Nadine held her back. ‘You can’t go ashore. We’re moving, and besides, Geoff knows what he’s doing. He is a policeman, after all.’
‘I can’t leave him,’ said Doreen, twin spots of redness bright as pennies on her cheeks. Lines of concern creased a brow that was usually so smooth, so shiny and sure of itself.
Nadine leaned closer. ‘You must. He’s depending on you to look after the children. You must think of them.’ She jerked her chin downwards to Doreen’s belly. ‘All of them.’
The gap between the boat and the shore widened. A wash of churning water sprayed out from each paddle as those on board fell to silence, worried faces watching as powder puffs of cannon fire exploded a few miles inland.
Nadine watched too. So here I am, leaving another country. What next?
Was it her imagination or were the puffs of explosion closer now than they had been that morning?
Watching for too protracted a period was painful. Lowering her eyes to the rushing water she wondered how long it would be before she saw Malaya again, or any land, for that matter.
Initially Martin laid his huge hand on her shoulder, his fingertips straying to the curve of her breast. Embarrassed, she took a step away.
Martin grinned. ‘Don’t you worry, girl. We’ll get through this, you just see if we don’t.’ He leaned closer. ‘Not very private here for man and wife, is it? Shame. Never mind. I’ll make it up to you some time.’
Strangely enough there was something very reassuring in having his bulk so close. It no longer mattered that he failed to arouse any desire in her and that he was coarse and crass. His body was strong. God help anyone who stole or injured anything of his, and that included his wife.
Chapter Seven
By morning, the sky in the direction of Singapore glowed red, the rays of the rising sun streaked by the grey smoke of burning buildings.
No one on the boat seemed keen to look for very long; just quick glances. No one wanted to dwell on the fact that what they’d been told couldn’t possibly happen had happened. The normal sound of people living went on all around, but muted as though they were afraid to make too much noise and be noticed. Routine acts were carried out, but rushed and quietly.
People washed and fed themselves as best they could. The ship’s crew – mostly Malay and Chinese – shared out what provisions had been brought aboard.
Nadine rubbed at her eyes and neck. She’d slept standing up, her head resting on the ship’s rail. Stretching, she looked around her at the host of fleeing civilians and the few servicemen aboard – mostly Australians.
She also looked for Martin, but he was nowhere to be seen. She couldn’t see Doreen and the children either.
For a while her gaze rested on the sea but it made her feel sick. She turned her attention to the horizon, the only part of the sea that was constant. The queasiness in her stomach dissipated. She tried to focus her mind in order to stop it coming back.
Feeling suddenly bereft and scared, she looked again for Martin. He was forcing his way through the crowd, a bowl of something held high above his head.
‘Breakfast,’ he said as though he served her breakfast every day, when the truth was he’d never prepared any sort of meal since the day they were married.
‘It’s only fruit, I’m afraid,’ he said. ‘A bit of mango, banana, pineapple and stuff, and before you guzzle the lot, this meal is for two.’
She looked into the dish and frowned. ‘That’s for two?’
He grinned. ‘No. Only joking.’
‘This is hardly the time for joking.’
In the period following that, she would remember the meal as being generous to the point of gluttony – but not then.
‘Where are Doreen and the children?’
He pointed to the other side of the deck. ‘Over there. I found them a bit of floor space, enough room for the kids to sleep and Mrs Tracey to sit down.’
Martin’s consideration surprised her.
He caught her looking at him, but misinterpreted the reason.
‘Don’t worry, girl. We’ll get through this. You just see if we don’t.’
Typical Australian optimism.
A shout went up that another ship was approaching, resulting in an instant buzz of excitement. They were not alone!
Swallowing the last of the fruit, Nadine turned her head in the same direction as everyone else.
‘More evacuees?’
‘Could be,’ Martin answered.
‘That’s the KL Princess,’ drawled an Australian soldier standing nearby. Tipping back his hat, he swiped at the sweat dribbling through his eyebrows. ‘Yeah. That’s her all right.’
