Joyce's War (28 page)

Those present included Mona, Geoffrey (who gave me away), and Edward Selwyn who supported David and duly handed over the wedding ring at the right moment, and Vera Fairweather and the RAF padre: a small but select party. It was a simple service – short and rather beautiful and I think even Dafydd,
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who doesn’t altogether love churches, was also moved. We went on to the Great Eastern Hotel and had drinks and then lunch. There were one or two little speeches, which I’d like to have remembered, but have not. Then we went our several ways, David and I taking up our abode in the Victoria Hotel for the remainder of my leave, which was altogether one week. It was pleasant there and comparatively cool and airy.

Edward came to lunch and to dine with us a few times and Geoffrey came – very preoccupied with prickly heat – to tea on the last afternoon. Dafydd and I distinguished ourselves by ‘allowing’ a light to shine forth from the bathroom window on the last night. There was a pane of glass missing – it had been so for nine months or so it seems – and it was spotted by the police at last. The management seemed upset but I didn’t give it another thought as I considered it entirely their affair, but a day or so ago a detective walked in and opened up the subject again. It was rather amazing as they suspected a first-rate mystery and had had five men on the job for more than three weeks. I have to go and see the Commissioner of Securities and tell him my story. I didn’t tell him, as I should like to have done, that the manager of the Victoria Hotel had followed the detective that afternoon and had asked me to back up his miserable story that we had ‘removed the shade from the light’. He nearly wept, saying that he would lose his job and so on, but I told him that he should have thought of that before. He agreed. Furthermore, unfortunately, David had signed D.H. Davies in the civilian register, although that was their fault, of course, as they knew perfectly well that he was in the RAF. I’ve heard nothing more so I presume that the matter has been settled ‘out of court’.

There were one or two incidents – amusing now – one at the close of the following Sunday morning service and resulting in a waste paper basket full of torn up manuscripts: such a waste of paper and time. Poor David!

And now we are both back at our jobs again and the monsoons are breaking – half-heartedly as yet – and the heat is still around and about us and altogether life isn’t
comme il faut
. However, there are compensations – letters arrive fairly well and the frangipani still blooms and the poinsettias have been a perfect glory – like a hundred burning bushes on Chowringhee and in the garden of Minto Park. Convoys come in – and go out, almost as quickly: hospital ships, troopships and ambulance trains bringing boys down from Burma, where something still goes on – presumably.

The Middle East of course is finished
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and everyone waits breathlessly for news of a ‘second front’. Clwyd has actually been home for a month’s leave and sister Mona was able to join him, from the second AGH in the tablelands of Queensland. Clwyd is now an S/Sgt, Glyn a bombardier and stationed somewhere near Sydney. Mali and Gwen write regularly and I write not so regularly to them and occasionally to others. I drift on in a state of semi-coma from day to day and what I do with my alternate half-days, I couldn’t rightly say. Waste them – it is to be presumed.

I am writing this on a 10–1 shift, and a moment ago my bearer came up and said that a ‘soldier sahib’ wanted to see me. It was a sergeant with a Welsh accent whom I didn’t know. He told me that he was Miss Timothy’s nephew (shades of Llanerch Road) and that a S/Sgt Lewis, whose wife knew me once upon a time, wanted to call and see me, but ‘didn’t like to’ for some reason. I can’t think who she used to be but I told the boy to tell him to call just the same.

And now its 12 midday and I must change my uniform and proceed to lunch.

June 27th 1943

A half-day and as is becoming usual these days, I got down on my bed until 4pm and then went downstairs for tea. Since then I have been writing to David. Edward called for a moment, and we made arrangements to meet for lunch – all three of us at Christies, on the 14th.

