to her stove.