Before the Poison

18

Extract from the journal of Grace Elizabeth Fox (ed. Louise King), February, 1942. Singapore

Friday, 13th February, 1942 Today the order came down for all the remaining sisters to evacuate the hospital. I could not believe that we were being asked to abandon our patients, though I know the civilian nurses and the V.A.D. s will do their best to care for them until the Japanese arrive. Then, who knows? Perhaps they will be killed. I tried to do my rounds one last time, mopping brows, stroking hands, administering morphia, but it was too hard in the end, and I could not go on. We were collected at midday, allowed only one small suitcase each, and taken to the Cricket Club. Most of the senior members of the services were there, the Matrons, and our Home Sister from the Alexandra. There were about fifty of us in all, including some Indian nurses. At four o’clock, we were taken by ambulances to the Naval Dockyard. The smell of untreated sewage was all around us. Near the docks, I saw a man drive a Hispano-Suizo into the sea so the Japanese could not take it. I made sure my journal was secure and waterproofed in its oilskin around my neck. I would hate to lose it now. It has become like another friend to me. There was an air raid at the docks while we were in the launches heading for our ships, and the Japanese machine-gunned us. They carried on attacking us even after we had boarded the ship, with wave after wave of aircraft. Several people were killed or wounded, and bomb splinters killed two civilian nurses and destroyed one of the lifeboats. I have never experienced anything as terrible or as terrifying as this before, but there was no time to dwell on it. We had work to do. Even before we left harbour, we were already up to our elbows in blood, bandaging wounds while the children cried and the injured groaned in agony around us in the mingled smells of burning oil, cordite and sewage. We finally set sail at about seven o’clock. As I look back from our ship, the SS Kuala, I can see Singapore in ruins and flames. Singapore, the city that had seemed so beautiful only months ago, with its endless sunshine, blue skies, palm trees, busy markets, beautiful green parks and golf courses and the white wedding-cake elegance of its buildings. Now filthy black smoke from the burning oil reserves fills the air, and artillery flashes light up the evening sky. There are hundreds of us crowded together on this small ship, mostly women and children. We are dirty, frightened, bedraggled and heartbroken, and we have no idea what will become of us.

