The Other Side of Paradise Read online

  Volunteers gave language lessons, bridge lessons, dancing lessons, singing lessons. Miss Mumford, a music teacher, formed a camp choir and put on concerts. Lady Battersby bullied people into giving talks on every imaginable subject: Cultivating Orchids, Collecting Teapots, Walking the Pennine Way, Breeding Siamese Cats, Life on a Rubber Plantation. Empty rice sacks were stuffed with grass to make mattresses and pillows, dolls and toys fashioned out of odds and ends for the children, and games made by hand – snakes and ladders, ludo, playing cards.

  Bartering was done with the native pedlars who came to the camp wire. Susan took one of the gold charms off her bracelet – an elephant – and exchanged it for four bananas which she gave to Peter and Hua. They were tiny and thick-skinned, the fruit inside no bigger than a finger, but they were food. Hua didn’t seem to mind the eternal rice but Peter hated it and he had grown thinner and thinner, his bones sticking out like a starving animal’s. That’s what we’re all doing, Susan thought. Starving to death slowly – if we don’t die quickly.

  Dysentery and malaria were rife in the camp. Nothing healed properly. Bites and blisters turned to running sores and ulcers, cuts and scrapes festered, rashes itched and spread, and the flies and the red ants and mosquitoes and insects of all kinds tormented them with their biting and buzzing. The rats ate their clothes as well as what little food they managed to save, and made nests for their young in the huts. They all stank to high heaven because there wasn’t enough water for washing either clothes or bodies, and no soap to wash with. Susan’s hair was like dirty straw, her skin the colour of old mahogany. Everyone had lice and fleas. They were all in the same boat, which was a small comfort, like the stars.

  Mrs Cotton lived in Susan’s hut and helped her with the children.

  ‘My son Harry’s not all that much older than Peter, but he’s safe in school in England, thank God. I cried for days when he went but now I’m glad. The school’s been evacuated to Wales and when we got Harry’s last letter he said he was having a super time. Heaven knows if we’ll ever get any letters in this place. I don’t suppose people outside even know if we’re alive or dead.’

  ‘The Japs made a list of our names and addresses, so there’s always the hope they might pass it on to the Red Cross.’

  ‘I doubt it. They don’t care about the Red Cross, do they? Look at what happened to those parcels the other day.’

  A lorryload of boxes had arrived outside the camp gates, close by their hut – boxes with American Red Cross in big letters on the side. They had watched excitedly through cracks in the hut walls as they were being unloaded. The guards had wrenched open boxes and pulled out jars of tablets, bottles of medicines, cartons of dressings, cotton wool and bandages. Then they had opened more boxes and fallen on the tinned meat and cheese and milk and butter, the Camels and Chesterfield cigarettes which they stood around chain-smoking.

  None of it had found its way into the camp. Not one jar or bottle or carton or tin. The hospital went without the medical supplies and the prisoners went without the food. Supper that evening had been the same old weevilly grey rice with a few bitter kang kong leaves, each tiny spoonful eaten very slowly to make it last as long as possible. There was always desperate, terrible craving for something sweet.

  The hunger never left them, especially at night when an empty stomach gnawed away like the rats that lived in the huts, and they rolled around in misery. In the dark they talked about their favourite foods, and what they would eat as soon as they were free. Susan lay awake torturing herself by conjuring up lovely dishes that Cookie had served at Cavenagh Road – noodles and shrimps, kung po chicken, shredded pork, crispy won ton. She thought, her mouth watering, of the Sunday curry tiffins at the Tanglin Club, of the dinner parties, of dining at Raffles, of beach picnics with the hampers of food and wine, breakfast on the east verandah with Soojal bringing fragrant coffee and fresh orange juice and a plate of her favourite mangoes and papayas. She even thought of the Indian meal served on banana leaves at the hut Ray had taken her to – which reminded her again, most bitterly, that it was all his fault that she was where she was.

