After the Storm (54 page)

It took weeks of arguing through their off-duty hours while they discarded Prue’s chandelier and Annie’s ruche material but finally Annie decided on a glass bowl with bamboo etched on as a centre light with duplicated bedside lamps.

The monsoons were over and it was not quite so humid though the latex still permeated every corner. ‘How can you want anything that reminds you of this place? You’re inhuman,’ Prue flung at her as they scooped Mrs Glanville’s ulcer. ‘Bamboos, how can you choose bamboos?’

‘Come on, Prue,’ retorted Annie as she dropped the final swab into the tin that Prue was holding. ‘Just because we’re in the wrong place at the wrong time doesn’t mean that ugliness is everywhere; the flame trees still flame and the sun still sets.’

‘It does that,’ said Mrs Glanville. ‘Right over good old Blighty.’

They both stopped glaring at one another and turned to the emaciated woman who lay beneath an old torn sheet. Annie ran her hands down her torn, dirty uniform and looked at Prue’s which was the same.

She laughed then. ‘None of that talk, Mrs Glanville, or I’ll have to talk with the doctor,’ she scolded, ‘and then there’ll be no more grapes at visiting time.’ She took the woman’s pulse and touched her cheek and was glad that she also smiled. They moved on to the next patient.

‘God, my legs,’ Prue groaned. Their periods had stopped long ago along with most of the women and their legs had swollen and permanently throbbed but whether it was as a result of this or just the diet and the work no one really knew.

Not exactly the place for research the doctor had said as they had talked it over in the early days of their captivity. She had worked in a children’s hospital in Sydney and had come to Singapore in 1939.

Annie stood with Prue at the side of the beri-beri case who was dropsical and exhausted.

‘The doctor has asked Cricket Chops for some Vitamin B again but he made her wait two hours in the sun, then sent her back speedo to look after the sick she was neglecting. Without the vitamins of course. No red cross parcels again, he said.’ Annie was angry as they moved away to sit at the end of the hut until they made another round in half an hour.

‘Did you do Van Weidens’s washing?’ Annie asked.

‘Only half before roll-call. Can you finish when you get off?’

Annie nodded. ‘It might buy us a banana from the guard, but don’t for God’s sake try with the big one. He belted Monica last week and took her money anyway.’

Prue raised her eyebrows. ‘Sounds pretty par for the course. Anyway, Annie, you really can’t have that glass bowl. It’s unpatriotic.’ She was looking down the hut towards the other door which corresponded with the one behind them. There was sometimes a slight draught but not today.

Annie picked up the fan from the desk and rose.

‘Well, I’m going to anyway. I like the lines of the bamboo. Tom would too.’

She stood waiting for Prue to join her in fanning the patients and she did pull herself to her feet but would not look at Annie as she started alone for the first bed.

‘Then you’ll have to sort out your own damn sitting-room, because that’s next on your list isn’t it, darling. I want no part of it.’ Her voice was full of bitterness.

Annie turned her back on her friend and tried to decide on colours for Sarah’s room as her stomach tightened. These rows were breaking out all over the camp as people became as taut as over-stretched elastic about to snap. She soothed Mrs Glanville then moved to the next bed, fanning the woman who lay unconscious on the pallet. Annie wondered if the sitting-room was always empty now or whether the boys were there from time to time to see Val and had anyone heard from Georgie? She knew from the radio – she would not think of Lorna, just the radio – that Rangoon had fallen long ago but that did not mean he was dead. She must not think of him being dead. That would make it impossible to live. So she thought instead of Tom reading letters from Georgie, sitting by the fire with Maud and Grace and Don, eating hot buttered toast while Val poured tea. Were the girls pregnant yet, she wondered? Was Tom safe in the pits and Don in his supply depot? But she would not think of these questions, only of scenes; of people sitting as they had always done; of Georgie watching the sun setting over the lakes and the ducks against the sky.

A patient called and she moved towards the bed. Her hair hung limp and irritated her neck; she’d have to cut it again although Georgie liked it long. She rubbed the back of her hand across her forehead.

‘Nurse, go and wash that hand. Septicaemia we definitely do not want. ’ The doctor was watching her from the end of the hut, then stooped again to her patient.

