Greyfriars House

by Emma Fraser

  ‘Not everyone, but most would. Those who don’t have dysentery as well as malaria.’ Edith ground her heel into the rock-hard ground as if she were imagining crushing a Jap underneath. ‘Any one of the things we put up with would be bad enough – the mosquitoes, the dirt, the bug-infested rice, the heat, the lack of water, not having medical supplies…’ She bit her lip and shook her head. ‘But there is no point in thinking like that. We just have to do our best. Chin up and all that.’ A brief smile crossed her face. ‘Never let them think we’re beaten.’

  Georgina squeezed her hand hard. ‘We’re not beaten. We’ll never be beaten. I don’t care what they do but I promise you and I are going to survive this.’

  This time Edith did stand. ‘I hope you’re right. I for one have no desire to die in this godforsaken dump.’

  As the weeks passed, their already meagre rations were cut and they became weaker and weaker. The only vegetables they were given were brought in on the back of a truck, dumped and left to rot on the ground before the women were allowed to collect them. They ate anything they could get their hands on, rotting banana skins, even the roots of the few plants that grew in the sun-baked earth. Their clothes turned to rags, their arms and legs were covered in sores and insect bites. Unable to stop themselves scratching, these often became infected and turned into suppurating ulcers. They buried Madeline and a pregnant mother who’d succumbed to malaria in a small graveyard.

  Georgina kept a close eye on her sister, worrying as she watched her get ever thinner. In those early months, a Malay trader was permitted to come to the camp once a week and the lucky few who had anything to trade or sell were able to buy cigarettes, or an orange or even some sugar. But anything Georgina might have traded for extra food was long gone. The Japs had taken her ruby ring before she’d had a chance to hide it.

  Those prisoners who did have money, in particular the Dutch who’d lived on Sumatra and because they hadn’t lost everything in a shipwreck, were relatively well off and prepared to buy services from those who didn’t. Those without earned money by sewing cloth – or more precisely rags – into clothes, or made straw hats to sell. Georgina couldn’t sew, was useless at making hats and her French lessons were considered part of her contribution to the daily running of the camp so there was no money to be gained that way.

  But there were a few dollars on offer for anyone prepared to clean the latrines. The latrines, no more than long planks with holes cut into the wood, and far too few to service the number in the camp, especially when at any time a number of the women had dysentery, were always getting clogged up with effluent, to the point they overflowed.

  Georgina would earn less than two dollars a day, but when one had nothing and no other means of earning money to buy food, when hunger was a constant gnawing pain, when the odd purchasing of a piece of fruit might be enough to keep her and Edith alive for one more day, she couldn’t see any other way. However, the thought revolted her and she gagged when she saw the task in front of her. The ditch was heaving with maggots, the smell utterly unbearable. How on earth was she going to do this?

  But do it she would. She had no choice. First, she had to find something to scoop out the stinking mess – but what? She could hardly use her bare hands and the only pans they had were used for cooking and fetching water and there were few enough of them. It was then she remembered the coconut husks she’d hollowed out to make eating bowls. She returned to the hut kitchen, collected two and made her way back to the latrines.

  She’d solved one problem, now she had another. Where to put the stuff when she’d scooped it out?

  She was hunkered on her heels, considering the question, when a shadow fell across her.

  ‘Pass me one of those husks,’ a familiar voice said.

  Georgina gaped up at her sister, stunned. Edith was the last person she’d expected to offer to help. Georgina smiled, a glow forming in the pit of her stomach. ‘Don’t you have enough to do?’

  ‘I’m off duty for the rest of the afternoon.’ Edith squatted beside Georgina. ‘ So what are we going to do with this stuff? We can’t just pile it up.’

  ‘Dump it in the jungle?’

  Edith stared across the compound. The jungle was a good mile away from the latrines.

  ‘In that case, we’d better get started.’ She handed Georgina a bandana from her pocket. ‘Tie this over your mouth. It will help with the stench.’

  Georgina did as she suggested. ‘What about you?’

  ‘I’m a nurse. I’m used to revolting smells.’ Edith dug her coconut into the seething mess. ‘Let’s just get on with it.’

  They spent the rest of the afternoon working to clear the ditch. They used the coconut husks to scoop up what they could and carried it at arm’s length over to the jungle where they poured it out. Then they would go back to the ditch and repeat the whole procedure over and over again. The Japanese guards lounged against the post of the huts watching them and laughing. Georgina would have liked to have thrown a filled husk into their faces and she was certain Edith felt the same.

  Even after hours of back-breaking work they’d barely made a dent. All the time they were removing the excreta the toilets were still being used.

  ‘Now I know what Sisyphus felt like,’ Georgina said, stretching her back.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘You know. In Greek mythology. The chap who was made to roll the boulder up the hill only to have it roll back down, so he’d have to start over again.’

