Jubilee (16 page)

‘And you can have your little naps.’

He winked. ‘Farming is hard work. And you, little Evie, you and your brother give me plums and apples and are kind. You almost make up for the dreadful weather.’ He stood and
stretched.

‘Carlo?’

‘Hmmn?’

‘Do you think Robert still loves Martha?’

His eyes rolled. ‘Love? He never love that one.’

‘But . . .’ She couldn’t bring herself to tell him about what she’d seen that night before Robert had left for the war.

‘She is . . .’ His hands described a woman’s curves in the air. ‘But that’s all it will be, all it should be, for Robert.’

‘Why? What’s wrong with Martha?’ Evie asked, feeling a shameful enjoyment of the implied criticism.

He was silent for a moment. ‘She keeps him in the camp,’ he said. ‘She should listen to him, yes
,
is good to listen. But not always ask him questions, questions,
questions. Perhaps a good friend would help him look forward again.’

Something rustled in the empty food sacks behind them. ‘Damn rats,’ Carlo said. Then his eyes narrowed.

‘What is it?’

‘Thought I saw someone. But perhaps not.’

Evie looked but could see nothing.

Carlo gave a yawn. ‘Back to work now.’ His face grew dreamy. ‘One day I’ll run away, Evie.’

‘Even though we’re so kind to you?’

‘I want to be free again, free to smoke all morning if I want. Or free to earn lots of money. I want to go to America.’

‘Oh America, America!’ she teased. ‘What’s so great about America?’

For a second he looked almost serious. ‘I think my life would start again out there, Evie. I really do.’

Robert seemed like the old Robert: teasing her about her frumpy old school uniform and her love of running races against her classmates. ‘How’ll a boy ever catch
you if you run that fast, Evie?’ They were standing up on the down and she was holding a fence post steady for him while he hammered in nails.

She smiled and wondered about throwing in a quick question of her own but before she could someone called over the brow of the hill, ‘Robert?’

‘Hello, Martha.’ His eyes were on the post.

‘Haven’t seen you for a few days. Thought I’d check you were getting on all right.’ Martha spoke with apparent casualness as she approached but Evie could hear the
tension in each word.

‘Everything’s fine, thanks.’ He kept his eyes on the nail. ‘Just busy.’

‘How’s your mother?’

‘The doctor found a nursing home for her on the coast. Thought the change of air would do her good for a week.’

‘Mrs Winter’s at the coast? Nobody told me.’ Martha sounded put out. ‘You coming down to the Packhorse tonight?’ She clenched her hands in front of her.

‘Probably stay in and have an early night.’ He raised the hammer to strike the nail and Evie stared down at the post. The hammer fell and when she turned her head, Martha had gone.
Gloom had veiled Robert’s features as though someone had lowered a blackout over his face.

That night they sat round the table with their tea. ‘I used to dream of this when I was in the camps along the railway out in Siam,’ Robert said.

Charlie’s face lit. He’d been longing to ask about the railway. ‘I looked it up on the map. It’s amazing to think of the Japs building a railway. Even our British
engineers never managed it.’

‘Amazing,’ Robert repeated as though he didn’t know the meaning of the word. ‘Yes, it was amazing, I suppose. Amazing and appalling, with the river curling through the
mountains and the treacherous currents. And the insects and snakes.’

Evie shuddered.

‘There were gibbons and macaques, though. I used to like them, although sometimes . . .’ He broke off.

Sometimes they’d eaten them, she guessed. Robert took a sip of tea. ‘We had tea with our evening meal but it was just leaves floating in dirty water and I’d close my eyes and
think of tea made properly, with our own milk, in a china cup. And sometimes the only source of protein in a whole day would be whatever weevils we found in the rice. Think of that, Evie, we ate
feed we wouldn’t give our livestock here.’

‘I wish we’d seen your letters,’ Evie said. ‘To know what you suffered.’

‘It’s in the past now.’ He stirred his tea and stared down at it. ‘And it doesn’t show me very well, Evie.’

‘What do you mean?’

He shrugged. ‘I told you, it was different out there. Things happened.’

‘I don’t understand.’

‘Perhaps I’ll explain, one day. I’ve got the letters back now. Matthew sent them on to me from the hospital. Perhaps after I marry you and I know you’ve got to stay here
with me.’

