The Long Journey Home

by Cecily Blench

  ‘Oh, God.’ She stood irresolute for a moment and wondered what to do next. She jumped as the doors behind her banged open again and, with a swell of relief, she saw Dr Singh, looking weary, his eyes bloodshot and his thinning hair plastered to his scalp. She wondered when he had last slept.

  They got the woman out of the car and inside the hospital on a stretcher and Dr Singh led the way into the operating theatre. From somewhere he summoned two Burmese nurses and suddenly Kate and Edwin were no longer needed. Kate saw the doctor in urgent discussion with the nurses and the husband weeping again, then the door closed and she and Edwin were left outside in the whitewashed corridor.

  ‘Are you all right?’ she said. Edwin looked up at her in surprise and then down at his unsteady hands.

  ‘Oh – yes. I’m fine.’ But he sank to the floor and closed his eyes, taking deep breaths. She sat beside him, her head tilted back against the wall.

  ‘Whatever happens,’ she said, ‘thank you for helping.’

  ‘She deserved better,’ said Edwin. His voice was muffled and she thought he was crying, but did not want to embarrass him, so she linked her arm through his and squeezed.

  ‘Yes, she did.’

  Kate thought vaguely that she should go back to work, but her limbs were heavy and her head pounded. Instead she sat listlessly on the floor of the corridor, listening to the distant buzzing of flies and drawing shapes with her fingertip in the dust. An hour passed this way, perhaps two.

  Dr Singh emerged quietly from the theatre, his overall bloody. He had not had time to change his shoes and his sandals were stained. Scrambling up, Kate saw at once what he had to say and her stomach churned.

  ‘She’s gone,’ he said. Edwin, still on the floor, glanced up blindly and then looked away.

  ‘And the child?’

  ‘Dead. She’d been bleeding for too long – eight hours at least, possibly all night.’ He sighed. ‘It wasn’t your fault, Kate. You did what you could.’

  ‘Not enough,’ she said. ‘What will happen to her husband?’

  He shrugged. ‘He’ll survive, for now. He’s in shock.’

  ‘We should help him.’

  ‘How? Money? Unless you can bring his wife back to life, dear Kate, you must leave him be. He’s not the only one, you know. Soon the Japanese will be here – and then we will all have bigger problems to worry about.’

  She looked at the doctor for a moment. ‘Why are you still here?’

  ‘It’s my job.’

  ‘But the others have all gone.’

  ‘I have no wife, no family, and there’s no one waiting for me in India. I am old. Where should I be if not here, working in my hospital?’ Dr Singh smiled, his face kindly. ‘Do not forget how privileged you are, Kate. You have the means to get away and a bright future. Many of these people have neither. Take the chance you are given with both hands and leave this city.’

  She watched him disappear down the corridor and realised that the bombing had started again somewhere nearby, a distant thunder that went on and on.

  Edwin stirred on the floor beside her and she knelt down. There were tear tracks down his cheeks and she knew that he was thinking of Emilia.

  ‘What happened?’ said Kate, and suddenly everything became silent; the whine of aircraft overhead, the crunch of collapsing buildings and the low roar of the fires that were sweeping through the city all somehow ceased to matter. It was just her and Edwin, sitting on the floor in a hospital corridor, an ocean of silent calm.

  Edwin did not reply for a long time. At last he said, ‘I betrayed her.’ He chewed his lip and she had a sudden glimpse of the man he must once have been.

  ‘She died because of me,’ he said in a rush, and Kate heard the tremble in his voice.

  ‘It wasn’t your fault,’ she said, remembering how she had said those words to her father, long ago.

  ‘I was to blame,’ he said with a shrug. ‘Without my actions she would not have died.’ He shook his head, looking weary. ‘You don’t understand.’

  ‘Perhaps I do,’ said Kate, watching him.

  ‘Why? What have you done?’

  A door banged open nearby and three nurses spilled out, talking intently. All three looked overworked and exhausted, with dark shadows under their eyes and stains on their longyis.

  ‘We ought to leave,’ said Kate, pulling herself up. ‘We’re of no use here.’

