Enduring Passions

by David Wiltshire

  The news of Dunkirk, when it reached Singapore seemed incredible, but for all that there was no increased anxiety, no building of air raid shelters or anything like that. Although Britain was now alone against the Axis powers, that applied to the rest of the world. Her Empire still stood shoulder to shoulder with her.

  There was no rationing, hotels and bars dispensed as much drink as you wanted. Fay worried about Tom, but went swimming at the Targlin Club and on the beaches facing Jahore. Aunt Blanche’s improvement had reached a plateau. On the really exceptionally humid days she looked awful, and stayed under a fan with a bowl of water and a wet flannel on her forehead. Fay realized that the old lady ought to be at home, in England, for the last years of her life.

  The Japanese were acting belligerently, certainly towards the Chinese, but The Prince of Wales and the Repulse could still be seen in the Navy dockyards.

  A reassuring presence of Britain’s might.

  The frustration of not being in the fight finally ended for the squadron when, at the beginning of August 1940, they were sent soμth from 13 Group to replace one of the badly mauled squadrons of Air Vice-Marshal Park’s 11 Group which had been guarding the south-east of England and the approach to London.

  The Battle of Britain was at its height.

  Almost immediately, Tom found himself sent to intercept raiders approaching Margate, but before they could engage the formation, ME 109s appeared from cloud and dived on them.

  In the mêlée that followed, he found himself on the tail of one and managed a perfect two-second deflection shot, watching as metal ripped off the side and black smoke poured from the engine. Remembering his CO and all the coaching on the shooting trips, he yelled in excitement, ‘That’s one for you, sir,’ and put in another three-second burst. The Messerschmitt exploded into whirling pieces. For a split second he thought he’d been hit by some of the wreckage as the Hurricane shuddered and the stick flicked violently in his hand.

  Then as an incendiary bullet flashed over his arm and blew the instrument panel to pieces, he realized he was being attacked. He’d made the classic error of not breaking away as soon as he’d carried out his attack. The fuel tank beyond the panel caught fire, white smoke, thick and burningly hot, instantly filled the cockpit. Panic gripped him. He jerked the hood back, released his straps, flipped the plane over, and fell out into a maelstrom of cold blasting air. At 12,000 feet above the coastline he counted three and pulled the rip cord.

  Fay sat bolt upright, eyes wide in the dark, chest heaving, her body bathed in sweat.

  It took a while for her to realize where she was – inside the mosquito net around her bed. Her heart beat slowly began to return to normal. She’d had a nightmare.

  Pulling aside the net, she swung around and set her feet down on the tiled floor, found her thermos of iced water and gulped down a glassful.

  Fay tried to remember her dream, but strangely she couldn’t recall a thing – except an overwhelming sense of fear.

  It took a long time for her to doze off and she never really went back to a deep sleep.

  In the morning Fay had a headache that in the clammy rainy dawn would not go away. She also couldn’t shake off a sense of dread.

  It was November 1940 before Tom returned to the squadron. He suffered a broken leg and arm going through the roof of a railway station; he’d then fallen further on to the platform in front of staff and passengers sheltering in the waiting-room.

  Lying in agony, he realized just how lucky he was when an engine hauling ballast had made the ground quiver around him and enveloped him briefly in steam. Two feet to the left and he’d have been under the thing. The irony of his being killed by a train did not escape him.

  Tom saluted the new CO who then shook his hand, ‘Glad to have you back, Tom and congratulations on the commission.’

  It was now Pilot Officer Roxham, and he had seven kills to his name.

  George Hawksley had also been promoted having been awarded the DFC.

  Tom was disappointed. He’d hoped there would be a message waiting for him from Fay, but the silence continued. It made him miserable but at least she was safe. Some of the boys worried about their wives and sweethearts, especially those living in the big cities.

