Enduring Passions (24 page)

As soon as Tom heard of the fall of Singapore he was inconsolable. Worried by his mental state, the group captain got the doctor to suspend him from flying duties.

‘It’s his wife – she’s in Singapore. He’s no good to me at the moment – positively bloody dangerous. Anyway he needs some leave.’

Tom was being eaten away by fear, unable to sleep, a pain in his guts like somebody twisting a knife in him.

He rang Codrington Hall. Whoever it was, it wasn’t Wilson’s voice that answered. He asked for Lord or Lady Rossiter.

The voice said, ‘Sorry, can’t help you I’m afraid, old boy, this is the Headquarters mess of the Fifth Division.’

‘But they must be somewhere?’

‘You’ll have to ask the War Department Requisition Unit.’

No, he didn’t know the number.

Tom was going mad. If anything had happened….

If she was alive – he snapped out loud at himself. ‘Of course she’s bloody alive’ – as a civilian she’d have been interned by the Japanese. It didn’t bear thinking about. The newspaper headlines were painful reminders of the disaster that had befallen them all. He had to avert his eyes at the frightening pictures of the burning city.

He took a train to London and thence by Tube to Paddington. The Great Western terminus had already changed – for the worse. Most passengers seemed to be in uniform – from all over the world. The
platforms
were dirty, the posters exhorting people to ‘Dig for Victory’ and ‘Keep Mum, She’s Not So Dumb’, already torn and defaced.

The journey was long and slow, with many stops, due apparently, to poor coal. The carriages were filthy, choking with cigarette smoke and troops with kit bags, boots scuffing the floor, jamming the corridors as he
stood all the way by a toilet, with continually heaving and squeezing bodies always going in and out. He added to the smoke himself by
lighting
one cigarette after the other.

When he eventually got to Cirencester he managed to get a room at the Fleece Hotel. Next day he went to the municipal offices. They referred him to the post office.

There, it was only due to his rank and the fact that he was looking for Lord and Lady Rossiter to ask them about his wife – their daughter, that they relented and gave him their address. They’d moved into town – a large house near the Bathhurst Estate.

He went straight around, stopping to look up at the handsome stone façade with its tall Regency windows, criss-crossed now with anti-blast strips of brown paper.

He knocked on the door. Slow footsteps sounded on the other side. When it eventually opened he didn’t recognize the thick-set lady in a dutch apron.

‘Yes?’

‘I’m looking for Lord or Lady Rossiter.’

‘If it’s about them ARP wardens….’

He cut her off. ‘No – it’s personal. Are they in?’

She gave him a hard look, and a begrudging, ‘Wait here.’

He heard some muffled talking, then Fay’s father appeared, in his First World War uniform.

The two men stood eyeing each other, one immaculate in khaki with riding breeches and a Sam Brown, the other in a crumpled sky-blue uniform with the top button undone.

But Lord Rossiter’s eyes noticed the rank and the DFC – and the new DSO for inspired leadership.

Tom spoke first. ‘Have you any news of Fay?’

‘You’d better come in.’

Tom closed the door behind him and followed her father down the corridor and into the sitting-room.

Lady Rossiter was sitting on a sofa with her back to them.

‘Is it to do with your Home Guard review?’

‘No, my dear, it’s Tom.’

He noticed the use of his Christian name as did his wife who whirled around.

She stood slowly, using a silver-topped cane, face anxious. He was struck by how much older they both looked.

‘Do you know something about Fay?’

He glanced away from her, unable to bear the sight of the pleading and worry in her eyes.

‘No – I’d hoped you had some idea. Did she get out?’

Miserably, her father shook his head. ‘Her Aunt Blanche was very ill. I gather she wouldn’t leave her.’

They looked helplessly at each other. For the first time he felt sorry for them, their arrogant bearing of old now gone. They were just suffering parents – like thousands of others in this awful mess.

But they were
her
mum and dad.

Gently he asked, ‘When did you last hear anything?’