Evie’s tea spilled over the rim of the cup onto her fingers and the scalding liquid made her wince. A couple of months ago this suggestion of future marriage to Robert Winter would have
been her dream-come-true. She tried to muster a smile. That foolish, foolish letter she’d written.

‘Not much of a prospect, eh, Evie?’ He shook his head. ‘But I’m fattening up, aren’t I?’ His eyes had taken on the hard, glassy expression which meant he was
somewhere else; not sitting in the Berkshire farmhouse but out in the East. ‘I’m becoming more the kind of man who’d catch a girl’s eye?’

‘I’m a bit young to marry,’ she said at last, trying to sound calm.

‘I’d wait for you to grow up.’ His eyes were still staring out at something she couldn’t see. ‘In the meantime I’m going to take such good care of
you.’

She glanced at her watch. Nine. Thank God. She caught Charlie’s eye and pointed at the dial. ‘We should go up.’

‘Time for a half in the Packhorse,’ Robert said as they left the kitchen. ‘Night, you two.’

Evie’d been up early every morning this week to help with the milking and there’d been games at school this afternoon. She heard the purr of the motorbike taking Robert down the hill
before sleep claimed her.

Robert

Kanburi Camp, ? June 1943

Dear Evie,

Not sure about the date for this letter. Lost track of time again. Been working out on the next patch of ground to be cleared for the railway, breaking stones and clearing trees. Not much
food.

‘Why do you write all these letters you’ll never post?’ Macgregor asked me yesterday. ‘What’s the point?’

It was hard to explain. But somehow when everything’s written down it feels more controllable.

You’ll remember my friend, Noi? I have been able to repay her for saving me from snakebite last month. She and I were sitting at the edge of the market stalls in town. I’d bought
some sweet potatoes from her. You may think it strange that we’re allowed to go into the settlements and openly barter with people. But the Japs know we won’t escape. Where would we go?
We’re surrounded by dense forest and mountains. I suppose someone could smuggle themselves onto a barge, but these are regularly inspected. Even if you managed to make it to the coast, this
is controlled by the Japanese, too. A white man is an obvious fugitive.

I drew Noi some pictures in the dust of my home: Mum, Matthew, you and Charlie. It was hard to explain who everyone was – she thought you were my wife! I also drew some cows, which
interested her greatly. They don’t have cows in this part of the world. Pigs and chickens were less interesting for her as she sees them here. She liked the horses, though.

Then she drew her barge and herself, parents and baby brother. Her mother called to her, presumably warning that they were about to leave. I looked up and saw why: a guard was staggering
around, drunk out of his head, armed with a club. Noi jumped up and ran towards her mother, who was standing at the far side of the marketplace, baby strapped to her back, gesturing at her to
hurry. Something about the girl seemed to grab the guard’s attention: he staggered towards her, waving the club, muttering something. Noi seemed to shrink while her eyes grew big with
fright.

Already everyone was rushing from the marketplace. A drunk camp guard with a gun is enough to clear a town. A pile of metal cooking pots sat beside an abandoned stall. The guard swung around
Noi, waving his gun, shouting; his back was momentarily to me. I ran to the pots and kicked them a passing blow. They crashed to the ground like cymbals but I was already sprinting to the cover of
the teak trees. The guard jumped round, gun in hand, and saw only a heap of fallen pots. He shouted into thin air. I peered out from my hiding place. In the seconds that he’d switched his
attention from her, Noi had run to her mother and the two of them had dissolved into one of the backstreets fanning out from the marketplace. The guard spat into the dust and wobbled away.

For days I didn’t go anywhere near the traders. But I spent some time in the workshop with some pieces of discarded wood. At home I was a fair carver and I managed to use our few
blunted tools to fashion a doll for Noi. It took some time: my hands are so sore from the splinters and blisters. I even found some old tins of paint, used to mark the sleepers, and drew on a red
mouth and black hair, eyes and nose, using a bamboo splint as a kind of quill pen. The poor doll was naked and I am no seamstress but I managed to cajole old Macgregor into helping out. You
remember I said he’d been a tailor before the war. He said he’d made doll’s clothes for his own daughters. The finished doll wore a fine cotton dress, made from a shirt I’d
discarded. When I saw Noi the following day I threw the doll behind my back and winked at her. I heard her quick, light steps and a chirp of joy, like a bird trilling, as she picked up the
toy.

