Prisoner from Penang: The moving sequel to The Pearl of Penang

by Clare Flynn

  We lapse into silence. ‘So, what are we going to do about you and Reggie?’ she says at last. ‘Do you care for him?’

  I feel a sob rising in my throat again and push it back down. I have to stay calm. ‘I don’t know, Evie. I didn’t think so. After all, he was Frank’s brother. It doesn’t seem right.’

  ‘Frank’s gone,’ she says quietly. ‘And Frank loved you both and would want you both to be happy above all else.’ She places a hand on my swollen abdomen. ‘Besides you need to think about your child. He or she will need a father. And Susan’s deprived Reggie of being anything other than a distant one to Stanford.’

  I take a gulp of air. ‘The next day, the morning after it happened, Reggie told me he wanted us to spend time together and hinted that he hoped it might eventually lead to something more. I told him it was out of the question. I sent him away.’ A tear runs down my cheek into the corner of my mouth. ‘I was horrible. Mean. Cold. I haven’t seen him since. Oh, Evie, I’ve messed everything up.’

  ‘Don’t be silly,’ she says in a stern voice. ‘It’s not too late. Reggie is one of the nicest men I know. And you and he will be perfect together.’ She claps her hands together. ‘Right, we need to get you to the doctor and find out your due date. Then you need to take yourself up to Bella Vista and tell Reggie he is going to be a father.

  15

  Bella Vista

  Evie is right. The doctor says I am six months’ pregnant. Now that the truth has been confirmed, I wonder how I managed to delude myself for so long that my swelling stomach was the continuing effect of rice belly. Since liberation, I’d been unable to bear eating another grain of the stuff, so what did I think was causing my stomach to keep swelling?

  I suppose I haven’t been able to confront the truth. And I am still not sure I can. Part of me continues to believe I’ve done something wrong. As the former fiancée of Reggie’s brother, I can’t help thinking I’ve committed a sin by allowing what passed between us to happen. In making love with Reggie, I have betrayed Frank.

  Fear is at the bottom of all my doubts and my self-dissembling. I am afraid to grasp hold of happiness, since it has always been true that, as soon as I have had it in my hand, it has been torn away from me. Perhaps I’m not worthy of being happy and that is the reason it has eluded me. My internment has made me fearful, unwilling to trust, unsure of myself and my emotions.

  The idea of becoming a mother terrifies me. Bringing a child into a world where such horrible things as happened to me could happen again. And, having witnessed those things, they might have destroyed my capacity to be a loving mother.

  But most of all, I am afraid to admit that perhaps I might actually love Reggie.

  He is not the kind of man I would usually be drawn to. I paid him little or no attention until his brother’s courtship of me brought him directly into my orbit – and even then, our encounters consisted of little more than polite exchanges. He was just another chap from the club. Just another rubber planter. If I had thought of Reggie at all, it was that he was a bland but pleasant man, not particularly attractive, and that we probably had little in common beyond the fraternal connection. He fell into the large and unexplored category of rather dull married men.

  Yet as I feel the child inside me quicken, I can’t stop thinking about the night he and I spent together. I have never before felt such tenderness for another human being and experienced it being shown to me. My affinity with Reggie is not logical, nor born of strong physical attraction. It goes much deeper. As if we are viscerally connected. Beyond logic, beyond reason. Maybe in the final analysis that’s why I am so scared.

  Evie offers to accompany me up to Bella Vista, but I tell her this is something I have to do alone. My wonderful, kind friend tells me she will drive me up there and leave me to get on with it.

  ‘It can’t be easy driving a car with that belly between you and the steering wheel,’ she says, grinning. ‘I’ll drop you off and make myself scarce.’

  She gives me a sly grin. ‘But I hope to see you later tonight. Reggie’s arranged to come into George Town to have dinner at my house to discuss the estate. You can both come.’ She winks at me, pointing a finger. ‘And never mind the estate business, I want to be the first person you two tell.’

  I start to protest. ‘He may not want me… he may–’

  ‘Rubbish! You are about to make him the happiest man in Penang.’

  I wish I shared Evie’s confidence, but I am swept along by her enthusiasm. I say a silent prayer that she’s right. Because, to my great surprise, now that this is out in the open, I realise that there is nothing more I want than to be with Reggie. The thought of seeing him soon fills me with a mixture of terror and longing.

  Evie drives through the gates to Bella Vista and drops me just short of the padang, where the daily roll call of the coolies is done. I can’t help being reminded of the tenko on that other rubber estate, the scene of Veronica’s death in Sumatra.

  But the atmosphere is different up here at Bella Vista. The sun lights up the ground and the heat is tempered by the altitude and the gentle breeze coming up off the straits. And the coolies – mostly Tamils from South India and Ceylon – have never been expected to bow to the tuan, have always been paid for their labour and are free to come and go, to live with their families and to have plenty of food in their stomachs.

