Darkest Before Dawn (41 page)

Toby laughed again at the formal ending to the chatty and loving letter, but had to wink away a tear at the thought of Evie running to meet the postman every day in the hope of getting a letter from him. If only he could have got in touch by some means! If only he could ask questions as well as answer them, come to that. Until Evie mentioned it, he had completely forgotten that they were in a new flat, one he had never seen. And just what had the girls meant about getting a divorce? He knew what non-consummation meant all right, but he could not imagine that any man would be fool enough not to consummate a marriage with someone as beautiful and desirable as Seraphina. It must be the Betty girl, who might be as ugly as a pan of worms for all he knew, though, in his experience, pretty girls usually went around together; hunting in pairs, they called it.

However, with two young married women, this rule would most definitely not apply. Sighing, Toby folded the letter and pushed it into the pocket of his ragged drill shorts, then ducked out of the hut and made for the gardens tended by the British prisoners. There were many nationalities in Changi: Dutch, British, one or two Americans, Australians, all sorts, and at first they had disagreed over everything, such disagreements sometimes ending in violence. It was not until the prisoners themselves noticed how the Japanese enjoyed the spectacle of such behaviour that they mended their ways, and began to respect each other's points of view.

Toby approached a group of men, talking excitedly. Miles was amongst them and turned to punch Toby lightly on the shoulder. ‘Guess what? They're selecting groups of men to help them build some bridge or other, out in the sticks. Captain Deveril says they're only choosing fit men; chaps who haven't been reduced to skin and bone by dysentery, or some other disease. If we get chosen, we might have a chance to escape, because I think they said the bridge was in Burma, and the Burmese hate the Japs.'

Someone standing nearby turned at Miles's words. ‘It's not just a bridge, it's a railway,' he told them. ‘The feller in charge of Changi is going to give a talk in about ten minutes, explaining things. That's why we're all here.'

‘A railway!' Toby exclaimed, unable to keep the interest out of his voice. ‘I wonder what sort of railway it is. Well, neither you nor I have had dysentery, Miles. I'd say we were in quite good shape, so we're likely to find out.'

Toby was right. The chief officer in charge of the camp addressed the prisoners, telling them that if they obeyed orders and worked hard they would be well treated, but if they disobeyed orders, tried to escape or failed to complete the work given them, then they could expect no mercy from their captors. He also told them that, as they got further north, ‘rest camps' would be provided, where they could spend their free time.

Many of the men, Toby and Miles included, had little faith in such ‘rest camps' but were desperate for more freedom – and more food – than they were allowed in Changi. Rations for working men must surely be better than the meagre portion allotted to men idling away their lives in a POW camp, and they thought their chances of escaping and getting back to British India would be far higher as they went north.

So they volunteered, along with many others. Next day they were loaded on to army vehicles which drove them out of the prison and over to the railway platform, where a great many cattle trucks awaited them. The guards herded them into the trucks, kicking, beating and shoving until each truck was crammed to capacity, then the doors were slammed shut and very soon the nightmare journey began.

The trucks were made of steel, with sliding doors which did not shut properly. Being cattle trucks they had no windows but, in any event, for the first day or two of the journey the train mainly passed through enormous rubber plantations so that there was no scenery worth a second glance. Because they were made of steel, the trucks were horribly hot during daylight hours as the relentless sun beat down, but at night they were freezing cold. Draughts whistled in through every crack and crevice – and there were many – and Toby thought that they might have frozen stiff had not the body warmth of so many men, crammed into so tiny a space, provided some relief from the icy cold.

The train did stop occasionally. At least once a day, the men were supplied with a bucket full of rice, one to each truck, and with a bucket of drinking water, though since this last was filled at any passing ditch or stream it was sometimes decidedly murky. Perhaps it was the water which gave most of the prisoners dysentery, or perhaps it was the rice which had sometimes gone sour in the heat before it reached them, but whatever the cause, there was a good deal of sickness.

