She rushed out of the room but it was too late; Riria had already been connected.
‘Yes, we are all fine here, too … Really? Well, that is wonderful news. I am sure they will be very happy together … Yes, I expect they will. Tamar, I am ringing you about Leila … No, no, she is all right, but there is one small matter … No, she is fine, but it seems that she has married because she is three months pregnant …’ There was a brief silence from Riria, then, ‘Tamar, are you still on the line? … Yes, an American Marine … No, I have only just this minute found out … Yes, they are both here … I do not think that would be a good idea at the moment, e hine, do you? … No, it would be better I think if Keely comes up herself; it is a very long journey for someone of our age … Yes, I know, but these things can always be overcome, and sometimes they even work out for the best, as you know yourself … Wednesday? Yes, yes, I will. Goodbye, Tamar. Arohanui.’
She hung up and turned to Leila, who was waiting nervously for the verdict.
‘That was your grandmother. Your mother will be arriving on Wednesday to collect you. Would you like to stay here, or go back to Whenuapai until she arrives?’
‘I have to go back to the base — I haven’t said anything to them yet. But I’ll try to spend as much time with Jake before he goes as I can. I love him, Aunty. What if I never see him again?’
Riria watched as tears trickled down Leila’s smooth, pale cheeks, and remembered the day that her darling John had left to join the New Zealand contingents in South Africa.
She held out her arms.
The girls went back to the base, and that night Bonnie helped Leila sneak out to meet Jake. They managed to spend one whole honeymoon night together at the luxurious Grand Hotel — after Leila had first produced their marriage certificate for the satisfaction of the concierge who would have nothing to do with unmarried couples using his lovely rooms as venues for their immoral trysts — and then two days later Jake, and Danny, were gone.
Leila and Bonnie were not able to see them off because they were on duty, but they appreciated the commiserations of their friends who knew they both had sweethearts shipping out. No one, however, knew yet that Leila had married hers, or that she was pregnant. Except perhaps for Peggy, whose knowing glance had lingered more than once on Leila’s slightly swelling belly.
Keely arrived at the base the following day, and went straight to the administration block and asked to speak with her daughters. When Bonnie and Leila, working in the SWO’s office, were advised that their mother was here, they glanced at each other apprehensively, took deep breaths and went to meet her in the visitors’ room.
Keely sat gazing out of the window, watching a transport plane lumbering down the runway, her face pale and the bags under her eyes prominent after her long train journey. Her gloves were rolled up in her lap and she’d taken off her hat and set it on her small suitcase on the floor. She looked tired, and very sad, but she didn’t seem angry. She stood and greeted them wearily.
‘Hello, darlings,’ she said as she kissed them. ‘I’m sorry, I’ve come straight from the train station and I’m rather worn out.’
Bonnie and Leila were disconcerted — they had been expecting one of their mother’s more spectacular tirades at the very least.
‘Now,’ she said resignedly once they were all seated, ‘tell me everything, right from the beginning.’
So Leila did, hesitantly at first, but soon the whole story came out.
As she listened, Keely was flooded with memories of the day she’d become aware of her own unplanned pregnancy, and how hopeless and helpless she had felt. She had married Owen, of course, but had not loved him at first, although she’d certainly fancied him enough to sleep with him. Did these sorts of things perpetuate themselves in families? If certain events occurred often enough down through successive generations, did they become almost expected, and therefore acceptable? She had been very lucky with Owen — with his patience, his perseverance and his love — and she prayed that Leila would be just as lucky with this young American man she had chosen. She certainly hoped Leila would make a better mother than she’d ever been to her own daughters. And it would be even harder for Leila, because the father of her child would quite possibly be away for some time yet, and might not come back at all.
When Leila finished speaking, it was Keely’s turn.
‘Leila,’ she began gently, ‘your father and I were very disappointed when your gran told us what you’d done. But this pregnancy isn’t the end of the world. We’re very happy for you to come home to have the baby, and you know Gran would love to have a little one in the house again.’
Leila said in a voice that was beginning to wobble, ‘I thought you would both be really angry with me.’
