Томас Кенэлли: The Widow and Her Hero

We know the bugger was softening us up, but you’ve got to take what mercies there are. We were happy for the moment but uneasy for the future. We could tell it might be a Kempei stunt. But we had to take what came, punches or privileges.

After Christmas, they began questioning us again. In our interrogations after Christmas we played dumb about other members of the party. But they mixed up their act on us. Sometimes they would offer us one of their cigarettes, but another time they would get in an NCO to punch us again and again. Sometimes they’d just make us kneel on a sharp piece of dowling or bamboo, while the NCO burned us with cigarette ends. And one day they poured the water not only down my throat but pumped it into my rectum. Hidaka would be there. But to be fair to him, he didn’t like any of it. Everyone – could tell that. Them and us.

We had a reason not to tell them about the blokes still on the loose. Hugo Danway was out in the Lingga Archipelago, probably trying to capture a junk. The idea of us stalling the Japanese while the others got away was at the forefront of our minds. Long sessions. But it was milder than what happened on Bintang. We kept saying the junk carried folboats and limpets, because they knew that already.

I remember old Mr McBride, the Minister of Defence who more than forty years ago gave us a miserable day in Canberra. I refuse to quote directly what Leo says in case this little memoir addressed to no one but my granddaughter should by evil chance, however remote, become public and the McBrides of this earth seize on it. Hidaka and Lieutenant Sunitono knew the prisoners were hiding something, for there were references in both Filmer’s captured journal, and in Rufus’s, to something named SBs.

This is the story Hidaka told Lydon. It had been noticed that Jockey tried to talk in Mandarin to one of the Chinese orderlies. The orderly was authorised by Lieutenant Sunitono to pass on the details of the deaths of Doucette and Rufus – Sunitono guessed it would put Leo and the others in a depressed and less guarded state of mind.

Jockey’s been talking to this Chinese orderly who takes us back to our cells. He told Jockey the Boss was killed by grenades and is buried on one of the islands. So is Rufus, dead of wounds and poison.

The Chinese guard wouldn’t risk telling us if it’s not so, and a pall is over us. I’m certain the Boss let himself be killed so there’d be no retaliation against his wife and stepson. We knew something must have happened to him and Rufus, but to get the final news is dreadful.

So the next day, Sunitono told Hidaka to ask Leo, What about these SBs? It was shallow where you sank the junk. And so our divers have found the wreckage of them. They’re no secret any more, Captain Waterhouse.

That’s the lie Leo fell for. And if he fell for it gratefully, who would not gratefully fall for it? But it meant that fat sleek men who never knew danger would for ever refuse him posthumous honour.

The next day, as a further grace note, Hidaka told Leo and the others that there were twenty Malays under death sentence for the Cornflakes explosion. Leo spoke to the other veterans of Cornflakes, and they offered to make a joint confession to Hidaka, to which they appended an appeal for the release of the Malays.

Hugo Danway and a sickly, shrunken officer named Dinny Bilson also turned up at the YMCA now. Bilson was sadly depleted and had only a few tufts of his fair hair left. They had tried to capture a Chinese prahu but the crew had sold them to the Japanese. They reported that Private Appin, who had hurled grenades for Doucette, had been captured too, but was very ill when they saw him in the gaol at Surabaya. There were two left, including Dignam, the old Foreign Legion veteran, who were still out there heading south-east for Australia.

There had been one small success for Memerang. A particular Japanese naval officer who had failed to have any success interrogating Hugo and the others sat down in a Surabaya restaurant and blew his brains out. But they would never know that.

So Memerang were interrogated and, when the naval prosecution considered its evidence was complete, they were moved to Outram Road Gaol, a huge old British prison which would not have been out of place architecturally in the Home Counties of Britain. And they were tried at Raffles College, and condemned, and came back to Outram Road, which they called the Grand Hotel because there the torture was at least random, not structured.

You wouldn’t believe, Grace, how calm I am now, here in Outram Road. The way I see things, I’ve got two people to be thankful to. One’s Hidaka and the other’s mad old Filmer. He’s such a character. I’ve got to say it’s just as well we’ve got him here. Hidaka’s brought Filmer some books from the Raffles College Library, and they’re P. G. Wodehouse stories which Filmer reads us at night in all the right Pommy accents and gets us laughing. Could have been an actor, Filmer, and he might be, he says, if he gets out of here. He says he knows some fellows in the Royal Marines that have got connections at the BBC. He also says that he’s related through his mother to one of Bernard Shaw’s Irish brothers. Filmer says they were all drunks, except George Bernard Shaw, who was a vegetarian, but he was just as mad as them without taking to drink. Filmer can do all the accents in Shaw too, this book of plays, Plays for Puritans, Hidaka gave him. The Devil’s Disciple is the best one of the three plays for us, because it’s like our situation, men under sentence, etc. In fact we’ve started calling ourselves the DDs – the Devil’s Disciples. We like the chief character’s gumption. None of us are really keen on Caesar and Cleopatra, but Captain Brassbound’s Conversion has a whole range of accents in it.

They’ve given us a mess room, and during meal times Filmer organises us into parts and goes through our lines with us, and then after lock-up we’ve got Blinkhorn, who has got better quicker than we could have hoped, doing Cockney from one cell and Hugo Danway doing the Yankee Captain Kearney from another, and Filmer doing Lady Cecily from a third, and prompting us, and it’s all great for our spirits. I’m doing a couple of Captain Brassbound’s sidekicks at the moment, but I’m going to take over the role of Brassbound from Jockey in a week or so. Jockey can do an English gentleman’s accent, you wouldn’t believe it. I really take back everything I ever might have said about Filmer. There’s a heavy-lidded guard we call Sleepy. He lets us make a fair bit of noise. It must be okay with his superiors. He looks like a fellow who’s in the army by mistake, shows a lot of patience, but when his temper goes, he’s frightful. We saw him beat a poor Dutchman dreadfully a week back. As the fellow stood outside his cell. He must have smiled or something – Sleepy can do that to you, sadder than a donkey in a cartoon one moment and the angel of death the next. I took a risk one day with him – he was putting Mel and Filmer in the same cell, as usual, and I knew they had something gnawing between them, so I said, No, not him, pointing to Mel. Him. And I pointed to Jockey. And to my surprise he let me nominate who went in with who, so everyone gets variety, a good thing for them and me, and it’s easy for us to pass on messages. Sleepy must know that, but I suppose he knows too we’ve got nowhere to go and no more harm to do. And that added to the play rehearsals – we were able to rehearse each other’s lines very closely – I suppose we’re getting a bit obsessed with it all. I almost got to consider if I want to be an actor instead of a lawyer.

As for Hidaka, he brings us bags of these little Chinese lollies, and they’re delicious – it’s amazing how much like heaven sugar is when you haven’t had any for a long time.