East of India

by East of India (retail) (epub)

  Life was primitive and far from private. Nadine stayed close to Doreen and the children, but sensed Martin was getting restless.

  ‘It’s not only food that’s rationed,’ he remarked, his expression leaving her in no doubt of his meaning.

  She knew it wouldn’t be long before he caught up with her and in a strange way she longed for a moment when there were just the two of them again. Kissing and embracing would be a nice change, even indulging in what he regarded as making love, would help her forget – help him forget too – that death was all around them.

  A reaffirmation of life, she thought. That’s what sex is.

  Circumstances came together on a day when she was assisting in an operation, holding a man down whilst a surgeon cut off a mangled leg with a pair of kitchen scissors. That was when Martin came looking for her.

  As he spoke he stood with his hands resting on his hips, his eyes on the trembling fingers of the tired young surgeon.

  ‘I’ve been talking to a few navy types over there. They reckon we’re at a place called Sinkop. Reckon we should try and get a ship – perhaps a junk or a prauw, anything – to Sumatra.’

  Nadine recognized the names of the fragile craft that roamed the coastal waters and wondered whether they were seagoing. She fixed her eyes on his face, anything rather than see the scissors digging into a man’s flesh.

  ‘Is it far?’

  ‘They reckon not. A week at most.’

  ‘What about the Japanese?’

  ‘They’re pretty sure they’re not in Sumatra.’ His eyes drifted from the bloody wound to her cleavage. All she was wearing was her underwear and a sarong tied loosely around her hips. The sarong had once been a tablecloth which she’d found in a suitcase, one of the few not requisitioned for bandages. The owner had not stepped forward to claim it.

  ‘You’ve lost a bit of weight, girl,’ he said to her.

  ‘This is hardly the time for comments like that, Martin,’ she retorted sharply.

  His expression darkened.

  The man losing a leg was on the verge of convulsions. The stick he was biting on splintered beneath the pressure of his teeth and his agony. His body was soaked with sweat. He’d been given a small amount of morphine in a measure of whisky. Someone had found both items in the debris littering the shore.

  Martin’s presence was irritating. ‘Finished now?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Right. Come on. We’ve got things to plan.’

  He put his arm around her, his fingers gripping her firmly.

  ‘I don’t like you looking like a bloody native,’ he hissed.

  He nodded at the sarong.

  ‘Would you prefer me to wander around in my underwear?’

  ‘You should have kept your frock on. At least it made you look as though you were white even if you’re not!’

  The comment was meant to hurt and it did, though not in the way he’d intended. Exposure to strong sunlight had turned her as brown as the Malayan women and the serangs, the Malayan labour force who fetched and carried for the army and navy personnel. Turning brown reminded her of who her mother really was, how much it must have hurt to be sent away from her only daughter.

  He led her forcibly to a group of men in torn and dirty shorts, their bodies varying in colour from clay pink to mahogany, crouched in a circle. One of them was using a stick to draw in the sand. He looked up at them, glanced at Nadine, then turned back to Martin.

  He jerked his chin at a Malay deck serang. ‘This chap here has some knowledge of navigation. He’s not exactly Royal Navy experienced, but the best we can get.’

  ‘Beggars can’t be choosers,’ said Martin. He hitched up what remained of his trousers, and crouched down.

  Nadine couldn’t help herself from asking the obvious. ‘Do you have a boat? Only it strikes me that all the determination in the world isn’t going to get us across the ocean without a boat.’

  The man who had spoken heard the sarcasm in her voice. ‘Your wife doesn’t sound too confident.’ He gave Martin a direct look, almost as though he were questioning whether he was beating her enough.

  Nadine persisted. ‘So where will you get one?’

  He spat in the sand. ‘Let’s hope we’re lucky and one comes sailing along. Now, Martin,’ he said, purposely pushing her aside and crouching down beside her husband.

