But then they all were, Abby thought, forcing a smile as she reached her friend’s bedside. Every one of the medical staff now shuffled slowly like old women as they nursed their patients, and when she bent over to see to someone’s needs it was all she could do to straighten up again for the grinding ache and pains in her back.
Abby was pleased to see Hilda looking brighter than when she had left her friend the day before, and the reason for this became apparent when Hilda whispered, ‘Have you heard the latest rumour, Abby? They are saying Germany has surrendered. Hitler’s lost the war.’
Abby had heard such a story, but then there was always some rumour or other doing the rounds in the camp. Since Major Fushida had forbidden any contact with those outside the camp the stories had got more extreme too. Nevertheless, Abby and the medical staff as a whole encouraged such gossip. They had watched the death rate of the POWs double in the last months, and sometimes the only difference between those patients who died and those who lived was their mental resilience and optimism. The patients who gave up in spirit invariably lost the will to fight to get better – it was as simple as that – and so anything that gave them a glimmer of hope was welcome. It didn’t really matter if it was bona fide or not.
Pulling back the thin, threadbare sheet covering Hilda, Abby carefully manipulated her friend on to her other side as she said, ‘I’ve heard it, yes. It would be wonderful if it’s true, wouldn’t it.’
‘I think this time it might be. You know that old Chinese man who delivers the rice to the camp? He managed to slip a note to one of the POWs which was incredibly brave of him, all things considered. Anyway, Geraldine Henderson was admitted last night with chronic malaria, and you know she can speak and read Chinese? Well, she told Delia who was on duty that she saw and read the note herself when it was passed round, so this is first-hand, if you know what I mean.’
Abby stared at Hilda as a surge of hope and excitement raced through her. After their ordeal at the hands of the Japanese soldiers, Delia and Geraldine had become good friends and as a consequence Abby had got to know Geraldine well too. The young British woman was not the sort to exaggerate or make up stories. If she said she had read the note, she had.
‘Geraldine said the note was very specific. The Germans surrendered in May and Hitler is dead. And the Allies are stepping up the attacks on Japan itself. You know that Peter can speak Japanese and he eavesdrops on the guards when he can? Well, he’s saying the guards are getting worried amongst themselves. Their officers keep them in the dark, apparently, and they’re expected to just unquestionably follow orders, but they’ve heard rumours too.’
Abby nodded. The normally inscrutable and impassive guards had been edgy recently, everyone had noticed, which had further fed the talk about the war not going well for Japan.
‘The thing is, Abby’ – Hilda beckoned for her to bend down closer as she whispered – ‘you know what the Japanese are like. Even if they’re beaten, they’ll never surrender, will they? This bushido code of conduct they all believe in says it’s better for them to commit hara-kiri than to suffer the shame of defeat, so where does that leave us? If they’re going to kill themselves they’ll kill us first, won’t they? It’s obvious.’
Abby thought exactly the same but Hilda was a patient first and fellow nurse second, so she said, ‘Not necessarily. The officers might think of themselves as warriors and follow bushido, but from what I can see most of the guards are just ordinary Japanese men who became soldiers when war broke out. They might delight in lording it over us because they’ve got this inferiority thing about Europeans looking down on them, but as for actually killing themselves, I’m not so sure. And even the most stupid of the guards know that if Japan does surrender and then the Allies find out they’ve executed all the POWs in the camp, their lives will be forfeit.’
Hilda sank back on the bed; just the effort of talking had exhausted her. ‘I hope you’re right.’
So did Abby, but she wouldn’t have placed money on it. The trouble was, the Japanese mindset was so fundamentally different, and so extreme in certain areas, that she didn’t know which way things would go.
She straightened up, the muscles in her back threatening to tear apart, smiling as she said softly, ‘Of course I’m right – I’m a QA, aren’t I? Now have a nap and I’ll bring you something to eat shortly.’
