War Baby (6 page)

At night the roof of the Caravelle offered a ringside view of the war. Webb nursed his beer and watched a violet dusk silhouette the palm trees on the far bank of the Saigon River. The first wave of Phantoms roared over the jungle and he heard someone say: ‘Show’s about to start, folks.’

A magnesium-white flare dropped down the sky. Red and green fingers of tracers probed the jungle, and the orange muzzle flash of heavy artillery danced around the horizon like sheet lightning. The glasses on the table clinked to the earthquake rumble of battle.

Webb shook his head: it was the most expensive pyrotechnics show on earth.

Took so many beers to get goddamned drunk these days. Mickey van Himst caught her Freedom Bird that afternoon.
Don’t mean nothin’ to me.

He listened to the conversation around him. Crosby told him you got better intel here than at the Five O’clock Follies. JUSPAO and MacVee boys, as well as Army and Marine HQ staff, came up here with their wives or their Vietnamese girlfriends, to watch the show and talk shop.

‘Hey, did you hear we lost eight guys from the 25th to friendly fire in the Delta this morning?’

‘Shoot, I heard it was an F-4 dropped short.’

‘No, it was a Dakota, man. I was there. The pilot had the grid numbers screwed up. They lost two officers from Alpha company. Eight dead, fifteen wounded. Abrams went apeshit.’

Interesting, Webb thought. At the JUSPAO briefing the press officer had acknowledged that the 25th had taken losses from friendly fire, but described casualties as ‘light’. But then, in this war, ‘light’ and ‘heavy’ were all a matter of perspective.

‘Spider,’ someone said. He looked up. It was Ryan; the sling and bandages were off his shoulder and he was hand in hand with a beautiful Eurasian woman in an
ao dai
of violet silk. She was one of the most exotic, exquisite creatures he had ever seen

He stood up and held out a chair for her.

Ryan grinned. ‘Christ, you’re such a gentleman, Spider. Is that for me?’

The woman smiled. ‘Thank you,
monsieur
,’ she said and sat down.

‘Watch me, you could learn something,’ Webb said.

‘Odile, this is a friend of mine. Hugh Webb, one of Saigon’s celebrated press corps. A pom, but never mind. Hugh, this is Miss Odile Ngai.’

Webb shook her hand. ‘Pleased to meet you,’ he said.

Heads were turned their way, a lot of the men were ogling her. Christ, typical of Ryan to get a woman like this.

He ordered another round of drinks.

‘How’s the shoulder?’

‘Aches like buggery, but I’m back into the traces tomorrow. Thought I’d head down to the Delta for a couple of days, see how I go. I’ve had enough bludging around in Saigon. I’m bored out of my mind.’ Webb saw a shadow of hurt pass across the girl’s face. Ryan must have realized what he’d just said, and he reached for her hand. ‘Only Odile here has kept me sane.’

‘Odile. Pretty name. Is that French?’

‘
Bui doi
,’ she said. Dust of life, the name the Vietnamese gave abandoned Eurasian children.

The deprecation hung in the awkward silence. A waiter brought two more beers, and a
citron pressé
for Odile.

‘I’ve organized to go into the Cradle,’ Ryan said. The Cradle; an area in the Mekong Delta totally controlled by the Viet Cong, infested with booby traps, rarely patrolled by government or American troops. ‘The ARVN Seventh Division HQ is at My Tho. Probably take me a couple of days to get there. I’ll have to get down by road the rest of the way to Ben Tre, then out on a chopper to Kien Hoa province.’

Webb listened to this madness without comment. Ryan made it sound so simple. To get to Kien Hoa itself would mean travelling by jeep through Viet Cong territory.

He saw the girl touch Ryan’s hand, a proprietary gesture.

‘How was Danang?’ Ryan asked him.

‘It’s a beach resort. The Highlands are a little more interesting.’

‘You are photographer also?’ Odile asked him.

