MR HO TURNED HIS head and from his bed raised a weak hand in greeting. His bony knees were drawn up under the cotton sheet in a mountainous shape. Raj remembered the asthmatic portliness of the man when they had first met on the trolleybus at Kreta Ayer. The effort of welcome set off a new bout of coughing, Mr Ho turned to spit into an enamel bowl then leaned back on his pillows, exhausted. A window beyond the bed looked on to a straggly papaya tree in which Myna birds squawked and quarrelled.
‘Do not talk,’ Raj ordered and Mrs Ho, hovering nearby, nodded agreement; she too had shrunk to bird-like proportions and her eyes were opaque and rheumy. Neither of the old people could come to terms with their son Luke’s murder in the war time massacre of young Chinese men. A friend of Luke’s, who had also been apprehended by the Japanese, had come to the house to tell them. Luke and fifty others had been taken in a lorry to the seventh milestone on Siglap Road. Luke’s friend had managed to loose his bindings and made a run for the nearby jungle. From there he had watched Luke gunned down with everyone else by Japanese soldiers.
As Raj pulled up a chair beside the old man’s bed, the blood-curdling cries of Ho’s grandsons playing in the yard outside floated through the window, but the mouth-watering smell of biscuits no longer filled the air. Since the return of the British the factory had been closed; flour was unavailable to Mr Ho because of his collaboration with the enemy.
‘History repeats itself,’ Mr Ho sighed, remembering the buckets of tar and the dead cats on his veranda at the time of the boycott of Japanese goods by the China Relief Fund. He had done well out of the occupation, awarded a licence to bake in bulk for the military. At Mr Yamaguchi’s insistence, a Japanese general had sampled a Ho biscuit and liked it. Raj observed Mr Ho’s decline with distress, for the old man had been like a father to him.
‘The closure of the factory can only be temporary. Soon you will be allowed to reopen; food is needed, everyone is hungry and Ho Biscuits are known as the best,’ Raj tried to comfort Mr Ho. The old man placed a bird-like hand upon Raj’s arm, looking anxiously at him from old eyes clouded by cataracts.
‘Now that the British have returned we’re in for another round of internments. It’s getting to feel like a merry-go-round. All the Japanese civilians here are to be interned once again, just like they were before the surrender. They’ve already taken Yoshiko along with her parents, Mr and Mrs Yamaguchi, to a camp at Jurong. Yoshiko is still a Japanese citizen, but the boys are Chinese like their father. Because of this they were not interned, and are allowed to remain here with us.’ Mr Ho drew a trembling breath before continuing.
‘Once all Japanese civilians are rounded up, they are to be repatriated to Japan. They will send Yoshiko away from her children; already the poor boys are fatherless. Speak to Mr Shinozaki. I believe he is the only Japanese who has not been interned. Perhaps even now he can do something to help us.’ Mr Ho began to cough again. Raj thought of Yoshiko, the fullness of her soft upper lip, the creamy skin of her cheeks, the light flowery scent that lifted from her and felt a stab of anxiety.
‘Mr Shinozaki was not interned because so many people pleaded on his behalf after the good things he did for everyone. I hear he is now working with the British Army Field Security Service. I will go to him at once,’ Raj reassured the old man.
Mr Ho nodded in relief as Mrs Ho returned to the room, followed by a houseboy carrying a tray with glasses of barley water and tapioca chips. The Myna birds set up a new squabble in the branches of the tree outside the window, and Mr Ho beckoned Raj nearer, speaking above the din of the birds.
‘I want you to take over Ho Biscuits,’ he rasped in a shaky voice. Raj straightened up in shock, thinking he might have misheard Mr Ho.
‘I do not have long; we all know that. I have left everything to the boys and Yoshiko. She has helped me run the factory since Luke was killed, and managed it herself since I became sick. After me it will be difficult for her alone. You must take a partnership and help Yoshiko when I’m gone. She will do the day-to-day running of the place but she needs someone like you beside her. There is no one I can trust, but you are like a son to me. It is all written down in my will.’ Mr Ho leaned back on the pillow, exhausted by this long speech. Raj tried to control the emotion that flooded through him at Mr Ho’s extraordinary words.
