by Nevil Shute
The man protested that there was no beer. Captain Sugamo already knew that, but he sent his orderly to the town to visit all the Chinese eating-houses to see if he could find a bottle of beer anywhere in Kuantan. In an hour the man came back; Captain Sugamo was sitting in exactly the same attitude as when he had gone out to find the beer. With considerable apprehension he informed his officer that there was no beer in all Kuantan. He was dismissed, and went away gladly.
Death to Captain Sugamo was a ritual. There had been an element of holiness in his approach to the Australian, and having offered in the hearing of his men to implement the last wishes of his victim he was personally dedicated to see that those last wishes were provided. If a bottle of beer had been available he would have sacrificed one of his remaining black Leghorns and sent the cooked meat and the beer down to the dying body on the tree; he might even have carried the tray down himself. By doing so he would have set an example of chivalry and Bushido to the troops under his command. Unfortunately, it was impossible for him to provide the bottle of beer, and since the beer was missing and the soldier’s dying wish could not be met in full, there was no point in sacrificing one of the remaining black Leghorns. He could not carry out his own part in the ritual; he could not show Bushido by granting the man’s dying wish. Therefore, the Australian could not be allowed to die, or he himself would be disgraced.
He called for his sergeant. When the man came, he ordered him to take a party with a stretcher to the recreation ground. They were to pull the nails out and take the man down from the tree without injuring him any further, and put him face downwards on the stretcher, and take him to the hospital.
To Jean, the news that the Australian was still alive came like the opening of a door. She slipped away and went and sat in the shade of a casuarina tree at the head of the beach to consider this incredible fact. The sun glinted on the surf and the beach was so white, the sea so blue, that it was almost ecstasy to look at them. She felt as if she had suddenly come out of a dark tunnel that she had walked down for six years. She tried to pray, but she had never been religious and she didn’t know how to put what she was feeling into a prayer. The best she could do was to recollect the words of a prayer that they had used at school sometimes. “Lighten our darkness, oh Lord, and of Thy great mercy . . .” That was all she could remember, and she repeated it over and over to herself that afternoon. Her darkness had been lightened by the well-diggers.
She went back that evening and spoke to Suleiman again about the matter, but neither he nor his sons could supply much further information. The Australian had been in the hospital at Kuantan for a long time, but how long they did not know. Yacob said that he had been there for a year, but she soon found that he only meant a very long time. Hussein said three months, and Suleiman did not know how long he had been there, but said that he was sent down on a ship to Singapore to a prison camp, and he was then walking with two sticks. She could not find out from them when that was.
So she had to leave it, and she stayed on in Kuala Telang till the well and wash-house were completed. She had already started the carpenters upon the wash-house after long consultations with the elder women, and the concrete work was now completed in the shuttering, and drying out. On the day that water was reached at the bottom of the well the carpenters began to erect the posts for the atap house, and the well and the house were finished about the same time. Two days were spent in baling out the muddy water from the well till it ran clean, and then they had an opening ceremony when Jean washed her own sarong and all the women crowded into the wash-house laughing, and the men stood round in a tolerant circle at a distance, wondering if they had been quite wise to allow anything that made the women laugh so much.
On the next day she sent a telegram by runner to Kuala Rakit to be despatched to Wilson-Hays asking him to send the jeep for her, and a day or two later it arrived. She left in a flurry of shy good wishes with some moisture in her eyes; she was going back to her own place and her own people, but she was leaving three years of her life behind her, and that is never a very easy thing to do.
She got back to the Residency at Kota Bahru after dark that night, too tired to eat. Mrs. Wilson-Hays sent her up a cup of tea and a little fruit to her bedroom, and she had a long, warm bath, putting off her native clothes for the last time. She lay on the bed in the cool, spacious room under the mosquito net, rested and growing sleepy, and what she thought about was Ringer Harman, and the red country he had told her of round Alice Springs, and euros, and wild horses.
She walked with Wilson-Hays in the garden of the Residency next morning after breakfast in the cool of the day. She told him what she had done in Kuala Telang; he asked her where she had got the idea of the wash-house from. “It’s obvious that’s what they need,” she said. “Women don’t like washing their clothes in public, especially Moslem women.”
He thought about it for a minute. “You’ve probably started something,” he remarked at last. “Every village will want one now. Where did you get the plan of it — the arrangement of the sinks and all that sort of thing?”
“We worked it out ourselves,” she said. “They knew what they wanted all right.”
They strolled along by the river, brown and muddy and half a mile wide, running its way down to the sea. As they walked she told him about the Australian, because she could talk freely about that now. She told him what had happened. “His name was Joe Harman,” she said, “and he came from a place near Alice Springs. I would like to get in touch with him again. Do you think I could find out anything about him in Singapore?”
He shook his head. “I shouldn’t think so, not now that S.E.A.C. is disbanded. I shouldn’t think there’s any record of prisoners of war in Singapore now.”
“How would one find out about him, then?”
“You say he was an Australian?”
She nodded.
“I think you’d have to write to Canberra,” he said. “They ought to have a record of all prisoners there. I suppose you don’t happen to know his unit?”
