INDIFFERENT HEROES

by MARY HOCKING

  Gordon said, with warning in his voice, ‘There’s no point in hanging around here. You can’t do anything about it.’

  As he and Alice walked on, the sailors remained where they were, bunched together, waiting silently until they had gone out of sight. Alice was conscious of Gordon’s uneasiness, and of his helplessness. The Commander for whom she worked, a small, straight Navy man with the belligerence of a Cagney, would have got the men back to their quarters with one rasping command. Gordon lacked not only rank, but the belief that this could be done. Momentarily, she saw him stripped of his enigmatic charm – a slight young man who had been forced by the war into a wholly inappropriate setting. Why was it that men with so much idealism were not more effective? What was the good of caring if you couldn’t influence people and situations? What, in fact, was the point of talking of the power of good, when on all sides goodness seemed so powerless?

  ‘They’ll go and get blind drunk, and break up some perfectly harmless café!’ she said angrily.

  Gordon did not answer. He held himself stiffly and walked a little apart from her, angry that there should be a witness to his humiliation. She realized, from his reaction rather than from her own observation, that he should have stood his ground.

  The taste for dancing had gone. They caught a tram and bade each other a subdued farewell outside the convent. He watched until she had disappeared into the building.

  The news had already got round. The dead girl was Edna Baxter, who had slept in the large dormitory adjacent to Alice’s own – not an especially daring girl, but one who tended to be late. The girls were shocked, but already asking, ‘What did she go down there for, anyway? She must have known . . .’

  Gwenda, genuinely upset, said, ‘Cutting corners as usual. She told herself it would only take her a few minutes; she’d be all right if she hurried, and didn’t stop for anything . . .’

  ‘She was with me at Pompey. We shared a cabin.’ Small claims to fame were already being staked.

  The next day, when Alice was having tea in the signals office at stand-easy, the sailors were talking about Edna.

  ‘Was she a mate of yourn?’ one of them asked her.

  ‘I knew her, but not very well.’

  She looked round for the sailors she had seen the night before, but they were not on duty this morning.

  ‘Some of our lads settled that score,’ the sailor said.

  ‘How – settled?’

  The leading seaman came over at this point, and something in his manner made the sailor edge away. Alice said, ‘What did he mean, hookey?’

  He swilled tea round in his mug, not meeting her eyes; he was a quiet, grave-faced, gentle young man. Alice could see he was very uncomfortable,

  ‘You don’t mean. . . they couldn’t!’

  He looked over his shoulder to where the sailors were grouped, talking in low voices. ‘This isn’t our sort of country. It wouldn’t be safe for women like you if the wogs thought they could get away with it.’

  ‘But they won’t know, hookey! How would they connect it? This isn’t a village, it’s a huge town.’

  ‘The word gets round, Alice.’ He was no more convinced of this than was she, he was bolstering himself up.

  Alice sipped her tea. It all seemed unreal, Edna’s death and this other death. Edna had taken a short cut, probably because she was late, and had paid the penalty; the unknown Egyptian had done nothing to merit his death beyond just being there when a scapegoat was needed. All that Katia had done was to be Jewish. Rage boiled up in her. ‘I hope they are caught and court martialled!’

  Hookey looked shocked, and said in a hushed voice, ‘You mustn’t say that kind of thing, Alice. Don’t let people hear you. It was just a wog. You can’t change things.’

  ‘I don’t want this tea.’ She went out of the room. She would not spend stand-easy with them again; she would go without her tea. That would be a gesture of some sort.

  She told Gordon about it later. He withdrew into himself; he had anticipated this and no doubt felt a personal responsibility. ‘There was nothing you could have done,’ Alice told him. This was true, but it was not enough to absolve either of them from guilt. He seemed unable to share his guilt with her. All he would say was, ‘Men do all sorts of things you can’t understand, Alice.’