Ryan grinned. ‘He reckons he is. He’s still wet behind the ears. It was his fault I got this.’ He patted his wounded shoulder. ‘This black Marine sergeant shouted “Everybody get down!” and Spider stood up and started dancing.’

‘Perhaps someone is watching over you,’ Odile said. ‘You believe in God, then, Monsieur Webb?’

‘Mostly just when it suits me, I’m afraid.’ He noticed the gold crucifix at her throat. ‘You’re Catholic, Miss Ngai?’

She looked away. ‘Not such a good one, I think.’

‘She’s being modest,’ Ryan said. ‘She was one of Rome’s stormtroopers till I rescued her from the convent.’

He saw another flicker of pain on the girl’s face, but Ryan did not notice. He’s like a big dog in a china shop, Webb thought. He blunders about, meaning no harm, destroying everything just by wagging his tail.

Suddenly the pieces fell into place. This was Ryan’s nun.

‘You all right, mate?’ Ryan said.

‘You’re unbelievable.’

‘What’s wrong?’

‘Did you ever get your three hundred dollars?’

The smile froze on Ryan’s face.

‘That was a joke, Spider,’ Ryan said, his voice hard. ‘Let’s leave it out.’

Odile looked at Ryan. The guilt was etched on his face like graffiti. ‘Sean?’ she said, waiting for an explanation. But he would not look at her.

‘Thanks a lot,’ he said to Webb.

‘I guess you must be bloody proud of yourself.’

‘You know how it is, Spider. When Crosby told me Prescott was dead, I didn’t know what to say. He was an old mate of mine. You don’t go bursting into tears, so I said the first thing that came into my head.’

‘
Qu'est-ce qui ne va pas, cheri?
Why is your friend angry at you?’

‘Someone bet Ryan three hundred dollars he couldn’t seduce a nun,’ he heard himself say.

Odile waited for Ryan to contradict this version of events, and when he did not she carefully set her drink on the table and took a deep breath. ‘
C’est vrai?
’

Ryan still would not look at her. He stared at Webb, like he wanted to kill him.

Odile gathered her purse, and then, with the bearing of an aristocrat, stood up and walked away.

For a long time neither man said a word. The battle was warming up on the other side of the river. The colors of battle were beautiful against the black sky.

‘Why did you do that?’ Ryan said.

‘I don’t know.’

‘You don’t know,’ Ryan repeated.

‘It amazes me what some people will do to stroke their own egos.’

‘It wasn’t like that, mate.’

‘Wasn’t it? It couldn’t have been the three hundred dollars. Could it?’

Ryan pushed his drink away. ‘I think it must be your shout. In the circumstances.’

He got up and left.

Webb ordered another beer. What the hell made him say that? It had been out of his mouth before he could stop himself. ‘Fuck,’ he said under his breath. Who did he think he was, Crusader Rabbit? Or was it just, you know, he was miserable so why shouldn’t everyone else be?

Seventh Regiment Armoury

‘You think he did it for a bet?’ Wendy Doyle said.

‘No. He didn’t give a damn about the bet,’ Webb said. ‘It was the prestige, another chapter in the Sean Ryan legend. He devoted his whole life to writing his own epitaph.’

Crosby helped himself to some more of the Bushmills and then made a round of the table. ‘Now that’s not fair,’ he said. ‘I think he did love her, in his own way. At least, he told himself he did. He made a commitment that he couldn’t live with. Hey, we’re all guilty of that, right, some time or other?’

Webb frowned. ‘You’re always apologising for him.’

‘I liked him.’

‘We all liked him,’ Cochrane said. ‘But that’s not the point.’

‘He was always the great risk-taker,’ Webb said. ‘That was the way he painted himself. But away from the battlefield he was a coward. When he persuaded Odile to leave the convent she was the one with her heart in her hand. What did he have to lose? Nothing.’

‘I don’t think he planned it that way,’ Crosby said.

