East of India

by East of India (retail) (epub)

  Betty was awake and bathing Peggy’s swollen face. Every so often her gaze drifted in the direction of the post and Nadine’s forlorn figure. Her head had fallen onto her shoulder; her arms strained against the single rope that held her there.

  ‘Is she still alive?’ Peggy whispered through cracked lips.

  Betty nodded. ‘Barely.’

  Peggy tried to raise herself on her elbows. ‘We have to do something. And that poor baby. She hasn’t stopped crying.’

  ‘You’re hearing things. The baby’s been asleep for hours.’

  Peggy looked up at her accusingly. ‘What did you give it?’

  ‘Never mind. Rest.’ She lay both hands on Peggy’s shoulders, pressing her back onto the thin reed-filled mattress which was barely two inches thick and all that lay beneath her tortured body and hard wooden slats.

  Betty bit her lip. If there’d been enough liquid in her body she might have cried, but like most of the women she was all cried out. Despair and dehydration had wrung them dry.

  The big, bold Peggy she loved was only half the woman she had been. Starvation and sickness had seen to that.

  She stroked the damp hair back from Peggy’s forehead and lovingly bathed the sores at the sides of her mouth. Was now the time to tell her how much she loved her? Some of the women lay together, hugging purely for comfort. Others sought a more physical pleasure, losing themselves in one shivering moment of nervous release.

  Betty envied them. Heaven knows, even a hug was small substitute for a beloved husband or sweetheart who might never be seen again. People lived as they could – in their minds or in the real world. It didn’t matter. They all needed to lose themselves in mutual solace.

  Suddenly the whole hut was disturbed by men shouting and the sound of crackling wood and palm leaves.

  Peggy tried again to raise herself from her bed. ‘What’s all that shouting?’

  ‘There’s a fire. I think it’s the She-Dragon’s place.’

  Peggy grinned and chuckled. ‘That’s bonza! Probably caught it alight with her breath!’

  Everyone rushed outside to cheer the flames. A bigger cheer went up when someone said the colonel and Madam Cherry were still inside.

  ‘They’re both burned to a crisp,’ Marjorie conveyed to Betty before collapsing onto her bed mat. ‘Oh, joy! I’m sure I will sleep tonight. More than my usual four hours, anyway.’

  Betty’s gaze wandered in the other direction from the burning house. Marjorie saw her. ‘Get some sleep, Betty. You must be tired out. I’ll keep an eye on Nadine.’

  Dawn brought a heavy downpour. A cool breeze drove the wetness through the bamboo curtains and whipped palm leaves from the roof.

  Betty was up before roll call to tend to the emptying of the night slops for those too weak to see to it themselves. Afterwards she would wash the receptacles out with earth and as much water as could be spared, though the pouring rain would help. Anything that watertight was put out to catch it.

  Birds and monkeys were already screaming at the dawn. She paused and listened, sensing that she was missing something. She shrugged. Whatever it was, it couldn’t be very important.

  Ducking beneath the dislodged palm fronds hanging from the eaves, she straightened and looked immediately to the post, expecting to see Nadine closer to death than to life.

  The mix of blood, excreta and urine slopped from the pail as it slid from her hand. Was she dreaming? She blinked. No. She was seeing what was really there. The mound at the base of the post had become an island amongst muddy puddles and newly hatched flies and mosquitoes. The ropes that had bound Nadine trailed like water snakes, partly on land and partly in water.

  Nadine was gone.

  Abandoning her task, Betty ran back into the hut.

  ‘Nadine’s gone!’ she called excitedly. ‘Nadine’s gone.’

  Women wondering what all the fuss was about stirred around her.

  ‘She’s gone,’ she shouted again as she raced down the ward heading for Peggy.

  Now she knew what the sound was she’d been missing. She ran to Kia who was curled up in a foetal position, her head resting on her hands. Betty nudged her.

  Kia groaned and her eyes flickered open.

  ‘Where’s the baby?’ Betty asked her.

  Kia sighed and snuggled more comfortably onto her hands. ‘Gone.’

  ‘Nadine took her?’