Saturday, 14th February, 1942 St Valentine’s Day. Hard to believe it could be such a harbinger of doom. We awoke at dawn to find ourselves at anchor next to the Tien Kwang in the lea of a small island, having sailed through the night to avoid detection. I knew we could not be far away from Singapore, as this old ship does not move very fast. One of the officers we had nursed in the Alexandra Hospital offered Brenda and me a camp bed on the officers’ deck, so we passed a reasonably comfortable night, though it was terribly hot and humid. We have little but the clothes we are wearing, and they are constantly soaked with sweat. Fresh water is strictly rationed. At about eight o’clock this morning, the Japanese aircraft appeared, and suddenly there was an almighty explosion, and smoke and fire burst out everywhere. People were running around the deck screaming, mothers trying to find their children amidst the smoke and chaos, the wounded writhing and screaming in agony, the decks slippery with blood. The SS Kuala was sinking fast, listing to the stern, and I heard a distant voice coming through the chaos, giving the order to abandon ship. I could not find Brenda in the crowds and the oily smoke, so I jumped. We were close to an island, but the currents were flowing in the opposite direction, and I could see people being swept out to sea, helplessly waving their arms and screaming for help, then going under the waves. There was nothing I could do for them. I knew that Brenda was a strong swimmer, and that if she made it off the ship she would have a good chance. The crew tossed lifebelts and everything that would float over the side, and people were clinging to whatever bits and pieces they could find. The lifeboats were full. I swam as strongly as I could against the current. Severed arms and legs bobbed on the water’s surface, along with dead fish, and kept bumping into me as I swam by. Once I saw a woman’s head floating, its eyes bulging. I worried that the sharks might get me, but I realised that they had probably been scared away for the moment by the bombs. The Japanese aircraft attacked again and strafed us in the water with their machine guns. I could never have imagined that anyone could be so cruel. I do not think I have ever hated anyone as much in my life as I hated them at that moment. Didn’t they know we were just defenceless women and children, the wounded and the sick? We were struggling for our lives in shark-infested waters against strong currents, and they were firing their machine guns at us. I was lucky. Like Brenda, I am a strong swimmer. I struggled on and found space in a lifeboat. We rowed hard against the current to the shore. Behind us, we could just see the last of the SS Kuala sinking under the waves. The Tien Kwang was already gone. The shore was too steep and rocky for us to land, so we continued around the island until we were lucky enough to find a beach on the other side. When we got there, I staggered out of the boat on to the sand and collapsed, exhausted. My legs were wobbly, my arms ached and I felt dizzy. I just lay there for a while staring into the burning sky, gasping for breath. It had all happened so quickly, yet it had felt like an eternity, too. I quickly realised that I was half-naked. I had shed most of my outer clothing when I was swimming, to prevent the weight of it from adding to the current’s pull, but I was relieved to feel my oilskin still around my neck. The others from the lifeboat flopped on the sand all around me, many of them bleeding from bullet or shrapnel wounds. There had been about nine hundred people altogether on those two ships, I thought, and I wondered how many were left. I could hear the aircraft continuing to strafe the survivors, but we were on the other side of the island, and I could not see them. That situation did not last long. It was a small island, and the Japanese decided to give us one more bombing before they left. Some of the bombs exploded quite close to us, and afterwards my ears were ringing, and I noticed that I was bleeding from a deep cut on my arm. I tore a strip from what was left of my underwear and used it as a bandage. As soon as I had got my breath back and listened to make sure the aircraft had gone, I got to work and started examining the other survivors around me. One or two were beyond help, but many just had minor wounds or concussions. The poor babies were crying, and some of the little children were wandering around calling for their mothers. After ten or fifteen minutes of trying to create some order out of the chaos, I found Brenda. She was stunned and had a nasty gash on her forehead, which would require stitches, but otherwise she was all right. I hugged her, and she revived quickly enough. She told me that she had clung to a mattress until she came close enough to one of the lifeboats to climb on board. So here we are, marooned on Pompong Island, as one of the Malayan women tells us. With Brenda’s help, I found some more sisters and two doctors, and together we did the best we could for the injured and dying. Brenda thinks there are about five hundred of us on here altogether, which means that we lost almost half our number in the attacks. All we want now is for the Japanese to stay away and let us sleep, but there is still much to be done while the daylight is still with us. Those who have searched already say there is no food on the island and only one small fresh water spring. We are still managing to salvage quite a lot from the ships, including a chest containing some of the crew’s work clothes, though I do not find the seaman’s uniform someone gave me very becoming, and it is far too large for me. Still, it covers up what needs to be covered up, I suppose, and it is better than running around in my knickers, which were all I had left to wear! As far as food is concerned, there is not much but a few tins of bully beef, which will not go far when shared by five hundred people. We have one barrel of water. Short of Jesus coming to perform one of his magic tricks, we do not stand much of a chance of surviving more than a few days. And the Japanese know we are here. As regards medicine and medical equipment, we found a few basic first-aid kits, and that is all. At least I have been able to stitch Brenda’s wound. I read Robinson Crusoe as a child, but I never thought I would find myself in such a situation as he did! I must stop now. There is much to do.

December 2010

There were two numbered music files on the DVD Louise had given me, and I was curious as to what they could be. Assuming my old MacBook had the software necessary to play them, I selected the first one. I heard tinny, distant piano chords that sounded only vaguely familiar, as if from a tune I recognised but was not used to hearing played on a piano. Even though it had probably been cleaned up by the computer software, the recording was still scratchy and sounded faraway, recorded at some distance from the piano.

Then, all of a sudden, came the voice, sounding closer, more intimate, and surprisingly pure. Immediately I knew what it was: ‘ Vissi d’arte, vissi d’amore…’ the famous aria from Puccini’s Tosca. It was Grace singing. It had to be, I knew, even though I had never heard her voice before. She must have gone into one of those make-your-own-recording places, the sort Elvis Presley had used to record ‘My Happiness’ for his mother’s birthday. It would have been acetate, or a 78 rpm pressing, I supposed, and Louise must somehow have transferred it to her computer, then on to the DVD.