And that was right, she was a QA, she told herself as she glanced round the ward. She couldn’t predict or change what the guards would do in the event of Japan being defeated; all she could do was the job she was trained for and moreover good at, and that was caring for her patients to the best of her ability and with the limited resources at hand. Worrying about whether she would ever see Nicholas again, or how she would die if the Japanese decided to butcher all of them was weakening, and she couldn’t afford such an indulgence.
She and Delia and the rest of the medical staff had to be a solid, strong unit for the sake of the weak and ill and vulnerable; it wasn’t bravery or heroism, it was simply what was expected. Especially with the patients dearest to her heart, those that were called ‘battle fatigue’ cases. There were a couple of men in the hospital at the moment suffering with this owing to a massive explosion they’d all heard somewhere outside the camp when a plane had crashed, whether one of theirs or an enemy plane no one was sure. The men’s pals had brought the two to the hospital, explaining that when the explosion had occurred the men had started digging desperately at the ground with their hands, for all the world like animals looking for shelter underground. The patients’ friends were worried the guards would incarcerate them in one of the ‘sweat boxes’ – little huts where prisoners were kept without food or water after misdemeanours – if they came across them like this, as the men would be oblivious to orders or threats by their captors when they were gripped by what their pals called ‘the horrors’.
And they were the horrors all right, Abby thought, a mental picture of her father’s face on that Christmas Eve so long ago flashing onto the screen of her mind. Shattered nerves were every bit as horrific as shattered bodies.
She breathed deeply, willing away the memory along with her exhaustion and aches and pains. She had a job to do and she needed to get on with it . . .
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Nicholas sat listening to the wireless, hardly able to believe what he was hearing. Gracie, standing at his shoulder, was transfixed too. For the second time, only three days after an atomic bomb had vaporized the Japanese city of Hiroshima, another bomb had fallen on Nagasaki, the shipbuilding centre on the Japanese island of Kyushu. Smoke and dust clouds completely covered the town, it was reported, and rose five miles high in a giant mushroom-shaped cloud. Both raids were carried out by the US Army Air Forces’ Superfortress aircraft, and President Truman had delivered a fresh warning in the wake of them that if Japan did not surrender, atomic bombs would be dropped on her war industries. He had already threatened a ‘rain of ruin from the air, the like of which has never been seen on this earth’.
‘By, lad, you can’t take it in, can you.’ Gracie plonked herself down in the armchair opposite Nicholas. ‘All them folk gone in the blink of an eye.’
Nicholas nodded but didn’t speak. In truth he didn’t know how he felt, but if this new wonder weapon created by British and American scientists could end the war with Japan, then he was for it. Not the death of women and children, not that, but it had been increasingly clear in recent months that Japan would never surrender and Allied POWs would never be coming home unless something extreme was done. But this? It was beyond comprehension, and he, for one, thanked God that he hadn’t been asked to make the sort of decision Churchill and Truman had faced.
‘Do you think this second bomb will do it? Do you think this Emperor fella will give in now? He must know he’s beaten, mustn’t he?’
‘I hope so.’ In July the Allies had told Japan to surrender or face ‘prompt and utter destruction’ but that had been ignored, Nicholas thought, alon
g with other calls for the end of the war. But this, this was different. The Allies had made it clear they would show as little mercy as the Japanese, and with action rather than words. Now that the bombs had been dropped, more facts were coming into the public domain. It appeared the secret project, which had involved 100,000 workers, had taken years to bring to completion. How the Americans had kept the whole enterprise under wraps, Nicholas couldn’t imagine, but although it had involved three new cities being built with factories covering several square miles, the vast majority of the workers hadn’t known what they were making.
Nicholas shook his head to himself as Gracie bustled off to make a pot of tea, her panacea for any event, great or small. What would those workers think now? And then he answered the question. If any of them had loved ones who were prisoners of the Japanese they’d consider it a job well done, as did he.
