by Ellie Dean
The tea had gone cold as Amah slept, so Sybil went back into the kitchen to prepare another pot and heat up the chicken noodle soup Elsa had made the day before. Warming some flatbreads to go with it, she carried it all into the sitting room to find Amah was stirring.
‘There’s tea and chicken noodle soup,’ she said, placing a bowl on the table in front of her. ‘I’m sorry there’s not much else. I got lost in the market yesterday and in a panic caught a rickshaw back here without doing any shopping.’
Amah seemed refreshed by her sleep. ‘May I use the bathroom now?’
‘Of course. It’s through there on the left.’
Amah returned a few minutes later with her hair combed, and her feet a good deal cleaner. She put her hands together and bowed to Sybil before sitting down. ‘Thank you, Mem . I feel very much better now.’
Sybil handed her the bowl of soup and placed the flatbreads on the table where she could reach them. So she wouldn’t feel awkward, Sybil picked up her own bowl and dipped the spoon in.
Once the bowls were empty and the tea was poured, Amah smiled at her. ‘That was very good soup, Mem . Did you make it?’
‘Sadly not. Elsa Bristow put it together last night. I’m hopeless in the kitchen as you know.’
Amah smiled and said nothing as she sipped the tea.
‘I don’t suppose you’d like to stay and help us out, would you?’ asked Sybil, dismissing the need to ask Elsa if it would be all right. ‘Only with the girls about to arrive and me being so hopeless at everything, it would be a huge help. I’d pay you, of course,’ she added hurriedly.
Tears brightened in the old woman’s eyes and her hand shook as she carefully placed the cup back into the saucer. ‘To be with you and my girls again would be enough. I do not ask for payment.’
‘Oh, but I insist,’ protested Sybil.
Amah looked down and it was a moment before she replied. ‘To serve you, to be fed and have somewhere to live is all that I wish, Mem .’ She looked up then and there was a world of pain in her eyes. ‘I will wait with you for the sahibs to come home.’
‘I wish I could promise you that they will,’ said Sybil. ‘But we’ve heard so little about what happened to Jock after he left Changi to work as slave labour on the plantation, that it’s doubtful he’ll ever come home.’
Amah nodded. ‘Death has been with us all since the Japanese came to the island,’ she said softly. ‘I have seen many terrible things, and although I am small and weak, Buddha has saved me. I often asked why he should do such a thing, but now I know. He wanted me to be with you again before I die.’
‘But you can’t die, not now we’ve found you again,’ gasped Sybil.
Amah’s smile was serene. ‘We must all go to the arms of Buddha when it is time, Mem . And I shall see him very soon, I think.’
Horrified at such defeatist talk, Sybil sat forward in the chair. ‘Not if I have anything to do with it,’ she said firmly. ‘I’m going to feed you up and make sure you have any medicines you need, and you must rest and get your strength back before you even think of working.’
Amah’s smile didn’t falter. ‘You are very kind, Mem .’
Sibyl realised she’d get no further with this, so changed the subject. ‘Did you spend the entire Japanese occupation in the kitchens at Changi?’
‘So, you received the note,’ Amah said on a sigh. ‘I’m glad.’ She folded her hands in her lap. ‘I worked for the Japanese for many months after the sahibs were sent to the plantation as slaves. They beat me for little reason, and the work was hard. When I got ill, they threw me into the street.’
She paused to gather her thoughts, and Sybil could see how hard it was for her to dredge up these awful memories. She was on the point of telling her not to say any more when she began talking again.
‘I managed to find my way to the east coast and hid there with others of my family. We survived on what we could forage or catch, but most of the time we were sick and very hungry. The Japanese came and burnt down our village, destroyed our holy temples and put us to work in the rice fields.’
Tears blossomed in her eyes and she blinked them away. ‘We saw many die among the old and the very young, but with Buddha’s blessing most of us lived to see the Japanese defeated.’
Sybil moved to sit beside her and put her arms about her thin shoulders. ‘It’s all over, Amah. You never have to be frightened or hungry again. I’m here to look after you now.’
