The Other Side of Paradise

by Margaret Mayhew

  The rain started then: a monsoon deluge bursting from the skies. Without a windscreen wiper, she was forced to stop. She opened up the top half of the windscreen as wide as it would go and drove on slowly, peering out into the rain. The road became a river, hard to follow; several times she had to halt, climb down and splosh ahead to test the ground to know which way it went.

  The Causeway lay before her – more than a mile of it over the Straits to Singapore. No cover, no protection and she would have to switch on the headlamp or risk going into the sea. There must have been another bombing raid because huge orange fires were raging on the island. Go-downs at the docks, most likely, with their stores of rubber ablaze.

  She said a prayer to God as she drove on to the Causeway, and then another prayer to the green glass Buddha, in case he could do anything too. Both of them must have listened and done something because the Jap planes kept away. On the other side she followed the Bukit Timah road across the island, drove up the hill to the Alexandra Hospital and stopped outside the main entrance.

  People came hurrying out, the double doors at the back were flung open, the steps lowered. She stayed in the driver’s seat, fingers still gripping the steering wheel. After a while, a nurse stuck her head in.

  ‘You all right?’

  She found her voice. ‘I gave one of them morphine.’

  ‘Yes, we saw. Well done, you.’ The nurse leaned in further. ‘Hey, you’ve been hurt. I’ll fetch a doctor.’

  The doctor, when he arrived, was Ray. He didn’t ask any questions. He reached in, prised her fingers one by one away from the wheel, lifted her in his arms and carried her into the hospital.

  She lay on a couch in a cubicle and the same nurse stripped off all her sodden, blood-stained clothes and wrapped her in blankets.

  ‘My word, you’re wet through. Have you been swimming in the sea?’

  Another Aussie. They were everywhere.

  Presently Ray came back. He leaned over and took a look at her forehead. ‘Seems like you cracked your head hard on something. It needs cleaning up and a couple of stitches.’

  He did the cleaning and the stitching – rather more than a couple, judging by the time it took.

  When he’d finished, he said, ‘Sorry, I’ve had to cut some of your hair away but it’ll soon grow again. Feeling any better?’

  ‘I’m perfectly all right, thank you.’

  ‘That’s good.’

  She said, ‘The man in the top bunk – I gave him morphine from one of those things in the locker. Is he OK?’

  ‘He’s fine. Don’t worry.’

  ‘Did I do it right?’

  ‘You certainly did.’

  ‘Roger Clark … the one in the bunk below?’

  ‘Did you know him?’

  ‘We’d met before, in Singapore. Is he all right?’

  ‘I’m sorry, Susan. He died soon after you got here.’

  She put her hand over her eyes.

  ‘I killed him. And the other one will probably die as well, because of me. I drove like a lunatic, trying to get away when the Jap plane attacked us. It was all my fault.’

  Someone rattled the cubicle curtain and a voice said, ‘Doctor, you’re needed urgently, please.’

  ‘In a moment.’

  He sat down on the edge of the couch, took her hands in his.

  ‘Listen, Susan. You didn’t kill Roger. Get that into your head. He was going to die in any case. He was in a very bad way. You did a hell of a good job getting the ambulance back at all, and thanks entirely to you, one of them has survived. He’s going to pull through all right.’

  But she thought of nice Roger and his nice parents in the house in Esher Park Avenue, and the Bear and the Star and the awfully good beer that he would never drink again.

  She started to cry.

  Nine

  SINGAPORE WAS SWARMING with troops. Shiploads of them arrived at the docks as hordes more retreated across the Causeway. They were camped in parks and gardens and among rubber plantations. Convoys of lorries blocked the roads and servicemen filled the streets, hanging round the bars, crowding the cinemas and the dance halls, monopolizing the taxi girls.

  More civilian refugees poured in from the peninsula and some of them arrived on the doorstep at Cavenagh Road. Cousin Violet turned up like a bad penny from Tampin, the Atkins and the Murrays, old friends from Kuala Lumpur, the Randolphs from Kuantan. A spinster aunt had fled in terror from Yong Peng.