  They walked slowly out of the low building, avoiding the crowds of anxious people who were waiting for attention. A few harried-looking staff were making their way through the masses, taking down details.

  ‘I suppose I ought to return this,’ said Edwin as they reached the car.

  ‘Thank you for helping me,’ said Kate.

  ‘We’re friends,’ said Edwin, patting her shoulder. He looked drained. ‘It’s what we do, isn’t it?’

  17

  Mandalay, April 1942

  Late at night, Kate paced restlessly around the house, opening and closing cupboards and peering at the things the Faulkners had left behind.

  She went through Mrs Faulkner’s wardrobe, holding up evening dresses and stroking the smooth silk. She tried on a pale yellow floor-length number, quite unlike anything she would normally choose, and laughed on seeing herself in the mirror. It was cut on the bias and evidently made for a much slimmer, taller woman, but she liked the soft fabric and the way it clung to her hips.

  Still wearing the dress, Kate drifted barefoot into the kitchen and opened the cabinet where she knew the alcohol was kept.

  There was a tentative knock on the door and she opened it to find Edwin hovering outside. He hardly seemed to notice what she was wearing.

  ‘Hello,’ she said. ‘Drink?’

  He looked at the bottle of whisky in her hand. ‘Please.’

  She slopped two generous measures into glasses and brought them out to the veranda, where he perched on the edge of a tattered wicker sofa.

  ‘Thanks,’ he said, and breathed in deeply over the glass. He looked up at her. ‘I heard the hospital was bombed.’

  She nodded. ‘Completely destroyed. Hundreds dead.’ She gulped at the whisky, feeling the numbing heat spread slowly through her chest. ‘I left at around nine – there was nothing else to be done.’

  ‘What about your friend – Dr Singh?’

  Kate shook her head. ‘No sign. Presumed dead.’ She collapsed into a chair. Her head hurt from the crying and the endless awful sounds of the bombing raids.

  Edwin looked around the veranda, at the smart furnishings now covered in dust. ‘This place must have been quite nice once.’

  ‘I think they left just after Christmas. There are bits of wrapping paper and so on inside. Probably far away by now.’ He was watching her as she spoke. ‘What?’

  ‘Nothing. You look tired.’

  ‘Thanks. So do you, actually.’

  ‘I haven’t been sleeping,’ he said, rubbing his forehead. ‘I hate this waiting.’

  ‘We’ll know soon enough,’ said Kate. ‘I suppose we’ll have to leave.’

  ‘And then what?’ said Edwin. She saw that he was gripping his glass tightly.

  ‘I expect we shall be sent to India,’ said Kate, sounding more confident than she felt. She had no idea what they would do next and the empty future that rose up before her was enough to fill her with panic.

  ‘In a strange way, I was starting to feel at home here,’ said Edwin with a half smile. ‘I was so unhappy when I arrived, and of course it’s awful knowing that people are suffering, but these last few weeks in Mandalay I’ve felt . . . needed, I suppose. Useful, for once.’

  ‘Me too. Perhaps we’ve both got some sort of saviour complex.’

  He shrugged. ‘When you’ve lost someone, I think it’s natural to want to make amends.’

  She watched a bat flit across the darkening sky. People in the houses nearby were beginning to light candles. Somewhere far away a siren was howling.

  ‘Kate,’ said Edwin, taking anot
her long drink, ‘can I tell you something?’

  She eyed him curiously. ‘About your wife?’

  ‘I don’t know how . . .’

  ‘You were unfaithful to her,’ said Kate, and she saw him close his eyes, his face crumpling. ‘I guessed. Sorry.’

  ‘Then you know what a wicked person I am,’ he said, his face haggard. ‘I was out that night. With – with someone else. She died alone because I wasn’t there.’

  They sat in the silence and Kate realised it was almost dark. She looked around for the lamp and the box of matches she kept above the lintel. The warm glow of the oil lamp quivered at first, then, as she turned it up, burned bright and strong.

  ‘Reminds me of home,’ she said, putting the lamp back on the little table. ‘We didn’t get electricity on the farm until a few years ago. My father was afraid of naked flames after the war so we all carried safety lamps up to bed.’

