‘No can do. Sorry, son.’ His father went to the sink and filled a glass with water. ‘Drink this. Come on.’
Silently Edwin drank while his father pottered around the room, humming an irritatingly cheerful tune, picking things up here and there from the messy floor. He barely looked at his son and Edwin had the sudden painful realisation that his father was ashamed of him.
‘What do you want?’ he said again.
‘I’ve come to take you home.’
‘My home is gone,’ said Edwin and felt the tears start again. ‘It’s all gone.’
‘I mean our home. Your mother’s and mine. You’re coming back with me.’ His father came at last to look at him, his face creased with pity and discomfort. ‘Poor lad.’
Edwin thought of refusing, but he could barely summon the energy. With his father’s help he struggled to his feet and noticed that the scarf was still in his hand. He pressed his face into it.
‘It’s not fair,’ he said, his voice muffled. ‘It’s not fair.’
‘I know,’ said his father, helping him out of the room and down the stairs to where his old car waited to take them home. ‘I know.’
‘It was my fault . . .’ mumbled Edwin as he clambered into the back seat. ‘My fault.’
‘Of course it wasn’t,’ said his father beside him, holding his arm firmly. ‘It was an accident, a tragedy.’
‘I’m guilty. I’ve done . . . dreadful things.’
‘Don’t be absurd, Edwin,’ said his father and closed the door gently. He got into the driver’s seat and peered at Edwin in the rear-view mirror before shaking his head and starting the car.
*
The rest of the night was a blank. They must have got home to the house in Kent, for when Edwin awoke, his head aching, he was back in his narrow childhood bed, a cup of tea cooling on the nightstand, an aspirin beside it.
He drank some of the tea with the aspirin and slept again. A little later his mother came in, smoothing his bedclothes and kissing him on the forehead. She had been fond of Emilia and had been subdued since her death. He smiled weakly up at her and felt sleep approaching again.
‘I’ve telephoned the school,’ she said as she left the room. ‘I said you’re ill. They won’t expect you until Monday.’
A little later he was awake, staring at the wall, when his father came in, shuffling in his carpet slippers. They had never been close; not through any dislike, but simply because they were too similar – shy, reserved, uneasy talking about matters of the heart.
His father had done well for himself; born a coalheaver’s son, he had excelled at grammar school and ended up working for a bank, saving enough to send his son to a decent school. Edwin’s mother, a teacher herself before marriage, had had high hopes for him, a headmaster’s post perhaps, but if they were disappointed to find Edwin still a lowly schoolmaster at thirty-three, they had never shown it.
His father sat down at the end of the bed, a little awkwardly, and proceeded to give him the first dressing-down Edwin could remember since he was a boy. He told him, in effect, that he could not go on this way and must pull himself together or ruin his life.
Edwin, who felt his life to be ruined quite enough already, listened carefully, full of shame and resentment, but he knew his father to be right, and wasn’t sure whether to hit him or hug him. He did neither.
‘Did I ever tell you about my pal Jeremy?’ his father asked suddenly and cleared his throat. ‘We were school friends. He had a twin sister, Diana, and the three of us were a little club, thick as thieves we were. I stepped out with Diana for a time – it didn’t last, and of course later I met your mother, but we stayed friends. Nice girl, she was. Jeremy loved animals and trained to be a vet.’
‘I remember him, I think,’ said Edwin, dredging up a memory from his childhood, shortly before the first war, recalling a big jolly man with a huge St Bernard that went everywhere with him. He had let the infant Edwin ride the dog around the sitting room, squawking with laughter.
‘Jeremy died at Passchendaele. Did you know that? I didn’t see it happen. A great loss.’ His father was staring at him. ‘And Diana never spoke to me again. She resented me, you see – for surviving. Twenty years of friendship, thrown away just like that. The last I heard she’d left her husband and was busy drinking herself to death. Not what Jeremy would have wanted, of course. She let the grief win.’
Edwin wondered, inexplicably, what had happened to Jeremy’s dog and felt tears coming again. Somehow he had never thought to ask why he had stopped coming to visit, had barely remembered his existence until today. Why had his father never talked of Jeremy? Hadn’t he, too, let grief rule his actions?
