Dead in the Dog

THREE

Although the Friday night function at the Sussex Club was nominally a dance, the majority of the members never set foot on the floor, which was a small area of the big lounge cleared of tables and chairs. The occasion was hallowed by tradition at The Dog, being the main social function of the week, where people came to meet their friends and catch up on the week’s gossip. They came to see and be seen, the men to ogle the younger women in their posh frocks and the older women to indulge in some righteous envy and to complain about their husbands.

In such an isolated community as Tanah Timah, the club provided virtually the only social diversion for the wives, who had not even the workplace or the Mess to relieve the boredom. There were not many Army wives there, as the place was still on the fringe of a brutal war, but as the terrorist threat had receded somewhat in this part of Perak, more of the senior officers’ wives were coming out from home. The planters’ wives had little choice but to stay, though some took extended leave back in Britain, often with the excuse that they had to see their children settled in boarding schools or colleges.

The younger women were almost all commissioned QA sisters from the hospital and being by definition unmarried, were the target of every military bachelor in the Brigade, as well as a few unaccompanied husbands and unmarried planters. Tonight, it was these ladies who monopolized the dance floor, being badgered by subalterns, lieutenants, captains and even the odd major, to gyrate with them on the polished boards, which a houseboy ritually lubricated with French chalk every Friday afternoon.

Tom Howden arrived at about eight fifteen, driven up by Alec Watson in his battered and rusty Morgan sports car. Dinner in the Mess was always brought forward on a Friday, so that they could get to the club reasonably early — a practice almost universal throughout the garrison. At about ten o’clock, the record player was switched off so that the assembled members could adjourn to the dining room, where Daniel always laid out a light buffet to keep them going until midnight, when the revellers drifted back to their mosquito nets.

Alec parked on the tarmac in front of the club, finding a space between the Austins, the Morris’s, the MG’s, the Land Rovers and a few big American gas-guzzlers, several of them armour-plated like the Robertsons’. Inside, there was already hardly an inch left free at the long bar, which ran across the full width of the lounge. A score of low tables fringed the dance floor, each with its circle of cane chairs. They were filled with people and the Indian servants were performing miracles of gymnastics with trays loaded with glasses and bottles, as they threaded their way through the obstructions. Half a dozen couples were swaying to a smoochy Sinatra number, generated by a Decca radiogram in the corner, operated by a fat Tamil houseboy who was worriedly studying a list of records supplied by Daniel, but constantly amended by the demands of the dancers.

The music was almost drowned by the buzz of chatter, which tonight was a good few decibels louder than usual. The inevitable topic was the new attack on Gunong Besar and as soon as Tom came in, he could see that the focus of attention was on James Robertson. He was perched on a stool at the centre of the bar, holding court amongst a cluster of acquaintances, all of whom had their own pet theory of what had happened. As Alec pushed his way to the bar for a couple of Tigers, Tom moved further along to be in earshot of the James’s clique.

‘Bloody bullets were coming like hailstones,’ brayed the planter, waving his gin like a flag. ‘Pushed the memsahib on to the floor out of the way, then took off over the verandah with my shooter!’ He stopped for a gulp of Gordon’s, then carried on with his elaborated saga.

‘But it was too late, the sods had all vanished. They’d shot up Douglas’s place first, then had a pop at the natives around the back.’

‘Sounds a bloody queer attack to me, Jimmy,’ drawled Les Arnold, the Aussie from the next estate beyond Gunong Besar. He was not actually part of the inquisitive circle around James, he had been sitting at the bar before they descended on his neighbour and had been enveloped by them.

‘What’s queer about being shot at, Les?’ demanded a captain from the West Berkshires, rather indignantly.

‘Not like the CTs to fire off a few rounds, then bugger off!’ objected the Australian. ‘Even in Jimmy’s last attack they killed a couple of blokes.’

Robertson flushed, both at being repeatedly called ‘Jimmy’ and at the insinuation that his latest moment of glory had not been all that glorious.

‘An attack’s an attack, Les!’ he snapped petulantly. ‘What d’you think all those holes are in the walls — giant termites?’

There was a guffaw from the group at this witticism, but Arnold just grinned.

