Authors: Maggie Ford
Susan made up her mind. The weather looking passable, Mrs Ward was upstairs clearing out a cupboard in one of the back rooms, which she loved doing on Sunday mornings, Mr Ward looked ready to settle back with his Sunday paper, which he was never allowed to read over breakfast. Susan hastily donned coat, scarf, boots, and gloves and quietly opened the front door to let herself out. Just a short walk. She’d be back before they knew she’d gone. Mrs Ward might even assume she’d gone to lie down in her room for an hour though there was a chance she might look in to see if she was all right. There was never any need. Susan felt her health was magnificent. Gone was all that dreadful morning sickness when Mrs Ward would hurry into the bathroom after her, embarrassing when she was being sick, to wipe her brow and advise on how to prevent morning sickness: drink cold water, eat an apple.
‘Is that you, Susan?’ Her mother-in-law’s bat-hearing had detected the door opening. Now she must answer.
‘I just thought I’d wander down the road a bit. I need some fresh air.’
‘Oh, no.’ Already Mrs Ward was coming downstairs. ‘The pavement is still a little icy. You’ll slip and fall. You must not harm that baby.’
It was all she cared about, Susan thought uncharitably, the baby, the mother just an incubator for her son’s child, someone else for her to fuss over, think for, do for, the way Matthew had described on one occasion.
‘I just want to go out,’ Susan blurted. ‘I need to go out.’
‘I’ll come with you. I think I need a little fresh air myself.’
There was only one thing Mrs Ward really needed, to keep an eye on her. Slumping a little, Susan waited as the spotless flowered apron was taken off and outdoor clothes put on, the lightly greying short hair given a brief tidying pat and a hat put on over it. Mrs Ward had a wonderful clear skin, virtually unlined, and Susan thought as she waited for her that when young she must have been a very handsome woman. She still was, but so forceful. Meekly, Susan allowed herself to be conducted a short way across the icy road, in through the park gates, as far as its nearest bench and then back – a distance of no more than five hundred yards, not really a walk at all, and all the time with the woman’s arm stayed tucked through hers, practically holding her up as though she were crippled or something. Susan was glad to get back indoors if only to escape to her room on the pretence of a lie-down after the walk, Mrs Ward approving wholeheartedly.
She had hardly closed her door and gone to her bed than she heard voices slightly raised downstairs. While Mrs Ward’s voice had a penetrating quality to it, her husband’s was always soft and thoughtful. Now, however, his could be heard above hers. Susan got up and opened the door again, the better to eavesdrop on this mystifying rise of voices.
‘I think we should let her sleep on, rest, before we say anything,’ he was saying.
‘I think she should be told immediately,’ came the reply.
‘I don’t think so, Lilian. You know how quickly she gets herself into a state.’
They had to be talking about her. What had she done to cause an argument? They had a damned cheek discussing her when she wasn’t there. Becoming angry, she crept out on to the landing.
‘Even so, he is her husband. She has a right to be told and as soon as possible.’
Susan made for the stairs. What had Matthew done that she must be told immediately of it? He hadn’t found someone else, all those thousands of miles away? She felt sick as she ran into the living room. The two people were standing, their backs to her.
‘What mustn’t I be told?’
They had turned, were looking at her with a sort of dumb fear in their eyes. It was Mrs Ward who moved towards her first. Susan noticed that Mr Ward was holding the Sunday paper, half folded, half crumpled.
‘My dear …’ Mrs Ward began.
Her voice broke. She reached out and took Susan’s arm in a vice-like grip but which Susan felt had been meant to be comforting. ‘My dear, you must be strong. You mustn’t allow yourself to become panicky.’
‘What is it?’ Susan asked, her heart already pumping like a little frightened animal behind her ribs although she had no idea why except the two people before her looked frightened and anxious, lending their anxiety to her.
‘It’s Matthew …’ Mr Ward began, then checked himself. ‘Well, not exactly Matthew, but it concerns him.’ With that, he unfolded the newspaper and held it out for Susan to read. She had read with dismay of the fighting that had broken out in Singapore, how the Japanese had come down from the north through hundreds of miles of tangled jungle hitherto thought impassable for any human being, taking that city by surprise, and she had been mildly worried, but Singapore was still a long way from India.
