A Winter Love Song

by Rita Bradshaw

  This thought cheered him. Gladys had been on about his beer gut for years but it was disappearing fast. He’d go home a new man. If he survived, that was, which at times over the last week he’d doubted. But however much he grumbled about the hardships, he could see that Bonnie was doing something good for the boys. They were with her every inch of the way during the concerts, singing along with the songs and clearly enjoying themselves, but it was when she visited the hospitals – mostly under canvas and basic, to say the least – that he found himself with a lump in his throat. There were so many really young servicemen, some still in their teens, and when Bonnie sat by their beds and talked softly with them their guard would come down and they would cry, unburdening themselves in a way they couldn’t do with their comrades. Bonnie would comfort them and let them talk about their families back home and their mothers and wives and girlfriends. No matter if the smell of sweat and gangrene and bodily fluids and disinfectant was overpowering, she never flinched or let them see she was struggling.

  He reached over now, patting her arm as he said, ‘You’re a good girl – you know that, don’t you? – and I’m proud to be with you out here, I am straight. Take no notice of me when I bellyache about this and that, gal. I don’t mean it. I’m glad we came, to tell you the truth.’

  There were times the next day when Bonnie wondered if Enoch regretted those words. They set off along the Bazar–Teknaf Highway, which in effect was a dirt track, at seven o’clock in the morning and arrived at their destination at six in the evening, stopping twice for Bonnie to do a show en route. They were close to the front now, and at the last stop the soldiers had waited patiently for hours in the unrelenting heat to hear her sing.

  Bonnie found it humbling and touching to see the rows of men, most of them looking exhausted and gaunt, come alive as she sang, and she knew she would never get such appreciative audiences in the rest of her life. One of the boys presented her with a bouquet of jungle flowers after the performance, and she had a hard job to keep back the tears. He looked no more than seventeen or eighteen, had already seen sights that would haunt the strongest man, and yet he was sweet-faced and gentle and thrilled to bits he’d had the honour of being the one to give her the flowers. She had wanted to gather him up in her arms and whisk him back to England and to his mother, who, he whispered shyly so no one else could hear, had played ‘A Song at Sunrise’ when it had first come out all day every day until his father had threatened to break the gramophone. He rolled his eyes and grinned at her and she had smiled back, wondering if he would be one of the lucky ones who survived the war. She hoped so. Oh, she did so hope so. She had kissed his cheek and all his pals had whooped and cheered as he’d returned, red-faced and suddenly jaunty, to his seat. So young, nothing more than a baby really.

  That night they slept under canvas with the cries of jackals puncturing the jungle night and a mouse-sized spider frightening Enoch to death as it ran over his boot just as he was about to take them off for bed. He slept with them on after that.

  The next morning they were up at the crack of dawn again to visit a hospital, and so the pattern was set. Travelling dirt tracks in a jungle land; hearing the sound of elephants and jackals and other wild animals; constant swarms of mosquitoes day and night, and insects the size of which would have done credit to any horror film. Bonnie did shows in tents, bamboo huts and out in the open, and found she had been wildly optimistic to think she could wear her evening frocks. It was long khaki trousers and buttoned-up shirts with long sleeves in view of the mosquitoes, and make-up wasn’t an option with the oven-hot heat and humidity. They washed at night and in the morning by the simple process of pouring a bucket of tepid water – the water was always tepid due to the conditions – over their heads, and ate what was given to them, often not enquiring too closely what was in the inevitable stews or rice-based dishes. Enoch swore on his life he had seen a claw in one of the vast metal feeding troughs the cooks used, and it was more than likely.

  The days and weeks became something of a blur as they travelled from one camp to another in a state of constant exhaustion, the odd venue more memorable, like the show Bonnie performed at an airport where they were housed in proper beds overnight, or the one at the other end of the spectrum when a concert was interrupted in the depths of the jungle by an irritable bull elephant making his presence known. Some of the roads they travelled were difficult and dangerous and others just plain bumpy and uncomfortable, but it was towards the end of the tour at Dimapur, near the Japanese border, at the height of the Kohima battle that something happened which was to change Bonnie’s life in a way she could never have foreseen.

  They had arrived at Dimapur late one evening and gone straight to sleep in a kind of shed where a sheet had been fixed between Enoch’s bunk and Bonnie’s, presumably for modesty. The next morning Bonnie had visited two hospitals to chat to the patients, but at the third one, after lunch, she was due to do a show. This meant the doctors and male nurses – she hadn’t seen one female nurse to date – would move the patients into the largest ward so there wasn’t an inch of elbow room left after the piano had been dragged in. So many bodies in such a confined space, along with the smells that went with them and the heat, meant these occasions really were a labour of love. But this hospital, like the two in the morning, was housing men injured from the raging Kohima battle and all the patients were severely wounded but incredibly brave. The fact that they wanted to hear her sing was humbling, but it also brought up feelings that tore her apart when she let herself dwell on them. That one madman’s quest for power could start a rippling effect that resulted in such horror was terrifying, and she constantly had to check the depression that could have gripped her if she had let it, and tell herself she would think about it all when she wasn’t so exhausted.

