A Town like Alice

night in very different forms, according to their age. The women under thirty, and the children, were in most cases actually in better condition than when they left Panong; they were cheered by the easier discipline, and stimulated by the exercise and by the improvement in the diet brought by fruit and sweets. The older women were in much worse case. For them exhaustion outweighed these benefits; they lay or sat listlessly in the darkness, plagued by their children and too tired to eat. In many cases they were too tired even to sleep.
    In the morning they buried Mrs Collard. There was no burial ground at hand but the Malay headman showed them where they could dig the grave, in a corner of the compound, near a rubbish heap. The sergeant got two coolies and they dug a shallow grave; they lowered Mrs Collard into it covered by a blanket, and Mrs Horsefall read a little out of the Prayer Book. Then they took away the blanket because they could not spare that, and the earth was filled in. Jean found a carpenter who nailed a little wooden cross together for them, and refused payment; he was a Moslem or perhaps merely an animist, but he knew what the Tuans did for a Christian burial. They wrote JULIA COLLARD on it and the date of death with an indelible pencil, hoping it would survive the rain, and then they had a long discussion over the text to put underneath it. This interested every woman in the party, and kept them happy and mentally stimulated for half an hour. Mrs Holland, rather surprisingly, suggested Romans, xiv, 4; 'Who art thou that judgest another man's servant? to his own master he standeth or falleth', meaning the sergeant who had made them march that day. But the other women did not care for that, and finally they compromised on 'Peace, perfect peace, with loved ones far away'. That pleased everybody.
    They sat around and washed their clothes after the burial was over. Soap was getting very scarce amongst them, but so was money. Mrs Horsefall held a sort of meeting after rice and examined the money situation; half the women had no money left at all, and the rest had only about fifteen dollars between them. She suggested pooling this, but the mothers who had money left preferred to keep it for their own children; as there was so little in any case it did not seem worthwhile to worry them by making an issue of it. They all agreed, however, to share rations equally, and after that their feeding times were much better organized.
    Captain Yoniata turned up about midday, driving into Kuala Lumpur in the District Commissioner's car. He stopped and got out, angry to find that they were not upon the road. He abused the sergeant for some minutes in Japanese; the man stood stiffly to attention, not saying a word in explanation or defence. Then he turned to the women. "Why you not walk?" he demanded angrily. "Very bad thing. You not walk, no food."
    Mrs Horsefall faced him. "Mrs Collard died last night. We buried her this morning over there. If you make us walk every day like this, we shall all die. These women aren't fit to march at all. You know that."
    "What woman die of?" he inquired. "What illness?"
    "She had dysentery and malaria, as most of us have had. She died of exhaustion after yesterday's march. You'd better come inside and look at Mrs Frith and Judy Thomson. They couldn't possibly have marched today."
    He walked into the barn, and stood looking at two or three women sitting listless in the semi-darkness. Then he said something to the sergeant and walked back to his car. At the door he turned to Mrs Horsefall. "Very sad woman die," he said. "Perhaps I get a truck in Kuala Lumpur. I will ask." He got into the car and drove away.
    His words went round the women quickly; he had gone to get a truck for them, and they would finish the journey to Kuala Lumpur by truck; there would be no more marching. Things weren't so bad, after all. They would be sent by rail from Kuala Lumpur to Singapore, and there they would be put into a proper camp with other Englishwomen, where they could settle down and organize their lives properly, and get into a routine that would enable them to look after the children. A prison camp would have a doctor, too, and there was always some kind of a hospital for those who were really ill. They became much more cheerful, and the most listless ones revived, and came out and washed and made themselves a little more presentable. Their appearance was a great concern to them that afternoon. Kuala