Call Nurse Jenny (37 page)

Strange he should think of Jenny Ross now, and with a small pang of sadness to go with it that he’d let her down. Where was she now? Was she still a nurse or had she married someone, was she raising a family? Without warning an empty place took up residence inside him, a sudden longing for things to be again as they had once been, carefree, safe, full of fun. He could see them all now. And Jenny, she had been a stunner, hadn’t she? Just that she hadn’t been his type. But a stunner just the same. He should have told her so. He regretted that now. Pity she hadn’t had as much confidence in her looks as some men had in them – that Dennis Cox – he’d been smitten by her but hadn’t the nerve to tell her. Someone had said Cox had been killed. Well, lots of blokes had been killed. Women too. Serving abroad, nurses being sent overseas, their ships sunk. Perhaps Jenny had been one of them. He wouldn’t know, would he? Not here. A stab of panic gripped him then sank away, leaving a sort of empty grief that had no substance because it was unfounded, all in his mind. He had begun to fall in love with Jenny at one time, he was sure, but then he’d met Susan …

‘F’Chrissake, y’ doughy Pom – get a bloody move on, bloody mooning about. Y’r thirty seconds was up bloody ages ago.’

Shot back to the present, Matthew slipped hastily out from the dribbling shower to receive a basinful of ripe epithets from the Aussie waiting to take his place.

‘Keep your hair on,’ Matthew growled irritably as the man named Phil shouldered roughly past him. Phil glared at him but Matthew’s mind was now taken up with more immediate interests, even above thoughts of Susan and Jenny, as he walked away still dripping wet. So were his ragged shorts, with his time under the shower too brief for them to be taken off. They would dry as he dried. His thoughts now were on what news there might be, if any, over the grapevine.

Hidden beneath the dirt floor of a low wooden lean-to, once a tool shed belonging to the saw mill, then a makeshift latrine but now just a haven for flies and maggots, was a radio, constructed by some boffin or other. With a look-out squatting idly against the sagging rotting walls, certain chosen men – not himself, thank God, for it was an execution if the Japs ever discovered it – would take it in turns, a couple at a time, to squeeze under the floor of the lean-to, lying flat, and follow the crackling news of Allied invasion in Europe, American successes in the Pacific or how many tons of bombs B-29s had dropped on Japanese-held territory, very little of it accurate, being mainly from Japanese sources rather than Allied.

But the news they most sought was lacking – the Fourteenth Army’s penetration into Assam and northern Burma five months ago had gone silent, and along with it any speculation of an early release from captivity.

He turned as an angry snort was heard directly behind him, Phil having caught him up after his own thirty seconds had been apparently cut short by two seconds owing to Matthew’s delay in getting out as promptly as was required. Phil, a dismal-faced individual who shared the next cell to his with a dozen other Australians, was in a bad mood and obviously wanted to make it plain to the miscreant. Giving him little time to finish his complaint, Matthew turned on him. His own temper was none too good, his shoulders smarting still from Valentino’s cane.

‘Why don’t you put a fucking sock in it?’

The Australian looked hurt. He wasn’t a brave man, at least not rash in the face of the other’s baleful glare that threatened a punch on the nose.

‘Don’t bloody take it out on me because yu’ve had a bloody blue with some lousy bloody Nip.’

Crisis over, Matthew continued walking in the direction of the three steaming oil drums from which wafted a bland aroma of saltless boiled rice.

‘I’m not taking it out on you.’ A fit of sawdust-laden coughing prevented him saying any more and gave Phil possession of the argument.

‘We’ve all got bludgers t’put up with. Ain’t no sense antagonising ’em, is there?’

Harry Hope, who shared Matthew’s cell, once a short, naturally chubby man, but now from whose skeletal back, ribs and hips protruded, unhealthy skin hung fleshless like thin grey rows of pelmets, caught the two up, his brief shower over as well. The last of it dripped off his ridged skin like raindrops off a gutter. His voice was soft, with a West Country accent. ‘Stay off our Matt’s back, old son. He’s been a mite touchy all day.’

‘Too right, he’s touchy.’ But Harry ignored the man as he surveyed Matthew’s shoulders.

‘It do look bloody zore.’

‘It is bloody sore.’

‘You need to keep that covered. Got a shirt?’

‘Flogged it last week for a bag of bran.’