  She started the concert with ‘A Song at Sunrise’ and as she sang you could have heard a pin drop in the packed tent. Some of the men shut their eyes as tears welled up, but others were openly crying, and when she finished the song the burst of applause actually made her jump. She continued with other popular numbers, including ‘You’ll Never Know’ and ‘My Heart and I’, as well as songs relevant to the war like ‘We’ll Meet Again’ and ‘The White Cliffs of Dover’, finishing with ‘This is the Army, Mr Jones’ which always lightened the atmosphere.

  Once the performance had finished and she’d had a drink of boiled water in which a few desultory tea leaves floated, she asked the officer who was escorting them if there were any patients whose injuries meant they couldn’t be moved but who would like her to sing to them. These were normally the men who had little chance of survival, in spite of the new wonder drug – a yellow powder put directly onto the wounds and called penicillin – that was bringing others back from the brink of certain death.

  The officer looked at the fresh-faced young girl in front of him who didn’t look a day over eighteen, although he had been told she was several years older, and said very gently, ‘There are a few but you would find their injuries very upsetting, Miss May. Perhaps it would be better—’

  ‘I want to see them if they are willing.’

  ‘I’m sure they would be willing and it would do them the world of good to hear you sing. It brings them closer to home for a little while. You know?’

  Yes, Bonnie said. She knew.

  Leaving Enoch to a second cup of the boiled water that passed as tea, the officer having said the tent with the very badly injured wouldn’t accommodate a piano, Bonnie followed her escort out into the blazing heat, which was only slightly hotter than inside the tents. How the injured must long for a cool breeze or a drink of cold water, she thought as she walked. The unimaginable heat must mock them, reminding them every moment that they were in a foreign land and far from home.

  When she walked into the tent it was the stench of gangrene and putrefying flesh that first hit her and it took all of her control to show no reaction. There were four beds in it. Two of the occupants were lying completely still,
one so badly burned it was impossible to know how old he was, but the other two men moved their heads when the officer said, ‘Miss May wanted to sing for you.’

  She had managed to stitch the customary smile on her face along with showing no shock or horror, but as her gaze met that of the man in the last bed she knew her expression had frozen. The blood pounded in her ears, she felt sick and dazed and dizzy, and then the dirt floor rushed up to meet her as she fell.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  He had heard she was coming to the camp, of course. The doctors and nurses had been full of it over the last day or two in an effort to jolly everyone along, but he’d thought being in the ‘no-hopers’ ward, as the men called it, she wouldn’t see him. He’d suffered the torments of the damned over it, part of him desperately wanting to look at her face once more before he died, and the other part dreading what would happen if she realized he was still alive. If she recognized him.

  John Lindsay lay back on the hard plank bed, his head spinning. And she had recognized him, all right. It had been a moment or two since the officer had carried her unconscious body out of the tent, muttering something about the heat and exhaustion. Would she come back when she came round? And what would he say to her if she did? How could he explain why he had let her think he was dead? He’d known it was cruel, but it had been for her that he had continued to be ‘dead’ when he’d remembered who he was. And he could have been dead, would have been but for Skelton calling his gorillas away when he saw a couple of coppers walking down the road.

  It had been Robert who’d saved him, Robert and a pal of his. Apparently they’d got him away in a handcart and Robert had pushed the thing for days on end, putting as much distance between Sunderland and Skelton as he could. He himself had been unconscious for more than three days, according to Robert, and when he’d come round he couldn’t remember who he was or anything about his past life. Skelton’s thugs had done a good job on his head with their hobnailed boots.

  Robert had told him the little he knew, emphasizing that they would be dead men if they went back, and so once he was physically able, the two of them had signed on as members of a crew on a boat leaving for the West Indies. He had chosen the name Abe Turner for himself – it was as good as any other – and he was still known by it today.

  He and Robert had been away for over twelve months when he had begun to have the occasional fleeting flashback to his past life. Faces, a name, the image of a place or building had come and gone before he could pin them down to mean something. And then one morning, for no apparent reason, he had woken up and his mind was his own again. He had a bairn, a little lassie. He remembered it all. And his heart had wept.

  It had been a shock to find out what sort of man he was, a man who could take the jewellery his wife had left for their daughter and pawn it, whose obsession with gambling had eventually reduced him to agreeing to be one of Skelton’s lackeys. Not only that, but in crossing the gangster the way he had, he’d put a price on his head. He couldn’t go home, and Bonnie’s best chance in life would be without a millstone round her neck like him. It had been a bitter pill to swallow, and for a long time he had sought solace in the bottle. He’d had nothing but contempt for himself, and but for Robert sticking by him there was no doubt he would have drunk himself to death or ended it all by jumping off one of the boats into the deep dark waters of the ocean.

  But then had come the war. They had been in Portsmouth looking to board another ship when it had happened, and – having had enough of the sea by then – he had volunteered to become a soldier and Robert had followed his lead. And eventually, after other bloody battles, they had ended up in this malignant, foul place. How he hated the jungle.