  Sometimes, to stop herself thinking about being hungry, she thought about clothes instead and what she would choose to put on, if only she could. At home in Cavenagh Road she had had at least fifteen pairs of shoes and dozens of evening gowns, cocktail outfits, day dresses, sundresses, skirts and blouses, tailored costumes and frivolous hats. Now she had one ragged frock, no shoes and a palm-leaf coolie hat. Some of the Dutch women still had powder and lipstick but there was nobody to wear it for: certainly not the Japs. Nobody had seen themselves in a proper mirror for many months, or cared any longer how they looked. Nothing could be done about their scabby, sunbaked, scarecrow appearance, so it had ceased to matter.

  Occasionally, when the hunger pangs gnawed unbearably at night, she put on one of her favourite dresses, her highest heels, her best jewellery, her brightest lipstick and went out dining and dancing. She ate the most scrumptious dinner at Raffles, or at the Coq d’Or or the Coconut Grove – five courses at least – and danced the night away to gorgeous music with a smoothie like Denys, or with Bill, or Hugh, or Teddy or Jack. The good-looking sub lieutenant invited her to another dance at the naval base and she wore her pale-pink tulle gown and her silver sandals, stuffed herself to the gills at the supper buffet, drank glass after glass of champagne and danced till dawn.

  Once she went out with Ray, but that was a big mistake. She had taken quite a lot of trouble: washed and curled her hair, put on her newest frock, her peep-toe platforms and dabbed herself with Je Reviens – all prepared to be nice to him. It had been a waste of time. He took her back to the shack on the hill, the one with the Hawaiian music and the lovely view but no food. She’d eaten all the fruit in the cocktail and they had argued about everything. The only comment he had made about her appearance had been to say that her shoes were ridiculous.

  ‘What do you mean, ridiculous?’

  ‘You’ll go and break your ankle if you don’t watch out.’

  ‘Do you expect me to wear dreary sensible things?’

  ‘I don’t expect you to do anything sensible.’

  He’d driven her home in the ordinary old car and stopped outside the house. Then he’d reached across to push the passenger door open, just as he’d done before.

  ‘Gentlemen usually get out to open the door.’

  ‘I’m an Australian, not a gentleman.’

  ‘That’s fairly obvious. You’re also supposed to kiss me goodnight.’

  ‘Is that an order?’

  ‘It’s the custom. Not that you’d be any good.’

  She’d got out, slammed the door and stalked off.

  She bartered another of her gold charms – a handsome lion with a flowing mane – for a length of brightly coloured cotton from a native at the wire. One of the Dutch women, called Ine, owned a sewing machine and she made a new frock for Hua and a shirt for Peter in return for a third charm – a little gold sampan. There was just enough material over to make a suntop for herself, and Ine gave her an old curtain to wear knotted round her waist as a sarong. The blue frock was hidden away in her rice-sack mattress, with her watch, her pearls and the remains of the charm bracelet concealed in its hem.

  Mrs Brook, one of the older women in her hut, had managed, like Lady Battersby, to cling on to her handbag when her ship had sunk and had saved a little zip-fastened travelling sewing kit, complete with needles, miniature cotton reels, and a pair of scissors. Susan borrowed the scissors to cut Hua and Peter’s hair. Her own she left to grow long, tying it back with threads pulled from a rice sack.

  She taught the smallest children in the camp school all the English nursery rhymes and poems that Nana had taught her. They sat cross-legged in a circle round her and recited them in a loud chorus.

  Sing a song of sixpence,

  A pocket full of rye,

  Four-and-twenty blackbirds

  Baked in a pie.

  When th
e pie was opened

  The birds began to sing;

  Was not that a dainty dish

  To set before the king?

  The king counting out his money, the queen eating her bread and honey were acted by the children, and so, with relish, was the maid hanging out the clothes and having her nose pecked off.

  She remembered songs to teach them, too: ‘Old Macdonald’, ‘Row, Row, Row Your Boat’, ‘Widdecombe Fair’, ‘One Man Went To Mow’, ‘The Grand Old Duke Of York’.

