The Plantation Part 26

'Why are you doing that?' he asked in a worried voice.

'Now I know that the war is over. We'll be going home,' sang out Bette.

Evelyn was studying the contents of one of the parcels. 'You know what? I bet this is old stuff. I think this food has been sitting in that shed for d.a.m.ned years while we starved and died.'

There was a stunned silence. 'Do you think so? The b.a.s.t.a.r.ds,' said Norma.

'Now, ladies. Let's have some order to this,' shouted June. 'Let's sort through systematically, what we have and take it to the kitchen.'

'Let's have a party,' called out Norma.

After that, it was happy chaos as children ran off with chocolate bars and women sat drinking proper coffee with tinned milk. The soldiers left them to it. After a slap-up meal, a sing-song and a prayer of thanks led by one of the nuns they fell into bed.

Philip went to sleep immediately. Bette stroked his hair.

'I don't think he's gone to sleep with a full tummy for years. You know, wonderful as it will be to go home, it's all going to be a big adjustment,' said Bette, cradling the sleeping boy beside her.

'When do you think that will happen?' said Evelyn. 'My mind can't take that in.'

'Oh, I do hope it's soon,' said Marjorie, her eyes s.h.i.+ning 'It's so exciting. What are you going to do first, Mother?'

'Hot bath. Clean clothes. Kiss your father.'

'And you, Bette?'

'I can't wait to get back to Brisbane and see my parents, and Margaret, and my home again. I've so missed them all. But I do wonder what sort of world we'll find after all this heartache. I suspect that it will be awhile before life settles down again. But I am so looking forward to it.'

'We've all changed, haven't we,' said Marjorie.

'You certainly have, you've grown up,' said Bette. 'And we must believe that this terrible time in our lives has given us strengths and knowledge about ourselves that we can use in the future.'

Uncharacteristically, the j.a.panese soldiers didn't appear first thing the next morning, though the sentries were still at the entrance to the camp. After the uninhibited and rather hysterical previous evening, everyone was drained, tired and still disbelieving that the end could be near. That was until there was a drone from above and everybody stopped what they were doing and looked to the sky.

'Is it one of ours?'

Once the women recognised the Allied plane, they started jumping up and down and waving to it. The plane flew low and a snowstorm of white paper fluttered to the ground, which everybody ran to pick up.

Philip scooped some up and ran to Bette. 'Letters, they're letters. What's it say, what's it say?' He jumped up and down excitedly.

Bette and Evelyn looked at the leaflet. 'It's from the Australian 9th Division. The j.a.panese have surrendered. It's official!' Bette leaned down and hugged Philip as Marjorie dashed towards them.

Wiping tears from her eyes, Bette read on. 'Due to your location it will be difficult to get aid to you immediately ...' She smiled at them. 'Not to worry, they're going to help us. We're going to be okay.'

The final days were a blur but eventually the 9th Division arrived to liberate the women. For Bette, to see the cheerful open-faced Australian soldiers, to hear their familiar accents, to suddenly have strong, kind men to look after them, to play with the children, to give them rides in their vehicles and to have enough to eat was all overwhelming.

'It's wonderful how most of the women have managed to save one reasonably good outfit for this day,' said Evelyn.

'Yes,' replied Bette. 'But it hardly disguises the terrible physical state of their bodies. You can see by the look on the faces of the Australian soldiers that they think we look pretty awful. There is such a yawning gulf between their world and the three-and-a-half years we've been here. I wonder how we will manage when we get out.'

Despite Bette's fears, Philip and the other children were beside themselves with joy, and the sense of new-found freedom and opportunity. The reality of home and family, barely recalled, was of little consequence in the excitement of the moment.

Finally the day came when the women went home. Evelyn and Marjorie, arms about each other's waists, walked beside Bette and Philip. The little boy skipped as Bette firmly held his hand and walked to the smiling Australians and Americans waiting to drive them away.

Evelyn saw Bette glance over her shoulder at the emptying compound, the huts and the wire that had enclosed their world for so long. Evelyn gave a quick prayer of thanks that they had all come safely through this ordeal. She did not look back. She squeezed Marjorie's hand and led her away.

10.

JULIE HAD TEARS IN her eyes. She took Marjorie's hand. her eyes. She took Marjorie's hand.

'What an incredible story. What an experience for a young girl. What happened after you got back home to the UK?'

Marjorie sighed. 'It was as wonderful as I had antic.i.p.ated, and although Mother was still frail, she recovered surprisingly well. My father refused to go back to Sarawak and got a job managing a printing company. I have to say, though, that the cold weather was hard for all of us, at first. It was also difficult to be parted from so many friends. They all went their different ways naturally, but we left some of them behind, too. One of Mother's closest friends, Babs, died not long before we were freed. Her death was a great shock to us.'

'Oh, she sounded such a jolly person. What happened?' asked Julie.

'I suppose she just wasted away. A lot of people died in camp from malnutrition and various deficiency diseases. When I think back, Mother and I were very lucky to have survived.'

