Life is the Destiny by Vivian Stuart

Author:Vivian Stuart
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Jentas Ehf
Published: 2023-04-27T12:07:49+00:00

8

Rayne left the camp early next morning. We bade one another a brief, unemotional farewell, having both said all that there was to say the previous night. But I was pleased by the unexpected warmth of her handshake. She said, as she climbed into the jeep which had been sent to fetch her, “Au revoir, Vicky. We’ll meet again one of these days, perhaps. If you’re in England—let me know, won’t you?”

I said that of course I would, only halfmeaning it. She raised her hand in a little mocking salute and then she was gone, the jeep swallowed up in a cloud of choking dust.

I returned to the canteen, clanking despondently over the steel-matting roadway. I had never imagined that I should miss Rayne but, as the day progressed, I did. There had been some kind of hitch concerning her relief—Joan had had to go out unexpectedly to the canteen at Hmawbi to help with the reception of a fresh influx of repatriated prisoners, most of whom, Dorothy Mordaunt told me, when she called to explain the situation, were hospital cases, requiring special attention.

We had a number of Burmese girls in the unit who had served throughout the campaign and Dorothy promised me one of these to take Rayne’s place temporarily. She sent Myint Thin Thwe, who was a sergeant and had more experience than any of the others but, for some reason, Myint Thin failed to hit it off with Janice. I was puzzled by this, for we all loved the Burmese girl and up till now, Janice had got on well with everyone. She was a nice child and a magnificent worker but, when I interrupted a heated argument between the two of them in the storeroom, Janice was in tears. I sent her off duty.

“I’m sorry, Vicky,” Myint Thin said, her friendly intelligent brown face puckered into lines of worried contrition, “I do not know what I could have said or done to upset her. Perhaps she does not like working under me because I am Burmese.”

I denied this suggestion emphatically. No one who knew Myint Thin could possibly have objected to working under her: she was tact itself, gentle and diffident and the last person in the world to cause resentment. And I was certain, from what I knew of her, that Janice wasn’t troubled by the colour bar: she had already met and mixed with several of the other Burmese girls and I remembered that she had told me how much she had enjoyed their company. Obviously the trouble went deeper.

Leaving Myint Thin in charge, I left the canteen and went in search of Janice. She wasn’t in her tent nor was she in the mess hut in which we ate our meals and the mess corporal shook his head in response to my inquiry. None of our unit had been into the mess since breakfast, he assured me.

It was Henry who, eventually, solved the small mystery of her disappearance. He caught up with me as I was making a second search of our tents.

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