AFTER BREAKFAST COUSIN MAVIS got out Rose’s wooden sewing box with an expression of determination. ‘Everyone is making flags to welcome the Japanese. We need a large one over the porch and another to wave when needed. We must show them we have no hard feelings.’ She was well settled in Belvedere and made herself useful where she could.
‘The Japanese anger easily,’ Rose agreed.
She found some old sheets from which to make flags and Mavis cut them to the appropriate sizes. For the red sphere of the rising sun Rose found a picnic cloth that she had used when the children were small. She remembered sitting upon it in a bathing suit on the beach at Katong. They spent the morning sewing quietly on the chintz sofa beside the window that looked out on to the mangosteen orchard. Soon the work was finished, and Hamzah and Ah Fong hung the large flag where Mavis directed over the portico of Belvedere. Several smaller flags were sewn on to sticks that Mavis put into a box for a time when they might be needed.
Rose went about her daily chores in a constant state of anxiety; it did not seem possible that the war was lost. Even the acquiring of twenty-four tins of sardines for $5 from the small store at the bottom of the road, gave her no pleasure. Cynthia had been transferred to Woodbridge Hospital and was working in dangerous conditions, but Rose was grateful Howard had returned. He had arrived home from some distant battleground in a dirty sarong, thin and weak with a bullet hole in his arm, and would tell her few details of his ordeal. For some days he had kept to his bed while she fussed about him. Now he was stronger, but against her wishes had gone out that morning to reconnoitre and had yet to return.
Mavis kept up a bright babble of talk, trying to ease Rose’s tension. She took upon herself many of Belvedere’s small chores, checking that the empty house was properly dusted, making a new inventory of linen and seeing that Hamzah regularly cleaned out the stone water filter in the dining room. Belvedere was now an echoing place; even the Bofforts had been evacuated on one of the last ships to leave the island.
In the afternoon Wilfred unexpectedly returned to Belvedere with Cynthia, who was still in her nurse’s uniform. They drove up in a St John’s ambulance and looked askance at the flag hanging from the portico.
‘I have to get ready for internment. The British community have been ordered to collect upon the Padang by ten o’clock tomorrow morning, and from there to march to Changi,’ Wilfred announced as they entered Belvedere, and Rose and Mavis hurried towards them.
‘Internment?’ Rose halted in alarm.
‘At the moment it’s the Chinese and Europeans they’re interested in, but Eurasians may also be called for screening later,’ Cynthia said grimly, pulling off her nurse’s cap and freeing her hair. ‘We’ve come home to pack Wilfred’s internment kit. I managed to get off work until tomorrow. Woodbridge Hospital is chaos, morphine had run out and some minor operations are being done even without anaesthetic.’
‘We have to bring clothes for ten days, but they say food will be provided.’ Wilfred assumed a brisk manner that Rose now understood often covered disaster.
‘Come and see my kit,’ Wilfred invited Rose later, showing her a leather suitcase open upon the bed.
‘Iodine, Dettol, Andrews Liver Salts, Elastoplast, soap, two pairs of shorts, three cotton shirts, a jacket, two pairs of socks, extra shoes . . .’ Wilfred went through a lengthy list while Rose and Cynthia stood looking into the case, trying to think of further useful things to add.
‘Scissors,’ Cynthia remembered.
‘A torch and some aspirin,’ Rose suggested and hurried out to find these things, filled with a weight of dread. With his ambulance duties Wilfred had always managed to be near the hospital and Cynthia, and this had kept her worry at bay. Nothing seemed real.
‘We will be in good company at Changi. The Governor and other assorted bigwigs are being interned as well.’ Wilfred sounded almost jocular as he packed the scissors and the torch. Rose hurried away again in the direction of the kitchen building, and returned with two small parcels.
‘Here’s some bread, tinned cheese, pickled onions and some rum fruitcake.’ Rose held out the packages, blinking back tears.
‘Very soon the taste of rum might be much appreciated,’ Wilfred predicted. Cynthia sat down suddenly on the bed and burst into tears.
They saw their first Japanese the next day, soon after Wilfred and Cynthia’s departure. A group of four soldiers walked up the hill and turned into the driveway of Belvedere. They stood looking up at the elegant balconies and then put their heads around the door. Rose decided to treat the soldiers as she would a new lodger, pleasantly polite but from the first letting them know who was in charge.
‘Can I help you?’ she said, wishing Howard were home and not out again inspecting the lie of the land.