  The air raids had become much worse: the Jap planes attacked round the clock and bombed and machine-gunned anything and everything they chose – civilian as well as military. Rumour had it that there wasn’t a serviceable RAF airfield left on the island and that the only planes were biplane Tiger Moths. Meanwhile, Raffles still advertised dinner dances in the Straits Times and a government poster exhorted people to grow their own vegetables.

  The Australian nurse at the Alexandra took the stitches out of Susan’s cut a week later. Her name was Stella and it turned out that she knew Ray Harvey rather well.

  ‘His family lived near us in Sydney and I trained at St Vincent’s, same as him. All the nurses were dotty about him, including me. He never looked my way, though, more’s the pity.’ She snipped on. ‘Only two more to go. Looks like it’s healed up nicely. When your hair’s grown back you won’t see a thing. You were lucky.’

  Luckier than the badly wounded she’d passed lying on stretchers in the hospital corridors. And much luckier than the hundreds of dead lying in the morgue.

  The next stitch came out.

  Stella said, ‘That bloke you brought back in the ambulance is doing fine now. I thought you’d be glad to hear that.’

  ‘He seemed so badly hurt.’

  ‘He was, but he’s being taken good care of. He’ll be OK. The ambulance was in a real mess, you know. Riddled with bullets. It’s a wonder any of you survived.’ Another snip. ‘There you are, that’s the lot.’

  On the way out of the hospital Susan ran into Geoff, who wanted to know if she had heard any news of Milly. She hadn’t. Milly would be somewhere on the high seas, sailing away to safety – if her ship hadn’t been sunk by the Japs.

  She said, ‘When you see Ray, would you thank him from me?’

  ‘What for?’

  She pointed to the cut. ‘He stitched this for me.’

  ‘Looks like he’s done a good job. He’s pretty handy with a needle.’

  He’d been kind too, as well as handy – she had to confess that. Very kind, actually. Sat with her and held her close while she’d sobbed away like a hysterical idiot. She seemed to remember weeping all over his white coat. She also seemed to remember the blankets falling down.

  At sundown, the Cavenagh Road refugees assembled on the west verandah where Soojal and Amith served the drinks – iced lime juice for Cousin Violet and the spinster aunt, Singapore Slings and whisky stengahs for the others, except for Grandmother who preferred her gin pahit. Hector walked up and down his perch and interrupted rudely in several languages. Her father, when he joined them, brought the latest news and none of it was ever good. Japanese soldiers were now said to be within sixty miles of Singapore.

  Mrs Atkins shivered. ‘We heard what they did to people in Ipoh and KL, especially to the Chinese. They cut off their heads and spiked them on stakes, and they raped the women and bayoneted the children. And if the Malays refused to work for them, they were thrashed and tied to trees so the ants got them and they died of thirst.’

  Grandmother said coldly, ‘Those sorts of rumours are invariably exaggerated.’

  ‘Oh, I’m afraid these are true, Mrs Roper. A friend of ours saw Japanese propaganda photographs. It was even worse when they took Hong Kong, you know. They drank all the whisky and went on the rampage. Shot fifty British officers and raped and murdered European women and nurses from the hospitals—’

  Grandmother interrupted firmly. ‘We should much prefer not to hear about it, thank you, Mrs Atkins.’

  After dinner there wa
s bridge. Her parents made up a four with the Atkins, the Murrays took on the Randolphs. Grandmother and Cousin Violet played mah-jong while the spinster aunt retired to a corner with her embroidery. Susan went out into the garden. It was a clear, star-lit night which meant the bombers would probably come and they would have to sit in the shelter again. It was a real squash with all of them, including Rex and Bonnie and Hector in his cage. She had tried taking Sweep too but he always refused. Not many people had home shelters and the only public ones were muddy dugouts or open slit trenches, half full of water and mosquitoes.

  The Atkins and the Murrays queued for long hours outside the P&O shipping office and eventually left on the ironically named Empress of Japan, heading for England. The Randolphs hired a launch from Collyer Quay and were taken aboard a Chinese coastal steamer bound for Colombo, and Cousin Violet and the spinster aunt sailed away on a cargo boat going to South Africa. Susan’s mother was finally well enough to travel and her father came home with embarkation papers for a liner sailing to Australia. There was another argument with Grandmother, who eventually gave way when told bluntly that she would be nothing but a hindrance and a liability if she stayed.