When the aria had finished, I played it again and concentrated on the voice. Grace wasn’t a great technical singer. Good, but not great. Her voice was strong and certainly had timbre and character, but ‘ Vissi d’arte ’ has some tough dramatic moments, some powerful high notes to be hit and held. While Grace didn’t always hit them from above – she was a natural mezzo, not a soprano, which the role called for – and while her voice sometimes seemed to strain and tremble over a phrase, she handled most of the song in its dramatic context with great sensitivity and skill, I thought. Interpretation was her forte, along with emotion. ‘I never harmed a living soul. / With secret hand / I helped relieve as much misfortune as I could.’

The second song was less taxing and much simpler, but it drove straight to the heart. It was ‘Dido’s Lament’ from Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas, the aria Queen Dido sings when Aeneas leaves her, with its keening call of ‘Remember me, remember me’, lingering long after the music has finished. I remembered Wilf telling me about the school production, of his hearing Grace sing it live to a similar piano accompaniment. The performance was everything it should be: simple and moving. I found that I had goose bumps all over me and tears in my eyes when it was over, and I didn’t want to play it again. Not that night. It was time for a film, something light years away from Dido’s or Grace’s tragic tale – Here We Go Round the Mulberry Bush, perhaps – then to bed.

It was now over a week since Heather had dropped her bombshell, and I hadn’t heard a thing from her. I had tried to phone her a couple of times at work and on her mobile, but she never answered, and she didn’t return my messages. I wondered whether she’d gone away for a while, or whether, perhaps, she was deliberately avoiding me while she extricated herself from her marriage to Derek. Maybe she was just plain busy. Moving house was a hell of a job, even without the emotional upheaval Heather must be going through. Perhaps she just needed to be left alone for a while. I felt for her, but there was nothing I could do. I hoped she would join us for Christmas – my invitation had been only half in jest, but the way things were going, I might not get the chance before then to invite her properly.

Two days after my visit to Staithes and to Grace’s graveside, late in the afternoon while I was in the living room reading my print-out of Grace’s war journal as the darkness drew in on Kilnsgate, my telephone rang. Thinking it was Louise with some news about Grace’s illegitimate child, I snatched it up immediately, without even a glance at the caller ID, but, to my surprise, it was Heather.

‘Chris,’ she said. ‘How are things?’ Her voice sounded weary and slightly husky.

‘I’m fine. It’s you I’m worried about. I was just thinking about you.’

‘That’s sweet of you. It’s all done.’

‘What?’

‘Gone. Moved. All my worldly goods. There’s nothing of interest to me back at the old homestead now.’

‘So how are you, really?’

‘Really? You expect me to tell you over the telephone?’

‘I’m not doing anything.’

‘Me neither. I took the week off work.’

‘So come by, if you like. I’ve got wine in the fridge.’

She paused. ‘OK,’ she said finally. ‘That might be just the ticket. See you soon.’

I wondered whether I had made a mistake in inviting her to the house as I did a quick tidy-up of the living room, made sure I had a decent Chablis chilling, and opened an Aussie Shiraz for myself. Of course, being November, it was dark by teatime when I heard Heather’s car pull up. I already had a nice fire burning in the living room, and after hanging up her winter coat and long scarf, I took her through and brought the wine. She certainly looked as if she had been through the wringer, though I could tell that she had made an effort to cover the pain and lack of sleep with a little make-up. I could have no idea how much it hurt to have your husband run off with a younger woman, but I was determined not to appear over-solicitous or pitying. We were grown-ups. These things happen. They’d happened to me, too, before Laura. We got through them somehow, anyhow, and we kept on going. I very much doubted that Heather was here because she wanted tea and sympathy, or someone to sit and talk to about her failed marriage. And if she wanted to brood alone, she could easily have stayed at her convent apartment and done that. She had no doubt had plenty of opportunity over the past week.

Heather quickly made herself at home, kicking her shoes off and stretching out on the sofa, swirling her wine. I had put on a Tony Bennett CD of Christmas songs, and it seemed to harmonise well with the log fire and the winter dark beyond the windows. No snow, yet, though.

‘How’s the convent?’ I asked.