  The man who’d edged her out began explaining. ‘Now, this is what we’ve got planned…’

  She took the opportunity to leave and make her way back to Doreen who was coping well enough with the children. The family were sitting, surrounded by empty coconut shells. Wendy was making a din knocking two more together whilst singing to herself. William was grizzling, complaining that he was hungry.

  Nadine addressed Doreen. ‘Haven’t you got anything else to give them?’

  ‘A few biscuits and some corned beef, but I’m having to go carefully. They say we’re going to have to catch fish in the same way as the natives do.’ Her eyes flickered as she took in Nadine’s appearance. ‘You’re very brown. You look like a native.’

  Doreen wasn’t quite herself, so Nadine swallowed the perceived insult. ‘Looking like a native doesn’t mean I’m any good at fishing.’

  Doreen’s comparative good humour swiftly turned to contemplation. The corners of her mouth turned downwards.

  Nadine guessed the reason. She touched her hand gently. ‘You’re thinking of Geoff.’

  Doreen nodded at the same time as smoothing a sweaty strand of hair back behind her ear. ‘I only hope he’s still alive. Better to be a prisoner than dead.’ She looked at the children. ‘I wouldn’t want them to grow up without a father.’

  It was on the tip of Nadine’s tongue to comment that as long as they grew up, it was all that mattered, but she couldn’t say it. Doreen – strong, forthright Doreen – had turned terribly fragile.

  Suddenly a skinny woman called Mrs Jeremiah Stevens dashed into their midst, waving her arms and shouting that there were Japanese hiding in the bushes around the burial ground. ‘They’re raping our girls and then they’ll kill them, and then they’ll kill us and eat all the babies!’

  Nadine sprang to her feet and attempted to grab the woman’s flailing arms.

  ‘Now calm down, Mrs Stevens.’

  Mrs Stevens’s husband had been a depot manager for a large American engineering firm but had retired some five years before and opted to stay on as a consultant. He’d died of malaria, swiftly picked up on landing here and just as swiftly killing him. He was one of those buried on a patch cleared of undergrowth that was steadily getting bigger as more people died.

  ‘Back there, back there,’ cried Mrs Stevens, waving one pure white arm in the direction of the sandy beach and undergrowth behind which the drowned and mutilated dead now lay in peace.

  It was already accepted that Mrs Stevens had taken leave of her senses, staring at the sky or the sea. She looked wild and unkempt, her hair as white as her tired flesh, her face as red as raw offal.

  ‘Now, now,’ said Martin, his voice dripping with confident bonhomie, as he held her bony shoulders. ‘Don’t you worry, now. Me and my missus will go in and take a look.’

  Nadine frowned. ‘Don’t you think some of the men should go with you?’

  Martin shook his head, held a finger before his lips and whispered, ‘Just humour the old girl.’

  Smiling down into the lined, sunburned old face, he spoke clearly and loudly as though she were deaf. ‘We’ll go and take a look. OK?’

  Eyes wild with approaching madness stared up into his face. ‘You won’t let them take Wilfrid, will you? They’re savages. They’ll eat him. Cut him up into little lumps and eat him!’

  In the past the idea of eating a dead body would have made anyone sick, but these were different times. Already rumours were rife and imaginations fertile.

  ‘That’s what natives do,’ said Mrs Stevens. ‘Along here.’ She danced on ahead of them, her spidery arms held out in front of her like a w
ater diviner without any sticks.

  ‘Poor old sow,’ muttered Martin.

  They followed her to the nearly full burial ground. People had been dying since the first day they’d landed. The interior of the island was thick jungle, too difficult to dig without proper equipment. The sandy soil nearer the beach was softer and easier to get at. A few bits of driftwood used as spades were used to dig a hole deep enough to avoid the crabs.

  Mrs Stevens whirled on ahead, a blur of blue cotton against the velvet green of the jungle path. She led them around an outcrop of rock and on to the graveyard.

  ‘There,’ she shouted, pointing upwards into the trees. ‘There!’

  Above them a troop of black gibbons leapt from bough to bough.

  Nadine exchanged a look with Martin. He shook his head.