The grey outline of the old launch shimmered in the glitzy haze of the Malayan dawn.
Nadine narrowed her eyes against the morning glare. Figures were lined along the deck, standing in tiers around a funnel belching black smoke.
‘I can see people,’ she said, shading her eyes in an effort to make out more detail.
Martin stayed silent but his expression said it all. Martin had never looked afraid before, but he did now.
A feeling like a tiny claw scratched at her heart.
What has he seen?
She looked at him at exactly the same moment as he looked at her, wanting to see a reassuring expression, but knowing instinctively that she would not.
His manner was abrupt. ‘Get over to the other side of the boat.’
She tried to turn but was hampered by the press of bodies. They were packed too tightly.
‘I can’t…’
‘Here!’
He stuck out his arm, enveloping her at the same time as pushing her behind him. Held flat against his back, she stumbled along unseeing, aware that he was using himself as a battering ram to get through the crowd.
Just at the moment when she glimpsed Doreen and the children, the panic spread.
There were no shouts that the launch was full of Japanese soldiers, but she knew that it was so. A pushing, shoving, screaming tidal wave moved inexorably across the deck, the boat tilting in response to the sudden shift of weight.
Doreen struggled to her feet, held the children against her and screamed. ‘Nadine!’
Nadine screamed back. ‘Over here.’
Her voice barely carried above the noise of men, women and children shouting and crying.
Doreen tried to move forward, but the rush of frightened souls held her back.
Martin pushed his way through, scooping the two children into his arms as though they weighed no more than bags of rice.
Doreen’s face was contorted with fear.
Nadine reached out. ‘Grab my hand.’
Their fingertips touched. Bit by bit, they inched closer together until their fingers intertwined and their palms met.
A huge plume of water coincided with a tremendous explosion. The air filled with screams of terror, crying children, shouting men.
Rivets popped and the ship creaked and groaned as she rolled further onto her side. All hell broke loose. Crew members abandoned ship, men abandoned women, and those women without children took advantage of their encumbered sisters, violently shoving them aside.
A mass of humanity slid reluctantly or jumped into the water.
Nadine sank deeply into a turquoise haze, its touch as cool as silk. Not for one instant did she fear she might die. She would not!
You have not left India and your father’s house to drown in the ocean.
Suddenly the aqua ceiling above her head broke open and she burst through the surface, gasping for air. She was alive, afloat in a sea of struggling humanity. Her first thought was of Doreen. She saw her not too far away and instantly looked for the children. They were nowhere in sight.
Kicking her legs and flailing at the water with one arm kept her afloat. With the other she jerked Doreen to the surface, who made a great whooping noise, water gushing from her nose and mouth as she fought to catch her breath. Nadine attempted to get her bearings, the water
ballooning her clothes as she kicked and turned, searching for land.
‘The children are there,’ she gasped between gulps of air and water, nodding to where spumes of surf surged and recoiled onto a sandy beach. ‘There!’
Up until now Doreen had seemed disorientated, too shocked to do anything except tread water. Now she was like a sleeper awaking.
‘Where’s Wendy? Where’s William?’
Clenching her jaw, Nadine tightened her grip and tugged her towards the shore.
‘They’re safe. Martin has them.’
Disbelieving, Doreen began to jerk her head around, searching for sight of her children.
Nadine tugged her again. ‘Doreen! They’re on the shore. Martin has got them to the shore! Look! See?’
She pointed in a vague manner, no more than a flippant flick of her wrist to a point where the strongest, mostly the soldiers, were dragging themselves ashore beneath a crop of straggly palms.
Martin chose that moment to pop up between them, blood trickling from a wound in his temple. He wrapped his arms around both of them.
A look of panic threatened Doreen’s features.
‘I told you,’ Nadine said. ‘The children are safe and now he’s come back for us.’
‘Kick and push with your hands,’ he ordered.
Nadine obeyed. So did Doreen but to a lesser extent.
