Jane Gardam - Old Filth

He watched the rollers of the Atlantic. “I think I’ll bathe,” he said. “Get rid of the banana juice.” He licked his fingers and ran down to the sea and was immediately flung back on the beach. He tried again and was again spat out. He lay with a ricked back and a badly grazed knee as the waves slopped over him with contempt.

“The sun’s dangerous,” Loss announced from the edge of the jungle.

But Eddie, exalted to be free, warm, deflowered and full of bananas, lay on in the sand. The dangerous part of the journey was over. They had seen no U-Boats, and there would be none on the next ship for they were out of range now. They were taking the Long Route down Africa to the Cape, and out to Colombo to refuel. Then Singapore and safety. And the next ship might be better. Even comfortable. A Sunderland flying boat suddenly roared from beyond the mangoes and came towards him along the sea, bouncing like a loose parcel chucked from hand to hand. It blundered to an uncertain lopsided stop some way out. Bloody planes, thought Eddie. I want to sleep. He was sated, different — happy.

“How many bananas have you eaten?” asked Loss.

“Thirty-six.”

“You are intemperate. I wouldn’t have thought it.”

“They’re miniature bananas. They’re nothing.”

“They’re very over-ripe. Where did you get them?”

“Off a heap. Under a tree. Any objection?”

Loss watched him.

“No. I am glad you have some powers of enjoyment. D’you want a game of Patience?”

“It’s about a hundred and five degrees. I want a beer.”

Eddie stumbled up the beach, to a stall under the trees where a massive lady in orange appeared to be in a trance but took his English money into her pink palm.

“You’ve left your watch lying on the sand,” called Loss.

“Look after it,” Eddie shouted. “D’you want a beer?”

“Certainly not. Not that stuff. And don’t touch the bottled water. I’ve been here before.”

Eddie lay back in the sand and went to sleep.

Waking he felt about him, sat up and began to swig from a dark bottle. His head began to swim deliciously. He lifted his legs in the air. Loss observed him.

“You are behaving quite out of character,” he said. “I have known you six weeks, but I know this to be out of character.”

“I like this character.”

“I am amazed. You have a rational mind.”

“I’ve slept with a woman,” said Eddie. “Yippee.”

Loss chose not to comment.

After a pause for thought Eddie said, “Have you been here before?”

“Somewhere like it. Down the coast.”

“Oh, I’ve been somewhere like it. Plenty of this. Worse.”

“When?”

“When I was five. When I came over to England with a missionary. Auntie May, she was called. To live in England on my own.”

“On your own?”

“No. With a woman called Ma Didds. Professional foster mother. Me and two vague cousins I’d never heard of. It wasn’t safe for Raj brats to stay in Malaya. We died off after five. And before five in hundreds. I felt pretty well in the East but I hadn’t a say in the matter. ‘Terrible for the parents,’ everyone says but I hadn’t a mother and my father lived in a world of his own. Anyway, all Raj Orphans forgot their parents. Some of them attached themselves to the foster parents for life.”

“Not you?”

“No.”

“Where did you go?”

“Wales. It was Wales or Norfolk. Wales was cheaper.”

Suddenly he knew that it must have been his aunts who had chosen it. “What about you, Loss?”

“Something of a mystery, my parents. They didn’t send me to England until I was ten. And they didn’t call it ‘Home.’ They weren’t Raj.”

“What did you do in the holidays?”

“Oh, I always went to Singapore.”

“You couldn’t have done. There wasn’t time.”

Loss continued to play Patience with a cloth over his head.

“Well,” he said vaguely. “I got humped about. I am a natural traveller. We are of Hakkar stock.”

“So you keep telling me. Were there many Hakkars going to Eton?”

“I beseech you, Feathers. You may have found your tongue at last and it is all very interesting, but do not drink any more of the beer. And leave off the bananas.”

“Why?”

“I shall have to look after you. I can see the fruit moving. It will be a humiliation.”

“For me or for you?” shouted Eddie, tight as a tick, flat on his back, feet in the air, peeling a thirty-seventh banana.

“Both of us,” said Loss. “Here. Cover yourself. Here is your shirt. You are calling attention to us.”

“Not true,” yelled Eddie. “They’re all drunk here. Look at the beer cans everywhere. Or they’re drugged — look at them all just standing staring. All des-o-late. All the best ones dead. We’re going to lose this War so we may as well drink and die.”

Another flying boat split the air with sound. “Bundle of spare parts,” shouted Eddie. “Won’t make it back. Torpedo boats bang bang — down. England won’t last six months against Germany. Churchill’s a buffoon. Ham actor. Country’s finished. Europe’s finished. Thank God I’m going away.”

Someone from the Red Cross hut came down the beach and took him off, Loss walking thoughtfully behind.

Eddie, put to bed, raved for three days. Loss moved into the Missions to Seamen and watched a scorpion hanging from a rafter, ate mangoes and played cards with anyone who would give him a game.

The Missions to Seamen medical man was troubled by Eddie. “How old is he?” he asked Loss. “Your friend. The other evacuee — a schoolfriend?”

“I am not an evacuee,” said Loss. “I am travelling home to pursue my life. Feathers is a young friend of mine, no; for I only met him on the Breath o’Dunoon . He is an unwilling evacuee. His father sent for him to return to Malaya. He wanted to stay and Do His Bit.”

“Did he? Well, now he’s yelling and ranting about dead pilots and the Battle of Britain.”

“That’s over,” said Loss. “I expect he’s lost best friends. There are those with best friends. I avoid such. He’ll be OK. He needed to blow up.”

The doctor looked dubious.

But by the time the Portuguese freighter arrived a fortnight later to carry them on, a gaunt, monosyllabic (but not stammering) Feathers was allowed to continue his journey.

“He’s strong,” said the Purser. “There’s those get malaria soon as they get to Freetown. He’s not had that. There’s blackwater fever if you so much as look at the swamp. He’s not had that. Just the guts. The guts and the brains. He’ll recover.”

“He drank palm-beer from a bad bottle,” said Loss, tightlipped as a Methodist.

“Maybe, lad, it saved his life.” The Purser was the only Englishman on the new ship, and spoke Portuguese. He had avoided the call-up, he said, because of flat feet. “I dare say the bugger’ll live,” he said. “He’s walking.”

But as they sailed — their neutral flag flying or rather hanging limp on the mast — down the bulge of Africa and at last out upon the hot-plate of the Indian Ocean, day after day, day after day, Eddie lay prone in the sick bay, hardly eating, drinking only lime juice, not talking but muttering and yelling in his sleep. Loss, three flights down in the noisome, sweaty bilges, sat on his bunk and wrote up his log book. He also sat with Eddie several hours a day thinking his Hakkar thoughts. In the night he went on deck and sat about learning Portuguese from the crew. He watched each morning the raising of the neutral flag to ensure that the sea and the sky and the sea-birds (there were few now) and the enemy submarines (there were none) knew that this was a craft on peaceful business.