  Nadine moved swiftly to stand beside the poor woman and put her arm around the bony shoulders.

  ‘They’re monkeys, not Japanese, Mrs Stevens. Do you see?’

  She pointed at the gambolling figures screeching above them.

  Mouth hanging open, Mrs Stevens fell to silence, eyeing the monkeys as though she wasn’t really sure what they were. Eventually her shoulders slumped as if all her energy had seeped out through her toes. She shook her head mournfully. ‘I didn’t know Japanese climbed with the monkeys.’ She shook her head again. ‘I’m tired. I want to go to bed.’

  ‘There,’ Nadine said soothingly. At any other time she would have laughed out loud at Mrs Stevens’s comments, but not now. Now was too tiring and serious a time. ‘We’ll go back now.’

  Just as they turned to go back along the path, Mrs Stevens’s shoulders stiffened and she exploded with energy. ‘I must get back! I must get back. The frying pan will be on fire!’

  Following a big shove from her bony arms, Nadine fell into the bushes. Martin made a grab for the older woman, but she proved too quick for him. She ran off, her ragged dress flapping around her white thighs, her skinny figure slapping into thick leaves before disappearing.

  Martin helped Nadine up from the ground. Even before she looked up into his face, she knew what would happen next. The world spun around her and the sound of insects filled the air. The afternoon was drifting into evening.

  ‘I think we’ve got a bit of catching up to do,’ he said, a low guttural voice as though his tongue was cleaving to the roof of his mouth.

  She tried holding her breath and pushing him away. ‘Not now, Martin.’

  ‘You’re my wife. No matter what happens, you’re my wife,’ he said, his eyes glittering, fingers hooking at her bra strap, pulling it off her shoulder.

  ‘Martin, I don’t… someone will hear… or come…’

  He ignored her.

  ‘Over here,’ he said, pushing her onto the edge of the beach where the sand was soft and away from the scampering of hermit crabs.

  As usual she turned her head away. Closing her eyes, she pretended it was happening to someone else.

  He pushed his leg between hers and slid his hand up the leg of her knickers, groaning as his fingers touched her warm crotch.

  She gasped as one finger slid inside her.

  ‘Don’t you like that?’

  She didn’t answer.

  ‘Never mind. I’ve got something better for you.’ He began fumbling with what was left of his fly buttons.

  For some inextricable reason, her thoughts went to her knickers, the only barrier left between her and near-nudity. Who was to say when she’d encounter decent underwear again?

  ‘Wait,’ she said, pushing her palms against his shoulders. ‘Don’t.’

  He frowned, his expression turning angry. ‘Don’t?’

  She managed a tight smile.

  ‘These are the only pair of knickers I’ve got left. I don’t want you ripping them. Who knows when I’ll get another pair? Be patient, please. I know where the button is.’

  His feathers were ruffled, but he begrudgingly allowed her to undo and take them off herself, though not once did he shift far enough to allow her to escape.

  She slid them off along with her bra and the sarong, bundled them together and put them under her head to serve as a pillow.

  Martin watched her. He looked a little puzzled.

  ‘I don’t know when I’m likely to come across a dress shop either,’ she said and even managed to sound amused. Then she lay back, just as she had in their bed back on the plantation, gazing up at the sky whilst he entered her, ejaculated and finally rolled off.

  To Martin, having sex was like drinking tea or eating rice on a regular basis; it was something he had to have. He rarely asked her whether she’d enjoyed it. She was left wondering whether it would always be like this. Yet somehow, today it was totally acceptable. Life going on as it always had, as it always would – once they were out of this situation.

  ‘You coming?’ he asked once his loins were covered.

  ‘In a minute.’

  He shrugged and left her there.

  Conflicting emotions stirred inside her. Ordinarily she could never love Martin, yet in these circumstances his earthiness was a bulwark against her fear and the probabilities of what might happen.

  Immediately after retying her sarong, she looked dreamily seawards, gazing at a sky full of stars.

