Oh we'll all go down to Shanghai in the fall–
Oh we'll all go down to Shanghai in the fall–
When we all get down to Shanghai,
The champagne corks will bang high–
Oh we'd all go down to Shanghai in the fall!
–The Book of Navy Songs
Something like four hundred thousand people called the city of Batavia home. There were some Java natives, of course, but there were also Dutch colonial administrators, ambitious German businessmen, Australian attaches hatched plans for New Guinea, Americans took a break from their duties in the Asiatic fleet…
With that tremendous population and an advantageous position came commerce and her less beloved partner, trouble. The Dutch basked in the glow of Germany's economy – which finally hit its stride with some 'help' from the Reichspakt – and paid their profits back into defenses for Indonesia. In the city proper, people scuttled to purchase all they needed for the night before the shops closed, and the administration of the Dutch East Indies attempted to prepare themselves to weather the fury of Japan.
The sun went west to shine on more 'civilized' climes, and parts of the city settled in for a night's rest. There were still places to go and things – or people – to do, just due to the sheer mass of humanity there, but the city calmed a bit. People retreated home, or in the case of the city's not insignificant (compared to the rest of the world, at least) shipgirl population, they retreated to a spot near port informally referred to as the Moorage.
It was… well, perhaps the most apt comparison would be the clubs in London, with a bit of a Dutch flair. London had a few private women's clubs, even if they didn't have the popularity of men's clubs, and the criteria for membership in a club really couldn't get much more exclusive than being a shipgirl. By the most recent estimate, there were… a few hundred of them, at most?
(And all of them came from a mere fifteen cubes. Their growth was almost as impressive as the sheer amount of blood that had been spilled in the process.)
The club's patron was De Zeven Provinciёn, it played host to Dutchwomen, Germans, Americans, Australians, and the occasional Thai. The building that it was hosted in was an old, Indies Empire style, conforming to the native clime while remaining aggressively European. Stout, whitewashed, wrapped in porticos… it was nothing like the pictures of the buildings going up in France these days.
Raleigh stood before it and felt some relief. She could understand Neoclassical influences. She could understand this little bastion of Europe in the midst of a city unlike any she had seen in America. She would need to learn all about Indonesia and the Philippines, though, because it didn't seem like she'd be leaving the Asiatic Fleet anytime soon.
She stood there, not quite confident enough to go in, so Aylwin took the lead and marched up to the entrance. After heaving the knocker up and then letting it drop thrice, they waited. Faintly, you could hear the sound of chatter and conversation from the rear portico, but they bided their time.
"Ah, the Americans!" Zeven smiled. She was taller than both Aylwin and Raleigh, but that wasn't an incredibly high bar to cross. At least they were all wearing somewhat formal dresses, although Zeven's wasn't quite as full as the one she was spawned in. She looked good in red, Raleigh thought.
(Raleigh and Aylwin wore whites and navy blues. Aylwin had to put some real thought into what would and wouldn't clash with her hair…)
"Thank you for inviting us, Miss Zeven." Raleigh started.
"Thank you, ma'am." Aylwin said.
"It's my pleasure, girls." Zeven gestured for them to follow, and they did. One doorway opened up to a bar where a few girls made themselves drinks. Sofas and paintings of Dutch sailing ships over there, bookshelves packed thick… Raleigh managed to resist the urge to grab a book and hunker down. Aylwin's glance lingered on the bar, but Raleigh would be generous and assume she was looking for bar snacks.
Zeven warmly greeted any girls that passed them by and made introductions. She already knew their names, just a couple of days after their arrival in Batavia. She must have heard about rotation into the Asiatic fleet, perhaps from their predecessors? She spoke rapid-fire German that melted into jubilant laughter over some joke or jibe.
"Aylwin, Raleigh, this vision of beaut- ah, loveliness is Cöln." When Cöln departed – for the bookshelves! – Zeven smiled apologetically. "You will have to forgive any slips of the tongue. English… is my third language, and the first without gender."
"Wouldn't that make it simpler?" Raleigh asked.
"English, simple?" Zeven scoffed, "It is… not the biggest issue, but it is strange, not having to remember gender."
They groused a bit about the difficulty of foreign languages before Zeven led them outside, where something that wasn't quite a party was taking place. There was a jovial mood and some serious chatter from a few girls all standing around a table – they cheered and whooped when Raleigh arrived, although that seemed to be a coincidence considering none spared her a glance – but a few others simply sat and talked or played quoits on the lawn.
