Prisoner from Penang: The moving sequel to The Pearl of Penang

by Clare Flynn

  I stared at her, uncomprehending. ‘But if you don’t like doing it, why…?’ I wanted to ask why she had slept with Ralph and made him fall in love with her, knowing full well that he had been engaged to marry me.

  She gave a little shrug. ‘It makes me feel there’s a point to me – giving men pleasure. I used to think it was all I was good at. It was certainly the only time that I ever felt valued.’ She paused, tilting her head back and staring up at the grey sky. ‘You want to know why I seduced your fiancé, don’t you?’

  I nodded.

  ‘You won’t like it.’ She stared right at me. ‘I did it because you looked so damned happy. I saw you with him at some match. Cricket or rugby. I can’t remember. I was feeling very low. I used to suffer from very black moods. Close to despair. Seeing other people happy made it worse.’ She closed her eyes for a moment. ‘And the only way I could make the pain feel better was to see other people suffering too. Funnily enough, since being locked up like this, I don’t get those black spells anymore.’

  I didn’t know what to say. I was dumbfounded.

  ‘It was nothing personal, Mary. I didn’t even know you then. You kept yourself apart. Not one of the gang. I suppose that made you an easy target. I’m sorry. I never meant to be the cause of what happened. The boy killing himself.’

  ‘He wasn’t a boy,’ I snapped.

  ‘He was to me. I was fifteen years older than the poor chap.’ She looked at me, her gaze intent. ‘I thought he’d see it for what it was. A passing fancy. A brief affair. I wanted to hurt you, shake you up. I thought you’d make up eventually and carry on with your lives. I had no idea he’d commit suicide. It was just an unthinking desire to wipe the self-satisfied smile off your face.’

  Before I knew what I was doing, I’d whipped my hand back and struck her across the face.

  She put her own hand up to cup her reddened cheek. ‘I asked for that, didn’t I?’

  I nodded but felt no triumph.

  ‘Look, Mary, we’ve cleared the air. Let’s forget about it. The RAF chap you were going to marry was twice the man Ralph was. I’m truly sorry he didn’t make it.’

  I snarled at her. ‘Come off it, Veronica. You tried to make a pass at him too. At the Camerons’ party at the Penang Club.’

  ‘That was the drink talking. I used to have a problem in that department. Rather too fond of getting intoxicated.’ She lit one of the cigarettes that were part of her booty from sleeping with the enemy. Veronica always used a lacquer cigarette holder and it was something she protected assiduously. Even here in the squalor of the camp it lent her an air of fashionable sophistication that her ragged clothes belied. ‘Anyway, I’d have got absolutely nowhere. It was obvious even to someone as insensitive as I am, that Frank Hyde-Underwood worshipped the ground you walked on.’

  That was it. For the first time since we had been imprisoned, I burst into tears.

  Veronica wrapped an arm around me and held me as I sobbed into her shoulder.

  Eventually she spoke again. ‘It must be a miraculous thing to love and be loved by someone as much as that. You have a great capacity for love, Mary. It will come to you again.’

  Sniffling, I wiped my hand across my nose. Handkerchiefs were long-forgotten luxuries. ‘It won’t. And I don’t want it anyway. Love is all about pain and sorrow. And I’m cursed. Engaged twice and both men dead.’

  She took my hand in hers. ‘Not when you are loved in return. There was no pain and sorrow in your feelings for Frank. The pain and sorrow came from war not from love.’ She looked into the middle distance, thoughtful. ‘It’s only now that I will probably never see him again that I realise how much I love my husband.’

  ‘This war won’t go on forever,’ I said. ‘You’ll see him again.’

  ‘I won’t. I am certain of that. Our marriage is over anyway. Arthur never loved me. At least not in that way. Not as a husband should love his wife. He cared for me. I think he felt sorry for me. He was good to me. But having someone pity you is no recipe for a successful marriage. And certainly not now he’s fallen in love with someone else.’

  This was news to me. Arthur Leighton had always struck me as the devoted long-suffering husband, taking Veronica back after all her extra-marital adventures. ‘Someone else? Who?’