‘I don’t want to sound like an echo,’ Cochrane said. ‘But that’s still not the point.’

Doyle picked up the bottle and looked at the poem that had been pasted to the back of the bottle. ‘Perhaps this is a clue to why he did it.’

‘Don’t romanticize him,’ Webb said. ‘He doesn’t deserve it.’

‘So how long did it last?’

‘How long before he ran the first time? About four months. Then Nixon and Kissinger decided ordered US troops over the border into Cambodia, and the hot news was in Phnom Penh for a while. All the talk in Saigon was about
Vietnamization
. Nixon wanted out of the whole mess and as more and more US troops went home, Vietnam disappeared off the front pages. We couldn’t film all the B-52 strikes in Laos and Cambodia and with fewer and fewer ground casualties public interest faded away. It was just someone else’s war, even though we were running it. Battles sell newspapers, issues don’t. Some of us relocated to Phnom Penh to pick up the front-line stuff there.’

‘That’s what Ryan did?’

Webb shrugged. ‘It wasn’t his decision. He was working for Time magazine and they just sent him there. It was his way out. Odile told me he left most of his things in the apartment and said he’d be away a week. She didn’t see him again for two years.’

The men tilted their whiskies and looked at the table. They had come to the part of the legend that didn’t bear close examination. ‘So what happened to Odile?’

‘I didn’t find out till later. I didn’t see much of him after the night at the Caravelle.’

‘I can’t imagine why,’ Doyle said.

Webb gave a rueful smile. ‘We couldn’t help running into each other, of course. The Continental, the Follies, the Press Centre in Danang. Once I literally bumped into him diving for a medevac chopper near Kontum. But we didn’t talk to each other much and then he got the transfer to Pnom Penh.’

‘What about the others?’ Doyle asked.

‘The old guard split up. Lee here was back in the States. O’Leary was rotated back to London. Then it was just me and Croz.’

‘You stayed on?’

‘Croz had to, he was still with the AP. Me?’ He shrugged. ‘Like a dog with a bone. I wouldn’t let go.’

‘You were still freelancing?’

‘I was doing pretty well, selling my pieces to Time-Life and Paris- Match. It helped that I could take my own photographs to go with the stories. There weren’t many guys doing that.’

‘So when did you run into Ryan again?’

‘Croz picked up a bit of gossip occasionally but I didn’t see him for a couple of years. It was Odile I found first. Purely by accident.’

* * *

‘By showing war in its stinking reality, we have taken away the glory and shown that negotiation is the only way to solve international problems.’

Howard Smith, ABC news presenter

‘Take the glamour out of war? I mean, how the bloody hell can you do that? ... Can you take the glamour out of a Cobra, or getting stoned at China Beach? ... War is good for you, you can’t take the glamour out of that. It’s like trying to take the glamour out of sex, trying to take the glamour out of the Rolling Stones!’

Tim Page, combat photographer, Vietnam War, in his autobiography Page by Page

Saigon, March 1972

There was a desperation about Saigon now. The grace once conferred by the French was all but gone, choked by overcrowding and pollution. Even the plane trees in the boulevards were dying. The American legacy had not been peace, but crowds of beggars and cripples and street children, and even more war.

The Calley trial had created a groundswell of revulsion in the US, and it was evident that America would soon turn its back on its disastrous Asian enterprise. The North Vietnamese were throwing more troops against the South, and the US military, with most of its ground forces now back in the United States, reacted by hurling renewed waves of B-52s against Hanoi.

The desperation was most evident along the Tu Do; a Marine was becoming a rare sight around the Saigon streets and the competition among the prostitutes for the remaining American customers was fierce. As the russet and orange clouds of dusk broiled above the city - pollution made the Saigon sunsets remarkably beautiful - the strip came alive, the bars and nightclubs pulsing with rock music, overlaid with the shouts of bar girls, the laughter of crewcut soldiers and the buzz of Honda motorcycles.