A gentle breeze blew past carrying the sweet smell of the flowers in the gardens on the building's sides. The moon hung in the sky, although the warm orange lighting of the balcony had banished much of her starry retinue. Raleigh smiled with a bit more ease and Aylwin turned to Zeven.
"Is there… I'm feeling a bit peckish, embarrassing as that sounds." Aylwin put on her best bashful smile.
"There's a kitchen over past the bar – you saw that, yes? – although you'll have to prepare things yourself."
"You don't have cooking staff?" That seemed a bit odd for a woman as refined-seeming as Zeven.
"No. This is… our place, you understand? What good is a home for shipgirls with strangers around?"
(A gentleman's club in London was an all-male place, by design. Zeven copied that and perhaps went a bit further, cutting out men entirely and almost all women who weren't shipgirls. It was a domestic space, a home away from all their homes where they weren't subject to the rigmarole of military life.)
Aylwin headed in the direction of the kitchen, not quite sure what she should do. She knew a few basic sweets and syrups, nothing sufficient to impress a European palate… but not offering Zeven something after pillaging her kitchen just felt wrong.
And yes, she knew excusing herself for her appetite wasn't a great look, but she was trying! Her captain told the men off when they tried to slip her sweets, all "maintain your weight" this and "mind your health" that. Aylwin knew she wasn't Dewey, thank you very much!
Thankfully, she was able enough of a navigator to make her way to the bar and past it – where a well-tanned girl with an Australian accent talked with a German – to the kitchen. No refrigerator, tragically, but there were fresh foodstuffs in the icebox that could bring a tear to your eye after a long mission… did Zeven send out a buyer for them? She wasn't going into the markets herself and searching for deals, was she?
Molasses there, flour here… ah, sugar! There were a few tins of condensed milk over there, but she didn't have the time to let caramel cool… Zeven didn't have any pudding mix either. What to do, what to do…
"What are you looking for?" Wow, wasn't that a posh accent! She turned, expecting to see a Brit from Australia…
And found Phra Ruang, previously Radiant. The accent was the most she had inherited from her time in the United Kingdom – she looked quite Thai. Aylwin had seen the pictures in the papers and read the columns about the proliferation of wisdom cubes. She, like Ireland's Belfast, owed her life to Germany.
"Ah, some sort of sweet I can prepare quickly…"
Phra Ruang's eyes drifted over to the jar of sugar. Aylwin gulped. "Have you heard of tanghulu?"
"Tanghulu?"
"A sort of Chinese method for candying fruit. All we need is water, sugar, and the fruit."
Strawberries and Australian grapes were retrieved from the iceboxes, and with that they were ready. They cut the leaves off the strawberries and then Alywin put them on skewers with the grapes while Phra set some sugar water to boil. It was… a lot more sugary than the syrup Aylwin knew. Phew.
The syrup eventually reached a nice amber color and they began dipping. (Phra hadn't informed her they were waiting for it to turn amber…) The syrup hardened into a shiny, almost glass-like coating around the fruit, and Aylwin nobly managed to avoid any snacking before they finished with the lot and set them on plates to harden properly. Those last minutes of waiting seemed the hardest yet, but Phra eventually gave the go-ahead.
Taking a stick of strawberries, she bit in, and… "Wow, it's got a crunch!" Sweet juice under a harder wrapping of candy… it worked well.
Phra Ruang grinned at her, a fragment of sugar crystal caught on her lip. "Good?"
"Great," Aylwin confirmed, "but you've got a little something…" She reached out to point at Phra's upper lip.
"Drat," she muttered, turning away and hiding her lip for the moment it took her to clean up. Aylwin wouldn't have minded if she just licked it up… the club was supposed to be relaxed, wasn't it?
"Thank you for showing me how to cook these, Phra Ruang."
"It was my pleasure, Miss…?"
"Oh, I'm sorry! I'm the United States Ship Aylwin!"
"My pleasure, Aywlin. Now let's see if we can foist these onto somebody else." She gestured to the rest of their batch, which… Aylwin probably wouldn't be able to finish, even if she really tried. Knowing this, they picked up the plates and went to resupply some of their fellow ships.