‘Good on you, mate! I’m glad they didn’t call on me, just up the road from you. I need my beauty sleep every night.’

Alec came back with the beers and he and Tom leaned against one of the pillars that supported the high roof while they looked around at the talent in the room. The disc jockey had found one of the request records and now Tony Bennett was crooning about a ‘Stranger in Paradise’, giving the swaying couples the excuse to cling together as if they had been welded front-to-front, their feet hardly moving.

‘Some nice-looking birds here, Alec,’ murmured the pathologist. Stuck in his laboratory all that first day, he had so far hardly laid eyes on a QA, apart from their motherly Matron, Doris Hawkins. ‘Who’s the dark-haired one, in the slinky blue dress?’

Watson grinned. ‘You got it in one, Tom! Everyone notices her first. That’s our in-house femme fatale, Lena Franklin.’

Howden looked across to the centre of the dance floor and saw a slim, sexy-looking woman in her late twenties, with dark hair in what he called a Gina Lollobrigida style. Her eyes were enhanced catlike with make-up and her glossed lips were in a slight pout as she rested her chin on her partner’s shoulder. Her dress was a westernized version of the Chinese cheongsam, a skin-hugging sheath of blue silk with a high collar and a slit up each side to the thigh. Tom could almost see the disapproval coming off some of the older wives, like a black cloud ascending to the fans overhead. Lena was certainly a dish-and-a-half, he thought. No wonder David Meredith was brassed off at the prospect of losing her to someone else.

‘Who’s the guy she’s with? That her new bloke?’

‘Nay, he’s some prat one-pipper from the Hussars. Looks as if she’s using him to fire up our master gasman — to say nothing of Jimmy Robertson.’

Looking around the crowded room, they found their anaesthetist standing with Peter Bright against the opposite wall, an untouched beer in his hand, scowling at the pair on the dance floor. As they watched, a handsome redhead in a white dress rose from a nearby table where she was sitting with several more nurses and a couple of young men. Going up to Peter Bright, she said something, but he smiled and shook his head.

‘That’s another factor in the equation, Tom,’ said Alec, who seemed to be a mine of information on the scandals and intrigues of Tanah Timah.

‘Who’s she?’ Tom asked, as he watched the auburn-haired girl talk animatedly to the surgeon.

‘That’s our Joanie. . Joan Parnell, QA sister on Medical One. She’s like a rash!’

‘What d’you mean — like a rash?’

‘She’s all over you! Especially if you’re Peter Bright, she’s got the hots for him even though everyone knows he’s after Diane Robertson.’

Joan had now wrestled the glass from Peter’s hand and putting it down on a shelf, was dragging him to the dance floor, leaving David Meredith alone and even more darkly morose.

‘I’m getting confused over all this,’ muttered the pathologist. ‘It’s like one of these Whitehall farces, with people popping in and out of bedroom doors.’

‘You won’t get that, at least not on hospital premises,’ said young Watson. ‘Both the Matron and our Old Man keep their beady eyes firmly on the bedroom doors in BMH.’

Just then, Alec spotted a couple of members leaving the bar and they quickly slid on to their vacated stools. ‘That’s better, we can see the action in comfort now,’ he said smugly.

The nubile Joan Parnell was wrapping herself enthusiastically around their surgeon on the dance floor and Peter Bright, though enjoying the feel of a lithe body in his arms, was casting wary glances around the room as they revolved slowly to the music.

‘Pete’s on the lookout for the evil eye from Memsahib Robertson,’ explained Watson, his boyish face alive with interest at the goings-on around him. ‘Though I haven’t seen her here yet, maybe the shooting has given her the vapours.’

Tom was still doggedly working out the romantic permutations. ‘Her husband’s here, anyway. You reckon he’s having a fling with this Lena woman, the one that our gasman is keen on?’

‘That’s it — and rumour has it that for years he’s been playing away with Rosa, until just recently.’

‘Who the hell’s Rosa?’

‘The wife of his manager, Douglas Mackay. They’re here somewhere, I’ve seen them.’

‘Bloody hell, this is like something out of Somerset Maugham!’

Tom buried his face in his Tiger while he sorted out the machinations in his mind. ‘Any more shenanigans I should know about, while you’re at it?’ he asked, when he surfaced.