The men turned to stare at her and then burst out laughing, revealing large, nicotine-stained teeth and conferring together incomprehensibly; Rose prepared herself for the worst. The men were darkly weathered from weeks of fighting their way through the jungle under fierce sun and monsoon rain, and their uniforms were in tatters. They were smaller than Rose had imagined. It was then that she noticed their bayonets and that they wore strange canvas shoes that split the big toe apart from the foot, like the cloven hoof of an animal.
Ignoring Rose, the soldiers turned towards the stairs, stopping to observe the dining room stretching away in a sea of red tiles. Rose waited, listening to the pad of feet on the floor above and the knock of bayonets on the skirting board. There was a constant banging of doors as they opened and inspected each room. Shouts echoed along the corridor, and Rose could not tell if the harsh guttural voices spoke positively or negatively about Belvedere.
Eventually, they reappeared and made their way down to Rose. She noticed now that their weapons were almost as tall as the soldiers themselves; the gleam of the sun from the upstairs window fell on the thin blades of the bayonets. One of the soldiers nodded to her as he passed, before running off across the dining room and out of the open patio doors to the kitchen building. The other soldiers went through the front door and disappeared around the side of the house. Within a few minutes they all reassembled on the gravel driveway, and without a backward glance left as they had come.
The following day they were visited by a Japanese soldier of higher rank. Rose knew he was an officer because he wore a sword. He was a thin man with skin that gleamed like oiled paper stretched tautly over his face. A wide jaw above a reed-like neck made his head appear too large, but his bulging eyes were not unkind and his manner was civil.
‘I Captain Tanamura,’ he introduced himself in English. Several soldiers accompanied him, all anxious to show him deference.
Captain Tanamura stood looking with interest about Belvedere, almost courtly in his attitude and his few words of English. Rose felt bound to offer some tea, and he accepted agreeably. She showed him to the alcove with the chintz sofa where Mavis was waiting to be introduced. He had some difficulty manoeuvring his sword as he lowered himself on to an upright chair, and it pushed up awkwardly at his waist. Military aides stood to attention behind him. Hamzah served tea, the cups rattling slightly on the saucers in his nervous hands. The officer sipped the tea with a loud slurping that Rose took as a sign of appreciation. At last, placing his cup on the table, he leaned forward over his sword.
‘You. Leave house.’ He spoke suddenly in a forceful manner that reminded Rose that their meeting was not a social occasion.
‘We have been told it is safer for us to stay at home until things settle down,’ Rose reassured him, thinking he was enquiring if she had been out, but the officer frowned.
‘You. Leave house,’ he repeated in a louder voice. One of the young soldiers standing behind him stepped forward and spoke in fluent English.
‘Captain Tanamura wishes you to vacate this house. It is needed as an officers’ army billet. You have very nice house, it will be useful to the Japanese Imperial Army.’
Rose recoiled in shock. Beside her Mavis gave a small cry that caused Captain Tanamura to frown even harder. He said a few stern words in Japanese to the young interpreter.
‘Captain Tanamura is giving you two days to vacate your house. Two days is very generous time. Everything must be left as it is, no food or linen or anything else is to be taken away. You may take only your clothes and personal items. By 5.30 day after tomorrow we will move in. You will not be expected to be here.’
As the young soldier finished this speech, Captain Tanamura gave a nod of approval. He rose from the chair and walked back to the door followed by his aides, his sword trailing the ground behind him. Soon there was the sound of car doors shutting, engines starting and a crunch of gravel beneath car wheels as they drove away.
Within a short time of the soldiers’ departure Howard returned from a further reconnaissance and was told the news.
‘I should have been here,’ he said, distressed that his mother and Mavis had had to face rough soldiers alone for the second time.
‘Better you weren’t. They say they’re taking young men for slave labour,’ Rose answered, feeling sick at the thought.
Howard said nothing, not wanting to admit to his mother the things he had seen on his outing. It was not young men so much as young women who were at risk. He had seen a girl of no more than twelve or thirteen dragged from her home into the bushes to be raped by three soldiers, while her parents sat helpless within the house, held prisoner by a fourth man waiting his turn with the girl. The men had left, laughing. The child’s screams still echoed in his ears; he knew he would hear them for ever. Trembling with horror and revulsion he had run off, shocked by his inability to do anything.
