My Beautiful Enemy Read online

‘Is Stanley his real name?’ I said. ‘Or just a stage name.’

  Matron Conlon said she had no idea but if I was so interested why didn’t I ask Stanley myself.

  ‘See what you can weasel out of him,’ she said. ‘I suspect there’s a great deal going on in that lovely head of his, and it’ll do you good to listen to someone else’s troubles for a change instead of dwelling on your own.’

  ‘You think I don’t know that?’ I said, gazing at Stanley and willing him to wake up.

  It wasn’t until the third day that I managed to have a proper conversation with him. By then the sun had finally returned after more than a week of foul weather. When I came to his doorway in the morning he was sitting up in bed eating a boiled egg with some bread and butter and sipping steaming tea out of a tin mug. The winter sun streamed into the room from the high windows beside him so that his face was sliced in half, one side blindingly white and the other side a black silhouette. As he raised his mug to take another sip of tea the steam billowed up through the light and made half a halo around the sunlit side of his head. I’d seen a similar effect in the cinema, done with artificial lights and cigarette smoke and I had a momentary vision of Stanley as a handsome villain in some spy thriller set in the perfumed Far East.

  ‘Morning,’ I said.

  I spoke to him from the doorway. I told him my name in case he’d forgotten it and informed him that I was normally a guard.

  ‘Stanley Ueno,’ he replied. ‘I’m normally an acrobat.’

  He was mocking me, or flirting with me, I wasn’t sure which. Either way it was a sign that he intended to treat me with absolutely no deference. I didn’t know whether I should be angry or flattered so for a moment I just stared at him and said nothing.

  ‘What’s wrong with you?’ he said.

  I told him I couldn’t eat anything.

  ‘Bad luck,’ he said. ‘The food here’s so good. Not like over in the mess.’

  I said I didn’t think there was any difference.

  ‘The major difference,’ he said, ‘is that you can eat it in bed without hundreds of other people all shovelling it in at the same time like pigs at a trough. This is so thoroughly civilised.’ He gestured around at the room, at his books, now unpacked, piled up on the bedside table, at his neat covers and his plump pillows. ‘The only thing missing is a cigarette and a paper so I can see how the New York Yankees are faring.’

  ‘Would you like me to ring down to reception?’ I said.

  ‘Please be so kind,’ he said, smiling at his own joke.

  I noticed how square and straight his teeth were. So many of the other kids had gaps where their rotten teeth had been pulled. I must have been staring because Stanley asked me if there was something on his face.

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘You’re perfect.’

  That made him laugh. ‘Why thank you,’ he said, fluttering his eyelids and pretending to be embarrassed.

  ‘I saw you when you first came in.’

  ‘I don’t remember.’

  ‘You were in pretty bad shape.’ I said.

  ‘I’m improving by the minute,’ he said, ‘thanks to your excellent care and attention.’

  ‘All part of the service,’ I said.

  It was unheard of to be talking to a Jap in this way, both of us in our pyjamas, him lying in his bed. I leaned on the doorframe, hesitant to come any closer in case he saw how nervous I was. I couldn’t stop trembling. He, on the other hand, seemed perfectly relaxed. Two days of solid meals and uninterrupted sleep had transformed him, made his skin clear and his eyes bright.

  ‘What happened to you out there?’ I said.

  ‘You ask a lot of questions.’

  ‘Matron Conlon told me to press you for information.’

  ‘Do you always do as you’re told?’

  ‘First thing they teach you in the army.’

  ‘I wouldn’t know,’ he said, his mood shifting. He had a way of clamming up suddenly, whenever a conversation turned in a direction he didn’t care for, and it never seemed wise to probe too deeply, not if you wanted to keep him as a friend. At the same time he could be forthright about things that he wanted you to know and this was how he kept you constantly off balance. It was like he had two different personalities, one cold and critical and the other passionate and temperamental.

  ‘I don’t suppose you play cards?’ I said. It was something to fill the lull in the conversation. I showed him the pack of cards I’d put in the pocket of my dressing-gown, on the off chance that he might agree to a game of poker.

  ‘Maybe later,’ he said. ‘I need a bath first.’

  ‘Do you want any help?’ I said, my pulse quickening at the thought of helping him to undress.