As Lady Rossiter lowered herself painfully back on to the sofa, her father motioned for him to sit down.

‘Nothing directly – I promise you. We’ve not held back any letters or anything. I know from the last war how word from family was good for the men.’

Tom bit back any retort about being seen as just one of the men. Her father had acknowledged that Fay was, for him, beloved. He realized that Lord Rossiter had probably been reading the
London Gazette
since the war had started, and must have seen his awards and promotions. He hadn’t had any communication from them – perhaps that was asking too much.

Her father continued: ‘No we haven’t heard from Fay for a long time, but for a while I was able to get information through various channels.’ He sniffed. ‘They’ve gone now, of course.’

Guiltily he looked down at the floor. ‘We heard she was in touch with you awhile back. I’m sorry we didn’t keep in contact.’

There was a pause before Tom roused himself. ‘Well, there are a good many things all of us should, or should not have done. Let’s just forget all that’s gone before. Getting Fay back is all that matters – to all of us.’

He told them that, although he had been sad – agonizingly so – at not hearing from her day on day, he hadn’t been worried. In fact, since the war proper had started, just the opposite. He was glad that she was
somewhere
safe
: that was until the catastrophe and sudden surrender.

He tried to cheer them up, and by so doing, convince himself that all was well. ‘She’s a civilian; she’ll be all right.’

They looked at him pleadingly. They so wanted him to be right. This old couple still dressed immaculately from an age that had already gone –
utterly
. Tom was aware of his rather crumpled uniform with the top
button – defiantly undone, and Lord Rossiter in his beautifully turned out kit. In their uniforms, was reflected everything that had happened in the last several years; from a once great nation, the hub of an Empire on which the sun never set, to an island race fighting for its survival.

But all of them were sick with worry.

And one unspoken question hung over everything.

Was she even
alive
?

The last days had been horrendous, but now, with the short tough soldiers of the victorious Japanese army guarding bridges, with rifles and bayonets bigger than they were, and British soldiers patrolling the city centres armed with pick-axe handles to keep order, life was calmer after the hell that had gone before.

Fay had been out, trying to get some food – their houseboy had
disappeared
– and she had been amazed by the normality. Admittedly it wasn’t like the Singapore of a week ago – that had died – but it was all strangely different from what she had been expecting.

And then the orders came through. Internment camps had been prepared. The district where they lived was to be cleared.

Now, on a Tuesday morning, at ten o’clock, she was with her aunt and several hundred women and children, standing in the blazing sun on the cricket club padang. Two thousand men were also lined up. There was no breeze, the sea which was so near, shimmered waveless like a mirror in the heat.

Fay’s dress hung limp with wetness. The black patches of sweat extended from her armpits down her front and back. But her worry was for her frail aunt. Fay held a parasol over her. Once she’d slid to the ground, but a bellowing Japanese soldier had stormed over to them and made jabbing motions with his bayonet.

After two hours an officer climbed on to a wooden crate and addressed them. Women and children would get transport – the men would have to walk. Houses had been prepared as a temporary camp, but they would all go on to Changi jail after a few days.

When they got there, the women found the houses stripped of all furniture and mosquitoes swarmed like a living cloud everywhere. They lay down on the bare floor, Fay doing her best to make her aunt
comfortable
, wrapping her in a sheet to stop the mosquito bites, with a veil made from a piece of torn petticoat. The guards were sometimes helpful,
sometimes
indifferent, but water was provided and some food for the children.

They remained there in filth and squalor until, in early March, they were ordered to march the seven miles to Changi. To Fay’s immense relief the infirm and very old, along with some pregnant women were given transport. The rest of them walked, in a column that stretched for over a mile, complete with prams, old rickshaws and trolleys piled with pots and pans. It took all day, and by the time they approached the walls of the jail, they were exhausted, bedraggled, trudging on blistered feet, shoulders drooped, dresses dirty and wringing wet with sweat.

