The Other Side of Paradise (26 page)

‘Holy cow!’ he said softly. ‘Oh, my word! Oh, my bloody word!’

Part Three

LIBERTY

Fifteen

THE DAKOTA CAME
in low over the sea to land on Singapore Island at dusk on an evening in September. The aeroplane touched down gently and rolled to a halt. After a while the passengers began to disembark, moving slowly like old people, though many of them were young. The crowd of photographers and reporters waiting on the tarmac pressed forward to record their arrival.

The passengers stood on the aircraft steps, blinking in the popping glare of the camera flashbulbs – still stunned by their liberation.

A reporter, notebook and pencil in hand, barred Susan’s way at the foot of the steps.

‘Can you tell us how you feel, miss? What’s it like to be a free woman again?’

He was young and he looked so clean and smart. His hair was smooth, his suit pressed, his shoes polished. She was carrying her coolie hat, wearing her ragged old blue cotton frock and a pair of muddy Japanese army boots that felt like lead weights on her feet.

She said, ‘It’s very nice.’

‘A bit more than that, surely?’ he coaxed. ‘How long were you a prisoner?’

‘Three and a half years.’

‘That’s a very long time. What was it like?’

‘Pretty awful.’

‘How did the Japs treat you?’

‘They weren’t very pleasant.’

He scribbled in his notebook. ‘Can you give me some details? People will want to know how you women managed to survive.’

‘A lot of us didn’t.’

He paused, but only for a second. ‘Do you have any idea how many died?’

‘I’m not sure exactly.’

About half, in fact, but she didn’t want to talk about it.

‘What about these children with you?’ he persisted. Hua was clinging to her hand, Peter close behind her. ‘What’s the story there?’

‘They were in the camps, too.’

‘Would you mind telling me a bit about them? Their names, and so on. What it was like for them.’

She looked at him, wondering how it would ever be possible to tell somebody anything about a Japanese prisoner-of-war camp who had never been in one.

‘I’m sorry, you’ll have to excuse me. I can’t talk about it now.’

She walked on with Hua and Peter. Behind her, she could hear him accosting old Mrs Brook.

‘How does it feel to be free at last, madam?’

It had been an effort to answer him at all. Others had wept copiously since they had been released but she had been unable to cry. The euphoria had evaporated and now she felt like a very old woman must feel. Everything was an effort: to speak, to walk, to eat, to drink and luckily, perhaps, to think.

More Australian soldiers had arrived at the prison camp after that first digger in the jeep and there had been a lot of crying and laughing and hugging. It had been extraordinary and very wonderful to see and talk to white men again.

The Aussies had been shocked by their appearance, though they had tried not to show it. She had seen them shaking their heads, heard them muttering and swearing to each other. They had taken complete charge. The hated white flag with its red circle had been hauled down and ceremoniously burned. They had chopped down trees and cut up firewood and mended leaking roofs. They had distributed cakes of soap and packets of cigarettes and provided food – tins of Australian butter and beef, bacon, milk, white sugar, salt, eggs. They had brought in freshly killed meat – chicken, pork, a whole bullock which they had skinned and cooked over a huge fire – and they had picked fresh fruit in the jungle: papayas, bananas, mangosteens, rambutans.

Best of all, they had brought good manners and kindness. To be treated like a human being and a woman again after years of being treated like the lowest scum was extraordinary. No more slaps and blows and kicks. No more bayonet jabs, or screaming abuse. No more having to bow and scrape to evil little men, no more standing in the roasting sun for hours at their sadistic pleasure. Instead, there were smiles and jokes and gentle words and strong helping hands. A cache of Red Cross boxes had been discovered, hidden by the Japs. The boxes had contained medicines, medical supplies, blankets, pillows, mosquito nets: things that would have saved lives and made life more bearable. And there had been tins of food – salmon, meat, powdered milk, jam – and sacks of letters, kept back from the prisoners.

They’d bombarded the Aussies with questions and discovered that Mr Roosevelt had died and a Mr Truman was President of the United States; that the Americans had dropped huge bombs on Japan, destroying whole cities and ending the war in the Pacific; that the King and Queen and Princess Elizabeth and Princess Margaret were all right, and so was Mr Churchill. There was still an England.