Aylwin had taken a look at the recognition manuals – which now contained portraits – but some of the faces still surprised her. Phra Ruang got a lot of the Australians before Aylwin did, but in her defense, there were a lot of R-classes, and they were all Phra Ruang's sisters. Half sisters? They certainly weren't as friendly with Phra as Aylwin was with Dewey… still, they took the sweets.
Eventually, they found someone that Aylwin managed to recognize first: Java! She knew that face quite well. While she was Dutch, not British, Aylwin couldn't help but take some interest in a ship who shared her name with the killer of the original Aylwin.
"Oh, hello!" She had aristocratic features like Zeven, although she seemed a bit more relaxed. She leaned back and stretched her arms in the air behind her. "Good to see you, Phra. And… Aylwin, yes?"
Why did all the Dutch ships know her name? Way to make a girl feel noticed, jeez… (Maybe she should be flattered that big, grown women like Zeven and Java even cared?)
Java politely refused their offer of snacks and made her own in turn: "Are you feeling like a game of billiards?"
Aylwin looked to Phra, who was shaking her head no. Unfortunately, Java noticed too: "Oh spoil my fun, why don't you?"
"Losing isn't any fun at all."
"I'm sorry you didn't win the first game of billiards you ever played." Java didn't seem that sorry at all.
"Of course, I'd lose, I'm playing the world's biggest billiards freak!"
"You wound me, Phra. And really, if anybody should be good at billiards, it would be you… torpedo-chuckers."
"Torpedo chucker?!" Phra asked, faux-offense in her tone clashing with a smile.
While Aylwin went off to investigate the club's foodstuffs, Raleight found herself attracted to that crowded table she had seen. They continued their chatter and their cheering after Zeven peeled away to play host somewhere else…
As she walked over, she saw one of the shipgirls – a smiling German with snow white hair – raise… was it a cup with a plate under it? She held the two tight against each other and gave them a thorough shake that filled the air with the sound of their rattling. There was murmuring as she went to set them down. She lifted the cup and said three fateful words: "Gourd, gourd, gourd."
"WOOOO! Read 'em and weep, girls!" One of the Australians cackled maniacally as everyone else at the table muttered to themselves, frequently resorting to the sort of language Raleigh would chastise someone for.
"And that's…" The one who rolled the dice paused for a moment, "One hundred and eleven pfennig?"
"Yes please!" The Australian… Adelaide, maybe? Raleigh didn't remember her face from the identification booklet, but she certainly wasn't Anzac, considering the woman in question had her name sewn onto her vest.
Speaking of Anzac, she noticed Raleigh lingering near the table. "Hey there. You're one of the Americans, right?"
"Yes! USS Raleigh, pleased to meet you."
"Charmed," Anzac said. "You want a seat?"
"I'm…" definitely not supposed to go gambling, that much was sure, "What is this, exactly?"
Raleigh watched money change hand. The mysterious winner got her pfennigs, while everybody else's money went to the house. Now that the money was out of the way, she could see a fabric mat covered in pictures. A gourd, a stag, a crab, a fish, a chicken, and a prawn… the dice had similar symbols.
"It's called bau cua cá cọp. Vietnamese, right?"
"Yep!" The German chirped. "But you say it bầu cua cá cọp."
"Right. It's not too complex. Put your money on a space…" she tapped the prawn with her thumb, "and the number of dice that match determines payout. One in, one out or two out or three out."
"Or none out."
"Yeah," Anzac conceded, shrugging her shoulders. "You want to play, though?"
She only had American dollars on her and even then, she wouldn't bother exchanging her money for silly gambling. "I'll just watch." She tried to bite back on the almost instinctual frown that came onto her face as she considered the probabilities.
Three six-sided dice means the chance of any guess being wrong was five over six times five over six times five over six. Multiply that out to get one hundred and twenty-five over two hundred and sixteen. You'd get nothing a little more than half the time. Properly weighed odds could counteract that, but they were currently operating with a house advantage.
It wasn't hard math! Simple fractions! They should know better!
There wasn't even any skill involved! Shipgirls could be unusually good card counters – Nevada told tales of her fleecing her crew – but there were precisely zero cards to count here. The game could be nothing more than simple dumb luck, by its very design. Why not just throw your money out the window and hope the wind blew some back while you were at it?