Suddenly, a tiny woman at the head of the column began to sing and the song was taken up by others. Fay joined in, and soon over a hundred voices, hoarse and tired, were singing with a passion that lifted spirits and straightened backs. With the little woman leading the way, they marched through the gates, singing so loudly, that the men in their section, behind the high wall that divided the prison, heard them and joined in.

Fay sang away at the top of her voice, chin up as she passed the sullen looking guards.

With no news, Tom went to see the group captain and asked for a
transfer
to the Far East Air Force. His reason was blunt. The war there was his war. It had just become very personal.

George Hawksley also wanted to transfer, because as he said, it was nearer to his home. Their applications for transfer went off together. They then retired to the mess.

Over a couple of pints they talked about the way things were.

George played with his drink. ‘I tell you Tom, I don’t think I’m going to make it through to the end.’

Surprised, Tom looked at him. ‘What’s got into you?’

The Australian gave a wry smile. ‘Just being rational. How many blokes have we seen off since the start of all this?’

‘Oh come on, George, this isn’t like you.’

George Hawksley took a good swig of his beer and licked his lips. ‘Did I ever tell you I’m an only child?’

Bewildered, Tom shook his head. ‘Nope. So what? I am too.’

‘Maybe that’s why we get on.’ The Australian grinned. ‘You’re the brother I never had.’

Embarrassed George finished his beer and stood up. ‘Another one?’

Tom drained his glass and pushed it across. ‘Too right if you’re signing –
Brother
.’

A week later Tom’s father was dead, his mother complaining that the fire watching on damp winter nights had done it. He attended in uniform, with a black band around his arm, and let his mother proudly show him off to help her through the day. He could see the look in Mrs Bars’s eyes, the next-door neighbour. She had lost Jimmy on the
Hood
when she had been sunk by the
Bismark
. As the vicar went through the service, and he held his mother at the graveside, he wondered if George’s
sudden revelation wasn’t a sign of the times. Perhaps the euphoria at the idea of the nation surviving alone had finally drained away from the country, perhaps they were all getting war weary.

But he wasn’t. All he wanted to do was be nearer to Fay, to do
everything
in his power to get her out, back where she belonged, and as soon as possible.

And if anything unthinkable had happened to her … he would kill as many Japs as he could – until they got him.

His transfer was approved, as was George’s. ‘They must be desperate out there’ was the laconic remark from the latter.

They were taken off flying duties, given a whole series of jabs at the station sick quarters which left him feeling really rough for forty-eight hours and then given embarkation leave. George came with him back to Cheltenham. For nearly a week they walked the hills in the daytime, saw a couple of films, talked most nights over a few pints in the Norwood Arms.

On their first day they went to Cirencester on the train. As they walked up the high street, Tom said, ‘We’re going to meet the in-laws. I want to see if they have any more news of Fay.’

George said, ‘You mean their Lordships?’

Tom nodded.

The Australian grinned.

‘Maybe they’re descendants of the ones who sent my great-
grandfather
to the colonies for poaching.’

This time Lord Rossiter was in a dark grey, double breasted suit, his wife out, with the WVS. The old man’s face lit up when he saw him.

‘Come in, come in. Just had a phone call from an old school chum in the office. I’m led to believe all the civilian women are in Changi Jail, that’s on the island about fifteen miles from the city – but no names yet. The Red Cross are looking into it. The Japanese have a Red Cross, did you know that?’

Tom shook his head, digesting the news. Changi Jail – he’d never heard of it.

They had tea made by the formidable, stocky woman whom Tom had encountered on his previous visit, and were taking their leave, when Lord Rossiter suddenly offered his hand.

‘Take care now, Tom, when this is all over we don’t want Fay to be a widow.’

He took it, and they shook – just the once.

Lord Rossiter grimaced. ‘She would have been if she’d married Jeremy.’

Tom looked at him, frowning as he the took in the meaning.

Her father nodded and went on, ‘Killed at Tobruk. Got an MC. We’re going round to see his wife tomorrow. She’s got a little boy.’

Tom shook his head. ‘I’m sorry.’

