PACT OF DEATH

Boxing Day, Kure, Japan, 1954.

‘My egg’s hard!’ The speaker was a sergeant with narrow eyes and a square, firm jaw. He kept stabbing at a sad-looking fried egg on his breakfast plate as if he was trying to cause it grievous bodily harm. 
            ‘What d’you think this is - the Ritz?’ The man opposite him at the table looked like a kitten with a ball of wool, a man happy with life, a padre who’d found his God. This was Tony Miller, in the middle of packing his kit to leave Japan. He didn’t know his departure would save his life.
           He added, ‘Here you take what’s given to you, George. Before we Brits arrived Japs never knew what a fried egg was.’ He hesitated to note any reactions around the filled table. Most of the others digging into their food ignored him. He had a poke at his own egg. ‘And they’re still learning.’
            Bill Andrews looked up. ‘The Yanks have been here since ’forty-five, nine years teaching them sunny side up and flipped over. What’s more important,’ he continued in a voice like a judge pronouncing sentence, ‘my morning tea was cold again.’
            Several diners nodded agreement. Jack Coombes said as he munched a piece of toast. ‘I can’t remember when I last got hot tea. I think they brew to suit themselves . . . you know, gnats’ dished up by geishas.’ Jack had been a Bevin Boy before joining the SIB and bore scars on his back to prove it. Despite life giving him a few hefty kicks he possessed the patience of a saint. A cheerful man, thankful for deliverance from the mines, for a SIB career well surpassed swinging a pick in the belly of the earth.
                                                                      It's Jock's fault for letting
                                                                 a squaddie die              
            ‘Lay off, Jack,’ said Bill. ‘It’s too early in the morning for risqué thoughts.’
            ‘Didn’t know you knew any geishas,’ said George, his eyebrows raised inquiringly.
            Les Hooper picked up a sausage with his fingers and bit off the end. He looked across the table chewing with a humourless grin on his face, waggling the decapitated sausage. ‘Early! . . . I was up before the birds, wasn’t I, Jock?’ 
     ‘I hear gypsy violins,’ sang Doug Marnoch, the sergeant major, an Aberdonian with shoulders like castle ramparts who relished food as if it were his last meal and seldom complained about its preparation. His main gripe was lack of kippers which he believed should be the mainstay of breakfast. He was an accomplished football referee and before speaking often paused as if he were blowing a whistle. His voice carried those strong undertones of authority acquired by British army warrant officers.
     'Serves you right . . . you shouldn't have joined,' intoned Paddy Philips, who was about original as Irish stew.       
     ‘It’s Jock’s fault,’ Les explained, ‘for letting a squaddie die in the guardroom.’ He glared at the redcap sergeant whose face had suffered more than one violent encounter in Glasgow’s Gorbals. ‘You should’ve got him to hospital before he snuffed it.’ Army brass considered dying in hospital normal and no one’s blood pressure heightened. Death in a cell caused apoplexy in the chicken run.
        Fred Harrington, the quartermaster, extra flesh overflowing on his chair  pulled a packet of Players from his pocket and lit one, inhaled and blew smoke over the table. ‘How did he die?’ he asked glumly.
        Jock Gunn and Les exchanged conspiratorial glances. Jock, inner turmoil making his northern accent thicker than cockieleekie soup, pleaded, ‘How was I supposed to know he was dying?’ For a dour Glaswegian, the anguish on his hard face seemed incongruous. The tiny  broken  veins which coloured his nose shone like neon lights. Flecks of blood spotted his sunken eyes. Still only 30, his kidneys wanted servicing like an old combustion engine. ‘I thought he was drunk.’        
            George almost jumped out of his seat. ‘Christ! You’ve pricked Jock’s thick skin. I’d never have believed it. I’m sitting here suffering heartburn without realising I’m witnessing history in the making.’ He stopped pushing the egg around his plate with a fork and stared openly at Jock Gunn with a rising tide of merriment on his rugged features.
