or the artillery fire begins, they jump out of bed and hide underneath it, or try to dig holes in the earth or hide themselves under the sheets. It is very upsetting because there is so very little you can do but try to comfort them and talk to them. Their fear is terrifying to watch. Everything seems to be happening at once, and we are still rushed off our feet, filling in the forms, giving transfusions, sending patients off to the theatres. When we get back to our quarters after a long shift, all we want to do is take our uniforms off, lie down and fall asleep in the blissfully cool blast of an electric fan. That is all there is now. Work. Sleep. Work. Sleep.
Monday, 12th January, 1942 I heard that Kuala Lumpur fell yesterday. It can only be a matter of time now. Guns facing the sea are not much use when the enemy invades by land, which everyone said could never be done. We can turn them around, of course, but everyone says they are no use in this kind of battle. We would only end up shelling ourselves. The talk among all the European women in Raffles Hotel and the Cricket Club is whether to stay or go. They are frightened, and they would like to leave Singapore before it falls into the hands of the Japanese, but they do not want to leave their husbands and be perceived as cowards or deserters. The news coming out of Hong Kong is deeply disturbing. We hear of medical staff and patients alike tortured and killed, sisters subjected to the most degrading ordeals. It seems the Japanese have no respect for the Red Cross, for medical staff, for the wounded, or for women. Major Schofield told me they did not sign the Geneva Convention, so they do not play by our rules. I worry constantly about what has become of Stephen, Kathleen and Doris, and I shudder to think what that will mean for us when the Japanese arrive here, for arrive soon they surely must.
December 2010
On the day following Louise’s visit, I got two phone calls that gladdened my heart. The first was from my daughter Jane in Baltimore. She was ringing to ask me whether she could visit me for Christmas and bring her fiance, Mohammed, with her. Fiance! It was the first I had heard of this. Of course, I told her she could.
A short while later my director and best friend Dave Packer phoned to remind me of the offer I had made last time we talked, and to ask whether he and Melissa could take me up on it and come over for Christmas. They were planning a short tour of Europe and would love to include Richmond. Melissa had a break in her filming schedule, and Dave was mulling over a few scripts for his – he hoped our – next project. Again, I said yes, delighted. Dave was Jane’s godfather, and Melissa would certainly raise a few eyebrows around Richmond, I was sure of that.
So there was going to be a Christmas, after all. Though it was only early December, I would have to get busy soon, order the turkey, get a case of decent champagne delivered. Crackers. Presents. A tree. Tinsel. Lights. Ornaments. I started making a list and was about halfway through when the phone rang again.
It was Heather. ‘Look, I’m still at the office. It’s been a really, really bad day, and I could do with a drink before I head home. Any chance of you joining me?’
Her voice took some of the wind out of my sails. She sounded sad, tired. I looked at my watch. It was seven o’clock. I had plenty I wanted to tell Heather – and I certainly owed her a lot after all she’d done to help me. The only thing that held me back from jumping at the chance was that I still fancied her, and something like this would only serve to fuel my desire. Even so, I paused for only a few seconds before answering, ‘Sure. Black Lion, half an hour?’
‘Perfect,’ she said. ‘See you there.’
The Black Lion was fairly quiet at that time on a weekday evening in December. There was no live music, no pub quiz. A few late-season tourists sat at the tables in the dining room, finishing their meals. I hadn’t eaten yet, so I thought I might order fish pie or something. The reason I had chosen this particular pub was the little snug beyond the dining room, which fortunately was empty. I bought a drink at the bar and went to sit in there and wait. Five minutes later, Heather arrived and popped her head around the door.
‘I thought you might be in here,’ she said. ‘Very cosy.’
‘If you think it’s likely to do your reputation any harm being alone with me like this, we can go back into the public bar.’
‘What, and listen to regulars talk about football and last night’s television? You must be joking. No, I’ll risk my reputation, such as it is, thank you very much.’
She asked for a vodka and tonic, and I went to get it for her, casting my eyes over the menu chalked on the blackboard.
‘Eaten?’ I asked Heather when I got back.
‘I’m not hungry.’
I ordered fish pie at the bar and went back to join Heather in the tiny wood-panelled snug. The room was so small that if two people were in there and someone checked it out, they most likely wouldn’t come in. You could hear voices from the dining room and the public bar, but you couldn’t really make out what people were saying.
Heather downed her vodka and tonic with the speed of someone determined to get drunk. She looked fraught, frazzled, and there were bags under her eyes from lack of sleep. I wondered whether it was just work, or whether there was something else. When I brought her the second vodka and tonic, still working on my first pint of Tetley’s Cask, before I could ask her what was wrong, she said, ‘You might as well know, Derek and I are separating.’
I just stared at her, speechless.
She stared back. I couldn’t read her expression. ‘Come on, Chris,’ she said. ‘Don’t act so surprised. You must have known it was on the cards?’
‘I might have had the impression that things weren’t going too well,’ I said, ‘after Bonfire Night. But… What are you going to do?’
‘One of the perks of being in the estate agent business. I’ve picked up a sublet on a nice little flat in the Convent development down on the Reeth Road. That’s why I’m so late tonight. Been wheeling and dealing. Very fitting, don’t you think? Me in a convent.’
I laughed. ‘Very.’
‘I suppose this puts an end to any interest you might have had in me?’ she said, one eyebrow raised.
‘What do you mean?’
‘Oh, don’t be so thick. It doesn’t suit you. It’s one thing flirting or having a fling with a married woman, and the way things were going, we might well have done that. But a single woman? Doesn’t that reek too much of entrapment, commitment?’
‘You’re far too cynical for one so young,’ I said.
‘I’m not that young. I’m forty-five.’
‘That still makes you fifteen years younger than me.’
‘Just think. When you were a thirty-year-old whizz-kid taking Hollywood by storm, I was a gawky fifteen- year-old schoolgirl with freckles, glasses and ginger hair madly in love with Geoff Johnson, who didn’t even notice my existence. You wouldn’t have fancied me at all then.’
I couldn’t help but laugh. ‘I should hope not. But look how far you’ve come since those days.’
She sat silently for a moment, then wiped her eyes with the backs of her hands, smearing a little mascara. She stared down at the table when the girl delivered my fish pie, then excused herself and went to the Ladies. While she was away, I thought about the implications of what she had said. She was wrong in saying that her separating from her husband would cause her to lose her appeal to me. Just the opposite, really. I had been resisting an affair, not strictly on moral grounds, but because they are, in my experience, messy, disappointing and ultimately painful to some, or all, concerned. Though I had never been unfaithful to Laura, I had had a brief fling with a married woman before we met, and it had ended badly and messily. If Heather were free, it would be another matter. But I wasn’t going to tell her that. Not before she’d made the move, at any rate, no more than I was going to offer to help her move – and it wasn’t for lack of gallantry or willingness. I didn’t want to appear to influence or encourage her in any way. Not that I had up to now, but people don’t always see things in the same light. I had learned that long before I encountered Heather, Charlotte or the Grace Fox case.
When Heather came back, she was composed. She also had another drink in her hand. ‘I hope you’re not driving,’ I said.
‘Walking up the hill.’
‘Sure you don’t want anything to eat?’
She reached for my fork and helped herself to some fish pie. ‘No,’ she said, when she’d finished it. ‘That’s enough for me.’ She pushed her drink away. ‘I don’t even want this, either, truth be told. I thought it would be a