  In the next few months, and then on through the summer and autumn of 1941 he took part in the increasingly deep fighter sweeps over enemy occupied territory, especially the Pas de Calais, called ‘Rhubarbs’. He added two ME 109s to his bag, catching them both with his cannon on their unarmoured bellies as they flew into his line of fire. Thick black smoke marked the end of both. A month after being back on the squadron he too as awarded the DFC and then a few weeks later was made a Flight-lieutenant; the citation listing his airmanship, combat skills and aggressive leadership.

  He was now a Flight Commander opposite George.

  Then, in mid November, one cold frosty morning he tightened his helmet strap, went through his pre-flight checks, felt the rudders and stick, and signalled for the engine start. Squadron Leader Tom Roxham led ‘A’ flight in a slanting climb over the white cliffs and out across the channel until they reached 22,000 feet, then moments later passed over the French coast.

  He never stopped searching the skies, and it wasn’t long before he saw several black dots, like angry bees, swarming down on them.

  He flicked his throat button, informing his wing commander that he could see ‘Bandits, eleven o’clock, coming down,’ then slipped the safety off the firing button.

  It was time to get to work.

  Fay’s war started in the early hours of Monday, 8 December 1941. Around four in the morning the bombs started to fall. She had stood with her aunt on the veranda, arms around each other as they had watched the flashes coming from the direction of Chinatown and the docks, followed by the thud of the bombs a second later.

  Then came an even nearer orange glow, and it was only subsequently they were to discover there had been a direct hit on Robinson’s new air-conditioned restaurant in Raffles Place. Throughout the air raid the lights of the city had remained on.

  But as they sat down to breakfast, fearful of what had happened and about the news that the Japanese had landed at Kota Bahru, a costal town near the Siamese border, the radio broke into its programme to announce something that halted Fay’s spoon as it was about to alight on her egg.

  The Japanese had bombed Pearl Harbour, no details, but many ships had been seen on fire. So, America was in the war. They both cheered up no end, and had a sherry at breakfast, a cheerfulness that was to evaporate slowly over the coming weeks. A black-out was imposed, though not adhered to. Because of the humidity people needed to be on their verandas, so a little light was allowed. More raids followed, and the town began to see boarded-up shop fronts and debris. Then came the stupefying news of the Japanese advance down through Malaya.

  By the time Fay realized she should have made Aunt Blanche leave, despite the older woman’s protestations that no Jap was going to chase her out of her home, it was too late. The radio interrupted its music with another announcement and she knew that there was no possibility of taking a boat to Australia.

  They were in the cricket club, beneath a big ceiling fan turning lazily in the hot, stifling evening. What followed made her not only immeasurably sad at the loss of so many young lives, but it also shook her and all the British present as to the extent of the peril they were in.

  The impersonal voice announced the loss of the Prince of Wales and the Repulse to enemy bombers.

  There was absolute silence in the room, broken after as long as thirty seconds, by a glass hitting the tiled floor and smashing into a thousand pieces. Everybody drank up and went home quietly.

  It was too late. Aunt Blanche had taken a turn for the worse. As Fay nursed her, changing her sheets and bathing her shrivelled old body, the Japanese had relentlessly advanced down the Malayan Peninsula until they were now at the gates of the city – or rather, on the other side of the Causeway which linked it to the m
ainland.

  They had begun shelling the military installations, and a liner, the Empress of Asia had been sunk in the Straits. They could have been on it.

  All was confusion. Desperate fighting was taking place as the Japanese ferried troops across the Straits near the Causeway. Nobody seemed to know what exactly was going on.

  Continuous air raids, explosions and giant fires in the north and south festooned the doomed city with black oily smoke. Once immaculate lawns were now cratered and covered with blasted trees.

  Fay had tried to do her bit with the Red Cross, but now she stood outside a hospital, almost dropping with fatigue, her face grimy and dirt streaked above a white uniform covered with soot and blood.

  She smoked a cigarette as she stood by a huge trench nearly two hundred yards long that had been dug by a mechanical digger.

