by Emma Fraser
Edith narrowed her eyes at her sister but, as always, did as Georgina asked.
‘I know supper’s waiting but would you mind if I changed first?’ I was conscious that the scent of sex might still cling to me.
‘Of course.’
‘How was your day?’ Georgina asked when I came back downstairs. I’d found her in the kitchen. She gave me one of her mischievous smiles. ‘I have to say you have a bit of a glow about you.’
Annoyingly, I reddened. ‘Lovely. Thank you.’ While I’d been freshening up, I’d thought about mentioning I’d met Findlay, but once more, had decided against it. Better to wait until either sister mentioned him. ‘Is Edith all right?’
‘She’s a little out of sorts. She likes her routines – we both do.’ She gave her head a little shake as if bemused by her own foibles. ‘Supper is keeping warm in the oven. Let me get it out.’
‘Thank you. I’ll try not to be late again.’
Georgina set it on the table – some sort of fried spam with more potatoes and carrots – and I thought longingly of the missed dinner in Jamie’s cottage.
‘It’s not very appetising, is it?’ Georgina said with a grimace, pushing her plate away. ‘But Edith and I never learned to cook. No real interest, I’m afraid.’
‘I feel the same,’ I admitted. ‘That’s why I eat out most days.’ I hesitated. ‘I’m going sailing with Jamie tomorrow.’
She widened her eyes at me theatrically and I blushed again. ‘What is he like?’
‘He’s kind. And honest.’ And so much more. ‘I think you’d like him.’
‘Perhaps I’ll meet him some time?’
‘It’s early days yet and I probably won’t be here very much longer. A day or two?’
A look of genuine regret crossed Georgina’s face. ‘So soon? In that case, I need to carry on with my story. You go through to the library. I’ll bring coffee.’ She looked at our barely touched plates. ‘And a plate of biscuits?’
Chapter Thirty-Three
Georgina
Singapore, 1942
With the arrival of January the news only got worse. Not only were the Japanese making progress south and through the jungle but they were outwitting and defeating the Allied troops at every turn. In recent days they’d started bombing Singapore during the day as well as the night and untold numbers were being killed or hideously maimed.
Edith was never far from Georgina’s thoughts and she worried all the time about her sister’s safety. Georgina tried to persuade Lawrence to arrange a lift for her to Edith’s hospital up north but he told her in no uncertain terms that it was impossible. Since the night they’d argued about the nurses’ safety they’d hardly seen each other. Lawrence was kept occupied with his army duties and Georgina spent most of her free time volunteering at the refugee centres.
Civilians from up north continued to pour in, most in only the clothes they stood up in. Trains were sporadic if at all and many had walked, arriving in Singapore worn out, dishevelled and shocked, suitcases in one hand, a child holding on to the other. It wasn’t only civilians that flooded into Singapore, there were retreating soldiers too. If possible they looked even more stunned than the civilians.
By mid January the Japanese were only fifty miles from Singapore, having made their way on bicycles, hacking through the forests and towards Singapore.
It was as if Singapore were divided in two: one side filled destruction and death, the other as if nothing untoward was happening. There was still dancing every night, even at tea time, and people still lunched at the cricket club, swam at the Tanglin or went to the cinema despite having to strain to hear the movie above the racket of bombs and crump of guns. The shops remained full of goods and one could still buy anything one wanted – the Straits Times carrying advertisements for silk stockings and several different types of refrigerators, as well as advertising accommodation to let.
But if one perused the personal message columns in the Straits Times, the evidence of a country in trouble was clearly there; people looking for missing relatives, abandoned suitcases waiting to be claimed. And when in mid-January the Chinese stopped the chit system that allowed the British to run accounts, insisting on being paid in cash instead, it was clear they, at least, knew the end was in sight.
To deal with the injured and dying, all sorts of buildings had been requisitioned for extra hospitals, including some of the grander homes.
To Georgina’s relief, as the situation in the north worsened, the nurses began retreating too, coming to staff the new hospitals that had sprung up in Singapore in an attempt to deal with the increasing number of casualties. At last came the news Georgina had been longing for: Edith’s unit had been sent to a makeshift hospital on the Changi road.
Immediately she hailed a taxi, paying twice the normal fare in Straits dollars and headed out there.
The hospital was little more than a collection of bungalows with stretchers holding injured men and women laid all across the grass. But the nurses appeared cool and collected in their pristine white uniforms and veils. They might have been nursing at home before the war for all the concern or fear they showed.
When Georgina asked if she might speak to Sister Guthrie, she was shown into a tiny, windowless room and told to wait.
It seemed a very long time before Edith appeared. She looked awful. Her apron was splashed with blood and there were dark shadows under her eyes like bruises, lines around her mouth that hadn’t been there before. She was also thinner than when Georgina had last seen her. Georgina’s chest constricted. This was her baby sister.
