To Love a Sunburnt Country

by Jackie French

  The house was eerie, another family’s photos of relatives on the side tables, music abandoned on the piano, even underwear and nightdresses in the drawers. The family who had left had gone in a hurry, carrying only what their car could hold. Just as Moira left her home and possessions on my say-so, thought Nancy.

  Kuala Lumpur was eerie too. Streets of empty houses, and not just the colonial bungalows. Many Chinese, Indian, even Malay residents had left the city too, fleeing to the country or at least a smaller village, anywhere hopefully safe from the bombing. Blocks of flats shone empty eyes onto the street; others stood seemingly intact, but when you looked behind only the façade was left, the rest rubble. Lines of cars stood looking perfect, but were in fact perfectly useless: their tyres all flat from flying shrapnel, their windscreens shattered from the concussion of exploding bombs, even if the paintwork was hardly scratched. The Japanese bombs were small and spread low. And each plane seemed to hold a lot of them.

  Nancy glanced out through the tape on the Club windows. Please, no raid tonight until the dinner rush is over, she thought tiredly. One more hour here and the worst would be done.

  ‘Feet hurting?’ Miss Reid smiled at her, her arms full of greasy plates.

  ‘Not too bad.’

  Miss Reid looked down at Nancy’s flat Chinese slippers. Nancy flushed. The slippers were comfortable: you couldn’t wear boots with a dress and it was impossible to wear jodhpurs to the Club. There was no way she was going to totter all day and part of the night between the kitchen and dining room in high heels, even the sensible heels that Miss Reid and the other women wore.

  But Miss Reid just looked approving. ‘I must see if my boy can get a pair of those for me at the market. I had to soak my feet for an hour before I could get to sleep last night.’

  Miss Reid was Australian, not English. She had come to Malaya to work for a rubber exporting firm, though she now worked at military headquarters. Perhaps as a working woman, thought Nancy, she was more tolerant of quirks such as wearing comfortable shoes than the mems whose only work had been ordering servants around and the parties, golf and picnics of colonial social life.

  ‘There are some back at the house that would fit you. I’ll bring them in tomorrow.’

  A few days ago it had been hard to use others’ possessions, from the pale yellow dress with lace collar she now wore under her apron to the green silk dressing gown embroidered with red dragons she’d found in the bedroom and guiltily adored. Now like everyone else in Kuala Lumpur, Nancy tacitly acknowledged that those who had fled would not return. Even if the Japanese were pushed back — when they were pushed back, Nancy told herself — this would remain a land at war for months, or years, with the Japanese bases in Thailand and Burma so close. Dresses, shoes, slippers and sheets left behind would rot, or be captured by the Japanese troops, or be blown to debris in the almost daily bombing raids. And Miss Reid had been so kind, practically single-handedly trying to locate the men from the volunteer Civil Defence Forces, to put them in contact with their evacuated families, neither having any idea where the other might be.

  ‘Thanks.’ Miss Reid hesitated. ‘I haven’t been able to get any news about Captain Clancy. But I did get a call through to Tanjung Malim. A few of the local Defence Corps men I know there are liaisons with the regular army. They’ve promised to get the word out that Captain Clancy’s family is here.’

  ‘You’ll let me know if you hear that …’ That Ben was dead, wounded or taken prisoner — all-too-possible reasons why he had not yet contacted his family.

  ‘If there is any news at all, I’ll let you know at once.’ And she would, thought Nancy, as Miss Reid moved on, setting down the plates with one hand while picking up another round of sausages and mash with the other. Miss Reid was one of the most capable women she’d ever met.

  Nancy placed the bowl of fruit salad and ice cream in front of a sweating major, then clattered the plates of sausages in front of a middle-aged civilian and a young lieutenant at the far table. ‘Dinner is served, tuans.’

  The young officer stared at his plate, his eyes shadowed.

  The civilian grinned at the mockery in her voice.

  ‘Thank you, miss,’ he said, tucking in his napkin. ‘First meal I’ve had since lunch yesterday. My boy ran off in the raid last night, leaving dinner half cooked. Had to give the chicken to the dogs.’