  The girls at the convent were divided in their reactions. Jeannie said with some satisfaction, ‘Matelots may be a grouchy lot, but they always look after their own’; while Madeleine commented, ‘My God! And we call ourselves civilized!’ The others seemed most concerned with trying to identify the sailors; once they had done this – ‘I know that fellow!’ – they lost interest.

  The darkness which Alice thought she had shaken off came down again. She was aware of the many things it was better not to see – the poverty, the cruelty to animals, the hungry children, the diseased and crippled. For a time, these became the only things she did see.

  She was aware of how fractured was her understanding of living. When she was growing up, she had known that people were starving while she

  was cared for and cherished; she had put money in boxes, but by doing so had not effected a reconciliation. Reconciliation had not been possible. Now, there was her war, which she, like many others, had been determined to enjoy because it offered an undreamt-of freedom; while, in Europe, people disappeared, like refuse swept into a sewer, never to see the light of day again. Here, in Egypt, she found the darkness encroaching. And she must fight the darkness for the sake of her own survival. Yet, by doing so, must she acknowledge the need for a fractured understanding? What alternative was there?

  She had another of her bad dreams. In the dream she saw her home after it had been bombed, the chimney still standing. The chimney dominated the dream, towering high above the wreckage; smoke belched from it, blowing ashes into the sky. There was something obscene about the chimney which filled her with terror. Yet it was not for her father and Mrs Vaseyelin whom she cried out in the dream, but for Katia, who had not been there when the houses were bombed. Her waking mind was unable to make the connection between Katia and the chimney.

  The next day she went into the convent chapel when it was empty. As she said her prayers, she closed her eyes tightly so that they should not dwell on the images and candles and other idolatries. Her mind formulated questions to which there were no answers. In spite of the quiet coolness of the place, she experienced a profound sense of uneasiness, of being drawn beyond the sheltering walls which had encircled her in childhood. Was this sense of danger related to the Roman Catholic faith, which she had been told had sinister drawing powers, or was there something else, something inherently dangerous which lay beyond the safe harbour of childhood?

  When Singapore fell, the number of prisoners of war might have presented a problem to a people more charitably disposed to men who have surrendered than the Japanese. The town was badly damaged, however, and there was plenty of work to be done. In time, they would devise more onerous work for their prisoners.

  Ben had been in hospital with fever during the last week of fighting. The hospital had been stormed by Japanese troops, who had killed everyone in sight. Ben had been out of sight at the time.

  The military prisoners were housed in the jail and Army barracks at Changi, some fourteen miles’ march from Singapore town. At Changi, where nearly two hundred men were crowded into a room which had once served as sleeping quarters for thirty, Ben was reunited with Geoffrey.

  ‘I thought you must be dead! We heard about the hospital.’

  ‘I was in the store,’ Ben told him. ‘I went there in the hope of stealing quinine – everyone was stealing. The Japs flung open the door and had a quick look. I was behind the door.’

  When the slaughter was over, he had crawled out of the building, and had been fortunate in being picked up by two Australian soldiers. Less fortunately, his brain appeared to have recorded in minute detail the sights and sounds of those dreadful moments in the hospital and now insisted on a r
eplay whenever he had a quiet moment. ‘What about you?’ he asked Geoffrey, hoping his would not be a less ignoble story.

  Geoffrey had little idea what had happened to him, only a confused series of images driven like a stake into his mind: a nurse shot down as she fetched water from a standpipe; English soldiers looting a hairdressing salon, spraying one another with perfume; groups of Australians sitting aimlessly on the edge of the pavement, smoking; frantic civilians, who still imagined they enjoyed some sort of privilege, threading their way disdainfully among the troops; Chinese traders hawking their wares as if nothing had happened; smoke and flames, and a burning oil slick looking incredibly beautiful as it moved slowly down the river; a captain in the Argylls weeping over the body of a dead child. From now on, death would be recorded in his drawings with the same factual precision as bridge building or a sunset after the monsoon.

  The atmosphere in the room was foul, the noise oppressive. Ben and Geoffrey were lucky to be near a window. They could see wooded hills which looked deceptively cool in the moonlight, like a fairy tale landscape, ambiguously inviting.

