‘These rooms only get used in high season,’ he explained, slightly apologetic.
Then he threw open a set of double doors at the end of the corridor and took her into a vast empty room, with a double height ceiling and dusty chandeliers hanging from the rafters.
On the walls were dozens of framed photographs of groups of people in evening wear, holding up glasses, or in fancy dress, standing under the chandeliers. There was something eerie about all these faces frozen in time, people who had once lived here and danced in this empty room and filled it with laughter and life.
‘Take your time. I know there are lots of them.’
The guests were not named, but the year in which they were taken was printed beneath each photograph.
She came to a photograph dated 1938 and stopped. She looked closely, and her heart missed a beat. There he was in the back row, standing between a stout lady with a pince-nez and a burly man with a jocular smile. He was smiling and holding up his glass, looking handsome in a bow tie and starched white shirt, his dark hair swept back from his face.
She turned to her host. She pointed to the photograph with tears in her eyes.
‘This is him,’ she smiled. ‘This is my father!’
26
Tom stood at the rail as the ship sailed up the straits between the mainland and Penang and into Georgetown harbour. The smell of frangipani and lotus blossom drifted on the air, and he felt a tingle of anticipation as the vessel eased into the dock on the Georgetown wharf.
It amazed him that he was finally returning to the place he had longed for throughout his captivity. He thought about how many times he had been close to death, had been convinced he would never make it back here.
When he had been washed up on that beach and surrounded by all those men with guns, he thought he had only a few seconds to live. To his astonishment the men had put down their guns and helped him up out of the sea, had virtually carried him to their camp deep within the jungle. He was greeted by six other exhausted and emaciated prisoners in the camp, who, like him, had managed to make it to shore from the shipwreck. They told him that this was the Philippines, the island of Luzon, and that the men helping them were Filipino guerrillas, who were fighting to drive the Japanese from their islands.
Tom and the others had stayed there for weeks, being fed and cared for by the guerrillas. Some of the men were very ill and spent the time recovering from malaria and other fevers. Tom, who had broken his leg escaping the sinking ship, simply lay in his tent the first few days, unable to move. When the pain in his leg subsided, he began to walk around camp, hobbling about with a stick made of thick bamboo, talking to his fellow soldiers and attempting to hold conversations with the guerrillas with simple words and hand gestures. When his wounds began to heal, he was able to help them prepare meals and maintain and clean the camp. Gradually all of them began to grow healthier, to put on a little weight. News of the progress of the war was brought to the camp regularly by the locals who brought them food and supplies.
Tom’s heart had filled with hope when he observed that the tide of the war was beginning to turn, and that it might all be over very soon. One day the whole camp had erupted in jubilation with the news that the US Army had landed on the island and that the Philippines had been liberated.
Soon after, a US Army truck had arrived at camp. It was to take Tom and the other prisoners to Manila. From there they were assigned to ships to take them home. Tom and the other soldiers had wept with joy and relief. They were finally free.
The journey from the Philippines to Penang had taken eight days. The transport officer at US Command in Manila had wanted to send him home on one of the troop ships bound for the United Kingdom, but Tom had insisted that he needed to report to his regiment in Malaya. So they had paid for his passage, issued him with some civilian clothes, and sent him on his way with twenty US dollars.
He could still feel it there now in his jacket pocket as the ship drew closer to the shore. It was an odd sensation to know that he was now a free man, that he could go into a shop and spend his money as he liked. As they tied up at the dock he was shocked to see the destruction on the waterfront, the bombed out go-downs and warehouses, and behind them the burned out shells of Chinese shop-houses flattened by the air raids. Where once had been bustle and commerce, there was now an air of hopeless devastation.
Tom didn’t have enough money to check into the Eastern and Oriental, so he found a small Chinese guesthouse a few blocks back from the waterfront, where rooms were cheap and clean. When he’d washed and changed his clothes, he went out onto the street and hailed a rickshaw. It carried him slowly through the backstreets of the town and up towards the Eurasian quarter. He stared about him, shocked at how many buildings had been bombed or burnt to the ground. Yet there was now an air of industry in this part of town, he noticed. Everywhere there was the sound of hammers and drills at work. Buildings
