by Clare Flynn
It was war that gave Veronica a sense of purpose and an outlet for her courage and her administrative and organisational skills.
I tried to comfort Cynthia and I hope I managed to reassure her that she was blameless in our friend’s death.
But with Veronica’s passing I found it much harder myself to exist in captivity. Much harder to sustain my spirits and my will to survive.
We had absolutely no idea our ordeal would soon be ending. We had no communication with the outside world. No radio. No newspaper. And the Japanese continued to act as our invincible masters. And on our part, we had given up the fight. Veronica’s savage death had shattered the last vestiges of hope among us and a dangerous and deep-rooted apathy took over the entire camp.
Liberation came late to us. A full week after the signing of Japan’s unconditional surrender on September 2nd and more than a month after the atomic bombing of Hiroshima. No one knew where we were.
I understand now how perilous our situation was and how lucky we were not to have all been killed in those days between the atomic bombing and the surrender. The Allied forces had no idea where the numerous internment camps were, particularly on Sumatra. Once the atomic bomb, with its terrible unleashing of mass destruction, had fallen on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, we would have been at critical risk that our captors could have exacted revenge upon us and executed us all.
I know now there were plans to do this, but it is a sign of the collapse of discipline and communication in the Japanese army, rather than the compassion of any individual commandants, that these orders were not fulfilled. Our captors were as apathetic and demoralised as we were.
In truth, we were expendable – not only by the Japanese, but also by the Allies. If a few thousand civilian women and children should happen to be executed by the Japanese in reprisals, before the Allied armies could get to us and make us safe, so be it. We were as inconsequential as dandelion clocks blowing in a breeze.
The bitter irony was that the number of fatalities increased the nearer we got to our eventual liberation. I often wonder now if, in those dreadful last days, we had known that freedom was just around the corner, whether some of those who died might have marshalled the strength to survive? But we had been through too many false dawns to sustain hope.
The day we were liberated from the camp, Sergeant Shoei shot himself. As the armoured cars and lorries burst through the gates, he went into his quarters, put his revolver to his head and blew his brains out. A much faster death than the one he had afforded Veronica. I am not ashamed to say I cursed him even in his death.
The camp commandant and the rest of the guards lined up, heads hanging, like stray dogs, surrendering to our Australian army liberators. I saw the fear in the guards’ eyes, the desperation for it all to be over so they could go home and get on with their lives. Some of them were virtually boys, little tinpot warriors, playing at soldiers in their green khaki uniforms with the gold stars on their caps and their no-longer-highly-polished knee boots.
Sergeant Shoei hadn’t been a boy though. He must have been in his late forties. I am absolutely certain that he killed himself because in the end he felt ashamed. Veronica had shamed him. Her bravery. His barbarity.
I know more than I care to about men who take their own lives, having come up against suicide twice. Oddly, both of them killed themselves because of Veronica Leighton. Ralph out of despair when Veronica left him. He had lost her, lost me, lost his future and his will to live. He knew he had messed everything up. But there was no despair in Sergeant Shoei. His death was an act of pure cowardice, a refusal to accept responsibility for his role in the war, for his running of the camp, for the savage treatment of us all, for the needless deaths from starvation and disease, for the medicines he kept locked away and refused to have dispensed. Maybe he didn’t feel able to return to his wife and children, knowing the things that he had done and that had been done in the name of his emperor. Surrender too was probably too great a shame for him – subjugating himself to the enemy he had been trained to despise. So, he died like the coward he was.
As I was driven out of the camp for the last time, I thought of all the brave women I had known during our captivity, those who had died prematurely and needlessly. My mother – a woman in her fifties, fit and healthy when we were captured, crushed and broken by hunger, exhaustion and disease. Her friends Beryl, Marjorie and Daphne, stalwarts of colonial Penang, formidable ladies, pillars of the bridge club and the church choir. Poor Sharon Henderson, captured a week after her marriage and now dead.
It turned out that the men from whom we had been separated so early on in captivity had been held less than a mile away all the time we were on the rubber estate.
Terence, Sharon’s young husband, walked the short distance between our camps to be reunited with his wife, only to find he was too late. I will never forget the look of utter desolation on his haggard, prematurely aged face when I broke the news to him. I couldn’t even show him a grave, as Sharon was buried on Banka with my mother and many others.
This lack of an identifiable place to mark our dead was one of the hardest crosses to bear for all of us who lost loved ones.
But it was Veronica who had suffered the cruellest fate and had done so much to help keep us alive. I admired and respected her courage and was grateful for the way she put herself on the line, risking everything to help others – and ultimately sacrificing her own life.
My memory of Veronica will always be coloured by the experience of that camp. She will always be a woman of courage, of resilience and grit, unsentimental, defiant. Until the day I die myself, I will never forget watching her suffer – the protracted agony and the sudden release with Shoei’s bullet.
That doesn’t stop Veronica also being the woman I had known before the war. Vain, shallow, bored and bitchy. A woman who toyed with men before casting them off like worn underwear. She had played a long game of cat and mouse with men, relishing the hunt but with no desire for the feast that should normally follow the kill. And I’d hated her for what she did to Ralph.