‘Not that I know of,’ admitted Alec regretfully. Then he brightened a little, ‘Apart from our dear Commanding Officer, of course!’

‘Jesus, don’t say he’s been rogering someone too? I thought he was married?’

‘He is — that’s the point! His missus was out here with him until two months ago, then she suddenly ups and goes home to UK. She was a right old battleaxe and the whisper is that she got fed up with him. But no one knows why?’

‘Where does he live, then?’

‘He’s still in his married quarter in Garrison, thank God. By rights, he should quit and come to live in the Mess, now that he’s on his own. That would be bloody awful, having the old bastard amongst us, but I think he’s got some pull with the Brigadier, who’s letting him stay on in his house. He’s only got three months to go before RHE, so perhaps we’ll escape a fate worse than death!’

Howden looked along the bar to where James Robertson was regaling another relay of listeners with his tale of derring-do.

‘Doesn’t he know his wife’s having it away with Peter Bright?’ he murmured.

Watson shrugged. ‘Dunno — but it’s difficult to keep any secrets in an incestuous place like TT. If the padre farts, everyone knows within ten minutes, so even though Jimmy Robertson is as thick as two short planks, he must surely have his suspicions.’

‘Maybe he doesn’t want to know, especially if he’s at it himself.’

Alec nodded over his glass. ‘Quite possible — he’s had plenty of practice, I hear. The delicious Diane is said to have been putting it about for years. Not much else to do around here,’ he added cynically.

Their scandalmongering was interrupted when a beckoning hand waved at them from one of the tables. It was Major Hawkins, the Matron, resplendent in a pink dress that looked like a floral bell-tent. She was sitting with four other girls who Tom assumed were QAs.

‘Come and meet some of the staff, doctor,’ she said kindly. Tom was warmed by her words, as he hadn’t been called ‘doctor’ since he left Tyneside — it was either ‘Captain’ or ‘Howden’. The two men perched on the arms of the girl’s chairs and Alec helped the Matron to introduce them. Tom caught a couple of names, but remembered only one afterwards as Lynette, a slightly chubby brunette with a pretty round face and a Yorkshire accent.

They all launched into the usual polite babble of ‘Where do you come from. . was it cold at home when you left. . d’you play tennis. . what d’you think of it so far,’ until Tom was in a haze of pleasant disorientation, but temporarily cured of his homesickness.

Of course, Alec knew them all — and probably all their business — and after a while, went off to dance with one, so Tom recklessly asked Lynette if she would like to take the floor. He was an indifferent dancer, but in the confines of the tiny space, now filled with shuffling couples, there was little harm that he could do to her feet. He acquitted himself fairly well and thoroughly enjoyed it.

The ice broken, he danced with a couple of the others and even offered himself to Doris Hawkins, who tactfully declined on the grounds that she had a bunion. At that moment, a gong was hammered by one of the club servants to announce that the buffet was served and everyone began streaming towards the dining room next door. Standing back to let the ladies through first, Tom found Alfred Morris behind him.

‘Fast workers, you Geordies!’ he chaffed. ‘A nice little girl, that Lynette.’

‘I suppose I’ll be the target for gossip tomorrow,’ grinned Tom.

‘Tomorrow? It’ll already have started, lad.’ The Admin Officer suddenly stopped and Tom noticed his head jerk round, then swing back.

‘We’ve got company, son.’ As they shuffled towards the dining room, they were overtaken by a lean figure shepherding a spectacular blonde. The men stood aside to let Diane Robertson through, Desmond O’Neill following closely behind, a fixed grin on his saturnine face.

‘Where the hell did he find her?’ muttered Alec Watson.

‘Maybe that’s why his wife went home in a huff!’ hazarded Tom.

The young Scot glared at him pityingly. ‘Come off it, he’s old enough to be her father. Even the fabulous Diane wouldn’t touch old Death’s Head.’

When they got inside the other room, they saw that their Commanding Officer had ushered the blonde over to her husband, who was vigorously attacking the sandwiches, chicken thighs and curry puffs. James did not seem to be particularly excited at the delivery, giving his dearly beloved a grunt as he handed her an empty plate and serviette.