  The girl nodded vaguely and kept her eyes closed. ‘Now I can get some sleep,’ she muttered. ‘If you leave me alone.’

  Betty was desperate to ask her more but Kia refused to make further comment.

  Betty ran off, her excitement lending new vigour to her scabbed, tired legs.

  Kia opened one eye and watched her go. It would be easy to go back to sleep. Shanti’s constant crying had kept her awake all the previous night. Nadine had warned her not to tell anyone anything, and she didn’t intend to. Not until she’d had a decent sleep.

  Betty went to tell Peggy. ‘Nadine’s gone,’ she said, wanting to kiss her dearest friend, and hoping, just hoping, that it would be all right.

  So great was her delight and her love that chancing a rebuttal she kissed Peggy’s forehead and her cheeks, pausing just inches from her lips.

  Should she or shouldn’t she?

  The question melted away as she realized that there was neither sweet nor rancid breath. Nothing. Nothing at all.

  ‘Oh, Peggy! You silly cow! You silly, lovely cow! Why did you have to go and die now? Why now?’

  She kissed her mouth shut and cried her only tears since leaving Singapore.

  * * *

  Shanti’s crying rose, fell and rose again. The jungle drooped in the windless night and the smell of the truck they travelled in was rank with gasoline and men’s sweat.

  The burning hut in which the colonel and Madam Cherry lay had been a godsend. Sparks flying up into the night sky had inevitably fallen again and, despite the recent rain, had set fire to the palms of other roofs turned crisp by the burning sun. Panic led to confusion, and confusion led to more panic; perfect as far as he was concerned. He’d headed for Nadine but hid until the fire had died down and the women had returned to their troubled sleep.

  Most of the women had been cheering the flames enveloping the two most hated people in the camp so didn’t see the major untie Nadine, toss her over his back and tuck the baby beneath his arm. He’d whispered amen to their comments.

  ‘Hope they all get fried,’ said someone who had observed Madam’s house aflame with gleeful pleasure.

  ‘Amen to that,’ added Sister Agnes in her soft brogue and made the sign of the cross whilst raising her saintly eyes to heaven. ‘Forgive me, Mother of God, but it seems befitting that the likes of them should fry on earth before frying in hell.’

  Kia, the young girl who had been looking after Shanti, was bleary-eyed through lack of sleep.

  Genda had amassed the things he thought they would need for their journey, most of it items such as maps and a compass, plus a bottle of whisky taken from the colonel’s office.

  The lieutenant who had told him of Nadine’s punishment accompanied them halfway to the fishing village.

  ‘Food,’ he said. ‘I’ve had water and more food taken to the village and you should be able to find more.’

  Genda thanked him. ‘Goodbye, my friend. How can I ever repay you?’

  The lieutenant bowed. ‘It is karma, Shamida-san. My grandfather was vassal to your grandfather. My loyalty too is with the Shamida clan.’

  He bowed to both of them before leaving.

  With Nadine now leaning on his arm, Genda took his small family to the village.

  Rain hammered on the roof of one of the abandoned fishermen’s huts. Her own milk long dried up, Nadine drip-fed Shanti coconut milk through a ragged square of mosquito net.

  Genda eyed the threatening dawn rising behind the mountains at their back. ‘No way can we wait for this rain to stop. We have to leave now.’

  He chose what he
thought was the strongest boat. Nadine climbed in followed by the supplies: a few coconuts, a little cooked rice and some tins of biscuits and bully beef he’d stolen from Madam’s storeroom a few days before.

  ‘Some stuff the camp won’t be getting,’ he explained in answer to her questioning expression.

  He also added the truncated remains of an oil drum. The rain hammered down and the drum began to fill with water. They found the supplies left by the lieutenant and the guards loyal to Shamida.

  ‘We’ll need all the water we can get,’ he said as he pushed off from the shore and clambered aboard once the vessel struck deeper water.

  A flock of roosting birds took off from the blue-black treetops skirting the beach.

  Soundlessly they peered through the darkness. The beach was a strip of white behind them. From out of the blackness that fringed the beach, a figure emerged, waving long, spidery arms.

  Nadine answered his unasked question. ‘I don’t know.’