           ‘What did he die of?’ Harrington repeated, expelling more smoke. He didn’t expect an answer.
           ‘What are we going to do about the cold tea?’ asked Andrews. 
           ‘Suffer!’ George grunted, finally abandoning the egg and pushing his plate away. He grabbed a slice of toast from the rack and began to spread butter on it as if worried it would fade like the Cheshire cat before he finished. ‘Where’s the marmalade¾or has that vanished, too?’
          ‘Why didn’t you suspect something when he failed to wake up?’ Doug blew a silent whistle, his alert eyes fixed on Gunn, who turned down the corners of his mouth and watched a Japanese waitress approach carrying a pot of marmalade she placed in the centre of the table like laying a wreath. A crisp white linen cloth covered the table but no napkins could be seen.
                                                                 Haven't you noticed that
                                                        Aussies bleat a lot?
       ‘I suppose you’ve been serving officers first again, Suzi, have you?’ George asked her.
          Harrington, his sad face drooping like a bull’s dewlap, got up and stalked out muttering to himself, trailing blue smoke. ‘Merry Christmas, Fred,’ someone called as the quartermaster barged through the screen door.
          The waitress smiled, her mouth stretched in a narrow red line, pretending to understand. In Japanese eyes she would be attractive. Not more than five-two, the ivory skin of her round sallow face was smooth and flawless. Enticing dark eyes danced under hooded lids. Her black hair was pulled back into a tight knot. Pin points of light reflected from her high oriental cheekbones. She wore a modest plain blue calf-length dress and white apron. Her thickish legs were slightly bandy but this was true of many Japanese women. The Brits called them “honey bucket” legs. (See note) 
          ‘Yes, Georgesan, I see officer,’ she lilted.
          Messes for both military police sergeants and officers occupied the same low wooden building and they shared kitchen, food and dining room staff. The difference being whereas on Fridays officers, with napkins, dined on baked cod steaks with spiced tomato sauce and French fries, sergeants ate fish and chips with optional ketchup.
          George ploughed a knife into the marmalade and trowelled a layer on his curled toast. ‘I bet you did! Don’t know why I waste my breath. Cold tea. No marmalade. Petrol back home going up to 4/6d a gallon. . . . Next thing, beer’ll be rationed.’ He smacked Suzi’s rounded backside and she wagged a finger as if scolding a wayward child.
          ‘You number ten cherry boy!’
          George’s eccentric behaviour was legendary. One night he found a Canadian captain’s uniform in the brothel parlour at No.12 Chome. The officer refused to come downstairs so George grabbed the uniform and tossed it into a nearby canal.
          ‘Already is,’ said Doug. ‘You get plenty because not everyone drinks as much as you.’ 
          Jack withdrew his nose from a teacup. ‘Except Aussies,’ he said. ‘They supply the rations so we drink their beer. Mind you, Abbots Ale’s not too bad. . . . But I’m tired of eating mutton.’
         While Jack spoke Les instinctively twisted his head towards him and caught a covert glance he threw at Suzi. Les wondered if . . .  
          ‘Australia has so many sheep their army isn’t allowed beef or pork. Haven’t you noticed they bleat a lot?’ Tony asked.
          Doug snorted and his heavy jaw tightened. He spooned three heaps of sugar into a cup. ‘Where did you pick up that rubbish?’
          Tony grinned. ‘It could be true.’
          ‘I’m not a flamin’ doctor,’ Jock Gunn insisted. ‘Can you tell the difference between a man in a drunken stupor and a dead man?’
          Doug blew up for a foul. ‘Hasn’t anyone told you, Jock . . . dead men don’t breathe?’ Tact was alien to him. He wielded a toothpick in his mouth like a miniature drill as he carried out an intense exploration for bacon fragments.
          ‘Very funny, sergeant major,’ Jock groaned. ’I’m splitting my sides.’