But if I learnt one thing in those camps, it was that love sustains while hate corrodes and destroys. I can no longer hate Veronica. I feel privileged to have known her – and wish others who knew her only in peacetime had had my chance to meet that other selfless, driven woman.
Part II
LIBERTY
11
Alone
Late November 1945
I am bereft. Back in Singapore, waiting to return to George Town, and I have never felt lonelier in my life. I am free from my long years of captivity, yet there is no joy. I have lost my mother, and the death of my father, in the labour camp where he was sent after a spell in Changi, has been confirmed. He died in late 1944. Just three days before Mum died.
I had suspected Dad wouldn’t make it. He wasn’t a strong man, and his desk job had ill-fitted him for hard labour on starvation rations. So, the news of his death is not what has set me back so badly, as I had a long time to prepare for it.
What has knocked me flat and sent me into the pits of despair is what ought to be good news.
Penny’s father is alive.
I have come to love Penny as my own child and had promised her that she would live with me and I would care for her after the war was over. I think she loves me too. Over those last terrible days, the worst of our entire captivity, we sustained each other. And now she has gone, leaving a void in my life I doubt can ever be filled.
What makes me so distressed is that I don’t believe Bertie Cameron really wants his daughter. He had assumed that she died along with her mother when the ship went down. He seems nonplussed by the news that she survived – although pleased to see his daughter.
Not for Bertie the suffering and privation of years in imprisonment. He spent the war re-establishing his business interests in shipping – from the comfort and safety of Australia.
He hugs Penny and smiles at her indulgently. ‘Well, you clever thing, you. Fa
ncy managing to escape from a burning ship, only to get caught by the damn Nips. Must have been absolutely frightful for you, darling.’
Yet he doesn’t seem that anxious to hear more about Penny’s ordeal, nor to learn any details concerning the death of her mother.
‘So, poor old Weena got washed away? What a rum business.’ He gives a shake of his head, brushing away the thought of his wife, blistered and blackened by sunburn, weakened by lack of food and water, being swept out to sea, while his young daughter watched, helpless. ‘All over now, eh, chicken?’ He pats her head awkwardly.
‘What happened to you, Bertie? How did you manage to escape?’ I try to keep my voice calm, level, when all I really want to do is smash my fist into his face. But he is my dear Penny’s father, and is her future, so I must be circumspect.
‘Luck of the devil, I suppose. Some old fishing boat came by and scooped a few of us up. We managed to get to Padang before the Japs arrived and I got on a ship to Fremantle from there. Not the pleasantest of journeys as it was rather overcrowded, but I suppose we couldn’t be too picky when there was a war on.’ He looks at his daughter. ‘Isn’t that right, darling? Eh?’
Penny stares at her feet. She is wearing a pair of sandals provided by the Red Cross. She says nothing.
I look at Bertie in his pressed linen trousers, his hair glistening with oil and his neat little moustache like a caterpillar on his top lip. I struggle not to feel contempt for him, trying to convince myself that being with her father is the best thing for Penny.
‘Will you be moving back to George Town?’ I ask, hoping desperately the answer is yes and that at least I will have Penny on the other side of the garden hedge again.
Bertie gives a little snorting sound. ‘No, no. My future is in Australia.’ He corrects himself. ‘I mean our future. Penny will love it there.’
Penny’s face is impassive. She has said nothing for several minutes.
‘And to tell you the truth, Mary, I’m planning on getting married again. I’ve met someone out there and I’m not the kind of chap who’d get very far without a wife to keep me on my toes.’ He gives a little chuckle.
Rowena never managed to keep him on his toes, nor to keep him away from the primrose path. I hope for Penny’s sake that his prospective bride will have better luck keeping him from straying.
‘Anyone I know?’
’No, no. She’s not from the Straits. Born and bred Aussie gal.’ He winks at me and I’m glad Penny doesn’t see. ‘She was my secretary.’ He guffaws. ‘Nothing like a pretty young woman to put the spring back in a chap’s step.’ He looks at Penny, doubtfully. ‘I’m sure Betsy will be thrilled as soon as she hears this brave little thing is coming home with me.’
He turns to me and lowers his voice. ‘Between you and me, Penny’s going to have a little brother or sister in the new year.’ He winks at me again and I have a strong urge to slap him. ‘Betsy and I rather jumped the gun, but I’m seeing her right.’
‘What about your business in Penang?’
‘It will be absorbed into the new Australian company. I’m still in the shipping game. Penang will be just another hub for Camerons. Our headquarters are most definitely staying in Fremantle. I may have the odd business trip back to the old island. But our life’s going to be in Australia.’ His tone of voice is different when he talks about business.
He looks at last directly at Penny. ‘Are you excited, chicken? You should be. Wait till you see those beaches. And we’ll soon get your tennis back up to scratch.’
Penny sucks her bottom lip. ‘Yes, Daddy,’ is all she manages.