Most of the war correspondents frequented the Melody Bar, where the girls were said to be younger, prettier and cheaper. Crosby had fallen in lust with a girl who worked at the Chicago Bar, so Webb arranged to meet him there. When he arrived, some bar girls were clustered under the hot pink neon sign at the door, smoking cigarettes.

They were all parodies of Times Square prostitutes: miniskirts, high-heeled pumps, sweaters of electric pinks and greens one size too tight. They all wore too much lipstick. One of them tugged at Webb’s shirt.

‘Buy me ladies drink?’ she said.

‘No thanks.’

She grabbed his crotch. ‘I love you too much, baby.’

‘Not right now.’

‘Buy me drink, baby, love you too much.’

Webb disengaged himself. ‘Maybe tomorrow.’

‘Then you fuck off numbah ten cheap charlie!’

Inside Steppenwolf was howling ‘Bom to be Wild’, the bass on the jukebox almost overriding the lyric. There was a jostling crowd of crewcut soldiers in open-necked shirts and jeans, as well as a handful of overweight Europeans, probably engineers, all surrounded by eager bar girls. He waited a moment for his eyes to adjust to the dark. No sign of Crosby.

He got a beer. A huge black Marine was pawing one of the girls in the corner. Webb noticed her straight away; unlike the others she seemed almost aloof, as if she had been led to the bar at the point of a gun. She was the only one not screeching too loud, smiling too much. She was also prettier than the other girls, so perhaps she did not have to try as hard.

She was half turned away from him, staring into the mirror above the bar, like a patient after a traumatic operation, examining the scars. She wore a red satin dress and stilettos, and her hair had been cut to her shoulders, leaving commas of hair at her cheeks. She was wearing too much make-up, but it could not disguise her exceptional beauty. The Marine had his hands all over her.

It couldn’t be.

He moved closer, making sure.

‘What you looking at, muthafucker?’ the Marine growled at him.

‘Odile,’ Webb said. Her eyes widened. She did not recognize him, but she looked surprised at hearing a stranger say her name.

‘You want something, man?’

He was the size of a gorilla. Webb shook his head, took his beer and moved away. Another girl grabbed at him, but he pushed her away.
Odile.
Ryan’s girlfriend, the novice. How had she ended up here? Not too difficult to guess. Why was he so surprised?

He looked again, had to be sure. Everything about her was different but it was her, he was sure of it. He saw her watching him in the mirror.

‘GRENADE!’

Everyone hit the floor. Bar stools crashed over; girls screamed. Bottles and glasses smashed on the floor. Those closest to the door hurled themselves outside, others looked for shelter behind the bar. The big Marine lay prone at Webb’s feet, his arms over his head.

Webb grabbed Odile’s arm. He pulled her towards the door and she did not resist. In moments they were on the Tu Do, running. He dragged her into a side street, putting as much distance between themselves and the bar as he could. Right now badly shaken soldiers would be climbing to their feet in the
Chicago
, grateful to be alive, but wondering why there had been no explosion. When the relief had worn off, they would ask themselves and each other what
muthafucker
had
scared the shit out of them for no reason, and then they would be very angry indeed.

Webb still had Odile’s arm. Unable to keep up with him in her stilettos, she tried to jerk away, but he only held her tighter. She shouted something at him in Vietnamese, and slapped his face.

‘I know you can speak English,’ he said to her. ‘Talk to me and I’ll let you go.’

She nodded her head and he let her arm drop to her side. ‘Vous êtes qui?’

‘I’m a friend of Ryan’s. We met one night at the Caravelle.’

At the mention of Ryan’s name, she lost her defiance. ‘You know where Ryan is?’ she said.

‘No, I don’t.’

She rubbed her upper arm. His fingers had left angry red marks on her flesh.

‘Sorry,’ he said.

‘What do you want?’

Good question. ‘I don’t know. I just wanted to get you out of there.’