Sometimes she swallowed water. It tasted funny and didn’t seem as blue as it had been. Mangled limbs floated without bodies, torsos without heads, in a sea turned from turquoise to pink. She was tasting blood.
Whether Doreen presumed he’d left the children on the beach and come back for them, Nadine did not know.
Her fears proved unfounded. Barefooted and ragged, Wendy and William came running through the white sand, finally throwing themselves into their mother’s grateful arms.
Not everyone was so lucky. Bodies and bits of bodies floated on the water.
Those who had made the shore ran into the green mantle surrounding the silver sand, hiding in the dense undergrowth, hoping against hope they could survive – somehow.
A last explosion ripped apart the old boat, debris and surf joining in a huge waterspout. Seemingly pleased with a good day’s work, the Japanese launch fired only a few more shots towards the shore before considering the shooting of civilians a waste of ammunition and turning away.
After warning Doreen and the children to stay down, Nadine crept out of a hollow beneath the roots of leaning coconut palms.
Martin shouted at her from an adjacent hole. ‘Stay down, you silly bitch!’
Taut with nerves, Nadine clenched her fists and glared at him. ‘Stop giving me your bloody orders, Martin!’
He looked surprised but she didn’t give a damn how he felt. She was shivering, scared and only seventeen, for God’s sake! Seventeen and married to a much older man and totally ignorant of the possibilities life had to offer. It wouldn’t be fair if she should die now.
‘I’ll see if I can help anyone,’ she said.
Once she’d got to her feet, she had a great urge to run, the natural instinct to flee, she supposed. Unfortunately her legs were not of the same mind, tired after kicking their way ashore. She only managed a stiff march, the soft sand tumbling between her toes, her dress steaming as the sun dried it.
The beach that looked like paradise had become hell. The injured were being dragged ashore and into the shade. Their wounds were terrible: limbs smashed, abdomens torn open by flying shrapnel, faces roasted in burning oil.
She looked towards the ocean. Small vessels peppered the far horizon. Judging by the fact that some of them were smoking like chimneys, they too had felt the accuracy of the enemy’s guns.
The sea around the submerged ship was littered with debris, bodies and pieces of bodies. The waves lapping the white sand were fringed with pink spume, pieces of flesh, spectacles and personal belongings. The blood mixed with spilt oil. The smell was terrible and had attracted seabirds and sharks. Things that had been whole littered the sea and the sand. Bits of flesh floated amongst bits of china, wood, metal and leather.
The sea breeze warmed Nadine’s face and played with her hair; the sun baked her shoulders, yet she felt so very cold. It was as if nothing around her was really happening, not so much a dream as a moving mural painted on a blank wall.
Someone said something and brought her back to reality.
‘Do you have clean underwear?’
She stared into the dirty face of a woman with bright blue eyes. She was wearing a uniform that might once have been smart but was now streaked with blood, dirt and sweat, drying to a crisp in the heat.
The woman’s voice softened. ‘I’m sorry, my dear. I know you must be in shock, but there are others far worse off than you. We need your underwear for bandages.’
Nadine looked dumbly down at her lemon cotton dress as though expecting her petticoat to have travelled from the inside out and for her to be wearing it on top of her dress. Once she’d clarified her thoughts, she saw her dress again. Yesterday it had looked crisp and clean. Today it was crumpled but already dried.
‘I’m wearing a white silk petticoat,’ she said and began unbuttoning her dress, but stopped and looked around her, suddenly realizing she was surrounded by people.
‘Your dress too if you can spare it.’
‘You want that too?’
‘If you don’t mind. No point in being shy, dear,’ said the nurse with a wry smile, noticing her hesitation. ‘Bra and pants is respectable enough in this heat. Just like a two-piece swimming costume. Anyway, there’s worse things to worry about. You’ll just be showing a bit more leg, but be thankful, there are those totally lacking legs.’
Nadine couldn’t place the woman’s accent; somewhere in England.
On the shadiest part of the beach a line of rocks formed a barrier between sand and undergrowth. This part had become a makeshift hospital. Nadine wondered at the resolve of the people who were already organizing things and helping people out.
