by Shaun Hutson
“Would you leave Peter if you didn’t love him anymore?”
“I don’t know. I really don’t.”
Ronni finished her drink and set the glass down.
The two women regarded each other silently for a moment, then Alison spoke again.
“Are you sure you don’t love him anymore? It’s not just that you don’t fancy him anymore?”
“What’s the difference?”
“Come on, Ronni, don’t be naive. Are you telling me the only blokes you’ve ever slept with in your life are ones you’ve been in love with?”
Ronni shook her head.
“Me neither,” Alison concurred.
“Even now, I see blokes I want to sleep with and I know Peter sees other women he fancies. It wouldn’t be natural if we didn’t. It doesn’t mean we love each other any less.”
“You make yourself sound like a tart.”
“I’m being honest. Perhaps you should be too.”
“Meaning?”
“If you hated life with Andy so much you’d have moved out by now.”
“It’s not that easy, Alison. We’ve been together for twelve years. Besides, I don’t want to hurt him. I don’t hate him. I don’t hate living with him. I just don’t love him anymore.”
“Then tell him. Be honest with him. The only one you’re fooling is yourself. What do you think is going to happen? Do you think this is all going to change? You’ll wake up one morning and you’ll love him again? You’ll be all over each other again like you were when you first met?”
“I’m not that naive, Alison.”
“Isn’t there anything Andy can do to help?”
To make me start loving him again?” She shook her head.
“Then for Christ’s sake put him out of his misery.”
Again the two women looked at each other for long moments, then Ronni got to her feet.
“I’m nipping to the loo before we go,” she said.
“I’ll meet you outside.”
She made her way through to the public bar where the toilets were situated. As Ronni pushed the door open the noise hit her like a fist.
‘.. . Now we lay you down to rest, you’re never gonna be more than second best ...” roared from the jukebox.
Ronni picked her way past the pool table where two youths were engaged in a game watched by half a dozen of their companions.
‘.. . roll the dice, don’t tfanktwke, we crush, crush, crush ‘em ..
.”
Darts thudded into the board on the other side of the room.
The rest of the tables in the bar seemed to be occupied as well.
Sometimes couples. Sometimes clusters of people.
A man a couple of years younger than Ronni almost bumped into her as he emerged from the Gents still zipping his flies.
He smiled, running appraising eyes over her.
She sought the sanctuary of the Ladies.
It was mercifully quiet inside.
Ronni inspected her reflection in the cracked mirror that ran the length of the wall, aware of movement in one of the cubicles behind her.
The toilet flushed and a young woman dressed in a black top, short silver lycra skirt and expensive-looking high heels emerged.
With the benefit of her heavy make-up, Donna Freeman appeared much older than her fourteen years. Her dishwater-blonde hair had been washed and blow-dried, and she smelled strongly of designer perfume.
Ronni guessed it was Calvin Klein; whatever, it wasn’t cheap.
She paused before the mirror and pulled a red lipstick from her handbag.
Ronni ran a hand through her own hair, aware that the girl knew she was being watched.
She applied the lipstick carefully, then dropped it back inside the handbag.
As she fluffed up her own hair she glanced at Ronni’s reflection with something akin to disdain.
Then she turned and walked out.
Ronni turned to the first of the cubicles and pushed the door open. The cistern was cracked, the bowl full of stained paper.
She retreated into the cubicle Donna Freeman had used and slid the bolt.
As she sat down she noticed the piece of silver paper lying discarded beside the toilet.
Ronni could see that there were still flecks of white powder on it.
In the bar, the noise seemed to grow louder.
THE HOUSE WAS silent when she entered. Ronni closed the front door behind her and hung up her coat.
The red light was blinking on the answering machine and she pressed the “Play’ button.
It was Andy. He’d been offered some overtime. He wouldn’t be home until late.
Good.
There was a loud beep as the message ended.
She moved through the house switching on lights, driving away the darkness.
She even switched on the TV.
The sound of voices filtered into the room.
It was a play or something. John Thaw was in it.
He seemed to be in everything.
Ronni glanced at the screen as she made her way back into the kitchen.
She boiled the kettle and made herself some tea.
As she sipped the hot liquid she leant against one of the work tops gazing idly into space, the sound of the TV drifting through from the living room.
She looked across at the CD player perched on the microwave and wondered about switching that on too.
It was as if she couldn’t bear to have a moment’s silence.
Silence gives you time to think, doesn’t it?
She jabbed the required button and the sound of the Corrs filled the room.
‘.. . What can I do to make you love me .. .”
She almost smiled as she walked out of the kitchen and made her way through the living room, then upstairs to the bedroom.
Ronni changed into a pair of jeans and a big baggy sweater, then she sat on the end of the bed for a moment, facing the wardrobe.
There were two suitcases on top of it.