‘Oh, we were, dear, very. Your father went off for most of the afternoon and wouldn’t speak to anyone until the next day, and I threw one of Gran’s best soup tureens against the kitchen wall. But we’ve had a day or two to think about it, and it isn’t as if it hasn’t happened in our family before, is it? We’re still a little upset, though, about your decision to marry this boy, and rather hurt because you didn’t tell us or ask for our advice. We didn’t even know you had a young man. I would like to have met him before he left. Your father was all for rushing up and talking to the lad — at the very least — but after we’d talked about it we decided it wouldn’t make much difference one way or the other, given that you’d already married him. We’re hoping we’ll meet him eventually.’
‘Well, maybe not, Mum,’ Leila said guiltily. ‘He’ll probably be sent back to America as soon as the war’s over, and then he’ll be discharged from the Marines.’
‘So he isn’t a career soldier?’
Leila shook her head. ‘He was drafted for the duration.’
‘And you want to go and live in America?’
‘Yes, but there’s no reason we can’t come back for holidays.’
‘It’s a bit of a trek, dear.’
But Leila didn’t want to talk about that. ‘I won’t be going for ages any way, I’d say. Possibly not even until the war’s over.’
‘Mmm. Have you told this Mrs Buckley-Jones yet about your predicament?’
‘Er, no, I was hoping you’d come with me when I tell her. I’ll have to leave the air force straight away, I expect.’
‘Well, there’s no point in putting it off any longer. Where is she now?’
‘In her office, probably. I’ll go and ask if it’s convenient for her to see us.’
‘That’s a good girl. Oh, and is there any chance of a cup of tea? I could really do with one.’
‘I’ll see, there’s usually an urn on the boil in the mess.’
When she’d gone, Keely said to Bonnie, ‘What’s he really like, this Jake Kelly?’
Bonnie looked uncomfortable. ‘Well, I don’t really know, Mum. We all went out together but I never got to know him really well, but Leila thinks he’s absolutely wonderful.’
‘Clearly. And you don’t?’
‘Oh, no, he’s nice enough. Very charming, very good-looking. I can see why she’s fallen for him, I must admit. And he seems kind, and he’s funny, and I do believe he genuinely loves her.’
‘Where’s he from? Do you know anything about his family?’
‘He’s from Oklahoma and his family are farmers. Cotton, I think he said.’
‘Well, she’s used to farm life, I suppose, but I expect it’s all very different over there.’
Bonnie shrugged. ‘I don’t know. He never really said much about his home.’
‘I imagine that’s the trouble with these American boys. You can never really tell what you’re getting. What’s yours like?’
‘Sorry?’
Keely nodded towards the ring on her daughter’s hand. ‘I see you’ve formed some sort of an attachment too.’
Bonnie blushed. ‘Yes, I’m engaged. I was waiting until after this to tell you. I thought Leila might be enough for you to go on with. His name
is Danny Hartman, he’s twenty-five and he comes from New Jersey. He was training to be a doctor when America came into the war, and he’s a medic with the Marines. He’s the youngest of five children, a surprise baby, he said, and his father’s retired now, but he was a doctor too. An obstetrician. Danny’s going back to medical school after the war.’
‘At least he sounds like he has prospects.’ Keely sighed. ‘I suppose you’ll be off as well, then.’
‘I expect so, but I didn’t think it would be a good idea to get married now. You know, with the way things are.’
‘No, but then you don’t have to.’
‘No.’
Leila came back, and handed her mother a cup of tea. ‘She can see us in ten minutes, she said, if we don’t mind waiting.’
Mrs Buckley-Jones’s office was small, and narrowly saved from military anonymity by several pretty flower paintings on the walls and a vase of lavender hydrangeas on a bookcase behind her desk.
She ushered them in and introduced herself to Keely.
‘You’ve a fine pair of girls, Mrs Murdoch, and it’s a pleasure to work with them.’ She sat down behind her desk. ‘What can I do for you today?’
Keely looked at Leila expectantly.
In a way she was proud of her daughter. As Leila told Mrs Buckley-Jones what had happened she held her head up, her voice was steady and she didn’t falter once.
Mrs Buckley-Jones made a steeple out of her hands, and rested the tips of her fingers against her lips.
‘Well, Leila, I must say this is disappointing news, but these things happen, I understand that. You realise that you will have to leave the WAAF immediately? Your behaviour and your, ah, condition completely contravene the rules, and could be seen as a bad example to the other girls.’
