by Maggie Ford
‘Don’t look too good,’ Harry said. ‘They’re sayin’ if the Fourteenth Army do make it to Rangoon, the Japs’ll start usin’ us for sandbags.’
‘If that’s the case,’ Matthew said grimly, ‘I’d sooner be shot running than being a shield for some …’
The rest of his words were drowned in a fit of coughing from which Harry moved hastily away. But it didn’t matter. He now had hope to cling to and his spirits lifted of their own accord.
May, the monsoon yet to begin, the weather still as sweet as any tropical climate allowed, Matthew came awake from a sleep already disturbed by the bouts of sweating peculiar to his condition and a wonderful dream about Susan to a hand shaking his shoulders. Phil was standing over him, all his worldly goods draped about his waist like tarnished charms on an old bracelet. Above it all the normally doleful hatchet face looked grim.
‘Sorry t’ disturb your sleep, Matt. But us lot ’re movin’ on.’
The Japs had been growing more and more jittery of late, even their interest in forcing their prisoners to work all hours dropping off. The air was still full of rumours, all of which the prisoners believed purely because they needed to feel that soon they must be released by the fabled oncoming Fourteenth Army. Now all the rumours suddenly took substance as Phil went on.
‘They say your blokes’re just up the road. Nips’re movin’ out. Taking all us healthy buggers with ’em. To Moulmein ready for shipment to Japan. You cripples are stayin’ behind.’
It was meant to be witty but the grin was one of sick disappointment. From the courtyard, came the bellow of the retreating Japanese assembling their ‘fit’ prisoners.
‘S’long then, sport. Take care of y’self. Yuh gonna make it y’know. Bet y’shirt on it.’ The grin widened determinedly, the first time Matthew ever remembered Phil smiling without it being a sneer. ‘Send yuh a postcard from Sydney one day.’
Going to the now wide-open door of his wing of cells Matthew watched the long gangling figure, deprived of freedom that was nearly his, shoulders hunched in despondency, go off to join the men assembled. He’d never liked Phil all that much but now it felt he was saying farewell to a comrade in a chain of comrades to whom he’d said farewell, one way or another. He should have been feeling elated by the news he’d been given. Instead he felt he wanted to cry. In fact, he was looking at this gangling bundle of misery through a mist and one of his cheeks was being dampened by a thin rivulet.
He forgave himself the tears; TB made a man over-emotional. But in his way, Phil had been close to him, perhaps by his very dolefulness. Watching him go, Matthew thought of all those he’d known, some closer than others: little Taffy Thomas, the endearingly libidinous Welshman blown apart in the retreat to the Sittang River; Bob Howlett, the gentle man who had succoured him on that long march to Rangoon, himself dying alone; another, Colin Pardoe, a religious man of simple faith who had dragged him back to sanity after Bob’s ignominious death – where he was now God only knew, might even be sitting at His feet right now for all Matthew could tell what had happened to him. There had been others, and Harry Hope was still here, but one by one they had all gone. Now he felt only utter loneliness as Phil, the man of misery, turned and waved for the last time.
Dawn broke grey and heavy, announcing the coming monsoon season. The sick awoke to find the prison gates standing open, the guardhouse deserted – a faintly bewildering experience after so long close-confined.
Matthew and a few others wandered through them just to savour the sensation of this new freedom. They found a note in English nailed to one of the gateposts: YOU ARE FREE TO MOVE AS YOU WISH. FOOD AND MEDICAL SUPPLIES HAVE BEEN LEFT FOR YOU. THE BRITISH WILL SOON BE HERE, YOU MAY WAIT FOR THEM OR GO TO MEET THEM AS YOU CHOOSE.
Thus, as the British had fled Rangoon three years earlier, so the Japanese, who’d scorned them for their cowardice, had likewise fled before the conquerors. The wheel had turned full circle. Slowly. But it had turned. He was going home, home to Susan. How she must have wept over him, worried herself silly over his well-being, how lonely she must have been.
