‘You can’t do that!’ cried Nancy, then wished the words unsaid. Of course they could do that. They could do anything to the women in this camp. Anything at all.
‘Very well,’ said old Mrs Harris crisply. ‘Your officers shall have me for company tonight.’ She looked the translator straight in the eyes. ‘I hope they enjoy my … conversation.’
‘One young woman.’
Me or Moira, thought Nancy, feeling sick. Or Sally.
‘None of us,’ repeated Moira, ‘are going anywhere near your officers. Or their club house either.’
‘No women. No food.’ He turned and left.
They met at the latrine, despite the stench, one woman from each house, no more than three at a time, two leaving one behind to tell the next two what had been said. If they tried to all talk together in one of the huts or in the yard except at mealtimes, the translator yelled, ‘No consorting!’ and the bamboo rods lashed down. The guards would be especially watchful now.
Nurse Rogers joined Nancy from Hut Number Two, then Mrs Hughendorn from Hut Number One.
‘No one from our hut is going,’ declared Mrs Hughendorn, her bosom still impressive under its ropes of pearls. ‘We’ll show them what British women are made of.’
‘Vivienne wants to go,’ said Nurse Rogers flatly.
‘How could she?’
Nurse Rogers shrugged. ‘She says the Japanese only want what every other man does. Says we’ll starve if we don’t get more food. I told her if she tries I’ll cut her hair off, then no one will want her anyway.’
‘What will you cut it off with?’ asked Nancy. None of them had knives or scissors.
Nurse Rogers grinned. ‘She’s too dumb to think of that. Believed me anyway. For now.’
Nancy walked slowly back to the hut. Moira propped herself up on her elbows. Her ankles were swelling, and she was out of breath. Over on the other bunk Sally played Peepo with Gavin.
‘What did the other huts say?’ asked Moira.
‘Nothing doing.’
‘If we all stand firm, they can’t make us,’ said Moira. She seemed almost to believe it.
They can make us do anything, thought Nancy. Anything or die.
There was no cassava, sago or yams at dusk. No vegetables. Not even a coconut.
‘They’ll see we mean business,’ said Mrs Harris.
Moira nodded as Gavin began to wail.
For the first time the pretence of food — Mrs Mainwaring’s cheese on toast — petered out. Perhaps it was just that cheese on toast was uninspiring. But this was the first time the absence of food was due to their deliberate actions.
Gavin was still crying with hunger deep into the night. The others pretended to sleep while Nancy and Moira took turns to walk him around the compound. At last Mrs Harris came out, brushing the mosquitoes from her face. ‘I’ll take him for you for a while, darlings.’
Moira nodded, beaten. ‘Thank you. I … I’m sorry. He must be teething.’
‘He’s hungry,’ said Mrs Harris bluntly.
We are all hungry, thought Nancy. Hunger was a small rat inside her, eating her innards. The twice-a-day gruel had been just enough to just keep going. Already the lack of it made her head swim. The lack of sleep didn’t help.
‘I’m feeding him as often as he wants …’ began Moira.
Mrs Harris glanced fleetingly at Moira’s chest. Her thin chest, gone from slender to bones in a month. ‘Time to wean him, love,’ she said tactfully. ‘You can’t give him what you haven’t got.’
Gavin had fallen asleep on Mrs Harris’s shoulder. Perhaps he too had finally accepted there was no food to be had. Or perhaps he had no more strength to cry.
They sat at the cook pit the next morning. No one even suggested a breakfast menu today. Gavin cried fretfully, small bubbles of complaint, lying like a toy doll against his mother.
‘We have to give in, don’t we?’ Mrs Hughendorn put into words what they had all been thinking. The guards had shaken their heads when Nancy had knocked on the door to fetch the water earlier. Nor had the food bin appeared.
‘Yes,’ said Nancy. They could survive a while without food. But without water in the constant dry heat they would die in days. Moira today, perhaps, or tomorrow. Or Gavin.
It was agree to their demands or die. You could throw away your own life for honour. But not Moira’s life, and not Gavin’s.