  Hua could speak very good English now – so good that she seldom spoke her own language any more. Susan kept talking to her in Cantonese so that she wouldn’t forget it by the time they were liberated, but there seemed no chance of them being freed for a very long time. There were always rumours; the camp lived and died by them. The Americans had landed in Sumatra and were sending the Japs packing. Singapore would soon be retaken. Everyone would be home by Christmas. Hitler had been assassinated and Germany had signed an armistice with England. Nobody knew what to believe but the rumours kept up their spirits and their hopes.

  Then Hua, who had seemed immune from the disease, fell ill with malaria. Susan sat beside her in the hospital as she lay semi-conscious on the bali bali, trying to cool her face with a rag and a tin of tepid water. The raging fever was followed by the child shivering and shaking with cold beneath the rice sack.

  Stella came over. ‘One of the Dutch women bought some quinine from a Chinese bloke at the wire. She said it cost a fortune, but then they’ve got the money. Might be worth a try.’

  The Chinaman appeared the next day – a tiny man with a big hat that hid his face. Unlike the other pedlars, he carried no trays or baskets.

  Susan spoke to him in Cantonese. ‘You have quinine?’

  ‘Perhaps.’

  ‘A little girl is very ill with malaria. She needs quinine. Without it she will die.’

  ‘Very expensive.’

  ‘I have no money.’

  He shrugged and turned away.

  ‘I have something else.’

  He waited.

  She put her closed fist through the wire, opened her fingers slowly to reveal the string of pearls: the ones she had been given for her eighteenth birthday and had worn at her first dance.

  ‘Will these pay for it?’

  He put out a hand – his palm small and creased as a monkey’s paw. She withdrew hers quickly.

  ‘Give me the quinine first.’

  A smoke-coloured bottle appeared like a magician’s trick from the depths of the loose garments that he wore. She took it from him. The label said in handwritten English Quinine and when she shook it, whatever was inside rattled. It might be the real thing, or it might not. There was no way of knowing.

  ‘Quinine?’

  He nodded.

  ‘You swear?’

  He nodded again.

  She put the necklace slowly into his hand. It vanished immediately.

  The Chinaman lifted his head and she saw his face for the first time. It was as creased as his palm, his eyes gleaming slits.

  ‘Quinine very good. The girl will live.’

  They were sent to do coolie labour outside the camp, hacking away at the jungle growth with changkols – iron hoes so heavy they could hardly lift them and which gave them horrible blisters on their hands. Later on, they used the changkols to make vegetable patches in the camp and planted seeds saved from the rotting vegetables dumped off the lorry – seeds from long beans, carrots, cabbages, all watered carefully with the precious water ration. One of the older, kinder guards brought in tapioca and sweet-potato cuttings which they stuck in the earth. The seeds sprouted like Jack’s beanstalk and the sweet potatoes and tapioca took root and flourished. To brighten and civilize their lives they planted flowers.

  Every Sunday church services were organized by Miss Tarrant and the Dutch nuns. The women knelt in the dust to pray and stood to sing hymns without music. Except for the sick, every prisoner attended.

  A truck arrived at the gates early one morning to deposit more prisoners – dumped out like the rotten vegetables. More Dutchwomen and children and, among them, an English girl called Rita. They had come from a camp at Palembang.

  Room was made for Rita in Susan’s hut – precious inches given up for extra space. They gathered round her in the hut to hear her story. She had been a typist in an import–export company in Singapore and the Japs had already crossed the Causeway on to the island when she had escaped on a launch with a group of civilian engineers. The launch had left after dark, just as the Japanese aircraft had arrived to drop their bombs. The whole waterfront from Keppel Harbour to the post office had been a mass of flames, from end to end. They had crept down the coast, following a Royal Navy launch which had guided them through the minefields. By dawn, just when they had begun to think they were safe, the engine had suddenly broken down. None of the engineers could restart it and they had drifted helplessly until they finally ran aground somewhere on the coast of Sumatra and were captured by the Japs. They had been taken to a makeshift camp where there were other Dutch prisoners – men and women kept in separate quarters. After several days, one more prisoner arrived.