Despite her mental objections, the girls continued playing. "Come on crab, don't fail me now…" Anzac muttered, placing down a tidy pile of coins. Some of the others tried to diversify. A bit of prawn, a bit of stag…
The German whose name Raleigh still didn't know did the same trick with the dice and the cup and set it back down. Everyone leaned forward, watching the cup rise with bated breath…
"Yes! Eat it, Adelaide!" Anzac crowed. So the mystery Australian was Adelaide.
"Triple crab." The German said. "Two triples in a row. Wow, what are the chances?"
"One in one thousand, two hundred and ninety-six," Raleigh said.
"Really?" The German asked. Raleigh fought the urge to start lecturing as the others chattered about their odds. No, Adelaide, that's the gambler's fallacy, and a thousand triple crabs wouldn't make the dice landing on stag any likelier.
As she slowly peeled herself away from the bầu cua cá cọp table Zeven marched outside, another one of the Dutch ships pushing a wheeled stand for a record player. Sure, why not add music while they were at it?
A quote came to Raleigh's mind, although she wasn't sure how many of the other ships would actually be able to understand it. Maybe the Dutch ones, actually.
Après nous, le déluge.
Aylwin and Phra Ruang had just about finished with the girls still inside the house. Phra had insisted that they give everyone a chance, and so they marched to every quiet little side room and hidden niche and knocked. This led to them accidentally waking up two people and got them shooed away – rather rudely, actually – from a few private conversations, but they did manage to get rid of more of their candy in the process.
It was nice to talk with Phra Ruang. In addition to having that lovely refined accent – which didn't seem weird coming from a girl of her stature – she knew a bit more about the area than Aylwin did.
"It seems like all the boys I came with want to go to China…"
"It's the best place to spend their pay, probably. Foreign money goes far in China." Phra Ruang said. "Marks are better than dollars, though."
"And what about…" Aylwin trailed off. What did they use?"
"The baht was pinned to the pound."
Ouch.
They kept on walking and passed by some old painting of a bunch of men on horseback. Raleigh would probably know what it was, but all Aylwin could glean from it was that the charge didn't do too hot, considering the falling horses and men. Dying in battle, huh…?
"Who are you named after, Phra?"
"I was named for a Thai king. The first one, actually." Phra said. "And you?"
"Lieutenant Aylwin died in the War of 1812, aboard the USS Constitution." Raleigh had hammered that one into her head.
"Hmm. Do you think my name would be fitting for a bigger ship?"
"What do you mean?" Aylwin asked.
"I'm a destroyer. Not even a native-built one, and I get that name? Would you call any old ship Washington or Lincoln?"
"No."
"Exactly. It'd be like if they named you USS Constitution or United States." Aylwin was silent for a moment, and Phra paled. "No, I didn't mean to… that wasn't an insult, I swear!"
Some part of her – a big, fat part of Aylwin – wanted to grab the candy and run to Raleigh so they could just leave. Stupid Phra Ruang, stupid not-party where they didn't even have any food prepared… She was big enough (ha) not to let a little slip of the tongue like that ruin their chances of making friends with the fleets they'd be working with for… years, potentially.
Raleigh had taken a seat near the edge of the portico alone – barring a brief visit from her caring host Zeven – and waited for Aylwin to come back outside. Maybe she should go and grab a book to make the wait a little easier… but no, Aylwin was expecting her outside. They had to stick together, as Americans!
Okay, maybe that was a little much. This wasn't exactly an emergency situation they were in. Nothing on the premises could be that dangerous, so it was more a matter of making sure they were escorted home safely. Not even together, necessarily, just safely. Zeven's spectacular largesse extended to sending Dutch soldiery to protect any shipgirl in the city. (Even during a Japanese courtesy call.)
She was eventually joined by Aylwin, who was… not frowning, but not smiling either. "Is something wrong?"
"Nothing…" she held out a skewer of candied grapes as she nibbled at her own. "You want one?"
"No thank you." Aylwin proceeded to pack away all three she carried with her. Raleigh… refrained from comment. She had a healthy respect for rules and regulations, but she could recognize that this hallowed place was supposed to be beyond such things.
Whatever song Zeven put on came to a close, and she went to change the record. "This one is a gift from my good friend Belfast. Let's start with the Irish Jaunting Car!"
The record player started, and both Aylwin and Raleigh paused for a moment.
"That's…" Aylwin thought she recognized the tune, but it wasn't quite clicking.
"The Bonnie Blue Flag?" Raleigh said.
