A Town Like Alice

by Nevil Shute

  She was buried that morning in the Moslem cemetery behind the village; her mother and one other woman were allowed to attend the burial. They read a little of the service out of a prayer book before the uncomprehending soldiers and Malays, and then it was over. Life went on as before in the accounts office, but the children now had nightmares of death to follow them to sleep.

  At the end of six weeks Captain Yoniata faced them after the morning inspection. The women stood worn and draggled in the shade of the veranda facing him, holding the children by the hand. Many of the adults, and most of the children, by that time were thin and ill.

  He said, ‘Ladies, the Imperial Japanese Army has entered Singapore, and all Malaya is free. Now prisoner camps are being built for men and also for womans and childs. Prisoner camps are at Singapore and you go there. I am very sad your life here has been uncomfortable, but now will be better. Tomorrow you start to Kuala Lumpur, not more than you can go each day. From Kuala Lumpur you go by train to Singapore, I think. In Singapore you will be very happy. Thank you.’

  From Panong to Kuala Lumpur is forty-seven miles; it took a minute for his meaning to sink in. Then Mrs Horsefall said, ‘How are we to travel to Kuala Lumpur? Will there be a truck?’

  He said, ‘Very sorry, no truck. You walk, easy journeys, not more than you can go each day. Japanese soldier help you.’

  She said, ‘We can’t walk, with these children. We must have a truck.’

  These were bad thoughts, and his eyes hardened. ‘You walk,’ he repeated.

  ‘But what are we to do with all the luggage?’

  He said, ‘You carry what you can. Presently the luggage is sent after you.’ He turned, and went away.

  For the remainder of the day they sat in stunned desperation; those who had luggage sorted hopelessly through their things, trying to make packs that would hold the essentials and yet which would not be too heavy. Mrs Horsefall, who had been a schoolmistress in her time and had assumed the position of leader, moved among them, helping and advising. She had one child herself, a boy of ten called John; her own position was better than most, for it was possible for a woman to carry the necessities for one boy of that age. The position of the mothers with several young children was bad indeed.

  Jean and Mrs Holland had less of a problem, for having lost their luggage they had less to start with and the problem of selection did not arise. They had few clothes to change into, and what they had could easily go into Jean’s haversack. They had acquired two blankets and three food bowls between them, and three spoons, and a knife and fork; they decided to make a bundle of these small possessions in the blankets, and they had a piece of cord to tie the bundle with and to make a sling, so that one could carry the haversack and one the bundle. Their biggest problem was their shoes, which had once been fashionable and were quite unsuitable for marching in.

  Towards evening, when the children had left them and they were alone with the baby in a corner, Mrs Holland said quietly, ‘My dear, I shan’t give up, but I don’t think I can walk very far. I’ve been so poorly lately.’

  Jean said, ‘It’ll be all right,’ although deep in her mind she knew that it was not going to be all right at all. ‘You’re much fitter than some of the others,’ and this possibly was true. ‘We’ll have to take it very slowly, because of the children. We’ll take several days over it.’

  ‘I know, my dear. But where are we going to stay at night? What are they going to do about that?’

  Nobody had an answer to that one.

  Rice came to them soon after dawn, and at about eight o’clock Captain Yoniata appeared with four soldiers, who were to be their guard upon the journey. ‘Today you walk to Ayer Penchis,’ he said. ‘Fine day, easy journey. Good dinner when you get to Ayer Penchis. You will be very happy.’

  Jean asked Mrs Horsefall, ‘How far is Ayer Penchis?’

  ‘Twelve or fifteen miles, I should think. Some of us will never get that far.’

  Jean said, ‘We’d better do what the soldiers do, have a rest every hour. Hadn’t we?’

  ‘If they’ll let us.’

  It took an hour to get the last child out of the latrine and get the women ready for the march. The guards squatted on their heels; it was a small matter to them when the march started. Finally Captain Yoniata appeared again, his eyes hard and angry. ‘You walk now,’ he said. ‘Womans remaining here are beaten, beaten very bad. You do good thing and be happy. Walk now.’