Rice bran, discarded during milling as fit only for animal feed, was a precious commodity, rich in vitamin B, and coveted because it helped avert beri-beri and other deficiency diseases. It was consequently hard to come by. Matthew’s haul had amounted to under a quarter of a pound, for which he considered himself fortunate all the same.

‘I’ve got a shirt you can borrow until you’ve healed a bit.’

Giving Matthew no time to thank him, shirts too being precious commodities, Harry made off towards the queue forming behind drums of steaming rice, their supper, leaving Matthew to stare after him until the small dry cough caught him again and he followed after Harry.

Leaning down from his rickety bunk Harry surveyed him lying directly below. He’d been disturbed by his cough. All those in the cell were disturbed by it. ‘’Bout time you saw the quack on that, Matt, old son. Don’t like the zound of that. Zounds loik a touch o’ TB ter me. Don’t loik your colour either.’

Matthew raised his eyes to the head hanging upside-down. ‘You really know how to cheer up a bloke, don’t you?’

‘Only an opinion, Matt, only an opinion. But if it be TB I don’ wanna catch it.’

From the next cell, divided only by open bars, came Phil’s monotone drawl. ‘Not as it makes any difference. All gotta go sometime, so what’s it matter, hundred years from now, if yuh died at nineteen or ninety? Tryin’ to live a long life – you’re just a bloody gnat on an elephant’s arse. Fifty years after they shove yuh under, forgotten, what’s it matter if you lived at all?’

Angered, fighting another cough, Matthew turned away from the would-be philosopher. ‘You’re just a miserable bugger. You might not have anyone to go home to, but I’ve a wife and a baby waiting for me.’

On that score, senses heightened to the possibility of tuberculosis, next evening after work found him outside the TB outbuilding transfixed by the sight of those within its open door, chests sunken, eyes unnaturally bright, cheeks with that peculiar transparent flush, as his were.

An orderly, just finishing ministering to a frail stick of what three years ago had been a strong young man, now having to be fed sips of watery rice gruel from a tin cup, looked up at Matthew.

‘Looking for someone, chum?’

Feeling suddenly fraudulent, Matthew shook his head; he watched the man gently ease his patient down on the platform that served for a bed and with a piece of khaki rag wipe the residue of gruel from the man’s lips. The tenderness of the action touched Matthew more than anything had done in a long time. This man with his gentle hands, these men quietly heroic in their suffering, they humbled him. This endless stream of sufferers, crippled by tropical ulcers, blinded by vitamin deficiency, swollen with beri-beri and withered by dysentery, so many struck down by all the diseases the tropics could throw at them; many died without fuss lest they undermine the will of others to struggle on. None had distinguished themselves in battle but they were heroes just the same in their silent acceptance of death. And here he was shivering in fear of his own miserable life as though he were someone special, as if he were the only man who yearned to make it home to wife and child.

The orderly had stood up and was coming towards him. ‘Can ah help ye, laddie?’ The soft Scots accent emphasised the hush of this place. He gnawed at his lip. He had no right to waste this man’s time.

‘It’s nothing,’ he blurted.

The man was looking at him with the eye of the experienced. ‘Ye think ye’re tubercular then. Hold on a minute.’ Drawing Matthew into the outbuilding with him, he began fishing into a box nearby, drawing out a stethoscope, home-made from rubber tubing and the handles of a metal filing cabinet he’d probably come across at some time. ‘Let’s have a listen.’

Submitting himself to the examination Matthew breathed, coughed, uttered thirty-three when told to. The stethoscope was put slowly away. When the man looked back at him, his smile was fixed, too reassuring by far.

‘Ye was reet to come here. But it’s no’ too bad. In a cool dry climate, why, it cud be cured in three months, Ah’d say.’

But the look on the man’s face told its story. In a cool dry climate with good food and rest, of course recovery would be certain. Here, in this humid heat, watery rice for fare, working without respite, it was a death sentence as surely as if he stood before a firing squad.

These three years he had stared at death. Now it had arrived. He nodded casually at the advice to take it easy. ‘At least I know where I stand,’ he murmured and received a short nod. As he left, an insane notion went through his head. Why wait for death? Why not go out in a blaze of glory, a heroic act of sabotage, take a few of those sons of Nippon with him? But he knew he would do no such thing. Like those who had gone before him, like Bob Howlett, he would await his time, quietly, patiently, reluctant to make a fuss, and carrying Susan’s image in his head, would silently say goodbye to her and hope to find courage and a small semblance of dignity when his time came.