  The figure became recognizable once the shadows were left behind. Lady Marjorie’s lanky frame whipped towards the sea.

  Genda began rowing more vigorously.

  ‘Genda! We can’t just leave her.’

  Even in the half-light, she could see his face was grimly set.

  ‘We haven’t got enough food for three. We’ve barely got enough for two.’

  Shanti mewed in Nadine’s arms. Soon she’d be crying and once she started, she wouldn’t stop.

  Nadine stared at the beach. ‘She must have escaped somehow. They’ll kill her if they catch her.’

  Genda surrendered a huge sigh. ‘Nadine, we can’t take her.’

  Nadine struggled to her feet. ‘Then I’ll go back with her. I’ll swim if I’ve got to.’

  ‘You’re jeopardizing everything! Think of the baby!’

  ‘Genda, I couldn’t live with myself if we left her there.’

  To Genda’s ears, the tone of her voice was as powerful as the words. He leaned on the oars and rested his head on his hands. ‘OK. OK. Now will you please sit down?’

  He used the oars to turn the craft round. ‘I only hope the old bird can row,’ he grumbled.

  Seeing them turn, Marjorie waded into the water. It was waist high by the time she reached the boat.

  ‘Help me.’

  Genda stopped rowing and pulled her aboard. She was awkward and took all his strength. Her legs and arms seemed too long for her body though that too lacked flesh. Eventually, it was as if her body had folded like an awkward deckchair.

  ‘I got out last night in the midst of that hullabaloo,’ she said, though they hadn’t asked her. ‘Don’t know how long they’ll take before they know I’ve scarpered. Can’t say I care. Nice to get one over on the Nips. Damn the lot of them.’

  Genda got in first. ‘No offence taken.’

  ‘I was going to say with the exception of American Nips. They don’t count.’

  ‘Thanks a lot,’ said Genda.

  His grimace spoke volumes about his attitude. He had not wanted any other passengers. The boat was small, supplies a lot smaller.

  Dawn broke incredibly crisp and sweet, the clouds scudding before a fine north-easterly wind. Genda prayed it would stay with them all the way to Australia.

  ‘We’ll stop for water on one of the smaller islands,’ he explained, his eyes narrowed against the light reflected off the sea. ‘They’re scattered like stepping-stones between here and the coast of New Guinea. Each of us rows a little every day.’ He closed one eye as he looked up at the clouds. ‘Pity we don’t have a bigger sail.’

  The fishermen of the village had cast their nets in the shallows no more than two miles off the coast and had not needed a bigger sail.

  The responsibility weighed heavily on him. Though he did his best to appear confident, the tension was not always easily hidden. ‘We must be mad,’ he muttered. He’d intended the exclamation to be purely for himself, but Nadine heard him.

  ‘We’re free,’ she said simply, and turned her face to the breeze.

  Lady Marjorie turned out to be a much quieter person when she wasn’t in charge of anything. She caught Nadine looking at her questioningly.

  Nadine explained herself. ‘You seem different from back in the camp.’

  Her ladyship smiled. ‘Someone had to be in charge and it fell to me. Just because we’re not in England doesn’t mean to say that the formalities are not still present. It was expected that I should take charge, so that’s what I had to do.’

  Silently they gazed into the distance. ‘I wonder what they’re doing now,’ said Nadine.

  Lady Marjorie sighed. ‘Dying, I suppose. Mrs Davies isn’t expected to live much longer. Dysentery. Her bowels have collapsed. Dengue, beriberi and goodness knows what else, and that’s besides starvation. And of course, Peggy’s gone. What a collection!’

  Nadine blinked back her tears. Peggy had been a pillar of strength. Her death was not unexpected, but the world seemed a sadder place already.

  ‘Must be a few thousand miles to safety,’ said Marjorie. She was rocking the baby up and down to stop her crying. Shanti cried a lot now, her naked little body strangely still, her mouth wide open.

  They took it in turns to row. At the end of a period of three days their hands were blistered and sore. Genda managed to hoist the small sail. In the meantime they bandaged their calloused hands. The sail would take them forward of the wind when it was blowing behind them. If it wasn’t behind them, then they would have to depend on the oars and the rudder to give them direction.

