The Other Side of Paradise (21 page)

‘How interesting.’

‘London very foggy. Very cold.’

‘Yes, it can be.’

‘Perhaps I return one day, but in summer.’

‘Perhaps you will.’

‘I have not yet seen
Syonan
. I hear it is very nice place.’

‘Yes, it is.’

‘The English build good buildings. Make parks and gardens. In Japan we have very beautiful gardens, also. More beautiful than in England.’

‘Really?’

She kept her eyes fixed on the gecko on the wall, who was still listening. She might have to bow to this man but she didn’t have to be chummy to him. After a moment’s silence, he snapped something to the guards and with more bayonet brandishing and kicking they were hustled out of the hut, retrieving the coolie hats from the floor as they went. They were given some water and a bowl with a little rice in the bottom; the rice was grey and dirty but it was food and she made the children eat it, Peter pulling disgusted faces.

By the time they were taken to one of the huts, it was completely dark. The guard carried a torch and flashed it around as they went inside. White women and children were lying in rows on the bare earth floor and they raised their heads, blinking like animals disturbed and frightened by sudden light. Before Susan could find a spare space for them to lie down the guard and the torch had gone, leaving them in the dark.

There were over two hundred prisoners in the camp – English women and children who had been shipwrecked in the Bangka Strait fleeing from Singapore, and Dutch women and children from Sumatra, including some nuns. At first there had also been men but they had been taken away; nobody knew where or what had happened to them. There was no sign of Stella or any of the other Australian nurses, and no news of them. Several of the women and children had been wounded in the attack on the ships but there were no doctors, no medicines or antiseptics. Water came from a well, carried in buckets, the lavatory was an open ditch, there was no soap and only one towel. When there was a monsoon downpour they stood out in it, faces uplifted, to let it wash them and their clothes.

The daily routine never varied.
Tenko
, the camp roll call, was at 7 a.m. when the prisoners lined up to be counted and to bow low to the Japanese commandant, Captain Atsuji. Women who had refused to bow at the beginning had been beaten by the guards. Now, everyone bowed.

At midday they queued for the first meal – a few spoonfuls of burned grey rice slopped from a bucket and a cup of tasteless liquid from another bucket that was supposed to be tea. At 4 p.m. they were given more rice with tiny pieces of vegetable or specks of something that might have been meat, or little lumps of pork fat floating in water that was called soup. Some of the Dutch had spoons and forks but the English prisoners had to eat with their fingers. There was nothing to do all day but walk up and down until the evening
tenko
at 5 p.m. Bedtime was at 7 p.m. followed by a seemingly endless night spent lying on the earth floor – the time when mosquitoes and bugs launched their main attack.

The wounded died, one after the other, and were buried in rough graves dug outside the camp: eight women and four children. The Dutch nuns led the prayers, wooden crosses were made and marked with the name and the date, jungle flowers were picked and made into wreaths for each one.

New prisoners kept arriving at the camp so that soon there was scarcely room in the huts to lie down. Sleep, in any case, was very difficult. Apart from the attacking insects, the Jap guards had a sadistic habit of shining their torches into the huts, deliberately waking everyone up and making the babies and young children cry. Sometimes they hit the prisoners on the legs with their bayonets or kicked them with their hard-toed boots, for good measure.

The woman standing next to Susan and the children in the food queue said, ‘You’re Susan Roper, aren’t you? I didn’t recognize you at first. I was at one of your mother’s luncheons last November.’

She hadn’t recognized Mrs Cotton either – last seen all dressed up to the nines and now ragged and barefoot, face burned lobster red by the sun.

‘Your mother’s not here, is she? What’s happened to her? Is she all right?’

‘She’s on a ship going to Australia.’

‘Why aren’t you with her?’

‘I changed my mind.’

‘Oh dear! You should have gone with her. You really should. Australia would have been safe. Mind you, I wouldn’t have left Singapore at all if my husband hadn’t insisted on it. He stayed though. Heaven knows what’s happened to him now.’

‘Have you heard any news?’

