by JH Fletcher
‘Never mind.’
She turned to go out of the room. An immediate squawk of protest. The orderly’s hand clutched her arm.
‘I’m going for the first aid kit,’ Ruth said, exasperated. ‘I won’t be more than a couple of minutes.’ She pulled her arm free, roughly, and went back outside. Yellow sunlight slapped her as she crossed the road to the jeep.
‘We’re going to have to hang on, I’m afraid. There’s a woman having a baby. It’s in breech. I’m going to see if I can turn it.’
Marge neither moved nor spoke. Her eyes stared sightlessly down the road.
‘I could do with a hand,’ Ruth suggested hopefully.
She might as well have asked the trees.
She sighed. ‘I’ll be as quick as I can.’
Aung Myat and the second orderly accompanied her to the house. ‘They won’t want you in there,’ she told him. ‘Go back and keep Sister D’Arcy company.’
A starter motor revved behind them. They turned, stared in horrified disbelief. In the few seconds since they had left her, Marge D’Arcy had moved into the driver’s seat and started the engine.
Ruth ran forward. ‘Wait, Marge! Wait!’
She saw the white-clad arm engage the gears, the white hands clutch the wheel. She was halfway to the jeep when it started with a sudden lurch and screech of tyres. Mud spurted. Ruth stared open-mouthed as Marge D’Arcy drove away from her down the muddy road.
She could have cried, screamed. She did neither. The shock of her sudden abandonment was too cataclysmic to register with her at all.
Better get back to that baby, she thought dully. There’ll be time to worry about everything else when we’ve sorted that out.
She turned and went into the house.
TWELVE
Time, the outside world, even the approaching Japanese threat, ceased to have meaning. The world was reduced to the dark room, the gleam of light in the watching eyes of the women, the hot, bloody, desperate business in hand.
Ruth tried to turn the child, wet and slippery, stubborn, as unyielding as rock yet indescribably fragile and precious. How she tried. The problem contracted to basic realities. A caesarean section was impossible. The necessary equipment wasn’t there. If she could not turn the child it could not be born, in which case both it and its mother would die. With insufficient force the child could not be turned. Too much force, even by a hair’s breadth, and they would also die. Ruth sweated and strained. Failed. Tried again. Failed. The girl writhed, cried out, screamed. From the shadows the eyes watched, accusingly, or so it seemed. Ruth’s hands were red with blood. Its coppery stench filled her nostrils, her mind.
Do not haemorrhage. She screamed the order silently into the gasping breath, the moans, the brooding menace of death.
Ruth rested her weight on her hands, dragging gulps of air into her lungs. Tried again. Nothing.
The girl’s body was limp, the skin yellow as lemons in the wan light.
‘Help me!’ Ruth demanded fiercely. ‘Help yourself!’
One of the women moaned, rocking.
‘Shut up!’ At that moment she hated them all.
The child’s successful birth, the survival of the mother, had become talismans. Save the child, the Japanese will not catch me.
She thrust in her hand again. A part of her mind wondered, How can she stand this? But this was no time for sympathy’s treacherous weakness, only for determination and strength. Hatred, too, had its place. The mirror image of love.
She yanked, sweated, twisted. Felt the pelvis grate. Any more of this and she will die anyway.
The baby moved.
She caught her breath. The girl lay inert. No time to think of her, either, all Ruth’s thoughts and being concentrated in the strong fingers, wrestling.
The baby moved.
Suddenly it was easy. She felt it turn, the head presented, she seized the girl’s hands, shaking, shaking, her eyes glaring down at her, willing her to one final effort.
‘Now! It’s ready! Push! Push!’
From somewhere the will returned to match her own. The wet fingers tightened. The body convulsed. Eyes glaring, teeth set.
‘Come on!’
And she pushed.
Slick as a fish after being denied so long, the baby slid into the light.
Ruth snatched it up, tied and cut the trailing cord.
Don’t you die on me brat, she warned, teeth ferocious. Not after all that.