On the fringes of the hospital women rummaged in vanity cases and peered into powder compacts – as though the sight of a red nose was going to shock anyone. Some could not abstain from familiar habits, dabbing powder or applying lipstick. Normality keeping people sane and inspiring hope, she thought.
Within the hospital area women wearing only their underwear were tending the injured. Others nearby were stripping off their dresses, ripping them into bandages with knives, scissors, anything that came to hand.
There was a smell of oil, of burned flesh – and even of face powder.
‘The wounded – they’re so quiet,’ Nadine remarked.
The nurse who had asked for her underwear was named Rose and it turned out she was from the East End of London.
‘It gets like that,’ she said as she tended the severed arm of a young woman who was whimpering with pain. ‘The pain becomes commonplace and bearable. Just as well, really. The morphine and other medical supplies went down with the ship. All we’ve managed to rustle up are a few jars of aspirin, a box of plasters, three pairs of scissors and a kukri knife – you know, one of them knives the Gurkhas use.’
Nadine watched as Rose began cutting the petticoat into strips.
The nurse noticed her expression. ‘Sorry about this. It’s real pretty and a shame to rip it up.’
‘I bought it for my honeymoon.’
‘Oh, well. Never mind the sentiment, think of its practical uses.’
‘I won’t miss it. Here,’ she said, handing her the lemon dress. She nodded in the direction of the men, women and even children lying in rows along the beach. ‘They need it more than I do.’
She stood there in nothing except a pink satin brassiere and a pair of French knickers, grateful for the breeze cooling her skin. Her feet were bare, her shoes now at the bottom of the ocean.
She went back to where she’d left Doreen, the children and Martin, and stopped.
Looking down at her nakedness made her feel in
stantly vulnerable. She knew her husband well. The thought of Martin taking advantage of the situation was unbearable. She couldn’t be sure of his reaction despite his protectiveness of late. Deep down she was still his wife, a chattel, something that he’d paid for. She’d found his constant demands tedious. If she refused he’d remind her that she was ‘touched with the tar brush’, as he put it.
‘I put aside my prejudices and married you anyway,’ he’d said.
She decided to follow the nurse. ‘Do you need any help?’
‘If you think you’ve got the stomach for it.’
Out of the corner of her eye she glimpsed Martin leaning against a palm tree.
She looked away. She wouldn’t go to him but knew that if she was away long enough it was certain he’d come looking for her.
Chapter Eight
The days turned into a week. Like everyone else, Nadine turned worried eyes seawards. The sinking had left them in this isolated place without much water, little food, without anything very much at all.
‘Of course we’ll be rescued. We’re British subjects,’ declared one resolute matron.
Nadine heard the words but wasn’t sure she believed them. Silhouettes of unidentifiable vessels slid along the distant horizon.
Desperate to do anything to relieve their despair, tired men had erected a distress beacon on the beach.
None of the ships were close enough to warrant lighting the sturdy-looking tepee of debris and dried logs. Hope still remained in the stoutest breasts. Spirits rose at the sight of some of the vessels that seemed to send out a signal of their own. Inevitably, the sudden flash of red mushroomed into an explosion of fire and thick, black smoke: yet another ship sunk by an unseen submarine.
Others were more obviously destroyed by Japanese Zeroes swarming like bees and diving on their targets.
Sometimes the aeroplanes came close. A low-flying Zero sent the bedraggled masses scattering into the thick foliage before it swooped low over the lines of injured left on the beach.
Prayers were muttered that it would not fire. It did not, flying away, perhaps to seek more worthwhile targets.
Rations were halved: a few dry biscuits spread with army-issue corned beef being the main meal of the day, supplemented with coconuts and the odd fish they managed to catch. The greatest joy was when a shark got stranded on the beach. Greedy for the bits of flesh still floating on the water, it had swum too close. Martin killed it with a kukri knife and the flesh lasted three days.
East of India Page 7