‘Only what the Japs tell you and, of course, you can’t believe everything they say. They say we surrendered and they’ve taken over and I dare say that’s true. Jim, my husband, always said it was bound to happen in the end. He thought the British in charge were useless and that nobody took the Japs seriously enough. I can remember saying something about it to Lady Battersby at that last lunch of your mother’s. Of course she thought I was talking rubbish. She’s here too, by the way. She was on the ship with me – her husband stayed behind in Singapore, too. We ended up in the same lifeboat.’

It was hard to imagine Lady B. taking to a lifeboat.

‘I haven’t seen her.’

‘You wouldn’t have done. She’s been locked up on her own in the punishment hut because she refused to bow to the commandant. We haven’t seen her for at least a week. She may be dead, for all we know. The Japs don’t seem to care if we live or die. And I don’t know how we’re going to stay alive on the rations they give us. Who are these children with you, by the way?’

Susan explained.

Mrs Cotton lowered her voice. ‘It’s the children I’m most sorry for. Poor little things. They haven’t got much of a chance in conditions like these.’

She was right about that. The heat, the mosquitoes, the bad food, the filth and the flies. Fevers and all kinds of diseases would spread fast and furiously. One of the babies was the next to die, and the mother’s anguished howls could be heard all over the camp. Susan watched Hua and Peter anxiously for signs of illness. They spent the days playing with the other English children, much as they had done with the native ones in the
kampong
.

Hua was learning some English words and Susan kept teaching her more. In Cantonese she asked, ‘What is your other name, Hua?’

The almond eyes screwed up. ‘I don’t remember.’

‘Do you have brothers or sisters?’

The child shook her head.

‘What does your father do?’

She lifted her small shoulders, giggled.

The Chinese settlement had been a poverty-stricken place so the father would have had a low-paid job – working in hotel kitchens, perhaps, or as some kind of humble servant, perhaps even as a rickshaw-wallah. There were more Chinese than Malays in Malaya and some of the Chinese immigrants had grown very rich, but Hua’s family would have been poor.

‘Do you have uncles or aunts, Hua?’

This time she nodded. She had an aunt whose name was Su.

‘Did she live with you, in the same place?’

Another shake of the head. Aunt Su had lived somewhere else, which was lucky for her or she would probably have been killed too.

She asked the same sort of questions of Peter, but warily because she knew that he found it a painful subject.

‘You’ve never told me your surname, Peter. What is it?’

He dug in the dirt with one foot, not looking at her.

‘Travers.’

‘Do you have a middle name?’

‘Yes, but I
hate
it.’

‘It can’t be that bad.’

‘Yes, it can.’

‘What is it? I won’t tell anybody else.’

‘It’s Cecil. I was named after my grandfather.’

‘Your father’s father?’

He nodded.

‘Where does your grandfather live?’

‘In England.’

‘Well, I think you’ve got a very nice name. Peter Cecil Travers. That sounds awfully smart. When you’re rich and famous you might be
Sir
Peter. What are you going to be when you’re grown up?’

He dug away with his toe. ‘I don’t know yet.’

‘Well, you’ve got plenty of time to decide. Perhaps you’ll be the same as your father. What does he do?’

‘He’s an engineer.’

‘What sort of engineer?’

‘He builds bridges and things like that.’

‘Is his name Peter, too?’

‘No.’

She persisted gently. ‘What is it?’

‘John.’

‘Where did you live before you came down to Singapore?’

He dug deeper. ‘Lots of places.’

‘What was the last place?’

‘Kuala Kubu.’

‘I used to live in Kuala Lumpur. That’s not far away. Did your father stay behind when you and your mother left to go down to Singapore?’

He nodded.

‘So, that was the last time you saw him?’

He nodded again, biting his lip.

She was as bad as Captain Atsuji with his barrage of questions, but at least she now knew Peter’s full name, and she knew that his father was a civil engineer called John who had stayed on in Kuala Kubu and that he had a grandfather in England called Cecil. It would all help to return Peter to his family one day.

Peter dug on with his toe. ‘How long are we going to be in this place?’

‘I don’t know,’ she told him. ‘Quite a long time, I expect. The Japs will keep us prisoner until the British and Americans win the war and I’m afraid that won’t happen for a while. We must just make the best of things. I promise you one thing, Peter.’