  But Veronica already clearly regretted that last confession. She got up and brushed her hands down the skirt of her faded threadbare frock and pulled back her shoulders. Even unwashed, with cropped hair and one filthy dress, Veronica had an air of elegance about her. ‘No one you’d know,’ she said briskly. ‘It’s time I got stuck into the rice-picking.’

  She was not referring to a trip into the paddy fields but to the painstaking and fiddly process of picking through the rice rations. These were literally the sweepings off the factory floor, and in order to cook with them, they had to be sorted grain by grain, to remove the weevils, grit, glass, and dead insects. ‘Cynthia will be wondering why I’ve abandoned her to the job.’ She gave me a brittle smile and then she was gone.

  Not long after we were installed in the new camp, I became aware that one of the guards was taking a lot of interest in me. He was new, presumably a leftover from the time of the men’s occupation. I tried to ignore him and pretend it wasn’t happening. But when he started following me every time I went to fetch water, I realised he wasn’t just checking that I wouldn’t try to make an escape.

  The guard was young, probably only about eighteen or nineteen, and like most of the Japanese, myopic and wearing the ubiquitous round spectacles that I came to the conclusion must be army issue. His name was Tanaka and he had a broad, rather plump peasant-like face and didn’t look as though he needed to shave often, if at all. We used to refer to him as Turnip Head.

  Everywhere I went in the camp, the young man was either already there or not far behind me. Some of the other women noticed his puppy-like devotion to me and started making jokes about it. One day, one of the other guards, witnessing the way the women were joshing me, realised the source of the hilarity. He shouted something to my young shadow and the boy retreated. I was relieved. It had begun to annoy me.

  About two days after the incident with the second guard, I was near the perimeter fence, searching for fallen twigs and branches to use as firewood. It was a secluded spot, away from the middle of the camp and I liked to be there as it was the only time I managed to be alone with my thoughts. Chopping wood with a kitchen knife was hard work. I was lethargic, due to the near starvation rations and the lack of variety in our diet.

  That morning it had been raining heavily and the trees near the fence were dripping with rainwater. Standing beneath them to do the work meant that was I out of the full strength of the sun, and able to enjoy the odd cooling shower, as birds or a breeze disturbed the foliage and sent drops down upon me, cooling my neck as I bent to the task.

  I sensed his presence before I saw him. Looking up, I saw Turnip Head was standing a short distance away, watching me intently. I gave him a polite smile – it was always best to try to stay on the right side of the guards and while this one had shown no aggression towards me, it was wise not to take any chances. I carried on splitting the wood.

  It happened very quickly. Too fast for me to anticipate his attack. The knife was jerked from my hands and he threw it aside, then pushed me over so that I landed hard on my back on the bare ground. Before I could scramble up on my feet, he was upon me, grasping at my thin dress, pushing it up and using his knee to force open my legs. I cried out, but he pressed his small, pudgy hand over my mouth and straddled me. I could smell the sweat on him, pungent, stale, and his breath against my face was foul and sulphurous as though he had been eating eggs. I gagged. His well-fed, small-framed body weighed me down as I struggled to break free from under him.

  No! My first sexual experience was not going to be a forced one and certainly not with an undersized, plump-faced Japanese boy, an uneducated peasant who wanted to slake his teenage lust on my unwilling body.

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sp; I sank my teeth into the smooth shiny skin of his cheek and he yelped in pain. I was about to take advantage of his surprise to push him off and make my escape, when I felt the cold point of a bayonet press against my neck. That was it. Rape was inevitable. Looking past my assailant I saw two other guards, standing, legs apart, their bayonets pointing at me. Laughing. One of them spoke rapidly to my attacker and with mounting horror and dread I knew they were goading their colleague on, taunting him to get the job done. One of them was thrusting his hips back and forth in a grotesque parody of the sex act.

  I will not describe the details of what happened. Suffice to say that this pubescent soldier stole my virginity there on the hard, bare ground under the trees. The pain was terrible, and I prayed for it to be over. The two others were waiting to take their turn. They would finish me off with their bayonets when they were done. I would have welcomed the swift release of a bayonet in preference to the horror of what that boy-man was doing to me.