His father was silent now, staring at the floor, and then seemed to make an effort to look at his son.
‘I don’t say any of this to chastise you, Edwin, but to help you. You must learn to deal with the grief. Not for my sake, or your mother’s, or even for your own, but for Emilia’s. Do you think she’d have wanted this? Of course not. She’d want you to pick yourself up and learn how to live again.’
The next day Edwin applied for a job in India.
9
Rangoon, December 1941
Taking a deep breath, Kate knocked on the door and heard Mr Carlton’s reedy voice say, ‘Enter.’
She went in and saw the old man hunched behind his desk. She had seen him only a few times since he had offered her the job in 1939. He evidently had little interest in education and tended to let his section of the department run itself.
‘Miss Girton,’ he said, peering up over his spectacles. She saw a stack of closely typed printed pages in front of him, but he moved his hand to cover them and put his pen back on the inkstand.
‘Well? What is it you want?’
‘I wondered if you have any information, sir,’ she said, trying not to sound impatient, ‘about the war. People are afraid and no one seems to know anything.’
He frowned. ‘What sort of information?’
‘Well – when the Japanese are going to arrive, for one.’
‘Don’t be foolish,’ he said, looking cross. ‘You’ll cause a riot with that kind of talk.’
‘Everyone says it’s coming,’ she said.
‘We do not anticipate an attack on the city in the near future,’ he said firmly, scribbling furiously on the paper before him. ‘The Japanese are far too busy targeting Singapore, which is unlikely to fall.’
‘So why has the city introduced a blackout?’
‘It’s a precaution, Miss Girton,’ he said, standing up. ‘Rest assured, you will be given instructions in ample time if there is any danger to the civilian community.’ He marched over to the door and wrenched it open, glowering at her. ‘Now please leave.’
Reluctantly she went back into the corridor and the door slammed behind her.
‘Anything useful?’ asked Edwin when she reappeared in the office.
‘No. Nothing. Everyone I speak to either pats me on the head and tells me not to worry or bleats on about bloody Singapore.’ Fuming, she sat down heavily.
‘If I were the Japanese Imperial Army,’ said Edwin, ‘an unlikely turn of events, I grant you – I’d say this was the ideal time to invade Burma, while everyone’s eyes are on Singapore. It seems the obvious thing to do.’
‘Try telling that to Mr Carlton,’ she said. ‘The thing is, they probably know much more than we do. It’s just that they won’t tell us.’
‘People ought to be leaving the city,’ said Edwin, fiddling with a pencil. ‘It’s not safe here.’
‘I think some are,’ said Kate. ‘Apparently a lot of Europeans, Mrs Campbell for one, won’t be coming back from India after Christmas. And a lot of the Indian merchants are making plans to get out.’
‘Evidently no one believes the official line,’ said Edwin, drumming his fingers on the table. He watched a flock of parakeets dive past the window, before they skimmed across the lawns and off into the distance. They circled around
a tall stupa, their green wings reflecting the sunlight, before they flew away.
*
A few days later Japanese troops came ashore at the southern tip of Burma and began inching their way north towards Rangoon. Two days before Christmas the first aerial attack on Rangoon came. The wireless crowed about a Japanese plane that had been shot down, but hundreds of people were dead and whole streets lay in ruins.
Trying to maintain a semblance of normal life, Kate spent Christmas Day with some of the staff of the Secretariat, who held a picnic in the nearby park. Most of them were Buddhists and she felt grateful to be spared the absurdity of an English Christmas.
‘Where is Mr Edwin?’ asked Miss Soe, ladling fish soup into bowls as they sat on the dry grass, the sun high in the sky above them.
‘I don’t know,’ said Kate. ‘I reminded him yesterday. Perhaps he doesn’t like Christmas.’
‘But all English people like Christmas!’ said Miss Soe. ‘It is very important for you, yes?’
Kate shrugged. ‘Very important for children, although I think that’s mostly because they get presents. I’ve always found it a bit tedious. This is much nicer!’