Within a moment Mr Ho, now at peace with himself, fell asleep and began to snore, his mouth open upon toothless gums. Raj left the room and took his leave of Mrs Ho who was supervising the preparation of food in the kitchen. The veranda steps were splintered, a plank near the bottom was missing and to steady himself Raj put a hand on the wooden rail. The old house had come to feel like home and he looked about proprietorially; he had only to step inside the gate to feel a sense of security. When he took over Ho Biscuits, Raj decided, he would immediately repair the broken steps and leaking roof and then renovate the factory sheds; he might import machinery from England. Even as the idea took shape, Raj was ashamed that his mind could run ahead of events so rabidly. Mr Ho’s grandsons were still playing in the yard with wooden swords. As soon as they saw Raj they ran to him.
‘Uncle, Uncle,’ they yelled, dancing about him. He dug into his pocket with a broad smile and pulled out a handful of coins that he divided between them. The boys ran off, shouting their thanks. It was the usual procedure; whenever he visited he made sure he had a good supply of coins. He did not think Leila would ever give him a nephew now, and it was hard to tell when he would marry and have children of his own. Until that time he was happy to treat Yoshiko’s sons as his own.
It did not take long for Raj to find Shinozaki at the British Army Field Security Service headquarters. He had lost his puckish grin, but otherwise appeared as always, dressed in a dark suit and tie. Raj was allowed to meet him in a busy reception room with rickety rattan chairs, a ceiling fan and a couple of desks. The room was constantly astir as people walked in and out on various missions. British army personnel were everywhere and it was strange to see again tall thin men in khaki shorts, instead of small men in high boots or puttees. Unexpectedly, a bowl of orange heliconia sat vividly on a table, lifting the threadbare room.
‘I picked them this morning. They grow beside the entrance,’ Shinozaki explained as he came forward to greet Raj, seeing his approving gaze.
‘You have to pick them as soon as they bloom, otherwise they become full of insects,’ Shinozaki said over his shoulder, as he led Raj to some basket chairs with worn cushions.
‘What do they do in this place?’ Raj asked, looking about him.
‘It is an investigative unit,’ Shinozaki explained importantly. ‘Now the war is over, the British want to understand our Japanese battle strategy and how we administered Singapore. They also want information the kempetai gained about communists during interrogations. With this information the British will know later how to control things. They feel I can be of help to them, as a translator and liaison officer. I translate the kempetai interrogation reports that were handed to the Field Security Service at the transfer of power. Some kempei ran away at the time of surrender, but they have since been caught and brought back here and it is my job to question them. All these British Field Security Service men are very intelligent people.’ There was a note of pride in Shinozaki’s voice at being associated with such men, even if they were former enemies.
As they sat down, two Gurkhas entered the room with a tall, dignified Malay wearing handcuffs. He was released to a waiting British officer and led away up a corridor as Raj and Shinozaki watched.
‘That man, Mohammad Abdullah, is also helping the British to understand Japanese operations with regard to the Malays. I have spoken with him. I believe he knows your friend Howard,’ Shinozaki said and Raj looked with interest at the Malay. The diplomat shook his head ruefully.
‘I’m lucky not to be handcuffed like him but to live in comfort here at Field Security Headquarters. Every day that poor man is taken back to Outram Prison. He was a member of a group working for Malayan independence, the KMM, and associated with Major Fujiwara’s intelligence outfit, just like the Indian National Army people. However, I am told he raised his gun to a Japanese officer who he says insulted the Malay race. All we Japanese wanted was to form these KMM men into a military force like the Indian National Army, but Malays are too peaceable; no one wants to fight.’
‘How is Takeshi?’ Raj asked. The mention of Major Fujiwara had reminded him of his Japanese teacher.
‘Takeshi is dead. He died the day after the surrender. Along with many others, he killed himself in shame.’ Shinozaki shook his head sadly. Raj sat forward in shock, the image of Takeshi’s prominent winged ears suddenly before him. The room was uncomfortably hot; there were no fans and a shaft of sun fell upon Raj, forcing him to move his chair nearer to Shinozaki.