‘Does the colonel come here a lot?’ Tom asked Alf Morris, who he found alongside him as their turn came to pile their plates with food.

‘Plays bridge quite a bit and uses the pool, but he only started coming to the dance night since his wife went home.’

The pathologist looked across at where their lord and master was picking at his food. Though almost all the other men just wore shirt and tie, O’Neill had a rather old-fashioned cream linen jacket over his, contrasting strongly with the wide red, blue and gold stripes of the Medical Corps tie that hung down from his collar. It reminded Tom of his grandad, who used to wear a similar jacket with a straw hat when he went to play bowls in Gateshead Park.

After they had all eaten, the music began again, but to Tom’s disappointment, the depth of which surprised him, Lynette had been commandeered by a lanky officer from the Gurkhas. The bar was less crowded now, as James had vanished and his audience had dispersed.

Tom got himself another beer and signed his chit, wondering what sort of a hole his bar bill would make in his pay at the end of the month, both here and in the Mess. By the sound of it, pretty soon he would have to scrape together enough for a second-hand car — especially if he was to fully enter into the social life, for which a wide back seat seemed to be essential.

The heat seemed to hit him again, the air being an almost palpable mixture of damp, perfume and curry fumes, so he ambled with his glass out through the open doors on to the terrace above the swimming pool, which was a large concrete-walled tank with a sloping floor.

The tables just outside the lounge were occupied with couples gazing into each other’s eyes, so he walked to the far end, overlooking a badminton court. As the club was built on the slope of a hill, the court was set a dozen feet lower than the terrace. Normally it was lit at night by fluorescent tubes, but on dance nights, it was dark and deserted. At least, no one was playing badminton there, but as he stood quietly with his beer listening to the still-novel sounds of insects chirruping and frogs burping, he could see two shadowy figures and hear their voices. The figures came closer together in the gloom — very close indeed, until he could see only one larger shape in the dim light from the open doors of the lounge.

‘When can you get away, say for two days? I’ve got to go to KL, to see about some machinery. .’

Suddenly feeling guilty at eavesdropping, Tom moved away, back towards the doors, but his guilt somehow evaporated sufficiently for him to sink into a vacant chair just inside and accidentally still be there when Lena Franklin walked in, still spectacular in her slinky blue dress. She gave him a glowing smile as she passed on towards the Ladies’ Room near the entrance. A moment later, James Robertson stalked in and plumped himself down at the bar, no doubt determined to enlarge once again on the story of his escapade the previous night.

The anxious disc jockey came to the end of his rumba and was being importuned by one of the nursing sisters, who was grasping Montmorency by the hand as if saving him from drowning. As they negotiated with the Tamil for a cha-cha, Alec Watson was abandoned by the girl he had been dancing with and he came across to collapse into the chair next to Tom.

‘Too bloody hot for these energetic sports!’ His shirt had arcs of dark sweat beneath each armpit.

‘Was that one of the QAs you were with?’ He had been dancing with a very thin girl, who looked no more than seventeen.

‘No, that was one of the daughters of the Commandant of the MCE.’

The pathologist frowned at yet another set of initials.

‘That’s this mysterious place I’ve got to go to on Monday morning, where I get my blood from, apparently. What the hell is it?’

‘Military Corrective Establishment — the chokey, the hoosegow, the jail!’ explained Alec. ‘The RMO of the West Berkshires has been filling in since your predecessor went home last month, but it’s traditional that the pathologist does the sick parades over there, as that’s where you get your blood donors.’

He explained that the prisoners were only too willing to exchange a pint of their blood for a bottle of Tiger — in fact, they fell over themselves to offer and their donations had to be strictly rationed, for fear of them exsanguinating themselves in return for a few beers. Light dawned upon Tom, as this explained why he hadn’t seen a Blood Bank refrigerator when he walked around his lab for the first time that day.

‘I see, so the blood is kept “on the hoof”, so to speak?’

‘Sure, it’s kept sterile and at body temperature — and it never gets out of date!’