Obediently, the child screamed. A boy. Which would please the husband, no doubt.
The old woman took it from her, jabbering — at Ruth, at the emptied body of the mother, at the world that had witnessed the birth of another man child.
Ruth bent over the girl. Her features seemed obliterated by exhaustion, by the long struggle with pain and fear. She had been pretty, would be again, perhaps. Not now. The long eyelids opened. The girl looked out at her.
‘A boy,’ Ruth told the waiting eyes. ‘He’s okay.’
At her back the old woman twittered, her voice high and shrill, like the talking of birds.
The eyes closed.
Ruth tended her. She could not bear to think how sore and drained the girl must be after such an ordeal but at least there had been no haemorrhage.
She is tough, Ruth thought. Women have to be to go through that. She will survive.
It was finished. Ruth’s body sagged. She felt old, as empty as the emptied body of the girl. She walked with dragging steps to the doorway, looked out at the world, felt it return with all its problems.
I can’t hang about here, she thought. If I do they’ll catch me for sure.
She had a dazed memory of washing herself in water brought her by someone, of faces, warm and golden, laughing, chattering, of her own slow strengthening under the beneficent warmth of the sun.
There was food; she ate, barely conscious she was doing so. She drank what they gave her.
Ang Bau, the orderly, the bright colours of her longyi stained with blood, translated. Ruth was too tired to take in what she was saying. One word brought her back.
She looked up sharply. ‘The Japanese, you say? What about them?’
‘Five mile.’ The woman gestured down the road behind them. ‘They come.’
Five miles.
‘On foot?’
It took a while to get her to understand but she did so at length.
She shook her head vigorously. ‘Moto,’ she explained. ‘Tenk.’
A motorised column, then. With tanks. And now that bloody Marge had pinched the jeep she was on foot. There was no way she could escape along the road.
‘Leave me,’ she told the girl. ‘They won’t bother you. I’ll hide in the bush. Get away later.’
Again the long rigmarole of being understood. Now the heads were shaking, voices vociferous from mouths no longer smiling. An old man, wizened, toothless, rattled away, gesticulating hugely.
Ruth spoke barely a word of their dialect yet now, listening, it seemed that she could understand at least the gist of what he was saying. They would hide her, the old man seemed to be telling her.
‘You can’t,’ Ruth said. ‘They’ll kill the lot of you, you do that.’
No one took any notice.
There was a wagon, curved like a ship’s prow, drawn by a water buffalo. In the wagon, a pile of straw. Encouraged by the villagers, Ruth clambered into the wagon and hid beneath the straw. Its strong smell filled her nose, the coarse stalks lacerated her.
She lay motionless upon the wooden bed of the wagon. Someone climbed on to the driver’s bench, a woman’s voice squawked shrilly at the buffalo, with a creak and groan of wheels the wagon began to move.
Where they were taking her Ruth had no idea.
Now she had time to be afraid. If the Japanese found her they would kill her, nothing was more certain, but that no longer mattered. What frightened her was what they might do to her first.
If I survive I shall write about this, she thought, and found that the
idea helped. She could not afford to die; she had too much she wanted to do with her life. She nearly laughed, hysterically, at the ludicrous thought.
I bet the Japs will be really impressed with that idea. I’m sure they’ll be only too happy to let me go so I can write about them.
Unbelievably, she dozed, exhausted after the long battle of the child’s birth. Later she came to with a jerk, aroused by a sound different entirely from all the other sounds that surrounded her. The growl of engines. The harsh squeal of metal.
Tanks.
Her heart pounded, her palms were cold and wet. Her whole body was cold, trembling uncontrollably.
Let them not find me, she prayed. Please God help me.
Then took a deep breath, ashamed of her fear. I never talk to God when things are going well, she thought. Why should he listen to me now?