Georgina jumped to her feet, her hands outstretched, doing her best to hide her dismay at her sister’s appearance. ‘Edith! It’s so good to see you.’
If she’d hoped Edith would let her take her in her arms she’d been mistaken. Edith stepped back out of Georgina’s reach.
‘What on earth are you doing here?’
‘I was worried… I wanted to see you. To make sure you were all right.’
An irritated frown creased her brow. ‘As you can see, I’m perfectly fine.’
Georgina’s heart sank. In every other respect she still was the same Edith. Tight-lipped and disapproving.
‘Look, can we go outside? I find this room a little claustrophobic.’
‘Very well. I have fifteen minutes and could do with a breath of fresh air.’
They stepped back outside and into the humid, earthy air. They found a bench on the lawn in front of the hospital and Edith lit a cigarette. She inhaled deeply and released the smoke thorough her nostrils.
‘I didn’t know you smoked,’ Georgina said.
‘There’s a great deal we don’t know about one another.’ When she gave Georgina a hard stare Georgina knew she was referring obliquely to what had happened with Findlay.
‘How did you get here? Don’t tell me you’re driving ambulances now?’ Edith continued.
‘I would if they let me. I’ve being volunteering – making myself useful. Or at least trying to.’
Edith raised her brows in astonishment. ‘You never struck me as the Nightingale sort.’
‘I’d never struck myself as the Nightingale sort.’ She didn’t tell Edith that she wasn’t volunteering at the hospital, but at one of the refugee centres – that she didn’t have the stomach for blood and gore. She had some pride left.
They shared a smile – the first they had in years – before Edith clearly remembered she hadn’t forgiven Georgina, frowned again and glanced pointedly at the fob watch she wore pinned to her uniform.
‘I’ve come to tell you that you need to leave Singapore,’ Georgina said quickly, realising Edith was about to get up and return to work. At one time they could practically read each other’s thoughts.
‘Leave?’
‘Yes, leave! It’s too dangerous for you to stay. You must go back to Britain. You can nurse in one of the hospitals there just as easily.’
Edith laughed shortly. ‘I can’t simply leave ju
st because you’ve taken it into your head that I should! You forget I am part of the British Army and an officer. We go where we’re told to. And that’s how it should be.’ She gestured towards the hospital. ‘Every inch of space is taken up with patients – we couldn’t possibly abandon them.’
‘Perhaps the Japanese will take care of them.’
Edith’s lips twisted. ‘The way they did in Hong Kong?’
‘You heard what happened?’
Edith’s expression softened and her eyes filled. She took a shaky draw of her cigarette. ‘I wanted to get off with the nurses in Hong Kong. Not just because I didn’t want to come to Singapore —’
Georgina winced.
‘But because my friend Anne was one of the QAs who was allocated to work there. We’d gone through all our training together, worked side by side in the military hospital in Edinburgh before we were sent overseas.’ She gripped Georgina by the arm. ‘She was in Hong Kong, Georgie, when the Japs invaded. You know people. Can you find out what happened to her? I’m going mad thinking about it.’
It felt good to have Edith talking to her again, even better that she was asking for Georgina’s help.
‘I’ll do my best,’ Georgina said. ‘I promise. But, Edith, what the Japanese soldiers did in Hong Kong is why you need to leave here. What if they do the same thing here? Oh, Eadie, I couldn’t bear it if something happened to you.’
But the small fissure in Edith’s coolness had closed again. ‘A bit late to be acting the concerned big sister, don’t you think?’
‘Don’t – please don’t – make what I did to you the reason you won’t leave. They need nurses in Britain. What use will you be to anyone if the Japs overrun the hospital?’
‘I can’t go. I’m needed. Besides, as I said, we’re as much a part of the army as anyone else. We don’t retreat just because we’re frightened. Imagine if we all did that! We might as well all go home.’ She glanced at her fob watch again. ‘But there is nothing stopping you from leaving Singapore. Go home, Georgina,’ she said. ‘I don’t understand why you stay.’
‘Because you think I don’t do anything useful? Because I’m a useless mouth as they like to call us?’ Georgina couldn’t help but smile. ‘I’ve been called many things in my life, but that is one of the worst.’
‘There is no point in us both risking our necks!’ Edith’s expression softened again. ‘Go home, Georgina. As soon as you can book a berth. Think of Olivia. She needs one of us. It’s what Harriet would have wanted and expected.’
‘I’m not leaving without you. We’re in this together. You’re my sister.’
‘You should have remembered that before now.’
‘And you shouldn’t keep bringing that up,’ Georgina retorted, exasperated. ‘It’s been years, Edith. I’ve begged you to forgive me. I’ve said I’m sorry. Tell me what else you want me to do and I’ll do it.’
Edith took a draw of her cigarette. ‘I saw him, you know.’
‘Findlay?’ Georgina’s heart banged against her ribs.