Their haematological discussion faded as they watched Diane Robertson come in from the dining room and join a group of men at the bar, Peter Bright amongst them. She was worth watching, thought Tom, her shoulder-length fair hair contrasting with a low-cut dress of black Chinese brocade. Diane seemed to have got over her terror at the previous night’s shooting and was laughing and flirting with her attentive escorts, one of whom was Les Arnold, though her husband pointedly ignored her.

‘How the devil did she manage to arrive here with O’Neill?’ he asked Watson, who Tom now looked on as the fount of all knowledge.

‘Percy Loosemore said he arrived in the car park just before them. Apparently she turned up in a taxi, as it doesn’t look as if she’s speaking to her husband and her own car has been shot up. The CO arrived at the same time in his Armstrong Siddeley and gallantly shepherded her inside.’

Tom didn’t know that TT had any taxis, but learned later that there were two battered Wolseley 6-80s and a Ford Consul run by a Chinese garage owner behind Main Street.

‘The colonel looked as if they had just got engaged, not just walking her in off the car park!’ he grunted. ‘Think he’s got a crush on her?’

‘God knows what goes on in that twisted mind of his!’ grumbled the Scot. ‘He’s certainly loosened up since his missus went home. She kept him on a pretty short leash, that’s why he took it out on everybody at BMH, we reckon.’

The beers had loosened Tom’s tongue a little beyond the point of discretion and he told his friend about the assignation he had seen between Diane’s husband and Lena Franklin. ‘Sounded as if he was trying to fix up a dirty weekend, the lucky devil!’

Alec nodded. ‘Good job it was you that heard them and not Dave Meredith. There’d have been blood on the badminton court if he had!’

He leaned a little closer with a conspiratorial air. ‘It was my turn last Friday to overhear Jimmy Robertson. I was in the Gents, standing at attention below that high-up window. He was outside, getting a right earful from his wife, something about her finding a hotel bill. I couldn’t hear the rest, as they moved away, but from the tone of her voice, if she’d had a knife, she’d have stuck him there and then!’

Tom shook his head in wonderment as he reached forward for his tall glass of Anchor. ‘We don’t need a war out here, there’s enough “aggro” going on between the residents!’

He looked across the room to where Rosa Mackay was sitting bolt upright, looking very Latin in a lacy white blouse and a black skirt. She was holding a glass of Pimm’s and though exotically immaculate, looked very unhappy. Her scrawny husband, looking old enough to be her father, sat alongside her, both of them silent and withdrawn.

‘How the devil did those two get together?’ asked Tom. ‘They seem totally unsuited to each other.’

As usual, Alec Watson had the answers — the pathologist decided that the Army would have been better off drafting him into the Intelligence Corps, rather than the RAMC.

‘I heard that he was working on an estate down in Johore before the war. He was interned in Singapore by the Japs and apparently had a hard time in Changi Prison. His first wife died of dysentery in an internment camp in Sumatra. Douglas met Rosa in a hotel in Malacca, where she was the receptionist. It seems that the manager was pestering her and Douglas’s interest was a means of escape.’

‘He’s not exactly love’s young dream, is he? Not for a cracking-looking woman like her?’ objected Tom.

Watson shrugged. ‘What! A Eurasian with no better prospects than slaving in a fleapit beach hotel with the manager trying to pinch her bum all the time? A European husband, her own bungalow far away — not a bad catch. And he’s Scots,’ added Alec with a grin.

Looking across the room at the smooth-faced woman from Gunong Besar, Tom had his doubts about her contentment, which the ruthless Watson soon confirmed.

‘Of course, they say that Jimmy Robertson has been servicing her for years, probably ever since the Mackays came up here in 1950.’

The pathologist’s eyebrows rose on the part of his face still visible above his glass. ‘You really are a wicked young gossip,’ he grated, when he came up for air. ‘I don’t know how much of your slander is true and how much you invent!’

The young doctor, who looked almost angelic in spite of his genius for trading scandal, shrugged off the criticism. ‘I just keep my ears open, that’s all. And I’ve got a good memory!’

He finished his drink and stood up. ‘I’m off for a pee, then a couple of turns around the floor again, before heading for bed.’

‘And no listening at the bog windows tonight, Alec!’ chastised Tom, as he looked around to see if Lynette was available now.