  A ‘useless mouth’, her father said, not mincing his words. ‘It’s your duty to leave, Mother. Surely you realize that.’

  Zhu, her old amah, was to go too, but Hector would have to stay behind. There was more argument about that.

  ‘I couldn’t possibly leave him here, Thomas.’

  ‘You’ll have to. The shipping line won’t let him on board. No pets are permitted.’

  ‘I fail to see why. They have parrots in Australia, don’t they?’

  As it happened, the liner in question was bombed and sunk by the Japanese before it even reached Singapore.

  Their cases – only one small one each – stood ready in the hall while they waited for the next available ship. Susan had packed her memories: her first evening gown, her photograph album, her favourite doll, the childhood books that Nana had read to her.

  Ray Harvey telephoned.

  ‘Geoff gave me your message. Glad you’ve healed up OK.’

  ‘Yes, it’s fine, thanks.’

  ‘Sorry I couldn’t see to the stitches myself. There’s been a hell of a lot going on here.’

  ‘I can imagine.’

  ‘I hope you’ll be getting out of Singapore soon.’

  ‘In a few days. We’re waiting for the next ship.’

  ‘That’s good news. To Australia?’

  ‘Worse luck.’

  ‘You never know, you might like it better than you think.’

  ‘How long will it take us to get there?’

  ‘Depends where you’re going.’

  ‘No idea.’

  ‘Probably Fremantle, in which case it’ll be about a week.’

  ‘I expect you’ll be staying on at the hospital?’

  ‘Have to.’

  A pause. It cost her, but it had to be said to him.

  ‘I’m sorry to have made such a stupid fuss, Ray. I’m afraid I just went to pieces in the end.’

  ‘I don’t blame you. It was pretty grim. You did bloody well.’

  ‘I must have been a perfect nuisance.’

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘You weren’t. I promise you that.’

  Somebody started speaking to him at the other end. He said, ‘Hang on a minute.’

  She waited till he came back on the line.

  ‘Sorry, Susan, but I’ve got to go now.’

  ‘Well, thanks again.’

  ‘Let me know what you think of Australia when you get there.’

  ‘It could be difficult to keep in touch.’

  ‘Try writing me a letter. It might even reach me.’ She went out into the garden and sat on the verandah steps and, presently, Sweep came silently out of the darkness and sat beside her.

  ‘I want to talk to you, Daddy.’

  ‘What about, poppet?’

  ‘About me staying in Singapore.’

  ‘Out of the question.’

  ‘I could help.’

  ‘It’s a man’s job now.’

  ‘I’ve been doing a man’s job.’

  ‘And I should never have let you. Lawrence Trent tells me that the Japs are nearly at Johore Bahru. There’ll soon be nothing but the Causeway between them and us. Singapore will be under siege.’

  ‘We can hold out against them for ages. There are thousands of troops on the island.’

  ‘You heard what Mr Trent said about the situation.’

  ‘Why do you always have to believe him?’

  ‘Because he knows the truth.’

  ‘England will send reinforcements.’

  ‘There are none to spare. And Churchill’s given us up. He’s said as much. In any case, it’s too late now.’

  ‘Then can’t you come with us?’

  ‘I’ve work to do here, poppet. Not just filling in forms any longer. Those days are gone. We can’t let the people of Malaya down, whatever happens. We have to fight on to the end.’

  They were given passes for another ship – a liner bringing more Australian troops to Singapore and returning to Fremantle. Ghani drove them to the docks and her father came to see them off. Susan sat in silence with her mother and grandmother in the back of the Buick. Zhu was huddled in the front between her father and Ghani. It was a beautiful day, the sky a cloudless blue.

  She had said goodbye to the servants in turn: to the amahs, to Cookie and the kitchen boy, to the kebuns, to Amith. They had all looked sad and bewildered, the amahs frightened too. Soojal had been the last and she had clasped both his hands in hers and seen the tears in his eyes.

