Free A Town like Alice by Nevil Shute

rice. Presently, they slept, exhausted, weak, and ill.
    The barn was full of rats, which ran over them and round them all night through. In the morning it was found that several of the children had been bitten.
    They woke aching in new places with the stiffness and fatigue of the day before; it did not seem possible that they could march again. The sergeant drove them on; this time the stage was to a place called Asahan. It was a shorter stage than the day before, about ten miles, and it had need to be, because they took as long getting to it. This time the delay was chiefly due to Mrs Collard. She was a heavy woman of about forty-five with two children, Harry and Ben, aged about ten and seven. She had suffered from both malaria and dysentery at Panong, and she was now very weak; she had to stop and rest every ten minutes, and when she stopped they all stopped since the sergeant would not allow them to separate. She was relieved of all load and the younger women took turns to walk by her and help her along.
    By the afternoon she had visibly changed colour; her somewhat ruddy face had now gone a mottled blue, and she was complaining constantly of pains in her chest. When they finally reached Asahan she was practically incapable of walking alone. Their accommodation was another rubber-curing barn. They half carried Mrs Collard into it and sat her up against the wall, for she said that lying down hurt her, and she could not breathe. Somebody went to fetch some water, and bathed her face, and she said, "Thank you, dear. Give some of that to Harry and Ben, there's a dear." The woman took the children outside to wash them, and when she came back Mrs Collard had fallen over on her side, and was unconscious. Half an hour later she died.
    That evening Jean got more fruit for them, mangoes and bananas, and some sweets for the children. The Malay woman who supplied the sweets refused to take money for them. "No, mem," she said. "It is bad that Nippon soldiers treat you so. This is our gift." Jean went back to the barn and told the others what had happened, and it helped.
    In the flickering light of the cooking fire outside the barn Mrs Horsefall and Jean held a conference with the sergeant, who spoke only a very few words of English. They illustrated their meaning with pantomime. "Not walk tomorrow," they said. "No. Not walk. Rest-sleep-tomorrow. Walk tomorrow, more women die. Rest tomorrow. Walk one day, rest one day."
    They could not make out if he understood or not. "Tomorrow," he said, "woman in earth."
    It would be necessary to bury Mrs Collard in the morning. This would prevent an early start, and would make a ten-mile stage almost impossible. They seized upon this as an excuse. "Tomorrow bury woman in earth," they said. "Stay here tomorrow."
    They had to leave it so, uncertain whether he understood or not; he squatted down on his heels before the fire with the three privates. Later he came to Jean, his face alight with intelligence. "Walk one day, sleep one day," he said. "Womans not die." He nodded vigorously, and she called Mrs Horsefall, and they all nodded vigorously together, beaming with good nature. They were all so pleased with each other and with the diplomatic victory that they gave him a banana as a token of esteem.
    All that day Jean had walked barefoot; she had stubbed her toes two or three times and had broken her toenails; but she felt fresher that evening than she had felt for a long time. The effect of the march upon the women began to show itself that 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