At the corner of Prinsip Street he had bought three small sweet potatoes for Rose from an old woman hawking a basket of the vegetable, and watched a group of emaciated British POWs go about the business of clearing the city of corpses. They pulled a rotting body from a pile of rubble and threw it into a handcart on top of other corpses. Japanese sentries stood everywhere, stopping people and questioning them. Then, rounding a corner, he found himself facing three decapitated heads stuck upon spikes by the roadside. The heads were so fresh they did not look properly dead; blood still oozed, congealing about their necks. The eyes of one were open and stared straight at Howard. A cigarette stub had been thrust between the blackened lips of another. Howard began to run and did not stop until he was in the vicinity of Belvedere. It was impossible to tell his mother any of these things or that the Radio Delhi news he heard each night on his short wave radio was only of Japanese victories and British retreat.
‘What are we to do? Where are we to go?’ Rose moaned softly, giving in to despair.
‘We could go to Cousin Lionel,’ Mavis suggested, getting up and pacing about to clarify her thoughts.
‘I have not kept in touch with him,’ Rose replied, her heart sinking, imagining the indignities that might now await her; Cousin Lionel lived in Katong in a disintegrating house on a coconut estate.
As she assessed the future, there was a knock at the entrance. Howard opened the door, peering into the dark garden. A figure stepped abruptly out of the bushes and Howard drew back in trepidation. In the porch light he saw a filthy face with a head of short matted hair and the androgynous loose clothes of a Chinese servant. He started when the woman spoke and he heard Mei Lan’s voice.
‘It’s dangerous for women to go out. Ah Siew would not let me come until she had made me look as ugly as possible,’ Mei Lan apologised, glancing nervously about her. Howard was silent with shock, his heart leaping beneath his ribs.
‘Come in quickly,’ he said at last. As she slid past him he caught the scent of her again and recalled the smooth skin of her cheek beneath his lips, the taste of her mouth. Mei Lan gave him a hesitant smile, trying to conceal her agitation at the sight of him and the turmoil of feelings that had brought her so desperately to his door.
The agony of waiting had overwhelmed them at Bougainvillaea House. Neither Bertie, the slave girls or JJ had returned, and there was no news to be had of Lim Hock An. Second Grandmother was half out of her mind. Mei Lan had suddenly remembered Cynthia telling her that Howard had an Indian friend who supplied Japanese ships and knew many Japanese people. The thought that such a man might have the power to help them would not leave her, however tenuous the hope. Ah Siew had insisted on rubbing boot polish into her hair and smearing mud over Mei Lan’s face and blouse. Although it was only a short distance along Bukit Timah and up the slope to Belvedere, Mei Lan had kept to the shadows, stooping as if she were an old woman.
Rose looked from Howard to Mei Lan in irritation. Beneath the dirt she now recognised the headstrong girl from Bougainvillaea House who had led Howard astray. Her annoyance was so great that at first she did not listen to Mei Lan’s story, or wonder why she had appeared at Belvedere in such a filthy disguise. Within a few moments the girl’s words began to filter through, and Rose listened to her distressing story. After the visit of the military men to Belvedere, Rose was newly sensitive to all issues concerning the Japanese. The day had been spent in the heartbreaking business of packing for the move to Cousin Lionel. What to take, and what could not be taken had involved them all. The thought that Belvedere’s beds would now be filled by rough Japanese soldiers, sleeping on Belvedere linen and eating off Belvedere plates, was more than Rose could digest. She felt too ill now to protest about the unexpected arrival of Mei Lan. Imagining the three frightened women – the young girl, the old grandmother and the ancient servant – she felt her resistance dissolve.
‘You’d better sit down,’ she told the girl, gesturing towards the alcove beyond the dining room where they usually sat in the evening. She called to Ah Fong to bring a lime cordial.
‘I have only met the Indian a few times, at political meetings. He has a shop in Serangoon Road,’ Howard explained and, seeing the disappointment in Mei Lan’s face, knew he would explore any risky and unlikely hope in order to see her again.
In Serangoon Road the street lamps were either destroyed or without gas and Manikam’s Cloth Shop was in deep shadow. At first Raj did not recognise Howard in the darkness; he had just returned from the Toyo Hotel where Mr Shinozaki was still staying at the invitation of Colonel Yokota of Defence Headquarters. It was a shock when two people stepped out of the gloom before him; nowadays, everyone waited to be apprehended and, like everywhere else, Serangoon Road was deserted, shops boarded up against looting. No one could do business without a licence from the military, and these licences had yet to be distributed. Raj opened up the shop, lit an oil lamp and invited Howard inside. A Chinese woman of servant class followed. Raj was annoyed that Howard did not tell her to wait outside.
