The Pearl of Penang by Clare Flynn (best books to read for students txt) 📗

training military and civilians – policemen and planters, locals too. We’re going to be in small teams, working behind the Japanese lines. But we’ve left it too late for an effective plan. We just have to do the best we can.’

He looked away. But Evie didn’t need to hear the words know what the implications were. Douglas was dead, Aunty Mimi’s husband and Frank were and it was probable Arthur would be killed too.

A tear rolled down her cheek. Arthur took his thumb and wiped it away. Bending towards her, he kissed her softly on the mouth. ‘Stay safe, Evie. I love you.’ He left without a backward glance, melting into the throng of people.

29

The train journey to Singapore passed in a blur. The carriages were packed, people sitting or standing in the corridors, and Evie sent up a silent prayer of thanks that Arthur had been able to secure seats for them. As well as Mary Helston and her mother, Susan Hyde-Underwood and Stanford, four other women and two schoolboys shared the cramped space.

Evie forbade herself from feeling any discontent, knowing that she and all the other passengers had walked out on the servants, shopkeepers, policemen, gardeners, estate workers, teachers and students that made up the non-European population. These people loathed and feared the Japanese as much as the whites did. Aunty Mimi had witnessed her husband being gunned down in the street. The old lady had loved and cared for Jasmine and her baby brother. Years of faithful service, of trust and loyalty, betrayed. Evie felt an acute sense of shame. She looked over at Mary, who was sitting in silence gazing into the darkness beyond the window. Most of Mary’s teaching colleagues were Malays. How must she feel, knowing that they had been let down? And Benny, who had served with the Volunteers, recruited by Douglas and an enthusiastic member, assiduous in attending drills and exercises. Benny had a wife and four small children. What would become of them?

Lurching along in the darkness, the sticky tropical heat of the Malayan night bathed Evie in sweat. It was hard keeping Jasmine and the two schoolboys entertained, not to mention the baby and Stanford, who was now a toddler, when there wasn’t even anything to see through the window. Hugh, at eighteen months old, was a substantial weight to hold in her arms for a train journey of more than ten hours. Staring blankly into the blackness of the jungle, broken only by the lights of kampongs, she saw occasional fires burning in the distance – a token belated effort towards the failed scorched earth policy of the British.

Her thoughts returned to Arthur. She tried to picture him, hiding in dense undergrowth, boot polish applied to his face, as he moved secretly behind enemy lines. Her imagination kept failing her. Where were those enemy lines and where and how would Arthur and other white-skinned men hope to hide from detection? While Arthur, and no doubt his colleagues, spoke Malay, it was impossible he could pass as a native. As well as the risk of being caught by the advancing Japanese, there was the risk of being seen and betrayed by frightened local villagers. Their abandonment by their former white masters surely made their support for any stay-behind British unlikely. And no doubt, if the Malays didn’t turn them in to the Japanese, and the British guerrillas were subsequently discovered, the repercussions would be fatal for the Malays, so who could blame them?

She squeezed her eyes tightly shut. It was all too horrible to think about. If Arthur was operating undercover, he would lack the protection afforded by a military uniform. Not that Evie had a lot of confidence that the Japanese would respect the Geneva Conventions anyway. She’d heard enough about the terrible massacres that had taken place in China in the Sino-Japanese war to make her feel sick to the stomach.

Hugh, as if sensing that tonight was no night for misbehaving, had gone off to sleep quickly, lulled by the movement of the train as it hurried along between the dark shapes of palm oil and rubber trees and virgin jungle. Evie let her thoughts drift back to Arthur’s final words to her, his promise that if they both got through this war alive, they would one day be together.

It was almost a year since Douglas’s death. The passing of time had helped her to accept what had happened, but she still missed her husband. She hadn’t loved him the way she loved Arthur. They had never been soul mates, but she had cared for him deeply despite his shortcomings as a husband and a companion. Now that she’d had time to reflect on her marriage and Doug’s character, Evie believed she had come closer to understanding him since his death than she ever had while he was alive.

Douglas had been damaged as a child and that damage had persisted into the character of the adult man. It had stunted him, crippled him emotionally just as the fall into the tin mine had crippled him physically. But Evie was beginning to feel able to follow the words of the Taoist monk and forgive herself for her inability to love Douglas as much as she would have liked to or thought she ought to. And at last, she could forgive herself, because with his death she had completely forgiven him.

Looking past her reflection in the train window into the inky blackness beyond, Evie allowed herself to think of Arthur again in a way she’d forbidden herself from doing over the months since Doug’s accident. That soft brush of his lips against hers tonight had reignited a fire inside Evie that hadn’t burned since the afternoon on the beach in the weeks before war was declared. How long ago that seemed. Another era.

When she and Arthur had sat side-by-side under the casuarina trees, the idea of the British abandoning Malaya had been inconceivable. Now it was happening. By the