The Other Side of Paradise (18 page)

He caught sight of Susan. ‘Here, look after her, will you? There may be more trapped.’

She put the little girl down on the grass and wiped away the dust from her face. She looked like a little doll, with straight black hair and almond eyes beneath a fringe. She was dressed in a cotton frock but barefoot.

Susan said in Cantonese, ‘Do you hurt?’

The child nodded, pointing to her arm. It looked awful – swollen and bleeding. Very probably broken.

The child whispered, ‘Where is Mummy?’

‘We’ll find her in a minute.’ She lifted the little girl in her arms, shielding her from the sight of the bodies. ‘We must wait here for now.’

An ambulance arrived and the men started to load the back with the dead. She stepped forward. The little girl had wound her good arm tightly round her neck. ‘This child’s injured. She ought to be seen by a doctor.’

The ambulance driver said, ‘You can bring her in the cab. That way she won’t see any of this lot.’

‘But she’s nothing to do with me.’

‘Where’s her mother?’

She nodded towards the bodies. ‘Over there.’

‘Looks like you’re stuck with her, then.’

She climbed up into the passenger seat with the little Chinese girl clinging to her like a limpet. As they drove away, she realized that she had left her bike behind.

The air raid was still going on and there was another terrifying noise now as well as the bombs and the ack-ack guns – a high-pitched screaming sound followed by ear-splitting explosions.

‘The bastards are sending shells over,’ the driver said. ‘They can’t be far away.’

The road ahead was choked with refugees: Chinese families burdened like beasts with pots and pans, bedding and sacks of rice, Tamil women following their men, their possessions balanced on their heads. The ambulance driver was cursing and yelling at them as he tried to get through but they took no notice.

At the Alexandra, the injured – soldiers and civilians – were everywhere: in the hallway, on verandahs, along passages, propped like rag dolls against walls, lying groaning on stretchers. The fans had stopped working and the heat was horrible, so were the flies and the stench.

Susan grabbed at a nurse. ‘What shall I do with this little girl? She’s been hurt.’

‘You’ll have to wait. Find a place somewhere.’

‘She’s not mine. I can’t stay.’

The nurse shrugged. ‘Give her to somebody else, then.’

‘Do you know where I could find Captain Harvey?’

‘No, I don’t. It’s chaos, can’t you see?’

She carried the child down a passageway where dirty linen lay in piles, covered with flies. A shell screeched over and exploded in the gardens outside; the little girl started to cry, tears rolling down her cheeks.

‘It’s all right,’ Susan told her. ‘It’s all right.’

She found Ray at last. He was at the end of a corridor packed with wounded. She fought a way through, calling out his name, and when he turned round she thrust the child into his arms.

‘She’s been hurt … her arm. I think it’s broken. Can you look at it?’

He felt the arm, moved it gently. ‘It’s not broken. It’s bruised, with a few bad scrapes. Needs cleaning up, but she’s OK.’ He handed the child back to her. ‘I thought you’d left, Susan. What the hell happened?’

‘I changed my mind. Got off the ship.’

He stared at her. ‘Well, you’re a bloody fool. And what in God’s name are you doing with this Chinese kid?’

‘A bomb killed her mother. I brought her to the hospital.’

He said harshly, ‘Well, you’d better get yourself out of Singapore flaming fast, Susan, and take the kid with you before the Japs finish her off with a bayonet. And while you’re at it, you can take this English boy, too. His mother here has just died. A bomb got her as well.’

She hadn’t noticed the boy. He was standing, white-faced and silent, gazing down at a woman lying on a stretcher. Very English in his grey shorts and white Aertex shirt.

‘I can’t do that, Ray.’

‘Why can’t you?’

‘Because I’m staying here with my father.’

‘What the flaming hell for? He wanted you out, didn’t he? The Japs’ll be here in a couple of days. They hate the Chinese and they like you Poms even less. Think about these two kids. One’s a Pom and one’s Chinese. They’re on their own and the Nips aren’t going to be nice to either of them. Give them a break and get them out.’

‘They’re nothing to do with me.’

‘They are now, whether you like it or not. They both need you.’

‘I can’t leave my father.’

