enough to fill the tethered rafts. When there was no room for any more, people clung on to the sides, and we drifted away into the night. I do not know what happened to the others on the ship. I can only believe that most of them are dead. Now it is just after dawn on the following day, and it feels already as if it is going to be a hot one. We have no protection from the sun. We lost two people during the night, both of whom had been clinging to the side of our raft. By morning they had simply disappeared. The children are hungry and crying already, their poor mothers trying in vain to comfort them. There is no comfort. We have no food or water. Brenda has a fever, and the wound in her side looks angry. She will need stitches and antibiotics soon, though, or infection will surely set in. When I look around, I see only the ocean, which, thank heaven, is calm today, and a few small islands dotted about. All we can do is keep trying to head west to Sumatra and hope a friendly ship rescues us before the Japanese find us.
Thursday, 19th February, 1942 Today the children all went mad.
Friday, 20th February, 1942 There was nothing to be done for the children. Heat stroke, festering wounds, starvation and dehydration took them. We lost them all, toddlers, babes in arms, all of them, and Brenda and I committed their little bodies to the sea in tears. One mother would not let go of her dead baby boy, and there was nothing we could do to make her. Later in the day, when nobody was looking, she slipped overboard with him and they both went under. By the end of the day we had lost three more civilians who had been clinging to the side. Whether they had died, weakened so much, or simply given up the ghost and let go, I do not know, but none of us left had the strength to search for them. The sun is merciless. We try to cover ourselves as best we can with what scraps of clothing we have left, but it is useless. There is no way to deflect the heat. My head aches and I feel sick most of the time. My skin is hot and dry. I am so thirsty that I think seriously about scooping up a palm full of sea water. Surely a small amount could not do any harm? The daylight also exposes us to any Japanese aircraft that might pass overhead, so we have many reasons to embrace the darkness, though it is in the dark that my fears are at their worst. We have not seen any sharks yet, but they are surely near by. They would not miss the opportunity of gorging themselves on the excess of food. I have not seen any other rafts or boats. We are alone, a painted ship upon a painted sea.
Saturday, 21st February, 1942 Brenda went over last night. She was sleeping beside me, but this morning her place was bare. She slipped beneath the waves during the night, and I did not even awaken. Maybe I rolled over and pushed her off? I feel so guilty and so responsible. I should have taken better care of her. I should have held on to her. Why Brenda? Why Brenda and not me? There are only five of us left alive now, and one of them may not survive until the end of the day. I cannot think that any of us will survive much longer. I wonder why I am still writing this, but I always find some comfort in my oilskin tied securely around my neck. I am becoming too weak to think clearly. There really is nothing more to say. We are all dying. It is simply a matter of time. Perhaps it would be best for me to follow Brenda. How easy it would be. Some moments, I even wish the Japanese aircraft would come and bomb us. Just one quick bomb would solve everything. When I close my eyes, I am in back at Kilnsgate, and there is snow all around. I am building a snowman with Billy, but all of a sudden, it starts to move and melt, and a Japanese soldier comes out of it, snarling, with his bayonet aimed at me. Sometimes I do not know which are worse, the hallucinations or the reality. Sometimes I do not know which is which.
December 2010
Just before Christmas, we got a serious dose of winter. Schools, roads and airports closed, including Heathrow, and the train services came to a standstill. At Kilnsgate, I was cut off from the outside world for a couple of days, though the telephone and Internet still worked. When the snow stopped falling, I was able to persuade a local farmer with a snowplough to come over and dig me out, for a small fortune. I was still worried that my guests wouldn’t be able to fly in, though, as Heathrow seemed quite unable to cope with the amount of snow.
The Volvo did OK. I had driven in similar conditions many times in New England, the Midwest or to Mammoth Lakes, in California, where we had our chalet for the skiing, but there I had winter tyres, and somehow things never seemed quite as bad. I was glad I’d already done my Christmas shopping and had bought pretty much everything I needed. I was a little worried about the wine order, but when I phoned to check, they assured me it would arrive within a day or two, and they proved to be right.