Yet, for all that, the repetitive litany continued. Please God, please God, please God …
The roar of engines came up behind them, drew level, passed. Stopped. The driver of the wagon called shrilly to the buffalo. Which also stopped. Tears of terror running down her face, the harsh straw sticking painfully into her body, Ruth cowered.
If they pull away the straw …
If they stick their bayonets through the straw …
A man’s voice, as harsh as the straw. The driver of the wagon answered. Ruth had to know what was going on. She shifted her position, very cautiously, until she could see.
A light tank was pulled up ahead of them, its gun barrel threatening the road ahead. A man was leaning out of the open turret and interrogating the driver of the wagon. Closely-cropped black hair furred a head as round as a ball but there was nothing humorous about him. His voice was belligerent, hectoring. Behind the tank was an open lorry packed with troops, their rifles ranged with bayonets. From where they sat they could look straight into the wagon. The slitted eyes seemed to stare straight at her. Frozen where she lay, Ruth willed her heart to stop beating, her blood to freeze in her veins.
It was dreadful to have no idea what they were saying.
The tank man shouted at the driver; her voice sounded cheerful as she replied. Whatever she said must have satisfied him; he turned away and an instant later the tank went on down the road, the lorry following, the acrid stench of the exhaust fumes heavy on the air.
Ruth slumped, breathing noisily.
The wagon resumed its creaking journey. At intervals more lorries overtook them but none stopped and eventually the wagon turned cumbrously off the road and along a narrow track overhung by trees. Ten minutes later they stopped. Ruth dared not move but the woman who had driven her here climbed down and came back to her.
By gestures she indicated that Ruth should get out of the wagon. Ruth did so, looking nervously about her. They had stopped beside a long shed of weathered planks with what looked like a brick oven at the far end. Rubber trees surrounded them. There was a smell of smoked fish, familiar yet incongruous.
The woman removed the wooden bar securing the shed door and pulled it open to reveal lines of smoke-blackened racks. The kippery smell was suddenly much stronger and Ruth realised that the hut was a smoke shed for drying rubber. The woman handed Ruth a jar of water and gestured at the interior of the hut. The cramped and smoky interior was uninviting but, hopefully, safe. And this woman, the whole village, had risked their lives to hide her from the Japanese. Ruth pressed the woman’s arm, smiling into her wizened face, then squeezed her way into the shed between the racks. The door closed and she heard the bar drop into place.
Light shone between the planks, beneath the door, but there was nothing to see. She did not know how long she would be here. Eventually, she supposed, someone would come. Upon who that someone was would depend whether she survived or not.
She drank from the water jar then crouched on the floor, back against the plank wall, knees drawn up to her chest, and went to sleep.
She awoke; it was dark. There was no sound outside the hut. She slept again. When she awoke next, grey light was showing through the gaps between the planks and someone was at the door.
She had a second to feel terror before the door swung back and light flooded in.
‘Missy?’
Relief so intense she almost fainted. It was Ang Bau, the orderly from the hospital.
‘What is it?’
The girl came into the hut, talking so fast in her broken English that Ruth battled to understand her.
It seemed that a column of Japanese soldiers had gone up the road during the night but for the moment, until the back-up troops arrived, the country was more or less clear of them. It was time for Ruth to make her getaway.
‘But if the soldiers are north of here already —’
It meant she was cut off.
The orderly shook her head. ‘British troops still in Maymyo, missy.’
‘How far is Maymyo?’
Ang Bau could not tell her that.
‘How do I get there?’
‘Along road. If Japanese come, hide in grass, then go on.’
To Ruth it all sounded suspiciously simple but she knew she had no choice.
‘Very well.’
She eased herself from beneath the smoking racks and stood. She was stiff after her cramped night but the sleep had refreshed her.
She would not allow herself to think what might happen to her if the British troops were not in Maymyo.
Then Ang Bau came out with the best news of all.
‘Soldier here, in village.’
Terror stabbed. ‘Japanese soldiers?
Vigorously the woman shook her head. ‘Karen soldier. White officer.’