And himself? The years spent struggling to survive yet seeing death at every turn waiting to pick him up, were over. Death had been waiting for him to thumb a lift from all the misery and degradation that had almost sucked him down into its depths. Thank God he had resisted that dark presence, even through the worst of times. It was over. It hardly seemed true that soon he’d be going home, picking up the threads of his life.
He felt all in, very near to tears at the enormity of this moment as he stood in the emerging sunlight with all the others waiting for their liberators to appear down that road. When they did he would show them that his head had not been bowed, that his spirit had remained strong, had endured. He would throw them a cheeky wave, perhaps even chuck up a smart salute, and not show the true emotions that were ruling inside him. His throat ached from the effort.
All the good intentions. When the first well-clad, sturdy, full-cheeked soldier came marching up to the gaol gates, he could only stand there staring at the health of the man, who smiled at him with such pity in his expression that Matthew found himself stumbling towards him. And as the soldier held out a hand to him, he laid his emaciated arms about the man’s neck and sobbed.
Chapter 24
Matilda was not an easy child. Lilian, with recollections of her own, had been taken by surprise. Her little hands were in everything. She was so quick, and it was all her grandmother could do to run after her, those sturdy little legs going like pistons as she found her feet.
It had taken a while to find them, left as she had been in her cot for days on end where she could come to no harm, Susan had said, from the stairs which she could have fallen down, the gas ring from which she could have pulled a kettle of water over herself, the sharp corners in the room. Excuses. Children came to know these dangers by having an alert parent watching them. No, the real reason was that vile man Crawley who didn’t want a child that wasn’t his hanging around.
Emma Crawley had taken their boys with her to stay with her sister in Valance Road a couple of streets away so that the boys hadn’t had to change schools or anything. And of course, in the quieter house, the cries of Susan’s baby to be given more freedom had disrupted his enjoyment with his mistress when he was home.
Let free in her grandmother’s large airy house, the child found her feet. Five months later and still she was wearing out her indulgent grandparents.
‘She’s as energetic and high-spirited as Matthew was,’ she said to Leonard one night, once the child finally fell asleep after lying wide-awake and bored in the drawn-out daylight of long May evenings, taking up time they would have preferred to have to themselves.
Leonard looked up from his Evening Star. ‘We should have known what we were taking on. Do you regret it, Lilian?’
‘No, I don’t,’ she answered emphatically, picking up the embroidery she was doing on a dress for Matilda – when she had the time. ‘All I dream is for her father to come home and see the pretty little daughter he has. That’s worth all the trials and tribulations we’ve undergone in taking Matilda on.’
She fell silent, bending her head to the rosebud she was fashioning on the front of the cotton garment. It had been a cream skirt of hers. Now it was a dress, needing just this sprinkling of rosebuds to lift its plain colour. Leonard went back to reading his paper.
A quietness descended on them both; it brought thoughts drifting through Lilian’s mind as she worked. The war in Europe was over, Hitler dead by suicide. He had deserved a far worse death. Mussolini too was dead, his body afterwards hung by its feet from a lamppost by a mob, those he’d once ruled as dictator, his face kicked in. Lilian shuddered. That should have happened to Hitler too. The ghastly pictures in the papers revealed the horror of those terrible concentration camps. And poor President Roosevelt, a natural death, but a sad, sad loss.
Now there was peace, but not everywhere. The newspapers, when they weren’t rep
orting about the Nuremberg Trials, now concentrated on the Far East and what the Japanese regime was really like. A statement made in January by Anthony Eden in the House of Commons had described the fearful treatment of prisoners by the Japanese, and later, a Japanese prison ship transporting prisoners of war to Japan, had been sunk. The state of the surviving captives showed them to be in the most appalling state.
What then of Matthew? He could easily have been on that ship, one of those who had not survived. No news, never any news. The war in Europe was over, but they might still find that their son had died perhaps a year ago or more.