Ten days later they left Southampton on a troopship bound for India. It was almost the same jetty from which he’d seen off Fay – that seemed like a lifetime ago. In the gloom at the end of the day, as they passed The Needles, he wondered if he’d ever see Old England again.

For the first few months in Singapore, they managed, but life was wretched, with not enough food. But slowly the Japanese indifference to them and to illness, began to take its toll, especially with the very young and the very old.

Denied medicines that people knew existed in the city, some quietly faded away. Others died in an agony of sweat and in their own filth from dysentery.

Aunt Blanche grew very weak, seemed to become just bones, her skin like yellow parchment on a frame.

Fay managed to scrounge a little bit of extra, watery fish soup which she spoon fed her. It was the last thing she did for her aunt who, without fuss, quietly went that night.

Fay watched as a couple of helpers wrapped her in a winding sheet and placed her on to a cart.

There were no tears – she didn’t have any spare fluid – her eyes just burnt.

But against the awful hardships, a school was started for the children, and plays and concerts were produced. News came from some prisoners who were let out to go into the city to do vital work on the
infrastructure
. Some of them managed to deceive and, in some cases, bribe, their guards to turn a blind eye while they talked to ‘friends’ – who, in reality, were go-betweens, disseminators of information.

Short-wave radios concealed in the city received news broadcast from the British in India with morale boosting personal items from the wives and husbands of those inside the walls.

Fay waited in vain for any message for herself.

Tom and George found India a mixture of squalor and richness,
excitement 
and depressing boredom. In the transit mess they drank far too much, and joined in with others in the game of sitting around, emptying their beer bottles then throwing them up into the ceiling. You were supposed to sit absolutely still, no flinching was allowed as the big fan batted them down again; there were a few injuries.

They’d been there for a month, when they were posted to a training squadron, learning the techniques of low-level jungle dogfights, and the use of air-to-ground rocket projectiles against tanks, strong points, convoys and road and rail bridges.

At last, they were addressed by the CO.

‘You are going to fight a tough, courageous but fanatical enemy, who will never give up. He is also ruthless, savage and barbaric. The Japanese Army in Burma just doesn’t have to be defeated – it has to be
destroyed.

‘Our troops facing him in the 14th Army deserve all the support you can give them. They are fighting under the most difficult circumstances you can imagine, across steaming dense jungles, mountains, wide rivers and swamps.

‘And when they meet the enemy they always engage at close quarters. It’s virtually hand-to-hand stuff all the time.

‘If that wasn’t enough, they also have to contend with the killer diseases of malaria, dysentery and scrub typhus.

‘Our transport boys are doing a wonderful job servicing long, tenuous supply lines. Your job will be to gain air superiority, and give close support to the men on the ground.’

He paused, then the CO tapped his shaven head which had taken them all by surprise when they had first met him.

‘I know some of you have wondered about this, and think it’s just to keep cool. Let me tell you something: the 14th is made up of many races – Britons, Indians, Africans, Burmese – and of course, the Gurkhas. I doubt if the like of it will ever be seen again: shave your heads,
gentlemen
, in honour of the tough riflemen who are doing the dirty work. Now, the drinks in the mess tonight are on me.’

They arrived at their operational airfield as the monsoon broke, to find they were living in Bashas made of bamboo with overhanging eaves, tucked into the jungle alongside the strip.

They watched as a grey-blue horizon above the green jungle moved towards them, growing darker all the time, until they stood under a black sky. As new boys they were bewildered as everybody seemed to be running for shelter and laughing at them. When it came, they were
completely taken by surprise. Suddenly, almost instantly they were in a gale, followed in seconds by rain heavier than anything they had ever seen in their lives.

But with it came no respite from the heat and the swarming flies that took shelter with them. Moisture was everywhere, camp beds and sheets were as wet as the air they breathed. Outside the flimsy huts, a blustery wind and sudden stinging downpours continued. Mildew was
everywhere
, even cigarettes were musty and covered in mould when they opened fresh packets. Nights were spent lying in pools of their own sweat under mosquito nets, playing cards and writing home.

