by Emma Fraser
‘He told me that he and Edith planned to formally announce their engagement at Greyfriars. His eyes were soft when he spoke of her and I felt a stab of jealousy. I wished I had someone who would love me like that.
‘As if realising he was going on a bit, he asked about me. I was still smarting a little from the treatment I’d received in Paris but I made light of it and set out to amuse him, to banish the darkness I thought I saw in his eyes. I was, I told myself, doing it for Edith.
‘It was late when he left to return to his hotel. We were both getting the same train to Balcreen the next day so it was natural that we would travel up together. He asked if he could arrange for a taxi to collect me and my luggage but I told him I would see him at the station. When he saw the amount of luggage I had brought with me, he laughed and teased me as easily as if we’d known each other all our lives. I was desperately in love with him already.
Georgina tucked a lock of hair behind her ear and gave me a shaky smile. ‘I thought that all I had to do was to get through those two weeks at Greyfriars. I was due to leave for Singapore and our paths wouldn’t have to cross again until after he and Edith married. I had never envied my little sister more, yet, believe me when I say, I wanted her to be happy.
‘At Greyfriars it was difficult to be in the same room as Findlay and not show everyone how besotted I was with him. There was a strange atmosphere at Greyfriars that summer – everyone was keyed up and overexcited at the thought of war. They were used to me making myself the centre of attention and if they noticed I was quieter, that I avoided being alone with him, they put it down to my foreboding about the war. But I dreaded the moment when Edith would announce their engagement and I dreaded even more the day he was to leave. For almost two weeks I managed to keep my feelings to myself. But I didn’t think about those sharp eyes of your mother. She was such a quiet little thing and it was easy to forget she was there. And then Findlay told us he was going to join up. He knew war was coming.
‘It was only because I had had too much champagne – that and the talk of war – everything was heightened. All I could think about was that I might never see him again. Or perhaps that is just an excuse – maybe I meant to have him all the time. I saw him going down to the loch side carrying his towel. Everyone else was in bed, but I wasn’t the least bit tired. He hadn’t proposed to Edith yet and I told myself that I would ask him why.’ She sighed. ‘All the little lies one tells oneself.
‘I grabbed an open bottle of champagne and a couple of glasses and picked my way down to the shore. When I stumbled in my heels I slipped them off and left them on the lawn. The cool feel of the grass beneath my feet was exquisite. It was one of those still perfect evenings you get in a Scottish summer – where the sky hardly gets dark. It was almost midnight yet still light enough for me to find my way without a torch. And, as it turns out, light enough for inquisitive eyes to see me.’ She gave me a pained smile. ‘But loving him was not an excuse for what I did. And it didn’t make me any less responsible for the situation Edith subsequently found herself in. If I’d kept away from him, they would have married. She would never have been in Singapore. Never have had to go through what she did. I promised myself when we faced death together that morning at the village that if we survived, I would do whatever it took to ensure Edith made it home.’
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Georgina and Edith
1942
As the smell of blood, smoke and charred flesh filled the air, the officer drove off in his jeep, his soldiers taking the male prisoners with them, three soldiers remaining behind to take charge of the women and children.
Bellowing commands and jabbing at them with their bayoneted rifles, their guards ordered the shocked and terror-stricken group of women to march out of the village. They were made to walk along a road – in reality little more than a track – through the jungle. Mothers carried their small children until they could no longer do so, when other willing hands took over despite their own exhaustion. Although they’d been allowed to keep their suitcases with them, many had lost their shoes and had tied strips of cloth around their feet to protect them. Some had nothing but the clothes they stood in; no suitcases, no shoes, no hat. Without shade, the heat was excruciating and there was no offer of water.
Sick with horror and disbelief, Georgina clung to the fact that she and Edith still lived. Unable to assimilate what had happened she concentrated on putting one foot in front of the other. Her feet were already blistered from the previous day’s walk and each step she took felt as if she were walking on needles, yet the pain was a welcome distraction from the images filling her head. The sun was so hot her skin felt on fire. With her red hair and pale complexion, she burned easily and the scarf she had taken from the suitcase and wrapped around her head offered little protection. Edith was only slightly better off. Her skin was more of a golden shade, but light enough to burn too. Everyone’s did. Already most of their lips were a mass of blisters, their skin beginning to peel. Others clearly suffering the effects of sunstroke and traumatised by the events of the last hours, had to be supported. If a woman collapsed the soldiers would prod them with the points of their bayonets, screaming at them to get up.
There were five children in their group ranging in ages from a toddler to a seven-year-old. Out of the sixteen women, there were six Australian nurses, Edith and Linda, a doctor who had trained in Britain and worked in one of the hospitals in the north, two planters’ wives, a missionary, and three other women who were the wives of government officials or businessmen. Most of them, including herself, had been petted and spoiled, their merest whim catered to by scores of servants, and had rarely had to walk more than a few hundred yards.
