by Jean Moran
The sun went behind a cloud. A stronger wind had the washing cracking a little louder.
Alice sat silently as she took in what Rowena was saying.
Rowena turned her head to look at her. ‘It happened to you, too, didn’t it? Don’t you remember?’
She shook her head. ‘Not really. I was in shock. I didn’t want to be there, I didn’t want to be me, and I kind of retreated into a bubble. I can’t recall the details.’
‘Were you pregnant?’
‘Yes. A few old recipes from Marjorie Greenbank and my little problem was no more. But it was early days. I was lucky.’
‘And Tansy?’
‘She miscarried, saved by malaria – though a heavy price to pay.’ She looked away.
Rowena sensed there was something more. ‘How bad was it?’
Alice hung her head and mumbled into the empty cup. ‘It was a breech baby. She went on for days. Luckily – and I say luckily only because the procedure saved her life – there was a surgeon here who’d specialised in obstetrics, but some time ago. Still, he was all we had. So he operated.’ She swallowed what might have been a sob. ‘He couldn’t do a caesarean. He hadn’t a full set of tools. The baby came out in pieces. I doubt she’ll ever get pregnant again, thanks to that.’
Rowena thought of Tansy’s vivacious personality, the colour of her hair and the glint in her emerald eyes. ‘I’m about four months gone but I want to lose the baby and only a doctor can help.’
Alice sucked in her breath. ‘You’re going to ask somebody?’
‘I am.’
‘But that’s taking a life. It’s a difficult thing to ask.’
‘Somebody will do it.’
‘You’re a doctor. What would you do if somebody asked you to abort a four-month foetus?’
Rowena bit her lip as she took in the scenes going on around her. Straight ahead one of the children playing with the rag ball ran off, the other chasing him, bawling at the top of his voice.
Rowena watched them. Could she really destroy the life that was inside her? She shook her head. ‘I would hate to be asked, but if there were extenuating circumstances...’
‘It’s your decision.’
‘And that of the doctor.’
‘Under the circumstances...’
‘Indeed. Under the circumstances.’
*
There was no white coat, no smell of antiseptic or the swish of nurses’ skirts as they went about their daily duty, but there were stethoscopes and medical instruments.
She began visiting Tansy daily. The once vibrant personality was no more and her conversation was always the same, as though the previous day hadn’t happened and their reunion was fresh not repeated.
‘Dr Rossiter,’ she said, her voice rasping, as though every word, every breath was painful. ‘How wonderful to see you again.’
‘And you, Tansy. How are you feeling?’
‘A little better.’
Rowena bathed her brow, gave her what comfort she could and also a little of the quinine that the incorrigible Mrs Greenbank had hidden from the Japanese.
Tansy’s belief that she was getting better was not supported by her appearance. Her red hair was paler and thinner than it had been and her fresh complexion had a waxy look. Her eyes were sunken, her lips cracked. Her furred tongue licked her lips and Rowena braced herself for the next oft repeated statement.
‘I lost it. I lost the baby.’
‘Tansy, you mustn’t think of it. You have to concentrate on getting better. That’s all that matters.’
There was a faraway look in Tansy’s eyes. ‘I think it was a little girl. I don’t know for sure, but I like to imagine it was.’
‘You shouldn’t think about what happened and what might have happened. Just get well.’
‘I don’t think about what happened, only about the baby I might have had. I wanted that baby. She would have made everything worthwhile.’
Rowena adjusted her stethoscope and swallowed her anger. She couldn’t understand how Tansy would want to keep a baby born as the result of a brutal rape. For her part she would prefer not to be pregnant and the baby not to be born. Tansy had seemingly forgotten the circumstances and embraced the thought of having the child.
‘Tansy. Do you remember me visiting you yesterday?’
Tansy’s glassy expression wavered and, for a moment, there seemed hope of improvement. Then she said, ‘That doesn’t matter. I know how busy you are. But you came today. You came today and that’s all that matters.’ Her confusion worsened with each passing day. After every visit, Rowena went outside to take deep breaths of air, brush at her tears and swallow the pain. It had been wonderful to see Alice and Tansy again, but there was no doubt that rape, the miscarriage and malaria were all worsening her condition. ‘I so wanted my baby,’ Tansy murmured, just before she took her last breath.
She was buried in the adjacent cemetery, a peaceful place near the chapel, originally laid out in the mid-nineteenth century as the last resting place for the military and their families. Rowena knew that she could cope with the funeral and the cemetery. The chapel, however, was more difficult. She’d had to steel herself to go inside, and stiffened on entering, walking down the aisle to the bare altar, seeing the army padre in his threadbare garb, his bald head shiny in the light from the window. The pews had been chopped up to make coffins. The floor was bare and cold. It was the fifth burial that week, but the first that Rowena had attended.
Beside the grave, she kept her eyes on the roughly made coffin in the grave, only raising them when those gathered began to sing ‘The Lord’s My Shepherd’.
Rowena did not sing.
Marjorie Greenbank noticed. ‘Lost your voice or are you like me? My husband used to tell me that I sang like a throttled hen.’
‘My throat’s dry.’
