A Different Sky (38 page)

S
HE CAME TO THE
beach each day in the late afternoon, and sat with Howard on the stones beside the breakwater. Ah Siew trailed after Mei Lan, squatting down to wait, always under the same coconut palm. Howard felt the old woman's eyes upon him, resigned but disapproving. He was surprised when one day Mei Lan arrived as usual, but without Ah Siew.

‘She didn't see me leave,' Mei Lan said and he knew she had waited for an opportunity to evade the old woman.

‘I've something to show you,' he said, taking her hand and pulling her after him. They walked on the firm, wet sand, feet bare and gleaming under the soft honeycomb of foam that edged each incoming wave. For the first time in days the events swirling about Mei Lan seemed distant. The weight of Howard's arm about her shoulders, the immediacy of him walking beside her was all that mattered. The shallow waves rolled over their toes, splashing about their ankles, and Howard remembered how they had waded through the clear water of the canal to catch crayfish so long ago. He observed Mei Lan's neatly shaped toes, the high arch of her foot, the narrow heel, and knew time stood still and there was only this moment, this walking together over the sand. The fragility of her filled him, reminding him of a bird he had once held in the palm of his hand, its heart beating against his fingers. In the silence he knew the same hunger was building within them both and that the same trepidation filled them. At last he stopped before the old shack, and they stood looking up at it.

‘It's my secret place,' he told her, pulling her up beside him to stand on the crumbling balcony.

‘Is it safe?' she asked, observing the splintering floor as he pushed open the door and led her inside.

‘You have to be careful where you walk,' he replied, knowing these mundane words were but a bridge across the awkward moments.
Already, he was unbuttoning his shirt and she was helping him, even as he pulled at her wrappings, fumbling with buttons, impatient with the complication of it all. Then, at last he could crush her against him, feel the swell of her breast beneath his hand, the soft inner thigh. He heard her moan, her lips wet against his shoulder, dissolving like him, carried up on the crest of sensation until it broke upon them both. It was over quickly. For a while they lay unmoving, then Mei Lan struggled free and pulled herself up on her knees to look out of the window above them.

‘I knew she was there. I knew she would come,' she said softly.

Howard knelt beside her and saw in the distance the small, bent figure of Ah Siew scurrying desperately up and down the track that led to the beach near the breakwater. Hurriedly, Mei Lan began to pull on her clothes. He sat on the pallet looking up at her and knew she wanted to get away from him, to erase what had just happened, and this know ledge filled him miserably.

‘I can't do this to her,' Mei Lan said, almost under her breath. ‘I can't come here again. It's wrong; everything has changed.' All she could see was the image of Ah Siew, bent with age and anxiety, clinging to her like a lifeline. Suddenly, things she had done so easily before, the reckless pleasures of disobedience, were gone. She had waited and planned for this time with Howard and yet everything now seemed wrong. All she could think of was Lim Hock An, his hatted corpse jolted away in the trishaw with the undertaker, and JJ, bound and shot beside a sea that ran red with blood. To seek life in the shadow of so much death seemed too great a decadence.

‘What do you mean, everything has changed? I didn't force you,' Howard protested, filled now with angry humiliation. Mei Lan threw him a look of such distress that he fell silent and watched sullenly as she pulled her shirt into place.

‘I should not have brought you here,' he admitted, feeling guilt as much as anger.

What she said was true: what had happened in the past between them was different from what happened now. She was changed by the trauma of the last weeks, and the world they had once entered so easily was gone. She paused, as if to say something then shook her head and was gone, the warped door creaking behind her. From the window he watched her making her way along the beach so that
it would seem to old Ah Siew that she was returning alone from a walk.

He was surprised the next day when she came as usual to the breakwater, the old nursemaid behind her. Howard knew this was how it would be from now on; she would stay safely in Ah Siew's view, giving the old woman no anxiety. This new obedience, he instinctively understood, was her way of acknowledging the weight the dead had placed upon her. To ease the tension, he suggested they go to the Joo Chiat Hospital to see Cynthia. The hospital was only a short walk from Lionel's home, and Howard went there often to visit his sister. The quickest route was along the beach and they walked silently, barefooted, carrying their shoes. Ah Siew, trailing behind them, kept to the dry sand in her worn canvas slippers. At the end of the beach they wiped their feet with Howard's handkerchief before putting on their shoes and then climbing up the slope to the road and the hospital beyond.