The newsreader talked on, and as Nicholas listened he became more amazed that there had been no leak of information to the enemy, while the ‘Manhattan Project’ had been ongoing. It had cost two billion dollars, a sum of money Nicholas couldn’t imagine, and central to the undertaking had been the new city of Los Alamos in the New Mexico desert. It was here the international team of scientists had carried out their research, and designed and built the most devastating weapon of all time. In addition, two gigantic factories, one in Tennessee and one in Washington, had produced materials for the bomb. The scientists were not prepared to reveal their exact nature, but it was known uranium was involved.
Nicholas leaned forward and switched off the wireless, his head spinning from both the content of what he had heard and what it might mean for Abby. Relieved though he had been in May when peace had come to a battered Europe at last, he had been unable to celebrate with Abby still in the hands of the Japanese. The blaze of multicoloured flags, fireworks and floodlights, the wild joy that most of the nation had felt that had expressed itself in kissing and hugging strangers, dancing, blowing whistles, throwing confetti and forming impromptu parades, had left him cold. He had tried to join in, contributing to the victory tea that the women had organized in his particular street and putting in an appearance for a while, but after the bairns had had their meal and the dancing had begun, with ‘hokey-cokey’ and other exuberant expressions of unrestrained gaity, he had quietly slipped away.
Gracie had understood and he dared say others did too, but whether they did or they didn’t, he didn’t really care. He had heard nothing from Abby for over eighteen months. He didn’t know if she was dead or alive, and if it was the latter, what sort of a state she would be in. They had heard such terrible, wicked, unbelievable things, things that were beyond the comprehension of the average Englishman. QAs were military nurses, and yet they had been raped, murdered, tortured, starved, shot at and shipwrecked in the Far East where the enemy had made no allowance for their officer status.
He ran a hand over his face; thinking about what she might have gone through always made him feel ill. These bombs were fearsome things but if it prevented the deaths of tens of thousands of Allied troops and POWs at the hands of the Japanese, then so be it. He was a doctor and he believed in the sanctity of life one hundred per cent, but this war had to end. Whether Emperor Hirohito genuinely believed himself to be a god like the Japanese people did, Nicholas didn’t know, but one thing was for sure. He had as inflated an idea of his own importance and supremacy as Hitler had had. He had sanctioned atrocities in both China and the Far East as a whole, beyond the comprehension of the normal mind, just like Hitler and the Nazis. The world had already been numbed by the horrors of the German death camps, but it was rumoured that equal cruelty had been shown by Japanese captors to Allied prisoners of war. And Abby was one of them. And John and Delia and the rest of his friends and colleagues – those who had survived, at least.
The August day was a hot one but it wasn’t the weather that caused the perspiration to bead on his brow and top lip. He dug a handkerchief out of his pocket and was mopping his face when Gracie came in with a cup of tea. She took one look at Nicholas and came immediately to his side. ‘Drink this.’ She put the cup in his hand and pretended not to notice how it was shaking. ‘Come on, drink up. This is the end of it, lad, you mark my words. Even them devils will give up now. And I tell you something else, your lass will be coming home, I feel it in me water, I do straight. She’s all right and she’ll be coming home.’
‘I hope so, Mrs Wood.’ He was cursing himself for letting the weakness come over him again. He wanted to be strong in mind and body, a proper man, and he didn’t feel like that a lot of the time.
He forced himself to drink the hot sweet tea and found it did help. The tremors under control, he looked up into the anxious little face staring down at him. ‘I’m all right, Mrs Wood,’ he said softly. ‘Really.’
He was far from all right, and Gracie feared that if this wife of his didn’t come home then he never would fully recover from what ailed him. Hiding her thoughts with a cheerful bob of her head, she said, ‘That’s the ticket, lad. Now I’ve got a nice bit of fish for our tea with a baked jam roll to follow, so don’t you let the evening surgery go on too long. I saw old Mr Davidson is here again and there’s nowt wrong with him now.’