‘Yes you bloody can. He won’t want to have to worry about you, as well as everything else. That’s not going to help him. You’ve still got a last chance to leave. The Australian nurses here have been ordered to get out. They’re going now and you can go with them. Get out of Singapore, Susan, and take the kids with you. And hurry up about it, for Christ Almighty’s sake.’

The little Chinese girl whimpered and tightened her stranglehold round her neck; the English boy went on staring blankly down at his dead mother.
The Nips aren’t going to be nice to either of them
.

‘If I must.’

‘Too bloody right, you must. I don’t know the boy’s name – he won’t tell us.’

The same boy had been splashing around happily in the Tanglin pool on Christmas day, and his mother had called to him.

‘I do,’ she said. ‘His name’s Peter.’

She carried the Chinese girl on her hip and dragged the boy along by his hand. Outside, ambulances were arriving with more dead and more injured, stretchers being rushed to and fro. Another shell screamed over, exploding in the gardens below. A small army truck was parked down the driveway, Australian nurses in their grey uniforms sitting in the back. She hurried over, pulling the boy after her.

‘Can you take us with you? Is there room?’

The one called Stella leaned over the tailgate. ‘Pass the kids up.
Quick!
We’re leaving.’

Hands reached out to snatch the girl, then the boy and, lastly, to haul Susan on board just as the truck roared off.

They made room for them on the bench. She held the girl on her lap and put her arm round the boy as the truck hurtled through the streets. At Clifford Pier, crowds of people were fighting to embark while troops with tommy guns struggled to keep order. Her suitcase and her handbag were still in the hall at Cavenagh Road. She had no luggage, no passport, no money and no papers to show either for herself or the children, but the Australian nurses formed a ring of steel round them and swept them through.

A tug carried them out across the harbour, a gentle breeze rippling the surface of a deep indigo sea, the noise and fury on the shore dying away in the distance. When they had boarded the ship Susan went to the stern, carrying the girl on her hip, holding the boy’s hand.

The evening sun had thrown the city into sharp relief – the Cathay Building and the spire of St Andrew’s rising above the rest. Fires were still blazing, flames leaping into the sky, and an immense pall of thick, black smoke hung over the island.

At dusk the crew weighed anchor and the ship sailed. Susan stayed at the stern with the children, watching Singapore vanish from sight.

Part Two

CAPTIVITY

Ten

THE SHIP WAS
an old freighter that had probably spent its days plying up and down the South China Seas and the Indian Ocean. It creaked along, laden with more than two hundred evacuees – white European women and children, a few civilian men, a handful of military and the Australian nurses. There was no room below and Susan found a corner for the children on the deck. Stella washed the little girl’s arm with clean water and rubbed in some ointment taken from her kitbag.

‘Looks OK to me but you never know in this climate. I’ve got a bar of chocolate, would they like some?’

The girl nibbled at her piece but the boy turned his head away. He hadn’t uttered a word since the hospital.

‘How did you get landed with them?’

‘Their mothers were killed in the air raid. I didn’t seem to have much choice.’ She didn’t mention the scene with Ray.

‘Same with us. No choice. We all refused to go at first but Matron said it was an order. We feel really bad – walking out on the patients and the doctors like that. None of them complained but that didn’t make it any easier. We’d come overseas to do a job and they stopped us doing it.’

She said, ‘I wanted to stay, too.’

‘Well, I suppose we should be grateful that we couldn’t. Everyone knows what the Japs are like – that’s why they packed us off. Those kids of yours wouldn’t have stood much of a chance – specially the little Chinese girl. What’s her name?’

‘She won’t say. The boy’s name’s Peter.’

‘Poor kid. Looks like he’s in shock. I wonder where his dad is.’

‘I don’t know. I don’t know anything about either of them. Do you have any idea where this ship’s supposed to be going?’

‘Java – at least that’s what somebody said.’

They were given dry biscuits and tinned bully beef to eat; the boy, Peter, still refused to touch anything, or to speak. The nurses lent coats to put over the children and made pillows for them with their kitbags. Susan lay on the deck, watching the stars and listening to the throb of the ship’s engine and the steady slap of the waves against the sides.