  There was nothing for it but to start. They formed into a little group and walked down the tarmac road in the hot sun, seeking the shade of trees wherever they occurred. Jean walked with Mrs Holland carrying the bundle of blankets slung across her shoulders as the hottest and the heaviest load, and leading the four-year-old Jane by the hand. Seven-year-old Freddie walked beside his mother, who carried the baby, Robin, and the haversack. Ahead of them strolled the Japanese sergeant; behind came the three privates.

  The women went very slowly, with frequent halts as a mother and child retired into the bushes by the roadside. There was no question of walking continuously for an hour and then resting; the dysentery saw to that. For those who were not afflicted at the moment the journey became one of endless, wearisome waits by the roadside in the hot sun, for the sergeant refused to allow the party to move on while any remained behind. Within the limits of their duty the Japanese soldiers were humane and helpful; before many hours had passed each was carrying a child.

  Slowly the day wore on. The sergeant made it very clear at an early stage that there would be no food and no shelter for the party till they got to Ayer Penchis, and it seemed to be a matter of indifference to him how long they took to get there. They seldom covered more than a mile and a half in the hour, on that first day. As the day went on they all began to suffer from their feet, the older women especially. Their shoes were quite unsuitable for walking long distances, and the heat of the tarmac swelled their feet, so that before long many of them were limping with foot pains. Some of the children went barefoot and got along very well. Jean watched them for a time, then stooped and took her own shoes off, savouring the unaccustomed road surface gingerly with her bare feet. She walked on carrying her shoes, picking her way with her eyes upon the ground, and her feet ceased to pain her though from time to time the tarmac grits hurt her soft soles. She got along better barefoot, but Eileen Holland refused to try it.

  They stumbled into Ayer Penchis at about six o’clock that evening, shortly before dark. This place was a Malay village which housed the labour for a number of rubber plantations in the vicinity. The latex-processing plant of one stood near at hand and by it was a sort of palm thatch barn, used normally for smoking sheets of the raw rubber hung on horizontal laths. It was empty now and the women were herded into this. They sank down wearily in a stupor of fatigue; presently the soldiers brought a bucket of tea and a bucket of rice and dried fish. Most of them drank cup after cup of the tea, but few had any appetite for the food.

  With the last of the light Jean strolled outside and looked around. The guards were busy cooking over a small fire; she approached the sergeant and asked if she might go into the village. He understood that, and nodded; away from Captain Yoniata discipline was lax.

  In the village she found one or two small shops, selling clothes, sweets, cigarettes, and fruit. She saw mangoes for sale, and bought a dozen, chaffering over the price with the Malay woman to conserve her slender cash. She ate one at once and felt better for it; at Kuala Panong they had eaten little fruit. She went back to the barn and found that the soldiers had provided one small lamp with an open wick fed by coconut oil.

  She distributed her mangoes to Eileen and the Holland children and to others, and found they were a great success. Armed with money from the women she went down to the village again and got four dozen more, and presently all the women and children were in mango up to their ears. The soldiers came in with another bucket of tea and got a mango each for their pains, and so refreshed the women were able to eat mos
t of the rice. Presently, they slept, exhausted, weak, and ill.

  The barn was full of rats, which ran over them and round them all night through. In the morning it was found that several of the children had been bitten.

  They woke aching in new places with the stiffness and fatigue of the day before; it did not seem possible that they could march again. The sergeant drove them on; this time the stage was to a place called Asahan. It was a shorter stage than the day before, about ten miles, and it had need to be, because they took as long getting to it. This time the delay was chiefly due to Mrs Collard. She was a heavy woman of about forty-five with two children, Harry and Ben, aged about ten and seven. She had suffered from both malaria and dysentery at Panong, and she was now very weak; she had to stop and rest every ten minutes, and when she stopped they all stopped since the sergeant would not allow them to separate. She was relieved of all load and the younger women took turns to walk by her and help her along.