She shook her head. “I’m afraid I don’t.”
“That might make it difficult, of course — there may be several Joe Harmans. I should start off by writing to the Minister for the Army — that’s what they call him, the head of the War Office. Just address your letter to the Minister for the Army, Canberra, Australia. Something might come of that. What you want is an address where you could write to him, I suppose?”
Jean stared across the river at the rubber trees and coconut palms. “I suppose so. As a matter of fact, I’ve got an address of a sort. He used to work before the war on a cattle station called Wollara, near a place called Alice Springs. He said that they were keeping his job open for him there.”
“If you’ve got that address,” he observed, “I should write there. You’re much more likely to find him that way than by writing to Canberra.”
“I might do that,” she said slowly. “I would like to see him again. You see, it was because of us that it all happened. . . .”
It had been her intention to go back to Singapore and wait there for a boat to England; if she had to wait long for a cheap passage she intended to try and find a job for a few weeks or months. Malayan Airways called at Kota Bahru next day, and the Dakota landed at Kuantan on the way down to Singapore. She spoke to Wilson-Hays again that evening after dinner.
“Do you think there would be a hotel or anything at Kuantan if I stopped there for a day?” she asked.
He looked at her kindly. “Do you want to go back there?” he asked.
“I think I do,” she said. “I’d like to go and see the people at the hospital and find out what I can.”
He said, “You’d better stay with David and Joyce Bowen. Bowen is the District Commissioner; he’d be glad to put you up.”
“I don’t want to be a nuisance to people,” she said. “Isn’t there a rest-house that I could stay in? After all, I know this country fairly well.”
“That’s wh
y Bowen would like to meet you,” he remarked. “You must realise that you’re quite a well-known person in these parts. He would be very disappointed if you stayed at the rest-house.”
She looked at him in wonder. “Do people think of me like that? I only did what anybody could have done.”
“That’s as it may be,” he replied. “The fact is, that you did it.”
She flew on down to Kuantan next day. Someone must have told the crew of the aircraft about her, because the Malay stewardess came to her after half an hour and said, “We’re just coming up to Kuala Telang, Miss Paget. Captain Philby wants to know if you would care to come forward to the cockpit and see it.” So she went forward through the door and stood between the pilots; they brought the Dakota down to about seven hundred feet and circled the village; she could see the well and the new atap roof of the wash-house, and she could see people standing gazing up at the machine, Fatimah and Zubeidah and Mat Amin. Then they straightened up and flew on down the coast, and Kuala Telang was left behind.
The Bowens met her at the air-strip, which is ten miles from the town of Kuantan; Wilson-Hays had sent them a signal that morning. They were a friendly, unsophisticated couple, and she had no difficulty in telling them a little about the Australian soldier who had been tortured, when they were sitting in the D.C.’s house where Captain Sugamo had sat so often, over a cup of tea. They said that Sister Frost was now in charge of the hospital, but it was doubtful if there was anybody now upon the staff who was there in 1942. They drove down after tea to see Sister Frost.
She received them in the matron’s room, very hygienic and smelling strongly of disinfectant. She was an Englishwoman about forty years of age. “There’s nobody here now who was on the staff then,” she said. “Nurses in a place like this — they’re always leaving to get married. We never seem to keep them longer than about two years. I don’t know what to suggest.”
Bowen said, “What about Phyllis Williams? She was a nurse here, wasn’t she?”
“Oh, her,” the sister said disparagingly. “She was here for the first part of the war until she married that man. She might know something about it.”
They left the hospital, and as they drove to find Phyllis Williams Mrs. Bowen enlightened Jean. “She’s a Eurasian,” she said. “Very dark, almost as dark as a Malay. She married a Chinese, a man called Bun Tai Lin who runs the cinema. What you’d call a mixed marriage, but they seem to get along all right. She’s a Roman Catholic, of course.” Jean never fathomed the “of course.”
The Bun Tai Lins lived in a rickety wooden house up the hill overlooking the harbour. They could not get the car to the house, but left it in the road and walked up a short lane littered with garbage. They found Phyllis Williams at home, a merry-faced, brown woman with four children around her and evidently about to produce a fifth. She was glad to see them and took them into a shabby room, the chief decorations of which were a set of pewter beer-mugs and a large oleograph of the King and Queen in coronation robes.
She spoke very good English. “Oh yes, I remember that poor boy,” she said. “Joe Harman, that was his name. I nursed him for three or four months — he was in a state when he came in. We none of us thought he’d live. But he got over it. He must have led a very healthy life, because his flesh healed wonderfully. He said that he was like a dog, he healed so well.”
She turned to Jean. “Are you the lady that was leading the party of women and children from Panong?” she asked. “I thought you must be. Fancy you coming here again! You know, he was always wanting to know about you and your party, if anybody knew the way you’d gone. And of course, we didn’t know, and with that Captain Sugamo in the mood he was nobody was going to go round asking questions to find out.”
She turned to Jean. “I forget your name?”
“Paget. Jean Paget.”