  One star seemed larger and closer than all the rest. Narrowing her eyes, she considered whether it was merely a reflection dancing on the water. It blinked again, a pinpoint of light not varying in size.

  A wave of hope washed over her. A ship! It had to be a ship, and not too far away.

  She took to her heels, yelling at the top of her voice as madly, if not more so, than poor Mrs Stevens had done just an hour or two earlier.

  When she got back to the beach, everyone was gazing seaward; she was not the only one who had seen the vessel.

  Martin and other men were running around finding dry matches and pieces of used, dried dressings in order to light the beacon fire they’d made.

  Those strong enough gathered around the bonfire, the dancing flames making their haggard faces and half-naked bodies look more hideous than they already were.

  Half a dozen soldiers who had kept themselves to themselves and done little to help anyone else, now rushed forward waving bits of rag that had once been army-issue tropical kit, eyes fixed on the light coming towards them.

  Nadine ran to fetch Doreen. ‘There’s a ship,’ she said.

  ‘Is it one of ours?’

  ‘Of course. The Japanese are still miles to the north – everyone says so.’

  ‘That doesn’t mean to say they’re right,’ said Doreen, reaching out and gathering her children to her side.

  She had a point. The Americans had not expected Pearl Harbor to be bombed in December 1941 and the British had not expected the Japanese to take Singapore in February 1942. Via her friend Lucy Lee, she’d heard about the rape of Nanking and the atrocities happening in other parts of China. She shivered. The enemy were not likely to treat them any differently.

  ‘All right,’ she said, sliding down with her back against a palm trunk until she was in a comfortable sitting position. ‘I’ll reserve judgement and stay with you.’

  The palm tree was on a low ridge where tough grass grew between the tangled roots of dead mangroves. She turned her gaze seawards, watching the light move closer. Men and women shielded their eyes against the light situated on the bow of the boat, its brightness preventing them from making out any detail.

  The excitement that had run through the gathered crowd at the prospect of being rescued became a breathless hush, a vacuum of silence.

  What at first looked like pieces of blackness fell off either side of the boat, and as it turned sidelong, they became men: soldiers bearing arms, someone shouting orders. The red-and-white flag of the rising sun fluttered at the stern.

  Chapter Nine

  The boat, some kind of larger launch of the type used for coastguard patrols, held off a few hundred yards until dawn. Those on the beach watched in grim
fascination. Some suggested hiding among the vegetation covering the heart of the island until it was pointed out that the island was barely two miles by four and wouldn’t take long to search.

  Martin trod a constant track along the beach close to where the coconut palms divided sand from loamy soil, near Nadine, Doreen and the children.

  ‘Why don’t they bloody come, take us prisoner or whatever?’ He stared out at the black outline at the same time as he peed against a palm tree.

  ‘They don’t need to,’ Nadine remarked.

  Doreen’s children were asleep, but their mother was not. Her face stiffened with disapproval. ‘Martin, don’t you think you could relieve yourself elsewhere?’

  Martin buttoned up what was left of his shorts. ‘Never mind being fussy. Won’t be so bloody fussy in future when they take us prisoner.’ He turned his nervous eyes back to the sea and the black shape bobbing gently in the surf. ‘But why don’t they come now? We’re here – waiting – just waiting.’

  ‘You’re talking rubbish.’

  ‘And you’re too outspoken for your own good, woman!’

  ‘That may be, but I always think before I open my mouth, which is more than can be said for you.’

  Judging by the look on Martin’s face, he wasn’t sure whether she’d insulted him or not.

  ‘So what do you mean?’ he said, his discomfort hidden by speaking louder – his usual trick.

  Smiling, she made herself comfortable against a pillow of fallen palm fronds. ‘They can come any time they like.’

  ‘I know that!’ he snapped.

  ‘Well,’ she said, wriggling her back against the greenery and folding her arms behind her head, ‘we’re not going anywhere, are we. They’ve got all the time in the world.’ She closed her eyes, shutting him out.

  Martin muttered something that sounded like ‘Bollocks,’ and ‘Stupid mare,’ then stalked off.