How tired I am these days. It amazes me when I consider myself three years ago and the energy I then possessed and how little I can muster now. It irritates me too; in three years I haven’t become appreciably older and I should still be capable of a good day’s work. Now, with a half-day off on alternate days, I feel mentally and physically worn out. This monsoon weather is rather depressing, we all feel that, but it is really the war that gets on top of me. I won’t talk about it here; I have it around and about me all day and that is more than enough. I long for a quiet hill station; nothing spectacular at all, removed from all excitement and glamour. It would revive me, I know. The Eastern Army did a round at 10.30 today – Sunday – notwithstanding the usual nonsense and all patients wearing red ties and at their beds, looking sheepish and silly. I had to take the senior man around and tell him what was what, while the CO and Matron and numerous lesser lights such as brigadier generals and full colonels and all their satellites, not to mention our own MOs, trailed languidly behind. Such a waste of time although, I admit, it is why on these occasions, one can get anything done on a ward.

July 1st 1943

July – I can’t believe it. How the months slip by; the second half of the year now – and yesterday it seems I was writing 1942.

I had a remarkable letter from David yesterday, regarding an American function I had promised to attend, as one of ten from the BGH. Some time back I had been told of a Welsh concert at the YWCA and had at once decided to attend that instead (ah me, ‘what mighty contents arise from trivial things?’). But tonight – tonight is golden – the palms stand straight and tall and unstirring against the setting sun. Here at least, there is nothing to jar, to irritate or to disillusion the unquiet spirit. I have just finished reading and enjoyed Osbert Sitwell’s
Open The Door.
The radio is pouring out some unknown symphony and through my still open shutters I can see the crows flying home to rest in the mango trees on the lawns below.

July 3rd 1943

Just another half-day and
c’est tout
!

July 18th 1943

David has been and gone his ways again. He had 48 hours travelling time in order to see his play produced and broadcast on the radio. I went to Sealdah station to meet him and arrived at 8.30, the supposed time of arrival. The train – labelled simply ‘Burarah’ – ambled into the dark station about 9.25pm with no murmur or apology for my long wait. These Indian stations always seem to be crowded with sleeping half-naked bodies day and night, it’s just the same. I believe I was the only European there among them. I sat in the shadows on a seat alongside an Indian gentleman – caste unknown – with a large black monsoon umbrella. I wondered what was passing through his mind as he sat there immovable, inscrutable, amid all these heaps of rags in diverse postures covering, or making some pretence of covering, some miserable forms of humanity. Although one is used to it long since and often does not even notice such a scene at all, or think it unusual, there are still occasions when it strikes the eye and an impression is left indelibly upon the mind. Then at such times, I long to be able to paint it all – I feel that there are no words for it. There is a mix of glamour and pathos about the East – the colour, the sounds, even the evil smells: all life is there.

Then the great searchlight on the front of the train appeared around the bend and at once the whole station was alive again. The forms that looked like bundles of filthy rags, sprang up and ran – ran anywhere – up and down the platform, screaming and pushing, arguing and gesticulating. I wondered idly if most of their lives were spent like this, day after day, night after night. And while I pitied them, I half envied them – untroubled as they are with possessions, ambitions or hopes. They have nothing and I do not doubt that they hope for nothing. With a shrug of the shoulders they go on existing from day to day and on the last day of their lives they go to join the sea that ‘gathers all things unto itself’.

I saw David from far off, tall and lean in a large Mackintosh cape and topee: a curious combination in anyone else but Dafydd. Although I had sent two wires to say I would meet him, he hadn’t received either and must have wondered as to whether I would be there. We got a taxi then to Fairlawns and then went out to a nearby Chinese restaurant and had some dinner. It was a small pokey room at the hotel into which, it seemed, they had pushed at the last moment, a second bed; still it was a room and it served. Someone with a curiously diverse taste in music played Grieg and the latest jazz alternately so after being transported into a rarefied state during
Peer Gynt
, we were driven to despair by the latest hit song. We continued to eat dinner there twice and the service was so superb that we romped through about six courses in about as many minutes. Ray Conaughton and his delightful Indian girl Oomah ate with us one night – the night of the play. We collected some of the cast for BESA
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still dressed as they appeared in the show and proceeded to the radio centre where Edward was already. I sat in a room apart and listened and David joined me as soon as he had said his lines. Edward and Mary were really splendid but Annie was a sad disappointment. She romped through her lines and her voice was too shrill and unsympathetic. All the while, however, I believe David was well satisfied with it. He’s had so little time with them, less than an hour altogether, so that it was amazingly good really. David gets 25 chips – all of it – for this effort and that goes to start a sinking fund – for holidays and such – or so we fondly hope.