Heather wrinkled her nose. ‘Strict. I’ve got a curfew.’

‘No, seriously.’

‘It’s comfortable enough. A nice apartment, plenty of room. You must come and see it. Charlotte’s been clucking around me like a mother hen. She even brought a casserole over the other evening. She’s driving me crazy. What have you been up to?’

I told her a little about Louise, the journal and the box of Grace’s stuff.

‘Should I be jealous?’ she asked. ‘Of Louise King, I mean, not the ghost.’

‘There’s nothing to be jealous of.’

She was half lying, propped at a rather precarious angle, and when she shifted position, she spilled a little wine on her dress. Luckily it was white wine. I brought a serviette over to her, which she took and dabbed at the spot. When she handed it back to me, I held on to her hand, and when I felt a gentle tug, I leaned down and kissed her. It was tender at first, like the kiss in the car that night after the Bonfire Night party at Charlotte’s, but as it continued, it grew more passionate, more probing. We let the crumpled serviette drop and I took her wineglass from her hand and set it on the table beside the sofa. Then I knelt and we continued kissing. I touched her cheek, her hair, ran my hand over her breasts, her stomach; she moved beneath my touch, hooked her hand around my neck and pulled me to her fiercely.

I don’t know how it all happened; everything was a bit of a blur. There was no more thinking, flirting, just a flurry of urgent need and desire that left a trail of clothes across the hall and up the stairs, where we lay in my bed, sweaty, breathless, entangled, some time later, the mutual need satisfied for the moment, the thinking returning.

Heather spoke first. ‘I suppose that was a recipe for disaster,’ she said.

‘Oh, come on, it wasn’t that bad.’

She nudged me in the ribs. ‘You know what I mean.’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘So what do we do now?’

‘We don’t have to do anything,’ Heather said. ‘We could just lie here.’

‘And after that?’

‘We can do it again. I’ve never been one to tremble in the jaws of disaster.’

I ran my hand over her bare arm and shoulder, so smooth, so warm. She had freckles there, too. ‘You know,’ I said, ‘I almost hate to say it, but I’m glad we’re not having an affair. I mean, technically.’

‘Me too,’ she said, turning to prop herself up on one elbow and face me. ‘Far too sordid and messy.’ She pushed her hair out of her face. ‘Chris, I’m not stupid. I know you’re not looking for commitment. Neither am I. Can’t we just let it be what it is?’

I stroked her hair. ‘Of course. Whatever it is. I’m not making any demands. I’m not running away, either.’ It was silly talk, the kind of thing you say to justify what you’ve just done, when you realise you’ve fallen off the edge of a cliff and your legs and arms are spinning useless circles in the air. Call me a fatalist, but we had as little choice about where we went now as we had when we first met. But somehow it helps to say things like ‘Let’s see where it leads us’ or ‘Let it be what it is’. It gives the illusion of control, or at least of understanding. There were only two things we could do: one was stop seeing each other, and we obviously weren’t going to do that, and the other was to continue to let ourselves get more and more entangled up in one another’s needs and desires until one of us had had enough. To fall in love. Oh, we could play it cool, see each other only on Wednesdays, see other people, all the usual evasions, but that was really what it came down to for me. Love or flight.

Heather lay on her back and put her hands behind her head. ‘It’s been so strange these past few days. I’ve been mostly on my own for the first time in years, and enjoying it. No dinner to get ready. No household responsibilities. I’m afraid the convent flat is already a tip. I haven’t done anything in the way of housework. No vacuuming, no dishes, no washing. I’m down to my last pair of knickers and I’m not sure I even know where they are right now.’

I laughed. ‘I think you’re entitled to let things go. For a while, at least. Till you can’t find your way around the place any more for the piles of old newspapers.’

She slapped my chest. ‘It won’t get that bad. I couldn’t live like that. I don’t even read newspapers at the flat. And I can always wash out a pair of knickers. But you know what I mean. Really. I’d forgotten how much I used to enjoy watching what I wanted on TV, not doing something if I didn’t feel like it, or just sitting and reading with my legs curled up and no distractions. I read my first whole book in years, Christina Jones, a real guilty pleasure, and I even had a pizza delivered the other night. I ate most of it, too.’

