He held his breath as they turned the corner into Joy’s road. To his relief all the wooden houses were still standing. The scene was exactly like the one that had greeted him the first time he had driven along here. Grubby children played amongst the chickens and pigs, underneath the wooden houses.
The house came into view and the rickshaw pulled up outside. Tom stood there, staring at Joy’s home for a long time. From a distance it had looked unchanged, but now he saw that all the windows were boarded up, and the potted plants on the veranda had withered and died. He paced around the house. In the overgrown back garden were a few broken toys and an empty washing line. Over the fence he spotted an old Indian woman, watering plants.
‘Excuse me,’ he asked her in Malay. ‘Do you know what happened to the de Souza family? They used to live here.’
The woman shrugged. ‘I do not know. I am new here. No-one has ever lived there since I came.’
He returned to the street and asked some children playing in the opposite garden, but they just giggled and stared at him. He knocked on a couple of doors. None of the occupants seemed to know what had happened to the family.
One old man said, ‘One day they left. The whole family. Carrying suitcases. I do not know where they were going. It was the day of the raid.’
Tom thanked him and returned to the rickshaw. He paid off the driver and said he would walk back to the hotel. He needed some time to think.
He walked slowly back through the old quarter, barely noticing his surroundings. Why had he assumed that she would still be here? All the time he’d been a prisoner, he’d imagined that Joy might have been to Singapore for a short while but would have returned to Penang. He’d thought that her life would have gone on as before, that she’d be waiting for him on the porch wearing a simple white dress just like in the old days. How deluded he’d been. How naïve. He wandered on and eventually joined a wider road. He wasn’t sure of the way the rickshaw had brought him out of town, and he soon realised that the buildings were thinning out and that he must be going the wrong way. So much had changed since he was last here. Buildings had been flattened, and new ones stood half-built on muddy plots where the undergrowth had been slashed away. He turned around and began to walk back down the hill.
Rounding a curve in the road, he noticed the back of a familiar building. He stopped and stared. It was High Tops. It looked odd from behind, surrounded by trees. He’d never approached it from this side before. He walked on, and as he drew nearer the sound of voices and the strains of a jazz band floated up to him. Stopping at the gate he held the bars and peered through. On the lawn in front of the house, a garden party was in progress. Women stood around dressed in bright colours, men chatted in groups. There was a burst of laughter as someone cracked a joke. A trestle table was set up, loaded with sandwiches, and servants in uniform walked amongst the guests with trays of drinks. He realised the music was coming from a gramophone set up beside the table.
Was Millie still there? He remembered the glimpse he’d had of her and Sir James pushing their way up the gang-plank on the crowded liner the day he’d left Georgetown with the Volunteers. He scanned the guests, but couldn’t see her amongst them. Perhaps the house had been sold. He was about to turn away when he did catch sight of her. She was sitting at the edge of the lawn in a deck chair, surrounded by a group of children. She was reading from a book. She must have changed dramatically from the woman he’d known before the war.
He turned away, feeling more wretched than before. The sight of all those healthy and sociable people reminded him more than ever of his own isolation and of what he’d lost in the war. He knew he could never open the gate and join them. He looked down at his bony frame, and the cheap clothes he’d bought from a market in Manila. He moved away from the gate before anyone noticed him, and began to walk back towards the town.
The next day he found the little office that now served as the Penang headquarters of the Straits Settlements Volunteer Force; it was on the main street, above a bank. The man behind the desk looked down at his list when Tom stated his name.
‘Ah … Private Thomas Ellis. Missing in shipwreck, February ‘45. Believed drowned.’
He looked up at Tom with an air of finality.
‘Well, I’m obviously not drowned. I’m here, alive and well.’
The man eyed him sceptically.
‘Do you have any proof of ID?’
Tom produced a chit of paper signed by the US Quartermaster, verifying his identity. He then placed his regimental badge on the counter. The man pushed the badge back towards Tom.
‘I don’t need that, Private. Your little unit has been disbanded now the war is over. Keep it as a souvenir. I suppose you will be wanting your back pay? Quite a tidy sum you’ve made … Three years and seven months to the day.’
So that was it. He was out of the army, without ceremony and without thanks for his loyalty, without apology for his captivity. He stood on the pavement outside the office, clutching his envelope stuffed with dollars, contemplating the situation. He felt numb, deflated. Slowly, he walked away towards his hotel, staring at the ground.
He spent the evening in a little Chinese café near the guesthouse. He sat at a table beside the window, eating noodles and watching