  It was Veronica who saved me from the other guards and probable death. Later, she told me she had seen Turnip Head follow me and as soon as she noticed the two other men had gone after him, she guessed what was about to happen. From a distance, she saw him push me down onto the ground, so she went to fetch Sergeant Shoei.

  As Tanaka finished his brutal invasion of my body, with a final violent thrust and a cry of triumph, he was yanked away by the collar. I opened my eyes. Sergeant Shoei was screaming at the three men and another guard was holding Turnip Head by the scruff of the neck. Tears spilled down my face and I struggled to get on my feet. As I stood up, blood trickled down my thigh, mingling with the sticky residue of the guard. I turned my head and vomited onto the hard-baked earth.

  Shoei focused his attention on me, striking me hard across the face and screaming in Japanese. Then he swivelled on his heels and headed back across the camp, the other guards hurrying behind him.

  After the rape, I sat slumped on the ground, bitter and angry. The casual way in which my body had been used for the instant gratification of a man filled me with disgust. I had been a vessel for him to satisfy his need for sexual release and if its attainment came at the cost of my virginity, my self-respect, physical distress and pain, it mattered not to him. I tried to be grateful that my ordeal had been curtailed by the arrival of Veronica with the deputy commandant but all I felt was sorrow and a deep feeling of shame.

  This is why rape is such a potent and terrible weapon of war. For it is indeed a weapon, used indiscriminately by armies throughout history. Not only is there the physical pain and violence of the rape itself, the hatred and desire to debase, which the act represents – but there is also the shame it produces in the victim. I wanted no one to know. I wanted to crawl away and hide, to die, to disappear. The thought of my mother finding out was unbearable. I felt dirty, despoiled, ruined.

  Veronica sensed this. We sat on the ground while she cradled my head in her lap and stroked my hair. It was generous, and uncharacteristic of the Veronica I thought I had known. Her usual response to adversity was to take control, boss people about, organise, fix things. Act first, explain later. Now, she was taking time to let me be. She gave me her presence; she bore witness to my pain but never once told me to pull myself together or offered empty platitudes.

  I’ve no idea how long we sat there, silent, waiting. If she had led me back into the heart of the camp, placed me into the care of the nurses, made a fuss, told the others about what had happened, I would have probably lacked the strength to carry on.

  ‘Thank you,’ I said at last.

  ‘There’s no need to thank me.’

  ‘If you hadn’t appeared with Shoei they would all have taken a turn with me and killed me afterwards. There was no one to witness it. They’d have said I was trying to escape.’

  ‘Probably,’ she said, simply.

  I looked towards the huts. I could hear the camp choir singing. ‘You won’t tell anyone, will you?’

  ‘Not if you don’t want me to.’

  ‘I don’t. And after today I’d rather you and I never mentioned it again.’ I bit my lip. ‘I don’t want Mum to know what he did to me. She wouldn’t take it well. She’s depressed enough as it is.’

  Veronica nodded.

  ‘Do you think I will ever be able to forget this?’

  She looked at me sharply, knowingly. ‘No. You won’t. Ever. But with time you’ll be able to see it for what it was – an act of war, and something in which you yourself played no part and must carry no guilt. The only people who should feel shame at what happened to you are the man who did it and the men who watched. It doesn’t make you a bad person.’

  She let out a long sigh and fixed her eyes on mine. ‘The only other person I have ever told what I am about to tell you, is my husband.’ Looking away, she said, ‘I was raped as a child. Twelve years old.’

  I gasped, shocked. It was impossible to imagine the cool, aloof, elegant Veronica ever going through the trauma of what I had just experienced – and doing so while a child.

  ‘Who did it to you?’