Once again Keely was uncomfortably reminded of events from her own past.
Leila nodded. ‘I’m going back home to Hawke’s Bay. I’m sorry if I’ve disappointed you, Mrs Buckley-Jones. I enjoyed working here very much.’
‘You made a notable contribution, Leila, and I liked having you. When you were actually on the base,’ she added archly.
‘Er, yes, thank you.’
‘Right. Mrs Murdoch, will you be accompanying Leila home?’
‘Yes, we’ll be going back on the train tomorrow.’
‘Then I’ll see to the paperwork, and I suggest, Leila, that you go and pack your things and perhaps say goodbye to your friends. Unless, that is, you’d rather just leave?’
‘I’d like to say goodbye, if that’s all right.’
‘Off you go then. Mrs Murdoch, you’re more than welcome to give her a hand to pack.’
Bonnie was waiting in the reception area by the time Leila was ready to go. This was the first time in their lives they would really be apart, and she felt tears at the back of her eyes. She hugged her sister tightly.
‘Take care. Look after that baby, and I’ll be home as soon as I get a decent leave. Oh, sorry, I mean a liberty. And write me lots of letters. I want to know everything that’s happening, all right?’
Leila nodded, and blew her nose.
Keely stood back and watched them, her own eyes filling up. She had something she needed to tell them, and now that Leila’s affairs had been put in order she couldn’t put it off any longer.
‘Girls, I’m afraid I have some bad news. I didn’t want to tell you before, but Drew has been taken prisoner by the Japanese. We think he might be in Burma now.’
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Burma, December 1943
Drew shook his head, but carefully, because he had another bad headache.
‘No, I think the potatoes should be mashed, with grated cheese on top and then lightly grilled.’
‘With roast beef?’ Tim protested. ‘No, you have to have roast potatoes with roast beef, lovely, crispy golden ones.’
‘Well, all right then,’ Drew said, ‘I don’t want roast beef, I want sausages. Pure pork ones.’
Don disagreed. ‘Well, you’re both wrong, as far as I’m concerned. The only way to eat potatoes, full stop, is to boil them, then add just a sprinkle of salt and serve them with lots of butter.’
Tim considered this. ‘New potatoes?’
‘Of course,’ Don replied.
‘Yes, but new potatoes are more of a summer thing really, aren’t they, and we’re having a roast.’
‘You can have a roast in the summer,’ Don insisted. ‘We always had a roast every Sunday no matter what, summer or winter.’
Tim folded his arms. ‘But Drew’s having sausages now.’
But Drew had forgotten about his sausages and was wishing that Don and Tim would both shut up. His headache was getting worse by the second, and he knew, with a sinking sense of dread, that it was going to turn into another migraine.
There would be no roast beef for dinner tonight, or sausages, or potatoes in any shape or form. What they might get was a small cup each of partially boiled rice and, if they were lucky, a shred of dried fish or perhaps a wedge of raw onion. Occasionally it was soya beans instead of rice, and from time to time there was a sort of pale watery soup with paper-thin slices of vegetable from the prison garden floating in it. Until recently this might have been supplemented with an egg or a tomato or a tiny piece of fresh fish bought or traded from the locals outside the prison gates, but this did not occur regularly enough to have any lasting nutritional benefit, and as the months had passed the Burmese people seemed to have had less and less to spare.
The food rations had been pretty diabolical ever since Drew had been captured nearly ten months ago when his ship, the Royal Navy cruiser Exeter, had gone down at the hands of the Japanese fleet in the Java Sea. At first they’d all thought they were going to be shot as they were pulled from the water by the Japanese sailors, but instead they’d been taken to the old Dutch barracks at Macassar, in Celebes. Well, some of them had. Where the other survivors from the Exeter were now, no one knew. The prison at Macassar had at least been clean and in fairly good repair, but even then the food was woefully inadequate. They were given the bare minimum of clothing — half of them were almost naked after their dunk in the sea — but no shoes. Drew, who’d arrived at the prison clad only in a pair of trousers with one leg torn off at the crutch, was issued two pairs of shorts and a singlet, and, in retrospect, considered himself to have been lucky. They’d thought conditions at Macassar were appalling, but now he and the other chaps would give just about anything to be back there.
