There was no time to rummage about for anything else – perhaps a nail from the boat – with which to make holes in the bounty he had found. His sword was still hanging at his side but it felt achingly heavy. Usually he could raise it above his head with one hand, but he was tired. It took both hands and all his strength.
Nadine woke up. She saw a man in silhouette against the brightness of the sun. Sunlight glinted on steel. His face and figure were indistinct, but the sword… There was only one that had stayed in her memory, the same one that had sliced off Lucy’s head.
Genda was surprised by her scream, but not as surprised as when he looked up and saw a group of uniformed men running towards him.
Something hard hit him in the base of the neck. Something else hit him in the mouth. He fell forward, blood spurting from his nose and mouth, even his ears. Although he tried to speak, to explain his intention, nothing came out but bubbles and garbled incoherency.
‘Did you see that? He was going to cut off her bloody head!’
‘Is he dead?’
‘No. I don’t think so. Shall we chop off his head like he was going to do to the Sheila?’
Nadine heard their voices. ‘Australians?’ Her voice was little above a whisper. Why couldn’t she open her eyes? Why was she so hot and where was Genda, where was Shanti?
‘Marjorie?’
‘Into the sea?’
‘Marjorie? Is that you?’
She found enough strength to get up on her elbows. The world was a blur but she saw the men, saw a bloodied body being swung backwards and forwards.
‘Genda?’
The horror of what she was seeing chilled her fever. She staggered to her feet, fingers clawing at the sleeve of the man beside her.
‘He was going to chop your head off,’ someone said.
‘No! No! He wasn’t.’
The sound of her voice reverberated in her head, yet the men did not seem to hear her; either that or they did not understand.
The sun was blindingly bright, the figures elongated and blurred against the sea.
Someone close and smelling of sweat tried to hold her back.
‘You’re too late. The Jap’s gone into the sea. He’s finished.’
She shook her head. What was that he’d said?
The comment was repeated. ‘The Jap’s gone. He’s dead.’
She was vaguely aware of a body floating face down in the surf. She tried to scream, but no sound came out. Her throat was dry. Her tongue burned her mouth; the words had to be forced onto her lips.
‘He was… American!’
The world went black.
Chapter Thirty-Four
In a ward at the Australian hospital in Darwin, inquisitive eyes gazed quizzically at the girl who’d been imprisoned by the Japanese. There was pity, there was curiosity but there was also embarrassment as they weighed up how best to deal with her.
Because of her condition, she’d been kept in hospital for a long time whilst her wounds healed and she was gradually weaned onto a normal diet.
‘Where were you born?’
‘Benares. India. My father was a government official. My mother was Indian.’
Some of those questioning her registered surprise. Others merely wrote down her details as though it were no more than a shopping list.
‘My baby died,’ she said to one of the doctors attending her.
He exchanged looks with the nurse standing next to him.
‘You gave birth in the camp?’
She nodded.
‘Was this very long after your capture?’
‘Quite a while. I buried her back on one of the islands we passed.’
More surprised looks before the doctor cleared his throat.
‘But your husband wasn’t with you.’
‘No. The father was Japanese-American – mostly American,’ she added, with a small smile that brought tears to her eyes and an ache to her heart. ‘Is he all right? The man I was travelling with?’
‘I’m afraid we don’t know that.’
‘I need to see him,’ she said pleadingly. ‘Please.’
She half-raised herself away from the crisp whiteness of the hospital pillows piled behind her head and tried to reach out for his hand.
‘We know nothing of the man you were travelling with. We must presume that he is dead. Under the circumstances you must concentrate on getting well again.’
Once they considered her relatively healthy, she was transferred to a refugee station where she was interviewed by an officer from one of their nursing corps, and someone from the War Office.
‘So. You were captured just after the fall of Singapore?’
‘Yes.’
‘Were you alone?’
‘No. I was with my husband. The Japanese killed him.’
‘And then you were taken to Sumatra. We believe the camp you describe was on the south-western side of the island, not too far north of the straits separating Sumatra from Java. You followed the coast and landed at one point.’ The woman pushed an open atlas across the table and pointed to where the tail end of Sumatra almost met the westernmost point of Java.
Nadine stared at it blindly but no matter how hard she tried the map was like a jagged tear in the paper not an island at all.
The questioning continued. Urgent voices affecting gentleness though not understanding. Not understanding a thing! And always returning to the same questions.
‘So you were imprisoned by the Japanese.’
‘Yes.’
‘How horrible for you.’
‘It wasn’t pleasant.’
‘You were starved?’
‘We were hungry for most of the time.’
‘And they beat you?’
The bald-headed man from the government department seemed to await her answer with undue relish.
‘Such things happened.’
‘My dear,’ said the woman, dropping her voice. ‘I’m afraid I have to ask you about the child. I presume you were raped.’
Nadine raised her eyes from the map. She took in the woman’s chill blue eyes, the crisply curled hair covering her head like a tightly fitting cap. With a patience born of anticipation, the two of them stared back at her, pens poised, ready to take down the details.