          ‘Not only lack of breath,’ Les added, ‘but cold, too. I’ll tell you, an Eskimo would’ve complained in the morgue at five o’clock this morning.’
          ‘Ah, just like our morning tea,’ Andrews snapped.
                                                               In Sergeant Gunn's book
                                                                  the soldier was drunk
          Doug Marnoch searched for debris on his toothpick and dropped it on his empty plate. He scraped back his chair, stood up and gave himself a red card. ‘I’m off. Can’t stand any more nonsense. Les, you’d better get some facts sorted about the dead bloke. The major’s bound to ask questions at kick-off.’
          Les had been up half the night. He was on standby when hauled out of bed at four-thirty. As he drove along pot-holed roads to the military hospital the steep hills to the west behind the Japanese naval base of Kure were only slightly darker than the sky and brooded over the city like giant guardians. To the east across the Inland Sea vague purple fingers clawed over the horizon. Wispy clouds were tinged with orange. He passed the stone building of Kure House which housed the NAAFI club. Now quiet but each evening became a sea of British soldiers and petty Japanese crooks vying to buy army gear from them. Tinpot Japanese entrepreneurs also liked to buy British Armed Forces Service Vouchers (BAFSVs), notes of intrinsically valueless paper money soldiers called soap coupons.
          Most buildings huddled in darkness . . . very few lights shining. Unlike the all-night razzle-dazzle of a big city like Tokyo, over 400 miles to the north east on Honshu Island, Kure bore more resemblance to an American Wild West town - all wooden shacks with peeling paintwork and unmade streets which emptied at dusk. No public toilets; dusty roadside tracks served this purpose. Should Bing Crosby and Dorothy Lamour think of  filming “The Road To Japan” back then,  no yen would be wagered on Kure getting a mention. Yet this shambles of a city witnessed the building of the world’s largest battleship, the Yamamoto, Japan’s pride in World War II, launched in August 1940, sunk by Yanks in 1945. It was also a training base for Kamikaze pilots, although crashing a plane surely needed no training!
            A small figure in a dark uniform wandered on to the pitted tarmac concourse in front of the railway station. He could be a policeman, a railway guard, even a postman. All uniformed officials looked the same. During his twelve months in the country Les never did work out who was what. These strange little people with their strange ways and inexcusable legacy of wartime cruelty failed to strike a chord with him and he gave up trying to understand and accepted things as they were.
            As for Jock Gunn, he had every reason to dig a deeper moat round his castle. Summoned by the Japanese police just after midnight to the area known as Shi Higashi Atago Machi, he was directed to No. 16 Banchi. In the house he found a soldier, Private High of the Royal Army Ordnance Corps, semi-conscious and, in Sergeant Gunn’s book, drunk. He nicked him and took him back to the cells in the Base Camp of British Commonwealth Forces Korea (BCFK), where military police, including SIB, were billeted.
            Around 4am Gunn began to worry. High remained unconscious and no amount of shaking would rouse him. The sergeant eventually realised the soldier might be suffering from something other than drunkenness and called for a doctor. A medical officer arrived and pronounced High dead. The body was taken to the morgue and Les Hooper informed.
            After visiting the hospital Les drove back to camp grim-faced and took Jock Gunn aside. The sergeant had a hangdog expression on his ugly mug. Les pointed out he might’ve been a bit quicker off the mark and when Gunn started to protest threw an arm in the air, fingers outstretched. ‘Stop! You’re pathetic! I’m not playing bloody ludo. . . . You’d better hope your story’s watertight at the Board of Inquiry or you’ll drown. God knows what you must’ve been thinking . . . if you can think at all. You know, Jock, if I had a choice between you and Mickey Mouse to look after my welfare, you know who I’d pick. . . .’
            The distressed sergeant tried hard to maintain some dignity. ‘If I wanted to nurse the sick I would’ve joined the medical corps. . . . What am I supposed to do?’
                                                                  It'll be our secret that
                                                      you watched him die
            ‘You could try writing to the Dalai Lama and ask if he’s got any vacancies.’