  By the afternoon she had visibly changed colour; her somewhat ruddy face had now gone a mottled blue, and she was complaining constantly of pains in her chest. When they finally reached Asahan she was practically incapable of walking alone. Their accommodation was another rubber-curing barn. They half carried Mrs Collard into it and sat her up against the wall, for she said that lying down hurt her, and she could not breathe. Somebody went to fetch some water, and bathed her face, and she said, ‘Thank you, dearie. Give some of that to Harry and Ben, there’s a dear.’ The woman took the children outside to wash them, and when she came back Mrs Collard had fallen over on her side, and was unconscious. Half an hour later she died.

  That evening Jean got more fruit for them, mangoes and bananas, and some sweets for the children. The Malay woman who supplied the sweets refused to take money for them. ‘No, mem,’ she said. ‘It is bad that Nippon soldiers treat you so. This is our gift.’ Jean went back to the barn and told the others what had happened, and it helped.

  In the flickering light of the cooking fire outside the barn Mrs Horsefall and Jean held a conference with the sergeant, who spoke only a very few words of English. They illustrated their meaning with pantomime. ‘Not walk tomorrow,’ they said. ‘No. Not walk. Rest – sleep – tomorrow. Walk tomorrow, more women die. Rest tomorrow. Walk one day, rest one day.’

  They could not make out if he understood or not. ‘Tomorrow,’ he said, ‘woman in earth.’

  It would be necessary to bury Mrs Collard in the morning. This would prevent an early start, and would make a ten-mile stage almost impossible. They seized upon this as an excuse. ‘Tomorrow bury woman in earth,’ they said. ‘Stay here tomorrow.’

  They had to leave it so, uncertain whether he understood or not; he squatted down on his heels before the fire with the three privates. Later he came to Jean, his face alight with intelligence. ‘Walk one day, sleep one day,’ he said. ‘Womans not die.’ He nodded vigorously, and she called Mrs Horsefall, and they all nodded vigorously together, beaming with good nature. They were all so pleased with each other and with the diplomatic victory that they gave him a banana as a token of esteem.

  All that day Jean had walked barefoot; she had stubbed her toes two or three times and had broken her toenails; but she felt fresher that evening than she had felt for a long time. The effect of the march upon the women began to show itself that night in very different forms, according to their age. The women under thirty, and the children, were in most cases actually in better condition than when they left Panong; they were cheered by the easier discipline, and stimulated by the exercise and by the improvement in the diet brought by fruit and sweets. The older women were in much worse case.

  For them exhaustion outweighed these benefits; they lay or sat listlessly in the darkness, plagued by their children and too tired to eat. In many cases they were too tired even to sleep.

  In the morning they buried Mrs Collard. There was no burial ground at hand but the Malay headman showed them where they could dig the grave, in a corner of the compound, near a rubbish heap. The sergeant got two coolies and they dug a shallow grave; they lowered Mrs Collard into it covered by a blanket, and Mrs Horsefall read a little out of the Prayer Book. Then they took away the blanket because they could not spare that, and the earth was filled in. Jean found a carpenter who nailed a little wooden cross together for them, and refused payment; he was a Moslem or perhaps merely an animist, but he knew what the Tuans did for a Christian burial. They wrote JULIA COLLARD on it and the date of death with an indelible pencil, hoping it would survive the rain, and then they had a long discussion over the text to put underneath it. This interested every women in the party, and kept them happy and mentally stimulated for half an hour. Mrs Holland, rather surprisingly, suggested Romans, xiv, 4; ‘Who are thou that judgest another man’s servant? to his own master he standeth or falleth’, meaning the sergeant who had made them march that day. But the other women did not care for that, and finally they compromised on ‘Peace, perfect peace, with loved ones far away’. That pleased everybody.

  They sat around and washed their clothes after the burial was over. Soap was getting very scarce amongst them, but so was money. Mrs Horsefall held a sort of meeting after rice and examined the money situation; half the women had no money at all, and the rest had only about fifteen dollars between them. She suggested pooling this, but the mothers who had money left preferred to keep it for their own children; as there was so little in any case it did not seem worth while to worry them by making an issue of it. They all agreed, however, to share rations equally, and after that their feeding times were much better organized.