  ‘You should have brought it here. We’ll cook anything for you. Be glad of the supplies.’

  ‘Roger, will do.’ He forked in a hunk of sausage with a generous splodge of mash. ‘Come on, lad. Eat,’ he said to his companion.

  The young officer lifted his fork as if he wasn’t sure what to do with it.

  The dining-room gong tolled behind them.

  ‘Air raid,’ said Miss Reid calmly. ‘Gentlemen, if you would step this way …’

  Nancy followed her, then glanced back. The young lieutenant still sat at the table. She stepped back, and gently touched his arm. ‘Come on. The spotters usually only give us fifteen minutes’ notice.’

  He nodded numbly. She took his hand to urge him up, then kept hold of it as they crossed what had been the lawn, now piled with hillocks and raw wood poles. The air seemed to shiver with unspilled rain, the sky above a sheet of grey, as if it had agreed to give camouflage to the bombers. ‘In here.’

  The shelters were big concrete pipes set in among the newly made hillocks, thick with humidity and fear. Young Malay troops were already inside, their rifles and bayonets on their laps as they crouched against the curved walls. Nancy privately felt that they might be in more danger from the unseasoned and nervous troops than the bombers.

  The first shelter was already full, and the second. She shoved the lieutenant into the third, then reached over to pull the door shut behind them.

  The darkness closed around them, the heat, the damp, the smell of sweat. She tried to listen for the first sound of aircraft, or the answering fire of ack-ack guns. Kuala Lumpur had no air defences, no planes that might attack the enemy. The few lumbering old Brewster Buffalos — chronically short of spare parts and with many years’ back-log of repairs despite the pleas of their Australian pilots — had been shot down in the first days of attack in what gossip said were impossible raids, ordered against the advice of the men who had to fly them, and die in the attempt. Now the town’s only defence was the ack-ack guns that might — or might not — hit a plane or two while the others unloaded their bombs. Twenty-seven planes, always in formation, following the lead plane …

  She felt the lieutenant tremble beside her. ‘We haven’t been introduced,’ she said brightly. ‘I’m Nancy Clancy.’

  She hoped he’d make the usual joke about the rhyme. Instead he said, ‘Bruce Ruddley.’

  ‘Pleased to meet you, Lieutenant Ruddley. What brings you to this part of the world?’

  She could hear the effort it took him to keep his voice steady. ‘Assistant manager at the tin mines.’

  ‘Ah.’ The Japanese will want the tin, she thought, just as they need Malaya’s rubber.

  ‘What about you, Miss Clancy?’ His voice sounded as if he had had to heave the polite words from some far-off place.

  ‘I came to stay with my brother and his wife. He runs … ran a rubber plantation up north.’ Would he and Moira ever be able to go back there? Ever want to go back? At least Moira and Gavin should be safe from the air raids tonight in their house by the jungle, too far from the central buildings for the enemy to bother bombing.

  She could hear the first drone of the enemy planes now, the chatter of the ack-acks. The shock wave of the first bombs hit. The man beside her gave a small cry. She reached for his hand again. ‘We’re quite safe here.’

  Actually, she didn’t know if they were safe or not — the hastily constructed air-raid shelters had never had a direct hit. But they were safe from flying debris and shrapnel, more likely killers than taking a direct hit from a bomb itself.

  ‘Not safe,’ he whispered. ‘They’re
coming for us. Coming for us all.’

  It was too true to argue with. ‘Then we’ll fall back to Singapore. There’s no way the Japanese can take Singapore.’

  She felt rather than saw him turn towards her. ‘You don’t understand. They don’t move like a normal army. You march up the road and there they are, these little men on bicycles. And you think, this will be easy. No one can move through the jungle. The only way north or south is on the road, or up the river. But before you even take aim they’re behind you too. Paratroopers with machine guns, dropped in the night before. They come through the jungle too. No one can come through the jungle! But they do, carrying those damn bicycles …’

  His voice was a thin croak in the darkness. She leant closer to listen, despite the noise of the aircraft, the guns, the shattering of who knew what around them. ‘They opened fire. Six of us left alive, the others lying all around. We put our arms up, held our rifles in the air, called out that we surrendered. The Japs made us kneel.’ His words leapt out now, as if he couldn’t stop them. ‘Six of us, kneeling by the river. They shot us, one by one.’ The words stopped as if the tap had been turned off.