  ‘I think I can manage,’ he said.

  I gestured to the table and chairs that were set up in the corridor for socialising.

  ‘Meet you when you’re ready,’ I said.

  He nodded and smiled again and then regarded me with something like sadness, as if he already felt sorry for me for some private reason of his own.

  ‘I hope you like losing,’ he said.

  ‘I’ve had a lot of practice,’ I said, smiling back at him.

  He raised his hand and waved goodbye in a gesture that was almost dismissive. For a boy of fifteen he seemed to have an enormous reserve of scorn for people like me, people who, in his estimation I’m sure, had yet to suffer.

  I went back to the ward and waited for what I judged was enough time for him to finish in the bath. My thoughts turned inevitably to May. I knew exactly what she would make of my courting Stanley in this way. She would see it as a betrayal, which is exactly what it was. In my own defence I reasoned that I was only taking advantage of the opportunity to figure out what made the Japs tick. I told myself I had a duty to get to know my enemy. After all, when Stanley and I were both well again, we would simply go back to our respective lives and have nothing to do with one another. Of course this took no account of my true feelings, which were in a state of unholy turmoil, or of my real intention, which was to put myself in Stanley’s way as often as circumstance allowed.

  When I returned to the corridor I found him seated at the card table shuffling the pack I’d left there, using various tricks he must have picked up from years of hanging around card sharps. He was showing off for Matron Conlon. She stood beside him with her hands on her stocky hips, gawping with admiration.

  ‘Sure did you ever see anyone as deft as that?’ she said when I was standing beside her. ‘He’s like a piece of oiled machinery.’ You could tell when she’d been drinking because she smelled of the cough lollies she sucked on to mask the gin.

  Stanley fanned the pack out with his right hand then swiftly flipped all fifty-two cards on their faces with a single movement of his left.

  ‘Pick a card,’ he told Matron Conlon.

  She reached out and took a card.

  ‘Don’t show it to me,’ he said.

  She hid the card against her bosom.

  He gathered the cards up again, cut the pack, then told Matron Conlon to place her chosen card on the top of one of the piles.

  ‘Either will do,’ he said.

  When she’d done as she was told he shuffled the cards again so fast his hands were a blur, at the same time throwing one single card a foot in the air. It landed face up on the table, the six of spades.

  ‘That’s not possible,’ said Matron Conlon. ‘How in the Lord’s name did you do that?’

  Stanley grinned first at her and then at me, and I saw again the flecks of green in his eyes where the sun was making them glow. With his face freshly scrubbed and his raven hair combed back he resembled some sleek creature just surfaced out of the sea.

  ‘Tricks of the trade,’ he said.

  Matron shook her head in disbelief. ‘You be careful,’ she said to me. ‘Are you sure you know what you’re getting yourself into?’

  ‘I have no idea,’ I said.

  She told us to keep our voices down in case s
ome nosey parker decided to come poking around where he didn’t belong. Strictly speaking, she said, we were not supposed to be fraternising.

  ‘I’ll keep a weather eye out,’ I said.

  ‘I won’t take the blame,’ she said, ‘if you’re found out.’

  She stared at us, trying to seem stern, but the truth was she had no time for the rules and regulations. She ran the infirmary her way, like it was home and the patients were family. And she was at ease with secrets, having so many of her own. The truth is I would have liked to stay curled up under her fleshy, inebriated wing for the rest of the war. The prospect of putting on my uniform again and returning to guard duties once my nerves settled down filled me with dread. I gave Matron Conlon a lazy salute and watched her bustle away. You could hear her stockings brushing against each other as her thick legs met and separated again. It was like she was walking through a field of corn.

  4

  The next two days were the happiest I ever spent with Stanley. While Matron Conlon tended his cuts and bruises and the orderly fetched him gargantuan meals, I stayed close by like a sidekick, someone to amuse him and distract him from his real worries. I wasn’t sure precisely what these were because he never told me, but I had the sense that in the eyes of his family he’d made a mistake by coming back to the camp when they’d gone to so much trouble to get him out. I only knew this because I was there when his uncle Shigeru came to visit him, trailed by his pale and silent mother.