‘Ah, the joys of single life. Is it official yet?’

‘It is as far as I’m concerned. Charlotte’s handling the legal details. I haven’t been out telling the world, though, yet, if that’s what you mean. Not even my closest friends. It’s not exactly something I’d want to employ a skywriter to advertise. They’ll find out soon enough, anyway, and the sympathetic phone calls will start coming in, even though I don’t want sympathy. Derek and I were finished a long time ago, long before I even met you, so you needn’t even think of getting big headed enough to blame yourself for any of this. It turns out he’s been having this affair for a couple of years, made quite a fool of me, really, and it’ll be all over town soon enough. Last week was my honeymoon period with myself, and I think I’ll be happy with me. I’m sorry I didn’t return your calls. I wanted to. I thought about you a lot. But somehow I knew we’d end up like this. Who did we think we were fooling? It’s not that I didn’t want it, but it just seemed too soon, and I… Besides, there was too much turmoil, so much to organise. Does that sound weird?’

‘Not at all. I’m just glad you’re here now.’

She smiled. ‘Unlike you, I do have one demand, though.’ Her hand started to move down under the sheet. ‘I know you’re an old man and all that, but do you think you could manage to get it up just one more time, then we can go downstairs, and you can make me dinner, pour me another large glass of wine and tell me everything about Louise King and Grace Fox’s box of goodies?’

‘I might be able to manage all that, despite my advanced years,’ I said, and leaned over towards her.

‘So let me get this straight,’ Heather said much later, almost lost in the folds of my dressing gown, back by the fireside with another glass of wine, her legs curled under her. ‘You’ve got Grace Fox’s granddaughter running around the country trying to find out whether Grace had an illegitimate child who would be… what would he be?’

‘Louise’s uncle.’

‘That’s creepy.’

‘A bit.’

‘And this is because…?’

‘It could have something to do with the murder. If it was a boy. If he was the one in uniform she was seen talking with the week before it happened.’

‘That’s a lot of ifs. Why should it be him, and what could it have to do with the murder?’

‘I don’t know. One thing at a time.’

‘Gee,’ she said. ‘You detectives. I don’t know how you do it. Have you heard anything from her yet?’

‘No. These things take time. Besides, she’s got her new job to deal with.’ I poured myself more Shiraz. The pasta sauce was simmering in the kitchen and I had just put the penne on. We were both starving. David Fray was playing Schubert in the background.

‘You really don’t believe Grace did it, do you?’ Heather said.

I shook my head.

‘And what if you find out she did?’

‘Then I hope I’ll accept the truth if I have to. But at least, by then, I’ll have made damn sure I know it is the truth. Right now, I don’t believe it.’

Heather looked at me as one might regard an exasperating child. ‘Come here,’ she said eventually, smiling and reaching out her hand.

I went. As I bent to kiss her, she ducked sideways and whispered in my ear. ‘Is that bloody pasta you promised ready yet? My stomach thinks my throat’s been cut.’

‘Message received loud and clear,’ I said, and went through to the kitchen.

Heather didn’t stay the night. I think she was still enjoying her new home and her own company, and I was certainly getting used to mine. Let things develop as they would, I thought, wincing at my own cliches, at their own pace. I liked Heather a lot, enjoyed her company, and she had also turned out to be good in bed, but neither of us wanted to give up our freedom or our solitude yet. And both of us were still carrying too much pain around with us, however we might try to mask it.

I felt that I was only just getting over losing Laura. The first few months I had been far too consumed by grief and guilt to think in terms of being ‘single’ or enjoying my ‘freedom’, but over my time at Kilnsgate, I was coming to see what these things meant, that there was a future without Laura. It didn’t mean that I loved her memory any the less, or that I didn’t miss her as much, but she had told me herself that my life had to go on without her and move in new directions, and of course, it did. Laura was right, as usual.

I cleared away the dinner plates, put the dishes in the dishwasher, poured another glass of Shiraz and went back to Grace’s journal, the fire crackling, the wind rattling the panes, bare branches scraping against the upstairs windows. I angled the standing light as best I could and put on my drugstore glasses. Grace’s handwriting, tiny as it was, was neat and for the most part legible, though I stumbled over one or two of the place names. She certainly had hit all the high spots.