It was almost sunset when, dead on their feet, they arrived at what seemed to be their final destination, a cluster of wooden huts surrounded by a fence in a clearing in the jungle. They were so relieved to have reached somewhere, to know that the marching would stop, that they cheered with what little energy they had left.
They hobbled through the gates and towards the huts, desperate to sit down and get out of the sun.
On closer inspection, the huts were barely standing, with holes in the roofs and gaps in the walls and had nothing inside them except two rows of sloping concrete on either side of a long passage. Some of the women prisoners sat on the edge, exhausted, rubbing their aching, swollen feet, while the others, Georgina and Edith included, went to investigate further.
To the rear, they found a smaller hut with the remains of an open fire that had once clearly been used as a kitchen, along with a couple of pans, and several rusty tins – stuff deemed too worthless to be taken by whoever had occupied the camp before them. Along one wall was a concrete plinth with a tapless sink embedded in it. Beyond it, close to the perimeter fence, was a well that appeared to be the only source of water. There were no bathrooms or showers, just outside latrines and the single kitchen sink to wash.
‘They can’t expect us to live here,’ Gladys, one of the Australian nurses, protested.
‘I’m very much afraid they do,’ Georgina replied.
‘Come on, let’s get organised,’ Edith said. She hadn’t said a word since they’d left the village, but now, with the prospect of something to do, she seemed to have regained her composure. ‘We should set up a nurses’ station and have a look at everyone. Georgina, could you fetch some water? As much as you can?’
That first night they were fed, if you could call it that, watery rice and a cup of brackish water that passed for tea. If they weren’t so hungry Georgina doubted any of them would have been able to swallow a mouthful. They lay down on their rock-hard beds, there was no space to have more than an inch or two between each body, and tried to make themselves as comfortable as best they could.
Lying sleepless, the hot, humid night filled with the whine of mosquitoes, the cries of children and the screeching of the monkeys in the jungle, with what had happened in the village playing over and over in her head, Geor
gina wondered how long they’d be there and how many of them would live to see home again. But, she promised herself, she would do anything and everything in her power to make sure she and Edith would be amongst those who did.
They were woken at dawn by the shouting of guards and the banging of rifle butts against the soles of their already tender feet.
‘Tenko! Tenko!’ the guards kept screaming at them as they were prodded and pushed and made to line up in the centre of the camp. Anyone who didn’t bow low enough to the guards was beaten to the ground.
They stood there for the best part of the morning; long after the sun came up and for hours after, with nothing to eat or drink. There was no shade and the heat of the sun was remorseless. If a woman collapsed she was beaten and those standing next to her quickly learned to support anyone who looked in danger of falling.
The guards counted them over and over again. Finally, when Georgina thought they were going to be made to stand there all day, the camp commandant came out of his hut to address them.
He was youngish with a clean-shaven face and glasses. Georgina could imagine him as a clerk or librarian except for the coldness of his eyes and his clipped, hostile tone. In broken English he made no bones of the fact that they were the lowest of the low. Women and prisoners. To be either was bad enough but to be both clearly made them beyond contempt. If they worked hard and showed respect, he said, they would be all right. There was more stuff about the Japanese military might and rubbish like that. Georgina suspected she wasn’t the only one who barely heard a word he said, they were all concentrating too hard on staying upright.
They waited in the sun until finally, when they were all swaying on their feet, they were allowed to return to their huts.
Inside, the suffocating heat was almost as bad as outside. Some women flopped onto their hard beds, while others sat around listlessly. The mothers didn’t have the luxury of rest – their children needed to be looked after, reassured and fed. A few hours later the cry of ‘tenko’ went up again and once more they were shoved and pushed into the yard and made to stand in the burning sun while the guards counted them over and over again. How they came to hate the call to tenko.
Over the next few days the camp filled as survivors of other shipwrecks, along with the Dutch women who had been living nearby, were brought to the camp. Soon every hut was crammed to overflowing with stunned and exhausted women and children.
And so the first week passed, the women growing more listless with each hour. For Georgina, almost the worst thing was never having a moment to herself. All day and every day she was forced to share her waking moments with her fellow prisoners, who with their constant squabbles and petty arguments set her teeth on edge.
It was easier in some ways for the nurses, Edith amongst them. They had their nursing duties to keep them occupied, were used to hard conditions, used to being on their feet until they dropped with fatigue and used to putting the needs of others before their own. The other women, with nothing to keep them from thinking of their own misery, sniped at each other constantly.
Following a particular bitter quarrel between two women as to who was getting a larger portion of rice, it finally dawned on them all that help wasn’t likely to come for months and that they should make the best of the situation in which they found themselves. Everyone was called together, and a leader, Mrs Barber, appointed.
