The Devil's Garden by Nigel Barley Read Free Book Online

sub-committee meeting.
    * * * 
    There was no shortage of doctors on the wing. In fact there were more than they knew what to do with, given the almost total absence of drugs and their helplessness without them. The hospital wing was known, with deliberate whimsy, as ‘Cripplegate’ and Pilchard was on the afternoon rota. It would be busy since people regarded medical consultations as a form of social therapy, comforting, validating, good in themselves. Miller, an Australian mine engineer with a swollen belly like a separate fitment hobbled in and sat down heavily, wincing.
    â€˜It’s me Niagaras, Doc.’
    â€˜Niagaras?’
    Miller chewed at the air in frustration. He had a face like a collapsed lung. ‘Yeah, Niagaras. Oh Jeez. You know … Niagara Falls, balls. They aches something cruel. Wakes me up at night when I’m in bed. A while back one of the lads give me a bit of melon and I thought it was that upset me guts. Like I was melancholic.’
    â€˜Have you suffered any recent injury in that area?’
    â€˜In bed, Doc? Nah. That’s one place I keeps out of trouble.’
    Pilchard sighed. He was not going to examine him. He recoiled powerfully from the notion. In peacetime, bodies might be variously erotic or medical. Years of training prevented their being both at the same time. Here they were simply universally repellent.
    â€˜You’re sure it’s not rice balls?’ It was the local term for a common prison complaint. ‘Erosion of the skin of the scrotal sack with attendant inflammation and infection? The result of vitamin deficiency.’ The man shook his head. Pilchard looked him in the eye, man-to-man, no-names-no-packdrill. ‘Look. When did you last have an orgasm, Mr Miller?’
    Miller rolled his head and blushed like a schoolgirl tickled under the chin. ‘Aw Doc. There ain’t no sheilas in here and I’ve had other things on me mind, what with the malaria and dysentery. Cripes, I hardly knows me cellmates.’
    Pilchard grunted. His wife flashed across his mind. His other half. Perhaps less a half than a sixteenth as it turned out. Margaret had fled to Australia on one of the first evacuation ships. Not that he had had much time for the pleasures and duties of marriage. He refused to go down that gloomy path.
    â€˜Not since your last bout of malaria then? Well, that may well be the trouble. The elevated temperature and so on. Hard on the genitals which function at their best at a lower temperature than the rest of the body. Hence their dependant siting. Find some way to drain away … er … try the usual form of release. You know what I mean.’ Miller blushed again and looked fixedly down into the corner of the room. There was a cockroach there, eavesdropping without shame, waving its antennae.
    â€˜You mean crack one off, Doc?’ His voice was high and incredulous.
    â€˜If that’s what you call it. At least once a day. For a few days. See if that clears it up.’
    Miller shook his head in shocked disbelief. ‘First time a quack’s told me to do that. When I was a kiddie lots told me not to. Make you blind. Make hair grow on the palms of yer ’ ands. Priests too—though there was some of ’em at school only too keen to give a lad a hand. I grew up poor and I was lucky to be born a lad otherwise I’d have had nothing at all to play with. Here, it seems like a waste of good porridge. Still …’ He lumbered to his feet, all bony arms and legs, the chair scraping back and rubbed his hand over his grinning jaw. The cockroach ran for cover. ‘Can you give me a prescription for that, Doc?’
    * * * 
    â€˜Singapore is a colony but it has its own colonies. It is an island become a prison and within that prison is this special place where women are further imprisoned. But we are not alone in this. There have been other places just the same. Imagine Australia on