Taking the paper from him while Mrs Ward turned away to gaze out of the window at the bare trees of the park opposite, Susan stared at the large black headlines:
SINGAPORE FALLS. GENERAL PERCIVAL SURRENDERS ON ORDERS OF MR CHURCHILL TO PREVENT LOSS OF LIFE
.
and then a smaller heading:
CHURCHILL TO ADDRESS NATION TONIGHT ON RADIO.
Susan looked up, imploring the couple as though they might be able to do something to make it all better. ‘But they said Singapore could never fall. How could it happen?’
With the Japanese capturing Singapore, would Matthew be with those sent to recapture it? He would have to fight, and she had thought him safe. He could be wounded, killed. She’d never see him again. The thought filled her whole being as though glue was being poured into her body. Susan felt herself beginning to sway. The baby seemed to be jumping about inside her.
‘I don’t know,’ Mr Ward was saying. ‘All their defences point out to sea, they were so sure no enemy could ever come from the north. But they did. That’s all I can say.’
But she hardly heard anything he said for the buzzing in her head. The room had begun to spin. The floor was coming up to meet her and she felt her body grow limp and lifeless. She vaguely felt someone catch her, felt herself being picked up and carried upwards in a jerky manner, guessed in her faint that this was the stairs. But her faint had become complete before Mr Ward ever laid her on her bed.
It was a day of stifling heat. Vehicles lurching from one bomb crater to the next sent clouds of dust over the sweating shoulders of those trying to clear the road of stricken transport on this twenty-second day of February.
The railway bridge over the Sittang River, hastily converted to allow single-file traffic, was making progress slow and hazardous, on top of which a truck had run off the temporary decking, hopelessly blocking the bridge, the tailback now grinding to a standstill.
They were at the mercy not only of enemy aircraft, but of Allied planes who had been ordered to attack the advancing Japanese but not informed that any troops west of Kyaikto would be British, and thus were strafing the waiting columns out of hand. With more transport being knocked out and more men being killed and wounded, the state of the road became steadily worse.
Beneath a smoking carrier a dozen men lay huddled, heads down, as dive bombers screamed over the muddle of men and machinery. Bullets whining like angry hornets ricocheted off the metal sides of the vehicle, and in the ensuing din Bob Howlett’s voice had as much power as the squeak of a mouse, begging that they make a run for it to the safety of the jungle.
Some had already sprinted for the trees looking for an easier way to the river, but orders were to hold the bridge for as long as was needed to get the transport across before they were all cut off.
Matthew held on to Bob’s shirt to prevent him from making for the deceptive shelter of tangled greenery each side of the open road. ‘Stay put! The Japs could already be there. A whole platoon of ’em would be on top of you before you could see them.’
Scarcely any of his mob was left. Taffy – poor libidinous Taffy – dead. Hadn’t known what had hit him. Ronnie Clark with his hankering for the excitement of battle, dead. Eddie Nutt, Lieutenant Grice, dead. Sergeant Pegg, somewhere back there along the road, both legs gone, had grabbed Matthew by the shirt front and pulled him close, his bullet-head unbowed, his eyes still glaring through his pain. ‘Yer in charge now, Ward. Yer wanted t’be an officer. Now see if yer c’n make somefing of yerself, prove yer can … Now git to it!’ Letting go Matthew’s shirt he sank back to stare at the bloody earth where his legs should have been and waited for the stretcher bearers, if there were any and if he was still alive by the time any did come for him.
Others of his platoon had been separated; of the survivors lying here beneath the shielding carrier, none of them was worth a light: Jeff Downey with chubby cheeks flabby and pallid with terror and fatigue, one side of his shirt stiff with blackening blood, his or someone else’s, Matthew hadn’t felt inclined to find out; Farrell nursing a shattered hand wrapped in a piece of his shirt; Bob as yet unscathed but becoming rapidly shell-shocked; a few men he didn’t know, and himself, feeling as little like a leader as any could, his eyes sore from dust and lack of sleep, his throat clogged and burning, his cheeks sporting several days’ stubble, his shirt and trousers caked with sweat and blood, thankfully not his own apart from digs and scratches collected from the lengthy retreat. But most of all his mind had gone quite blank as to how and whom he should be leading as Sergeant Pegg had demanded.
The rising crescendo of dive bombers seemed to expand inside his brain, smothering all ability to think. A bomb blast threw earth and rock high into the air beside the carrier with an ear-splitting fulmination of blinding light, making the vehicle jerk alarmingly as blast and chunks of white-hot metal slammed into it. One piece hissed past Matthew’s cheek. Behind him came a gurgling, high-pitched shriek, a brief threshing about; then warm liquid gushed on to his back and he saw the victim flop and lie still.
