The Plantation - Di Morrissey [123]
‘Well, at least let’s ask,’ said Bette.
When the new commander, Captain Toyama, arrived, June and Bette asked permission to speak to him. Bette took along the half cup of rice that was now each woman’s daily ration, and a miserable meal it looked. She bowed low and humbly and carefully explained that this amount of food was not adequate to live on and outlined their plan to grow some more if they could have permission to tend the disused field beside the main gate.
‘You run away, soldiers will shoot.’
‘I understand,’ said Bette. ‘But where are we going to run? There is nowhere to go.’
‘You grow only for you. Women work in field every day. You work like coolies.’ He looked rather pleased as he imparted this news. Perhaps he thought that if the women were more occupied, they would create fewer problems, or perhaps he thought that white women working in the fields was the correct place for them to be.
Bette and June bowed as they expressed their thanks. Captain Toyama turned his back. They were dismissed.
The women were given heavy mattocks and a few old spades with splintered wood handles and they gradually created more tools from flattened tins and heavy sticks. Once they’d prepared the garden beds, fertilised with waste from their latrines, water supply became the next problem to solve. They dug trenches alongside the beds in order to catch the rain and started digging a small pond in the hope it would also hold water.
Seeds were bartered for, and a bunch of uprooted green vegetables that no one could identify were also handed over and quickly planted. Yams that had sprouted became the first crop to be harvested.
‘This garden might be providing a bit of fresh food but its wrecking my back,’ sighed Babs.
‘Gloria and the nuns have made up some sort of liniment,’ said Norma. ‘It burns but seems to help.’
‘I wonder if Hannah has any of her fancy cream left. I certainly could use it,’ sighed Bette. ‘At one stage I thought she had brought half her bathroom.’
‘She might have face cream, but you’re prettier,’ said Marjorie and they all laughed.
It was a relief to laugh. And the hard work was worth it. The garden struggled, like the women workers, but eventually it produced small crops of fresh food that helped to halt the outbreaks of deficiency diseases like beri-beri and general malnutrition.
It was Norma who first said something to Bette. ‘There’s something up with the Japs. What do you suppose is going on?’
‘Don’t know. There seem to be a lot of meetings. Captain Toyama took off and hasn’t come back.’
‘They’re not paying us a lot of attention,’ added Gloria.
‘Hashimoto is waiting for the field gang, though. Let’s go,’ said Bette standing up. ‘I’ll have to get someone to rub my shoulders this afternoon, I feel terrible again.’
‘Aren’t you going to work for mean Hannah today?’ asked Norma as they picked up their heavy gardening tools.
‘She’s conserving her assets.’ Bette shrugged.
‘Poor thing,’ said Evelyn unsympathetically. ‘Maybe she might have to work like the rest of us soon.’
It was while they were hoeing a new row, cloths wrapped around their calloused hands to protect them, the remains of any hats pulled down low over their faces, strips of cloth across the backs of their necks protecting them from the sun, that Bette thought she heard a whistle, then a shout.
Slowly, stiffly, she straightened up. The other women stopped what they were doing and looked across the road at half-a-dozen men coming their way. ‘They’re white. It’s some of our men,’ Bette shouted.
Evelyn limped closer to Bette, shading her eyes. ‘What are they saying? How can they be here?’
The few times the women had seen the male prisoners marching past, the men had shouted out and sung to them despite the admonitions from the Japanese guarding them. But this time the men were waving, punching the air and smiling as they called out. And there were no guards with them.
Ignoring Corporal Hashimoto, the women ran to the road at the edge of the garden.
‘What’s