  Captain Yoniata turned up about midday, driving into Kuala Lumpur in the District Commissioner’s car. He stopped and got out, angry to find that they were not upon the road. He abused the sergeant for some minutes in Japanese; the man stood stiffly to attention, not saying a word in explanation or defence. Then he turned to the women. ‘Why you not walk?’ he demanded angrily. ‘Very bad thing. You not walk, no food.’

  Mrs Horsefall faced him. ‘Mrs Collard died last night. We buried her this morning over there. If you make us walk every day like this, we shall all die. These women aren’t fit to march at all. You know that.’

  ‘What woman die of?’ he inquired. ‘What illness?’

  ‘She had dysentery and malaria, as most of us have had. She died of exhaustion after yesterday’s march. You’d better come inside and look at Mrs Frith and Judy Thomson. They couldn’t possibly have marched today.’

  He walked into the barn, and stood looking at two or three women sitting listless in the semi-darkness. Then he said something to the sergeant and walked back to his car. At the door he turned to Mrs Horsefall. ‘Very sad woman die,’ he said. ‘Perhaps I get a truck in Kuala Lumpur. I will ask.’ He got into the car and drove away.

  His words went round the women quickly; he had gone to get a truck for them, and they would finish the journey to Kuala Lumpur by truck; there would be no more marching. Things weren’t so bad, after all. They would be sent by rail from Kuala Lumpur to Singapore, and there they would be put into a proper camp with other Englishwomen, where they could settle down and organize their lives properly, and get into a routine that would enable them to look after the children. A prison camp would have a doctor, too, and there was always some kind of a hospital for those who were really ill. They became much more cheerful, and the most listless ones revived, and came out and washed and made themselves a little more presentable. Their appearance was a great concern to them that afternoon. Kuala Lumpur was their shopping town where people knew them; they must get tidy before the truck came for them.

  Captain Yoniata appeared again about an hour before sunset; again he spoke to the sergeant, who saluted. Then he turned to the women. ‘You not go to Kuala Lumpur,’ he said. ‘You go to Port Swettenham. English destroy bridges, so railway to Singapore no good. You go to Port Swettenham now, and then ship to Singapore.’

  There was a stunned silence. Then Mrs Horsefall asked, ‘
Is there going to be a truck to take us to Port Swettenham?’

  He said, ‘Very sorry no truck. You walk slow, easy stages. Two days, three days, you walk to Port Swettenham. Then ship take you to Singapore.’

  From Asahan to Port Swettenham is about thirty miles. She said, ‘Captain Yoniata, please be reasonable. Many of us are quite unfit to walk any further. Can’t you get some transport for the children, anyway?’

  He said, Englishwomans have proud thoughts, always. Too good to walk like Japanese womans. Tomorrow you walk to Bakri.’ He got into his car and went away; that was the last they ever saw of him.

  Bakri is eleven miles in the general direction of Port Swettenham. The change in programme was the deepest disappointment to them, the more so as it showed irresolution in their destiny. Mrs Holland said despairingly, ‘I don’t see why he shouldn’t have known at Panong that the bridges were down, and not sent us to Kuala Lumpur at all. It makes one wonder if there’s going to be a ship when we get to Port Swettenham…’.

  There was nothing for it, and next morning they started on the road again. They found that two of the privates had been taken away, and one remained to guard them, with the sergeant. This was of no consequence to their security because they had no desire to attempt to escape, but it reduced by half the help the guards had given them in carrying the younger children, so that it threw an extra burden on the mothers.

  That day for the first time Jean carried the baby, Robin: Mrs Holland was walking so badly that she had to be relieved. She still carried the haversack and looked after Freddie, but Jean carried the bundle of blankets and small articles, and the baby, and led Jane by the hand. She went barefoot as before; after some experiments she found that the easiest way to carry the baby was to perch him on her hip, as the Malay women did.