  Ben said, ‘We must get out of here.’

  ‘We can’t, Ben. Even if you were strong enough to make the attempt, it would be madness.’

  ‘It’s madness to stay here. I’d rather die fighting the jungle . . .’

  ‘You’ll never get off the island.’

  Ben leant against the wall, considering this. After a few moments, he said, ‘That would be a good caption to the Singapore series of drawings.’

  ‘It’s been used.’

  ‘Already?’ He turned his face to the wall, ashamed to let his friend see the extent of his despair. His face was much thinner now. Geoffrey thought he would draw him as a dark, wounded bird; but a bird of prey, still, fierce and formidable. How different they were! All he had to sustain him was the countryman’s stolid, persevering patience. He guessed that, had they met in peacetime, Ben would not have spared him a second glance. He said gently, ‘We’ll get used to it.’

  ‘I’d rather die.’

  As Ben lay in the hospital, he had felt a sense of shame, outrage, anger, bewilderment, as if he had lost a vital race. Surely it was only a heat? There would be a re-run and this ludicrous result would be reversed; the Union Jacks would fly from the flagpoles again. He had never thought of himself as being particularly patriotic, but it had never for one moment occurred to him that British soldiers could be so comprehensively beaten. In particular, he had never imagined himself being beaten. He thought of his mother, her face drawn and old before her time because she had struggled so hard to give him a chance. That was a mistake! Life doesn’t like planners; whatever happens you must not be seen to be too much in charge, otherwise the reins will be snatched from your hands. Then, interrupting all this self-pity, the Japanese had burst into the hospital, performing in a few minutes infinite variations on the theme of terror. Afterwards, he had crawled out on his belly, glad to be alive.

  He could not stay here, shut up in this confined space, with such memories. He had to get out, beyond those hills. ‘I’d sooner die.’

  ‘That is going to be the alternative way of escape.’

  Geoffrey spoke so soberly that Ben turned to look at him. ‘I believe these are the conditions in which men may think themselves into death.’ He did not meet Ben’s eyes, and Ben could see that he was frightened for himself.

  Ben said sharply, ‘You are still doing your drawings?’

  ‘I lost most of them. But I’ve started again.’

  They were both going to need the drawings to keep them sane. They were at Changi for several months, during which time they became accustomed to hunger and brutality. The hunger was the more destructive because it never went away; and if you weren’t careful it dominated every moment, walking and sleeping, so that a man could get into a state where there was nothing, however ignominious or vicious, he would not do to obtain extra rations. They thought they were living like animals and that their conditions were as bad as they could be. Tandy had talked his way into the cookhouse, proclaiming himself an expert at cooking rice. As rice was all there was to cook, he was made welcome. Ben and Geoffrey went out on working parties. Sometimes they worked on the roads, but occasionally they had to repair houses to make them habitable for Japanese officers. They became adept at looting, although their efforts were not always successful. Geoffrey once presented Tandy with what he took to be cooking oil, and was only discovered to be some kind of lubrication after the entire evening meal had been burnt to cinders.

  When the news came that some of them were to move north into Malaya and beyond, they greeted it with relief. The Japanese painted a beguiling picture of the conditions they would enjoy – better climate, fresh flowing water, plenty of fruit and vegetables. While not entirely convinced, they were disposed to be mildly hopeful.

  ‘It must be better,’ Tandy said, it stands to reason. How could it be worse?’

  That night, Geoffrey wrote to his family; and Ben, feeling the need to communicate his misery, wrote to Judith, telling her what a waste it had all been. It was of himself that he was thinking as he wrote, of the years going by, years in which his energy should have been expended on his career, years in which he would have reached his peak. As he bent over the paper, his face had a look of intense, impatient absorption, as though time itself was something to be consumed before it got away from him.