When dawn came up, they saw that they were trailing after a motley flotilla: big ships, small ships, ships of all shapes and sorts. More biscuits and bully beef were served, with rations of water. In the afternoon, a Jap spotter plane appeared and flew over.

‘He’ll go and tell all his friends,’ Stella said. ‘They’ll be here soon. By the way, it’s Friday the 13th today, in case you hadn’t realized.’

They were ordered below deck and lay huddled together in airless heat as the spotter’s friends swooped in from the east – forty or more of them forming up to bomb and machine-gun the ships. Susan had one arm round the girl, the other round the boy. Some woman started reciting the Lord’s Prayer loudly and when she got to the Amen, she began all over again.

A second wave of planes arrived and bombs fell closer to the ship, making it shudder and roll. One of them exploded against the side and seawater rushed in through a gaping hole. People were screaming and stampeding to get up on to the deck when a second bomb hit and the ship began to list heavily to starboard and to fill with smoke. In the panic and confusion, Susan lost sight of Stella and the other nurses. She picked up the girl, gripped the boy’s hand and fought her way up the stairs.

The bridge had been hit and was in flames; people were throwing themselves overboard in panic. The Jap planes came back, very low, and their guns raked the deck from bows to stern, mowing down passengers and blasting lifeboats from their moorings into the sea.

Susan kicked away her shoes and wrenched off the boy’s sandals. Holding the girl in her arms and the boy by the hand, she jumped over the side.

When she surfaced she still had the girl but she had lost her grip on Peter and he had disappeared. She trod water, shouting his name, and had almost given up hope of finding him when she saw him swimming towards her, doing the same splashy crawl he had done in the Tanglin pool. A ship’s raft floated past and she grabbed its rope, heaved both the children up on to it and hauled herself up after them. There was another person already lying there – a woman.

The ship, enveloped in flames and black smoke, had rolled on to its side and was sinking fast. Within a few minutes it was gone, leaving behind a film of black oil and a scene of carnage: wrecked lifeboats, overloaded rafts, people floundering and choking in the water – some clinging to lifebelts, some swimming for their lives, others slipping away beneath the surface. And all around – drifting along with the current – there were dead bodies, parts of bodies and dead fish. Soon there would probably be sharks.

The raft floated with the current, too. There was nothing to paddle with – not that Susan would have known which direction to take. No land was in sight – only sea and, far away now, the few flotilla ships still left unsunk.

The woman on the raft had been badly hurt and was barely conscious. She managed to speak but so feebly that Susan could only make out the name Duncan, which she kept repeating. Her husband? Her son? There was no way of knowing and nothing she could do for her.

They drifted on, carried by the current, and lost sight of the other survivors. The woman had stopped speaking or moving and Susan realized that she was dead. As darkness fell, she gathered the children into her arms and stayed awake while they slept.

During the night a storm blew up and the waves tossed the raft up and down and round about, making them violently sick; her arms ached from clinging on to the children to stop them sliding overboard. The dead woman had vanished.

At sunrise, she saw land – a small hill rising out of the sea several miles away. The current took them steadily towards it and soon they were near enough to see a beach and palm trees. The raft floated closer and closer but suddenly, and cruelly, the current took hold again and swept them on past the beach.

They drifted on, following the shoreline. There were no more beaches, only a mangrove swamp along the water’s edge. But land of any kind was better than letting the current take them far out to sea again. The sea had never frightened her before. It had always been lovely to look at from the rails of a P&O liner, pleasant to swim in, fun to sail on. Now, it was none of those things.

She said to the boy, ‘Peter, could you swim with me as far as those mangrove trees? Do you think you could do that?’

He nodded.

She smiled at him. ‘That’s lucky, because that’s what we’re going to have to do. Can you swim breast stroke? It won’t be so tiring as crawl. Can you do that?’

He nodded again.

‘Right. We’re going to get off the raft now. Stay very close. You can hang on to me if you get tired.’

She swam on her back, pulling the girl, the boy swimming beside her. The water was calm after the storm but it was a long way to the trees and Peter soon grew tired and slipped behind. She trod water with him for a while but she could see that he was almost exhausted.