Much later that evening, Sybil greeted Elsa as she came in the door and quickly explained what she’d done. ‘I’ll pay for her keep and nurse her if necessary, but I simply can’t turn my back on her after all she’s meant to my family.’
‘Well, of course not,’ said Elsa. ‘Jim told me an elderly Malay woman was asking after you, and I suspected it could have been your Amah. But it might have been polite to ask me first if I wanted another lodger. Where have you put her?’
‘In the smallest bedroom at the back. The doctor’s been to see her, and it appears that years of heavy work combined with the lack of proper food and dreadful living conditions has taken its toll.’ Sybil kept her voice low. ‘She doesn’t have very long to live, Elsa, and I mean to make her last weeks as comfortable as possible.’
‘Well, at least you’re doing something useful at last,’ retorted Elsa brusquely as she dumped a bulging bag of shopping on the kitchen counter. ‘Your girls will be here tomorrow night, by the way,’ she added. ‘Another telegram arrived late this afternoon.’
‘Oh, thank goodness!’ Sybil exclaimed. ‘Amah will be so pleased to see them. And is there any further news of Jock or Philip?’ she asked fearfully.
‘Not as yet, but there are rumours that they were rounded up in 1944 with seven thousand other prisoners deemed fit enough, and sent into Thailand as slave labour.’
Sybil covered her mouth with a trembling hand. ‘Please tell me they weren’t sent to work on that awful railway,’ she begged.
Elsa squeezed her shoulder. ‘I’m sorry, Sybil. I shouldn’t have said anything. There’s no hard evidence that they were sent there, and as I said, it was just a rumour – and they’re as numerous as the flies around here.’
Sybil realised Elsa was trying to sweeten the bitter pill. ‘How soon will we know if those rumours were true or not?’
Elsa turned her back and began to unpack the bag of shopping, but Sybil noticed that her hands weren’t quite steady and her voice was hesitant. ‘The teams are out there now searching the jungle between Bangkok and Moulmein in Burma for the camps. Reports coming in are brief and rather confusing, but it seems the first transport of prisoners will be flown in within the next few days.’
Sybil’s pulse was racing as hope and dread battled within her. Suddenly she didn’t want to be here – didn’t want to know what had happened to her darling Jock. The walls of the bungalow closed in on her, the warm, damp air stifling her until she could barely breathe. She turned away swiftly to find refuge in the garden and stood there gasping for breath as the soft rain mingled with her tears.
19
The rain had finally stopped and the sun had broken through, making the wet road and sodden greenery steam in the rising heat of that early morning. The mosquitoes were out in force as were the flies, and Sybil was struggling to keep her temper as she alighted from the rickshaw and told the boy to wait for her.
She regarded the tiny sari shop the boy had recommended, which didn’t look too prepossessing, being squashed between a bank and a post office. She stepped inside to be greeted by the smiling but clearly puzzled owner. ‘I’d like to buy three saris,’ she said. ‘They are for a friend of mine and I’d like them to be very colourful as she’s not feeling well at the moment.’ Sybil realised she was babbling and fell silent.
‘We have many beautiful saris, memsahib ,’ he replied with a bow. ‘May I ask the age and size of your friend?’
‘She is an elderly lady, very small and slight, and I would guess no more than five feet tall.’
An array of glorious silks in a rainbow of colours was brought out and unfurled for her to peruse, and Sybil eyed them all, unable to choose. They were so beautiful, so delicately woven, some edged with gold or silver, others bearing intricate hand-stitched designs. All the colours should have clashed, but strangely enough they didn’t, and Sybil eventually chose a lime silk striped with deep purple and edged with gold; a scarlet and silver one; and a midnight blue shot through with silver and turquoise. She selected the close-fitting short-sleeved tops to go with them as well as two pairs of sandals, and waited in the blissful coolness of the shop’s fans as the owner cut the lengths of silk and parcelled everything up.
Having paid him, she returned to the rickshaw and told the boy to take her to the food market. She was feeling much braver today, and determined to show Elsa that she wasn’t completely hopeless.