She looked around at the dozen or so people who sat on mats, some of them playing with babies and small children, others chatting quietly and offering around platters of food.
It was very hot in the park and the slender palm trees overhead did not afford much protection. Europe, she had heard, was suffering a punishing winter, but she could hardly imagine the snow and ice.
At 11.30 that morning the air-raid sirens had gone off across Rangoon, but the all-clear went out two hours later, and people seemed remarkably relaxed about it all. Perhaps this is the only way they know how to cope with such horror, thought Kate, seeing people setting up stalls once again in the street near her flat. Perhaps we all close our eyes because we don’t want to see.
Late in the day, as the sun was going down and the children were playing a lazy game of football, Kate looked up to see Edwin strolling across the park, swinging a cloth bag.
‘Mr Edwin is here!’ said Ohmar, who worked in the office beside theirs, and quickly a plate of leftovers was made up.
‘Hello,’ said Kate, squinting up at him.
‘Merry Christmas,’ said Edwin, squatting down beside her. ‘Oh, thank you,’ he said, as the food was passed to him. ‘Look, I’ve brought some fruit for everyone. It’s not much, but . . .’
With exclamations of delight the children dived at the bag and held up its contents one by one for everyone to admire. Out came several guavas, a giant pineapple, a heap of tiny oranges, and three warm papayas.
As the fruit was efficiently sliced up by Miss Soe and her friends, Kate looked at Edwin. ‘Had a good day?’
‘Yes, busier than expected,’ he said. ‘I got roped into helping the teachers at the boarding school down the road. They were loading all their belongings into trucks and getting the children ready to board a ship tomorrow morning.’
‘They’re leaving?’
‘Seems so. I’m surprised they’ve left it this long, really.’
‘Where are they going?’
‘India, at first. After that, who knows. Maybe they’ll come back when the threat is gone.’
Kate looked thoughtful and watched the platters of fruit making the rounds. ‘Do you really think they’ll come back?’
‘No. Would you?’
‘God, I’ve no idea. It could be ages – months or years. And anyway . . .’ She stared absently at the game being played nearby. ‘I’m not sure it would be the same.’
‘Mr Edwin, you play football with us?’ called one of the boys.
‘Oh, no, I’m useless,’ Edwin said shaking his head. ‘Really. You’re better off without me on the team.’
‘Please, Mr Edwin!’
After the demand was repeated several times, Kate was surprised to see him struggling to his feet and brushing the grass off his shorts.
‘Don’t say I didn’t warn you,’ he called, and within moments he was off, dashing around among the boys as though he were ten or fifteen years younger than he was.
‘He is pretty fast!’ laughed Miss Soe beside her.
‘Pretty terrible, too,’ said Kate as she bit into a slice of warm pineapple, the juice trickling down her chin. ‘He wasn’t joking.’
At last, when he could take no more, Edwin collapsed, puffing, on the ground. ‘I haven’t done that much exercise since I was at school.’
‘You are very hot!’ exclaimed Miss Soe, pointing to where the perspiration ran down his face. ‘It is too hot for you in Rangoon, I think.’
‘It must be cooler up in the hills, or on the coast,’ said Kate. ‘Where would one go?’
Miss Soe looked thoughtful. ‘There is a place far to the west – my family took me there when I was a child. Two days’ journey from here perhaps if you went by motor car. It is called Chaungtha. A beautiful place. One night we ran to the sea and put our hands in and suddenly there were little lights everywhere, under the water.’
‘What was it?’ asked Kate breathlessly.
Miss Soe shrugged. ‘I do not know the English word for it. Tiny animals in the water, shining like stars.’
‘Sounds like what we call bioluminescence,’ said Edwin. ‘I’ve heard of it – it’s plankton or something like that. How extraordinary.’
‘So beautiful,’ said Miss Soe dreamily. She turned away to help the children to more food, spooning out aromatic tealeaf salad.
‘Little stars in the water . . .’ said Kate. ‘How I wish we could go there.’
‘Two days’ journey,’ said Edwin regretfully.