  Genda was resting. He’d rowed far longer than either of the two women and the strain was beginning to tell. Energy levels evaporated quickly in the torturous sun. Faces reddened and were crisp with a layer of salt even though none of them had been in contact with the sea.

  The water in the oil drum tasted greasy. Genda pronounced that soon they must go ashore and search for fresh water. The little food they’d managed to bring was also diminishing.

  Genda tried fishing using a bird feather as a lure on the end of a string extracted from a net. He was unsuccessful.

  He shook his head mournfully. ‘If I’d been born a fisherman, I’d have starved to death.’

  They all laughed far more than the comment and Genda’s pathos warranted, a little light amusement in a sea of sameness.

  ‘I’ll give it another go. I’ll use the net, but it’s heavy. I’ll need help.’

  Nadine aided him in casting it, dragging it behind them in a wallowing pocket that tended to slow their speed. They caught one fish.

  ‘Hmmm,’ grimaced Genda, and they laughed again, though with more despair this time, as if it might be the last.

  Perhaps it was the laughter, or perhaps the shade thrown by the boat and the net, but suddenly they were surrounded by flying fish. A sudden gust threw the sail across away from the side of the boat, then just as quickly back again. A host of flying fish came with it, flopping into their laps.

  Lady Marjorie clasped her hands together, threw her head back and closed her eyes. ‘Thank you, Percy,’ she shouted.

  Nadine and Genda looked at each other. Genda mouthed, ‘Who’s Percy?’

  Nadine shrugged.

  ‘My husband,’ said her ladyship. ‘He’s up there keeping an eye on us.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said Nadine. ‘I didn’t know he was dead.’

  ‘Neither do I… well… not for sure. But I think he is.’

  Nadine recognized the resigned pragmatism of the camp where death and disease had been ordinary and despair a luxury.

  ‘There’s plenty,’ said Genda excitedly. He prepared some of it raw for immediate use, the rest he lay out in the sun to dry. ‘We need moisture, but it has to last.’

  Once the fish was completely dry, he wrapped it in a strip of cloth torn from his shirt and laid it in the bottom of the boat.

  * * *

  Like the sea and the sky, the days melted into each other.

  Nadine never tired of looking at
the nothingness, the unadulterated spaciousness of the blue-green ocean. The misted outlines of islands clung like clouds to the horizon. She imagined the ocean without sight of land. It would happen once they reached the end of the chain of islands. Between New Guinea and Northern Australia were miles and miles of emptiness. Nothing but ocean. There was no guarantee they’d reach safety. They were depending on the wind and also on the currents. So far they were both in their favour, but might not remain so. They might never make it.

  Her empty stomach churned at the thought of failure and the hugeness of their journey. Despite their precarious situation, she was filled with the joy of being alive. On those sweet occasions when Lady Marjorie and the baby slept, her eyes met Genda’s. Something would spark between them, not a smile exactly, not even love. Satisfaction. Whatever they did they did it freely. No one was insisting they choose sides.

  At those times when Lady Marjorie slept, they talked about the night they’d spoken of poetry and other things.

  ‘How is the Honourable Miss Nadine Burton today?’

  ‘She’s well. And how is Joseph Smith Junior the Third?’

  Salt spray covered her face. The wind filled the sail. Genda used the compass to check their course three times a day, firstly at daybreak, then noon, then sunset.

  The skies at dawn and dusk were glorious great sweeps of gold, salmon pink and purple. The days were hot. The nights rarely cool. Midday was the worst, no shade, little breeze and a merciless sun.

  A day came that was different. Marbled clouds of purple and grey were building like mountains. The air was humid.

  Nadine rubbed at her prickling skin.

  ‘A storm,’ said Genda, his eyes red with fatigue.

  Just as he said it, the sky exploded with sheet lightning. The air rumbled with thunder.

  Nadine instantly took the lid off the oil drum, licking her lips at the prospect of fresh water, unadulterated by essence of gasoline. It would be good to get rid of what was left. Even now she swallowed, the thought of the greasy taste lingering on her tongue. The first raindrops caught on her eyelashes, heavy as coins on her head.