A Town like Alice

member of the party.
    Ellen Forbes was the unmarried girl who had come out to get married and hadn't, a circumstance that Jean could well understand by the time she had lived in close contact with her for a couple of months. Ellen was a vacuous, undisciplined girl, good humoured, and much too free with Japanese troops for the liking of the other women. At Seremban they were accommodated in a schoolhouse on the outskirts of the town, which was full of soldiers. In the morning Ellen simply wasn't there, and they never saw her again.
    Jean and Mrs Horsefall asked to see the officer and stated their case, that a member of their party had disappeared, probably abducted by the soldiers. The officer promised to make inquiries, and nothing happened. Two days later they received orders to march down the road to Tampin, and were moved off under guard.
    They stayed at Tampin for some days, and got so little food there that they practically starved; at their urgent entreaty the local commandant sent them down under guard to Malacca, where they hoped to get a ship. But there was no ship at Malacca and the officer in charge there sent them back to Tampin. They plodded back there in despair; at Alor Gajah Judy Thomson died. To stay at Tampin meant more deaths, inevitably, so they suggested it was better for them to continue down to Singapore on foot, and a corporal was detailed to take them on the road to Gemas.
    In the middle of May, at Ayer Kuning, on the way to Gemas, Mrs Horsefall died. She had never really recovered from her attack of malaria or whatever fever it was that had attacked her two months previously; she had had recurrent attacks of low fever which had made Jean wonder sometimes if it was malaria that she had had at all. Whatever it was it had made her very weak; at Ayer Kuning she developed dysentery again, and died in two days, probably of heart failure or exhaustion. The faded little woman Mrs Frith, who was over fifty and always seemed to be upon the point of death and never quite made it, took over the care of Johnnie Horsefall and it did her a world of good; from that day Mrs Frith improved and gave up moaning in the night.
    They got to Gema, three days later; here as usual in towns they were put into the schoolhouse. The Japanese town major, a Captain Nisui, came to inspect them that evening; he had known nothing about them till they appeared in his town. This was quite usual and Jean was ready for it; she explained that they were prisoners being marched to camp in Singapore.
    He said, "Prisoner not go Singapore. Strict order. Where you come from?"
    She told him "We've been travelling for over two months," she said, with the calmness borne of many disappointments. "We must get into a camp, or we shall die. Seven of us have died upon the road already there were thirty-two when we were taken prisoner. Now there are twenty-five. We can't go on like this. We must get into camp at Singapore. You must see that."
    He said, "No more prisoner to Singapore. Very sorry for you, but strict order. Too many prisoner in Singapore."
    She said, "But Captain Nisui, that can't mean women. That means men prisoners, surely."
    "No more prisoner to Singapore," he said. "Strict order."
    "Well, can we stay here and make ourselves a camp, and have a doctor here?"
    His eyes narrowed. "No prisoner stay here."
    "But what are we to do? Where can we go?"
    "Very sad for you," he said. "I tell you where you go tomorrow."
    She went back to the women after he had gone. "You heard all that," she said calmly. "He says we aren't to go to Singapore after all."
    The news meant very little to the women; they had fallen into the habit of living from day to day, and Singapore was very far away. "Looks as if they don't want us anywhere," Mrs Price said heavily. "Bobbie, if I see you teasing Amy again I'll wallop you just like your father. Straight, I will."
    Mrs Frith said, "If they'd just let us alone we could find a little place like one of them villages and live till it's all over."
    Jean stared at her. "They couldn't feed us," she said slowly. "We depend upon the Nips for food." But it was the germ of an idea, and she put it in the back of her mind.
    "Precious little food we get," said Mrs Frith. "I'll never forget that terrible place Tampin in all my born days."
    Captain Nisul came the next day. 'You go now to Kuantan," he said. "Woman camp in Kuantan, very good. You will be very glad."
    Jean did not know where Kuantan was. She asked, "Where is