Holding her baby in her arms, Susan went to answer the knock on the door. She was not really concerned who stood there, except that whoever it was had interrupted her quiet afternoon nap. Trevor, a good baby, unlike Mattie, slept in the afternoon, allowing her to do likewise until Geoff came home. Since the war had finished he’d applied for a transfer nearer home to be with her more, and now worked at a Gas Board office in London. Wonderful. She saw him every night. Well, almost, because some evenings he went round to see his sons. She hated those evenings.
Casually she opened the door, then gasped. Mr and Mrs Ward stood there with Mattie between them, Mrs Ward holding the child’s hand in her usual iron grip. Mattie, now nearly three years old, looked happy, her small face animated at seeing the mother she seldom saw these days, but the look on the faces of her grandparents suggested they had received bad news. Susan’s mind flew to Mattie with a stab of dismay. Had they brought her back? What the hell was she going to do with her? She had Trevor now. How could she deal with two children?
‘What’s the matter?’ she blurted, hitching Trevor to a less weighty position in her arms. ‘What’s she done?’ She had to have done something awful for them to look like this. Not angry; strange, strained.
‘It isn’t Matilda,’ Mrs Ward began, but Mr Ward cut in.
‘We’ve had news of Matthew,’ he said.
Another stab of dismay. If they’d had news that he was dead, she’d be sorry, thinking back to that glorious time they had spent together making love on Beacon Hill, then their wedding day and the little love nest he had found. She saw again the cramped little room with the sunshine coming through the window lighting everything golden. The cosy silence they had shared, the way he had so masterfully commanded her to make love to him, laughing; the love they had made. They had been such wonderful days, but so brief. So long ago. A blur, a photograph, a faded photograph.
And what if the news was that he was alive … She tightened her lips, all the complications it would entail filling her head. Did she love him after all this time? She tried in those few seconds to feel what she once had for him. But it wasn’t there, only fond memories that could have been those of someone other than her, someone not her any more, totally different.
And what of Geoffrey? She recalled those twinges of excitement when Matthew had talked of the trust made for him, enough to buy a house, live comfortably. His father of course had a shop, so there was money there too. But Geoff had a house, here. She felt comfortable in it. She could imagine the home Matthew would make for them. His mother would constantly be popping in, criticising this wasn’t right and that wasn’t right, looking askance at her for not keeping the place spick and span and sparkling. She almost shuddered at the thought, knew immediately, staring from one to the other of his parents, that if he was alive she’d still have to choose Geoffrey, comfortable, dependable Geoffrey, who treated her like a goddess, and no one to interfere in what they said or did.
She became aware that Mr Ward was saying something to her which she hadn’t caught and had to beg his pardon to ask what it was he’d said.
He looked irritated. ‘I said … Look, Susan, may we come in. I can’t stand here on the doorstep explaining news as important as this.’
Automatically she stepped back, allowing them inside. She’d had fish and chips for dinner (she’d get Geoff’s tonight when he came home) and the smell of it hung in the house – she knew it did by the offended twitch of Mrs Ward’s nose, though she said nothing.
They followed her into the still-cavernous front room, no longer with the old blackout frames stuck in the corner. Letting the two sit on the huge sofa, she positioned herself on one of the upright chairs, laying Trevor in one of the armchairs where he wouldn’t roll off while Mattie went exploring the room.
‘I’m sorry I wasn’t quite listening when you were speaking,’ she said looking at Mr Ward, but it was his wife who reacted with a disapproving sniff.
‘I would have thought you’d at least be attentive seeing that it concerns your husband.’
Mr Ward raised a mollifying hand. ‘I said, Susan, that we’d had good news of our son, your husband. He’s still your husband, Susan.’
‘Yes, I know.’ It sounded fatuous, but he’d said it with such distaste for what she supposed he saw as her carrying-on behind Matthew’s back. What did he know of how she felt? No one could turn love on and off like a blessed tap.
‘Our news,’ he continued, ‘if it’s worth anything to you now, is that Matthew has been released.’
Susan stared. ‘But the war out there’s not over yet.’
‘You may have read,’ put in Mrs Ward, her tone intimating that Susan’s reading power was limited to say the least, ‘that the Fourteenth Army recaptured Burma some weeks ago.’ Even so excitement rang in her voice. ‘They found Matthew there.’
