After the Storm (53 page)

They had been marched for two weeks after leaving Singapore. At first they’d been able to buy food from the natives in the kampongs but soon their money had run out and they lived on rice that the Japanese dug out of sacks and handed them, glutinous and stinking. They had stumbled and dragged one another along and been kicked when they fell and when they cried; killed when they would not bow their heads. Two elderly women had died like that, not shot but bayonetted. The children had been made to watch and had become quiet and Annie had sold Don’s watch to the headman of a village for four chickens and that night they had cooked them and the children had eaten a piece each and had walked better the next day.

Natives had stoned them at one village, stoned the memsahibs and Mavis Anderton had cried then and said that nothing would ever be the same again.

The hardship had not been as difficult for her as for most of the others. She had thought of Albert and Wassingham and
told herself that she had always liked the heat and she should be grateful for that at least. It was different for Prue.

Annie shifted Prue’s weight on her shoulder. ‘Come on lass,’ she murmured. ‘Three years in the camps and you’ve still got a punka wallah fanning you so open those eyes and throw me a rupee.’

She eased her back. There was no one in the hut with its moist panting heat; they were outside as she was, sitting in the shade or hoeing the vegetable patch; teaching the surviving children over in the hut by the commandant’s office. Annie stroked Prue’s hair.

‘Come on, my wee lass,’ she whispered. ‘Don’t give up now, don’t leave me here on my own.’ Louder she said, ‘One of the Dutch has some peroxide, we need most of it for the hospital but I’ve earned enough with the washing I did for Van Eydon to dye that streak in front. Give old bandy legs a thrill, eh, make him faint on parade for a change.’

She felt a stir from the girl and smiled as Prue slowly straightened.

‘That, darling, is quite the best idea you’ve had in a long time.’ It was faint but it was good.

‘What a vain bitch you are,’ Annie laughed. ‘I’ll tell you one thing. We must write to the girls in Oxford, when this is all over, and tell them they’ve lost their bet. There is a new slimline you with a fetching streak in your fringe as well.’

Prue pushed herself from Annie and sat up against the wall. Her eyes were dull and heavy-lidded and she had a sore at the corner of her mouth. ‘This will never be over, it’s nearly three years now and we won’t be alive much longer. It’s too hard and not worth the effort.’ Her head sagged on to her chest and Annie scrambled to her knees. A pebble cut into her leg, then scraped her ulcer as she shoved it to one side. The pain made her feel sick.

She took Prue’s chin in her hand but she would not lift her head, so she took her hair and gently pulled until she could see her face, then shook her until she opened her eyes.

‘We’ll survive and it will be over. Lorna told us that “D” Day happened in June, you remember? They’ll come for us, you see. Just hang on, Prue. We must hang on. There’s India waiting for you and your da. Think of your da. How would he feel if you left
him alone?’ Prue’s eyes were closing again and Annie took her chin in her hands, smoothed back the hair from her face.

‘What about me if you let go? Who’s going to drive me mad, keep me going? What would Georgie say if you let me die, because you weren’t here any more?’

Prue’s eyes were open again now, but her mouth was slack with weariness. She was worn out with dysentery and malnutrition like them all but there was no way this girl was going to die. She was too young and it would be a waste, as Sarah would have said. And Annie would miss her too much.

‘We’ll survive,’ she said through gritted teeth. ‘If it bloody well kills me, we’ll survive.’ And suddenly Prue’s eyes were not dull any more but alive with laughter, and Annie grinned, her body limp with relief. She rose, then dusted off her knees and entered the dark heat of the hut to fetch the scissors.

She cut Prue’s hair as she had been asking all week and told her she looked like Veronica Lake but piebald. Monica called then from the hospital hut next to them and Annie patted Prue’s shoulder, feeling her bones through her flesh.

‘Tea-break over.’ She picked up the tin can and checked that some water remained. ‘Take a bit. It’s clear of worms. Just stay in the shade and I’ll do your shift.’

They had built the hospital hut large enough to take twenty patients and it was always full. She went from bed to bed with the doctor, checking pulses and bathing foreheads, easing discomfort if possible.