They had stayed on at the camp for another month, waiting to be transported back to Singapore. Supplies were dropped by bombers – fruit juice, Nescafé, cocoa, cigarettes, matches, chocolate, sweets and fresh bread which they had not tasted for so long.

Susan had asked one of the diggers, while he chopped firewood, if he knew what had been happening in Singapore. He had leaned on his axe, tipped his hat back, wiped his brow.

‘Nothing good. Not from what we’ve heard. The Japs locked up all the civilians in Changi clink – thousands of them. Men and women. Sounds like they had a tough time there.’

‘How tough?’

‘Lousy conditions, lousy food, lousy treatment – like you women here. And the Kempeitai were real bastards.’

‘The Kempeitai?’

‘The Nips’ secret police. Like the Nazi Gestapo. They interrogated prisoners. You don’t want to know about them.’

She said, ‘My father was in Singapore when the island fell. I still don’t know what happened to him.’

He shook his head. ‘My word … sorry to hear that. But I dare say you’ll be able to find out as soon as you get back there. He’s probably OK. You don’t want to think the worst. No sense in that.’

He was a nice young man and she knew he was trying hard to say the right thing. It was a big change to have a man speak kindly instead of yelling and screaming foul abuse. She couldn’t imagine how she had ever thought Australian speech so awful. It sounded wonderful to her now. Gentle, drawling, soft.

She said, ‘We heard that the Japs massacred hundreds of patients and doctors and nurses at the Alexandra Hospital when they took Singapore. Is that really true?’

He had nodded. ‘Yeah, we heard about that too. I reckon it’s true all right. The Nips have been doing all sorts of nasty things. Still, they won’t be doing them any more, that’s for sure.’

They had been transported in lorries out of the prison camp and then by train to an aerodrome a hundred miles away, where they had waited patiently for many hours before Dakotas had swooped down from the skies to fetch them. The planes had been used for carrying paratroopers and had hard metal benches down each side instead of proper seats. They had bumped and roared down the runway and climbed up into the skies above Sumatra. The long imprisonment was finally over. She had felt too tired to care.

At the aerodrome in Singapore they were given tea served in cups and saucers with milk and sugar, spoons to stir it, sweet biscuits to eat and cigarettes to smoke. And they sat on real chairs, at real tables. The Red Cross workers wore crisp uniforms; they had pale, soft complexions and shiny hair. The contrast to their own woeful appearance was depressing; even more so, the mirror in the ladies’ cloakroom which showed them how truly terrible they looked.

They were driven in ambulances to an Australian military hospital. There they were deloused, took baths in tiled bathrooms with hot water and scented soap, washed their hair with shampoo, cleaned their teeth with toothbrushes and toothpaste, used porcelain lavatories and lavatory paper. They were given pyjamas, dressing gowns, brushes and combs, and slept in beds with clean white sheets and two soft pillows. It was all far too comfortable.

‘I don’t know about you,’ Stella said from the bed beside Susan. ‘But I’m going to sleep on the floor.’

The next day the Red Cross provided clothes. Undies, frocks, blouses, skirts, stockings, shoes to put on their splayed and leathery feet, as well as face creams, powder and lipstick and nail files. They were given civilized meals on civilized china plates that they ate with civilized knives and forks and spoons.

There were other internees in the hospital, too – women and men survivors from other camps and some from Changi prison in Singapore. A lot of them were very ill and likely to die or to take many months to recover. Susan talked to one man who was well enough to walk around. He had been a solicitor working in Singapore and he described what had happened after the city fell.

‘People couldn’t believe it – not even then. It was like a nightmare. The Japs made all European civilians assemble on the Cricket Club
Padang
. Thousands of men, women and children. We were there for hours during the hottest part of the day while they told us exactly what they thought of us whites. No shade, no water, no mercy. Later they made the men march the twelve miles to Changi prison. The women and children had to walk, too. We were already there when they arrived at Changi and as they came marching through the gates we heard them singing at the tops of their voices, “There’ll Always be an England”. We thought that was pretty splendid, I can tell you. We cheered them like anything.’

She said, ‘Did you happen to come across my father, Thomas Roper? I think he must have been in Changi.’

‘Tom Roper? Good Lord, yes. He was in the same cell as me for over a year.’

‘Do you have any idea where he is now? Nobody seems to know.’