  As Geoffrey wrote, he thought of his family. His mother would pour out her anxiety and grief to friends and neighbours, while endeavouring to keep the spirits of her dear ones high. His father’s would be a quieter sorrow which he would keep to himself, unable to share it; probably he would find difficulty in mentioning his son. The two girls would be confused and irritated by their parents’ behaviour, unable to conceive the possibility that their brother would never return. He realized as he wrote that he seemed to know and love his family much more now that he had moved outside the frame of their lives.

  For part of their journey, they travelled in railway trucks. Then, when there was no railway, they marched. As they marched, they clung grimly to the belief that they would eventually find themselves in a better place. Once, it crossed Ben’s mind that he was headed for Alice’s mythical Kashmir. At the memory of Alice, he began to laugh. He did not laugh often. Tandy said, ‘If there’s anything funny, man, you ought to share it.’

  ‘I was thinking of a girl I know. She came to the door one evening to let us in – I had been walking her older sister home. There was a howling wind and it blew her nightdress right up over her head.’ Tandy sucked in his breath, visualizing something rather different from the young Alice’s podgy form.

  It was the beginning of the wet season. The rain hissed on the leaves of trees, and from time to time it surged as though a gigantic fan had been switched on which drove it now in this direction, now that. Occasionally, it came with a sharp little patter and Tandy muttered, ‘God, it’s raining bloody rice now!’

  The ground was like black treacle. Geoffrey was already walking barefoot. Ben had bound his boots up with leaves, tending them as gently as mutilated flesh, but at each step he could feel them breaking apart; if he could not doctor them again he would soon be bootless, too. Tandy had managed to obtain new boots.

  When they rested at night, the Medical Officer came to see how they were getting on. Geoffrey said he was a good sort. Ben thought him a fool.

  ‘If ever there is a chap who won’t get out of this alive, that’s the one!’ he said scornfully. ‘The product of a good public school, more concerned with being gentlemanly in adversity than survival! What good does he think he is doing himself or any of us, rushing hither and thither, encouraging the weak and faltering!’

  ‘Whereas you wear yourself out with anger.’

  Geoffrey had his own personal scheme for survival: don’t expend too much energy hating the Japs, or being ashamed of defeat; don’t sweat about what happens tomorrow or try to be brave today. ‘Energy is going t
o be as important as food and water,’ he warned Ben. ‘There isn’t much we can do about food and water – but we can try not to squander energy.’

  He looked affectionately at his angry friend: six foot one of spare flesh and bone, a mere exclamation mark in a world in which Nature had run riot. The jungle was the enemy and it was little use being angry with it. It was like a child’s painting where everything has been overdone; trees with vines twisting in the branches and cascading down the trunks, huge fungi rising above a tangle of vegetation. Everything was clotted as though each inch of space must be used up. There was too much creation here, he thought uneasily; life and death were in danger of becoming one. He looked at Tandy, squatted beside him. His jaw was thrust out; every now and again, his tongue flicked out and licked the water which ran down his face. There was something saurian in the movement. Unconsciously, Geoffrey’s drawings began to show man in the process of reverting to the primeval.

  They marched for many days and had little rest. Soon, Ben found himself trying to concentrate his mind on the miseries of his boots in order to save himself rather than them. He was in a state of exhaustion, but other men were managing to keep going and so must he. It was only later he would come to realize that there was hardly a man who did not feel he had reached the extreme limit of endurance. During the next months the limits would be pushed further and further. It was good that at this stage they did not know what lay ahead of them.

  In June, Tobruk fell. Alice remembered her father saying what magnificent fighters the Dutch were; and then, ‘It will be Belgium again; we shall hold them in Belgium’ – the Maginot Line had been side-passed before he had had time to consider its holding power. People were more used to defeat now. The ships of the French fleet, inactive in Alexandria harbour, were a constant reminder of the fall of France. More recently, the Japanese had taken Malaya and Singapore. Once Tobruk fell, there seemed nothing to stop Rommel getting to Alexandria. The Great Flap was on. Where were they, Alice wondered, those cool, right-lipped, purposeful men who never panicked and had the air of knowing exactly what they were about? Perhaps they had been sent to some other arena of the war.