Monsoon or not, the war went on. To begin with they just carried out defensive patrols, the Japanese hitting back with bombers and fighters, making sudden attacks against Allied airfields.

Despite the heat, they wore their Beadon flying suits at dispersal, complete with long trousers to protect against fire and the jungle leeches if they were shot down and lived. All pilots carried a survival kit of knives and screwdrivers strapped to their legs, plus a Mae West. They sweated like pigs until there was a scramble and then they got to the colder air at altitude, and shivered.

Tom got his first Zero and George got two bombers in these
skirmishes
.

After three months, they began to take part in fighter sweeps over Burma, the ‘rhubarbs’ they’d been used to over the Pas de Calais, flying east over the Arakan Yomas peaks, dropping down to tree level over the rolling green sea of jungle to Shebo. Here, enemy supply convoys were concentrated.

Diving down he watched his rockets blowing supply trucks to smithereens, great columns of black smoke marking their success when an ammunition lorry erupted in flame and pyrotechnics. Afterwards they sprayed the roadside bushes where the drivers had flung themselves for cover – just to be thorough.

Once they’d climbed, at tree-top level, over a high ridge and on
dropping
down on the other side, they came across a whole regiment. They were lined up complete with reviewing officers and large flags of the Rising Sun carried over shoulders.

With his first cannon burst Tom took out the reviewing party, their flags rolling in the dust. As the troops ran for cover, the rest of the squadron followed in wreaking carnage. In less than thirty seconds nearly a hundred soldiers lay dead or injured on the ground. The Japanese
reinforcements
had only just reached the front.

It was one of the better days, and worth all the flies, the diet of bully beef and sausages made of soya beans. It justified kite hawks with their vicious razor-sharp claws that swooped down on anything neglected for a moment, and the prickly heat that went into red weals from the
continuous
sweat that poured from their ever thinner bodies.

It made it seem possible that in the seemingly endless days, months and finally years, that the war might one day be won, and they could all go home and leave this beautiful but impossibly hostile land forever.

And through it all, Tom, as he wrote home, and now to his in-laws as well, could only think of Fay, and what she might be going through. Never religious in his life, he prayed nevertheless to an unknown, unseen God that she was alive, and well.

Late in the autumn of 1943 he received a letter, in signal form, from the Air Ministry. It was one of many seen every day by the squadron. He tore it open, still talking to George as they walked out to their Hurricanes, freshly fuelled and armed with rockets and 500lb bombs for the latest rhubarb in support of the increasingly victorious Forgotten Army. He took it to be some annoying directive or censure from head office, so it took some time before his brain caught up with his eyesight.

The strength went out of his body. Tom sank to his knees, as George carried on his way, before he realized what had happened. He rushed back, crouched down by his friend.

‘Tom, what the hell is it? Are you OK?’

Then he noticed the tears streaming down his face. ‘Are you in pain?’

Tom shook his head, wordlessly, holding up the letter.

George took it, expecting it to be a death telegram – the bloody orderly officer should have delivered it personally. Then, as he read it, he realized that his chum was overcome with relief and joy.

A turbaned mess steward ran up to him.

‘Help me get him on to a charpoy.’

Inside the mess tent, they lowered him on to a coco-fibre couch.

Tom looked up at him, wiping a hand across his wet face. ‘George, I’m sorry for behaving like an idiot. I just seemed to buckle at the knees.’

George beckoned to the mess steward. ‘Get a brandy.’

He turned back to Tom. ‘You stay here, you’re not fit to fly today. Take the day off, Tom.’

When he started to protest, George shoved him back down into the chair,

‘Don’t be a bloody fool – there will be plenty of war to go around tomorrow, and the next day, and besides, your mind won’t be on the job – and you know how dangerous that can be.’

Tom opened his mouth to say something but George was already on his way. Ducking, he paused in the entrance, ‘And Tom,’ he winked, ‘good on you mate – you never lost faith.’