Responding more to her own churning of feelings than the news itself, Susan wasn’t sure how to react. To give herself time to analyse how she felt about all this, she merely said, ‘Oh.’
Mrs Ward’s eyebrows shot up into her forehead, her controlled joy smothered instantly by exasperation. ‘Aren’t you going to enquire how he is? Aren’t you interested?’
‘I’m glad he’s safe,’ Susan offered automatically, taking it that was what she was expected to say. Uppermost in her mind, however, now she’d had time to sort out her reactions, were the complications this news brought. She saw a line of legal wrangles, divorce courts, three years at least being fettered to a man she’d all but forgotten, never again to feel at ease with her Geoffrey without her husband’s mother breathing down her neck. She would be marked as the guilty party. She was the guilty party, true, but how can anyone turn aside natural feelings, the way she felt about Geoffrey? A tiny place in her mind cried, why couldn’t he have died, a voice she brushed aside the instant it spoke, shuddering that she could even harbour such an evil thought. She wouldn’t wish that on Matthew, on anyone, for a million pounds.
In the nurses’ home Jenny opened her mother’s letter. The hospital overlooking the Blackmoor Vale had a timeless charm; with its smooth grey stone over which this hot, sunny June day seemed to slide like treacle left the interior cool, placid and airy. The windows stood wide open to the fresh breezes essential for those with half a chance of recovery; tuberculosis was a known killer, fresh air, rest, good food were all they could hope for. There was talk of some drug called streptomycin; the press had called it a miracle cure, promising to make TB a thing of the past, but it was still in its experimental stage. The papers hadn’t referred to it again, the headlines bowing out to more important political news. The first peacetime general election was set for the fifth of July. Small things like reporting work on a wonder drug took second place. What a glory if it could be used on the patients she cared for. It was heartbreaking to see those glowing-faced young men, the deceptive transparent bloom a cruel symptom of the disease, slip away. Heartbreaking when they died so young, having come through all the perils of war. It was only when Jenny opened her mother’s letter, the usual two closely written pages relaying all the home gossip, that the disease suddenly became a personal thing. Halfway down the letter, her eyes paused over the next words:
… You remember Matthew Ward, don’t you? He was a prisoner of war and they lost trace of him. Well, they’ve heard from him at last.
Jenny’s heart leapt inside her chest, co
ntinuing with a thumping of joy and anticipation as she skipped the observations on how it couldn’t have been jolly for them, everyone celebrating VE Day, the other war still going on.
Matthew’s parents had no idea he was in Rangoon. He could have been anywhere. It must have been absolutely marvellous, our boys recapturing Burma like that. Mrs Ward’s been telling the whole street about it. He’s in hospital in Ceylon. They think he’s got TB. Isn’t that dreadful, after coming through all he’s been through …
There was more about the bits she’d found out about Matthew’s wife. And a part that made Jenny go suddenly cold with anger. Hearing of his release, the girl had written to him telling him about the man she was living with.
What an awful thing to do. Some people can be so cruel. How he must feel I just don’t know. How could anyone do such a thing? She should at least have waited until he came home, I would have thought. But I gather she doesn’t have much sense, or so Mrs Ward once said, a long time ago now. But …
Jenny lifted her eyes from the page of neat, tight little writing, her head a hotchpotch of thoughts, silent prayers touching her lips in a gush of thanks for his safety, of pleading for his health, of joy, of hope for him to be sent back to England very soon and for her to see him again, and the opportunity for her to be at his side should he need someone, anyone.
Quickly she scanned the rest of her mother’s letter but there was nothing more about Matthew. He just constituted a passing bit of information among all the other snippets her mother had written, the letter closing with a hope that Jenny could be allowed a holiday soon so she could get home.
I don’t know why you want to work so far away. The war is over and there are adequate hospitals around here. But if you must work with TB patients, and I hope to God you don’t catch it, tuberculosis is so infectious but I expect you’re immune by now, we’ve one just the other side of the park where you first went to get a job, do you remember? You could find a place there …