‘Oh dear, haven’t you been informed? He died a long while ago. It would have been back in December 1942, I think. Or around that time. My memory’s not too good, I’m afraid. I’m so sorry. Didn’t you know?’

She said quietly, ‘No, I didn’t know. What did he die of?’

‘Hard to say exactly … people died of all kinds of things, sometimes there were several causes. You were in a Jap camp yourself, weren’t you?’

‘Yes.’

‘Then you know how it was.’

Yes, she knew.

‘Did he suffer very much?’

‘We all suffered. Some more than others. I shouldn’t dwell on that, if I were you. Much better not.’

‘The Kempeitai,’ she said. ‘Did they question him?’

‘They questioned anyone they suspected of any kind of disobedience or conspiracy. Any man who stood out as a natural leader, like your father. It didn’t matter that there was no shred of evidence and nothing to justify it.’

‘Did they torture him?’

‘He was a very courageous man. An example to us all. That’s all I can tell you.’

She went on doggedly. ‘Did he die because of being tortured?’

‘As I said, it was hard to know what a man died of. There was never any shortage of causes. Some died, some survived. That’s all one can say. I was one of the lucky ones. I don’t know why. I did absolutely nothing to deserve it.’

She felt the same guilt, too: guilt at surviving when so many others had died, and now the agonizing grief that one of them had been her father.

Officials from an organization called the Repatriation of Allied Prisoners of War and Internees came to the hospital. A plump, middle-aged woman in uniform interviewed Susan with Peter and Hua. The plumpness looked strange – so much flesh on bones, among so little.

‘I’m very sorry about your father, my dear.’

‘Are you quite sure he’s dead?’

‘His name is here on the list, I’m afraid. He died on the tenth of December 1942 and was buried in the prison cemetery. The Japanese seem to have been meticulous about the Changi lists. I’m sure you’ll want to visit the grave and it can be arranged for you, when you’re feeling up to it.’

‘Yes, I’d like to do that, please.’

The RAPWI woman was being very kind, like the Aussies at the camp, but she kept staring at her. It wasn’t the first time that Susan had noticed how people seemed fascinated by internees – they stared as though they were freaks.

‘We’ll try and trace the children’s families but it may take a while. At least we have some helpful details for Peter but it’s going to be very difficult so far as Hua is concerned. Her mother is dead, her father missing and all we seem to know about her is roughly where she lived and that she had an aunt called Su. It’s not very much to go on but, of course, we’ll do our best.’

Susan said, ‘I could go to the place myself and see if I can find out anything. I remember exactly where the Chinese settlement was.’

‘Do you think you’re fit enough to go anywhere yet?’

She had weighed just over five stone on arrival but after one week she weighed nearly six, and her physical strength was beginning to come back.

‘Yes, I’m quite all right.’

The woman said, ‘We’ll find out about your mother and grandmother. That shouldn’t be too difficult. As soon as I have any news I’ll let you know.’

She waited a moment while more notes were made in neat handwriting.

‘Do you happen to know anything about the massacre at the Alexandra Hospital?’

The woman looked up. ‘I heard about it. It was shocking. A terrible thing.’

‘I knew some of the doctors and nurses there. I’d like to find out if any of them survived.’

‘Anyone in particular?’

‘Captain Ray Harvey. He was a doctor in the Australian army.’

‘From what I’ve heard, it could be a bit of a problem too. I gather they were all buried by the Japanese in a mass grave. But I’ll certainly try.’

‘Thank you.’

‘It’s all a bit chaotic at the moment, you see. It will take time to sort everything out. Is there anything else I can do to help?’

‘Well, there is one thing. The children are getting very fed up in the hospital. So am I, to be honest. It’s awfully depressing. Is there anywhere else we could stay?’

The woman smiled. ‘Yes, my dear, as a matter of fact there is.’

* * *

The YWCA had commandeered rooms at Raffles Hotel for women and children internees. Susan, Peter and Hua were taken there by ambulance – an Austin K2Y exactly like the one she had driven. She sat in front beside the Red Cross woman driver with Hua on her knee and Peter sitting on a tin toolbox beside her. She had tried to persuade Stella to go with them, but Stella had chosen to stay on and help with the nursing while she waited for a passage home.