She took one down, wiped a thin layer of dust from the lid and flipped it open.
There were two old airline tickets inside.
She opened the first and inspected the date.
Five years ago. The last time they’d had a holiday.
A week in Corfu.
There were some photos too and Ronni reached for them.
Andy emerging from the sea.
A view from the hotel room.
Ronni in her bikini laying beside the pool.
And the two of them together on the beach, arms around each other.
(as if they were in love) She remembered Andy asking a passer-by to take it.
Ronni dropped the photos and the tickets back into the case, then she pulled open a couple of drawers and took some clothes out.
She hastily folded a couple of T-shirts and placed them in the bottom of the case. She put a blouse next to them.
Some leggings. Knickers. A sweatshirt.
Ronni paused and looked down at the random selection of clothes in the case.
Go on then, finish the job.
She ran a hand through her hair, then closed the suitcase and lifted it back on top of the wardrobe.
For long moments she stood looking at it.
Why did you stop?
She wondered what she would have told Andy if he’d walked in then.
The truth, perhaps? He might have helped you pack. Ronni sat down on the edge of the bed, head bowed. She began to cry softly and the tears took her by surprise.
JACK FULLER KNEW he was going to die.
He’d been expecting it for the last three years and now he knew the time had finally arrived.
The only surprise was the way it would come.
He knelt in the heat, hands tied behind his back, the sun wringing perspiration from his body and baking his flesh.
Flesh that barely covered his bones. When he was standing upright he could count almost all of his ribs. There was so little skin and
muscle covering his legs it seemed as if the limbs would shatter with each step he took.
And yet, like so many others like him, he lived out his daily existence in that condition.
Although perhaps to say that he lived was an overstatement. He and his comrades existed. No one lived anymore. Not in a world of brutality and sudden death like the one he had come to know so well.
Death was so frequent a visitor he felt he knew it like a relative, but never before had it come for him.
He had seen men die in their hundreds during the past three years.
Starvation.
Disease.
Brutality.
He had seen men cut their own throats with pieces of jagged rock rather than exist another day in the conditions he knew.
Others had succumbed to the savagery of their captors: beaten to death with rifle butts for the smallest transgression; bayonetted repeatedly for the amusement of those who looked upon them as lower than animals.
Perhaps they had been the fortunate ones.
Daily, he saw men die from dysentery, typhoid, cholera, yellow fever and God-alone-knew how many other maladies.
Plagued at nights by mosquitoes, tormented during the day by insects, some could only lay helplessly and watch as the bloated flies fed on the pus that oozed from their leg ulcers.
And everywhere around the water was filled with leeches. They clung to a man until they had gorged themselves on his blood and then they dropped off, bloated and corpulent. Those who panicked and ripped the monstrous gastropods off were often left with the head embedded in their skin.
It had to burned out with a cigarette end.
The leeches carried disease too.
Everything in this godforsaken place carried disease and death with it.
For a handful of rice, men were worked to death.
And now, Jack Fuller knew that it was his time to die.
There were two others before him.
Both naked but for a small piece of cloth around their groins, as was Fuller.
They too were kneeling on the parched earth, the sun blistering their fragile forms.
He had no idea why they must also die.
All he knew was that in a couple of minutes it would be over.
And yet, despite the suffering, the hunger pangs that tore at his insides, the ulcers and the malaria, he wanted to live.
Some found death a welcome release from the hell that he knew as everyday existence; but in his eyes a man should value life above all things, and the thought of having it snatched away was intolerable.
But Jack Fuller knew he had no choice in the matter.
From his kneeling position he could see only the boots of the man who would end his life.
He heard words hissed in a language he now half understood.
Heard the sweep of the sword as it was pulled from the scabbard.
The first man had closed his eyes tightly.
His lips were moving soundlessly in prayer.
The sword flashed down.
The man’s head was cleanly severed.
It rolled a few feet across the ground, propelled by a massive gout of blood from the stump of the neck.
The second man began to sob quietly.
Fuller could see his skeletal body quivering.
He heard words rasped at him.
Someone spat at the shaking man. Called him a coward.
Fuller saw the sword raised.
Heard the man’s cries rising in volume.
Heard his entreaties.
Then the whoosh and the dull thud as the head was sliced effortlessly off.
Hot blood jetted into the air, some of it spattering Fuller and the realization hit him with even greater force.
He was next.
His legs were not bound.
Perhaps if he could get to his feet he could run.
Run as fast as his frail form would allow.
One of them might put a bullet in his back, but that didn’t seem to matter now.
He looked across the ground and saw the two severed heads looking blankly back at him, eyes open like fish on a skillet.
He tried to rise, but the sole of a foot held him in place.
He prayed for help.
Prayed to a God who had looked down upon so much suffering for so long.
He opened his mouth to scream. Please, God, I don’t want to die. Then the sword swung down.