‘I don’t understand. I’ve already told you. My baby, Shanti, died. We buried her.’
The nurse shook her head and smiled kindly. ‘I don’t mean the one who died. I mean the child you are expecting now. Didn’t you know that?’
Speechless that she hadn’t noticed herself, Nadine shook her head. Her thoughts raced and she felt a great wonder deep inside. This time she knew the identity of the child’s father.
‘I didn’t know.’
‘Did he rape you?’
She shook her head. This was just too much to take in.
‘If you were raped we will see that he’s punished,’ the man said gently. ‘And please don’t be embarrassed. You’re far from being the only one. We’ve heard quite a few stories of what these terrible people have been up to.’
They eyed her expectantly, aching to write down that she had answered in the affirmative. She also knew their attitude to her would change drastically should she tell them the truth.
She agonized. Genda would not suffer. He was probably dead, but even so the urge to preserve something of his memory, of the man that he had been, was too strong to ignore.
‘No. He did not rape me. The Japanese officer I was with helped me escape. He had to escape too.’
She could sense their disbelief – no, their disgust – that she had willingly lain with a Japanese major and that he was the father of her child.
‘He was of Japanese descent but in effect an American citizen and in danger of being executed.’
‘Ah!’ said the man, hiding his discomfort by fiddling with his glasses and searching his paperwork for the correct place to insert this worrying information.
The woman looked perturbed at first but swiftly r
eadjusted her lipstick smile and poured out condescension. ‘You were under great strain, my dear. It’s perfectly understandable that you excuse what happened by believing he wasn’t really Japanese at all…’
‘He was a good man! He helped me escape. If he hadn’t I would have died. He would have too. He killed the colonel. The colonel was responsible for a lot of deaths in China. Genda – Major Genda Shamida – hated him.’
She stared at them, hating the way they looked at each other, as though she wasn’t quite sane or was lesser than them in some way.
‘Right!’ said the woman. ‘You can put all this behind you and rebuild your life. Have you written to your parents?’
‘My father’s dead. Or might as well be. We didn’t get on.’
‘And mother?’
‘She’s most definitely dead. I went to her funeral. I’ve got nobody.’
‘Under the circumstances that’s just as well. They’d probably be shocked and reluctant to accept a mongrel child. We can of course arrange to have him adopted and…’
‘No.’ Nadine sprang to her feet. ‘As my father is dead he won’t know that his mongrel daughter had a mongrel baby as you put it!’
The woman looked shocked and unsure quite how to interpret Nadine’s tight-lipped declaration.
‘Yes,’ she snapped, placing her palms face down and leaning on the desk. ‘I’m a mongrel myself! My mother was a Hindustani nautch dancer. Did you know that Christians and converts regarded the nautch dancers as prostitutes? No! Of course you didn’t! And they weren’t – not until they were forced into it because their dances were banned. And that’s the whole point. They did what they had to do in order to survive. Even the devadasi, the temple dancers who sold their bodies as an act of faith. Just as many did in that terrible place I have recently escaped from – just to live, to survive and return to the life we once had. I owe Major Shamida my life – so I’ll keep my baby, thank you very much.’
* * *
It was in winter of 1944 when she was told of her pregnancy. It was early days and came as something of a shock. At first sight it seemed a setback but the feeling swiftly passed. Having new life within fostered in her a great determination that this child would survive.
The Japanese were in retreat on all fronts. US forces were pushing ever closer to the islands of Japan, though fatalities were high and it was feared would go higher.
She fervently hoped that he or she would not be born into the same cruel world as her poor little daughter. This child would have a far better chance. She would make sure of it.
She was lucky enough to find accommodation in a large old house in Darwin, Northern Territory. A widow whose sons were away fighting owned the house. Both women were in need of companionship and somebody to confide in.
‘You can stay here as long as you like,’ said Mrs Worth, a likeable woman with twinkling eyes who confided in Nadine that she’d always wanted a daughter but had only had sons.
Whilst awaiting the birth of her child Nadine wrote letters to her father, his solicitor and other people she remembered from both Benares and Singapore. Her father’s solicitor wrote back to say that her father had died in her absence, leaving everything to her. He also advised that he would forward letters of credit giving her access to funds he would transfer personally into a Darwin bank of her choosing.
The only sadness she felt at the passing of her father was regret that they had not got to know each other better. Perhaps there might have been some kind of reconciliation. Perhaps he might even have enjoyed the company of grandchildren, though bearing in mind what she remembered of her childhood, perhaps not.
The baby was born in the summer of 1945. Germany had already capitulated in May. Following the dropping of atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan surrendered in August.
Nadine smiled down into the face of her baby son and told him the tremendous news.
‘The war’s over, Joseph. The war is over at last and we’re going home.’