‘
Pourquoi? Vouley-vous coucher avec moi?
’

He shook his head.

‘Then what do you want? Vous êtes
fou!
’

‘What the hell are you doing in that place?’

‘It is not your problem, I don’t think so.’

‘I just made it my problem.’ They stared at each other. She’s right, he thought, you’re crazy.

‘You don’t want to sleep with me, leave me alone.’ She turned away, but he caught her at the end of the alley and grabbed her wrist again. She tried to wrench herself free. Passers-by stared at them; two Vietnamese military police stopped, but then moved on. Just another soldier having an argument with a prostitute over money, they must have thought.

‘
Que voulez vous, monsieur
?’

‘I just want to talk, okay? I’m a friend of Ryan’s.’

‘Monsieur Ryan is dead.’

‘No. He’s in Phnom Penh.’

‘Phnom Penh,’ she repeated slowly. She nodded, eyes closed, as if some great dilemma had finally been answered for her.
‘C’est vrai?’

He nodded.

‘When you see Monsieur Ryan again .. . you will tell him how I live now. Yes?’ She turned away.

‘Wait...’

‘Please. You cannot help me.’

Webb fumbled in his shirt. ‘How much do you want?’

She stared at the money in his hand, then snatched the bank notes from him and counted them. It was too much, way too much, but he nodded.

* * *

Old women squatted in the mud, hawking wicker pannikins of green bananas, durian and water melons. He followed her up the laneway, dodging the motorcycles and push bikes, picking his way through the piles of rubbish. He made out betel-nut stains in the dirt, like splashes of blood. There was a pervading stench of
nuoc mam
, kerosene and raw sewage; it was noisy with the staccato shouts of the night market and the whine of motorbikes. A man urinated against the wall.

He followed her up a flight of rotting wooden stairs.

They stopped outside a wooden door, and Odile removed the padlock with her key. She pulled him inside.

The only light came from a low-wattage bulb hanging from the ceiling on a frayed black flex. The room was not much larger than his parents’ bathroom back in London. There were rush mats on the floor and there was a plastic bowl for washing. There was a wooden crucifix on the wall, above a child’s cot.

Her bedroom was an area in the corner partitioned off with a tom curtain. Odile drew it back to reveal a narrow wooden bed. She sat down and started to unzip her dress.

Webb stopped her, shook his head.

‘I only give you sexual intercourse,’ she said, ‘I cannot do anything else.’

‘I don’t want sex,’ he said.

Her shoulders sagged. ‘You want your money back?’

‘No, I don’t want my money back.’ He sat down beside her, his eyes on the cot in the comer of the room. ‘You have a baby now?’

She nodded.

‘Ryan’s?’

‘She is fifteen months old. Her name is Phuong.’ She put her head in her hands. ‘What I say before, this is not true. I do not want you to tell Monsieur Ryan how I live. I will have no face left.
Tu comprends?
’

‘It’s not your fault, it’s his.’

‘He does not love me.’

There was no dearth of abandoned women and children in Saigon, as there was no shortage of men without legs in the military hospitals. It was just another cost of war. But he had expected more of Ryan. ‘Where is your baby?’

‘When I am . .. working ...
une vieille
takes care of her for me. I pay her money. Like an
amah
.’

‘Can I see her?’

‘Why?’

‘Perhaps I can help you.’

‘Why you want to help me?’

‘I don’t know,’ he said, and it was the truth.

She stood up slowly. It hurt him to look at her. She was a travesty of the woman he remembered from that evening at the Caravelle.

He followed her back down the steps to the alley.

She stopped outside a hole in the wall. ‘In here,’ she said.

It took a few moments for his eyes to grow accustomed to the gloom. There was just a single kerosene lantern and it was crushingly hot. The small room housed a large family; a woman was cooking over a charcoal stove in the comer, while three small children played on the dirt floor. A man in a white vest eyed him with naked hostility. He barked something at Odile.