The Eurasian looked puzzled. “That wasn’t it. I wonder now, was he talking about someone different? I can’t remember now what he called her, but it wasn’t that. I thought it would have been you.”
“Mrs. Frith?”
She shook her head. “I’ll remember presently.”
She could not tell them very much more than Jean knew already. The Australian had been sent down to a prison camp in Singapore as soon as he was fit to travel; they heard no more of him. They thought that he would make a good recovery in the end, though it would be years before the muscles of his back got back their strength if, indeed, they ever would. She knew no more than that.
They left presently, and went down the garbage-strewn lane towards the car. When they were nearly at the bottom the woman called to them from the veranda. “I just remembered that name. Mrs. Boong. That’s who he was always talking about, Mrs. Boong. Was that one of your party?”
Jean laughed, and called back to her, “That’s what he used to call me!”
The woman was satisfied. “I thought it must have been you that he was always talking about.”
On the way back to the D.C.’s house in the car, they passed the recreation ground. There were tennis nets rigged and one or two couples playing; there was a white young man playing a brown girl. The tree still stood overlooking the courts, and underneath it a couple of Malay women sat exactly where the feet of the tortured man had hung, on ground that had been soaked in blood, and gossiped while their children played around. It all looked very peaceful in the evening light.
Jean spent that night with the Bowens, and went on to Singapore next day in the Dakota. Wilson-Hays had advised her about hotels, and she stayed at the Adelphi opposite the Cathedral.
She wrote to me from there a couple of days later. It was a long letter, about eight pages long, written in ink smudged a little with the sweat that had formed on her hand as she wrote in that humid place. First she told me what had happened in Kuala Telang; she told me about the well-diggers and that Joe Harman was still alive. And then she went on,
I’ve been puzzling over what I could do to get in touch with him again. You see, it was all because of us that it happened. He stole the chickens for us, and he must have known the sort of man that Captain Sugamo was, and the risk that he was taking. I must find out where he is living now, and if he’s all right; I can’t believe that he can be able to work as a stockrider after having been so terribly injured. I think he was a man who’d always fall upon his feet somehow or other if he was well enough, but I can’t bear the thought that he might be still in hospital, perhaps, and likely to stay there for ever with his injuries.
I did think of writing to him at this place Wollara that he told me about, the cattle station that he worked on, somewhere near Alice Springs. But thinking it over, if he can’t work he can’t be there, and I don’t suppose I’d ever get an answer to a letter from a place like that, or not for ages, anyway. I thought of writing to Canberra to try and find out something, but that’s almost as bad. And this brings me to what I wanted to tell you when I started this letter, Noel, and I hope it won’t be too much of a shock. I’m going on to Australia from here.
Don’t think me absolutely crazy for doing this. The fare from here to Darwin costs sixty pounds by the Constellation, and you can get a bus from Darwin to Alice Springs; it takes two or three days but it ought to be much cheaper than flying. After paying the hotel bill here I shall still have about a hundred and seven pounds, not counting next month’s money. I thought I’d go to Alice Springs and get to this place Wollara and find out about him there; someone in that district is bound to know what happened to him, and where he is now.
There are some Merchant Service officers staying here, very nice young men, and they tell me I can get a cabin on a merchant ship back to England probably from Townsville, that’s on the east coast of Australia in Queensland, and if there isn’t a ship there I’d certainly get one at Brisbane. I’ve been talking to a man in the Chartered Bank here in Raffles Place who is very helpful, and I’ve arranged with him to transfer my next month’s money to the Bank of New South Wales in Alice Springs, and so I’ll h
ave money to get me across to Townsville or Brisbane. Write to me care of the Bank of New South Wales in Alice Springs, because I know I’m going to feel a long way from home when I get there.
I’m leaving here on Thursday by the Constellation, so I’ll be in Australia somewhere by the time you get this letter. I have a feeling that I’m being a terrible nuisance to you, Noel, but I’ll have an awful lot to tell you when I get back home. I don’t think the trip home from Townsville or Brisbane can take longer than three months at the outside, so I shall be home in England in time for Christmas at the very latest.
I sat there reading and re-reading this, bitterly disappointed. I had been making plans for entertainments for her when she came back, I suppose — in fact, I know I had been. Old men who lead a somewhat empty life get rather stupid over things like that. Lester Robinson came into my office with a sheaf of papers in his hand as I was reading her letter for the third time; I laid the letter down. “My Paget girl,” I said. “You know — that Macfadden estate that we’re trustees for. She’s not coming home after all. She’s gone on from Malaya to Australia.”
He glanced at me, and I suppose the disappointment that I felt showed in my face, because he said gently, “I told you she was old enough to make a packet of trouble for us.” I looked up at him quickly to see what he meant by that, but he began talking about an unadopted road in Colchester, and the moment passed.
I went on with my work, but the black mood persisted and it was with me when I reached the club that night. I settled down after dinner in the library with a volume of Horace because I thought the mental exercise required to read the Latin would take my mind off things and put me in a better frame of mind. But I had forgotten my Horace, I suppose, because a phrase I had not read or thought about for forty years suddenly stared up at me from the page and brought me up with a round turn,