They reached an area of paddy fields and when the train stopped the men were glad enough to get out for short periods, to stretch their cramped limbs. Then they discovered that the paddy fields, and the ditches surrounding them, were full of small fish which they could catch. They gave them to their Japanese guards to cook with the rice and, for the first time, there was a little variety in their diet.

Toby lost count of time, though he was fortunate in not contracting dysentery – or not as badly as some, at any rate. Miles, who had been a medical student before the war, had told him, from the first moment they entered Changi, that hygiene was all-important. He and Toby were careful to go without the rice when it was sour and to examine any food or drink offered them to make sure it did not contain either maggots or eggs, and their caution paid off to an extent, for neither young man was seriously ill on that terrible journey.

The train drew in to their destination at last, after five dreadful days, and the men were pushed and harried out of the trucks as they had been pushed and harried into them. They were counted, which took several hours, and then marched through a small and very dirty village into the camp whence they would go, daily, to whichever part of the railway needed their labour.

Toby and Miles had thought the journey horrendous, but when they saw the new camp they realised that worse was to come. The whole place was ankle deep in thick and oozing mud; the Atap huts in which they were to sleep were constructed of flattened bamboo canes and inside the men slept on bamboo platforms. Mud was everywhere and the prisoners who had been there for some time were in dreadful physical condition; more like walking skeletons than living men. They told the newcomers that rations were meagre; mostly just water to drink and boiled rice to eat, and not very much of that. The old hands told them that the Japanese guards here were very different from those in Changi. Here, they had a definite task to perform, which was to force the men to work, regardless of sickness, disease or injury, and the methods they employed could be as harsh as they wished.

When they prepared for sleep that night, having been told that they would move on next morning, Miles whispered that if they survived this lot, he reckoned they could survive anything. Inside, Toby trembled at what was to come but he put a brave face on it.

Next morning, when they were herded out of the hut, he tried to look around him, to interest himself in his surroundings. Miles, who was fair-haired and fair-skinned, kept his own face impassive as they slogged along, even when one of the guards, a Korean as it happened, hit out at him viciously with a short cane he carried, raising a scarlet bleeding weal across his back. So far as Toby knew, his friend had done nothing which could be considered offensive, save possibly to glance at the man as they passed him. He heard Miles mutter ‘Little yellow bastard' beneath his breath and glanced apprehensively around, but the man had disappeared. Praying that they would somehow manage to steer clear of him, Toby marched on.

Autumn came and Evie set off for work with a rare piece of exciting news to pass on to her friends. That morning, as she and Martha and Mr Wilmslow ate their breakfast porridge, the post had come rattling through the door. Evie had jumped up; she was always first to get the post if it were possible since she still hoped, desperately, for a letter from Toby, but when she clattered back up the stairs again she handed two letters to her mother and one to Mr Wilmslow. ‘Nothing for me,' she had said resignedly, sitting down and beginning to eat once more. ‘I bet yours is another of those wretched things from the government, Mr Wilmslow.'

‘Course it is,' Mr Wilmslow had said, glaring at the official brown envelope. ‘I've forgotten what it's like to receive ordinary mail.' He had peered, inquisitively, at Martha across the table. ‘Are yours from the girls?'

‘That's right,' Martha had said. She slit open both envelopes, then spread the contents before her on the table. ‘Seraphina's fine, but in a dreadful rush, so only a few lines. There's much more from Angela . . . oh, goodness gracious!'

‘What is it? Nothing horrid, I hope,' Evie had said anxiously. ‘Or is it something nice? Is she coming home on leave?'

‘Yes she is, in a manner of speaking,' Martha had said, in a rather hollow voice. ‘And she's bringing her friend Albert Reid back with her so that we can meet him. They – they're going to be married on 21st November, so they're coming home to get the banns read and so on. Oh, dear me, my daughter's going to be a vicar's wife!'

‘What's wrong with that?' Mr Wilmslow had said, rather belligerently. ‘At least he's not likely to go round the city floggin' black market cheese and illicit silk stockings.'