When at last Raj explained about Yoshiko, Mr Shinozaki nodded. ‘I too was interned at first. I walked with Yoshiko and her parents to the camp in Jurong. It was a long walk and a great ordeal for Mr and Mrs Yamaguchi. On the way Chinese children threw stones at us, and this angered many of our people. I told them, we forced the British to walk to Changi and now they are making us walk to Jurong. We cannot complain. This is how things are in war. I carried old Mrs Yamaguchi on my back for the last few miles. I will ask if something can be done for Yoshiko,’ Shinozaki promised as Raj stood up to take his leave.
Raj now had his own car. It was a second-hand vehicle and he had acquired it just before the surrender with the help of Shinozaki, but nowadays he used a rickshaw or a trishaw to get around and left the car at home. The special licences Raj had had from the Japanese military, to trade in cloth and other commodities, had made him a wealthy man. Yet, it was now dangerous to be seen as having prospered under the Japanese. Raj had not ventured far beyond Manikam’s Cloth Shop for days. Gangs of locals still roamed the streets, meting out vigilante justice to those they viewed as collaborator ‘dogs’. At the height of the fear, Raj had heard of people being killed on the spot, or tied to lamp posts and having their ears and noses hacked off. It was impossible to hide his association with Shinozaki, but the man’s largely benevolent reputation had overflowed advantageously onto Raj. The British were slowly picking up the pieces, and this terrifying anarchy of the streets, encouraged by the communists in the Malayan Peoples Anti-Japanese Army, had all but ceased. In spite of this, Raj still kept a low profile. He was thankful that, before the surrender, he had invested his money with Shinozaki’s help in a terrace house on Waterloo Street with a narrow front but a roomy interior.
Leila and Krishna had moved with him into the place, and lived in the upper part of the house, while Raj had his home on the ground floor. It was a spacious residence compared to the cramped rooms above Manikam’s Cloth Shop or the tenement room Krishna had rented. Krishna had resumed his job at the Ramakrishna Mission School and Raj, his once illiterate student, was now his landlord, although no rent was ever taken. Krishna’s meagre salary was barely enough to keep himself and Leila. All his dreams were now painfully threadbare. India was not yet free of colonial rule and Subhas Chandra Bose was dead, killed in Taiwan at the end of the war, in a mysterious plane crash.
On reaching Waterloo Street, Raj paid off the trishaw and approached his house, gazing up as always with a sense of proud bewilderment. The pungent aroma of cooking hit him even before a servant opened the door. He sniffed and thought he detected the smell of mutton curry and wondered where Leila could have found goat meat; food was so scarce people fought over scraps, and the ration shop queues were even longer than those under the Japanese.
‘Your nose is playing tricks on you; still only tapioca. You’re just smelling our black market spices,’ Leila said as Raj greeted her.
Leila had taken over the management of the house. They no longer ate from banana leaves on the floor, but from banana leaves on a table sitting on upright chairs. The main room was furnished with a narrow wooden bench and a rattan sofa, a standing bookshelf and a sideboard, in which Leila kept a Japanese tea set hand painted with scenes of Mount Fuji. A large cupboard was built into one wall and a metal almirah with a lock and key in which they kept their valuables, stood beside the window. There was also more than enough room in the house for a wife, should Raj decide to marry.
As a servant appeared with the food, Krishna entered the room, his hair dishevelled, the smell of alcohol about him. Leila looked at him coldly. A large framed photograph of Subhas Chandra Bose hung on the wall behind the table, draped with a garland of everlasting flowers. With a respectful glance at the picture, Krishna pressed his hands together in obedience to Netaji. Taking his place at the table, he sat silently hunched over his food, his face thin and morose. Two deep frown lines were now etched between Krishna’s brows like antennae sprouting from the bridge of his spectacles. Netaji’s violent death in Taiwan had engulfed him in such desolation it seemed he might never recover.