  The corpses of Europeans were being put in one end, Asians the other, then sprinkled with lime.

  The stench told its own story.

  She knew they were doomed, no one who could see all this with their own eyes could think otherwise. There was a report of a smaller hospital that had been overrun, where the Japanese had bayoneted patients and staff alike – some still on the operating table.

  She finished her cigarette and tossed it, still alight, away. If she was going to die, her only regret was that she had left Tom.

  She should have followed her heart and rejected everything else; her parents; their backgrounds; her career; everything.

  Now it was all irrelevant – too late. Would they ever meet again in this life?

  What would she and Tom be like in the next?

  CHAPTER THREE

  As soon as Tom heard of the fall of Singapore he was inconsolable. Worried by his mental state, the group captain got the doctor to suspend him from flying duties.

  ‘It’s his wife – she’s in Singapore. He’s no good to me at the moment – positively bloody dangerous. Anyway he needs some leave.’

  Tom was being eaten away by fear, unable to sleep, a pain in his guts like somebody twisting a knife in him.

  He rang Codrington Hall. Whoever it was, it wasn’t Wilson’s voice that answered. He asked for Lord or Lady Rossiter.

  The voice said, ‘Sorry, can’t help you I’m afraid, old boy, this is the Headquarters mess of the Fifth Division.’

  ‘But they must be somewhere?’

  ‘You’ll have to ask the War Department Requisition Unit.’

  No, he didn’t know the number.

  Tom was going mad. If anything had happened….

  If she was alive – he snapped out loud at himself. ‘Of course she’s bloody alive’ – as a civilian she’d have been interned by the Japanese. It didn’t bear thinking about. The newspaper headlines were painful reminders of the disaster that had befallen them all. He had to avert his eyes at the frightening pictures of the burning city.

  He took a train to London and thence by Tube to Paddington. The Great Western terminus had already changed – for the worse. Most passengers seemed to be in uniform – from all over the world. The platforms were dirty, the posters exhorting people to ‘Dig for Victory’ and ‘Keep Mum, She’s Not So Dumb’, already torn and defaced.

  The journey was long and slow, with many stops, due apparently, to poor coal. The carriages were filthy, choking with cigarette smoke and troops with kit bags, boots scuffing the floor, jamming the corridors as he stood all the way by a toilet, with continually heaving and squeezing bodies always going in and out. He added to the smoke himself by lighting one cigarette after the other.

  When he eventually got to Cirencester he managed to get a room at the Fleece Hotel. Next day he went to the municipal offices. They referred him to the post office.

  There, it was only due to his rank and the fact that he was looking for Lord and Lady Rossiter to ask them about his wife – their daughter, that they relented and gave him their address. They’d moved into town – a large house near the Bathhurst Estate.

  He went straight around, stopping to look up at the handsome stone façade with its tall Regency windows, criss-crossed now with anti-blast strips of brown paper.

  He knocked on the door. Slow footsteps sounded on the other side. When it eventually opened he didn’t recognize the thick-set lady in a dutch apron.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘I’m looking for Lord or Lady Rossiter.’

  ‘If it’s about them ARP wardens….’

  He cut her off. ‘No – it’s personal. Are they in?’

  She gave him a hard look, and a begrudging, ‘Wait here.’

  He heard some muffled talking, then Fay’s father appeared, in his First World War uniform.

  The two men stood eyeing each other, one immaculate in khaki with riding breeches and a Sam Brown, the other in a crumpled sky-blue uniform with the top button undone.

  But Lord Rossiter’s eyes noticed the rank and the DFC – and the new DSO for inspired leadership.

  Tom spoke first. ‘Have you any news of Fay?’

  ‘You’d better come in.’

  Tom closed the door behind him and followed her father down the corridor and into the sitting-room.

  Lady Rossiter was sitting on a sofa with her back to them.

