A Town Like Alice

by Nevil Shute

  There was a pleased and excited little buzz amongst the women who surrounded her. Old Zubeidah said, ‘It is true, the men get everything.’ One or two of the women looked shocked at this heresy.

  ‘I have thought many times,’ Jean said, ‘that there should be a well in this place, so that you should not have to fetch fresh water from the spring morning and evening, but you could walk out of your houses only fifty paces at the most and there would be a well of fresh water with a bucket that you could go to and draw water at any time of the day whenever you had the need of cool, fresh water.’ There was a little buzz of appreciation again. ‘There would be smooth stones around the well where you could sit and talk while the young men work the bucket for you. And close beside the well, I would have an atap house for washing clothes with long slabs of smooth stone or concrete arranged so that you could face each other while you wash, and talk, but all surrounded by an atap wall so that the men will not be able to see.’ The buzz rose to an excited clamour. ‘This is what I want to do, as a thankoffering. I will engage a gang of well-diggers, and they shall dig the well, and I will pay masons for the stonework round the top, and I will pay carpenters to build the washing-house. But for the arrangement inside the house I shall want two or three women of experience to advise me how it should be devised, for the height of the slabs, for concrete pools or channels for the water, and so on. This is the gift of a woman for women, and in this thing the men shall do what women say.’

  There was a long clamour of discussion. Some of the women were doubtful if the men would ever allow such a thing, and some were doubtful whether it was not impious to wish to alter the arrangements that had satisfied their mothers and their grandmothers before them. But most were avid for the innovation if it could be achieved; once they were used to the idea they savoured it and turned it over, examining it in every detail and discussing where the well should be and where the washhouse, and where the concrete pools should be, and where the drain. At the end of a couple of hours they had accepted the idea whole-heartedly, and Jean was satisfied that it would fill a real need, and that there was nothing that they would have preferred her to give.

  That evening she sat opposite Mat Amin on the small veranda before his house, as she had sat so many times before when matters that concerned the women had to be discussed. She sipped her coffee. ‘I have come to talk with you,’ she said, ‘because I want to give a thankoffering to this place, that people may remember when the white women came here, and you were kind to them.’

  He said, ‘The wife has been talking of nothing else all day, with other women. They say you want to make a well.’

  Jean said, ‘That is true. This is a thankoffering from all the English mems to Kuala Telang, but because we are women it is fitting that it should be a present for the women of this place. When we lived here it was a great labour, morning and evening, to fetch water from the spring and I was sorry for your women when I thought of them, in England, fetching water all that way. That is why I want my thankoffering to be a well in the middle of the village.’

  He said, ‘The spring was good enough for their mothers and their grandmothers before them. They will get ideas above their station in life if they have a well.’

  She said patiently, ‘They will have more energy to serve you faithfully and kindly if they have this well, Mat Amin. Do you remember Raihana binti Ismail who lost her baby when she was three months’ pregnant, carrying this water?’ He was shocked that she should speak of such a thing, but English mems would speak of anything. ‘She was ill for a year after that, and I don’t think she was any good to her husband ever again. If the women had had this well I want to give you as a thankoffering, that accident would not have happened.’

  He said, ‘God disposes of the lives of women as well as those of men.’

  She smiled gently. ‘Do I have to remind you, Mat Amin, that it is written, “Men’s souls are naturally inclined to covetousness; but if ye be kind towards women and fear to wrong them, God is well acquainted with what ye do.”’

  He laughed and slapped his thigh. ‘You said that to me many times when you lived here, whenever you wanted anything, but I have not heard it since.’

  ‘It would be kind to let the women have their well,’ she said.

  He replied, still laughing, ‘I say this to you, Si-Jean; that when women want a thing as badly as they want this well that you have promised them, they usually get it. But this is a matter which concerns the village as a whole, and I must consult my brothers.’

  The men sat in conference next morning, squatting on their heels in the shade of the atap market house. Presently they sent for Jean and she squatted down with them a little to one side as is fitting for a woman, and they asked her where the well was to be put, and where the atap washhouse. She said that everything was in their hands, but it would be convenient for the women if it was on the patch of ground in front of Chai San’s shop, with the atap washhouse west of it and pointing towards Ahmed’s house. They all got up then and went to see the ground and discuss it from all angles, and all the women of the village stood around and watched their lords making this important decision, and Djeen talking with them almost as if she was an equal.

  She did not hurry them; she had lived three years in this village and she knew the slowness of their mental processes, the caution with which all innovations were approached. It took them two days to make up their minds that the well would be a good thing to have, and that the Wrath of God would not descend upon them if they put the work in hand.

  Well-digging is a skilled craft, and there was one family only on the coast who could be entrusted with the work; they lived about five miles from Kuantan. Mat Amin dictated a letter for the Imam to write in the Jawi script, and then they took it into Kuala Rakit and posted it. Jean sent for five sacks of cement from Kota Bahru, and settled down to wait for several weeks while the situation developed.