HE WAS SCREAMING when he sat up in bed.
The residue of the nightmare was still painted vividly upon his mind and Jack Fuller could feel the sweat that sheathed his body. For interminable seconds he thought that the sweat was the product of the tropical heat.
Only gradually did he realize he was sitting in darkness.
In his room.
Safe.
His heart was thudding madly against his ribs so hard it seemed it would shatter them.
He gripped the sides of the bed and looked around.
Jack Fuller didn’t dare close his eyes in case the nightmare came flooding back.
Instead he stared around his room inside Shelby House.
He thought he was still screaming, but then realized the sound was only in his head.
He was awake.
It was over for another night.
He swung his legs over the side of the bed and placed them on the floor.
Contact with something tangible seemed to shock him back to reality and, at last, the nightmare began to recede somewhat.
Fuller dragged himself out of bed and stumbled across to the sink, where he spun the tap and drank some water, gulping it down like a man in a desert.
He gripped the porcelain with one hand to steady himself.
He was still standing there when the door opened.
“Jack.”
He turned slowly and saw Gordon Faulkner silhouetted there.
“Jack,” said the younger man.
“Are you OK?”
Fuller nodded, trying to control his breathing.
Faulkner stepped inside and closed the door behind him. He crossed to Fuller and put one hand on his shoulder. He could feel the older man quivering.
“Another nightmare?” Faulkner asked.
Fuller nodded.
“There was a time when I thought they’d stopped,” he said, his voice a feeble whisper.
“Do you want me to get you a sleeping pill?”
Fuller shook his head.
“I’ll be fine now,” he insisted.
“Do you want to talk about it?”
“Again?”
“If you want to talk, I’ll listen.”
“All part of the service.”
That’s right.”
Fuller drank some more water, then sat down on the edge of the bed.
“Same dream?” Faulkner wanted to know.
“They’re always the same, Gordon. You know that.”
“About the camp?”
“The camp. The railway. The hospital. It never changes.” He smiled weakly.
“It happened over sixty years ago and yet it seems like yesterday. All of it.”
“Jack, after what you went through it’s a wonder you’re still sane.”
“I sometimes wonder if I am.”
“Where was it you were taken prisoner?”
“Singapore in 1941. I was seventeen.”
“You must have been terrified. I would have been.”
“We’d heard rumours about what the Japs did to prisoners. What they’d done to the Chinese back in ‘38. Gutting open pregnant women. Burying men up to their waists and setting dogs on them. Using people for bayonet practice. But we thought with us being Westerners, professional soldiers like them, we thought they might treat us differently.” He shook his head.
“Most of my platoon were dead within the first year,” he continued.
“Worked to death, starved or tortured.”
Faulkner reached out and touched the older man’s arm.
“I read in
papers that people say we should forget about it now,” Fuller continued.
“That what happened doesn’t mean anything anymore. The politicians are the worst of the lot.” There was an edge to his voice.
“No one cares except those who went through it. I’ve tried forgetting about it, but then I think if I do that I’d betray the memory of all those men who died building that bloody railway. I don’t want to forget any of the men those Japanese bastards murdered. And that’s what it was. Murder. Pure and simple.” He swallowed hard and took another sip of water.
“You were a medical orderly, weren’t you, Jack?”
Fuller nodded.
“The Japs were losing so many of us to disease they decided to set up a hospital at Chungkai in Northern Thailand,” he said quietly.
“Not that you could call it a bloody hospital. It was a collection of huts. We didn’t have any supplies either. The Japanese guards used to come to us to be treated for things like VD and syphilis. We’d tell them what medical supplies we needed to help them, but they didn’t realize it was stuff we wanted to help our own boys.” He managed a smile.
“We used needles made out of bamboo. We turned old cutlery into surgical instruments. We even used to spit into rotten bananas and the yeast that developed helped prevent Vitamin B deficiency. The blokes weren’t too keen on taking that, but they knew it helped them.”
He afforded himself a brief grin.
“I was working there one day when they brought in this lad with tropical ulcers all over one leg. They’d been caused by bamboo shoots. Got infected. We knew the only way to save him was to remove the leg. He couldn’t have been more than nineteen. A scouser. He kept on about how he didn’t want to die so we told him we’d have to amputate.” Fuller was gazing ahead as if watching the incident being projected on the opposite wall.
“All we had to do it with was an old butcher’s knife,” he murmured.
“I did it.” He suddenly looked directly into Faulkner’s eyes and the younger man saw tears there.
“I took his leg off from the knee down,” Fuller continued almost apologetically.
“We didn’t have any morphine. Two of the others held him down and I cut it off. I made him a cripple.”
“You saved his life, Jack,” Faulkner said, touching the older man’s arm.
“What choice did you have?”
Fuller was silent for a moment.
“He was in the hospital for a week afterwards,” he said finally.