Annie stood still, her legs trembling as she saw again the
varicosed veins at the fair, so vividly that she was startled. She washed at the basin and wondered whether plain white paper would suit the sitting-room.

At lunch Prue sat on the Dutch table and did not look up as Annie came in, so she sat with Mavis Anderton who smiled. Her face was drawn and her teeth had rotted into black stumps; her hair was quite white and cut very short.

‘Had a row, my dear?’

Annie murmured. ‘It’s the heat, it gets us all down.’ She felt so tired today, even more so than she had done yesterday but not inside her head, not where she planned the sitting-room and, when that was finished, there was the kitchen and then the greenhouse to plant out.

‘Wallpaper can be so dull, can’t it?’ she said as she swallowed the last of her rice. A piece fell on to the
atap
table and was lost between the weave. The women either side of her stopped eating. Mavis shoved her fingers in her mouth and sucked hungrily at the rice water while her eyebrows lifted. Monica looked round at the walls of the hut.

‘Yes, I have to agree, palm and bamboo do become a trifle tedious. Let in the the draught too.’ Mavis waved her hands to the walls. ‘Should we complain to the management, do you think?’ The whole table was laughing now and Annie glanced at Prue but she had turned her back to them and was busy eating.

‘What are you up to now, Annie?’ someone called from another table. More rice was pushed into open mouths again.

‘Just thinking of doing up my house when I get back.’ And that sounded good.

‘You’ll use your own firm, will you, the one you keep talking about?’ Mavis was wiping her mouth with the back of her hand.

‘I thought so, my brother and I together.’ The sound of running feet broke into the conversation.

Camp leader stood panting in the doorway, holding on to the frame. ‘Roll-call,
tenko
, quickly now everyone.’ Her hair was falling over her face and she flicked it aside with an impatient hand. The women pushed the remains of the rice into their mouths as they ran towards the door knocking over stools in their haste. Mavis was in front of Annie and gripped the leader’s arm. ‘Not another Lorna, is it?’

‘No,’ she gasped, still trying to catch her breath. ‘They’ve decided on three a day that’s all, but they’re creating merry hell
anyway.’ Then she ran back to the compound past Annie who had begun to run to the hospital. There would be a beating if they were late but she was on duty and needed for the stretcher-cases. She pushed through the running women and struggled up the steps. She could not run for more than a few paces now, she was just too tired and the heat was beating on her head. Oh God, she’d left her hat in the dining-hut.

The doctor was just leaving. ‘It’s all right, Sister, stretcher-cases can remain inside today. For God’s sake, hurry. He’s in a rage, just look at him stamping.’ The doctor took her arm and they stumbled down the steps and ran again for parade. The others were already lined up and bowing and Dr Jones’s hand tightened on her arm and Annie felt her bowels loosen with fear.

They reached the lines and bowed and barely breathed as feet slopped along in boots which seemed too large always and had to be held on with binding. It was frayed Annie saw and the boots were dirty and scuffed up small clouds of dust as they approached and stopped. The blow knocked her across the doctor on to the ground and the sand was gritty in her mouth, blood trickled from the corner; she lay motionless.

‘You come speedo, you bad woman.’ The boot kicked and hands dragged her upright and Annie felt the stickiness of his spit as words were hurled. ‘You stand here all day. Look at sun, all day.’

Her face was rigid with animal fear, she felt urine escape and stain her shorts. The bamboo caught her across her midriff cutting into the flesh where her uniform was torn. She was silent. It struck across her hands and she screamed and though her eyes were open she could see no faces and then they filed away as the pain covered her.

‘Ichi, ni, san, yong,’ kept leaping and snarling in amongst the pain which coiled tight now around her broken finger. The guard smelt and beige roses merged into glaring white suns which wrung the sweat from her body. Her tongue grew large in her mouth, her lips cracked and burst and her throat was too swollen to swallow.

‘Look at sun.’ The guard kicked and turned her body, but her eyes stayed shut and he could not force them open. She fell and large boots kicked her up. She partially opened her eyes and fixed them on the tear in his trousers, then the verandah in the
distance and then at Prue standing on the steps and she did not fall again.

‘Chin up, darling.’

