‘I’m afraid that’s true.’
Verity smiled. ‘As I said, it didn’t make any difference.’
‘How is he?’
‘He was pretty bad when he got back – but he’s getting a lot better. God knows what the Japs did to him – he’s got the most terrible scars but he won’t talk about it. Not a word.’
She thought of the silent ex-POWs at the Singapore hospital and their haunted eyes. ‘They seldom do,’ she said.
The house at Warranga stood at the end of a mile-long driveway. It was a large one-storeyed wooden building with a corrugated-iron roof, and shaded from the sun by wide verandahs, window blinds and giant pots of greenery. Not unlike many houses in Malaya. Some horses were grazing in a grassy paddock under a group of trees beside a stream. She could see why it might have made the grandfather think of Devon without the hedgerows.
‘It’s beautiful,’ she said. ‘I didn’t know Australia could look anything like this.’
The grandparents were another surprise – not old and bent, as she had pictured, but sprightly and youthful.
The grandmother took her arm. ‘Ray went off with one of the horses and he won’t be back for an hour or so. Verity asked me not to tell him you were coming.’
Ceiling fans creaked inside the house, reminding her again of Malaya. The floors were dark polished wood, the furniture Victorian, the lamps old-fashioned with glass shades. A grey-haired, bony woman in a print apron brought tea and cake served on English china.
‘This is Jessie,’ the grandmother said. ‘She came from Scotland years ago. We couldn’t manage without her.’
Afterwards, the grandmother showed her the rose garden that she had made beside the house.
‘I had all the plants sent out by ship from England,’ she said, as they moved slowly from bush to bush. ‘I picked them out from a catalogue. A few of them died but the rest have flourished. So long as you keep them well watered, they don’t mind the heat. I’ve never been home but I’d like to go one day and see some of the beautiful English gardens. Get a few new ideas, and some new plants.’
She referred to England as home, just as the English had always done in Singapore. But those people had been talking about the country where they had been born, whereas this woman had never even seen it.
They were admiring the perfect form and creamy petals of Elizabeth Harkness when the grandmother looked up.
‘Ray’s back, I see.’
He was standing on the verandah, leaning on the balustrade, watching them. Susan wondered how long he had been there. She thought in horror, God, he looks as though he’s been through hell. And then, as he didn’t move or speak, she thought, in panic, he doesn’t recognize me. He’s wondering who on earth I am. The Sydney hair-do and the new frock haven’t made any difference. I still look like a camp scarecrow.
The grandmother broke the long silence. ‘I believe you two have already met.’
He nodded. ‘Too right, we have. Hallo, Susan.’
After supper they sat out on the verandah with the oil lamps lit and the insects fluttering and flitting around, which reminded her yet again of Malaya. No Soojal to bear stengahs or iced lime juice, though. Instead the grandfather brought out cold Australian beers and uncorked a bottle of Australian wine made from grapes that they’d grown at Warranga. It tasted good.
Ray had asked about Peter and Hua and she had told him about her father, and about her mother and grandmother, and about Stella. No details – just the bare facts and no sentiment. The rest would keep. She knew better than to ask anything about the deep and livid scars around his wrists. Ray used to stick out his neck for them … the Japs punished him for it … they gave him a really bad time. Her heart ached with pity for what he must have suffered and she felt like weeping. But he wouldn’t want pity. Or tears.
She sat silent now, listening to them discussing the Australian wine and the grapes and the grandfather talking about the plans he had to enlarge the vineyard. The night air was warm, almost as warm as it had been in Singapore, and she could smell the sweet scent of the English roses in the garden below the verandah. She watched Ray from her dark corner and sometimes he glanced her way.
‘You two will have plenty to talk about, I should think,’ the grandmother said later and the three of them went off to bed, leaving her alone with Ray.
‘Actually, I’m rather tired too,’ she said. ‘There’s no need for us to talk about anything, is there?’
‘I think there is. If you don’t mind.’
She sat down again.