‘But think of swimming in that sea.’
She pictured the place, imagining a strip of palm-fringed beach where the waves gently whispered and, through the darkness, an unearthly glow under the surf.
‘I’m going to go there one day,’ she said. ‘There are so many wonders in Burma and I’ve hardly seen any of them.’
‘All right,’ said Edwin agreeably. ‘I’ll come with you.’
‘You will?’
‘Of course. When the war is over.’
*
Late that evening Edwin sat silently in a corner of a capacious cellar, surrounded by smartly dressed strangers. The air-raid siren had gone off an hour before and with very little fuss the Strand’s guests were shepherded safely out of the main building.
Most of the people around him were familiar, now – he had passed them on the stairs or exchanged nods in the breakfast room. Uniformed staff moved among the guests, calmly distributing blankets, pillows, drinks and trays of canapés.
‘Anything I can get for you, sir?’ said a young waiter, looking at him with some concern. ‘Would you like me to call the doctor?’
‘I’m quite all right,’ said Edwin, knowing he was pale and clammy. ‘Just a bit tired.’ He jumped as he heard another distant thud and caught the boy’s sympathetic look. ‘Thank you.’
He could see a red-faced man berating the night manager on the other side of the cellar, his voice getting louder, and was filled with admiration at the manager’s diplomatic concern. Most of the guests, however, were sitting coolly with cocktails, reading their week-old newspapers by the light of oil lamps, and he had the impression that they were rather enjoying themselves. The British upper classes loved this sort of thing, he reminded himself. Give them a disaster and the chance to keep up appearances and they were in heaven.
He wondered how Kate was coping, imagined her sitting with her neighbours, laughing at some joke and practising her Burmese. She’s the strongest person I know, he thought suddenly, and remembered how she had brought him home without fuss after the Scottish party. She was unlike any woman he had ever met, but she seemed to know him better than anyone else. She was dismissive of convention, refreshingly opinionated, and she made him laugh. She would survive anything. He hoped that she was safe.
But nowhere is safe now, Edwin thought bleakly,
feeling the distant vibrations under his feet. He wondered how much of the city would be left in the morning.
10
Rangoon, January 1942
The office door banged open and Kate appeared, flinging a sun hat and white gloves onto her desk. She perched on the edge of the desk and pulled off her shoes, wincing as the stiff leather pinched her bruised ankles.
‘Where have you been?’ said Edwin, looking up from his work. ‘Anywhere nice?’
‘The hospital. Visiting.’
‘Oh – how was it?’
‘Awful,’ said Kate, pursing her lips. She collapsed into a chair. ‘God, I could do with a drink.’
‘There’s only water, I’m afraid,’ said Edwin, but she shook her head.
‘I so wanted to be useful. I heard that Lady Dorman-Smith was looking for volunteers to sit with wounded people at the Rangoon General so I thought I’d offer my services. But it was simply dreadful.’
‘Are you squeamish?’
‘Oh, no. I can cope with any amount of that. It was just . . . the atmosphere. That awful sickbed smell that pervades everything. It took me back to the years of looking after Father. There were dozens of miserable people lying in narrow beds, and troupes of absurd English women twittering around with chocolate and card games. I couldn’t bear it so I got out as fast as I could.’
Kate slumped in her seat for a moment. Then she sat up, reached for a handful of hairpins, and set about tidying her hair. ‘My first great test of the war and I’ve failed it,’ she said wryly.
‘You haven’t failed,’ said Edwin. ‘Visiting in gloves and high heels and talking brightly about the weather – well, it isn’t your style, that’s all. You’re more – practical.’
‘I hope so,’ she said, pulling a pile of papers across the desk. ‘I’d rather do something useful.’
She started to read the report in front of her, a thick wad of pages that had taken weeks of work, comprising her earnest suggestions for improvement in the schools of the Irrawaddy Delta, some of which she had visited the year before. They would surely not stay open for long now that the Japanese were moving ever closer. She had barely even started her report on the schools of the Bagan area and knew with a heavy certainty that it would never be written.
The Long Journey Home Page 5