Not bloody likely, sang her mind, and dehydration wrung her miles away and she heard the wind on the dunes and felt the sharp sting of the sand and the waves as they rushed and swirled and she felt his hands and drank his tears. Look at the boots, she thought, look at the huts. What can I put on the white curtains? And finally dusk came and Prue and Monica carried her to her bed, away from the mumbles of the hospital. They pushed her in from the end of the pallet since there was no space between the platforms. Prue slowly poured a little tepid water into her half-open mouth and Monica held a soaking cloth to her head and the doctor strapped her hand.

‘That’ll teach you to be late, you silly clot,’ Prue said and pressed her hand to Annie’s cheek. ‘For God’s sake, I’ll get you there on time if I have to drag you tomorrow.’

Annie spoke and Prue leant close.

‘Glass bowl with bamboo, OK.’

During the next five months Annie finished all the bedrooms and the sitting-room and her finger was beginning not to hurt and her eyes to see clearly again. One Monday in June, the guards issued postcards and Prue had the only pencil in the hut. It was short and an HB which smudged in their sweat-drenched hands. They filled in the blanks. ‘I am quite …. ., what should we put?’ asked Annie.

‘Quite well, if you value your other hand,’ responded Prue. So she did. Flies were crawling over her face and the corners of her mouth. She was too tired to move them, only to have them resettle in the next breath.

‘I’m sending mine to Daddy. What about you Annie?’

Annie had been looking at the work-party breaking up dried lumps of soil with emaciated fingers, shorts stained with dysentery. It seemed a betrayal to name a survivor for surely, if she pointed a finger, God would find them and they would be killed. Georgie or Tom or Don, who should she send it to?

She watched as the working women fingered the small segments to dust and moved, crouching, along the line to bang another large piece on to rock-hard ground, then again and again. Vegetables were to be growing for the 1945 September
inspection, so they would be showing if they wanted to live. It was her turn tomorrow when she had finished her duty.

‘I’ll send it to Georgie,’ she challenged. ‘He’ll think I’ve turned senile looking at this writing though.’ Her hands had shaken since the beating. They were improving but not much.

Doctor Jones came out on to the verandah and looked down at them. Her face was set and she held her finger to her lips.

‘Number three bed has diphtheria,’ she whispered, and Annie broke out in a rush of sweat as she scrambled to her feet, pulling Prue.

Doctor Jones stood with her hand in the pockets of her linen coat. ‘It could go round the camp like wildfire. Absolute rest for her and isolation; my room at the end.’ She walked out into the heat of the square. ‘I’m going to see the commandant. They don’t like epidemics in case they catch it. Perhaps we’ll get some disinfectant from the old devil.’

She turned. ‘Write her postcard for her Annie please and we’ll steam her pallet when I get back. For now, strain her water through the last of the disinfectant. The two beri-beri cases are in the last stages. Both of you pretend to write their cards please.’

The disinfectant came while they were dragging the large oilcan from the cookhouse to the bricks which the commandant had given them for the sterilization of the bedding. Their legs shook but the can had to be back for lunch and they could not bear the thought of the mid-day sun as they worked. They worked up the fire inside the bricks and boiled up the can; the steam began to rise and they stood either side on old buckets and held the pallet over the top. The steam billowed out at their faces and their hands and Annie’s arms shook and her hand ached.

‘Frightfully good for the pores, darling,’ breathed Prue. Finally it was done. They damped the fire with earth and tipped the water out of the can before stumbling back to the cookhouse balancing the pallet on the top of the can.

As they placed it down there was a shudder and Annie staggered slightly, grabbing at the verandah for support but that was shaking also. There was another shudder and a distant rumble and Annie remembered the tiled floor in the nurses’ home and the crash of falling bombs, searchlights which stabbed the sky and knew that it was here again.

‘Air raid, Prue. It’s a damned air raid.’ The doctor was calling them back to the hut and they ran with the pallet, past guards whose neckcloths flapped as they rushed across to the prisoners and herded them inside, standing guard outside the closed doors.

The hospital door was also slammed shut and in the dark they each went from bed to bed soothing until Doctor Jones sent Prue into the diphtheria case and Monica to the two with beri-beri.

‘It’s the allied planes,’ Annie soothed as she passed between patients. ‘Yes, it must be getting near the end.’