‘It's more like a prison than a hospital,' Mei Lan decided when they reached the small, drab building hemmed in by walls scarred by shrapnel and shells. They found Cynthia almost at once, and she greeted Mei Lan with delight.

‘Dr Wong was ordered to come here with a dozen of us nurses one morning. We were all loaded on to a truck and driven here to start work the same day,' Cynthia told her. ‘It's a small hospital but on the road to Changi. POWs and the sick from the internment camps are sent here if medical treatment is needed.' Cynthia spoke in a level voice, but the mention of the word Changi summoned up the lost Wilfred to them all as they stood in the Emergency Room. Cynthia fell silent, unable to suppress the wave of emotion that passed over her face. Then, finding her balance again she turned briskly to Mei Lan, forcing brightness into her voice.

‘You're a trained medical auxiliary after all that time at the General Hospital. We could do with extra help here; you can't waste that training,' she argued. ‘I'm now in charge of the nursing staff as all the British matrons have been interned; it's taken a war to put a local person in charge.'

‘When do I start?' Mei Lan asked, overcome with relief at the thought of a structured life, and a valid reason to absent herself from the East Coast Road house.

Although POWs and internees were brought in regularly to the hospital from Changi, and although she prayed day and night for a miracle, Cynthia had not expected to see Wilfred. The shock was so great when he appeared that she could barely manage to give directions to the Japanese guard who accompanied him. Wilfred was brought in on a stretcher, moaning and groaning and holding his stomach and making as much noise as possible. For a moment Cynthia thought the pain was real. She placed a hand on his shoulder and Wilfred gripped it. Relief and emotion made her weak, and she gritted her teeth, determined not to cry or give in to the impulse to bend and put her arms about him.

‘We have to X-ray him. It may be an appendix,' Dr Wong told the guard sternly as he hurried to stand beside Cynthia. It was the usual procedure, to insist on X-raying the POWs. They would only get to the hospital in the first place if they were in severe pain. Although there was a steady flow of real patients from Changi, there were also many who reached the hospital on false pretences. Dr Wong had set up a lifeline for prisoners and internees at great risk to himself. Each time a Changi POW or camp internee like Wilfred was brought to Joo Chiat for medical attention Dr Wong went through the same procedure. First, the excuse of an X-ray behind closed doors and then, as soon as the door was shut, money and medicines were concealed inside his shorts in special pouches sewn in for this purpose. Dr Wong kept a stock of medicines for them and also radio parts; there was a constant demand for radio parts. Messages were smuggled in and out of the internment camps and Changi Prison in this way as well. Wilfred had managed to send Cynthia the occasional note by this route, and she was able to reply.

Two orderlies carried Wilfred into the X-ray room and departed. The guard waited as he was told to, outside the door. Japanese guards could not speak or read English, and so were slow to pick up on what was happening.

‘You have only a few minutes with him,' Dr Wong told Cynthia as the door to the X-ray room shut behind them. He turned away, busying himself before the shelves of medicines, giving them what privacy he could.

‘Don't cry,' Wilfred whispered. ‘The guard will suspect something if he sees you've been crying.' She nodded against his shoulder as he
rocked her in his arms. ‘I had to come. They're sending me away,' Wilfred whispered into her ear. Cynthia drew back in alarm to look into his face.

‘Some of us civilian internees have given them trouble in the camp. As punishment for insubordination, we've been sent out to work with the POWs from Changi Prison. Now it's rumoured we're all being sent as a labour force to Burma, to build a railway there.' As he spoke the guard knocked on the door impatiently with the butt of his rifle.

‘You'll have to go. Keep groaning, I'll say I've given you an injection to calm you down.' Dr Wong began putting the usual money and medicines into Wilfred's pockets.

‘They're building a radio in the camp; we're sending in parts bit by bit. These are today's batch,' Dr Wong told him. Wilfred nodded, pushing wires and screws into a secret double waistband in his shorts, before buckling up his belt again.