It was as simple as that, she thought. If we do not agree, then Gavin dies.
The translator’s boots thumped again at midday. Thud thud, thud thud, into the hut …
They bowed.
‘Four young women, tonight.’ His voice was expressionless.
Had he rehearsed the words? thought Nancy. Did he have a textbook that he studied every night? It was impossible to know how much he understood of what they said.
‘There will be a young woman,’ said Mrs Harris. ‘If you give us the food we should have got yesterday and this morning, tonight.’
‘You will get supper.’ Was he refusing or agreeing?
‘More supper? If we do not get more food,’ said Mrs Harris clearly, ‘this young boy will die. We need food for him now too.’
‘You will get supper. I will take the women before supper. The women will get supper at the club. A very good supper.’
‘Water?’ asked Moira, her voice a hoarse whisper.
The translator looked at her, at Gavin, lying white-faced on the bed, his arms and legs slack, as if in sleep. But he was not sleeping, had not slept since early morning, his eyes open, far too large for his small face.
‘The guards will bring water now.’ The translator turned, and marched between the shadows to the next hut.
The silence filled the hut. Nancy waited for Sally to volunteer. She didn’t.
Moira didn’t look at any of them. ‘I’ll go.’
‘No,’ said Nancy.
‘Nancy, darling, I … I’m married. I know what to expect …’
From men like that? thought Nancy. Men who would force a woman by threatening to starve her and her friends?
‘I will go,’ she said. ‘Because I could never face Ben if you go in my place. Or Mum or Gran. Never.’
She sat on the dirt floor and waited for Moira’s arguments. There would be an afternoon of arguments, she knew, surfing back and forth as supper and dusk approached. But when the translator returned, she would be the one going with him.
Four women, from three huts. Herself, Vivienne, Nurse Rogers and Mrs Mainwaring. None of them looked at each other, as they waited in the shade of the Number One tree. Mrs Mainwaring had been even more quiet the past weeks. The other women spoke of the families they longed for, fears for their families. Mrs Mainwaring had never spoken of either. Nancy wondered if she knew — or feared — her husband was already dead. She stayed silent now, her eyes empty.
At last Nancy said, to break the silence, ‘Nurse Rogers, I’m worried about Moira. Her ankles are swelling.’
‘Scurvy,’ said Nurse Rogers. She looked relieved to be back in professional territory. ‘Or beri beri,’ she added. ‘Vitamin deficiency. We need to ask for more vegetables.’
‘We have asked. They won’t give them to us.’
‘But they have to —’ Nurse Rogers stopped, accepting once again that their captors did not have to do anything, except what their own honour required.
‘Those bushes in the garden out there — they look a bit like hibiscus. Back home, my gran told me you could eat the flowers and buds of the Australian hibiscus. She said they were good for you — I think she meant they had vitamins. Could we eat the flower buds?’
‘We could. And they might kill us,’ said Nurse Rogers dryly.
‘One of us could try it. Me,’ Nancy added. ‘I know what the ones at home taste like.’
‘It’s worth trying,’ said Nurse Rogers, just as the translator arrived.
They bowed.
‘Sensei,’ said Nancy, not sure she had got the honorific right but hoping her willin
gness to try might move him, as well as their presence here tonight. ‘We need vegetables. We are getting sick because we don’t have any.’ She pointed at the bushes. ‘May I go outside each morning to pick the buds and flowers to eat?’
The translator looked at her, at the bushes, then back at her. ‘They are food?’
‘Full of vitamins,’ said Nancy, hoping it was true.
‘You will pick them for the Japanese too.’
Nancy bowed. If I live through tonight, she thought. I can pick flowers for the Japanese if I can get through tonight. And if the flowers poison me, then they’ll kill the lot of you too.