After a month at Macassar they were moved up to Burma and incarcerated in their current POW camp — Rangoon Jail, a huge, grim, imposing prison that had once, ironically, been operated by the British. The compound was configured like a wheel within a square: inside the high perimeter wall were half a dozen or so wedge-shaped sections divided off by barriers, and within each section were the ‘spokes’, long, double-storeyed blocks of prison cells surrounded by a large yard, along with various sheds and other smaller buildings, all in varying states of disrepair. At the centre of the wheel stood a tall, incongruously grand house where the Japanese commander lived. There were very few trees in the compound, but even they made a marked contrast to the miles and miles of grey concrete and tin. It was a thoroughly depressing and dismal place.
Drew went back to his rattan mat and lay down. Most of the time he counted himself very fortunate to be sharing a cell with three chaps from the Exeter, one of whom — Tim Scanlon — was also a New Zealander. Some of the other inmates, and there were hundreds and hundreds of them, lived in single cells, which he wouldn’t have been able to tolerate — he liked company, and always had. But these days, when he was feeling so unwell much of the time, he could have done with a bit of peace and quiet. They played this game often, planning favourite menus, and Drew usually enjoyed it, especially when they got to the pudding bit, but today he just felt too sick.
Before banging his head leaping off the Exeter as she went down, and then hitting it again so hard when he was in the water that he’
d been unconscious for nearly twelve hours, he’d never had a headache in his life. But now he seemed to be having them all the time. They’d started gradually, perhaps one a fortnight after he’d been taken prisoner, but now he was getting them every week, and sometimes they could drag on for three or four days. He could always tell when they were starting — first the extreme sensitivity to light, then sound and smell, and finally the excruciating pain — but the knowledge did him very little good because the medical care in the camp was dismal. The Japs issued about fifteen fresh bandages a month, to service the entire complement of prisoners, plus a small bottle of iodine and maybe a dozen assorted tablets, but there was certainly nothing suitable for severe headaches, or any other sort of pain, if it came to that. It was well known that the bastards had stockpiles of quinine for malaria and emetine to combat dysentery, but they kept those for them selves. There was no point to letting on you were sick anyway, as the Japs regarded illness as a sign of weakness and punished anyone forced to admit they were too weak to attend parade or work at prison chores.
Almost everyone had already contracted malaria or dysentery, or both — a month ago Drew had spent a whole week lying in a pool of his own reeking shit, despite the best efforts of his mates to keep him clean and comfortable — and squashy, swollen bellies and puffy ankles were clear signs that chaps were beginning to suffer from the malnutrition-related diseases beriberi and pellagra. The sanitary arrangements were extremely basic — a water tap per prison block, and the latrines were wooden seats mounted over basins on the ground which had to be emptied regularly into open drains at the back of the camp. It was probably only a matter of time before someone contracted cholera.
But there were doctors and medics among the prisoners, and they’d worked hard to set up a hospital in the camp for the sick and wounded, although they had almost no medical supplies, and only crude medical tools they’d fashioned themselves. The doctor in Drew’s block, McCaffrey, was a major in the Royal Navy. When Drew had first gone to see him, he’d suggested that Drew’s migraines were possibly brought on by either the stress of being a prisoner or the constant, debilitating heat, but were more likely a result of whacking his head. He couldn’t offer any treatment, except to mention that he was doing his best to get hold of some of the Thai opium he knew was available on the black market. It was a matter of coming up with something the guards were willing to accept as payment. He was talking to some of the RAF chaps at the moment: they were in a better position to offer some sort of currency simply because they’d been wearing more clothes — with more pockets containing items such as cigarette lighters — when they were captured. Along with watches and jewellery, those items had been very carefully hidden away for the day when they could be used for barter. And the chaps were also making decorative boxes, palm oil soap, wooden dolls, shaving brushes and other gadgets that appealed to the guards. If and when they were able to get their hands on some opium, McCaffrey had said, and if there was enough to go around, then there might be some for Drew. But he’d also told him, as kindly as possible, not to hold his breath; there were men in the camp, amputees and such, in severe need of pain relief, and any opium would have to go to them first.
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