  ‘He was a newspaper correspondent in Singapore,’ Rita said. ‘He’d got out even later than us, on the very day that Singapore surrendered.’

  Susan said, ‘He wasn’t called Lawrence Trent, by any chance?’

  Rita shook her head. ‘I never knew his surname but his Christian name was Roy. He was an Australian and he said he’d been at the Alexandra Military Hospital when the Japs got there, the day before the surrender. He told us that the Japs had shelled the hospital and then they went in and massacred the patients and the doctors and nurses – shot them and bayoneted them in the operating theatre and in the wards all over the hospital. After that, they ordered more people outside in the gardens and killed them, too. Hundreds of them.’

  There was silence in the hut.

  Rita went on. ‘He managed to escape by hiding in a ditch until it was dark, then he went down to the docks and hired a sampan out to a small ship that was just leaving. It was going through the Malacca Strait when it was attacked and sunk by Japanese bombers. He said he was picked up eventually by a Japanese ship.’

  Susan said, ‘Did he say who’d died at the Alexandra? Did he give any names?’

  ‘No. He just said it was a whole lot of people. Doctors and nurses and patients. Two hundred, at least. Maybe more. It was a bloodbath, he said. An indescribable bloodbath.’

  Mrs Cotton said, ‘What else did he tell you?’

  ‘Well, he’d heard that the Japs had murdered thousands of Chinese in Singapore – raped the Chinese women and girls and cut the men’s heads off with swords and stuck them up on poles.’

  ‘What about the Europeans?’

  ‘All white European civilians were ordered to go to the Padang in front of the Cricket Club and then they were marched off to Changi Prison. Men and women, he said. The troops had already been taken prisoner when they surrendered, of course.’ Rita looked round at the stunned faces. ‘That’s all I can tell you. The Japs moved us women away to another camp soon after. They kept sending us from one place to another and we’ve spent months travelling round till we ended up here.’

  The others went on asking questions. The tiniest new titbit was seized upon, chewed over and digested. Susan didn’t listen any longer. Instead, she went outside the hut and walked alone along the compound wire. Stella was on duty at the hospital hut but she’d hear the news soon enough. Good or bad, true or false, it always travelled like wildfire throughout the camp. She passed the old Jap guard who had given them the sweet-potato and tapioca roots and he gave her a toothy grin, but she turned her head away from the hateful sight of him.

  Stella said, ‘They’ll pay for it one day. They’ll be punished. When this war’s over.’

  She’d spoken quietly but Susan knew the depth of her feeling. They were walking round the compound – fruitlessly round and rou
nd. Caged animals in a terrible zoo, ill-treated by brutal keepers, thrown putrid scraps for food, stared at and mocked by onlookers outside the wire fence.

  ‘There’s a chance it may not be true, Stella. The newspaper correspondent could have got it all wrong.’

  ‘He was there at the hospital, wasn’t he? That’s what he told Rita. Strewth, he was an eyewitness. Of course it’s true. I’ve seen the Nips in action too, remember? There’s nothing they like better than killing us – the more the merrier so far as they’re concerned. And they don’t care how we die. They can shoot us, bayonet us, cut our heads off, blow us up, starve us, torture us, let us die from disease and neglect – it’s all the same to them, just so long as we die. All those people at the Alexandra – doctors and nurses and patients, for God’s sake – they must have loved killing them. It was easy. They were unarmed, defenceless – the patients lying in their beds, the doctors and nurses trying to save them. The Nips must have had wonderful fun. A real party.’

  Ray would be dead. So would Geoff. So would Vincent. So would Denys, almost certainly. Her father would have been marched off to prison with thousands of other civilians. Harmless, hardworking, loyal Chinese, like Cookie, would have been horribly butchered.

  Susan covered her face with her hands. ‘It’s unbearable, Stella. Unbearable.’

  Stella put an arm round her shoulders. ‘You’ve got to bear it, old chum. You don’t have a choice. None of us do. We’ve got to keep going, somehow. We’ve got to learn how to stay alive.’