Everything had collapsed for Krishna with the disbanding of the Indian National Army. The Indian soldiers, who had crossed from the British Indian Army to the Indian National Army, had all been arrested by the returning British authority and shipped to India to be tried as traitors in Delhi. To save their lives, civilian soldiers like Krishna had quickly discarded their uniforms and melted back into everyday life. Every time he shut his eyes, Krishna remembered it all anew. They had trekked up the Malay Peninsula and into Thailand, the women of the Rani of Jhansi Regiment in trucks, the men walking, and then on through Burma to the border town of Imphal. At last they were almost in sight of Delhi. From the slopes of the hills and from the encroaching jungle there were calls of Inquilab Zindabad and Azad Hind Zindabad from the different INA regiments. Shots rang out. Someone fell beside him as they ran, rolling ahead of him down the slope, blood pouring from his head, but Krishna could not stop to help. They had fought for sixteen hours. They had waited for this fight and the great distance they travelled had been fuelled every mile by hope and then at Imphal after the terrible battle, came the news that they must retreat. Netaji spoke to them, giving them strength.
‘Our retreat is a temporary retreat. We are not going to stop until India is liberated.’ Krishna heard Netaji’s voice in his mind once again, and then suddenly, rudely, there was Raj’s voice, bringing him back to reality.
‘So you have decided to come home,’ Raj remarked to Krishna, as he joined them at the table. He exchanged a glance with Leila. Krishna had not been seen for the last two days, and Leila had been sick with worry about him.
‘Why are you spending your time with left wing rabble, and worrying your sister?’ Raj was unable to keep the anger out of his voice. Krishna frowned but did not reply. Taking hungry mouthfuls of food, he kept his thoughts upon Netaji. Krishna’s regiment had suffered appalling casualties, both in the battle and on the retreat from Imphal. It took nearly two weeks to reach Bangkok. Krishna arrived alive but half-starved and in a terrible condition; he had marched for one thousand miles. Now he tried to shut out the voices of his sister and his brother-in-law, but they would not let him be.
‘Nowadays, he is keeping the company of communists and mad radicals, and not fighting any longer for a pure cause. Netaji kept him straight,’ Leila commented bitterly. Krishna stirred and emotion flooded his face.
‘The Japanese murdered him because he was seeking Russian help to liberate India. When Russia declared war on Japan they killed him; his plane was sabotaged,’ Krishna raged.
‘Go back properly to your school teaching. How will the Ramakrishna Mission School keep you if you run around with communists?’ Leila reproved him.
‘The British are promising India independence next year. You should be happy such a great dream is at last coming true,’ Raj said. Both brother and sister looked sternly at Krishna over the table.
‘Communism is the same as socialism, only stronger. I am always for left-hand thinking,’ Krishna growled.
‘If workers rise up against employers, how will commerce function? Who will make the world go round in a sensible way, if only left-hand rabble are ruling? No one will be able to make any money,’ Raj raised his eyebrows.
After school finished at the Ramakrishna Mission Krishna wandered the streets, getting drunk or debating politics with one or another group of left-wing rabble. Netaji’s death had destabilised him. He came home late at night, throwing himself down on the old string bed, his breath foul with home-brewed liquor. He refused to sleep on the new Western-style beds Raj had acquired for his house, and always woke late with a hangover so that Leila must make excuses to the school to explain why he did not appear.
‘Too much education has made your brain mad in old age.’ Leila sighed, thinking of the idealistic man she had married, and how many things had changed between them.
‘You have become a fanatic,’ Raj announced in a critical voice. ‘And you are an Imperialist. Only interested in money and in consorting with that Japanese Imperialist Ho Ho woman,’ Krishna shouted. Leila stared at him in alarm, and Raj looked as if he had been slapped.
The subject of Yoshiko Ho was a sensitive one for them all. Leila had met the woman several times over the years, but since Mr Ho’s decline she had become uncomfortably aware of her brother’s interest in Yoshiko. She could not understand it. Yoshiko was unfailingly polite and affable when they met, but Leila found her so self-contained, so neat and precise, so different from anyone she had ever met; it was difficult to fathom the woman.
Several times over the years she had gone to a matchmaker or tried to engineer a suitable match for Raj. Nothing had materialised because Raj himself refused to take any prospective bride seriously. Now, Leila realised, his negative attitude towards an arranged marriage sprang from his interest in Yoshiko Ho. Perhaps, she thought, he may only recently have stumbled upon his real sentiments, now that Mr Ho was so feeble and Yoshiko was in such ascendancy at Ho Biscuits. Their working relationship had allowed an intimacy to blossom, Leila thought, hot with a jealousy that surprised her.