The ‘club’ was the front room of the officers’ house, still furnished as it must have been when Mrs Hughendorn’s mother-in-law lived there. Floral sofa, four chintz-covered chairs, even two family photographs, a woman with two small children and a young man who might have been Mr Hughendorn, before acquiring Mrs Hughendorn and the moustache that adorned the face in the photograph Mrs Hughendorn kept tucked in the armour that still served as her underwear, although no longer needed to rein in her bulk. The photos sat on the ledge that might have been a mantelpiece, if a fireplace had been needed. A portrait of the Emperor hung on the wall above it.
Four men sat in the armchairs, including the commandant, all in uniform, the youngest one in his early twenties perhaps. He was the only one who smiled. The others neither moved nor changed their expressions.
The translator bowed, then left. The door shut behind him.
Vivienne stepped forwards. She smiled at the youngest officer. ‘I’m Viv,’ she said.
They can’t speak English, thought Nancy. We can’t speak Japanese. She stifled a hysterical giggle. How are they going to tell us what to do if we can’t talk?
Except, she realised, the married Mrs Mainwaring would know what to do. Vivienne too, she suspected. And Nurse Rogers? Did they teach that to nurses? Her own animal husbandry knowledge probably wasn’t going to help her predict the behaviour of Japanese officers.
She tried not to think of Michael. Trying not to think of him made her think of him even more. Could she marry him after this? Would he even want her, if he knew she had … been with … a Japanese man? An enemy? And not from choice, but for food and water?
Yes, she thought, Michael will forgive. Though perhaps she would not be able to forgive herself. No, she told herself. Whatever happens tonight will be done to you, as a soldier might be wounded in war. You will let it slide away from you, leaving you untouched. Just Nancy of the Overflow.
I can do this, she thought. No matter what. I can do this.
They stood there, silent, even Vivienne. The men regarded them. The commandant stood. He nodded to Nancy, then walked towards the corridor.
He expects me to follow him, she thought. He is the highest-ranking officer here, so he gets first choice. I should be flattered.
She could refuse to follow. I have no choice, she thought again. No choice. No choice.
She followed.
Down the corridor. The commandant stopped by a door, obviously expecting her to open it for him. She did, standing back to let him walk through. She wondered for a moment if she should leave it open, so she could call for help perhaps.
But who would help? Or if they did, at what cost?
I can do this, she thought. I can do this.
She shut the door. She waited.
There was a bed — a single bed, with an ornate bedhead and a flowered bedspread. The commandant sat on the bedspread. He nodded to her to sit next to him.
She couldn’t. She knew she had to but she couldn’t. Her feet were lumps of flour, her heart was trying to choke her. It was all she could do to stand there and not cry, or urinate like a scared puppy when a big dog barked. She wished she had not bitten her nails because then she could have dug them into her hands and that pain might drive out this other one …
The commandant regarded her, much as he had in the front room. He reached over to the bedside table, opened a drawer. He drew out a black-and-white photograph. He held it out to her.
She found that she could take it, her fingers hardly trembling.
It was a girl. A girl about my age, she thought. A girl with shiny black hair gathered up about her face and wearing a kimono with a pattern of leaves. The girl did not smile at the camera but she looked happy. Above her a tree seemed to be in bloom, though without colour it was hard to tell if they were flowers or strange leaves.
Was this his mistress, back in Japan? A young girl like her? Or was this photograph the Japanese equivalent of a poster of Bette Davis, illustrating his idea of beauty?
But the girl was not particularly beautiful. Pretty, but nothing dramatic.
The commandant pointed to himself, then to the photo. He took it from her hand, then looked at it, his face gentle.
She understood. ‘This is your daughter?’
He said nothing. She guessed he had as little English as she had Japanese. He studied the photo, then lay back against the bed.
She tensed as he began to speak.
It was not directed to her, but to the photo. To what it represented, perhaps, to his family, to his home. His voice continued, tender, sometimes laughing, once almost in tears.
She stood. At last she sat on the floor, letting herself slide down the wall. She sat cross-legged, as she might before a campfire, and waited for him to stop talking, to order her to the bed. Finally he stopped speaking. He looked at the photo for some time more, then opened the drawer, and hid the photo away again. He looked at Nancy.
‘Watashi no musume,’ he said.