'Philip and Bette? What happened to them?'

'We were so focused on our lives and wanting to put the war behind us that we pressed on. Bette went back to Australia. Mother and she wrote to each other for a while, but being separated by twelve thousand miles and having nothing in common except the POW camp, the letters gradually ceased, but, as you know, Philip came back into our lives. He was at boarding school in England and he wrote a letter to Mother and me, and so my mother insisted that he come and stay with us when he had holidays. So we saw a lot of him during his school years.'

'You must have enjoyed having him around in much easier circ.u.mstances,' said Julie.

'Yes. And then years later Philip persuaded me to return to Malaysia, and I've just kept coming. The memories of the war have faded and you can't blame this country for what happened during those years. And Malaysia really is a lovely place.'

'I can see why Shane and Peter are so attached to you,' said Julie.

'Yes, and I'm very fond of them. I'm sorry that I can't tell you much more about your aunt. Looking back now, it's a shame that she dropped out of our lives. But perhaps from what I've been able to tell you, you can get a sense of how strong she was. She was also very creative. She told me that when she was in solitary confinement that time, she drew in her head as a way of staying sane. And of course there was the card she gave me for my birthday.'

'Do you know what happened to the diary that was kept in the camp?'

'I didn't know about the diary at all until after we were liberated, but I found out later that one of the women rewrote it and it was published.'

'My aunt wrote a book about the Iban, but I don't know if she continued her art. She obviously loved to draw,' mused Julie. 'Marjorie, I can't thank you enough for sharing your story. It's certainly given me an insight into my Great Aunt Bette. It's amazing what she did for Philip. You would think that when Bette returned him to his mother, she would have been grateful to have her son back alive. I find it very hard to understand why Margaret ended up hating Bette.'

They sat and chatted a while longer, then Julie hugged Marjorie goodbye, and walked from the villa along the beach, past the coconut palms and freshly raked sand. She continued along the beach to the point, deep in thought. A shout caused her to look up and she saw Aidi jumping from his boat.

'Hi, where are you off to?' she called.

'I'm collecting a couple of guests for the mangrove tour. What're you doing?'

'I've been visiting a friend here, a lovely lady, who knew my aunt when they were in a prison camp together near Kuching.'

'They were hard times. What are you doing now?'

'Just walking.'

'Be careful of broken gla.s.s and rubbish,' said Aidi, pointing to where the clean sweep of beach in front of the resort was bordered by piles of rubbish on both sides. 'This junk swills back and forth on the tide between us and Thailand over there. It's toxic.'

Julie could see that the naturalist was affronted by the garbage washed from the sea and now lying on the beach beyond the hotel grounds. 'I've noticed that away from the tourist places, the locals don't seem to care about pollution and rubbish.'

Aidi sighed. 'Yes, it's a big job to educate people not to treat the beaches and the sea as a sewer and a dumping place.'

'I've been told the east coast has wonderful beaches but the pollution is getting out of hand over there, too,' said Julie.

'That's true. The east coast of Malaysia is different from this side of the peninsula. It is the poorest and most culturally conservative part of Malaysia. In some places the supermarket queues are separated for men and women and the people all dress very modestly,' said Aidi. 'But on the island resorts, all regulations about dress codes and alcohol seem to get ignored. But pollution is a problem everywhere in Malaysia.' He glanced at his watch. 'I'd better not be late. Catch you before you leave. Say hi to everyone,' he added.

'Will do. Lovely to see you.' Julie went back through the hotel gardens to reception where she caught a taxi back to her resort.

Christopher was waiting for her.

'So, how did it go?' he took her hand. 'You look a little dazed.'

Julie laughed. 'Well, I could do with a long cold drink.'

'How about a swim and a cold beer?'

'Actually, I'd love one of those green coconuts if you can open one.'

'That's easy, lop off the top and stick a straw in the coconut water.'

'Coconut water?'

'You might call it coconut milk, but it's called coconut water here.'

'I'd love one of those, whatever it's called.'

Bobbing in the pool, she told Christopher about Marjorie's experience in the camp as a prisoner during the war.

'It's amazing that she knew your aunt, but it's not so surprising that they lost touch. You'd want to put all those awful experiences behind you. So where to now?' he asked. 'What are your plans? When are you going back to Brissie?'

'I have another few days. Work seems a forgotten country. I feel I've been away for months when I'll have been gone barely two weeks.'

'I know the feeling,' said Christopher. 'Holidays take a bit of adjustment. Sometimes I miss the routine of my job. Don't know what to do with a lot of free time, I get bored.'

'Really? Are you bored here?'

He laughed. 'Absolutely not! These few days have been a lot of fun. And I'm enjoying sharing it with someone from home.'

'It's been nice for me, too,' said Julie thinking to herself how comfortable they were with each other, how unlike it was travelling with David Cooper. As Christopher began playing with one of the cats that had come to the edge of the swimming pool, she decided he was just one of those unpretentious people who made you feel at ease. 'I'm heading back to Utopia for a couple of days and then I'll do a bit more sightseeing before I go home,' she said finally.