  ‘Is it to do with your Home Guard review?’

  ‘No, my dear, it’s Tom.’

  He noticed the use of his Christian name as did his wife who whirled around.

  She stood slowly, using a silver-topped cane, face anxious. He was struck by how much older they both looked.

  ‘Do you know something about Fay?’

  He glanced away from her, unable to bear the sight of the pleading and worry in her eyes.

  ‘No – I’d hoped you had some idea. Did she get out?’

  Miserably, her father shook his head. ‘Her Aunt Blanche was very ill. I gather she wouldn’t leave her.’

  They looked helplessly at each other. For the first time he felt sorry for them, their arrogant bearing of old now gone. They were just suffering parents – like thousands of others in this awful mess.

  But they were her mum and dad.

  Gently he asked, ‘When did you last hear anything?’

  As Lady Rossiter lowered herself painfully back on to the sofa, her father motioned for him to sit down.

  ‘Nothing directly – I promise you. We’ve not held back any letters or anything. I know from the last war how word from family was good for the men.’

  Tom bit back any retort about being seen as just one of the men. Her father had acknowledged that Fay was, for him, beloved. He realized that Lord Rossiter had probably been reading the London Gazette since the war had started, and must have seen his awards and promotions. He hadn’t had any communication from them – perhaps that was asking too much.

  Her father continued: ‘No we haven’t heard from Fay for a long time, but for a while I was able to get information through various channels.’ He sniffed. ‘They’ve gone now, of course.’

  Guiltily he looked down at the floor. ‘We heard she was in touch with you awhile back. I’m sorry we didn’t keep in contact.’

  There was a pause before Tom roused himself. ‘Well, there are a good many things all of us should, or should not have done. Let’s just forget all that’s gone before. Getting Fay back is all that matters – to all of us.’

  He told them that, although he had been sad – agonizingly so – at not hearing from her day on day, he hadn’t been worried. In fact, since the war proper had started, just the opposite. He was glad that she was somewhere safe: that was until the catastrophe and sudden surrender.

  He tried to cheer them up, and by so doing, convince himself that all was well. ‘She’s a civilian; she’ll be all right.’

  They looked at him pleadingly. They so wanted him to be right. This old couple still dressed immaculately from an age that had already gone – utterly. Tom was aware of his rather crumpled uniform with the top button – defiantly undone, and Lord Rossiter in his beautifully turned out kit. I
n their uniforms, was reflected everything that had happened in the last several years; from a once great nation, the hub of an Empire on which the sun never set, to an island race fighting for its survival.

  But all of them were sick with worry.

  And one unspoken question hung over everything.

  Was she even alive?

  The last days had been horrendous, but now, with the short tough soldiers of the victorious Japanese army guarding bridges, with rifles and bayonets bigger than they were, and British soldiers patrolling the city centres armed with pick-axe handles to keep order, life was calmer after the hell that had gone before.

  Fay had been out, trying to get some food – their houseboy had disappeared – and she had been amazed by the normality. Admittedly it wasn’t like the Singapore of a week ago – that had died – but it was all strangely different from what she had been expecting.

  And then the orders came through. Internment camps had been prepared. The district where they lived was to be cleared.

  Now, on a Tuesday morning, at ten o’clock, she was with her aunt and several hundred women and children, standing in the blazing sun on the cricket club padang. Two thousand men were also lined up. There was no breeze, the sea which was so near, shimmered waveless like a mirror in the heat.

  Fay’s dress hung limp with wetness. The black patches of sweat extended from her armpits down her front and back. But her worry was for her frail aunt. Fay held a parasol over her. Once she’d slid to the ground, but a bellowing Japanese soldier had stormed over to them and made jabbing motions with his bayonet.

  After two hours an officer climbed on to a wooden crate and addressed them. Women and children would get transport – the men would have to walk. Houses had been prepared as a temporary camp, but they would all go on to Changi jail after a few days.