Women in War

Lizzie Lane

Description

She must face the terror of war alone to survive…

1939 - India
When headstrong Nadine Burton learns that the woman, she thought was her Indian Ayah was in fact her mother, she rebels against her father in a flamboyant display of disrespect and dares to dance with her two local best friends at a public party.
Her father, local official, Roland Frederick Burton is furious. He arranges for her to be exiled from India and married off to Australian Martin McPherson, owner of a rubber plantation north of Singapore.
Within a year Singapore falls to the Japanese. Martin is killed and Nadine becomes a prisoner of war, imprisoned in Sumatra, where her dancing skills don’t go unnoticed by her captors.
Amidst the horror she finds a friend in a Japanese American major caught up in the war whilst visiting his grandparents in Japan.
Much like her, he straddles two cultures and worlds. As their love deepens, boundaries are crossed and together they must unite to survive.
Don't miss this emotional and powerful saga about a woman's determination to beat the odds, perfect for fans of Dinah Jefferies and Fiona Valpy.

Previously published as 'East of India' by Erica Brown

Sujets

• Romance
• Romance multiculturelle
• Mashups
• Cultural Heritage
• Historical Fiction
• Feminist
• 20th Century
• World Literature
• Historical
• Women
• Coming of Age
• Friendship
• Historical romance
• General officer
• Military
• Woman
• Southeast Asia
• Singapore
• Feminism
• The Women
• General
• Family Life
• War
• India
• Indian
• Fiction
• Singapour

Informations

• Publié par: Boldwood Books
• Date de parution: 31 mars 2023
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781837518470
• Langue: English

Extrait

WOMEN IN WAR


LIZZIE LANE
CONTENTS



Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35


More from Lizzie Lane

About the Author

Sixpence Stories

About Boldwood Books
1
BENARES, INDIA, 1941

It was a week before leaving Benares School for Young Ladies that Nadine Burton came home expecting everything to be as it always was but found it had changed forever.
As always the air was humid and heavy with the scent of rotting vegetation, rich spices, and bullock droppings. In contrast, the veranda running along the front of the house was cloaked in shadow. But something, she wasn’t sure what, was very wrong.
The house was the same, but there was no Shanti, no loving ayah waiting on the veranda to welcome her home. Ever since she could remember, her nurse had stood on the veranda waving a welcome, eyes sparkling, lips spread in a welcoming smile.
She frowned. Her hands turned clammy. Some ancient, womanly instinct clicked into place.
A small lizard ran across the floor in front of her, disappearing into a crack in the wall. This particular breed of lizard was common and harmless but today there was something ominous about the hollow sound of its scuttling in the shady house and there no response when she called Shanti’s name, just the scuttling lizard.
Uneasily, feeling slightly sick, she walked swiftly towards Shanti’s bedroom, the corridor so cool after the heat outside.
If her ayah had been sleeping, the door would be closed but it was open. The room was bare except for the familiar iron framed bed and a small yellow rug. The mattress was rolled up and placed against the iron bed head.
Nadine saw no trace of her ayah ’s silk saris, her sandals decorated with silver bells, her bangles, her unguents, the heavy gold earrings with the fine chain connecting them to her nose ring.
A small earthquake erupted in her heart. There was no life in the room. No Shanti, though her scent still lingered on the air.
The soft rustle of a sari sounded behind her accompanied by the hushed padding of sandals upon stone.
For a moment her spirits soared then dipped again when she saw it was Myla, the housekeeper. Though her hair was black, a swathe of whiteness ran back from her temples which gave her a fierce look as if she was running into the wind.
‘She is gone,’ said Myla in a matter-of-fact manner.
‘Gone where?’
‘Away from here. You do not need her any longer. You are a grown woman now. Your father let her go.’
Nadine felt as though the ground had given way beneath her. The whole world seemed so much darker, her life destroyed.
‘I shall kill myself if she doesn’t come back. I mean it. I shall kill myself!’
‘Foolish talk.’ Myla shook her head emphatically. ‘She would want you to live forever.’
Nadine’s laughter was raw and brittle and tears stung her eyes. ‘Nobody lives forever.’
‘Life is precious. That’s what your ayah always said.’
‘Where has she gone?’
‘Back to her place in the world,’ said Myla, and hurried away, her calico skirt swirling as she went, her leather sandals slapping the hard floor.
Nadine sunk down against the whitewashed walls until she was sitting on the floor, her legs folded beneath her, her feet bare and dusty. Shanti was gone and the world seemed a much lonelier place. So where was she? Nothing is ever totally unknown.
‘Nothing,’ she murmured, springing to her feet on legs that had been coltish and were now firmly feminine.
Those legs now ran through every room in the house searching for the woman who had brought her up from babyhood. She demanded of the house servants, the gardeners, the cooks, and the grooms to tell her where she was.
‘Tell me. Tell me now!’
Nervously, they shook their heads, dark lashes flickering over velvet brown eyes, their mouths firmly shut. Their jobs depended on them obeying orders.
The old house reverberated with the noise of slamming doors and running footsteps.
One door, dark mahogany and usually locked against the world, suddenly opened. Her father, Roland Burton, a severe personage dressed in well-tailored clothes, a gold ring on one finger, appeared at his study door. He was wearing a pale cream suit, the knot of his old school tie hard as a pebble against his throat. The stark lightness of his suit was angelically white against the dark mustiness of the study behind him, a place lined with books, the curtains dark, the furniture leather covered and unashamedly masculine.
‘Stop this noise. I am trying to work.’
His manner was curt, each of his words delivered like the thwack of stick against ball on the polo field.
‘Shanti! I can’t find her.’
Seldom did she find herself face to face with her father. She was his child, yet over the years they’d seldom spoke or even ate together. Only in these last few weeks had she been invited to dinner when guests were expected. The rest of the time she’d dined in her room or with the servants, eating what they ate whilst sitting barefoot at the back door watching the sun go down.
‘Forget Shanti. You are now a woman and have no need for a nurse.’ There was no softness in his words, no sympathy or acknowledgement that there had been affection between the two women. ‘And no more dancing. Not Shanti’s style of dancing. You must be the prim young English lady and behave properly.’
‘Where is she? I want to see her,’ Nadine shouted.
He stiffened, his expression grim.
‘You have no need of a nurse. You are now a young lady. A young English lady. In future you will behave as such and will forget everything Indian. The time has come for you to marry. An English gentleman requires an English wife, not one that acts like a native.’
He went back into his study, the door closing on him and the smell of musty books, tobacco, and masculine cologne.
Hours later, she was still sitting where she had last sat with Shanti, her eyes still heavy with tears and her nose running.
Though twilight lay heavy over the garden and the shadows were long, she kicked off her shoes, stepped onto the grass and began to move her body and arms in the way Shanti had taught her.
Tears streaming down her face she danced until it was too dark to see then went inside and went to bed, fresh tears staining the pillow.