  As I walk across the open stretch of land, I see him – the tuan besar of Bella Vista, Reggie Hyde-Underwood.

  He is standing outside one of the large wooden huts where they roll out the latex into sheets, ready for transporting to the godowns in George Town. Doug’s old dog – and he must be very old – is beside him. After all these months, Reggie appears taller than I remember. He is still thin, rangy, none of his pre-war fleshiness has returned. My stomach does a flip – a combination of nerves and desire.

  He turns, sees me, does a double take, and runs towards me, the dog shambling along behind him. He slows to a walk as he gets closer, his surprise and nervousness about my sudden unannounced appearance, evident on his face.

  ‘Mary.’ He says my name and it speaks a thousand words.

  I look at him and see the uncertainty in his eyes.

  Taking a long, slow breath, trying to control my shaking, I say, ‘I’m having a baby. It’s your baby. I mean we are having a baby, Reggie. Soon.’

  I am struggling to find the right words, when Reggie takes away the need for any words at all by taking me into his arms and kissing me. A long, slow, beautiful kiss. I stand here, on the wide expanse of the padang, as he kisses me again, and keeps on kissing me. I wrap myself in his warmth and tenderness.

  When at last we emerge from the kiss, he asks, ‘Will you marry me, Mary?’

  All I can do is grin. The widest, happiest grin I have ever made.

  Epilogue

  April 1948

  Our baby is a girl. Now a year old. We called her Frances. Apart from her first name being the female version of Frank’s given name, it means ‘free one’. That strikes me as a singularly appropriate name for the first child of two former prisoners of war. I hope and pray that she will live in a different world from the one her parents experienced. That she will be part of a new freer future for the country that is our home.

  Frances is a lively baby. Strong and healthy. Already a year old and able to stand on her chubby wobbly legs. Beautiful – with a mop of light brown hair and eyes of the most beautiful hazel green. She is a miracle. After the years of starvation and suffering I still can’t believe my body was capable of conceiving and bearing a child.

  Reggie is a devoted father. He is besotted with his daughter. Just as – to my constant astonishment – he is besotted with me. And I with him.

  I had believed his brother to be the love of my life, but I was wrong. Frank was and will always be dear to my heart and I will always love him. But with Reggie I have found my true soul mate. The joy of finding such a deep and enduring love, when I had abandoned all hope of it, is all t
he sweeter. Every day I send up my thanks to God or the universe – my faith is flexible – that we found each other. We are different in so many ways, yet that in itself is the source of the joy we take in each other’s company.

  We never speak of the war. We never need to. Both of us instinctively knows when the other is feeling low, when the bad memories encroach. We are there with each other, for each other. He is the balm to my troubled soul. When I experience the occasional day of utter despair and sadness, Reggie senses it and knows not to ask questions, but to hold me, to love me, to heal me. And I him.

  I have begun teaching again. Not at my old school down in George Town, but up here in the nearby kampong. I am teaching the children of the coolies and the local villagers to read and write in English – something that will stand them in good stead for the future. I bring Frances with me to the hut where I hold the lessons and one of the mothers cares for her while I take the class.

  I am not without anxiety for the future. The communists and nationalists have been growing in influence in Malaya since the war and it feels the unrest might be coming to a head. The Japanese did all they could to foment this – with their ‘Asia for the Asians’ propaganda. And to be honest, I am not unsympathetic. This country rightly belongs to its indigenous people. Not to us British interlopers. Not to the big British, American, Dutch and French rubber companies. I hope we will find a way to co-exist peacefully, no longer as white masters, enjoying wealth and privilege while the locals serve us.

  I abhor violence. How could I not, after what I have lived through? The conditions for the workers at Bella Vista are good, better than any on the island. Reggie is in the process of buying the estate from Evie, but I have a nagging fear that our tenure here may be short-lived. I hate the thought that one day we may be forced to leave, to give up the life we both love, to abandon our home and find another. Yet whatever happens, we will get through it. Together.

  Who can possibly know what the future might hold? Whatever it brings to our door, I believe Reggie and I have the strength to cope with it after what we have each gone though. And we will stay in Penang, please God.

  After all the sorrow in my life, I never expected to find happiness. I thought I was blighted. Cursed even. The woman with two dead fiancés. A damaged survivor of the Sumatran camps. How wrong I was.

  Each morning, as the sunlight slips through the slats of the wooden shutters and I feel a soft breeze on my face, I am filled with contentment. In the evenings, sitting with Reggie on the veranda sipping a sundowner, I listen to the sound of the cicadas and together we watch the fireflies dancing towards us in the dark and I tell myself I am blessed. What happened to me in the war has made me see the world with a different perspective. It has made me notice and be thankful for small things.