‘Smoke?’ he asked.
‘No, thanks.’ Her hand might shake. She’d never felt shy before in her life; not until now.
He fired up the match with his thumbnail and held it to his cigarette and the flame illuminated the terrible scars. He leaned against the verandah post, smoking the cigarette.
‘I owe you an apology, Susan, for what you’ve been through.’
‘You do, rather.’
‘It was my fault.’
‘Yes, it was.’
‘I thought you’d drowned on that ship – you and those two kids.’
‘We nearly did.’
‘How the hell did you manage to survive?’
‘I’ll tell you about it one day.’
He nodded. ‘Fair enough. You’re alive, that’s the main thing.’
‘So are you. That’s another main thing.’
He smiled. ‘I reckon we must both be born survivors.’
She said, ‘Actually, to be fair, it could have been just as bad if I’d stayed in Singapore. I gather Changi was pretty grim.’
‘I wasn’t there. We were sent to Borneo.’
‘Yes, I heard.’
There was silence for a moment, except for the frantic beating of a moth’s wings.
‘Well, now you’re finally Down Under, what do you think of it?’
‘I haven’t seen anything much. Mostly Sydney.’
‘How do you like it?’
‘Not bad.’
‘That’s praise, coming from you.’
‘Stella drove me around. I’ve seen Paddington, King’s Cross, Circular Quay, Bondi Beach, the Botanic Gardens …’ She ticked them off on her fingers. ‘And I’ve been on the ferry across to Lunar Park – that was fun – and she took me to Taronga Zoo. That was amazing. They had kangaroos and wallabies and koala bears and a duck-billed platypus. I’d never seen any of those before. You have some really weird animals. And all those horrible poisonous spiders and snakes – far worse than in Malaya. It’s a wonder any of you survive.’
‘We’re used to them. What do you think of our Bridge?’
‘You can see it from all over the city, can’t you? Everywhere you go. Round every corner. It’s quite a sight.’
‘Did Stella take you up the coast? Did she show you Whale Beach, Palm Beach, Pittwater?’
‘There hasn’t been time.’
‘That’s a pity,’ he said. ‘When do you go on to Perth?’
‘Wednesday next week. I’m flying Qantas. It’s all booked.’
‘How long will you stay there?’
She shrugged. ‘My mother wants to go back to England as soon as possible. My grandmother wants to go back to Penang.’
‘How about you? Where do you want to go?’
‘I expect I’ll end up going to England.’
‘It’s a long way away.’
‘Yes, it is.’
‘I thought you didn’t like it over there.’
‘I don’t, but there’s not a lot of choice. I don’t want to go back to Singapore now. Too many ghosts.’
‘I know what you mean. But you must see a bit more of Australia before you go. Can you ride a horse?’
‘I used to have my own pony.’
‘Good. I’ll take you out tomorrow, if you want. Show you round Warranga. It’s a wonderful place.’
She said politely, ‘I’d like that. Thank you.’
There were flashes of lightning out in the
darkness – an electrical storm going on in the far distance, the faint grumbling rumble of thunder. Another reminder of Malaya. She thought of the dance a hundred years ago at the naval base when she and the sub lieutenant – the one who had been such a good dancer – had watched a night storm out on the mainland. What if the Japs didn’t come from the sea? Supposing they come from the peninsula instead? Oh, they’d never try that. The jungle’s virtually impassable. A snake couldn’t get through.
She said, ‘Stella and I heard about what the Japs did at the Alexandra. We were afraid they’d killed you. We thought you must be dead.’
‘I was one of the lucky ones.’
‘And Geoff?’
‘He wasn’t so lucky.’
‘I’m very sorry,’ she said. ‘Milly will be too.’
‘What happened to her?’
‘She got away on one of the liners, but I haven’t been able to find out yet if she’s safe. Everything’s still in such chaos in Singapore. It’s going to take ages to sort out.’
She got up from her chair and went over to the verandah. She looked up at the night sky and the stars.