"But wasn't there…" Aylwin hummed for a moment, "The Irish Volunteer! That's it!"
"The Irish Volunteer?"
"You know… Then fill the ranks and march away, no traitor do we fear, 'we'll drive them all to blazes' says the Irish volunteer?"
"No, I don't know, but… you've got quite a voice, Aylwin."
"Really? Thank you!" She smiled. Phew.
The song on the record didn't share those exact lyrics, though. Some say the Russian bear is tough, and I believe it's true, Though we beat him at the Alma and Balaklava too… those battles were seventy years old! The song continued to prove itself dated in the very same stanza – how could the Czar be driven to blazes in an Irish Jaunting Car if the man was dead?
(Maybe he had already been driven to blazes?)
Omake: Phra Ruang and the Father of the Navy
Phra Ruang carried a great name, but she had also carried a great person. A man who meant more to her than some quasi-historical king, a Thai Arthur…
Well, Phra Ruang didn't have the mental facilities to actually remember it at the time, but she had carried the Prince of Chumphon, Abhakara Kiartivongse back from Britain after her purchase. It wasn't the first time he had sailed on a British ship, even.
Radiant wasn't exactly comparable to Revenge and Ramillies though, was she? He had served as a midshipman on both and been educated on modern naval warfare in Britain, while his brother had spent his education at Sandhurst and Oxford before ascending to kingship as Rama VI. They were alike in their British educations, and alike in their early deaths in their forties.
She didn't get the chance to meet either. The king was a bit above her, and she had been cubed a year after Abhakara's death, almost to the minute. Twenty minutes before noon on the 19th of May, 1924. Or 2468, if you preferred Buddhist reckoning.
Considering that the man had sired eleven children, saying that he was her father felt a bit… offensive. Presumptive. Still, she ached to meet him in a powerful, aching way, the way of a posthumous child who had not even the faintest hint of who their father was. Perhaps she was almost in the same boat as Princess Bejaratana, who had about two hours in the world before King Rama departed it.
Well, she wasn't exactly like Bejaratana, considering that she sprung into the world nearly full-grown. They probably weren't teaching the little tyke Muay Thai. The Admiral knew Muay Thai quite well…
She'd have to light some incense for him when her next paycheck came in. Maybe she could beg for one, but she wanted to buy one with her own money. The Prince had paid the price of a lot of fine incense for her.
Phra Ruang as seen in this chapter is at her most relaxed, more than she probably ever lets herself be in Thailand proper. She doesn't have the appearance issue Kongou has, so she settles in a little easier, but makes up for feelings of being foreign or alien by following etiquette and such to the letter.
The person who introduced Bầu cua cá cọp to me was my priest. He picked the game up in seminary, where he would consistently wipe out his laundry money for the year, every year, on Tet. He still has the very Bầu cua cá cọp set he lost like, several hundred dollars of laundry money on. The way we played it the game's basically fixed but the hype is unreal even when you're playing with poker chips.
Apparently Montezuma's revenge, the term for traveller's diarrhea, came about in the 60's. I had a brief line in here about Utah, Florida, and Monty's revenge but I cut it. Other fun vocabulary adventures include me trying to genuinely research the historical gentlemen's clubs and then having to change my search terms so Google doesn't give me advice for going to strip clubs. As for the epigraph song, the book in question comes in 26, which might be a little tight for this fic (although I didn't twist myself into knots over timeline here) but the song itself has context in the Philippines so I think it's clear.
Less fun fact I learned while researching for a quote: King Rama VI apparently picked up anti-semitism while learning in the west? Well, technically the article he wrote applied those negative stereotypes to the Chinese… which is like double-dipping, I guess? He wrote a lot of other stuff though, both originals and Siamese translations of European works. He also has a book on the war of the Polish succession.
Apres nous le deluge means 'after us, the deluge" and generally refers to a lack of care re: what happens post your croaking. Raleigh might be a little hasty about this judgement – note the hushed conversations behind locked doors Aylwin interrupts – but I tried for a subtle undertone of 'if the Japanese go for it, we're screwed, might as well live life' going on. The painting of a cavalry charge is supposed to be the Charge of the Light Brigade, not that Aylwin recognizes it as such. If we consider Zeven a 'lovable boomer' then the Moorage club is a sort of midlife crisis of a building. Clinging onto a pre-war past without troubles like Syndicalism or a Japan that is liable to knock the western fleets' teeth in.