  Sometimes, I prepare a picnic and we take Frances and climb up to a little plateau at the top of the estate. Up there we can see the straits and the distant peak of Kedah on the mainland. The birdsong is magical, and it feels like we three are the only people in this place of paradise.

  On the anniversary of Frank’s death in December, Reggie and I took the ferry across the strait to Butterworth, to drop flowers over the side into the waters that are his grave. We will do this every year as long as we are able, as long as we are here in Penang. There is no official memorial for the RAF and Australian Airforce men who died here – just as there is no official graveyard or headstone for my mother and Veronica and all the others who died in those vile camps in Sumatra. They all live on in my memories.

  As we stand side-by-side, watching our garland of flowers drift across the calm waters of the straits, I reach for Reggie’s hand and he squeezes mine in return.

  THE END

  To learn more about Mary and for Evie’s story, read the best-selling The Pearl of Penang, the novel that precedes Prisoner from Penang. “This book hit me in the gut. It was magical to read and will stay with me for some time. Wonderful.”

  Find out more about The Pearl of Penang on Clare’s website

  https://clareflynn.co.uk/the-pearl-of-penang.html

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  Acknowledgments

  I am indebted in particular to two accounts of the experiences of women imprisoned by the Japanese during the Second World War.

  The Real Tenko by Mark Felton examines prisoner experiences across the whole Pacific theatre while Women Beyond the Wire by Lavinia Warner and John Sandilands focuses on the Sumatran camps. The latter was the background to the stories and characters in the 1970s British television series Tenko and the more recent feature film Paradise Road. These books, as well as other biographical accounts, demonstrate the conditions under which the women and children existed in the prison camps and were invaluable sources. I chose not to watch the two fictionalised accounts, as I wanted to be free to shape my own story and characters without influence. The central story of Mary’s captivity is the product of my imagination but consistent with history. Many details about everyday camp life are drawn from the true accounts.

  I have included references to actual events, such as the slaughter of nurses and wounded men shipwrecked from the Vyner Brooke, the execution of patients and medical staff in the British Military Hospital in Singapore, and the death of the airman at Muntok camp after the make-shift amputation of both his feet. Other incidents, such as the repairing of the thatched roof by a plucky Dutch nun and the terrible circumstances of the long trip between Banka and the rubber estate in Sumatra are closely based on actual events.

  I borrowed heavily from history to locate the story – following the movement of the captured women between Muntok camp, the Dutch Houses at Irenelaan in Palembang, the Palembang men’s camp, Muntok Atap camp in Banka and finally the isolated Dutch rubber plantation at Belalu.

  The evacuation of Singapore was indeed botched and the Japanese navy and airforce bombed and shipwrecked several vessels carrying women and children – the Kuala lost off PomPong island in particular.

  The diet, diseases, daily routines and treatment of the women in the camps draws directly on real experiences and the composition of the camps by nationality is consistent with the facts.

  My characters may have experienced some of the tribulations the real women went through, but are entirely fictitious, so too are the Japanese guards, including Shoei.

  As always, thanks to my wonderful editor, Debi Alper, designer Jane Dixon-Smith, and Eastbourne critiq
ue group partners, Margaret, jay, Maureen and Joanna. A big thanks to my fabulous eagle-eyed readers Debbie Marmor, JT Carey, Jill Hiatt, Lynn Osborne, Cyndi Wannamaker and Irene, who all kindly did a pre-publication proof-read on super-fast timing. To the Facebook Second World War Authors group, particularly Marion Kummerow, who provided the impetus to write this book. To my wonderful author friends in ‘The Sanctuary’ who are a constant source of advice, encouragement and empathy. Most of all, to my loyal readers who make this possible and so worthwhile.

  About the Author

  Clare Flynn is the author of eleven historical novels and a collection of short stories. A former Marketing Director and strategy consultant, she was born in Liverpool and has lived in London, Newcastle, Paris, Milan, Brussels and Sydney and is now enjoying being in Eastbourne on the Sussex coast where she can see the sea and the Downs from her windows.

  When not writing, she loves to travel (often for research purposes) and enjoys painting in oils and watercolours as well as making patchwork quilts and learning to play the piano again.

  Read more about Clare and her books on her website

  https://clareflynn.co.uk

  Also by Clare Flynn

  The Pearl of Penang

  Kurinji Flowers

  Letters from a Patchwork Quilt

  The Green Ribbons

  The Gamekeeper’s Wife

  A Greater World

  Storms Gather Between Us

  The Canadians collection

  The Chalky Sea

  The Alien Corn

  The Frozen River