  Edith rested on her haunches. ‘I’m going to have to go back to work. I’ll need to scrub before then.’

  ‘Thanks, Edith.’

  Edith gave the faintest glimmer of a smile. ‘Whatever you’ve done, you’re still my sister.’

  It seemed, finally, Edith had forgiven her.

  Chapter Forty

  After two years, and without warning, they were told they were being moved to a different camp. At first they were pleased. The conditions in the new camp could only be an improvement.

  They were only given enough time to grab what they could, before they were lined up and forced to march. Anyone who still had any strength took turns carrying the stretchers of those who were too weak to walk even though they were hardly in better health, suffering as they all were from the effects of malnutrition and repeated bouts of dysentery. After marching for a whole day, they were forced into a small boat and left in the stinking cargo hold without food or water for the night and the best part of the next day. Several died and the others had to share the tiny, suffocating space with their corpses.

  The next afternoon they were taken out and told to wait in the pouring rain. There were some trucks standing by and Mrs Barber asked the guards to allow the sick and dying to take shelter inside. The guards agreed, and some of the nurses were allowed in with them. But their captors locked them in without food or water and by morning, only the nurses emerged. Georgina had thought it was impossible to hate the Japanese more; they’d proved her wrong.

  Eventually, those who had survived that horrific journey made it to the new camp. At first glance, it did appear to be an improvement. It was near water, higher up than their old camp, and therefore cooler.

  Although they could barely stand, they were lined up for tenko and after the usual waiting around, the new camp commandant came to address them. To Georgina’s horror, she recognised him immediately. It was the officer who’d ordered the massacre at the village. She ducked her head. What if he recognised her or one of the others? What would he do? Would he be prepared to leave witnesses alive that someday in the future might testify to what he’d done?

  He stood on his makeshift podium to address them, staring at some point above their heads. All the while thoughts spun around Georgina’s head. There were only five of them, including her and Edith, left from the group that had been at the village that day, the rest having died. In addition, those who remained had lost weight and as a consequence looked different – drawn, gaunt and glassy-eyed. All of them had cu
t their hair in a hopeless attempt to keep the lice at bay, but in an act of defiance, Georgina had refused to cut hers. They’d taken everything else from her and her long auburn hair was the only physical reminder of the woman she’d once been.

  Thank God, her head had been covered by a scarf the day of the massacre. Furthermore, she recalled, he’d hardly glanced their way. There was still a chance he wouldn’t recognise them. Even if he did, they were obviously only hanging on to life by the merest thread.

  To her relief he showed no recognition. He continued to address the air above their heads, before retreating to the comfort of his hut. When they were finally released from tenko, Georgina hurried across to Edith.

  ‘Did you recognise him?’ she said.

  ‘I doubt any of us will ever forget him.’

  ‘We must never say anything to anyone that it’s him. Tell the others they mustn’t say anything.’

  Edith shrugged her shoulders. ‘What more can they do to us? Frankly I’m beyond caring what happens. We’re all going to die anyway.’

  Georgina grabbed her by the hand. ‘You mustn’t say that! You mustn’t even think it! I told you, we are going to live. We’ll leave here and live the rest of our lives. You have to believe it. You must never give up, do you hear me? Just concentrate on making it through one day at a time.’

  Edith glanced over to the straggly row of women waiting to see a nurse and shrugged Georgina’s hands away. ‘I’ll do my best.’ She sighed. ‘As long as there are patients who need me, I’ll try to keep going.’

  Conditions at the camp turned out to be far worse than they could have imagined, their rations were cut again and people came down with a new disease – one they hadn’t seen before and didn’t know how to treat, the source of which they suspected was the river water and people began to die in earnest. Soon the little patch of jungle they used as a burial ground was almost filled with graves.

  Georgina forced herself not to think about the next day, or the day after that. Instead she let herself remember the past; recreating happier moments in her head. Games of tennis where she replayed every point, dances where she imagined every footstep of a foxtrot or a two-step, midnight picnics where she mentally savoured every mouthful she’d eaten.

  It wasn’t long before Georgina noticed that the commandant was watching her. She would hobble past with her tins of water, bowing as she passed him, aware that his eyes were following her until she’d disappeared from sight. It worried her. More, it gave her the creeps.

  Today she’d placed her tins of water on the ground and paused to stretch her aching back. The thin, high voices of the children as they recited a poem one of the teachers had taught them drifted across the camp. On the whole they were in better health than the remaining adult prisoners. Their mothers had kept them alive by giving them the bulk of their rations, but as a consequence the women with children were even thinner and weaker than the others, although that was only a matter of degree.

  The commandant was standing in the shade of the balcony of his hut. He glanced around and walked over to her. She bowed low, hating that she had to.

  ‘Prisoner Guthrie,’ he said. ‘You are well?’