Was he asking her to undress? She didn’t move.
‘Watashi no musume,’ he repeated and then, ‘Musume,’ again.
Oh. It was a language lesson.
‘Musume,’ she said slowly.
He nodded, smiled. He pointed to the bed. ‘Shindai.’
‘Sindoi.’
‘Shindai.’
‘Shindai,’ she said.
Ten words later he seemed to have had enough. He lay there, looking at the ceiling. He consulted a pocket watch. Later — much later — he stood up. He nodded to the door.
It was time to go.
Once more she understood what he was trying to tell her. Understood it all: that he was protecting her; that she must not say, even to the other women, that nothing sexual had happened here tonight.
Had he protected her because she reminded him of his daughter? Or because he was a basically good man, whatever the war had brought to him, who would not take a woman against her will, even if he had not the courage, or perhaps even saw no need, to protest when it was done to others?
‘Thank you,’ she said.
He stood. For the first time he smiled at her, not at the photo.
‘Arigato,’ he said.
‘Arigato,’ she repeated.
‘Sayonara.’ He opened the door and walked back down the corridor.
The front room was empty. Empty of humans anyway, for the sofas and fat armchairs still sat invitingly. How long had it been since she had sat in a chair? And there on the table …
Food. Real food.
Rice balled together somehow, held in place by a strip of something black. She hadn’t eaten rice since they’d arrived — it wasn’t grown on the poor soil of the island. Fried fish, small and brown and crisp, piled on a platter. Slabs of the baked plantain she had become familiar with in Malaya, as well as strange fat dumplings, shiny and white, again piled high.
The translator had promised them supper.
She wanted to eat. Needed to eat. She also wanted to curl up behind the door and cry, because whatever hadn’t happened to her tonight might still happen, and was happening to Nurse Rogers and Vivienne and Mrs Mainwaring.
She did not cry. She was Nancy of the Overflow, and if she ate here tonight she need not eat at all tomorrow, so there would be more for the others to share.
So she would eat.
She still hesitated. There were bow
ls, chopsticks. She couldn’t use chopsticks. If she tried to learn how tonight, she would go hungry. Perhaps she was meant to wait, and the four women were to eat with the officers.
Four bowls. Four sets of chopsticks. Just for the women then.
She picked up some of the dumplings and rice balls, and stuffed as many as she thought she could get away with into her bra, to share with the others. The fish looked oily, and she dared not risk getting oil stains on her dress that might be noticed.
She began to eat, fast, resisting the instinct to cram food into her mouth with both hands. Rice balls first, using her fingers — Mum had once told her and Ben that rice lined the stomach when they’d eaten too many green apples. Then, more slowly, because if she was sick after eating too much rich food when she was so very hungry, then the food would be wasted. She ate a fish, a plantain, hoping it was high in Nurse Rogers’s vitamins. She was nibbling a dumpling, even more slowly, when she heard a door open. Nurse Rogers walked stiffly down the corridor and into the sitting room.
For a moment they looked at each other in silence. Then Nancy said, ‘I think this is for us.’
‘Good,’ said Nurse Rogers, in a voice that said, do not ask me, and I will not ask you. ‘Don’t eat too much too fast,’ she added.
‘I’m not.’
Nurse Rogers picked up a bowl and manoeuvred the chopsticks easily. She glanced at Nancy. ‘One of the nurses at the hospital was Chinese. We’d go to her parents’ place sometimes. Chopsticks aren’t hard when you get used to them. I’ll show you.’ She seemed relieved to talk about the normality of food.
Nancy let herself be shown. It was something to speak about that wasn’t unspeakable; and she had eaten enough now to know that she needed to slow down. Managing chopsticks meant careful eating. She had just manipulated a piece of fish into her mouth when Vivienne came out. Her lips looked puffed and red.
‘That wasn’t too bad,’ she said.
The others stared at her.
Vivienne shrugged. ‘Don’t expect me to go into a maiden’s faint. I expect you’ve done it before,’ she added to Nurse Rogers.
To Love a Sunburnt Country Page 23