She too was now a businesswoman. Every day she spent some hours helping in Manikam’s Cloth Shop at her brother’s request. Krishna did not like this. Although, at the time of their marriage, he said he wanted a modern woman, Leila found his ideas of what was modern differed from her own. The war had changed them both. At Manikam’s, business had picked up, not for cloth which was still largely unavailable, but for all the cheap sundry items Leila suggested the shop should sell, such as needles and thread, scissors and buttons, paper and ink, boot polish, tape measures and shoulder pads. She had persuaded Raj to drop the words Cloth Shop and call the place simply, Manikam’s. A new sign had gone up above the shop.
After lunch was finished and Raj had returned to his rooms downstairs, Leila lay down upon the old string charpoy; like her husband she too rejected her brother’s purchase of the hard new Western-style bed. Krishna had stormed out of the house and might not return until the early hours; she had not confided to her brother the extent of her worry about him. Across the room the wooden crib on rockers that Krishna had found before her first miscarriage was now used as a receptacle for all manner of oddments, its homely status representing her acceptance that she would never now bear a child. Yoshiko Ho had two sons who Leila knew looked upon Raj as an honorary uncle, if not an honorary father. It was more than she could bear. There was so much she wanted to do, so much that might have been.
Within a week Mr Ho died and was given a Christian burial. Raj stood at the graveside with the family. As the coffin was lowered into the grave Mrs Ho slumped forward as if in grief. Yoshiko and Raj bent to her in concern, but saw with horror that she too was dead. The grave was left open and quickly widened to take two coffins instead of one. Within a day Raj stood at a further funeral beside Yoshiko Ho and her sons.
‘Uncle, we have no one now but you,’ the elder of Mr Ho’s grandsons said tearfully as they left the cemetery. Yoshiko nodded agreement, dabbing her eyes with a handkerchief. Thanks to Mr Shinozaki she had soon returned home, but her old parents were still interned at Jurong. Raj put a fatherly hand on the boy’s shoulder, looking over his head at Yoshiko’s tearful face, and knew he would do whatever he could to help them.
Howard sat wedged behind a small round table, a remnant from Belvedere’s heyday of lodgers and that Rose had salvaged from the house. Mavis cooked him breakfast on a primus stove; the hot room was full of the smell of frying egg.
‘Soon the British will have things back to normal; at least now we live without fear.’ Rose looked up from darning Howard’s socks, to stare hopefully out of the window at the huddle of makeshift dwellings that still filled her garden.
Howard frowned and finished in one mouthful the tiny Bantam egg that Mavis had bartered for a spoonful of sugar from a squatter who kept a hen. Their shabby life, crowded into one room of Belvedere amongst an army of malnourished strangers, and queuing all day at the ration shops, did not give him hope.
‘The British may be back but unemployment is phenomenally high and the cost of living is just, well, unliveable,’ Howard remarked, wiping his mouth on the back of his hand.
‘Restoring life to a broken city is a daunting task,’ Rose replied reprovingly, continuing with her darning. Howard felt a moment of fury as he stared at his mother’s bent grey head.
‘Nothing will ever be the same again, and the British know it. When they knew they were losing the war the Japanese gave Indonesia, the Philippines and Vietnam their independence, handing over to nationalist movements. If the Japanese surrender had been just a little later, Malaya too might have been independent by now. We have a right to rule ourselves; that’s the one thing we’ve learned from the war.’ Howard could not control his impatience and his voice rose angrily. He remembered the gangs of starving British prisoners of war forced by the Japanese to clear the town of corpses. That sight alone had altered everyone’s perspective of British invincibility.
Howard still woke with bad dreams and experienced bizarre flashbacks, but the sores on his limbs had healed, his hair had thickened and his gums no longer itched. Although the dank green chamber of the jungle with its grim secret life still held him, its grip had lessened in the months since his return to Belvedere. Small things no longer upset him so quickly, and at every turn the familiar reasserted its hold on him. Slowly, he reclaimed himself.
