Snowflakes in the Wind

by Rita Bradshaw

  Some of the soldiers, young men of eighteen or nineteen, could be incredibly childlike in their dependence and trust in the nurses. As Abby remarked to Delia one day, they had become more mothers than nurses, especially to the seriously wounded and the dying. Abby didn’t know how the other women who had been raped felt, but she knew the work Delia did among the injured men was helping her friend to carry on from day to day.

  Any patients who recovered sufficiently to leave the hospital were given fresh clothes and two army blankets and taken to Sham Shui Po, the men’s POW camp on the mainland at Kowloon. The Japanese didn’t recognize mental trauma, only physical injuries, and Abby was fearful of what would meet some of her ‘boys’ with shell shock when they entered the camp. At great risk to herself she kept their physical improvement secret from the guards as long as she could, knowing that she could be beaten within an inch of her life if the Japanese caught on to what she was doing.

  Over the last days and weeks they had all – nurses and patients alike – learned the hard way that resistance of any kind to orders, or to the constant bowing and scraping the Japanese demanded, only fed the obsession their captors had for ‘face’ and ‘respect’. For any slight, imagined or otherwise, punishments could range from a vicious slap across the face to a serious and prolonged beating with a rifle butt, pickaxe handle, shovel, riding crop, or in the case of the Japanese officers, a sword scabbard.

  In spite of the severe rationing of food by their captors which meant Abby was always hungry, the exhausting days on the wards with the injured and dying, and the constant threat of beatings, it was the nights that were the worst time. Tired in body and soul, Abby would fall asleep to the sound of Delia quietly weeping in the bed next to her, something her friend had done every night since the rapes. And then the nightmares would begin, terrible nightmares in which Nicholas would be kneeling on the ground as Japanese soldiers hacked and hacked at his neck. Sometimes his face would change and become that of her grandfather or Robin, and she would shout and tell them that they should have stayed at home on the farm where they were safe. Another time she and Nicholas would be running, hand in hand, from a deadly dark force that was pursuing them, but her legs would be like lead and every step was harder and harder and she knew they were being overtaken. And then, still in the dream, she would wake up back at her grandfather’s cottage and look around her bedroom and be so glad it was just a nightmare; she would open the bedroom door and go downstairs to begin cooking the breakfast but instead of the ground floor of the cottage there would be a vast expanse of dead and mutilated bodies, piled high, with wide staring eyes and open mouths. Sometimes she felt she was more tired when she woke up than when she had gone to sleep, unable to work out what was real and what was not.

  She had told Delia about the nightmares, asking her if she thought she was going mad, and for a brief moment her friend had seemed more like her old self. ‘Going mad?’ Delia had given a snort of disgust. ‘Don’t be so daft. If you’re going mad then there’s no hope for the rest of us because you’re the sanest amongst us all. You’re dead tired, Abby, as well as being half starved, but barmy you’re not.’

  Dear Delia. Abby glanced at her friend now in the dim morning light. Everyone was still asleep but she hadn’t been able to drop off again after a particularly horrific nightmare had woken her up an hour ago. It was the monsoon season and the rain and wind lashing at the building hadn’t helped. Delia would deny it with typical British stiff-upper-lip fortitude, but she had been so brave and sacrificial in how she had carried on after her ordeal. Tending to the wounded, giving a word of encouragement where needed and showing compassion and unfailing gentleness to the patients under her care as well as her fellow nurses, she was a remarkable woman. And on top of what she had personally gone through, Abby knew Delia was mourning the loss of John. The two of them had become a couple within twenty-four hours of meeting, and Delia had confided that John had asked her to marry him the evening before the hospital had been captured.

  Lying quietly in the early morning, Abby admitted to herself that she had been guilty of misjudging her friend initially. She had thought her to be a lot more frothy and empty-headed for a start, probably because of Delia’s behaviour on the ship that had brought them from England to Hong Kong.

  But who was she to be judge and jury? Abby twisted uncomfortably. She had done the same with Rachel; there was no excuse. When would she learn?

  Abby berated herself for a few minutes before reason asserted itself and told her to stop. She wasn’t perfect, heaven knows she wasn’t perfect, but she had always been there for Delia and that was something in her favour. And at least Nicholas loved her. Abby smiled wryly to herself before the worry and longing that always came with thoughts of her husband invaded.

  ‘Please let him be safe, God,’ she whispered in the silence. ‘Let him live. I can put up with anything if You let him live. I promise I won’t judge anyone else and I’ll be everything You want me to be if You just let Nicholas live and have a good life, even if it’s without me.’

  After the first few days, the guard had been removed from their sleeping quarters which was a huge relief to everyone. The women assumed that the Japanese had come to understand that they would not try and escape and desert their patients; not that there was anywhere to escape to. They were on an island, after all. Every morning one of the soldiers banged on the door of their room when it was time to rise, but this morning instead of just knocking, the door was opened and one of the officers strode in.