‘It is for her we have come,’ Howard smiled as he sat down and began to explain about Mei Lan’s situation. ‘You know Mr Shinozaki, perhaps he can help her,’ Howard urged.
Raj nodded politely, but did not want to hear of any new trouble the occupation was causing. He knew exactly the situation Mei Lan described. He had been running about all day on rescue errands of this nature for Shinozaki. Each night when the diplomat returned to the Toyo Hotel a queue of desperate people was waiting for him. Shinozaki’s reputation as the man to contact to liaise with the Japanese military was now firmly established.
‘There is nothing I can do tonight.’ Raj rubbed his brow with the back of his hand and yawned. All he wanted to do was sleep.
‘My brothers have done nothing to deserve arrest, and Grandfather is old and sick. He may not survive,’ Mei Lan protested, trying to keep her voice steady. Raj sighed deeply and stood up.
‘I do not know why I am doing this,’ he said, picking up his keys. ‘Mr Shinozaki is probably still at dinner with Colonel Yokota at the Toyo Hotel. He will not be pleased to see us at this hour. Find a rickshaw if you can while I lock up the shop,’ Raj told Howard.
The Toyo Hotel employed a Hungarian orchestra. The kempetai did not harass the musicians because their lively music was much liked by Colonel Yokota and also by General Kawamura. Mr Shinozaki had left the room and the dinner party to go to the bathroom, when Raj came hurrying up to him in the foyer of the hotel. The diplomat listened to Raj’s brief explanation, and with a nod of resignation followed him to where his friends waited.
‘I have only a moment,’ he informed them impatiently, looking at the woman standing before him and then turning to frown at Raj.
Of the many people who now flowed about Shinozaki like a river swirling around a lone rock, he had never been confronted by such a bedraggled figure. If it were not for Raj and the personable young Eurasian man accompanying her, he would have dismissed her outright. Shinozaki turned his head in the direction of the dining room, from where the notes of a dashing mazurka drifted, and sighed. Sitting down on a red velvet chair he took out a cigarette, interrupting Raj’s long-winded description of Lim Hock An.
‘She is the granddaughter of Lim Hock An? Of course I know who he is.’ Shinozaki looked intently at the girl over his thick-framed spectacles. Lim Hock An’s name was high on a list of wanted persons in connection with the China Relief Fund’s anti-Japanese activities.
‘Nowadays, women must find any way they can to avoid being raped by your soldiers,’ Mei Lan retorted, head erect, eyes ablaze in her blackened face. Shinozaki glared at her and Howard pressed her arm in warning, wondering why Mei Lan could not control herself at a time like this.
‘They are probably holding the old man at the YMCA building on Orchard Road,’ Shinozaki told Howard, turning away from Mei Lan.
The kempetai had taken over the YMCA, and after some renovations to the building to install a number of cells, had made it one of their main interrogation centres. Shinozaki thought of the graceful red-brick building he had always admired and felt sad. The door of the dining room swung open as waiters went in and out and Shinozaki caught snatches of a Viennese waltz and noisy laughter. Everyone was drinking copiously and the room was thick with cigarette smoke and the smell of beer. Shinozaki stubbed out his own cigarette, anxious to get back to the dinner.
‘Grandfather is an old man,’ Mei Lan repeated, holding Shinozaki’s eye, her tone now one of appeasement. The diplomat had a small triangular moustache that stopped short of the ends of his mouth; thick straggly eyebrows reinforced a kindly but inscrutable expression, making it difficult to know what he was thinking. Shinozaki gave a reluctant but conciliatory nod.
‘I have no information about your brothers. I am sorry, but it is better you understand that many young men who were suspected of anti-Japanese activities have already been killed. If your brother was part of Dalforce, then he is guilty of a criminal offence for which death is the sentence.’ Shinozaki spoke curtly, taking no notice of Mei Lan’s stricken face as he continued.
‘The 25th Army have already moved on to Bangkok. Many top members of the kempetai who knew me are no longer stationed in Singapore. I have less influence now than before, and the new men are not so willing to give me information.’ Shinozaki absently lit another cigarette, pulling on it thoughtfully. It was as he said, there had been a change of authority at the top and he felt a waning of his already small power. Many of the military men about him now were rough and arrogant individuals, who not only bullied and threatened prominent Chinese but had little respect for Shinozaki who, although Japanese, was not a military man. Sometimes now he worried about his own safety. Although he said nothing to Mei Lan, he was concerned that an old man like Lim Hock An should have been arrested, although he knew this was inevitable. All the Chinese leaders were under arrest, and as all had been supporters of the China Relief Fund and worked against Japan, retribution was severe.