It was perfectly possible to wind up her father’s affairs from Darwin, but something was drawing her back to India. There would be no closure, no moving on until she saw her place of birth one more time.
* * *
Joseph was a year old by the time she returned to her home in India. The house in Benares was little changed except that the roses needed attention, though not so much as the pergola where she had once danced with her mother.
The old gardener who had talked to his plants was no more, taken in an outbreak of cholera some time back. Her father had caught the same disease. No definition between race and colour there.
The sun was still as hot, the city just as bustling, seemingly unchanged, and yet she knew it had; India had changed.
The drive for independence had been fuelled by the weakening of the British Empire, the changes wrought by a war that had redrawn frontiers, fuelled aspirations and shifted alliances. There was a new restlessness in the air, a thirst for something more. India would govern herself.
Regardless that this was the country of her birth, it did not feel like home. The possibility of returning to her husband’s plantation in Malaya did not appeal to her either, even if the new constitution there would allow her to take charge of it. In effect, she did not know where she belonged, and of course she had Joseph, her son, to think of.
She asked one of her servants about the future of India and her place in it.
‘You will go home, madam.’
‘Home? This is my home.’
‘No, madam. Your home is in England.’
England! She had never been to England in her life.
‘I only know India. My mother was Indian.’
He was an old man who had served her father for many years. Keeping secrets had been his duty. She could see that her blurted exclamation troubled him.
‘You are a memsahib, missus. You were brought up as a memsahib. You cannot be anything else but a memsahib.’
‘I’m sure independence will happen.’
‘I am sure too, madam. We will have a good Hindu government.’
‘And Muslim surely?’
His heavy eyelids flickered like the wings of a trapped moth. ‘I will not vote for a Muslim. Only Hindu.’
‘But you’re both Indian.’ She couldn’t help the dismay in her voice. Surely millions of civilian war dead counted for something?
He pursed his lips. ‘Their culture is not my culture, their traditions are not my traditions, and their religion is not my religion.’
Hearing him say that was disturbing and brought back a host of memories. She instantly thought of Genda, the only person she knew whose views matched hers.
Even though she had the pergola repaired, the garden tidied and the roses pruned, the house where she had danced with her mother and with Zakia and her sister, was not where she wanted to be.
She was aimless and waiting, but she didn’t know for what. The house held many memories of a different time and of the person she used to be. The only reason she clung on was to ensure that Joseph had a stable home life and could grow in comfort from a baby into a toddler.
She spent her mornings dealing with her dead husband’s plantation in Malaya. There was a lot of paperwork to deal with and the country itself had achieved peace but its constitution was changing. What with that and dealing with the final winding-up of her father’s affairs, and looking after Joseph, she was glad of the occasional respite. Sometimes she stood in Shanti’s old room with Joseph in her arms. Even though he was far too young to understand, she told him about her mother and how they used to dance together.
Sometimes she fancied she could still smell her perfume and hear her bracelets jangling on her arms.
Then one day she went in there and smelled and heard nothing. Everything was gone. There was only the sound of scuttling lizards and the smell of the dusty limewash covering the walls.
It felt to her as though everyone was finally gone, their spirits flown to eternal rest. The house was
empty, even of memories, and she didn’t want to stay here.
But where did she want to be?
She looked at her small son chasing a lizard around the room, falling to his hands and knees as it scurried into a crack in the wall. His hair was very black, his eyes almond-shaped and his face a perfect heart. He did not look English. Neither did he fit into the mould of being Indian. The only place he might fit in was the place where his father had been born – California. But before that there were ends to tie up. Most of all, she had the vague notion that she had said goodbye to this house and her life in India. For that reason alone she was glad she’d stayed here a while. She was now ready to move on but first there were two other places she wanted to revisit: one was the island on which they’d buried her daughter, Shanti, and Lady Marjorie. The other was the island where she’d last seen Genda alive.
Her mind was made up so she wasted no time in contacting a solicitor, telling him she wished to sell the place as quickly as possible. To her delight he told her he knew of somebody who would be very interested.
The solicitor was true to his word. With peace and the possibility of independence, India was changing rapidly. The house was sold to an Indian merchant who was growing wealthy on the purchase and smelting of scrap metal. ‘The war has made much scrap metal and I have bought lots of it,’ he’d told her proudly. ‘I need a house that suits my more elevated standing in my community.’
* * *
She boarded a boat from India to Singapore, taking Joseph Genda Burton with her. At first she had agonized over what to name him, but he was all that was left of a very fine man.
In the distance Singapore rose from the sea like a reclining goddess shrouded in heat-induced mist. It seemed a lifetime ago since she’d last seen it, back when she’d been a married woman.
She’d arranged to stay in a hotel and give herself time to sort out her deceased husband’s estate.
Singapore looked battered and she was in no doubt that the estate would also have suffered.
Martin himself seemed like a leftover from another lifetime. To her great shame she could barely remember what he looked like. Their time together had been fleeting, and though not exactly unhappy, merely mundane.
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