  ‘But … you’re still alive.’

  ‘I was number six,’ he said flatly. ‘I shut my eyes. I tried to pray, but all I could think of was Grandma’s Christmas pudding. She’d promised to send me one. I thought what a thing to think about at the end of your life, a Christmas pudding. And then I heard a scream …

  ‘I stayed there with my eyes shut, waiting for the shot. And then I opened them. And there were these big men surging from the river, naked as the day they were born, waving great curved swords like they were chopsticks. That’s what they did with them — chop, chop, chop — and every single one of those Japs was dead. And I was still alive.’

  She tried not to let her mind see what he had described, but the image came nonetheless. ‘Who were the men who saved you?’

  ‘Gurkhas. They’d heard we’d been ambushed. Stripped off, swam underwater with their swords strapped to their waists with cords.’ She heard him take a breath. ‘They gathered up the heads they’d chopped off and hung them about their waists, then they plunged back into the river.’

  ‘They left you there?’

  ‘I can’t swim much. Besides, there was … no one … no one at all … I was safe. Safe!’ She could hear that he was sobbing now. ‘I walked through bodies, their bodies and ours. I walked and walked. Walked past the bodies, walked along the jungle track and there was no one. No one. Then I came to a crossroads and a dispatch rider rode up and he gave me a lift on the back of his bike. He said he needed dinner. Dinner.’ He gave a small shudder. ‘So we came here. He saw some friends in the bar and I … I just sat where you found me.’

  Did anyone even know this man had survived? she wondered. Or that his comrades had been killed? ‘Have you reported in?’ she asked gently.

  ‘I … I don’t know who to report to here.’

  Miss Reid will know, she thought, if they could catch her before she vanished to work at the Defence Headquarters after serving breakfast (sausage with bread instead of mash). She wondered if the young woman ever slept.

  The ground had stopped shaking. The ack-ack guns were quiet. She could hear the drone of the planes getting fainter. She reached over the lieutenant and opened the door.

  The world was white. For a moment she thought it was dust and debris, the club house bombed to shards, then realised it was paper. She clambered out and picked up a leaflet.

  It was Japanese propaganda, very like ones she’d seen before, dropped after the bombs. Some were printed in Chinese, others in Malay and Indian dialects. She could read none of them, but had been told by Miss Reid that they promised freedom and prosperity to all Asians once the British colonial oppressors were defeated.

  This one had no words, just two images — one that showed an English officer with a giant moustache and bucked teeth, sitting with a luscious blonde on his knee, a tankard of beer in his hand. Below was another scene: Indian troops dead and dying, their shattered bodies among barbed wire, the blood — the only colour on the page — dripping down the paper.

  Liberators, she thought. No English person she had met had considered that anyone might think the Japanese were truly liberating the country. They wanted the Malays’ rubber, tin, rice, and the local labour force to get them. But she had heard her grandmother’s stories, of land taken, of uncles, cousins killed. She could hear Gran’s quiet voice now. ‘I was born at the end of a war. We lost.’

  It was easier for her to think of the British as an invading force than it would be for most of the other people in Malaya, colonists or locals, not the spearhead of civilisation that they thought themselves to be. But the Japanese as liberators? No. Instinctively she knew that once you came as a conqueror, you stayed one. There was no freedom for anyone in Malaya coming from the north.

  The young lieutenant stumbled out into the open air beside her, blinking at the daylight. She took his arm, and led him over to Miss Reid, who was clambering out of the first bunker. ‘Miss Reid, would you mind finding out who Lieutenant Ruddley should report to —?’

  ‘Nancy!’ The voice came from over at the club house.

  She turned. It was Ben.