‘That’s the Southern Cross up there, isn’t it? Those five stars.’
‘Yeah. Same as on our Aussie flag.’
‘I didn’t know that.’
‘Don’t tell me you’ve never noticed them?’
‘Sorry, I can’t say that I have. I mean, I knew there were some stars on your flag but not what they were. But I know all about swagmen and billabongs and jumbucks. Stella taught the children to sing “Waltzing Matilda” in the camps. We did a lot of singing.’ She went on stargazing. ‘And I used to spend a lot of time watching the stars at night. They were a big comfort. I’m not quite sure why.’
‘Maybe because they were still there. Something to hang on to.’
‘Yes. It was the worst thing about being in solitary – not being able to see them.’
He said quietly, ‘The Japs put you in solitary?’
‘For a bit. But I wasn’t alone. I talked to everyone I could think of while I was there. I had long conversations with them. Even with you.’
‘Even me?’ He sounded surprised and amused. ‘My word. Fancy that.’
‘Even you. Only you weren’t feeling at all guilty about what had happened. You agreed with my mother that it was my fault for getting off the other boat in the first place. In fact, you were rather beastly about everything. You said I’d got to put up with things and keep going, for the children’s sake.’
‘I was right, wasn’t I?’
‘Yes, you were absolutely right. And you were nicer later.’
‘How nice?’
‘As nice as you were in the Alexandra when I made all that stupid fuss. But you’ve probably forgotten about that.’
‘No,’ he said. ‘I haven’t forgotten.’
She craned her neck to see more stars.
‘When I couldn’t sleep at night in the camps, I used to pretend other things, too. Make them up. We all did. Mostly to do with food because we were always so hungry. We’d lie there, making up menus and choosing our favourite dishes. Other times some of us would dress up in our best clothes, curl our hair, put on powder and lipstick and go out to dinner. I went out with you, one night.’
‘You don’t say! Where did I take you?’
‘Back to that Hawaiian place up on the hill with the band and no food. I ate all the fruit in the cocktail and I was still starving.’
‘Sorry about that. How was the rest of the evening?’
‘Not a big success. We argued and you were very rude about my shoes, as usual.’ She stuck out her foot. ‘What do you think of these? I bought them in Sydney.’
‘You’ll break your ankle one of these days.’
‘That’s what you keep telling me. How about this frock? I bought it in Sydney, too.’
‘You look beautiful in it.’
‘I didn’t look very beautiful in the camps.’
‘Nobody did.’
‘That’s true. I don’t think I’ll ever look like I did before.’
‘None of us will.’
‘And we’ll never get back the three and a half years we lost.’
‘They weren’t totally wasted.’
She understood him. ‘I suppose not.’
After a moment, he said, ‘I used to take you out at night, too. Lots of times.’
‘Oh?’ It was her turn to be surprised. ‘Where did we go?’
‘Different places. All with good food.’
‘You were lucky. What did we eat?’
‘All kinds of stuff. Indian, Chinese, French. Sometimes we went where there was a band so we could dance. We got on like a house on fire. You’d be amazed.’
‘Yes, I would. Very. Are you sure we did?’
‘Dinky-die, as we ex-convicts are so fond of saying.’
‘It wasn’t like that in my version.’
‘Well, you got it wrong.’
She said, speaking to the stars, not to him, ‘I’ve always been wrong about you, Ray. I want you to know that. And wrong about Australians. And about Australia. As a matter of fact, I like all three of you quite a lot.’
‘Enough to stay?’
‘I’m not sure. I don’t know what to do. Do you think I should?’
He stubbed out the cigarette. Came over to the verandah rail where she was still staring at the stars; turned her towards him.
‘You know bloody well what I think, Susan. Verity told me she’d spilled the beans.’
‘I didn’t believe her.’
‘Why not?’
She looked up at him. ‘How could I, Ray? We’ve always squabbled, you and I. You’ve always seemed to disapprove of me – you said I was spoiled, remember? And I’ve been pretty foul to you. How could I possibly believe it?’
