The Collected Short Stories - Jeffrey Archer [115]
They allowed me to hold Deborah in my arms for just a moment before they put her into an incubator and told me it would be another twenty-four hours before she came off the danger list.
You will never know how much it meant to me, Father, that you came to the hospital so quickly. Christina’s parents arrived later that evening. They were magnificent. He begged for my forgiveness—begged for my forgiveness. It could never have happened, he kept repeating, if he hadn’t been so stupid and prejudiced.
His wife took my hand and asked if she might be allowed to see Deborah from time to time. Of course I agreed. They left just before midnight. I sat, walked, slept in that corridor for the next twenty-four hours until they told me that my daughter was off the danger list.
She would have to remain in the hospital for a few more days, they explained, but she was now managing to suck milk from a bottle.
Christina’s father kindly took over the funeral arrangements.
You must have wondered why I didn’t appear, and I owe you an explanation. I thought I would just drop into the hospital on my way to the funeral so that I could spend a few moments with Deborah. I had already transferred my love.
The doctor couldn’t get the words out. It took a brave man to tell me that her heart had stopped beating a few minutes before my arrival. Even the senior surgeon was in tears. When I left the hospital the corridors were empty.
I want you to know, Father, that I love you with all my heart, but I have no desire to spend the rest of my life without Christina or Deborah.
I only ask to be buried beside my wife and daughter and to be remembered as their husband and father. That way unthinking people might learn from our love. And when you finish this letter, remember only that I had such total happiness when I was with her that death holds no fears for me.
Your son,
Benjamin
The old rabbi placed the letter down on the table in front of him. He had read it every day for the last ten years.
COLONEL BULLFROG
There is one cathedral in England that has never found it necessary to launch a national fundraising appeal.
When the colonel woke he found himself tied to a stake where the ambush had taken place. He could feel a numb sensation in his leg. The last thing he could recall was the bayonet entering his thigh. All he was aware of now were ants crawling up the leg on an endless march toward the wound.
It would have been better to have remained unconscious, he decided.
Then someone undid the knots, and he collapsed headfirst into the mud. It would be better still to be dead, he concluded. The colonel somehow got to his knees and crawled over to the stake next to him. Tied to it was a corporal who must have been dead for several hours. Ants were crawling into his mouth. The colonel tore off a strip from the man’s shirt, washed it in a large puddle nearby, and cleaned the wound on his leg as best he could before binding it tightly.
That was February 17, 1943, a date that would be etched on the colonel’s memory for the rest of his life.
That same morning the Japanese received orders that the newly captured Allied prisoners were to be moved at dawn. Many were to die on the march, and even more had perished before the trek began. Colonel Richard Moore was determined not to be counted among them.
Twenty-nine days later, 117 of the original 732 Allied troops reached Tonchan. Any man whose travels had previously not taken him beyond Rome could hardly have been prepared for such an experience as Tonchan. This heavily guarded prisoner-of-war camp, some three hundred miles north of Singapore and hidden in the deepest equatorial jungle, offered no possibility of freedom. Anyone who contemplated escape could not hope to survive in the jungle for more than a few days, while those who remained discovered that the odds were not a lot shorter.
When the colonel first arrived, Major Sakata, the camp commandant, informed him that he was the senior ranking