  Chapter 8

  Gibber’s Creek Gazette, 18 December 1941

  Cabinet Approves Employment of Women in Factories

  Prime Minister Curtin has announced that as a war measure Cabinet has decided to approve the extensive employment of women in industries where men are not available. The Prime Minister assures us that such employment will only be for the duration of the war, and that the women will be replaced by men as soon as male labour is available. A sub-committee will be formed to prevent the encroachment on men’s jobs by cheap female labour.

  KUALA LUMPUR, 18 DECEMBER 1941

  NANCY

  He looked like he always looked, rumpled, even if these clothes were army uniform. He even had a beer in his hand. Trust Ben, Nancy thought, to find himself a drink in the middle of an air raid.

  He drained the glass, placed it on the ground, then enveloped her in a hug. He even smelt the same, the sweat that was essentially Ben sweat, still, she thought, with a tang of gum leaves.

  He pulled back. ‘You’re looking good. I like that dress.’ He grinned at her. ‘Even wearing lipstick.’

  She flushed. With Miss Reid managing to wear lipstick, it had seemed — to use Moira’s phrase — to be letting the side down if she couldn’t keep her lips rouged too. ‘Where have you been?’

  The grin grew wider. ‘Fighting a bloody war.’

  ‘Don’t you swear at me, Ben Clancy.’

  ‘Who was it who called Mrs McNaughton a silly old —’

  She punched him, hard, on the shoulder. He stepped back, laughing, the exchange the same as it had been since she was four and he was thirteen, and she discovered that if she punched him he wouldn’t hit back. Some things, at least, were easier as a female, and punching your brother — or that shearer up past Nyngan with the (she hoped) broken nose — was one of them.

  ‘Moira all right? And Gavin?’ His voice lost its laughter.

  ‘They’re fine. Gavin can sit up all by himself! We’re staying in a bungalow up towards the tin mine — no danger from the bombs there, the Japs won’t want to damage the mine.’ She was about to offer to drive him home, then realised that he might want — need — time alone with his wife and son, without worrying what a sister might hear. ‘Ben, you have to get Moira to leave. Down to Singapore, and a ship to home.’

  ‘I will.’

  ‘She says she’s been waiting to see you.’

  She thought he’d be as exasperated as she was at Moira endangering Gavin by staying in Malaya. Instead he gave a half-smile. ‘I married a good ’un, didn’t I?’

  She stared at him. Moira a good ’un? Spoilt, snobbish. Thinking if she went to Overflow, she’d be expected to sit in the kitchen and drink her tea with a black woman, and call her Gr
an. And she’d be right. But Nancy had never tried to talk to her brother about his choice of wife. This was not the time to begin.

  ‘I’m glad she’s here. I know, I know,’ he held up his hand as she began to protest, ‘I tried to get her to go south months ago, as soon as she was strong enough. But the way things are going, well, I may not get a chance to see them for a long time. But I’ll tell her she needs to go now. For Gavin’s sake. For mine, so I know they’re safe. And you. But Moira makes her own mind up about things.’ His smile was different now, the one he always had when he spoke of Moira, or saw her when he came in from the plantation or manoeuvres. ‘Gavin’s tooth come through yet?’

  ‘Not yet. But he’s drooling enough to fill a bathtub. Here.’ Nancy handed him the car keys and its piston rings — all vehicles had to be immobilised now so no Japanese paratroopers who might come down after the air raids could use them. ‘Take the street to your right, then drive towards the tin mine. It’s in the last street, the house with the bougainvillea in front and a million nappies hanging up under the veranda. Can’t miss it.’

  ‘Thanks, sis. How will you get back though?’

  ‘Have to stay on duty here till late,’ she lied. ‘Then be up to start breakfast. We’re shorthanded.’ Which was no lie. Nor was, ‘There are plenty of spare bedrooms now.’

  ‘With locks on them? Wouldn’t trust some of these chaps as far as I could chuck them.’

  ‘With locks on them, big brother. How long can you stay?’

  ‘Got to be back on duty by six am.’

  ‘You want some food?’

  ‘Is there food at the house?’

  ‘Plenty,’ she assured him. ‘Well, eggs, fruit, rice.’