  Half-asleep and bleary-eyed, the women struggled to their feet and gave the customary bow as the bristling little man paraded importantly back and forth, his hands behind his back. It was clear he had something to say, but when he spoke it was quite a bombshell. ‘You will leave here in one hour.’ It was the same officer who had dealt with them on more than one occasion and who had given permission for Delia to remain with Saffron when the Chinese girl was dying. He now stopped in front of Abby. ‘This hospital is closing and you will be moved to a building on the mainland. The Japanese Imperial Army will allow you to take any supplies and equipment you need with you.’

  He paused – obviously this was a concession in his opinion and one that required thanks. Abby didn’t take the hint. ‘We’ve only got an hour to get everything together?’

  ‘This is sufficient.’

  ‘But some of the patients are too ill to be moved.’

  He regarded her impassively. ‘One hour.’

  The next sixty minutes were chaotic as they worked against the clock, but the male orderlies were terrific, loading patients onto the trucks the Japanese had waiting while the nurses took care of the mattresses, blankets, linen and medical supplies.

  In the midst of the organized mayhem it dawned on Abby that it might be a trick and they were all going to be killed but she had no time to dwell on that. It was every hand to the plough if the hospital was to be cleared in time. It was, but the orderlies reported that some of the seriously injured were in a bad way after being moved and might not make the journey to the mainland.

  With several guards escorting them, Abby and the others were herded out of the hospital and into a truck which deposited them at the harbour. They crossed over to the mainland in an open-topped boat getting wetter by the minute, and once they had reached Kowloon they were put in a large wire cage with other POWs. Again there was no shelter from the torrential rain and wind as they huddled together for hours, chilled to the bone. Since the rapes all Delia’s confidence and boldness had vanished, and now she shrank into Abby whenever one of the Japanese guards came to inspect the prisoners through the wire, terrified the same thing would happen again. Nothing Abby said could reassure her. One guard in particular seemed to enjoy tormenting the women, eyeing them up and down and making obscene gestures.

  It was after one of these episodes that Delia whispered to Abby, her teeth chattering, ‘I won’t let them take me again, Abby. I’ll kill myself first.’ She brought a scal
pel out of the pocket of the battledress all the nurses had taken to wearing since the capture of the island. The traditional ladylike uniform was all very well but with the realities of modern warfare the more practical khaki was far more serviceable. ‘See?’

  Abby stared at her friend, aghast. ‘Delia, if they see you with that it will be taken as a threat, that you’re planning to kill one of them. Get rid of it.’

  ‘I won’t let them see it and if they do, at least I can slit my throat quickly and cleanly before they can touch me.’

  Abby didn’t know what to say. One of the orderlies had told them that the Kempeitai, the Japanese military police officers, were devils incarnate. It would be to these fiends Delia would be handed if they found her with a weapon. According to the orderly who had been chatting to one of the Chinese truck drivers who delivered the sacks of rice, the Kempeitai were greatly feared in his country for their obsession in rooting out ‘anti-Japanese’ elements and ‘spies’, among prisoners and civilians alike. They delighted in gruesome medieval tortures on men and women to extract confessions and didn’t know the meaning of the word mercy.

  Swallowing hard, she tried again. ‘Look, you know the officers have got their troops under control now. All right, the guards might be brutal and vicious but there’s been none of the behaviour of those first few days. Please, Delia, get rid of the knife. What if they grab you before you can do what you’ve planned? They won’t believe you were only going to kill yourself and not one of them.’

  ‘I’d like to kill one of them. I’d like to kill all of them. They’re not fit to draw breath.’

  Delia was trembling, whether from the rain and wind lashing them or the intensity of her hate, Abby wasn’t sure. Gently, she reached for the scalpel and drew it out of Delia’s cold fingers. The guards had retired to the hut from which they periodically emerged to do their rounds, and now Abby walked across to the edge of the concrete floor of the pen and knelt down as though to tie up her boot. Surreptitiously she put the scalpel through the wire and into the muddy ground on the other side of the cage, working it down into the soft dirt until it had completely disappeared.

  Walking back to Delia, she took her friend in her arms. ‘I won’t let anyone hurt you again, I promise. Trust me.’

  It was an impossible promise to make and they both knew it, but Delia smiled wanly in spite of herself. ‘Amazon Abby,’ she said wryly, sniffing hard.

  ‘You’d better believe it.’ Abby hugged her tight, ‘We’re going to stick together like glue and watch each other’s backs and make it through this war. All right?’

  Delia nodded. ‘All right.’

  It was dark by the time the transport arrived to take them to their new quarters. After a short journey they found themselves entering the grounds of an old hotel. One of the guards led the women to an annexe at the back of the main building which must once have been used by the resident staff of the hotel, and which had its own entrance from outside. Weary, cold and hungry, they filed through the door and straight into what had been a sitting room at one time but which now had a number of the mattresses they had packed on the trucks that morning spread on the floor, along with two blankets apiece.

  As they entered, a young British nurse came to meet them. ‘We heard you were coming earlier. The Japanese dumped your mattresses and the blankets in the rain this morning, but we got them in as quick as we could and they’re only a bit damp. There’s no food I’m afraid but I can offer you hot water with a touch of cocoa powder,’ she said cheerfully.