‘So is mine, my dear. I could murder a drop of gin. How about you?’
Marjorie’s forthright manner was enough to lighten the moment.
‘I was just thinking.’
‘Yes. At this moment I feel quite a rapport with that line about walking through death’s dark vale.’
‘I would prefer not to.’
‘So would I, dear, so would I. But death comes to all of us. It’s just a question of when.’
‘I’m not ready to die.’
‘None of us are. Cedric wasn’t. He loved life. Now it’s the end of his line. We could never have children, you see. That’s what makes his death so final. Mine, too, I suppose – when it happens, neither of us leaving anything behind except material possessions. And they mean nothing.’
‘I’m sorry, I didn’t intend...’
‘I know you didn’t, dear, but I meant it about the gin.’
14
She didn’t know when her attitude changed about the child. Perhaps it was after that conversation with Marjorie or Tansy’s death, or perhaps as a result of what happened a few days later. She was lancing the boils of a girl of thirteen or so. The child was listless and starving, like everyone else but also immature for her age.
Her mother was very concerned. ‘I thought she would have had a period by now. I did by the time I was thirteen. And I would like to become a grandmother. In time, of course, when she’s grown-up and this is all over.’
‘Not having enough food can impair a child’s development and postpone adolescence. Some calcium might help. Green vegetables and fruit contain some. Condensed milk even.’
There was no point in mentioning butter or cheese and certainly not cow’s milk. Thanks to Mrs Greenbank and her late husband, there was condensed milk, but the supplies hidden in the secret place beneath the floorboards were swiftly running out.
Sudden movement in front of the commandant’s office turned heads and contributed to hushed conversations.
‘Roll-call.’
‘Tenko! Tenko!’
Women and children began lining up.
Rowena had been on her way through the main door and from t
here to the ward. She wanted to get on with what she had to do – roll-call interfered with medical schedules. She asked Marjorie Greenbank if she knew what was going on.
‘Give me a minute. I will shortly, no doubt.’ As one of the few British people in the camp who could speak Japanese, once everyone was standing in line she stepped forward, bowed and asked what was happening.
Standing behind her, Rowena saw the sudden stiffening of her spine.
When Marjorie finally turned, her face was pale. ‘We are required to dig a mass grave in the cemetery. We will receive further instructions after that. Can I have volunteers, please?’
Silence dropped like an iron curtain on those present. When only a few married men stepped forward to volunteer, the commandant barked at his men to pull others out of the lines, including some of the women. Leaving everyone in stunned silence, they were marched off, shoulders slumped and sweating fear.
Although the day was pleasant enough, it was as though a black cloud had touched the earth. Whispers coursed from one person to another. Those too sick to leave their beds continually asked questions that nobody wanted to answer. Rowena kept herself focused on the jobs she had to do, though every so often she looked out of the window to see if the grave-diggers had come back.
Everyone in the camp was on alert for their return. There were fears that they might not come back at all, that they had dug their own grave.
It wasn’t just Rowena who feared that, if this was so, it might be a new policy and not stop at one communal grave but continue until the camp had been emptied of people.
‘Tea.’ Alice pressed a cup into Rowena’s shaking hand.
‘Thanks.’
‘There’s a chair behind you.’
Gratefully Rowena sat down, rested her aching feet on an upturned enamel bucket and took a sip. ‘Thank God for tea.’
‘Do you think they’ll come back?’ Alice resembled a frightened rabbit as she peered over the rim of her cup.
Rowena declined to answer because she had no answer to give, or not one that would bring any solace.
‘Should we revolt?’ Alice asked.
‘Armed with what? A few scalpels and bedpans?’
‘It’s no laughing matter.’
‘I’m not laughing.’
Between sips of tea Rowena rubbed her belly. Perhaps the child would not be born after all. Perhaps she would die before that happened. If only she could believe it was Connor’s baby she might die happy, but that was impossible.
Alice was just as frightened. ‘I’m so scared that we’re all going to die.’
‘I don’t think so. If they were going to kill everyone, why wait until now?’
She could see from Alice’s face that her comment had done some good.
The same kind of thinking was going on around the camp but nobody let it get in the way of their meals, the children’s schooling, the laundry, the cleaning, the growing of vegetables and the endless attention to those who were sick.
The feeling of apprehension intensified as evening approached. Some of the inmates were hanging out of the upper windows, hands shielding their eyes as their fellows returned, their steps slow but relief etched on their faces. They were still alive. The grave had not been for them… So who had it been for?
They came in dragging their feet, dog-tired bodies covered with dust and stinking of sweat. A line formed outside the bathing hut where the water supply was as intermittent as the electricity, but less dangerous.
Concerned about providing enough coal to the British-built power station, the Japanese had cut back, plunging whole areas into darkness, and at Fort Stanley they kept only their own headquarters permanently powered.
Skilled engineers among the prisoners had reconnected the supply, though it wasn’t entirely safe and everyone was warned not to touch the overhead wiring with wet hands.
One or two of those who had not been involved with the grave-digging attached themselves to the queue for the showers. Heads shook in disbelief, matching the expressions on haggard faces and in sullen eyes.