After that meeting the camp arranged itself into some sort of order. Chores were divided between them. One of the women had been a teacher and she, along with a couple of the mothers, established a makeshift school at one end of the compound. Some of the women were given cooking duties and the nurses held their clinics, helping out with chores when they had some free time.
The rest, Georgina included, shared the remainder of the tasks. They scavenged for what little wood there was and chopped it with whatever they could find, fetched water from the well and collected the heavy bags of rice that were their rations and cooked it, adding whatever they could find to make it taste better.
Not everyone was able to contribute to camp life. Mrs McCutcheon, the wife of a planter, came down with fever and was confined to bed, and Cecilia Fairweather sat all day, knees tucked into her chest, not moving and not saying anything. They took it in turns to spoon the thin gruel that passed for food into her mouth.
Nights were worst; the huts unbearably hot and humid, the strange sounds from the jungle and the never-ending cries of children, the rats nibbling at their toes, the fleas making them itch and perhaps worst of all, the mosquitoes. Georgina slept in a kimono she’d taken from one of the abandoned suitcases, the long sleeves helping a little to keep the mosquitoes at bay, but almost everyone was covered in bites which became infected, turning into boils that required lancing.
Day after day followed the same relentless pattern. After a restless sleep, Georgina would rise at first light along with several of the more able women and walk to the well to fetch water. It was a thankless task. With very little suitable to carry it in except for some leaky tins they’d scavenged, they had to make several trips just to supply sufficient to drink let alone cook or wash with.
Bathing was a euphemism for stripping down in front of the kitchen sink and washing as best they could. Those who had soap and a towel were the lucky ones, those without had to make do with whatever they could find to dry themselves. Shy and embarrassed at first, they soon got used to being naked in front of each other.
In those early weeks there was enough rice to eat, if little else, and hours of free time to fill. Georgina gave French lessons to the children and to those adults who were interested. In the evenings there was bridge with homemade cards, mah-jong with bits of wood they found and once a week they held a camp concert, everyone, even the children, taking a turn to tell a joke, or sing.
Despite the horrific conditions and the occasional spat, a camaraderie developed amongst the prisoners. The Australian nurses in particular were quick to find humour wherever they could. Georgina was to look back on these days in the years to come with something akin to longing.
They had been in the camp for over two weeks before Georgina and Edith were alone. So far they hadn’t had the opportunity to speak in private. Either Edith was busy, or she was in the company of the other nurses. Georgina was using a piece of broken glass she’d found to extract the flesh from a coconut after which the husk could be used as a bowl, when Edith came to sit on the rock beside her.
‘How are you?’ Edith asked.
Edith had lost weight, as all of them had, and if she’d looked exhausted before she seemed even more so now.
‘As well as I imagine most of us are. It’s good to see you. You look tired.’
Edith grimaced. ‘No more tired than everyone else.’
‘I wish we saw more of each other.’ Georgina laid the now clean coconut shell aside and picked up another. It was odd how this simple, mundane task soothed her.
‘We see a great deal of one another.’
‘But never alone. Always with other people.’
Shielding her eyes with her hand, Edith looked towards a hut where children played in the dust. ‘Is there something you especially want to talk to me about?’
‘I… You’re my sister. Isn’t that enough reason?’ Georgina hated the pleading note that had crept into her voice. She sucked in a breath. ‘I need to know you’re all right.’
‘I’m fine. As you can see.’
Georgina blinked away the traitorous tears that formed behind her lids. It was only lack of food that made one so emotional. But oh, how she missed the easy atmosphere that used to exist between them.
‘Can’t we put everything behind us? You saved my life. You can’t pretend you don’t care,’ she whispered.
‘You’re so melodramatic, Georgina! Of course I care.’
‘But you haven’t forgiven me, have you?’
Edith sighed. ‘Please, Georgina. Let’s not open up old wounds. Let’s just agree never to speak of it.’
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‘But if it still causes such a rift?’
Edith took her hand away from her eyes and turned to face Georgina. ‘If you keep bringing it up then matters will only get worse. You did what you did. What happened, happened.’ She stood. ‘I have work to do. I need to get back.’
Georgina reached for her hand and clasped it. ‘Stay for a few minutes more. I promise I won’t speak of it again.’
Reluctantly Edith sat back down. ‘For a few moments then.’
‘How are your patients?’ Georgina asked. Amongst all the things she wanted to say it was the only thing she could think of.
‘We are going to lose Madeleine Simpson. Why won’t they give us some quinine? Mrs Barber has been to see the commandant several times about it.’ She pursed her lips. ‘Silly question. They don’t care if we die. We are nothing to them except a nuisance.’
‘Would people live if they had quinine?’