大象传媒

Then I returned to Chepstowe and decided I must go to Melbourne and meet up with other evacuees and for Jonathan to have some playmates at a nursery school. I had not received any news of Roy, but went on sending a Red Cross card each month, with not more than 25 words on it, hoping he would receive it some time if he was still alive.

We had got as far as 1943, and, sometime during that year, Jonathan and I set off by train to Melbourne, and I booked into the Majestic Hotel at St. Kilda while I hunted for lodgings. The dining room in the evening was quite an impressive sight as one looked across the tables crowded with elderly ladies who seemed to be covered in diamonds, apart from the Yanks who would ask me 鈥淲hat are you doing tonight?鈥� I would reply 鈥淟ooking after my youngster鈥�. I scanned the local paper and called at various addresses, finally finding a bedroom, sitting room and part of a kitchen which seemed suitable, and we settled in.

It was winter and I was glad to have a fireplace, and I bought some logs which were delivered to the back yard and had to be split with the communal axe. Unfortunately, I tended to get the axe stuck in the log, and one fateful day the handle broke and I was in great disfavour. No one in Melbourne could produce an axe handle so I phoned my cousins who sent one down. After that I thought I should get an axe of my own, and, to my joy, found one in a junk shop.

Meanwhile, the winter was passing and the peach tree in a narrow passage outside the window came into flower, and I wondered how big it would be before we had news from Malaya. I became tired of the lodgings, as the large landlady used to get drunk and make an awful noise at night. I was unwise enough to remonstrate at one point, and got a punch on the nose from a very heavy hand. Fortunately, several friends who were sharing a large mansion by the sea, told me the big dining room had become available, so we moved in 鈥� thankfully. We had a bed each at one end and a lounge suite and beautiful fireplace at the other and a small gas stove (among several) in the kitchen. So here we were, settled among fellow 鈥渆vacuees鈥�.

There were four of us with five children, and Jonathan was old enough to go to a small nursery school with two of the others. My room had French windows onto a small garden and to the right the sea wall and sandy beach, ideal for the small children with one of us always 鈥榦n duty鈥�. My fireplace was a joy when winter arrived, and I found I could get logs already cut up.

As far as I remember, it was the winter of 1943, and the war news from Europe seemed to be improving and we had all become resigned to no news from Singapore, except for the odd card with a few words to say that the prisoner was well 鈥� but it might have been old news 鈥� and an occasional radio message picked up by the Red Cross or a private listener with a short wave radio. I had, over the years, two cards and one radio. There was one woman (husband in Sumatra) who had no messages, so we kept quiet about ours, but she always seemed to know

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