At five she had supper, the last meal before the long night. The rice grain had been spread and sorted all through the day, she had seen the team busy over by the kitchen hut. There were a few vegetable scraps today which was good but nonetheless her throat closed as it did now against the meal which had not varied since they had been interned. She pushed rice deep into her mouth with her fingers, forcing herself to swallow.

Monica was sitting next to her. ‘Prue all right now?’

Annie nodded. ‘I saw her come across for first sitting earlier so she’s eating anyway.’

It was dusk outside. It had come quickly as it always did and the evening felt cooler after the heat of the day but still sticky and Annie walked back to their hut while Monica went over to the Dutch to cut hair for cigarettes.

Prue was waiting on the verandah, propped against a
doorpost, her eyes half-closed, her mosquito-net pulled about her. She smiled as Annie sat down next to her and took the blanket that she passed, wearing it as the pit women wore their shawls only this was for protection against mosquitoes, not the cold. There were groups of women all along the verandah talking in low voices, and in the huts. She took a piece of bible paper from her pocket and rolled it round the shredded leaves they had dried in the sun during the day. Pruscilla hugged her knees.

‘Feeling better?’ Annie asked as she put the cigarette in her mouth and lit it. She had packed the leaves tightly so that they would burn slowly. Prue nodded.

‘I don’t fancy the idea of the move tomorrow,’ she said.

Annie drew in the smoke. ‘I’m 30 tomorrow and don’t feel like that kind of a party either. Don’t worry though, you’ll be feeling better by then.’ She swatted at a mosquito that buzzed close to her. It was never silent here; there was always the noise of the jungle, the murmur of insects. She had seen the flash of colour as butterflies wove in and out of the undergrowth around the camp and she had thought how Georgie would love it. Then there were the moans and restless turning of the patients which they could hear easily from here and the children who cried out in the dark, especially those who no longer had a mother living. One hundred human beings here now she reckoned, minus three of course. No wonder there was always noise.

Prue reached in under her net and held out her hand to Annie. ‘If we hadn’t been on the move tomorrow, I would have given you this in the morning. But since you’re 21 again I thought I’d push the boat out for you.’

There was a chilli in her hand. ‘More precious than bloody gold,’ breathed Annie. ‘All those vitamins.’ She fingered its shiny smoothness and leant back against the hut.

‘Thanks, bonny lass. The best present I’ve ever had. We’ll have a party when we arrive. Chilli con carne but without the con carne.’ She paused. ‘Do you remember the strawberries and salmon, Prue, and how we thought it would last until the end of time? We were wrong and Georgie was right.’

‘I know and I said some things I should never have said to you then, about you and Georgie. I’ve always wanted to say I was sorry.’ Prue’s face was in shadow. They were talking
quietly as everyone was doing in these moments before they crawled on to their beds.

Annie drew on the last of her cigarette, feeling the heat near her fingertips. ‘I don’t remember you saying anything,’ she replied, but she did, every word and suddenly she could not wait to be on her pallet and able to think of him. Of the coldness of the beach as they had lain together the first time, of the feel of his skin, the scars that ridged down his back, of his arms as they held her and of later, when they met again and loved again. This is what she thought of each night, what she saved up through the day using it as a prize which beckoned her on through every hour. Georgie kept her sane, kept her alive. That was how she thought of Georgie and all the questions were kept in that little black box in her mind where dark things belonged.

On the third day of the march, it rained and Annie’s clompers stuck in the mud with each dragging step, wrenching her toes and rubbing further raw patches. It swept over struggling bodies as they toiled along the tracks which seemed to lead nowhere. It was still hot, in spite of the rain, and the humidity sucked away their strength. Four died on that day, and a child. The guards threw the bodies into the swamp and would not allow time for burial.

Annie watched Monica’s back and counted to fifty and then again and again. They kept in step because it helped them to keep going and made the stretcher they carried less bumpy for the patient who was bloated with beri beri and should not last the night, or so the doctor thought.

The camp was reached on the seventh day at noon and the woman only died when they laid her down inside the wire. Annie’s hands were bleeding and her shoulders felt as though hot wires were strung from shoulder to shoulder.