Once she’d completed her shopping the boy took her back to the bungalow, and as she stepped down from the rickshaw she saw Amah standing in the open doorway.
‘Amah,’ she said, hurrying to her. ‘I told you to stay in bed after your breakfast.’
‘I am rested well enough,’ she replied, taking the shopping from her. ‘Come. I will make you tea.’
Sybil followed her into the kitchen, suddenly worried that the proud, elderly woman might be offended by her gifts and see them as charity. ‘I have bought you some presents, Amah. I do hope you’ll like them.’
She turned from the stove, her eyes widening. ‘For me, Mem ? But it is not my birthday, and I have done nothing to earn them.’
Sybil thought quickly. ‘I thought that as we’ve missed so many birthdays and Christmases recently, we should catch up on the gifts Jock and I would have given you,’ she said, handing over the parcel. ‘Welcome home, Amah,’ she said softly.
The thin fingers fumbled with the string, and the brown paper was slowly drawn back to reveal the saris, sandals and tops ‘Oh, Mem ,’ she breathed, reaching almost reverently to touch the silks. ‘They are beautiful.’
There were tears in her eyes as she looked up at Sybil. ‘Thank you, Mem . You are too good to an old woman like me. I do not deserve such things.’
‘Well, I think you do, so go and try everything on while I make the tea,’ said Sybil. ‘The girls are coming today, and we must both look our best when we go to the docks to meet them.’
The tea was made and Sybil had just taken it into the sitting room and sat down when Amah appeared shyly in the doorway. ‘Oh, Amah, you look lovely,’ she sighed, taking in the scarlet and silver sari, the matching top and delicate sandals.
‘I look like old woman in beautiful sari,’ she replied with a wry smile. ‘But I do feel like Amah again.’ She placed her palms together and bowed. ‘Thank you for giving me my dignity back,’ she murmured. ‘Buddha will give you many blessings for your kindness.’
‘Come and have your tea before it gets cold,’ said Sybil, moved almost to tears by the woman’s words.
‘I will take mine in the kitchen, Mem . There is food to prepare for when my girls come home.’
‘Oh, but …’
‘Mem , I am here to serve you. Please allow me to do my duty.’
Sybil realised that now Amah had found her pride again, she needed to return to the old ways she found comfortable and familiar, and that she had been in danger of overstepping the mark. She nodded and watched her leave the room, the sari drifting around her.
Jim had spent the day taking statements from some of the women who’d been held in prison camps since the fall of Singapore. Unlike the men, they were eager to tell their stories, to purge themselves of the horrors they’d withstood so they could regain some sense of self-esteem. As they poured out all the wrongs that had been inflicted upon them, Jim became aware of the profound anger they all possessed for their Japanese captors, and also that the same names came up time and again.
Jim had discovered early on that the men and women who’d been prisoners had lost their confidence and self-belief, and this was particularly true of the men, who felt shame at being captured when others had actively served their country by bringing the war to an end. They were mostly reluctant to talk of their experiences, but those who did haltingly revealed the depths of misery and brutality that had been inflicted upon them.
Not all the torture had been physical. There were accounts of punishments aimed at killing off the last spark of hope in men already desperate for some small sign of humanity and that they had not been forgotten by their loved ones. The cruellest had been to burn three sacks of letters from home in front of them in retaliation for an escape attempt. That had almost broken the man relating that story, and Jim had left the respite camp with a heavy heart and a bitter taste in his mouth.
For the women it had been an ongoing and desperate struggle to keep their children alive, and with each burial their spirits had dwindled. Subsisting on a diet of mouldy rice soup, they were weakened further by hard labour, malaria, dysentery, jungle sores and ulcers, and the nurses and doctors amongst them raged to Jim about the lack of medicines and the simplest things such as calcium tablets, suture needles and thread, or clean bandages.
When they’d been liberated, it was to discover that the locked storehouse was packed solid with medical supplies and Red Cross parcels filled with powdered baby milk and tinned food, the like of which they hadn’t seen for four long years, and which could have saved so many lives. Their rage was bitter and profound, their stories repeated over and over as yet more women were brought in from the far-flung prison camps.
