The Forgotten Highlander - Alistair Urquhart [73]
The staff carried me back to my hut, where I fell asleep exhausted. The next day they took me back and sitting on that stool I managed to raise my leg two or three inches. I felt ready for the parallel bars and the orderlies agreed. They lifted me up and held my shrunken backside as I dangled my useless legs. Being on my feet felt surreal, as if I had never walked before. They pushed me to try to move a leg.
‘You moved your leg when you were sitting down so you can do it now.’
Try as I might, I couldn’t get my legs to move.
‘Don’t worry about it if you can’t. We’ll try again tomorrow.’
I went back to the stool and tried again. Once I had mastered lifting one bag of weights I went on to the next heaviest. I gave up only when completely knackered, and they carried me back to the hut.
On the way back a young chap was walking towards me when he stopped suddenly and said excitedly, ‘It’s not you, is it? Is it you? Is it?’
I recognised him straight away. ‘Yes, it’s me, Freddie.’
‘Awright mucker! It’s been a while.’
Indeed it had. It was the first time I had smiled in months. Freddie Brind looked remarkably fit and well, considering. I was not surprised he struggled to recognise me, however. I had lost three or four stone and most of my dignity and self-respect.
One of the medical officers carrying me told Freddie, ‘Alistair here has been learning to walk again. He’s doing very well.’
As they carried me Freddie trailed alongside, talking at a million miles a minute. It was as if we had never been parted. At the hut the orderlies left and we were alone. We were so pleased to see each other. For me he was a breath of fresh air. I had constantly worried about him, his brother Jim and the other lad, John Scott. I still felt like I had let them down, abandoning them at Changi all those months ago. It seemed like a lifetime ago. I wanted to know everything but I struggled to get a word in. He told me he had been at Chungkai for almost twelve months, having arrived with his brother. He did not know what had happened to John, who became separated from them at Changi. But Freddie was more interested in telling me what I should be doing. He might only have been aged fifteen then but he was a truly inspirational figure.
Lying in my bed I must have looked a pathetic, sorry soul. He told me in no uncertain terms, ‘This isn’t you, Alistair. You need to pull yourself together. You can do it.’
He must have noticed the deep-rooted scepticism that lay behind my watery eyes.
‘You can do it all right, mucker. I’ll see to it. In fact I’ll have you swimming across that river before you know it. I swim across it every day to collect dead bamboo for the cooks’ fires and you can come with me, it’s a breeze.’
‘No way,’ I said. I couldn’t even walk – I couldn’t see how I could ever possibly swim again.
‘You wait and see,’ he beamed. ‘Wait there.’
He dashed off. Good old Freddie, I smiled. He had made it. The senior Gordon Highlanders officers must have pleaded with the Japanese not to send the boys to the railway and instead to the relative safety of Chungkai. I was surprised, though, that they had not been kept at Changi, which may have been safer. Still Freddie looked healthy and the glint in his eyes registered that he remained as cheeky as ever.
Freddie soon returned with some cake – and his brother Jim. It was great to see him too. He had lost some weight but still looked quite healthy. He was the same old Jim; it was impossible to get a word out of him. Instead I devoured the cake, which he called ‘Gula Malacca’ and told me was made from the sap of a palm tree. It was extremely sweet and tasty – the first amount of sugar to pass my lips in two years. It was possibly not the best thing for me, as I had some bowel problems after that but it was so delicious that it was worth it. I stopped short of asking Freddie where he got it from; I didn’t want to know. And if Freddie had been in Chungkai for a year without my supervision to rein in his unbridled curiosity and enthusiasm, he no doubt