  ‘How old were you when you started taking care of him?’ said Edwin.

  ‘I always did, really. He got worse as the years went by and my mother had enough on her plate running the farm. Laura had already moved away, so at fourteen I left school and became a full-time nurse.’

  She frowned, picking at a thread on her dress. ‘I swore I’d never be a nurse again – and here I am in Mandalay and it’s all I’m good for.’

  ‘Your father must have been very grateful to have you there.’

  ‘He felt so guilty that he was keeping me back from the world, kept telling me we’d hire someone and I could go back to school, but I knew we couldn’t afford it. I just kept plodding along, never admitting how miserable I was.’

  ‘We all do that. It’s hard to admit things, even to yourself.’

  ‘I suppose I understand what you mean about Emilia,’ said Kate, ‘about not being there.’ She poured out more whisky, seeing her hand tremble slightly. ‘I wasn’t there when my father died.’

  Edwin listened, his thin face in the lamplight, kind, friendly. She felt that she could tell him anything, although it was hard to find the words.

  ‘I was at the cinema,’ she said, ‘watching a new picture with a friend. I shouldn’t have gone. I came back and he was dead.’

  ‘But you couldn’t have known,’ said Edwin. ‘You have nothing to feel guilty about.’

  ‘It’s not that,’ said Kate, and now she could feel her heart thumping, and the blood, or the whisky, roaring in her veins. It was a comfort to talk about it finally with someone who understood.

  ‘I felt relieved,’ she said at last. ‘I could see the world changing around me, my schoolfriends growing up and having lives of their own while I was stuck at home. I loved my father dearly, but I was so miserable, so fed up with the nursing, the smell of the sickroom, the hideous memories of the war. I was relieved that he was gone – for him, partly, relieved that his suffering was over – but also for myself.’

  She looked over at Edwin, afraid of what she might see, and to her surprise he took her hand, very gently.

  ‘Oh, Kate,’ he said, ‘dearest Kate.’ He sat still for a moment, his hand warm, holding hers tightly. He shook his head. ‘You are not alone. It’s quite normal to feel that way.’

  ‘Is it?’ she said.

  ‘We’re human,’ said Edwin. ‘We can’t be selfless all the time.’

  ‘I was never selfless,’ she said wryly. ‘I was the grumpiest, most inept nurse anyone could have asked for. My poor father.’

  ‘What about your mother, your sister? They must have felt the same.’

  ‘Perhaps they did,’ said Kate. ‘It was so hard for Mother. All those years when she was fighting to keep the farm afloat, working long hours and dealing with an ill husband. When he was gone she was grieving, I saw that, but I sensed that she felt relieved, too, although she’d never admit it. She’s very tough – doesn’t take any nonsense from anyone.’

  ‘You sound quite alike,’ said Edwin, smiling.

  ‘I suppose we are. Laura looks more like her – I got Father’s nose – but Mother and I respond to things in the same way. Neither of us were natural carers, but we got through it.’

  ‘But you decided to leave.’

  ‘After that, home wasn’t home any more,’ said Kate. ‘Even after all those years of unhappiness, I looked back with a sort of nostalgia to the time before my father died. Without him the place seemed empty. So I moved to Birmingham, took my exams, did my teacher training. Went to bed with a lot of unsuitable men. Then eventually the idea of Burma came up and I ran away again.’

  Edwin lay back on the sofa, cradling his glass of whisky in both hands. ‘It’s odd, isn’t it? You can have a good life, a loving home, and still not feel quite as if you belong.’

  ‘Is that why you came out here?’

  He swilled the whisky around his glass. ‘I suppose it is. I was looking for something – different. When Emilia died, I knew I’d never find it in London.’

  For the first time in a long while, Kate found herself thinking about the home she had left behind. It was spring once again, the season in which her father had died, and she knew her mother would have her hands full on the farm, anxiously watching over the ewes who were due to lamb any day.

  She saw her, in her oversized rain coat and wellingtons, pausing to talk with the farmhands before driving into town with one of the dogs in the back of the car. Later she would sit at the kitchen table, writing letters and frowning over unpaid bills.

