Extract from the journal of Grace Elizabeth Fox (ed. Louise King), October, 1945. Indian Ocean
Wednesday, 10th October, 1945 The dolphins play alongside us nearly every day now. We are in that still, hot, humid world where the ocean is a blue mirror and everything seems to move slowly, as if through thickened air. I am going home again. I am still not clear why I volunteered to travel out to Singapore again, except perhaps that I needed some sense of coming full circle, of finding some sort of peace with myself. And for all these years, no matter what, I have never been able to get rid of the feeling that it should have been me who died out on that raft, not Brenda. I have carried the guilt of survival around with me through France and Belgium, through a defeated Germany, among the mass graves, the unbearable stench of the huts, and the walking shadows of Belsen, a ruined Berlin full of liberating Russians. Hell on earth. I still have my guilt, and I have not yet found peace. Now I sit on deck after midnight, smoking, and strands of my hair stick to the sweat on my brow and cheeks and neck. Was it a mistake to come back here on the hospital ship after we had won the war in Europe? I don’t think so. Deep inside, I knew it was always Singapore where I really came of age, where I lost what innocence I had. Not to men. I do not mean that kind of innocence. Despite Stephen’s kiss, it was remarkably easy to remain the faithful, responsible married woman while all around me lost their hearts for a night, or a week. I would be lying if I did not admit there were times when I would have liked to shed my inhibitions and everything else and join in, and I came close to that with Stephen. The innocence I lost was of a different sort. Everyone on this hospital ship is from the ‘liberated’ Japanese prison camps on Sumatra, or from Changi, in Singapore, or Stanley, in Hong Kong. Some were among the hordes who arrived after us at Padang, when there were no more ships. They could do nothing but wait there until the Japanese came and took them prisoner. Others had simply been found wandering in the jungle, abandoned by their defeated guards after the bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki and Japan surrendered. Nobody knew what camps they were from. They have all been nursed and given nutrition in local hospitals and are now on their way home. There are no battlefield wounds, no missing limbs, but there are infections. Luckily, we have penicillin. Most are men, but there are also many civilian women and children, and sisters. Most evenings I spend with Kathleen. She never smiles now and does not speak – I suspect as much as anything else that she must be embarrassed by the change in her voice the missing teeth have caused. I should also imagine that her surprising laugh is all but gone now. Our former statuesque beauty is a string bean, weighing only six stone, legs like matchsticks, knees like cricket balls. Her beautiful blonde hair is stringy and lustreless, torn away in patches, her scalp raw. At first, I did not recognise her, nor she me. It took one of the other sisters who had seen how inseparable we were on our first journey all those years ago to reintroduce us. It is hard. Kathleen does not remember very much. She has no passion for life. At night she has frightening dreams – they all do – and she cries out a lot. In the daytime heat she is listless and inert. She has no interest in anything. I try to talk to her about ordinary daily matters, the routine, who is causing trouble, where we are, the dolphins, but it means nothing to her. Kathleen is broken. She hums rambling melodies to herself a lot. I managed to learn from the other sister, whose name is Mary, that Doris died of dysentery in the Stanley camp. She need not have died, but the Japanese withheld all medicines the Red Cross sent, so she could not be treated. Kathleen nursed her until the end. Mary also told me what happened at the hospital in Hong Kong on Christmas Day, 1941. We had heard rumours before, back in Singapore, but the reality was even worse, the sisters subjected to the most vile degradations, then killed, and the men, doctors and patients alike, bayoneted. Stories had also started making the rounds about the Banka Island massacre. Some Australian nurses I had known and watched sail out of Singapore just before us on the Vyner Brooke were bombed and shipwrecked, as we were, but managed to get to Banka Island, where they tried to surrender to the Japanese. When the Japanese patrol came to the beach, they first took all the men around the headland and shot them, then they forced the women to walk out into the sea and machine-gunned them all. One Australian nurse survived – the bullet went straight through her leg without causing any major damage – played dead, and eventually went on to survive a prison camp and tell her story. I asked a number of the officers about Stephen Fawley, but they knew nothing. One thought he had probably been killed in the fighting. Either way, nobody had seen him later, in the camps. But for the few patients who can, and do, talk, the rest are like Kathleen. They have lost their will to live. They are frightened of their own shadows, frightened of what is to come; they live in a perpetual state of fear. Though they have been half starved, they can hardly eat, as their digestive systems have weakened and suffered permanent damage from starvation at the hands of their captors. We feed them as best we can, but for the nightmares we can do nothing at all. Even as I sit here now, in the sultry beauty of the tropical night, feeling the peaceful motion of the ship, the gentle slapping of water against the sides, I cannot fail to be aware of the sound rising up from the depths of the ship’s wards. It is a sound like no other I have ever heard on earth, made up of a thousand nightmares, the dying boys calling for their mothers, the endless wailing from the completely unhinged, and hovering around it all, the terrible silence of those who have lost everything – their voices, even themselves.