‘He has to go or they'll suspect something,' Dr Wong repeated, taking Cynthia's arm and drawing her away from her husband. When Wilfred returned to his stretcher, the guards and orderlies were called in again to transport him back to the waiting truck for the return to Changi.

Cynthia stood at the hospital entrance, watching Wilfred being loaded on to a Japanese military vehicle. As the engine started she bit her lip and could not control the panic flooding through her. It was all she could do not to run after the lorry, screaming for it to stop. The truck slid out of the gate and vanished. She remained at the door until the sound of the engine was lost to her.

On those nights when Lionel's band had no engagements Howard went to the hospital to see Mei Lan, who now worked in the Emergency Clinic with Cynthia. The hospital was short staffed and since through his Air Raid Precaution duties Howard knew enough first aid to be of help, Cynthia insisted he too should do what he could. He accepted the chance to work with Mei Lan with alacrity. Often, in the late evenings, when the normal queue of patients with cuts and broken bones and fevers diminished, Howard noticed that a queue of people with entirely different ailments always formed. It was invariably made up of young men of sallow complexion with pus-filled sores on their limbs. Without exception, these patients also required treatment for
malaria. Howard was expert now in mixing up a solution of quinine powder and distilled water for Cynthia to inject during the late evening influx.

After he had been working some weeks in the dispensary with Cynthia and Mei Lan, Howard was shocked one night to see Wee Jack walk in and join the late night queue. It took him a few moments to be certain he was not mistaken as he stared across the room in disbelief. Wee Jack had left the Harbour Board soon after trying to recruit Howard to his communist cell, and no more had been heard from him. Now, here he was. Always cadaverous, he had lost more weight and was of skeletal appearance, his cheeks sunken, his jaw ridged sharply above his thin neck. Wee Jack turned his head and met Howard's eyes, giving a surly nod of recognition. Eventually, once Cynthia had seen him and dressed a septic wound on his leg, he walked over to collect his medicine from Howard, who was in charge of dispensing.

As he came closer Howard was shocked again at the unhealthy jaundiced tone of his skin. One arm of Wee Jack's spectacles was held together by sticking plaster; the sparse beard he had grown on the end of his chin gave him a goatish appearance.

‘I'm here with my friends,' Wee Jack said, nodding in the direction of the young men Cynthia and Mei Lan were attending to.

‘Why are so many of your friends ill?' Howard frowned as he observed the ragged group across the room.

‘Conditions are bad in the jungle. We've walked all day to see your sister.' Jack laughed, raising his eyebrows at Howard's uncomprehending expression.

‘Don't you see, we've just exchanged one colonial master for another. The fight to be rid of imperialists continues. The jungle protects us; the Japanese cannot find us there.' Wee Jack lowered his voice, observing Howard over his lopsided spectacles.

‘You're holding out in the jungle?' Howard had heard it rumoured that there were groups of communist guerrillas living in the jungle. Wee Jack nodded, amused at Howard's incredulity.

‘No doctors there. We have a stock of quinine and medical supplies, but it is never enough. Your sister helps us.' He looked over at Cynthia, who was administering swabs and injections to the last of his comrades.

‘
She
helps us as well,' Wee Jack whispered, gesturing to Mei Lan,
having already noticed how Howard's eyes rested upon her. Howard drew back in shock.

‘They're risking their lives for you,' he protested, cold at the thought of the dangers that helping Wee Jack must involve.

‘We're all risking our lives.' Wee Jack gave a derisive snort of laugher.

Later, when the clinic emptied and Wee Jack and his men had disappeared into the night, Howard strode angrily across to Cynthia, who was clearing up used syringes for Mei Lan to sterilise.

‘Do you know those men are communists? They're dangerous. Don't let them in here. What do you think you're doing?' Howard demanded. Cynthia turned upon him equally angry, the used syringes clattering into a metal dish.

‘I just have to think of Wilfred in that camp and it's all I need to join the resistance against the Japanese. Now he's been sent to Burma. I don't know if I'll see him again.' Her face twisted with emotion as she spoke.