Laura found herself crying softly. It was as if her father’s voice was speaking to her directly from the page. She read on.
Epilogue
Tom sat propped up against the pillows, watching the activity on the busy ward from his hospital bed. The nurses bustled about in their starched white uniforms, moving efficiently from patient to patient, dressing wounds, taking temperatures, checking pulses. He observed their quiet efficiency, and how the equipment they used was shiny, clinically clean. They worked under the watchful eye of the sister, a stern woman who patrolled the ward inspecting for specks of dirt and any sign of laxness on the part of the nurses. She clearly struck fear into their hearts.
His newly pinned leg still throbbed from the operation and the stitches were sore. He was grateful for the painkillers the nurses doled out to him at regular intervals.
Lying in this spotless, echoing room with white walls, high ceilings and enormous windows, Tom couldn’t help but compare the ward to the makeshift hospital hut in the jungle at Chungkai, constructed of bamboo and thatched with atap palm leaves. There, sick and dying men had to lie on hard cane platforms without pillows or blankets, and the doctors and orderlies went about half-naked and barefoot on the earth floor, caring with warmth and compassion, with improvised equipment and virtually no medicine, for men who had little hope of recovery.
He forced himself to stop thinking about it. He knew he must stop dwelling on those memories. A few months ago, when he had first met Arthur Stone, he had made a pact with himself that he would stop his mind from wandering back there, that he would write down everything that had happened to him and that would be the end of it.
It had taken him nearly two years to take the step of contacting Arthur Stone. He had carried the advertisement the doctor had given him in his wallet, sometimes taking it out and reading it, thinking about acting on it, but never really getting around to it. He wanted to wait until he felt ready to speak about what he had been through.
He had met Arthur Stone in an old fashioned spit-and-sawdust pub near King’s Cross. Arthur was an amiable and slightly eccentric academic. He explained to Tom that it would help his research enormously if Tom would write down his memories. Tom had been worried about revealing his identity, so they had worked out an alias together, and he had left the pub resolving to start writing straight away.
But his life was busy now and he was left with little spare time. He had found a job at a small legal practice in Hackney that provided low-cost advice to poor and destitute people. He loved the work. The knowledge that what he did every day made a difference to someone’s life gave him great comfort. The pay was dismal, but he had saved enough to rent a studio flat above a shop in Islington so that he could move out of home and become independent.
He had promised himself that he would start writing his account for Arthur Stone while he was in hospital, but since he had come round from the anaesthetic he had received a steady stream of visitors.
Two of his colleagues, Peter and Steven, had visited the day before, bringing him a basket of fresh fruit. His old friend David Lambert had visited, and his sister Elsie had come along too. She was now happily married to a stockbroker and expecting her first child. They had stayed for a long time, chatting about the old days. Watching Elsie’s plump, contented face as she sat beside his bed gossiping away, he had been struck by how dull her company was. He wondered how she had inspired so much passion in him all those years ago.
This morning his mother had appeared carrying an enormous bunch of white roses. She bent over and kissed him, and the delicate scent of the roses had wafted towards him.
‘That’s very sweet of you,’ he said.
‘I saw them at the flower stall by the tube station. I couldn’t resist them. I thought it would cheer you up on such a gloomy day’ she said, glancing at the grey sky out of the window. ‘Aren’t they beautiful?’
‘They’re lovely. Thank you. I don’t think anyone has ever bought me flowers before.’
‘Well there’s a first time for everything, Tom. And besides, you haven’t been in hospital before either, have you?’
He smiled at her, blotting out the image of the hospital hut in the camp. His mother knew nothing of that. He wanted to keep it that way.
His mother had stayed for a couple of hours, holding his hand, chatting. Then she had kissed him again and left.
Now there was no excuse anymore. He leaned over and took the pad and pencil from the shelf beside the bed. He had to start writing. He nibbled the pencil. How could he begin to tell that extraordinary story? The memories came flooding back to him, crowding in on one another. He decided he would start with February 15, 1942. The day he was taken prisoner in Singapore.
He opened the pad and scribbled down a couple of paragraphs. It all came quite easily to him until he came to the part about the march to Changi and remembered that it was the first time he had seen Harry and Ian. His hand began to tremble, and he dropped the pencil. Suddenly he wasn’t so sure he could do this. The heat and noise and confusion of that day came back to him, and he was there again, marching alongside his old friends, feeling confused and lost and terrified.
‘Penny for them?’
He looked up, momentarily confused to be back