‘Time we got a move on.’ Bertie jumps to his feet. I need to sort out your passage. Wasn’t expecting to need another cabin. Wonderful surprise.’ He turns to me and shakes my hand. ‘Good show, Mary, old girl. Thanks for taking care of the lass.’ He looks at his watch. ‘Right-o. Tally ho!’
I clasp Penny against me, bend my head and kiss the top of hers. ‘Maybe your father will manage to bring you to Penang some time on one of his business trips. You will always find a welcome with me.’
I want to ask her to tell Bertie to get lost if she’d rather live with me, but I have no right to come between a motherless child and her father.
Penny gives my bony hand a squeeze with her smaller one. ‘I’ll never forget you, Miss Helston. And I promise to write.’ She turns to follow in her father’s wake, and I am utterly alone for the first time in my life.
12
A Chance Encounter
June 1946
It’s months since the end of the war and my return to Penang, and I still haven’t returned to teaching. I’m beginning to wonder if I ever will. It’s not that I don’t want to, but every time I make up my mind to do so, I back out at the last minute.
Education matters enormously to me. It always has. I had managed to teach in the prison camp, despite its constraints. I enjoyed it and genuinely believe it made a difference to the children. And education is vital to the future of the country and I want to be a part of that future. Malaya’s future.
I’ve tried to work out why I keep pulling back and postponing. The conclusion I’ve reached is that I have lost faith in humanity. All I want to do is scream and shout that there’s no point in anything anymore when the world can allow such terrible things to happen – and, in the most part, let the guilty go unpunished.
Those Japanese prison officers who brutalised all of us will be back with their families, going about their daily lives and acting as though those years had never existed. Some of them may even have been teachers and I am pretty sure that they won’t be sharing the shame of what they did with the children they are teaching, or with the mothers and fathers who have placed their children in their care. They won’t even be trying to find a way to ensure it never happens again. No. They will have told themselves they were following ‘superior orders’ – ultimately from the emperor himself and, as such, their individual culpability has been washed away.
Obedience and duty is a central tenet of Japanese culture – even though I struggle hard not to let myself believe that cruelty is too. Those men will have wiped the war years from their consciousness, like a bad dream forgotten in the light of day. Perhaps not all of them. Some of them may have developed a conscience and tried to seek atonement, but my guess is that most of them will simply want to forget.
The Allied victors appear to feel the same. There have been only token efforts to bring men to justice – and the Emperor Hirohito and others have escaped all punishment.
How can I try to ensure that children in my care will neither be victims nor future perpetrators of crimes like that? In short, I can’t. I am stuck. Frozen in time, unable to move forward and unwilling to look back. I don’t want to remember, but I can’t forget.
I’m probably feeling particularly glum as I now know what happened to the chosen skeleton staff at the British Military Hospital after the Japanese arrived. A doctor emerged from the hospital to greet them, carrying a white flag, and they gunned him down. A killing spree of patients and medical staff followed as the Japs rampaged through the wards, shooting and bayoneting anyone in their path. That included a patient on the operating theatre.
I think of those nurses I knew, not well, but as colleagues. Their dedication and self-sacrifice were never in question. How could God have allowed people like them to suffer in that way? Veronica Leighton too. There appears to be an inverse correspondence between an individual’s readiness to help others and the cruel punishment they endure as a consequence. As long as I live, I will never understand this.
So, I remain here in my former family home, all too aware of the absence of Mum and Dad. I sit for hours in the gloom, with the shutters closed, mulling over what is past but can’t be changed. I couldn’t bear to move away from the bungalow, even though I am all too aware that remaining here makes my loss constantly apparent. I’d been saving up before the war and now I’m living on my savings and what was in my parents’ account, so
I dismissed the servants, giving them enough money to provide for their overdue retirement. It would feel wrong to have servants doing the things that I had to do for myself in the camps. And to be able to do these things of my own free will is a pleasure I hope I will never tire of.
I am missing Penny desperately. It doesn’t get easier, as I had pinned all my hopes on us being together after the war. It’s hard to believe that I could feel any more strongly about a child of my own. She has kept her promise to write to me, but the time that elapses between her letters is already growing longer. I am relieved and happy that she is building a new life for herself in Australia. Reading between the lines, she has little in common with Betsy, her stepmother, but Penny is overjoyed to have a new baby sister to fuss over. And while I am sure the new Mrs Cameron must have been less than thrilled to welcome a thirteen-year-old into her newly formed family, at least she has not been overtly hostile to Penny. My surrogate daughter has a growing circle of friends and plans to become a teacher when she’s older. I am happy for her. But that doesn’t diminish my sadness and loss. She has left a void I doubt will ever be filled.
Other people have gradually given up on me. I had never had much time for most of the expatriate women in George Town, apart from Evie. Those older ladies from Penang who were in the camp, Mum’s pals, Marjorie, Beryl and Daphne, all died there. While I feel enormous kinship and love for those who survived – Laura and Cynthia among others, I have no wish to spend time with them now that we are no longer living in co-dependency. I would feel I were fetishising that period, trapped in friendships based solely on our shared incarceration. I have to make myself look to the future. And that future increasingly seems to me to be one in which the Malayan people have control over their own country.