Beside him Bob was curled into a tight foetal position. Downey was scrambling forward on all fours in an effort to get out from under the carrier and was screaming at the top of his voice: ‘Oh, Jesus! We’re gonna die – we’re gonna die!’
Matthew threw himself on the man, hung grimly on to the squirming body as another string of explosions rocked the vehicle. ‘You’ll die all right out there.’
Farrell’s voice was high with panic. ‘Let the bleeder go, can’t yer?’
‘Shut your bloody mouth, Farrell!’ His own voice sounded demented. So much for wanting to be an officer. He could hardly control himself, much less half a dozen panicking men. He felt utterly helpless.
The aircraft were wheeling off, leaving a strange silence. Ears accustomed to the din felt as though cotton wool had suddenly been stuffed into them. The planes would be back. Or perhaps they had realised they were bombing their own side. Oh, God, he hoped so. The panic under the carrier had melted away into shuddering breaths, trembling grunts, but for the moment it was safe to creep out and take stock.
Slowly, buzzing, deafened eardrums began to pick up sounds; the crackle of burning vehicles, the moans of the wounded, the urgent tone of men calling to each other, the crunch of boots running, the spasmodic revving of a lorry.
Shakily, shoving Bob ahead of him, Matthew crawled out, stood up, his legs feeling like rubber. Shattered transport lay everywhere. A truck with a cargo of wounded under a shredded tarpaulin had slewed across the road, its rear wheels in a bomb crater, gripping nothing while its excited Indian driver was revving the thing like a madman. Beside him an officer was leaning from the cab yelling orders to some Indian soldiers already trying to heave against its rear end without falling into the crater themselves.
Seeing the few men who had scrambled from under the carrier, he screeched, ‘You lot, there! Give a hand. Give a hand.’
Matthew stared blankly at him, as yet incapable of a response. ‘We’ve hurt men here.’
‘Then get ’em on board and get this damned thing moving.’
The order brought Matthew back to his senses. No longer needing to be a leader, he could take relief in letting someone else do the leading. He and Bob, Bob now coming back to himself with an apologetic grin for his previous show of weakness, helped get their own wounded aboard. Farrell was the first to climb in.
Men’s weight was pitted against machine. ‘One – two – three, heave!’ the officer shrieked. The vehicle lifted, its back wheels back on firm ground; the driver touched the accelerator. The wheels spun, briefly spraying dust over the men, then slipped back.
‘Hold it! HOLD IT!’ The officer’s voice was full of panic. ‘Again. One – two – three, heave! For Chrissake, HEAVE!’
From the direction of the crossing came the sudden rapid hammering of Bren-gun fire followed by the staccato crack of rifle fire. Caught by the knowledge that those at the river were having to turn and fight an enemy that had crept up on them, the men struggling with the truck paused.
The unsuspecting driver braked frantically but ineffectually and the vehicle slipped violently backwards. Cries of pain came from the wounded unceremoniously thrown about. Eyes rolling, the Indian soldiers exchanged cries of alarm in their own tongue, but it was Farrell leaning out over the tailboard of the stricken truck who said it explicitly.
‘Oh, my bleeding Gawd, we’re cut orf. We’ve ’ad it.’ Very agile for one who a moment ago had been counted among the helpless injured, he was over of the tailboard and off, bolting towards the jungle.
‘Stop that man!’ To the officer’s yell, Matthew added the power of his own lungs.
‘Farrell – stay where you are!’
Farrell paused, Army training prevailing for all his panic, but his face as he turned twisted in an animal snarl of fear. ‘Yer can’t stop me. I’ve got a right ter git back ter me own lines. I’m pissin’ orf.’
In one quick movement, Matthew unslung the rifle he still had on his back, levelling it at the man’s groin. ‘You do and I’ll cripple you.’
In that moment he knew himself capable of carrying out the threat. It was as though he were another person, not because of his dislike of Farrell, but cold, clinical, the indurate soldier, Army-crafted, a machine, hating what he had become. But he’d halted Farrell who for a moment stood uncertain, though whether he would have defied his corporal’s threat or not was not to be discovered as twin dark shapes roared over the rim of the trees, their shadows passing between the sun and the men below. A clatter of machine-gun fire scattered men in all directions, as though a stone had dropped on a cluster of marbles.