July 1943

Quite a break since I last wrote. Things have been happening. There are other radios in the camp now. What happened before has not put people off making them. It’s
quite ingenious how they produce them from strips of wire and off-cuts of metals scrounged from the workshops. I pretend I haven’t noticed. What’s on my mind is quinine. I know there is
some along this section of the river. But the guards are taking more of an interest in our dealings with the traders now. Often they’ll seize bags of rice from us or smash eggs on the ground.
Sometimes I see Noi in the road but she looks away. Frightened. But I see the little doll I made her tucked into her belt.

Matthew and I both had a fever the same night. I thought we were at home again and kept shouting at him to come and have a dip in the brook now we’d finished haymaking. In between my
bouts I don’t feel too bad, weak, but I can stand. Matthew is feeble. He can’t get up. The guards come and shout at him. I fear that hospital hut. I’ve heard the guards sometimes
come in and finish off those they know won’t work again. It’s not looking good, Evie. I keep trying to stay on top of things, to keep my spirits up but I feel weighed down and helpless.
The guards seem to be waiting for something. They laugh at us and their eyes are calculating.

I try to cling on to Robert Winter of Winter’s Copse in the county of Berkshire, but Robert Winter, prisoner, seems to have taken me
over.

Evie

Autumn 1945

Evie woke knowing something had happened. It took seconds for her sleepy brain to work out that the change was to the light. The bedroom door was open and moonlight streamed in
from the window halfway up the stairs. She glanced at her wristwatch. Midnight.

She lay back and tried to calm her mind. Sleep, she told herself. Just go to sleep. He’ll be better in the morning. She forced her eyelids down. A floorboard on the landing creaked.

A shadow passed back over the moonlight. ‘Don’t be scared,’ Robert whispered. ‘It’s the guards. They’ve come for us. But this time I’m ready for them.
They won’t hurt you.’ He moved and she saw that he was carrying a stick.

‘The guards?’ Her voice was high. ‘What do you mean?’ The blood pulsed round her veins in icy waves. He moved again and she saw that the stick in his hand was a shotgun.
Evie’s mouth opened in a soundless scream. She pushed herself out of bed.

‘Keep quite still and they won’t see you.’ Robert took another step into the room.

‘There’s nobody here but us.’ She made for the desk, back to the wall, keeping her eyes on the man. She could use the chair, if she had to.

‘Stay still,’ he hissed. ‘They’re here, in the trees.’ He raised the gun so that it pointed over her shoulder.

Using all her force she lifted the chair and pushed him with it. He grunted and stepped back, doubled over, onto the landing. Evie ran out of the room, skirting him. ‘No, no,’ he
shouted. Charlie was asleep in the next room. It had a lock. She shoved open the door, slamming it behind her and turning the key. Charlie murmured something. She shook her brother by the
shoulders. ‘Wake up.’ Terror made her rough. ‘He’s going to kill us.’ Charlie put his hands out like a supplicant to stop her.

She let him sit up.

‘Whatchermean?’

‘Robert. He wants to kill us.’ Her voice was high, panicked. ‘He’s got the shotgun.’

Charlie’s eyes went from her to the locked door. Robert pounded on the wood. ‘No!’

Charlie pulled back the covers and jumped out of bed. From the chest of drawers he pulled out two jumpers and threw one at her. ‘Let’s get out of here.’

‘I haven’t got any shoes on,’ she hissed. A silly thing to remember at a time like this.

‘Boots in the cowshed.’ He prised open the window sash.

Robert shook the locked door handle.

‘Evie! Let me in,’ He was half shouting and half pleading. ‘I need to help you.’

They’d climbed out of the window and down the drainpipe so many times for dares under the benign rule of Mr Edwards that they could escape without making a sound. Outside the night was
moonlit, clear, the dew on the grass cold under Evie’s bare feet. In the cowshed she found boots, too big, but welcome. ‘We need to hide from him.’ She peered out of the door.
‘He’s mad tonight.’

Charlie looked out at the farmyard, bathed in creamy light. ‘He’ll find us easily anywhere out here.’

‘Where shall we go? To find the constable in the village?’