He smiled slowly. ‘My word,’ he said. ‘We’ll have to do something about that.’
They stopped the horses at the top of the hill. The land stretched away for miles and miles under the hot sun and the blue Australian sky decorated with puffy white clouds – red earth, green grass, yellow wattle, silvery gum trees, the smudged purple distance.
‘Well, what do you think of it all, Miss Roper?’
‘It’s pretty amazing, Captain Harvey.’
‘Worth staying for?’
‘On balance, I think so. Yes.’
‘Dinky-die, as we say?’
‘Dinky-die.’
‘Spoken like a true Aussie,’ he said. ‘You know, I always reckoned you’d come round to us, in the end.’
Epilogue
Ray and I were married in Sydney by the end of that year. He had already returned to work at St Vincent’s Hospital, where he later became a consultant surgeon. We moved, with Sweep, into a house at Mosman on the northern side of the Harbour and our children grew up there.
My mother went back to England and eventually married a rich and charming widower. Grandmother returned to her home in Penang with Zhu and stayed there until she died. Hector went back there too, recaptured by Soojal and shipped off to Penang, protesting loudly all the way. He outlived Grandmother and, in spite of his unsociable ways, we gave him a home with us in Sydney. The children taught him to sing snatches from ‘Waltzing Matilda’.
Peter has written to me regularly over the years and I went to see him once during a visit to my mother in England. He had grown into the fine young man I had always expected him to be. He went up to Oxford and then into the Foreign Office and, as I had predicted, he ended up as Sir Peter Travers. Hua still writes to me, too. She grew up to become an English teacher in a school in Singapore and sends me photos of herself with her Chinese husband and her beautiful children. Stella married a doctor and went off to live happily ever after in Brisbane. I found out, eventually, that Milly had reached South Africa where she spent the rest of the war before returning to England. We wrote to each other regularly for a while until the correspondence dwindled to Christmas cards. She married a solicitor and li
ves in Yorkshire. I expect that, in time, she forgot all about Geoff.
Many years after the war, I happened to see a photograph of Denys in the Sydney Morning Herald. He had become something very high up and important in the police and was on an official visit to Australia. He still had the same toothbrush moustache but he was looking very solemn and serious – quite unlike the Denys from Cads’ Alley that I knew. I wonder if he still remembers.
Even now, the camps return. Nightmares about them wake me in a sweating panic and sometimes they pop up unexpectedly by day, and in the oddest places. A woman in front of me at the supermarket checkout queue puts a bag of rice down on the counter. There is a hole in the corner and a small handful trickles out – about a day’s ration. I stare at the innocent little pile of grains and I’m back in the camps again. I don’t suppose they will ever go away.
I have been back to Singapore to visit my father’s grave and to see the war memorial to the civilians who died during the Japanese occupation, but I shan’t go back again.
The house in Cavenagh Road has been pulled down and replaced by a block of apartments. House, gardens, tennis court, aviary, goldfish pond and the pet cemetery have been erased, so has the surrounding jungle. The bullfrogs and the cicadas croak and chorus there no more.
Singapore has become an ultra-modern Asian city. Where there was green growth there is grey concrete and where there were historic colonial homes there are glass skyscrapers, luxury hotels, shopping malls and international restaurants, all hermetically sealed in air conditioning. Land has been reclaimed from the waterfront for more building and the old labyrinthine streets have widened into ordered highways. The hawkers’ stalls have vanished, the pavements are spotless, the native markets sell foreign tat to tourists.
It’s a very impressive city but it’s not my Singapura. My Lion City was creaking fans, tiled floors, rattan chicks, verandahs wide open on to lallang lawns, the lushest greenery, the sweetest scents and the brightest flowers. It was a swarming, clamouring jumble of life, smelling fragrantly of curry and spice and all things nice, and of things not so nice. Chinks, Stinks and Drinks, as the old saying went. Nobody would say that now.
The Other Side of Paradise Page 24