The doctor organised the burials and explained that the smell which was strong was latex and that this was a work-camp. The rubber plantation was all around.

‘There’ll be more work for us, more injuries to the women Sisters,’ the doctor said, her face drawn and looking older than her 40 years. Her auburn hair was now almost completely white though she had once been a beautiful woman. ‘Now come on over, we’re to be addressed by the commandant.’

He spoke through an interpreter while the rain beat down
and it dripped down Annie’s bowed neck and face and off the end of her nose.

‘Nippon number one,’ he said. ‘And the war finish in one hundred years. You work well, you be treated well. Remember that.’

They stood up straight as he picked his way through the mud to his car and roared away, klaxon sounding.

‘Thank you and goodnight,’ murmured Prue as she walked painfully with Annie over to the hospital hut. Their legs were trembling and so were their arms. The bamboo slats laid down for mattresses glittered with bugs which scattered and scuttled across and down the cracks where each cane met the other, so when the rain had ceased they lit fires with a lighter made of plaited cotton dipped in coconut oil and a flint. Annie felt the heat as they passed the slats quickly through but they knew that still some would survive and that the night for the patients would be one of torment as the bugs bit and the smell of bad burnt almonds rose as they tossed and crushed, and not just for the patients of course.

There was more rain again the next day and it poured through the
atap
tiles which were too few to create a proper roof on the bamboo huts. They had to move the patients so that rain dripped only on their bodies not their faces. Then they heard shouting in the compound and a woman’s screams, loud and long and despairing. Annie felt cold rush through her body.

Guards burst through into their huts then, their boots clumping and kicking at the platforms, tipping patients on to the floor, emptying out the doctor’s bag where they kept what little medicine they had, smashing bottles with their rifle butts. Her mouth went dry. She should stop this but she was too afraid. The guards came towards them, their bayonets fixed, their faces bulging with rage, words spitting from their mouths.

They were pushed, patients and nurses, out of the doorway. Prue stumbled and Annie caught her and held her upright as they were slapped down the steps. She turned and helped two patients and Prue took another across the compound to where the other prisoners were waiting in silence in three long rows. They were not to bow their head, the interpreter said. They were to watch what happened to those who disobeyed.

Lorna Briggs’s radio had been found. She was 24, still with her Scots accent and covered in freckles from the heat of
Malaya. Now she was beheaded quite silently in the centre of the compound and the blood that shot two yards was washed away in the deluge before it had settled.

And Annie drew in her head beige and pink flowers, any sort of flowers that might do for wallpaper, for curtains, as she had done before in the camps when her friends had been swatted and destroyed and she had been unable to bear it. Why not have matching lampshades and crockery? While the rain sheeted down and they all stood there she closed her mind to the pain, the body and the blood, pushing it into that black box at the back of her head.

Later she rolled her cigarette on the verandah with Prue and they listened to the cicada and she thought of Sarah’s house, her house now and decided she would start with the bedroom. Tom could help. They would design that first, see how it worked before they went into production. Yes, they would do that and now she must think of a design, a design that would keep today out of her thoughts tonight. She drew on the cigarette and lit Prue’s from the stub.

Not lush flowers but small gentle pink and beige with an indefinite outline for wallpaper and larger flowers for the bedspread and the curtains. Slowly she cut, pasted and papered the bedroom up to the picture rail and brought soft beige emulsion across the ceiling and down to meet the paper. The lighting was a problem and she turned to Prue.

‘Right,’ she challenged. ‘I’ve decided on the wallpaper and curtains, the bedspread too, but what about lighting?’

Prue flicked away her cigarette stub into the compound and it was doused by the rain before it hit the ground.

‘Is this your business idea you’re on about?’ she asked, smiling slightly.

And Annie nodded. It always worked and made them turn from the present when it became too cruel.

‘Yes, but first I’ve decided to do the house and I’m stuck on the light fitting.’ Their voices weren’t quite right yet but by the end of the long night they were sounding normal and they had not had to bother with the agony of sleep.