‘Ain’t no good, the bloody thing’s had it.’

He and another man named Derek gazed down at the now silent wireless that had crackled itself to its death. From now on they could receive no news of the outside world, no heartening snippets about Germany herself being overrun by the Allies.

‘No chance getting hold of another valve?’ It was a valve that had gone. It might as well have been the whole set for all that could be done.

Derek shook his head viciously. ‘Just when something good came over. Something about the Fourteenth Army fighting around Mandalay. Mandalay’s only just up country. Didn’t you hear it?’

The sound had been so faint, Matthew hadn’t heard. Within days, however, rumours were going around. And the Japs were looking decidedly jumpy. Perhaps Derek had heard right. But everyone had grown concerned by their captors’ attitude. If rumours were correct and their liberators not far away, what would the Japs do?

‘Don’t look too good,’ Harry said. ‘They’re sayin’ if the Fourteenth Army do make it to Rangoon, the Japs’ll start usin’ us for sandbags.’

‘If that’s the case,’ Matthew said grimly, ‘I’d sooner be shot running than being a shield for some …’

The rest of his words were drowned in a fit of coughing from which Harry moved hastily away. But it didn’t matter. He now had hope to cling to and his spirits lifted of their own accord.

May, the monsoon yet to begin, the weather still as sweet as any tropical climate allowed, Matthew came awake from a sleep already disturbed by the bouts of sweating peculiar to his condition and a wonderful dream about Susan to a hand shaking his shoulders. Phil was standing over him, all his worldly goods draped about his waist like tarnished charms on an old bracelet. Above it all the normally doleful hatchet face looked grim.

‘Sorry t’ disturb your sleep, Matt. But us lot ’re movin’ on.’

The Japs had been growing more and more jittery of late, even their interest in forcing their prisoners to work all hours dropping off. The air was still full of rumours, all of which the prisoners believed purely because they needed to feel that soon they must be released by the fabled oncoming Fourteenth Army. Now all the rumours suddenly took substance as Phil went on.

‘They say your blokes’re just up the road. Nips’re movin’ out. Taking all us
healthy
buggers with ’em. To Moulmein ready for shipment to Japan. You cripples are stayin’ behind.’

It was meant to be witty but the grin was one of sick disappointment. From the courtyard, came the bellow of the retreating Japanese assembling their ‘fit’ prisoners.

‘S’long then, sport. Take care of y’self. Yuh gonna make it y’know. Bet y’shirt on it.’ The grin widened determinedly, the first time Matthew ever remembered Phil smiling without it being a sneer. ‘Send yuh a postcard from Sydney one day.’

Going to the now wide-open door of his wing of cells Matthew watched the long gangling figure, deprived of freedom that was nearly his, shoulders hunched in despondency, go off to join the men assembled. He’d never liked Phil all that much but now it felt he was saying farewell to a comrade in a chain of comrades to whom he’d said farewell, one way or another. He should have been feeling elated by the news he’d been given. Instead he felt he wanted to cry. In fact, he was looking at this gangling bundle of misery through a mist and one of his cheeks was being dampened by a thin rivulet.

He forgave himself the tears; TB made a man over-emotional. But in his way, Phil had been close to him, perhaps by his very dolefulness. Watching him go, Matthew thought of all those he’d known, some closer than others: little Taffy Thomas, the endearingly libidinous Welshman blown apart in the retreat to the Sittang River; Bob Howlett, the gentle man who had succoured him on that long march to Rangoon, himself dying alone; another, Colin Pardoe, a religious man of simple faith who had dragged him back to sanity after Bob’s ignominious death – where he was now God only knew, might even be sitting at His feet right now for all Matthew could tell what had happened to him. There had been others, and Harry Hope was still here, but one by one they had all gone. Now he felt only utter loneliness as Phil, the man of misery, turned and waved for the last time.

Dawn broke grey and heavy, announcing the coming monsoon season. The sick awoke to find the prison gates standing open, the guardhouse deserted – a faintly bewildering experience after so long close-confined.

Matthew and a few others wandered through them just to savour the sensation of this new freedom. They found a note in English nailed to one of the gateposts:
YOU ARE FREE TO MOVE AS YOU WISH. FOOD AND MEDICAL SUPPLIES HAVE BEEN LEFT FOR YOU. THE BRITISH WILL SOON BE HERE, YOU MAY WAIT FOR THEM OR GO TO MEET THEM AS YOU CHOOSE.