Very gently, Nicholas said, ‘He’s grieving, Mrs Wood.’ Elias Davidson had lost all his three sons in the war and his wife hadn’t been able to cope with the loss. She had just faded away, leaving Elias on his own with a houseful of memories of happier times and a broken heart. It was true that the boils that afflicted the old man now and again had cleared for the time being, but even when they had been at their worst it hadn’t been that which had brought Elias to the surgery. It was being able to chat to Nicholas and pour out his heart in a way Elias would never have dreamed of doing with any of his neighbours or pals, for fear of being talked about. But he trusted the young ‘fellow me lad’ as he called Nicholas, trusted and liked him, and he knew anything he said to his GP would be treated with the strictest confidence.
Gracie sniffed. She felt sorry for Elias but not when the old man hogged more time than he should and made Nicholas late for his tea; a regular occurrence. Glancing at the small watch pinned on the lapel of her crisp white blouse, she said, ‘I’ll show your first patient in in five minutes, and mind you eat them two biscuits in your saucer. You didn’t finish your midday meal and you’re as thin as a lath as it is. You don’t want to be poorly for when your wife comes home, now, do you?’
So saying she bustled out of the room, leaving the faint scent of the lavender water she favoured behind her.
He prayed to God Abby would be coming home. However ill, however frail, however broken, he wanted her home where he could take care of her and make her well. And he would make her well; he would devote his life to it.
He glanced at the newspaper on his desk that he had been reading earlier that day. How many other husbands and wives and relations had thought that about their loved ones who had been murdered in the German concentration camps? There was an article in the paper reporting that German civilians were being taken on forced visits to the Nazi death camps, to view for themselves the hideous evidence of mass extermination which many apparently were refusing to accept ever took place.
Coachloads were being taken daily to the former camps to see the gas chambers, which the SS guards, with cruel euphemism, had called ‘bath houses’, and the ovens, in which hundreds of thousands of victims were cremated, many of them while they were still alive. And the Japanese camps would be no better, perhaps worse.
He had wanted to stop reading the report at that point. Just as he wanted to turn off the wireless when the newsreader spoke of things he found it hard to listen to, because he always related such horrors to Abby and what she might be suffering; but it was as though some inner force drove him on to torture himself. The article had described how grim-faced Allied soldiers had pointed out monstrous heaps of human ashes, unburned bones, hair shorn from women prisoners and toys taken from children befor
e they were herded to their deaths. It related the details of the torture equipment the sadistic SS guards had used on their helpless captives, and the ‘sound machine’ which had been built to hide the noise of human screams.
And all the time, with many of those who had been so horribly murdered, there had been loved ones thinking they would come home, or at least hoping for the best, just as he was doing. But those men, women and children, babies some of them, wouldn’t return. Some of them had been dead for a long time. And while he had been here in England, drinking his nice cups of tea and eating three meals a day and sleeping in a soft bed, Abby might have died and he didn’t know. Damn it, he didn’t know. He had left her, his darling, his beloved, his precious wife whom he’d promised before God to cherish and protect, he had left her in the hands of those inhuman fiends. Hell, he couldn’t bear it.
Rising to his feet, he flung open the window and gulped in great gasps of the fresh air. Birds were singing in the trees bordering the garden, the sky was as blue as cornflowers and the sun was hot, but none of it registered on his senses for a few moments.
What would he do if she didn’t come home? Lose his mind, most likely. Descend into a spiral of darkness that would draw him for ever down, sucking all the life and will out of him.
He opened his eyes, which had been shut, as the tweet-tweet of a bird penetrated the blackness. Two baby robins, still small and speckled and clearly just out of the nest, were dancing round one of their parents who was standing with a worm dangling out of its mouth. The wide-open gapes of the fledglings as they vied with each other for the meal, and the determination in their tiny feathered bodies, brought a reluctant smile to Nicholas’s mouth. Life was going on. In spite of the last six years and the unimaginable death and destruction that had resulted when madmen had tried to take over the world, life was going on. He had to do exactly what he told his patients to do, and take each day one at a time, minute by minute, hour by hour. Those birds had got it right. It was the only way to survive.
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