* * *
It was the following day before she found out what happened.
A dim narrow corridor ran from the main one to the back of the school and the veranda where the caretaker kept his buckets and sweeping brush.
The corridor was empty. So many of the girls had been sent home at the outbreak of war in Europe. To Nadine, it seemed all so far away in a country she’d never visited. War would not come to India, surely? It was too distant and protected by its own army. Shanti would have reassured her that everything would be fine. Thinking of Shanti, she began to dance, imagined music guiding her movements. In her mind, Shanti was dancing with her.
None of her fellow students ever came here so she had not expected to be discovered, but today she was.
‘You’re dancing like a native! It’s disgraceful. Absolutely disgraceful. I intend reporting you to Miss Clark.’
The speaker was Cecilia Renfrew, the red-headed daughter of a senior civil servant. Nadine stopped dancing, placed her fists on her hips, and faced the least popular girl in the school.
‘Cecilia Renfrew! Why do you have to spoil things for everyone?’
‘You shouldn’t be dancing like a native. It’s not seemly.’
The girl with the unruly red curls and a turned-up nose took a step backwards. Nadine concentrated all her anger on that nose. It was like a small snout, intruding pig-like into the secret world of her imagination.
‘Seemly? What would you know about seemly? Come to that, what would you know about anything? Anyway, I was just exercising, flexing my limbs to improve my poise. A well-educated young English lady should always move gracefully. Which is more than you’ll ever do! You have all the grace of an elephant. No. Less than an elephant. More like a water buffalo!’
Cecilia raised her least attractive feature that little bit higher, her oily chin blemished with faint traces of acne shiny in the noonday light. Most people sweated. India was like that. White hot summer. Humid winters. How could anyone not sweat?
‘I’m going to tell Miss Clark. Now!’
Nadine paused in mid pose. She didn’t care if she was reported. Shanti was gone and her world was shattered, but she would always dance. She owed it to Shanti.
In her mind she had been bending and weaving to the sound of a sitar in the vine-covered pergola at the far reaches of her father’s garden.
The imagined smell of roses, perfumes and spices was wiped out by the musty stink of mothballs and old tweed as Miss Clark, the headmistress appeared.
Bull dog fashion, the headmistress’s bottom lip curled up over the top one. ‘I will tolerate half heathens, I will even tolerate full-blooded natives as long as they are Christian, but I will brook no heathen decadence in this school!’ Her voice had a grinding quality as though she were mincing each word before spitting it out. She wasn’t finished yet. ‘Your father will know about this. Those dances are the Devil’s work, Nadine Burton, and whoever taught you such things is the devil incarnate. A heathen practise.’
Hot tears burned at the back of Nadine’s eyes, but she willed herself not to cry.
‘Shanti is not a devil! She is – was – my ayah !’
Cecilia’s eyes glittered. ‘Well I heard she was your mother and that she lives in Alexander Street. I heard she was your father’s floosie and that you