The bare details of her account said very little about the terrible ordeal she had been through. That was the stuff of nightmares. She described most events, however terrible, in a straightforward style, showing about as much emotion as she had at her trial, simply detailing what happened, what she did and what she saw – though I could tell how affected she was by the horror of it all. I will admit without shame that, at several points in her narrative, I had to pause to wipe away my tears, and perhaps that was due all the more to her sense of restraint and lack of graphic detail. For someone gifted, or cursed, with an imagination like mine, it wasn’t too difficult to fill in the spaces between the lines with pictures. My movie-obsessed mind couldn’t help but flesh out the brief, fleeting images, search for the structure, the narrative arc, the musical score, even.

To say that I was stunned and surprised by Grace’s account of her wartime experiences is a grave understatement. Like most people, I suppose I knew there were nurses in the war, but I never really thought about the horrors of their job, what they experienced. I never gave them much thought at all. Grace’s story made me realise how we have simply overlooked the courage and suffering of women during wartime. There are exceptions, celebrated heroines, such as Florence Nightingale, Gladys Aylward and Edith Cavell, but on the whole they are a forgotten army. They suffered many of the same hardships as their male counterparts, the same fears of being blown to bits by a stray shell or a bomb, or hit by a sniper’s bullet, the same fear of capture and imprisonment, a fate that many suffered. And, for women, there was also the deep-rooted fear of what traditionally happens at the hands of male conquerors. Grace had seen it all, horrors I could barely begin to imagine, and throughout it all she had kept her humanity.

No wonder she never spoke of it to anyone. No wonder she hid her Royal Red Cross. No wonder she often seemed distracted and haunted. No wonder she liked to ride her motorbike like the clappers down the country lanes and make love in the open air with a penniless young artist.

But where did Ernest Fox come into all this? Did he know about it? Did Grace ever tell him or show him her journal? And if so, what did he do or say? Did he offer her comfort and sympathy? Was he jealous of Stephen’s kiss? It was my opinion that she hadn’t told him the details because she couldn’t, and that he hadn’t read the journal, that no one had except Grace, her sister, Louise and me. Grace had kept it hidden in the secret drawer in her escritoire until she handed it over to Felicity.

It remained my strong impression from everything I had heard about him from Wilf and Sam that Ernest Fox was something of a cold fish, and that Grace knew she could find no solace or sympathy in his arms. His coldness, his preoccupation with his job and his status in the eyes of the community had driven Grace to Sam Porter as surely as anything. It was my guess that Ernest wouldn’t want a woman who had the stink of the battlefield on her hands. He wanted a pretty, elegant companion in a fine hat hanging on his arm, who could be brought out and admired at functions and balls, but not heard. Never heard. Grace had tried to be that person, but it hadn’t worked for her. Nature has a way of making itself known.

The journal kept me up most of the night. I read and reread pages, turned to my favourite composers for relief – to Schubert, Elgar, Shostakovich, Tchaikovsky, Brahms. At one time, I remember getting up and opening a second bottle of Shiraz, which went the way of the first, and slowly my eyes grew heavy from reading and crying behind the inadequate spectacles. I hadn’t found any of the answers I’d been looking for in Grace’s words – there was little or nothing of a personal nature – only a record of great courage and suffering told with incredible forbearance and self-possession. I knew that I could never have borne a fraction of what Grace had seen, touched and tried to heal, and it made me think how easy my own life had been, apart from Laura’s death, of course. But I had found no answers. Or at least, if I had, I couldn’t interpret them.

I finished my wine, took off my glasses and settled back in the armchair, almost imagining I could hear Grace’s laughter as she splashed with her friends on a rare day off in the waves of the South China Sea, while chaos reigned all around. I massaged the bridge of my nose. Fischer-Dieskau was singing ‘Irrlicht’ from Schubert’s Winterreise. Had it been summer, rosy-fingered dawn would have been spreading her array of colour across the morning sky when I finally fell asleep, but it was bleak midwinter, and there was nothing outside but the darkness of the night and the coldness of the stars as the last charred log dimmed in the grate and the fire died.