  They talked on, hardly noticing the hours passing, and eventually the whisky bottle was empty. At last Kate saw Edwin nodding off and found that she too was starting to doze.

  She jerked awake and realised that it was starting to grow light. They had been on the veranda all night.

  ‘Look, Edwin,’ she said, prodding his outstretched foot. ‘It’s morning.’

  He groaned. ‘My head hurts.’

  ‘Drink some water. I’ve got an idea.’

  ‘An idea?’

  ‘The sun will be coming up soon. Get in the car.’

  ‘I thought yours was broken.’

  ‘Mrs Farnham bequeathed hers to me when she flew out yesterday. I don’t suppose she’ll be coming back for it.’

  She drove them through the quiet streets. Smoke was rising in the distance from the night’s raids and already there were sweepers and teashop boys going to work.

  ‘Are you safe to drive?’ said Edwin. ‘Where are we going?’ His clothes were crumpled and there were dark circles under his eyes. Kate realised that she was still wearing the yellow silk dress and her feet were bare.

  ‘I’m fine,’ she said. ‘Wait and see.’

  She drove out along the trunk road, away from the city. On all sides there were broken-down vehicles, people sleeping rough beside the road, the ruins of bombed buildings.

  ‘We should just make it,’ said Kate.

  ‘What are we looking for?’

  ‘That,’ said Kate, and pointed. The spire of a huge white pagoda rose up ahead of them. The first rays of the rising sun were catching the golden tip, making it sparkle in the early morning.

  The Irrawaddy snaked around the base of the great temple, mist scudding gently across the surface. A lone monk walked across the causeway leading to the temple, his saffron robe glowing against the pale, clouded mountains that rose in the distance.

  ‘What is this place?’ said Edwin, as the car rolled to a stop by the riverbank. She switched the engine off and the silence was suddenly deafening.

  ‘This is Amarapura,’ said Kate. ‘One of the old capitals of Burma. This was once the centre of a great kingdom.’

  They walked down to the water and Kate saw a rowing boat pulled up under a tree. She unhooked the rope and pushed it down to the water.

  Edwin, still slightly drunk, didn’t question her for once, and climbed in. They took an oar each and sculled out from under the trees, until they were far out on the river, drifting gently in the lazy current.

  Kate paused in her rowing and watched the sun come
up. All my life I have dreamed of seeing something like this, she thought, and soon I must leave. The pagoda, glowing white in the morning sun, the mist on the river, the birds flying low over the paddy fields on the far side – all seemed suffused with beauty, and she knew with a perfect clarity that she would never return.

  ‘It’s extraordinary,’ said Edwin, and she heard his voice catch.

  ‘I’ve wanted to come here for ages. I didn’t think we’d get another chance.’

  ‘I’m glad you brought me here.’ He watched an ibis standing silently in the water close to the bank, its long curved beak occasionally darting down to fish below the surface.

  Perhaps that’s why we were drawn to one another, thought Kate, as the sun rose fully above the horizon, and they began to row gently back to the shore. He, too, is looking for something like home.

  She sensed that Edwin had not told her everything. There was something nagging at her, an idea of what the secret might be, but it was not something she cared to put into words, not yet.

  18

  London, May 1941

  At eight o’clock in the morning, Edwin stood twenty yards from the wreckage of his home. The bomb had ripped straight through between his house and the next one in the terrace, half-demolishing both and killing Emilia where she hid under the kitchen table.

  A policeman was talking to him, but he could take nothing in. He watched the house intently, as though she might suddenly emerge unhurt from the wreckage.

  ‘I want to go in,’ he said suddenly.

  ‘I’m sorry, sir,’ said the young officer. ‘You can’t. It’s too dangerous. The rest of the house might collapse at any moment.’

  ‘What else have I got to lose?’

  The policeman looked down at his notebook. ‘I’m sorry. The demolition fellows are working in there.’

  The elderly couple who lived next door, whose names he had forgotten, had been fast asleep in their room on the far side of the terrace when the bomb hit, and had emerged to find half of their house gone. He had seen them being helped into an ambulance, trembling but alive.

  ‘I’m sorry to ask, sir, but – you and your wife lived alone?’