Jim had enough evidence to ensure that the men guilty of these heinous crimes would be executed – although most of the women had demanded to be left alone with them for five minutes so they could dish out their own punishment. He couldn’t blame them, for they’d lost far more than any person could withstand.
He felt drained by the harrowing stories, and knew they’d live with him long after the prisoners had been repatriated. And yet he’d come to realise, much to his surprise, that he was doing a worthwhile job that was making a difference. That he had an empathy with those men and women and the ability to listen and carefully absorb what they told him without letting his emotions get the better of him. They didn’t ask for sympathy, but needed to be believed and assured that the guilty would be punished – and he was the man in a position to do that.
He bundled up the latest statements and headed for the bar. He’d railed against doing this task, but Elsa Bristow must have recognised something in him that he hadn’t known he’d possessed, for he seemed to have a natural ability to put people at their ease so they found it comfortable to talk to him. And in a strange sort of way, he felt rather proud to be doing such an important job.
Suspecting that Elsa had again gone without lunch, he ordered sandwiches and a pot of tea for her, and a long glass of cold beer for himself, then followed the waiter to the office. Tiffin, as Elsa called it, had become something of a ritual at the end of each day, and they both enjoyed it.
Elsa took off her glasses, pressed her fingers to the bridge of her nose and smiled up at him. ‘You must have read my mind,’ she said as the waiter left the room. She glanced at her watch. ‘Gosh, is it that time already? How time flies.’
Jim placed the folders on her desk and took a long drink of his beer. ‘I can’t stay long this evening, Elsa,’ he said, watching her tuck hungrily into the sandwiches. ‘I promised Sybil I’d take her down to meet her daughters.’
‘Sybil’s perfectly capable of hailing a rickshaw,’ said Elsa. ‘You shouldn’t let her run rings around you, Jim. You’re too soft, that’s your trouble.’
‘Aye,’ he replied. ‘I probably am, but Peggy would never forgive me if I didn’t look after her and the girls.’ He took another drink of the Indian Pale Ale and waited for her to finish eating before lighting their cigarettes. ‘Anything concrete on those rumours yet?’
She shook her head. ‘Communication between here and the search teams is very hit-and-
miss, but I was told this afternoon that the first planeload of men will be arriving sometime tomorrow.’
She sat forward in her chair. ‘Whatever you do, don’t tell Sybil,’ she warned. ‘I let slip about the rumours last night, and if she knows the men are beginning to come in, she’ll be here badgering me endlessly and getting in the way.’
‘She’s bound to hear about it, Elsa,’ said Jim. ‘And you can’t blame her for looking to us for answers.’
Elsa gave a weary sigh. ‘I don’t blame her, Jim. Of course I don’t. I just wish she’d find something sensible to do other than fussing over her old amah .’
‘Perhaps once the girls are here they’ll persuade her to find something,’ said Jim. ‘Sarah’s a very practical girl, and from Peggy’s letters I understand that Jane is too.’
‘Mmmm. Sarah used to work in her father’s office, so she could be a tremendous help here – but Jane was always treated like a child by Sybil and Jock, and behaved as such. I doubt she’d be of much use.’
Jim finished his beer. ‘You might be surprised,’ he said. ‘According to Peggy, she held down a very important secret post with some government office during the war, and is quite the sophisticated young woman now.’
Elsa raised an eyebrow. ‘That I shall believe when I see it,’ she said briskly. She finished her cup of tea and reached for a file. ‘You’d better get a move on. The flying boat’s due in at seven.’
Jim left the office and eased his way through a large, chattering group of children who ranged in age from seven to fifteen. These were the youngsters who’d lost their mothers, and sometimes siblings, in the camps, and were now waiting to be escorted to the ship which would take them to England and the surviving members of their families.
He stood outside in the warm, rather muggy twilight and watched them boarding the bus. He knew that some of them were orphans now, for their fathers had also been killed during the war, and he wondered fleetingly how they would cope in England after all they’d been through. He suspected there would be great difficulties ahead for them and their families, but at least they were being given a second chance at life.