  I didn’t recognise either of them and they didn’t introduce themselves. Shigeru simply stood very tall and straight beside Stanley’s bed and stared at me through his glasses, while Mrs Ueno bowed her head repeatedly in my direction. She was a strange sight to behold, with her unravelling garments and her fierce glower. When I failed to budge from my chair Shigeru removed his crumpled felt hat, revealing a shock of hair that sprang straight up off his forehead like a rooster’s comb.

  ‘This is a private business,’ he said, smiling at me mirthlessly. ‘If you will please excuse yourself.’

  Stanley’s mother stopped bowing and grabbed hold of Shigeru’s jacket as if to steady him. She looked at me so imploringly I was forced to stand up and leave the room.

  Later I asked Stanley what all the subsequent yelling had been about. Even though some of it had been in English I hadn’t caught the thrust of the argument.

  ‘Nothing,’ he said.

  ‘Didn’t sound like nothing to me,’ I said.

  He did an impromptu impersonation of his uncle berating him, calling him names, telling him what a failure he was: ‘It’s a good thing your father’s not here. He’d be ashamed to have you as his son,’ he yelled, in a high-pitched squeal that was a perfect rendition of his uncle’s rage.

  ‘Did you tell him you were beaten up at school?’ I said.

  ‘Who said I was beaten up at school?’ said Stanley.

  ‘I just assumed,’ I said.

  He paused then fell on the sofa as if he’d been shot.

  ‘I deserved it,’ he said. ‘I was lucky they didn’t kill me.’

  I asked him who ‘they’ were but he waved a hand in front of his face to indicate it wasn’t worth pursuing the topic. And then he rolled onto his side and propped his head up on one arm so his gaze was level with mine.

  ‘Do you know anything about baseball?’ he said.

  ‘Sorry,’ I said. ‘Tennis is my game.’

  This made him collapse onto his back again and hoot with laughter. He repeated what I’d just said, mimicking the way I spoke with cruel accuracy.

  ‘Fuck off,’ I said.

  ‘Tennis doesn’t count,’ he said. ‘It’s like comparing a game of chess with a game of checkers.’

  ‘Do you even play tennis?’ I said.

  ‘I play everything,’ he said. ‘Apart from water sports. I don’t like getting naked unless it’s for money.’

  If he noticed me blushing he didn’t let on. I proceeded to tell him how tennis was a game where mental strength was more important than physical strength.

  ‘Who told you that load of horseshit?’ he said.

  ‘My tennis teacher,’ I said. ‘Ex-junior state champion. Bill Humphries was his name. He used to live next door to me when I was growing up.’

  ‘How come he didn’t make the senior team?’ said Stanley.

  I didn’t reply. Stanley looked at me and broke into a sympathetic smile, as if he’d decided to feel sorry for me.

  ‘You want to know why I came back here?’ he said.

  ‘I couldn’t care less,’ I said.

  ‘Because nobody in Ballarat knows the difference between a curveball and a slider is why. I never met a more ignorant bunch of queers in my entire life.’

  The earnest way he said it made me laugh.

  ‘You think I’m joking?’ he said.

  ‘Exaggerating,’ I said.

  ‘Yeah well that’s probably because you’re one of them,’ he said, climbing off the sofa and dancing around the room with an invisible tennis racket calling out the score in a woman’s falsetto. Fifteen-love thirty-love forty-love game. Jolly good show chaps.

  ‘Why didn’t you just disappear somewhere?’ I said. ‘You could have gone anywhere you wanted.’

  He came over to where I was sitting and leaned over to rest his hands on the arms of the chair so he could stare right at me from a foot away.

  ‘Look at my face,’ he said. ‘What do you see?’

  I was too afraid to tell him. The truth was I couldn’t see anything because my eyes had suddenly refused to focus. But I could feel his warm breath on my face and smell the laundered cotton of his pyjamas, and I could also feel myself going hard so I pulled the flaps of my dressing-gown shut as if I was chilly.

  ‘Jap,’ he said. ‘That’s what you see.’

  ‘Is that why you were beaten up?’ I said, hoping he would stand and move away so I could breathe normally again. But he stayed where he was.

  ‘What do you think?’ he said.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I said.