He lifted his head and looked at her. ‘What’s that?’

‘When the war’s over and we’re set free, I’ll find your father for you.’

‘He might not be alive. He might have been killed like Mummy.’

‘He’s an engineer, not a soldier, so he’ll probably be quite all right. We’ll find him. And we’ll find your grandfather in England, too. That’s a promise.’

He nodded and went off to join the other children, who were making long ropes out of plaited palm leaves. The girls used theirs for skipping, the boys theirs for jumping. Peter, she noticed, was rather a good athlete. Perhaps he took after his father – the father called John who, like her own father, might be alive or might be dead.

After supper – rice again, this time with a piece of half-raw potato and some scraps of rubber that were, apparently, dried octopus – one of the guards came up to Susan. He spoke in bad Malay. Captain Atsuji wanted to see her. A sharp prod with the bayonet. At once.

She went into the hut, took off her hat and bowed.

‘You like cigarette?’

A tin full of Players was being offered across the table – obviously filched from the British.

‘No, thank you.’ She would have loved one, but not from a Jap.

He lit one for himself, blowing the smoke tantalizingly in her direction.

‘English cigarette. Very good.’

She waited, fists clenched. What was his game? What was he up to? The kerosene lamp on the table was making little hissing sounds and moths were beating their wings helplessly against the glass. His slit-eyed face looked frightening in the lamplight – like a carnival mask.

‘Your name Susan. Susan Roper.’

‘I’ve already told you that.’

‘Yes, we have list of prisoners now. All names.’

‘Bully for you.’

She saw that he was puzzled by the English slang.

‘You talk to me. Good talk.’

‘I
am
talking to you.’

‘Is bad talk. Not good. You speak to me like friend.’

Like a friend? Oh God …

‘I’m not your friend. I’d sooner be dead.’

He scowled. ‘I order you as prisoner. You talk and teach me good English. How to use correct words.’

She nearly laughed aloud with relief. The horrible little man only wanted to improve his terrible English. She shrugged.

‘If you like.’

‘We start now. I say good morning. How are you?’

‘Sick as a dog.’

He frowned. ‘This is correct?’

‘The English use the expression all the time. It means not very well.’

‘So … Sick as a dog. Now you ask me how I am.’

‘How are you?’

‘I am very well, thank you.’

‘An Englishman would say I’m in the pink.’

He repeated it carefully.

‘We talk about weather now. English weather. Today it is very cold.’

‘Yes, it’s bloody freezing.’

Again he repeated it. ‘Bloody freezing. I ask more questions.’

‘Carry on.’

‘What is the time, please?’

‘I haven’t the foggiest.’

‘Fog? I do not talk of weather now.’

‘It’s nothing to do with the weather. It just means I’ve no idea.’

‘I not have foggiest.’

‘
The
foggiest.’

‘I not have the foggiest.’

‘I have not the foggiest.’

‘I have not the foggiest. This is correct?’

‘Yes. You’ve got it right.’

‘I ask another question. Where is the train stop, please?’

‘Not stop. Kennel. You must ask for the kennel. Where is the train kennel, please? That’s what you say.’

The ridiculous English lesson dragged on. If he ever got to London again she would love to see people’s faces when he tried to ask his way or to strike up a polite conversation. He was looking very pleased with himself.

‘Now you ask me things and I answer.’

‘All right. Can we have more food? We aren’t given enough to survive and what we are given has gone bad. And we need medicines, especially for the children. Some of them are very ill.’

His face darkened. ‘This not good talk.’

‘You said Japanese people weren’t savages but you are letting us die. Only savages would do that.’

He jumped to his feet and hit her across the face so hard that she staggered sideways. Then he hit her again, harder still, and she fell to the ground.

‘You very bad woman. Not respect Japanese officer. You go now.’

The guard kicked her with his boot as she struggled to her feet. ‘Bow to officer. Show respect.’

In the hut, Mrs Cotton said, ‘Are you all right, Susan?’

She touched the side of her face gingerly. Her lip was bleeding and already swollen and a tooth felt loose. ‘I’m OK.’

‘What on earth did he want?’