Evie had glared at him. She had known he was having a dig at Percy and though she disapproved of her old pal's new employment, she did not want Mr Wilmslow rubbing it in, so she had said: ‘Just because someone's a vicar, that doesn't make them a saint, though I'm sure Mr Reid is a very nice vicar, of course, otherwise Angie wouldn't be thinking of marrying him.' She had turned to her mother. ‘You ought to be delighted, what with Dad being a lay preacher an' all.'

‘I am delighted,' Martha had said, rather defensively. ‘It's – it's just rather daunting having a son-in-law who's a vicar. Still, I'm sure you're right, pet, and he's a lovely young man.' When Evie would have spoken again, her mother shushed her. ‘Let me read the rest of my letter,' she had commanded. ‘Oh, Lord!'

‘What
is
it?' Evie had cried. ‘Oh, don't say she wants me to be a bridesmaid because I won't do it. It was bad enough being Seraphina's bridesmaid in that awful tight dress and I won't be made to look such a guy again.'

‘No, it's all right; it's just that Albert's parents – his father's a vicar too – want us to book them into a quiet guesthouse for the weekend of the wedding. Oh, Lord, that'll mean entertaining them . . . feeding them as well, I suppose.' She had turned to Mr Wilmslow. ‘What'll we do, Arthur? I'm sure Angie's friends will want to see her married. And then there's canal folk who knew us before the war . . .'

‘Don't worry, Martha; we'll manage something and no doubt they'll bring their ration books,' Mr Wilmslow had said grandly. He had finished his porridge, pushed back his chair and had stood up. ‘I'd better go down and open up or Mrs Bunwell will start banging on the door and shouting.' He had turned to Evie. ‘Come along, young woman, you don't want to be late for clocking in.'

Evie had agreed that this would never do, had snatched her coat off the back of the kitchen door and headed downstairs. Unlike their former home, this flat had no separate entrance and could only be accessed through the stockroom, so she had followed Mr Wilmslow down, picked up the A board, which proclaimed that Wilmslow's was open for the sale of groceries, sweets and tobacco, and erected it on the pavement, and then had hurried on her way. She was working in Litherland in a very large clothing factory and had to catch a bus each day, though she was thinking of buying a bicycle – if she could get hold of one, that was. She had been saving up ever since starting work and had quite a nice little nest egg, so could afford to purchase a second-hand model if anybody was willing to sell.

She was actually on board the bus, rattling through the damaged streets, when it occurred to her that her mother, in extremis, had addressed Mr Wilmslow as Arthur, and in reply he had used her mother's given name of Martha. Hello-ello-ello, I wonder what that means, Evie thought to herself. She had noticed, of course, that Mr Wilmslow and her mother had grown easier and friendlier ever since starting work in the new shop, but had given the matter no thought at all. Now she was forced to consider it, for not only had Martha called Mr Wilmslow Arthur, she had also appealed to him over a matter which was strictly family.
What'll we do?
she had said, not
What'll I do?
which was what Evie would have expected her to say.

The bus rattled on whilst Evie considered, for the first time, whether she might, one day, end up with Mr Wilmslow as a stepfather. Once she would have hated the idea, would have fought, energetically, to prevent it, but war, or her mother's influence, had changed Mr Wilmslow for the better. He was far less mean and far more generous, both with his money and with his time, she realised. Because he came to them for all his meals, and spent most evenings in the flat, he had shown a different side of himself, she supposed. He treated her with rather awkward jocularity and was still extremely shy with the older girls, but he had a quirky sense of humour and was fond of the wireless, insisting that they should have Music While You Work playing softly in the background whilst he and Martha served their customers. He never missed ITMA or Workers' Playtime and often repeated the jokes to customers who had not managed to listen in.

Well, if Martha was growing fond of him, Evie supposed it was no bad thing. No one could deny that he took care of her mother, did his best to see that she did not work too hard, though Martha often pooh-poohed his suggestion that she should do less. ‘I don't have to tell you there's a war on,' she had said reproachfully, only the previous week, when Mr Wilmslow had tried to take a pile of paperwork away from her. ‘If we both slog away at it, it'll be done in half the time and then we can both have a bit of a rest.'