I had to get up early next morning, before six, and get myself back to the mess in a rickshaw, there being no taxis about, and in the pouring rain. It was my half-day (I stole the previous one and got away with it for once) and returned to Fairlawns soon after 2pm. David was OUT, had slept until 12.30 and then proceeded to take himself into Park Street to have his photograph taken. He returned later with a cake and a copy of Byron, which it transpired was for me and for which I was ungracious enough to say it did not particularly interest me. He changed it later for a complete W.H. Davies which pleased me much. We spent the evening indoors and returned at midnight, the rain still streaming down, in a rickshaw bound for Minto Park. The poor willing rickshaw driver panted and strained in the rain and all his and David’s frantic cry for a taxi proved pointless. The rain seeped down through the hood and trickled down our legs and we were cramped and damp and chastened in spirit. David got a lift back by taxi fortunately and I do hope he managed to get another as he was to leave about 3am, an ungodly hour to embark on that dreary journey. I was as sorry about it as I know very well how he hates Chittagong and everyone in it or near it in his present state of mind. It is too bad that he cannot be posted elsewhere, if not Calcutta, and given some work to do of real interest to him. However, we’ll see.

And now the second offensive has begun. The Allies are installed in Sicily and gaining a grip daily, or so we are assured. One presumes that something will start on this front after the rains are over. David thinks his crowd will end up in China. Odd that we can say it and write it and accept it as though one were to say, ‘I may be going to the races next week.’ Will there be anything left to fill us with wonder and surprise, when all this is over? I doubt it. Well if it is China, it is a dreary prospect: irregular mail, so little hope of an odd meeting, so many months of wondering and worrying. I try to live beyond all this, to get beyond the unsatisfactory present, to be patient, to accept it all with some semblance of reason and grace. Sometimes I can, but most often, I can’t.

The ward still worries me although not as much as it did. But last night I had one of my bad dreams again. I was distinctly awake. I could see the palms outside my window and the light shone across the floor from the next door room and then I felt it approach – this unseen, formless, dreadful ‘something’ that literally drags me in two, leaving my physical conscious body where it is, speechless and powerless to move, whilst sometimes I am propelled through space as though expelled by some unseen evil power. I hear voices, many voices, excited and jabbering incoherently – which always occurs – and last night I thought someone came and knocked at my door and wanted to give me a message. I watched the door frantically, hoping they would come in, but although I tried to call out that I was there, I had no power to speak at all.

Later Vera came in wearing evening dress as she had gone out some hours before and I tried, I thought, to speak to her. I hoped that she would see that my eyes were open and that she would speak to me; she said something and that broke that awful spell. I made myself speak to her and she put the light on and gave me a cigarette and I had a drink and told her about it and how thankful I was that she had come in. At such times I feel I shall never be able to drag myself to acute consciousness again. I seem to be possessed, body and mind, by this awful power. What I am afraid of is that I shall dread going to sleep at all, in case it appears again. I had some aspirin and vegamins and eventually slept quite well, except for the usual dreaming which I always do. I felt quite tattered and worn out this morning, but I am better again now.

Sometimes I think that I will ask to be posted elsewhere – it would take my mind off many things. A change of environment would give a fresh interest and heart. But then I feel, while David is at least comparatively near Calcutta, it would be a pity for me to be moved somewhere inaccessible, particularly as he may move beyond all hope of meeting, as time goes on.

It is 7.30pm, the hour when my bearer brings me my coffee as I never go to supper. Night is falling fast as it does in the east and soon I shall close the shutters and employ myself somehow until it is time to fall into my little camp bed. I was talking to Golightly today (who was with us at 92 Cromwell Road) and she told me that of the five girls who went forth from Millbank to Singapore, she is the only one who escaped. Two definitely were killed by direct hits on the hospital and the other two are prisoners, if indeed they are still alive. I often think what a strange and tragic tale it would be, if one could know the details of all the lives that went out from the club in those far off days in August 1940. How little any of us suspected what lay before us in those days of boredom and waiting. And now …