‘He came to see me when I was in Peebles. He was going to join his regiment abroad.’
Georgina stayed silent, her whole body stiff with the effort not to show a reaction.
‘We talked. He told me what happened.’
Georgina’s heart stood still. ‘What did he say?’
‘More or less what you did. He wants us to get back together.’
Georgina wasn’t sure if she felt relieved or dismayed. ‘And will you?’
Edith removed a strand of tobacco from her tongue. ‘I think so. After this is all over. Supposing we survive.’ She narrowed her eyes against the cigarette smoke. ‘I still love him. And I believe he still loves me. One thing this God-awful war has taught me is that life is too short not to forgive. Or to have regrets.’
‘Does that mean you forgive me?’ Her throat was tight and she had a crushing pain in her chest.
‘It’s harder with you. You were the one who was supposed to watch out for me. Sisters are supposed to stick together. Why did you have to go after him?’
There was no answer to that – at least not one Georgina could share with her.
The sound of grinding gears caught their attention as several trucks with red crosses pulled up outside the hospital.
Edith ground out the cigarette beneath her heel. ‘Looks like it’s starting again. I need to go.’
‘I’ll come back,’ Georgina shouted. ‘I’ll keep coming until you agree to leave.’
But her sister was already gone.
Over the next weeks, Singapore descended into chaos. Drunk, shocked, dazed soldiers wandered the streets and the dead, too many for the ambulances to collect when the wounded had to take priority, lay unburied on the streets. Even the additional hospitals couldn’t cope with the number of casualties. When beds ran out they lay everywhere; on the floors, in the corridors, on verandas, even in garages of requisitioned houses or in the ditches the troops had dug.
Yet, astonishingly, people more or less carried on as normal. Houses for sale or rent were still advertised in the press.
It was as if everyone had gone completely mad.
At end of January Winston Churchill sent a message, broadcasted from the House of Commons. ‘Bad news from the Far East… and highly probable we shall have more.’
The army had been told to hold on as long as possible – to fight to the last man. It was finally an admission that Singapore was lost and, worse, on its own. No more help would be coming from Britain.
Within days the authorities had made four troopships available for ‘useless mouths’ and finally people were making for the docks in earnest.
But the government’s final admission that Singapore was in deep trouble came far too late, and was made even worse by the ineptness of the way in which they went about organising the evacuation. The P&O line were put in charge. It turned out to be a terrible decision that ended up costing lives. Instead of piling as many as they could reasonably fit on to the ships, people had to buy tickets and book berths. To Georgina it was the equivalent of taking bookings for lifeboats – not that many appeared to agree with her. Her voice was a lone one. And as if to make securing a berth even more difficult, despite the constant bombardment that made it almost impossible to travel any distance along Singapore’s roads, the P&O moved their booking office out of the city to a bungalow several miles away from the docks. It was as if no one in Singapore could let themselves believe what was actually happening. The British sang froid was one thing, burying one’s head in the sand, another.
Everyone lined up outside the bungalow and the queues stretched for miles, countless feet tramping the lawn into mud. People would take shelter as Japanese planes flew over dropping bombs, flinging themselves to the ground before calmly retaking their place in the queue.
There were two queues: one for those wanting to go to Britain and another for those wishing to go to Colombia. But even the constant bombardment, and the fact that Singapore was holding on by a thread, didn’t stop those manning the desks from demanding passports and money for fares from people who had lost everything they owned. Women were even asked to produce their marriage certificates – as if that had the slightest bearing on anything. And if that wasn’t bad enough, even after the passengers had their tickets, after everything they’d gone through to get them, when they made it back to the docks, they were forced to queue again at a small gate where a single clerk made out their tickets, taking his time to write each person’s name in copperplate. If Georgina hadn’t seen it for herself, she wouldn’t have believed it. She had held off buying a ticket for one of the ships, but knew time was fast running out.
Tsing Tsing had long since gone into the jungle with Georgina’s blessing. There were no berths to be had for non-Europeans and nowhere for them to go even if there had been. Georgina was ashamed of the way they’d let the locals down. They’d abandoned the servants and employees who had served them well in north Malaya and were essentially d
oing the same all over again. As it turned out, Tsing Tsing had made the right decision.
On the tenth of February the Japanese reached Bukit Timah only five miles from the city and no one could doubt any longer that Singapore would fall. Robinson’s store began to give their stock away. Mothers and children with only what they stood up in were given two complete sets of clothes – one to wear – one immaculately wrapped. Aimless and exhausted soldiers wandered the streets, getting drunk whenever the opportunity presented itself. Even order at Raffles Hotel had collapsed, the ballroom full of drunken servicemen and the floor littered with beer cans. Yet in a city where services, gas, water, electricity, drainage were collapsing under the constant bombardment, the last issue of the Straits Times – reduced to a single sheet – still carried the headline Singapore Must Stand; It SHALL Stand.