  He shut his eyes, the pain from the stump of his leg that had been amputated a few days before and the agony from the deep wound in his stomach, which had laid bare his insides, nothing to the torment of seeing Bonnie again.

  When they had been told they were being shipped to Burma, he had been blissfully unaware of what that meant, but within minutes of landing on Burmese soil he’d found out. The jungle was like nothing else on earth – the permanent semi-twilight – gloomy even when sunshine dappled the jungle floor with shadows; the constant dampness – rain or sweat – of stifling, windless heat; the dirty clothes on smelly bodies; the heavy backpacks and loaded and cocked weapons they were forced to carry, it all drained a man quicker than the most ferocious fighting. Tensed reflexes, inaccurate maps, constant vigilance, tired limbs, sore shoulders where equipment straps bit in, a chafed crutch and the desperate craving for a cigarette to quell the nerves for a while. And a cold beer. Hell, he would have given his right arm for a cold beer many times. As it was, it was his right leg that had been separated from his body, he thought grimly.

  But it was perhaps the constant expectancy of death from behind the impenetrable screen of green in the jungle that got to you the most. He nodded to himself. In the heart of the jungle he and his fellow soldiers had found the fight against the Japanese almost incidental. The real fight was against the enervating climate, the demanding terrain, the fitfulness of sleep, the lack of hot meals, the disease and the accidents every day because of the many natural hazards. The insects and wild animals were bad enough, but one of his pals had had a leech go inside his penis, blocking the passage. And in spite of all the doctors had done, the poor beggar had died screaming. But then there were so many ways to die in the jungle and none of them pleasant, especially if the enemy had anything to do with it.

  He and Robert had only been in Burma for a week or so when they were out on patrol one day and saw what looked like one of their soldiers embracing a tree. They had gone to see what the trouble was and found that the Japanese had nailed the man to the tree by his hands and feet. He was dead, but he hadn’t died easy. It had been their first encounter with the unique cruelty of the Japanese but not their last. It had made them very careful but also determined always to have a grenade by them so that if it came to it they’d choose to go while taking as many of the enemy with them as possible.

  It hadn’t been long after that when their patrol had entered a village close to a Japanese administrative area. They’d found a Nepali living there, and he had reported to the CO that the Japanese had looted his village, killed his wife and stolen his cattle to eat. They had also taken away his son and two daughters and he believed them to be dead also. The CO had ordered them to take the Japanese compound and once they had killed the enemy they had discovered the two young girls in the house. Both had been repeatedly raped but were still alive, as was the son who couldn’t have been more than twelve or thirteen and who the Japanese had used as a servant to fetch water and cook food.

  They had taken the children – the girls were even younger than the son – back to their father, along with several of the cattle that hadn’t yet been slaughtered, and left what medical supplies they could spare with the family for the girls. He had found it hard to sleep that night. War was one thing, but the rape and buggery of children? Who – what – could do that?

  John rubbed his hand across his face, aware he was fighting against thinking about what he would say when Bonnie came back. If she came back. But she would, he knew she would. His lass had never been one to shy away from conflict. Did she hate him? He wouldn’t blame her if she did.

  He groaned, forcing his mind to replay the lecture on jungle craft that they’d had on their first day in Burma, a lecture that had become the mantra by which they lived – or died. He could recite it off by heart and he did it now, dulling his brain to any other thought.

  The ability of a soldier to live and fight in the jungle; to be able to move from point to point and arrive at his objective fit to fight; to use ground and vegetation to the best advantage; to be able to melt into the jungle either by freezing or intelligent use of camouflage; to recognize and be able to eat native foods . . .

  There was more, much more, but John found he wasn’t winning. Bonnie wouldn’t be denied. It was a
fter the war had started that he had discovered the Bonnie May who sang on the radio and made records was his Bonnie. He had seen a signed photograph she had sent to one of his comrades, and he hadn’t been able to believe his eyes. Everything in him had wanted to write to her, but what could he say? ‘This is your da, Bonnie. The one who deserted you and ran off with your mother’s jewellery and then fell foul of a gangster who controlled a large part of Sunderland’s underworld. Oh yes, and my name’s Abe Turner now.’ She would have thought he had contacted her because she was well off and famous, anybody would.

  One of the nurses had heard him groan and now appeared at his side with a syringe, injecting him with whatever it contained even as he asked how the pain was. John didn’t object. He knew what being in this ward meant. The Grim Reaper was waiting. And if he could have died without Bonnie knowing about his other life he would have been content to go. He had always hoped she had imagined he’d met with an accident and knew that he had been meaning to come home that night, even though the jewellery was missing. That she hadn’t doubted his love for her. That her memories of him were good ones.

  But now . . .

  Hell, he would rather be waiting to face a Japanese soldier than Bonnie right now. They might be cruel so-and-sos and barely human as far as he was concerned, but anything would be better than having to look into her eyes again and see himself reflected as the scum he was. His fingers pulled at the sheet covering his body, the stitching already rotten. Everything went mouldy or rotted in the jungle. Rust appeared overnight and mildew could grow on leather between dusk and dawn when it rained.