‘The Chinese community here is in great danger,’ Shinozaki told them, remembering the intelligence reports handed to him and the things he had seen. ‘I am a friend of the Chinese people and I am encouraging suggestions that an organisation be formed to allow the Chinese community to co-operate with the Japanese military. This co-operation will be a way for the Chinese people here to protect themselves. It is to be called the Overseas Chinese Association and will be headed by an ancient of the Chinese community, Dr Lim Boon Keng.’ Shinozaki leaned back in his chair and blew a perfect smoke ring, watching it drift towards the ceiling.
Dr Lim had been arrested some days before and had been asked to be the leader of the newly formed Overseas Chinese Association. When he refused, citing frail health and extreme age, Shinozaki had been ordered to persuade him to accept. During the time Shinozaki was with him, Dr Lim’s old wife had been made to kneel for hours in the scorching sun, subjected to brutal insults. All this Dr Lim had watched through an open window. None of it was to Shinozaki’s liking, but he was unable to protest. Instead, he had reasoned with the old man, whose long white beard and kindly face gave Shinozaki the confidence to address him as ‘Papa’. Finally, after listening to sounds of his wife’s increasing discomfort, Lim Boon Keng had meekly agreed to lead the Overseas Chinese Association. Remembering this, Shinozaki returned his gaze to Mei Lan.
‘I am about to submit a list to the kempetai of prominent people who should be released from prison to run this new organisation. It is being suggested that wealthy men, such as your grandfather, should make a donation in apology for their previous anti-Japanese behaviour. I will put your grandfather’s name on the list. That is the best I can do.’ Shinozaki pulled deeply on his cigarette, still staring at Mei Lan.
After the visit to Shinozaki, Mei Lan and Howard began the long walk back to Bougainvillaea House in awkward silence. As they hurried along in the darkness, the sound of soldiers’ voices occasionally reached them and Howard drew Mei Lan into the shadows until the danger had passed. As they neared Cairnhill, they saw a long queue of drunken soldiers, waiting before a block of terraced houses for their turn with the women kept prisoner there. Howard pulled Mei Lan quickly away and they ran, seeking another route to Bukit Timah. Only when they neared Bougainvillaea House and were on familiar ground did they sit down at the side of the road, catching their breath, the tension easing at last. The moon was full and lit the road with its cool light.
‘Why didn’t you write when you were in Hong Kong? I wrote to you for a while each day,’ Howard burst out, unable to contain the turmoil of emotions that had burned in him all evening. Mei Lan stared at him in distress.
‘I wrote each day and you never answered,’ she replied.
Piece by piece, they unravelled what must have happened: that Howard’s letters had been intercepted by Mei Lan’s father before they reached her, and her letters to Howard, which she had always given to a maid to secretly post, had been taken straight to her father. Howard would have kissed her then but the sound of a car, travelling at speed down the shrapnel-pitted surface of Bukit Timah, forced them to draw apart and begin the last short stretch of their journey. At last, as they reached Bougainvillaea House, Howard drew her to him.
‘Tomorrow we’re going to our cousin Lionel in Katong,’ he told her as they parted, explaining the commandeering of the house by the military.
‘I’ll find a way to get back here, to see you,’ he promised after explaining in detail where Lionel lived.
Next day Lim Hock An returned home, pushed out of a military vehicle before the gate of Bougainvillaea House. Second Grandmother gave a cry of distress as the car shot off with a screech of tyres, and tottered forward on her ivory-topped canes to where her husband lay. Mei Lan, followed by Ah Siew, ran to the half-conscious Lim Hock An. The houseboys, Ah Pang and Ah Fat carried the old man upstairs and lowered him gently on to his Blackwood bed. Bruises and burn marks covered his body and his fingers bled where his nails had been ripped out. Whatever else had been done to him they never knew for, within a few hours, Lim Hock An silently died, never regaining full consciousness
Later that evening Bertie limped home, blubbering and trembling. His soft egg of a brain had saved him from death. The soldiers, seeing his infirmity, had impatiently tossed him aside, not bothering to waste a bullet on him. Running off, he had crouched down behind a clump of tall lallang, shivering and shaking, to watch JJ’s execution on a beach as the tide came up. The sea had run red with blood, he sobbed.