Christmas came and went without any sign of Heather. She had told me on the night she came for dinner before the snow that she didn’t think it was a good idea, our spending Christmas together, and that she would visit her parents this year. I suspected that her decision may have had something to do with the tree I had decorated by myself, perhaps making her feel excluded, though I soon realised that was probably fanciful on my part. It was clearly something she had thought about and decided before she came over and saw the tree, on which she complimented me.
We had a good dinner that evening before the storms came, laughed a lot, talked about Christmas memories, then made love. I told her I understood her decision to spend Christmas with her family, that she was right. It was too early in our relationship and too soon after her separation for her to be meeting my family and friends. The only regret she had, she told me with characteristic Heather directness, was that she would miss meeting the famous Melissa Wilde. I said we might be able to arrange something after Christmas, depending on everyone’s exact schedule, and we left it at that. She didn’t stay the night, claiming she wanted to get away before the snow got too deep.
Luckily, Jane and Mohammed and Dave and Melissa all managed to get in OK, though the LA flight was delayed nearly ten hours. They had a few days to relax and get over it before Christmas itself, but the weather grew even colder, and any ice that might have melted during the day froze again at night. Even the hot-water bottles didn’t help. My American guests complained constantly. Except for Mohammed. He had lived in London for a while when he was younger and had got used to the cold. I say ‘younger’, though he was only in his mid-twenties now, an intern at Johns Hopkins with, my daughter Jane assured me, ‘amazing’ prospects.
I have to confess that when I first heard Mohammed’s name, and that he was a doctor, I expected a rather earnest and disapproving young teetotaller, but he turned out to be a Goons fan with a keen, off-the-wall sense of humour, and he was not averse to the occasional glass of wine, or to celebrating Christmas with us heathens, for that matter. He was, however, still a member of the medical profession, and I always feel a bit guilty being around doctors when I’ve had a few drinks. I always imagine that they’re ticking off another year with every sip as they look at me. But Mohammed put on a silly hat and pulled crackers with the rest of us. He also ate everything I put in front of him and didn’t say no when I pulled out the single malt at the end of the meal. Jane helped me with the dinner, and I was glad of both her help and her company in the kitchen. It made me realise how much I missed her. And Laura. She had her mother’s good looks, that was for certain. Jane and Mohammed slept in the big guest bedroom, and neither mentioned anything to me about strange reflections in the mirror.
Mother rang from Graham’s on Christmas Day. She’d had a terrible journey, she said, but she was all right now, except there were too many noisy children around. I reminded her that some of them were her own great- grandchildren, but she went on to complain about not understanding the television programmes because they were all in French. I gave up on conversation then and just listened. My son Martin called later from his in-laws’ home in San Francisco and wished us all a merry Christmas, and the rest of time the phone remained silent.
We didn’t stay in the house all the time, of course. Despite the weather, my guests still insisted on seeing Yorkshire, so I took them to Hawes, Reeth, Castle Bolton and York. I also wanted to show them the Buttertubs Pass between Wensleydale and Swaledale, and drive them up to Tan Hill for a pub lunch, but that was out of the question. The road conditions were too icy and dangerous, with sheep wandering the unfenced tracks and the occasional chasm on one side or the other. The weather also ruled out the coast, but I think everyone had a good time.
Whenever we went out, say to the Shoulder of Mutton for Sunday lunch, I began to feel like an outsider in Yorkshire all over again. Apart from me, they all had American accents, even Mohammed, and I hadn’t so much noticed while I was living over there, but Americans tend to speak rather loudly in public. The whole subject of foreigners abroad is, I know, a contentious one, and in my experience there’s not much worse than the Yorkshireman abroad, where nothing is ever quite as good as it is ‘back ’ome’, except the weather, of course. Still, people would stare at us, and it was hard to ignore their occasional expressions of disapproval, such as when Dave questioned why the Brits couldn’t even deal with a simple snowstorm, as if someone in the group had told an off- colour joke or farted too loudly. I realised that they saw me as part of the offending group. Even my old acquaintances the Wellands smiled thinly and kept their distance.
Melissa certainly put an interesting spin on things, though. Plenty of people had teased Dave when he