  ‘No you’re not,’ he said, finally straightening up. He stretched his back with a grimace, a sign that his injuries were still causing him pain.

  ‘You’re nothing like a Jap,’ I said, blurting it out before I’d even begun to comprehend the naivety of thinking that his Yank swagger was the true Stanley. Hadn’t he just told me that his face alone was the thing that defined him in the eyes of the world?

  Stanley glared down at me and shook his head. And then he did something that I have trouble believing even now, given the fact that Matron Conlon was in her office next door having her morning tea. He leaned over again and kissed me on the cheek.

  ‘I bet you’re sorry now,’ he said.

  I don’t remember if I replied. I think I just sat there and watched him walk towards the doorway.

  ‘Nature calls,’ he said as he left the room.

  When he came back I was still sitting in the chair exactly where he’d left me. I waited for him to return to the sofa and get settled.

  ‘You shouldn’t have done that,’ I said.

  Stanley ignored me and gazed out of the window at the boundary fence that ran along the back of the infirmary. Beyond that there was a field where sheep grazed and the occasional family of wallabies stopped to feed on the patchy grass.

  ‘I promise I won’t do it again,’ he said, without taking his eyes off the scene outside.

  And then I told Stanley that he wasn’t the first boy who’d ever kissed me. I told him how Nigel Rutherford had kissed me on the back of the neck while we were riding a stolen motor bike and had nearly killed the both of us. I pulled up the leg of my pyjama pants to show him my scars.

  ‘Nasty,’ he said.

  ‘You should have seen Nigel,’ I said. ‘They had to scrape him off the road.’

  ‘Serves him right,’ said Stanley. ‘Bloody pervert.’

  I laughed so much that Matron Conlon came to the door and asked what the joke was. She’d brought us both a c
up of tea and I leaped up to take the tray from her, terrified in case she’d overheard our conversation.

  ‘Arthur’s just telling me the story of his tragic love life,’ said Stanley.

  Matron Conlon looked at Stanley then at me, then at Stanley again, then she gave us one of her smiles, the kind you give to children who are misbehaving. She was already red in the face from her morning tipple.

  ‘Sure isn’t he in the business of breaking hearts,’ she said, staring pointedly in my direction. She knew about May because I’d told her, even venturing to confess that I might actually be in love.

  ‘Legs actually,’ I said, trying to act the clown.

  Stanley started giggling so hard he had to hold his hands to his bruised ribs.

  ‘Are you all right there?’ said Matron Conlon. ‘Do you want me to strap you up?’

  Stanley shook his head.

  Matron turned to me and adopted what she must have considered to be her sternest expression.

  ‘You need to take a leaf out of Stanley’s book,’ she said.

  ‘Which one?’ I said. ‘He has so many.’

  She wagged a finger at me. ‘You’ll never get your strength back if you don’t make the effort to eat,’ she said. ‘You’re not getting the nourishment you need to put some meat on those bones, the way Stanley here is doing. Sure you’ll fade away to nothing.’

  Stanley rolled up his sleeve and raised his right arm, bending it and clenching his fist in a strongman display. He beckoned for me to come over and feel how hard his biceps were. I put down the tea tray and did as I was told, while Matron Conlon watched.

  ‘What’s your secret?’ I said.

  ‘Mental strength,’ said Stanley, mocking me again.

  If Matron Conlon hadn’t been there I would have slapped him.

  After she left Stanley said he wanted to go back to bed and sleep for a while. He also said, as if it was an order, that I should come with him because it was warmer in his ward than in the reading room. So I went and sat in the bedside chair and tried to concentrate on my book. I remember I’d discovered a collection of essays by George Orwell on the bookshelves and had started to read Shooting an Elephant. At the point where he says that the whites in Burma were frequently spat upon, I put the book down and watched the sheep moving in single file across the sunlit field outside the fence. It occurred to me at that moment that I was probably the object of a similar loathing myself among the Japs. Just because I’d never been spat at in the camp didn’t mean there weren’t people there who despised me. It was even possible that Stanley was only pretending to be my friend because he had no other alternative. But then I remembered his kiss. It had been too reckless to suggest any kind of a pretext. I could still feel the spot on my cheek where his lips had touched my skin. It seemed to give off a special heat like a burn or a cut.