‘No one here wants independence.’ Rose put down her darning heel, observing him anxiously. She viewed Howard’s extreme political views as a further residue of his unspeakable ordeal in the jungle and hoped that like his gums and his hair, this too would respond to loving care. Although it had taken some months, there was flesh on Howard’s bones again and his defensive expression had eased; he looked much more himself, Rose thought with relief.
Howard decided not to pursue the subject of change that always irritated his mother. Life in the jungle with Wee Jack, for all its fear and hardship, had forced upon him a political awareness from which there was no turning back. Through the comrades in the camp, he had gained painful insight into lives of grinding poverty and the struggle to live without education or privilege. He had begun to think about things as he had not before.
After many months, Howard had returned to the Harbour Board, one of a lucky few to get a job. He found everything much as he had left it and yet, like everywhere else, irrevocably changed. He had returned resignedly, in need of money, depressed by the place as it closed around him again. Working from the same office, he once more overlooked the dock and the sea, but what remained of the quay was just a pile of bomb rubble. The arrival of ships was still infrequent, and even these could not dock easily in port because of wrecked vessels in the water. The port was awash like everywhere else with gamblers and prostitutes and opium dens, all of which had been legalised by the Japanese. Secret societies proliferated and strikes were to be expected each week. The only thing that heartened Howard was meeting Teddy de Souza again. It had shocked him to see the man no longer sitting at a desk, but doing the lowly work of a messenger boy, stooped and emaciated. When he had first seen Teddy’s bent figure hurrying along a corridor, he had not believed it.
‘The days of Calthrop were halcyon ones,’ Teddy de Souza sighed. He had been just a month in England with his daughter before war broke out and trapped him there. They sat outside in the shade of the building, and shared some tapioca chips Rose had packed for Howard’s lunch.
‘Took the first boat I could find back here when it all ended. We didn’t see the best of England,’ Teddy sighed sadly again.
‘Olive died in the Blitz, you know, buried beneath our daughter Elizabeth’s home. When peace came Elizabeth and her husband Jim decided to emigrate to Australia. They told me to go with them, but I’m too old to make a fresh start. Besides, there’s no place like home. Couldn’t wait to get back here,’ Teddy said, chewing contemplatively on a tapioca chip. His hair was now no more than a few sparse grey strands stretched over an oily scalp, and his sad eyes were deeply pouched behind a pair of cheap glasses. He had come back to live in a crowded rooming house, and shared a bed with another man.
‘He does a night shift and I do a day shift. Works out just fine; he has the bed by day and its mine each night,’ Teddy gave a weak chuckle.
‘How can you come back here and do a peon’s work?’ Howard asked, distressed at Teddy’s plight.
‘Didn’t think a bright boy like you would still be at the Harbour Board,’ Teddy retorted defensively.
‘What else can I do?’ Howard replied, seeing again the powerlessness of his life. His mother talked about making his way up the ladder, but when he looked up there was always the inevitable European backside above him.
‘You’re just a young sapling, boy. You’ve still got a chance to do what you want with your life. No doubt the British will get it back together again, but the calibre of the men they’re sending out now leaves something to be desired.’
Howard knew what Teddy meant. These days he worked under someone much younger than Calthrop. Mr Lambeth, with his narrow jaw, wide forehead and deep-set watchful eyes had fought in the war and killed Germans. The effect of such deeds had undermined him; he was a man in search of opportunity and the lining of his pockets. He was not averse to petty black market trading or even weightier work, and Teddy de Souza knew all about it.
‘I’ve heard it said he’s pilfering large quantities of goods from the harbour warehouse, commodities that are meant for the ration shops and selling it on the black market. Also buys watches and jewellery from anyone here, small things to put in his pocket and sell again in England. Making a packet on it all – many of these new men are doing it. Whatever his faults, our Mr Calthrop would not have stooped to that; shows how times have changed.’
Howard had been given a supervisory position as a section manager, but like everyone else worked hard for low wages. As Calthrop had done before, he now took his own boarding parties to the ships, checking cargo and tonnage, and found himself responsible for his team of men and involved in the training of harbour labour. The problems of his men concerned him, as did the living conditions of the workers and the sight of gangs of emaciated coolies hauling unthinkable weights. The war and life in the jungle had changed him; he had accepted such sights before.