Alice was one of those who heard the news first. ‘They had to dig a big pit. A grave,’ said Alice, in a hushed voice. ‘And they have to work tomorrow too.’
Marjorie interrupted. ‘The men tried to take on most of the heavy work so the women didn’t have to do it. Now they’re exhausted. I think you’ll find there’ll be new diggers tomorrow, and as they’ve exhausted the men, it will consist mostly of women. They need workers. They need more people.’
Unable to sleep, that night Rowena sat up holding the hand of a dying nun. She had once been in a convent looking after orphaned Chinese children. Somebody said she’d known Gladys Aylward, the missionary who had taken her own Chinese orphans away from fighting warlords to safety, but nobody knew for sure.
In the morning Rowena nodded into wakefulness in time to see everyone milling around outside, long before tenko was actually due. Before going down to join them, she closed the eyes of the dead nun. She reckoned everybody needed someone to witness their passing, confirmation that they had once lived.
She wandered out to join the others, her hands dug deep into the pockets of a very tattered white coat to be worn only when she was on duty. The doctors shared equipment between them and also the coat. All of it had seen better days. The more up-to-date medical equipment had been requisitioned for use by the Imperial Japanese Army.
Alice was already there, scuffing at the dust with one foot then the other, a sure sign that she was nervous.
Marjorie was standing up front, waiting to hear whatever the commandant required. When she finally turned to relay what the commandant required, her strong, purposeful manner was absent. Before she could get a word out, soldiers loaded with empty sacks came in and piled them in a heap behind her.
Rowena almost stopped breathing as she contemplated what they were to be used for. They were big enough to take a folded body. She banished the thought. There had to be a more civilised purpose. Cruel as they were, surely they were not contemplating massacring a whole camp?
Marjorie licked her lips. ‘Some of you were at St Stephen’s on Christmas Day so there’s no need for me to go over what happened. You know those killed were burned. Their bones and ashes are all that’s left. Permission has been given for their reburial in the cemetery, hence the digging of a communal grave and the supply of these sacks, which are to be filled with their ashes, then interred.’
The sound of sobbing broke out. Rowena closed her eyes and placed a hand over her chest. It did nothing to stop the palpitations brought on by shock, surprise and an overwhelming sense of loss. Ashes to ashes, a few words from the funeral service that seemed to bear no relation to the people those ashes had once been. Kind and dutiful army doctors, British, Canadian and Indian soldiers, nurses raped and brutalised, then killed.
A doctor was not expected to join the column of volunteers that was forming to carry out the sickening task, but she felt driven to do so.
Today somebody else had donned the white coat and stethoscope, but she could not sit idle while this was going on. Like many of those around her, she stepped forward, picked up a sack and a shovel and joined the growing line of sad people faced with a terrible task that, nonetheless, they were willing to carry out.
Marjorie confirmed the details. They were to shovel the remains into sacks, take them to the cemetery for burial and hope, blindly, that somehow they could live with the memory.
*
In silence they arrived and in silence they contemplated what lay in front of them.
Weathered and tossed by wind and rain, the remains of the bonfire formed a bleak island in a sea of green grass.
‘Go! Work! Dig!’
Some sobbed. One or two brought up what little was in their stomach.
‘Dig! Now!’
Somebody mumbled a short prayer: ‘May they rest in peace, safe in the arms of the Lord.’
They worked in pairs, one digging, the other holding open the mou
th of the sack.
The ash was loose and easy to break into. In some places a scorched bone pierced the surface, a grim reminder that this grey morass had once been people. Overnight rain meant the top few inches of ash had formed a damp crust so at first there was no dust. As they dug deeper, the remains were drier, a mixture of powdered bone and wood ash rising in a pewter cloud to coat their faces and sting their eyes.
Sporadic coughing began as they breathed it into their lungs. Rags torn from their clothes were wound around noses and mouths. Salty tears ran from their eyes leaving white trails on pale grey faces. Some dug slowly, some more quickly but always carefully.
In an effort to keep her feelings at bay, Rowena opted to dig furiously, another woman holding open the mouth of the sack so she could drop in the ash.
The shovel suddenly hit something more solid. She reached into the ash and picked out a small round object. A ring. It looked like an engagement ring, which saddened her. Somebody, possibly a nurse, had been engaged to be married. What dreams she must have had: a white wedding, a handsome husband probably in uniform, dreams of a home where they would raise a family. The dream had ended at Christmas in 1941, a black Christmas that would long be remembered by those who’d survived.
A few minutes later she came across a nurse’s belt buckle. She picked that out too and laid it to one side with the ring. Eyes wet with tears and sobs strangling her throat, she went back to digging. The sooner the residual remains of the fire were all gone, the better.
The personal items were plucked and put to one side in the hope that at some point in the future somebody would locate the relatives of the dead person and the items could be claimed.
Her throat dry, she pulled the rag mask off her face, took a gulp of air, then water from the ladle hanging at the side of the bucket they’d brought with them. Half a cup only every hour. It wasn’t enough but it was all they were allowed.
When the sacks filled, everyone stood silently, staring at the scorched ground.