  So he knew her name.

  If she’d learned anything it was that their guards were completely unpredictable. She picked up her tins. ‘Quite well. Permission to go?’ She kept her eyes downcast, so he wouldn’t see the hate in them.

  Instead of replying, he stretched out a hand and touched a lock of her hair that had come loose from the bandana she wore. ‘I have never seen such colour.’

  It took all her self-control not to slap his hand away. She made herself stand rigid in front of him, keeping her head bowed.

  ‘You have enough to eat?’

  Her head shot up. ‘No. Of course we don’t.’ She forced the anger from her voice. ‘We could do with some vegetables. People are getting sick because we don’t have enough. Could you find your way to giving us more?’

  ‘I give you more,’ he said. ‘Vegetables, rice. Meat.’

  ‘You could? That would be wonderful! The other prisoners would be so grateful.’

  ‘Not for other prisoners. For you. Only you.’

  Despite the suffocating heat her blood ran cold.

  ‘You come my quarters,’ he continued. ‘Wash first. You eat.’

  She almost laughed. How desperate did he think she was? She’d rather starve than eat with him. And to tell her to wash first! Really. That took the biscuit.

  ‘I’ll eat with my friends,’ she said stiffly.

  ‘Not just to eat, stupid woman. You will come to me. Japanese officer is not like ordinary soldier. He does not force women. She must submit willingly. If you wish to survive, one day you will submit to me, Prisoner Guthrie.’

  She would die before she would submit to him, as he put it. If she hated the Japanese she hated him most of all. Any man who could kill women and children without a flicker of conscience was no better than an animal.

  Repelled, without waiting to be dismissed, she bowed again to hide her disgust, and walked past him.

  She didn’t tell anyone, least of all Edith, about the conversation with the commandant, but she worried constantly. She hated that he had noticed her. She had no way of being sure that he hadn’t recognised her and the other women from the village and was biding his time until he could get rid of them. He didn’t have to do much – just let the conditions in the camp continue to take their course.

  Alternatively furious that he thought she would sleep with him and terrified he’d even noticed her, she tried to put the conversation out of her mind. So far the Japanese had been content to take the women who were prepared to sleep with them. No one had been forced. However, the memory of what she’d learned about the way the Japanese troops had behaved when they’d invaded Hong Kong wouldn’t leave her. She tried to tell herself they had been troops drunk on stolen alcohol and fired up from the heat of battle, but she also knew that the Japanese considered rape to be the natural spoils of war.

  The commandant could have raped her had he wished. There was no one to stop him if he took it into his head. But to refuse him was also dangerous. Face was everything to the Japanese and she was glad there had been no other Japs around to witness his proposal. Georgina wondered whether she should cut her hair. The commandant clearly found it attractive. But the Japs had control of almost every bit of her life and she refused to let them take this last bit of who she was away from her. She did ensure, however, that her hair was always hidden under a bandana.

  She kept an eye out for him after that day, dashing past his hut whenever she had to pass in his direction, keeping her head lowered when he was around. Thankfully, he rarely appeared for tenko or out on his balcony.

  They’d been at the new camp for almost nine months and almost every day now someone died. Under the new commandant, no trader was allowed within the gates and even those few women who had money left were unable to buy food.

  So when the Japanese asked for volunteers to work in the native hospital in the village (the Australian nurses said no, a wise move on their part, as it turned out), Georgina wasn’t at all surprised when Edith and Linda, the other QA, volunteered to go.

  To begin with, it seemed that they had made a good decision. The hospital was run by a Dutch doctor and his wife, and security there was much more relaxed. After finishing their shift, Edith and Linda were able to walk to the village and, using the money the women had agreed to pool, were able to buy some fruit or vegetables that helped supplement rations back at the camp. Every evening when they returned the women would fall upon them to see what scraps they had managed to bring with them.

  Edith and Linda had been working at the hospital for a few months when one evening they didn’t come back.

  When, by the next evening they still hadn’t returned, Georgina was frantic. As usual the rumour mill was working overtime. Edith and Linda had been tortured and killed. They were being used as comfort women – it ha
d all been a ruse to separate them from the others.

  Georgina couldn’t bear not knowing. She marched up to the commandant’s office and requested to see him.

  She bowed low at the waist and waited for him to acknowledge her.

  ‘I have come to ask about my sister, Sister Guthrie. She and her colleague did not return to camp last night.’

  ‘What do you want me to do?’

  She raised her head. ‘I’d like you to find out where they are. What’s happening to them. Surely you can do that?’

  He left his desk and came to stand in front of her. ‘You make demands? Of me?’

  ‘I’m only…’ She didn’t manage to get the rest of the words out before one of the guards stepped towards her and smashed her in her face with the butt of his rifle.

  She tried to get to her feet but she was knocked to the ground and hit again and again, until there was only darkness.