  She spent much of the time with the fishermen on their boats, or sitting on the beach and playing with the children. She taught them to build sand castles and to play Noughts and Crosses on a chequer drawn with the finger in the sand; she bathed and swam a good deal, and worked for a week in the rice fields at the time of harvest. She had lived so long with these people that she was patient about the passage of time; moreover, she had a use for time to consider what she was going to do with her life now that she had no further need to work. She waited there for three weeks in idleness, and she did not find it tedious.

  The well-diggers and the cement arrived about the same time, and work commenced. The diggers were a family of an old grey-bearded father, Suleiman, and his two sons, Yacob and Hussein. They spent a day surveying the land and all the arguments for the site chosen for the well had to be gone over once again to satisfy these experts; when work finally began it was done quickly and well. The diggers worked from dawn till dusk, with one at the bottom of the shaft and the other two disposing of the soil on top; they bricked it downwards from the top as they worked, supporting the brickwork upon stakes driven into the earth sides.

  Old Suleiman, the father, was a mine of information to the village, for he travelled up and down the east coast of Malaya building and repairing wells, and so visited most villages from time to time. The men and women of Kuala Telang used to sit around watching the progress of the new well and gossiping with the old man, getting news of their acquaintances and relatives up and down the coast. Jean was sitting there one afternoon, and said to him, ‘You are from Kuantan?’

  ‘From Batu Sawah,’ said the old man. ‘That is two hours’ walk from Kuantan. Our home is there, but we are great travellers.’

  She was silent for a moment; then she said, ‘Do you remember the Japanese officer in charge at Kuantan in the first year of the war, Captain Sugamo?’

  ‘Assuredly,’ the old man replied. ‘He is a very bad man, and we were glad when he went away. Captain Ichino who came after him was better.’

  Jean was surprised that he did not see
m to know that Sugamo was dead; she had supposed that the War Crimes Commission would have taken evidence in Kuantan. She told him, ‘Captain Sugamo is dead now. He was sent to the Burma-Siam railway, and there he caused many atrocities, and many murders. But the Allies caught him when the war was over, and he was tried for murder, and executed in Penang.’

  ‘I am glad to hear it,’ the old man replied. ‘I will tell my sons.’ He called down the well with the news; it was discussed a little, and then the men went on with their work.

  Jean asked, ‘Did he do many evil things in Kuantan?’ There was one still hideously fresh in her mind, but she could not bring herself to speak of it directly.

  Suleiman said, ‘Many people were tortured.’

  She nodded. ‘I saw one myself.’ It had to come out, and it did not matter what she said to this old man. ‘When we were starving and ill, a soldier who was a prisoner helped us. The Japanese caught him, and they crucified him with nails through his hands, and they beat him to death.’

  ‘I remember that,’ the old man said. ‘He was in hospital at Kuantan.’

  Jean stared at him. ‘Old man, when was he in hospital? He died.’

  ‘Perhaps there were two.’ He called down the well to Yacob.

  ‘The English soldier who was crucified and beaten at Kuantan in the first year of the war. The English mem knew him. Tell us, did that man die?’

  Hussein broke in. ‘The one who was beaten was an Australian, not English. He was beaten because he stole chickens.’

  ‘Assuredly,’ the old man said. ‘It was for stealing the black chickens. But did he live or die?’

  Yacob called up from the bottom of the well. ‘Captain Sugamo had him taken down that night; they pulled the nails out of his hands. He lived.’

  5

  In Kuantan, in the evening of that day in July 1942, a sergeant had come to Captain Sugamo in the District Commissioner’s house, and had reported that the Australian was still alive. Captain Sugamo found this curious and interesting, and as there was still half an hour before his evening rice, he strolled down to the recreation ground to have a look.

  The body still hung by its hands, facing the tree. Blood had drained from the blackened mess that was its back and had run down the legs to form a black pool on the ground, now dried and oxidized by the hot sun. A great mass of flies covered the body and the blood. But the man undoubtedly was still alive; when Captain Sugamo approached the face the eyes opened, and looked at him with recognition.

  It is doubtful if the West can ever fully understand the working of a Japanese mind. When Captain Sugamo saw that the Australian recognized him from the threshold of death, he bowed reverently to the torn body, and he said with complete sincerity, ‘Is there anything that I can get for you before you die?’

  The ringer said distinctly, ‘You bloody bastard. I’ll have one of your black chickens and a bottle of beer.’

  Captain Sugamo stood looking at the wreck of the man nailed to the tree, and his face was completely expressionless. Presently he turned upon his heel and went back to his house. He called for his orderly as he went into the shade, and he told him to fetch a bottle of beer and a glass, but not to open the bottle.

  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 supped 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 washhouse were completed. She had already started the carpenters upon the washhouse 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 washhouse 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 dispatched 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 washhouse 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 SEAC 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?’