  ‘Safe journey, missee. I take care of everything here for you.’

  Finally, she had said goodbye to Rex and Bonnie and given them each a piece of chocolate, and goodbye to wicked old Hector who shouted something rude at her. To her great sadness, Sweep was nowhere to be found.

  ‘You’ll look after him till I come back, won’t you, Soojal?’

  ‘Yes, missee. I look after him for you.’

  She gave the Buddha’s tummy one last rub for luck, and placed a pink hibiscus flower behind his ear.

  On the way to the docks she stared out of the car window, twisting and untwisting the string of pearls round her neck. Ruined streets and rubble, deserted marketplaces, shuttered shops and burned-out cars went by. A Chinese family crouched pathetically in the ruins of their home and some Tamils stood watching at the roadside as the Buick swept past. What must they think of the white tuans and mems now? What price the great British Empire that had claimed to be protecting them? She thought, ashamed, we’ve betrayed them all.

  Closer to the docks, Ghani had to weave in and out of bomb craters. Troops were wandering about and a group of drunken Australian soldiers were smashing shop windows and waving beer bottles. A military truck tore past, scattering the soldiers; some of them jeered and shook their fists.

  The Governor had broadcast on the wireless to the people and spoken of the battle to be fought for Singapore and the need to write a glorious chapter in history. None of it seemed very glorious so far.

  At the docks their way was barred by dozens of empty cars, abandoned by their fleeing owners. Ghani found a handcart to take the luggage and they walked the rest of the way to the wharf and joined the end of a long queue. There was no shade from the glaring heat of the sun, no shelter of any kind.

  Before long the air raid warning sounded and Jap planes screamed overhead. They wheeled to fly low along the wharf, guns firing, and the queue went down before them like standing corn before a reaper’s scythe.

  When the planes had gone those who had survived rose from the ground. Susan helped Grandmother to her feet while Zhu retrieved the solar topee. Her father was comforting her mother. Children and babies were crying, women screaming. The woman who had been standing immediately behind Susan had been hit in the head and lay dead, half her face shot away. When the dead and the injured had been carried away the
queue inched forward once more, stepping over the blood.

  After nearly three hours they reached the officials’ trestle table where their papers and passports were checked and stamped. At the foot of the gangplank, her father kissed her goodbye and hugged her.

  ‘Off you go, poppet.’ He pushed her firmly towards the gangplank. ‘Godspeed!’

  Halfway up, she turned round to see him walking away, and when she turned again at the top he had already vanished.

  There had been no time to clean the ship after the troops had disembarked. Her mother and grandmother’s cabin had no porthole and the fan was broken, the heat appalling. Her mother lay down on a bunk and closed her eyes.

  ‘Well, at least we’re getting out of this horrible country at last.’

  Susan said, ‘What about Daddy?’

  ‘It was his choice to stay.’

  ‘We may never see him again. The Japs might kill him. Don’t you care?’

  Grandmother put a hand on her arm. ‘That’s enough, Susan. Go and find your berth.’

  The purser had allotted her a bunk in a cabin further along the deck but someone else was sitting on it – a fat, ugly woman, mopping her sweaty face.

  ‘I’ve taken this bunk and I’m not moving. I’ve got a bad heart. You’ll have to find somewhere else.’

  She carried her suitcase out on to the deck again and went over to the rail. The men who were being left behind were standing on the quayside, looking up at the ship – some waving, some calling out, some smiling, some grim, some just sad. There was no sign of her father.

  Nobody tried to stop her as she started down the gangplank. She pushed past passengers struggling up with their baggage and they grumbled and swore at her. At the bottom, a ship’s officer said, ‘Hey, where do you think you’re going, miss? The ship will be sailing soon.’

  She took no notice of him and walked away down the wharf. The abandoned cars were being pushed over the side into the sea – Chryslers, Vauxhalls, Cadillacs, Buicks, Morgans, Jaguars, Fords, Morrises … splash, splash, splash, splash, splash. Further on some policemen were taking bottles of whisky from a pile of crates and pouring the contents into the harbour. She went on past them, out of the dock gates and back on to the streets of Singapore.