'I have to go back to b.u.t.terworth. But you should see Penang. It's a great place. Just about my favourite place in the whole country. If you get there, I'd like to buy you dinner.'

'That'd be lovely. Will you be flying around in your jet, or whatever it is?'

'Not at all. Mostly what I do involves a lot of paperwork and discussions with the Malaysian Air Force.'

'Is that the sort of thing that you want to do for the rest of your career?' asked Julie.

'I'm happy in the Air Force, it's a great life and the work can be very interesting and varied, but I might think about being a commercial pilot eventually. It seems the logical career path, though I have a few ideas of other things I might do one day.' He stepped out of the pool. Julie studied his lean, tanned body and he caught her looking at him. She smiled. He smiled back as they both acknowledged the moment. 'Would you like some satay? I can smell them cooking from here.'

They all flew from Langkawi to Penang airport and there were rushed farewells as everyone found their luggage. Ramdin, the Utopia driver, swept them away in minutes in the Jaguar. Once they were in the car, Peter and Shane began to talk business. Martine offered Julie some magazines to look at, but she shook her head, preferring to gaze at the pa.s.sing scenery.

As the car purred along the highway, Julie looked at the endless hills covered with palm oil plantations. The immaculate, serried ranks of plump fronds marched in straight lines as far as she could see. It all looked so silent, so ordered, so militaristic. She longed for the tangle of jungle, the disorder of human habitation, the sight and sounds of birds and wild animals. Every few miles a neat billboard announced the name of the company that owned that particular plantation.

'Shane, Peter, would you mind if I asked you how you feel about the spread of the palm oil plantations?' she asked. 'I know you must think palm oil is important, because you now grow so much of it, but palm oil is a contentious issue.'

Peter turned and smiled at her. 'Ah, this is a discussion that can fill in a few hours.'

Shane drew a long breath and said, 'It's true, palm oil is a part of the Malaysian economy and yes, there are problems because the jungle is being cut down to create these oil plantations, but at Utopia we are trying to be as ethical as possible. My father made the decision to plant palm oil after Grandfather Roland died. Grandfather was such a rubber man and although he had experimented with palm oil before the war, he couldn't bring himself to change the whole plantation over to it. But Dad decided that the time was right to make the move, but he wanted to do it the right way.'

'It takes a lot of investment, organisation and long-term commitment to create a properly run plantation,' added Peter. 'We try to show that we're not just after profits but want to give local people opportunities for a better standard of living. Governments also say that they want these things for their people, but it's really difficult to find the best balance between the economy and development, and the ecology and forest conservation.'

'It's such a complex issue, it's impossible to give easy answers,' added Shane.

'But what about these campaigns telling us not to touch any products with palm oil in them?' asked Julie.

'We belong to an international organisation the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil. This is moving forward to promote best practices as well as labelling products so that consumers can choose to buy products from sustainable sources,' said Peter.

'Frankly, if we don't persevere with sustainable production, then others would say that they don't care about all these high standards and restrictions, either. So they'd just clear the jungle for plantations, with no ongoing support for the community or interest in long-term viability,' said Shane.

'Lately, there has been some acknowledgment that continuing to clear for palm oil production can't go on,' said Peter. 'Governments are beginning to compensate farmers for not clearing land and giving them funds to start other projects. And, of course, this new policy allows for carbon trading, which is great, so long as corrupt politicians and other interests don't derail it.'

'It is complicated,' said Julie. She didn't doubt the sincerity of her cousins, but she could see both sides of the argument, especially after what she had learned from the Iban.

'Julie, you've had the visitor's tour of the plantation, perhaps we need to show you how the business side really works,' said Shane.

Martine lifted her head. 'Don't lecture her, Shane. Let Julie enjoy her last day or so.'

'No, I am really interested,' protested Julie. 'Our great grandfather established the plantation, so I'd better find out how it works.'

'Enough of this serious talk,' said Martine, putting down her magazine. 'Tell me, Julie, what did you learn about your great aunt from Marjorie?'

Julie told Martine briefly about Bette and her efforts to keep Philip alive in the POW camp. 'I wish I knew more about Bette,' Julie said. 'I really know very little. My mother says she remembers her aunt from when she was a little girl, but then Bette just dropped out of her life.'

'Why was that? After all she went through with that little boy, I would have thought that Bette would have been close to Philip forever. It all seems very ungrateful,' said Martine.

'My mother says that she was ostracised from the family because she married a Chinese man,' said Julie.

'Oh, I can't believe that!' exclaimed the worldly Martine. 'Shane, you told me that your grandfather had many good Malay, Chinese and Indian friends. He doesn't sound like a racist, or a person easily shocked by such a marriage.'

'My grandmother painted Bette's husband as the devil in the piece,' said Julie. 'According to my mother, Gran never got over the shame of her sister marrying a "Chinaman".'