            ‘It’s drugs, isn’t it?’
            ‘So your brain is working . . . only first gear but it’s encouraging.’
            Gunn looked as if he’d just sat in a dentist’s chair. ‘What about you?’
            ‘Me?’ Les frowned. ‘I’m going to try and snatch some kip. It’ll be our secret that you watched him die.’ 
            By the time he returned to his quarters the light had improved although a chilly dawn breeze brought on a minor outbreak of goose pimples. It looked like a clear day in prospect. One or two fluffy clouds snagged the hills, which were now turning daylight green with tiers of crop fields climbing the sides. The Japanese used every inch of arable land, including road verges, to grow food. The yellow orb of the sun climbed higher, bathing the countryside in a soft, misty grey light. The ground shook gently underfoot. Earth tremors were part of everyday life.
            Not many people were about yet. A few workers on their way to the shipyards where once the mighty Yamamoto was built and now a massive bulk carrier under construction. The house girls who worked in the messes would still be curled up on their futons in their ramshackle timbered houses - those who served the cold tea which preyed on Bill Andrews’s mind.
            He took a quick shower to get rid of the cloying disinfectant  smell of the mortuary although he knew it wouldn’t. The smell clung more to the mind than the skin . . . it hung around like drizzling rain.  
            Les learned a Japanese girl friend of High, Emi Agoura, had also died. He visited the house at 16 Banchi where a tearful Agoura family mourned for Emi. He pushed through the cloth noren hanging over the doorway and examined her room. It was quite small with thin paper screens for interior walls. A porcelain bowl containing stale remains of a sashimi meal lay on the bare polished wooden floor among scattered bedclothes and a futon. A low teak table stood in one corner. On it a smouldering incense stick, an ornamental glass ashtray containing several half-smoked Capstan cigarettes and a white tablet. He kept the tablet for evidence. Back outside he almost collided with two giggling girls tripping along in colourful kimonos, their wooden geta sandals clattering on the uneven paving slabs . . . clip-clop, clip-clop.
            He searched Private High’s belongings and found a green wash-bag containing several white tablets like the one at the house. He also collected a  number of personal letters Emi Agoura had written to High.
            The completed jigsaw showed High and Emi died in a suicide pact by taking an overdose of sleeping pills as her soldier lover was due to leave Japan and they couldn’t bear to be parted. An age-old story sadly repeated yet again.
            Sergeant Gunn’s fairy godmother waved a magic wand . . . he bounced back like a tennis ball.
                                                            Yoku served more than
                                                    tea each morning
            A few days later several things happened in breathtaking succession. 
            7.30am. No one got tea, not even cold, because Yoku the prettiest of the house girls sat in the kitchen sobbing her eyes out and refused to move.
            8am. SIB said goodbye to Tony Miller. He’d completed his year in BCFK and was off on the troopship SS Asturias to Hong Kong where he spent the next two years with his wife and kids.
            9.10am. A commotion at the camp gates. A man demanded entrance because he had a score to settle with an Englishman . . . and he carried a loaded shotgun.
            When everything was finally sorted the three incidents came together. Yorisada, the man with the gun was married to Yoku, broken-hearted because her lover deserted her. The lover? . . . None other than Tony Miller. Yorisada wrung the truth out of his tearful wife and came hunting for the errant sergeant with murderous intent. Too late! As though announcing Tony’s deliverance, the ship’s hooter of the SS Asturias as it stood off from the harbour could be heard in the distance.
            Miller survived his affair . . . High would never be going home.
            Another mystery was solved - Yoku served Tony with more than morning tea, which explained why the brew was cold by the time she reached the other rooms.
            Bill Andrews wore a broad smile at the outcome. From then on morning tea would arrive hot . . .
            . . .or was he kidding himself?
            Sayonara!
                                                                                 



                                                         The City Band marches proudly along Kure High Street