February 2011
Kilnsgate House was waiting for me like an old friend when I got out of the taxi I’d taken from Darlington railway station. A pile of mail awaited me inside, scattered over the floor below the letterbox. It was mostly bills and junk. Nobody writes letters any more in these days of emails and texts. I wondered whether the collected emails of John Keats would have been half as interesting as his letters. I doubted it. The medium does make a difference.
I dumped my bag in the hall, turned up the central heating and went into the kitchen to make a cup of tea. It was late afternoon, and I had been awake all night on the plane from Cape Town and spent most of the day getting home from Heathrow, my patience with the train system definitely wearing thin. There was no excuse. It hadn’t even been snowing.
I had spent my last day in Cape Town wandering the waterfront cafes and shops. I had bought a wrap- around summer dress of beautiful patterned material at the market for Heather. I didn’t know whether it was the kind of thing she would wear or not, but at least she might appreciate the design and the African colours and use it as a wall hanging. I thought she would look good in it, at any rate. I had also bought a few CDs of local musicians for myself – Judith Sephuma, Abdullah Ibrahim, Wanda Baloyi, Pops Mohamed – finding that the record shop I had discovered on my previous visit was still thriving.
When my tea was ready, I carried it through to the living-dining room and sat by the fire. I would probably light it later. It was early February, and the snow had all gone, but that all-permeating Yorkshire chill was in the air, making it seem colder, especially after the South African sun. The temperature outside was six degrees Celsius, and the sky was grey and threatening rain. The woods beyond my back garden seemed dreary and forbidding. I put some Abdullah Ibrahim jazz piano on, then settled in my comfortable armchair to sort out the post. As I had thought, it turned out to be bills and circulars. The only letter of any interest was an invitation to speak at a film festival at London’s South Bank Centre in May. I decided I would probably go. It could be fun.
Next I checked the messages on my phone. There were two sales calls – BT and double-glazing – and a welcome-home message from Heather. She said to give her a ring. I checked my watch. It was ten to four and already getting dark. I was too tired for company tonight, too tired for anything, really, except a final bit of research I needed to do online.
There was also a message from Mother, asking me in her inimitable way whether I was still alive. I immediately felt guilty. With all the excitement of finding Louise and then Billy Strang, I had forgotten about Mother. I rang back and listened to her complain about the weather for about fifteen minutes, then promised to come and visit her as soon as I could, and hung up.
Next I phoned Heather, and we agreed to meet in a couple of days, when I had caught up on my sleep. Next, I had a couple of important phone calls to make. I had had plenty of time since my afternoon with Billy Strang to think things over, and I believed that after all my floundering around in the dark I now knew the truth about what happened on that first of January 1953, here at Kilnsgate. Louise King and Samuel Porter deserved to know before anyone else, so I picked up the phone.
The following morning, still dragging my feet a little, I carried a spade up the hill to the lime kiln and surveyed the tangled mess of weeds inside. I attempted a couple of thrusts, but soon realised it was no good; I couldn’t do this by myself. I didn’t feel confident enough to call in the authorities at this stage, but there was only one way to find out whether I was right, and that was to dig.
I went back to the house and phoned Tony Brotherton. When I explained my theory, he clearly thought I was crazy, but I reminded him of his grandfather’s concerns, and in less than half an hour he arrived with Jill and two