  While they drank their weak cocoa the VAD filled them in on the situation. Apparently the Japanese had ordered the closure of the smaller outlying hospitals, hence the move. They were busy establishing POW camps and, the VAD said bitterly, badly injured and dying patients didn’t matter a jot to them. She was one of several nurses who had been brought to the hotel the day before. Their matron, Matron Fraser, had been summoned to a meeting with the Japanese director of medical services a short while ago. He had told her that the hotel had been given over to them as an exclusive POW hospital, and they would be caring for existing patients who had been here since the surrender as well as those men who had been transferred from Hong Kong island.

  ‘What this means,’ the VAD said, her blue eyes filled with fury, ‘is that the Japanese army doctors and dentists and pharmacists keep all the medical supplies for their wounded, and release next to nothing for our boys. When we got here we found all the existing patients in a terrible state. They’re starving and so emaciated they’ve got nothing to fight with. The lack of medicine and basic supplies means even those who would have had a chance of survival are dying. It’s horrible, just horrible. Dysentery is rife and we’ve got nothing to treat it with. There’s no nourishing food’ – she paused – ‘what am I saying? There’s no food, full stop. Just a starvation diet of rice, and sometimes we get a sack of turnips to make a kind of soup with. Our matron told this director that he needs to release sufficient drugs and so on or else he is guilty of war crimes against the men, and he apparently just looked at her as though she was an insect he’d seen crawl out from under a stone.’

  Abby thought she liked the sound of Matron Fraser. It took a strong woman to take the Japanese to task, knowing what it might mean to them personally.

  ‘So . . .’ The VAD shrugged. ‘Welcome.’

  It was tongue in cheek, and Abby and Delia smiled. The enemy might have taken away their liberty, brutalized some of them and imposed a regime intended to crush their spirits, but the Japanese would never understand the British sense of humour which rose to the fore even more when the chips were down. Somehow that was immensely comforting.

  Once they’d drunk their cocoa they fell onto the mattresses just as they were, wearily pulling the slightly damp blankets over them and falling into the sleep of the mentally and physically exhausted.

  Tomorrow was another day, and if one thing in life was certain, it was that it would bring a whole host of heartbreaking challenges and misery with it.

  PART SIX

  When All That’s Left is Hope

  1944

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  ‘For crying out loud, Nicholas, face facts. Even if this girl survives the POW camp what state is she going to be in when she comes out? You read the papers and listen to the news, you know what those brutes are like. If she hasn’t lost her mind it’ll be a miracle, and she’ll be in no state to give you children, m’boy. Have you thought of that? Far better to cut your losses and move on.’

  Nicholas hadn’t thought he could hate his father any more than he did, but if he had had a pistol to hand he would have used it. ‘Get out. I mean it, get out.’

  ‘No need to take that tack. I’m only stating the truth because no one else will. You’re not in particularly good shape yourself, man. You need a wife who will look after you, not the other way round. A wife who can provide children to carry on our name—’

  ‘I said get out, Father.’ Nicholas rose from behind his desk, his eyes fiery. ‘You came uninvited and I don’t want you here again.’

  ‘Damn it, man! What is the attraction this girl holds for you anyway? You could have any number of highborn women and yet you persist in holding a candle for this farm girl. One of our ancestors had a taste for gutter flesh but at least he had the sense to marry well and keep his appetite fed on the quiet.’

  Gerald Jefferson-Price had walked to the door as he spoke; now he turned on the threshold to survey the livid face of his son. ‘Start using your head instead of concentrating on another part of your anatomy, Nicholas, because I swear this is the last warning I’m giving you. I’ll cut you out of my will and you won’t get a penny.’

  ‘Damn you and your money, and for the record this “girl” you keep referring to is my wife, my wife. Mrs Jefferson-Price, legally and in the eyes of God, and there isn’t a thing you can do about that.’

  ‘I’ve had enough of this.’ Gerald had made a promise to his wife that he wouldn’t lose his t
emper but no one could make him so blazingly angry as Nicholas. ‘Who got the best medical minds dealing with your case when you were shipped back to England more dead than alive? If it wasn’t for me, you wouldn’t be here now.’

  ‘Funny, but I thought it was the surgeons who saved my life.’

  ‘Don’t try and be clever. You know damn well what I mean. You were like a colander, and you’d have lost your leg when the osteomyelitis kicked in if I hadn’t brought that surgeon over from Switzerland.’

  ‘And I’ve thanked you. A hundred times I’ve thanked you. But we both know if you’d had another son and heir available you wouldn’t have gone to so much trouble to keep this one alive, don’t we? All you really care about is Brookwell and the estate and a son – any son – to keep it going. Well, I’ve told you before and I’ll tell you again, I’ve no intention of doing that. And unless I have a son who takes after you – and frankly I’d rather strangle him at birth than have that happen – but unless it does, and you last long enough to pass Brookwell and the rest of it on to him, you’re up the creek without a paddle.’

  ‘You think I’d give the lairdship to the flyblow of a farm girl?’

  ‘Not a flyblow, Father, not that. Oh, no. She is my wife, and any children we have won’t be bastards, but I pray to God they’ll inherit nothing of you in their genes.’