Relief brought tears to Ruth’s eyes. They must be stragglers cut off from the main army in the retreat. No matter. She was not alone, after all.
‘Where are they?’
Ang Bau pointed back along the track. ‘Come now.’
Ten minutes later, they did.
There were half a dozen of them, sweat-stained and dirty. They were levies and wore a motley selection of clothes but their weapons were clean and they carried them as though they knew how to use them. The officer in charge, a lieutenant a year or two older than herself, was slender, dark-haired, with a fresh and open face. He smiled at her, sketched a salute.
‘Richard Hudson,’ he introduced himself. ‘This is a mess, isn’t it?’
He sounded cheerful and Ruth felt her spirits lift. She smiled back at him. ‘Are you going to get us out of it?’
‘I’ll give it a good try, I promise you that.’
Confident without being cocky. She began to think her luck had turned at last.
‘What are you doing out here by yourself?’ Richard Hudson asked.
She explained about the casualty station, the airstrip that had never been used.
‘Typical shambles,’ he said cheerfully but did not seem overly depressed by it.
She stared at him. ‘You sound like you’re enjoying yourself.’
He did not deny it. ‘It’s an adventure, isn’t it?’
Ruth had no interest in adventures. ‘I just want to get out of here in one piece.’
‘Don’t you want to have stories you can tell your grandchildren?’
‘If you can guarantee I’ll live long enough to have grandchildren.’
‘You’d best tag along with us, then. I don’t fancy your chances by yourself.’
Neither did Ruth but was not about to say so. ‘If you like,’ she said.
A show of independence never came amiss.
‘Have you got a gun? A knife?’
She shook her head.
‘You ought to have something.’ He unbuckled his belt, handed her his sheath knife. ‘Take this.’
‘What about you?’
‘I’ve got this.’ And hefted the sten gun.
‘What I don’t understand is how you came to be running that clearing station all by yourself.’
‘I wasn’t.’
She explained how Marge D’Arc
y had abandoned her. Felt an obscure need to defend conduct that she knew was indefensible. ‘She was shaken up by the bombing, the way everything happened so fast.’
Richard shook his head disapprovingly. ‘Even so …’
They had been walking for three hours, to begin with along the road, but soon Richard had led them into the forest. At once they began to climb.
‘Why are we going this way?’ Ruth asked.
‘The road’s too dangerous. Not only the Japanese. The whole Chinese Sixth Army’s around here somewhere.’
‘Surely they’re on our side?’
‘They’re on the run. They’re not on anyone’s side but their own.’ They marched swiftly, all the time ready for trouble, but by evening had met no one. They camped by a stream and next morning pushed on again.
Ruth’s muscles were sore from the previous day’s march; she hoped they would not have to go far. ‘How far is it to Maymyo?’
‘We’re not going to Maymyo.’
‘I thought that was where the army was supposed to be.’
‘Maybe the Japanese army.’
‘But Ang Bau said —’
Richard shook his head. ‘We’ll have to go a lot further than that.’
‘How much further?’
For once he was not smiling. ‘As far as it takes.’
The jungle trails were hard going. There seemed no end to the slopes up which Ruth had to drag herself, clutching at roots and branches as the earth slid in tiny avalanches beneath her feet.
‘Keep it up,’ Richard told her as he hauled her up a particularly steep section. ‘We’ll be taking a break in an hour.’
Before the hour had passed they met up with their first party of Chinese soldiers. There were about a hundred of them, heavily armed, with yellow uniforms and hating, sullen faces. No one seemed to be in charge. They did not answer when questioned but stared at the small party with eyes that missed nothing. The weapons and supplies were valuable booty as was Ruth herself, perhaps. She felt the weight of the dark eyes appraising her, face and breasts and belly, and for the first time since meeting Richard felt fear. Which she took care not to show.
Yet the Chinese, sprawled at the side of the trail, made no attempt to interfere with them. They passed them; soon they were out of sight.