  ‘That doesn’t matter. It was so long ago. Let’s just say he was one of my mother’s gentlemen friends. A sailor. He was very rough with me. When he was done, I was so filled with shame I ran away. I vowed it would never happen again.’ She narrowed her eyes and took a breath, drawing the air deep into her lungs. ‘And it never has. I make sure I’m the one in control where men are concerned. Why do you think I made a play for Shoei? I want his protection. None of the others will dare to lay a finger on me.’

  She gave a little snort. ‘I loathe him with every fibre of my being. His horrible hairless bandy legs, his fat belly, his tiny hands. Most of the time I can get away with using only my hands to deal with him – and it’s usually over quickly.’ She gave a little chuckle. ‘I suppose I should be thankful for small mercies.’

  I didn’t know what to say. I wasn’t surprised by what she was revealing about the deputy commandant, but I was stunned by her girlhood trauma. It was hard to square the picture of that little girl with Veronica’s sturdy resilience, her brazen self-confidence and her innate sense of social superiority. It was all an act – armour she girded herself with to face whatever obstacles were put in her path.

  ‘How are you feeling?’ she asked. ‘Ready to face the world?’

  I nodded and we went back to the camp.

  To my relief, I never saw Turnip Head Tanaka again. Veronica told me later that Shoei had transferred him to one of the men’s camps. After that, she and I never spoke again of what happened to me. Or of what had happened to her.

  8

  Penny Arrives

  November 1944

  In the camp, children were not afforded any special treatment by our captors, but they were tolerated and some of the guards appeared to find them amusing, like small pets. It was rare these days that they would punish or strike a child. Children were not deemed to merit the same contempt their parents received, as members of the losing side. Since we had chosen not to do the honourable thing and ritually kill ourselves for the shame and disgrace of surrender, we were worthless, lower than mongrels and if we starved to death or succumbed to disease, so much the better.

  Disease was rife. Every manner of sickness from the inevitable malaria and dysentery to malnutrition. All would have been easily treatable with medication. The only medicine we had in camp was what the nuns and nurses had managed to bring in with them – and later what Veronica managed to procure. This was another example of her selflessness. Instead of using the small sums of cash and supplies of cigarettes she got from Sergeant Shoei to buy and barter indulgences for herself, she kept only a modest amount of smokes and used everything else to exchange for food, which she shared, and where possible medicines. It was this that kept my mother going through almost constant bouts of malaria and dysentery. Later we were to discover that the Japanese had plentiful medical supplies in storage – including the contents of the Red Cross parcels which they neither distribu
ted nor even told us existed.

  One of the strange aspects of our long internment was the way the numbers in the camps continued to increase. In the earlier days it contributed to the unpleasant overcrowding and the severe limitations of our allotted sleeping space. In the later days, the new arrivals barely kept pace with the rate of dying.

  The newcomers were sometimes recent ‘acquisitions’ by the Japanese – many of them Dutch, or Hollanders as they preferred to be known, who had been under house arrest in their own homes at first. Some were stragglers from various shipwrecks; one or two had been living in hiding under the protection of villagers. Some were brought in from other camps on the whim of our captors, who appeared to enjoy moving their detainees from camp to camp like pieces on a chess board. As there was no rhyme nor reason, I came to the conclusion it was a bureaucratic game – or possibly a power struggle between rival camp commandants. The Japanese appeared to have no love for each other; none of the sense of esprit de corps I had witnessed in our own servicemen and which, here in camp, was most apparent among the large group of Australian nurses and the Dutch nuns.

  One day, almost six months after we had arrived in the former men’s camp, a dozen new internees arrived and among them I saw a face I recognised. A scrawny-legged girl of about twelve or thirteen with large sad eyes. Alone.

  Moving as fast as my weakened legs would carry me, I ran over to greet her. Penny Cameron had once been my pupil, my next door neighbours’ child, and the best friend of Jasmine Barrington, Evie’s daughter.

  Feisty, mischievous, often outspoken, Penny had been a spirited little girl, yet as I looked into those huge saucer-like eyes, I could see only emptiness and despair.

  ‘Penny!’ I clutched her tight against me. ‘I am so happy to see you.’ That sounded wrong, so I added, ‘Well, not in this place of course. I wish we were meeting somewhere else.’