The Long Journey Home

by Cecily Blench

  ‘They used water,’ he said, ‘poured water through a tube into my throat to make me believe I was drowning.’ He paused and watched the life of the park as it undulated around them, listened to the sounds; the calls of children, the soft laughter of men playing chess on a stone bench, and the sharp thwack of a cricket ball somewhere in the distance. ‘I wanted to die.’

  ‘But you survived.’

  ‘It was Edwin’s loss that made me want to die, but somehow it was also what gave me the strength to live on. And I have, for three years,’ he said. ‘I was moved to another camp after a year or so, where we mostly worked on the railway. The camps were liberated by the army in August, although it has taken until now for me to get home.’

  She looked at his thin face and his twisted, bony hands. Even now, months after the end of the war, he looked unwell. The physical and mental souvenirs of his time as prisoner would last, she supposed, for the rest of his life, and he had lost the person he cared for most.

  ‘It must be strange for you to be back in India after so long,’ said Kate. ‘I still don’t feel that I understand this place.’

  ‘Will you go back to Burma?’ asked Rama.

  ‘No,’ she said at last. ‘I’m not sure I would be welcome.’ She looked up at him. ‘But my ghosts are quieter now.’

  ‘Mine still clamour. But perhaps that’s to be expected.’

  ‘Where will you go?

  ‘To the Punjab, to see my family. I have not always been a good son but it’s time to make amends.’

  ‘And what then?’

  ‘The rest of my life?’ said Rama, and he heaved a sigh. ‘I have no idea. I will have to start again. What about you?’

  ‘I’ll work at the hospital until they no longer need me. Soon, I think. And then I suppose I’ll take a ship back to England. I want to see my family, too.’

  ‘Will you stay there?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ She stared at the spray of the fountain, leaping high over the marble horses, drying almost before it hit the ground. ‘I’m not sure I’ll be able to, after all that has happened. Who knows?’

  He smiled. ‘You sound melancholy.’

  ‘Shouldn’t I be?’

  ‘You have endured. I think that is rather extraordinary.’

  ‘If anyone has a right to be melancholy, it’s you,’ she said.

  He shrugged. ‘I have mourned and raged for three years. But it grew quieter each day, and on the day the camp was liberated I felt a great elation. I have been granted another chance. I don’t intend to waste it. He taught me that, in the short time we had together.’

  He glanced up at her and she felt suddenly that they understood one another, that she knew everything that she needed to know. Though she had only known him for a few short months, Edwin had been one of the most important friendships of her life. At what might have been his darkest hour, he had found love and absolution.

  Grant me the same courage, she thought.

  ‘Edwin’s parents ought to know what happened,’ said Kate. ‘I might be able to track them down.’

  Rama was silent for a moment. ‘I suppose they will also know where to find his wife’s family.’

  ‘I expect so.’

  ‘He talked about her sometimes. He loved her. Does that sound strange, knowing what you now know?’

  ‘Not strange at all.’

  ‘He really did.’

  ‘Emilia,’ murmured Kate.

  ‘I think they should know that he is gone,’ said Rama. ‘But also that as he approached the end she was in his thoughts. Perhaps it might bring them some small comfort.’

  ‘It’s kind of you to think of them.’

  ‘I believe that regret is corrosive. Better by far to live well than to live in shame and melancholy. I will do what I can to become the man he believed I was.’ He looked at her, his head on one side. ‘I think you have allowed regret to direct you for too long. Let it go.’

  She twisted her hands, feeling his gaze on her, and knew he was right. ‘I don’t know how else to live.’

  ‘Let your heart guide you instead,’ said Rama. ‘Nothing and no one else can choose the right path for you.’ He sat back with his eyes closed, feeling the sun on his face. ‘Edwin talked about you, too, you know.’

  ‘Did he?’

  ‘He said you had a great capacity for love. He believed that you were destined for an extraordinary future.’

  ‘He always saw the best in people,’ she said wryly.

  ‘He did,’ said Rama, and they smiled at each other, pleased to have this shared affection.

  There was something else that she couldn’t put her finger on until later, when she was sitting on her bed with a letter from Joseph in her hand, scribbled on the train taking him and his daughter from Calcutta to a small town by the sea. It was an acknowledgement of a shared humanity; the acceptance that they were both human, with all the flaws and mistakes that that entailed, and that Edwin too had been human, and that believing that was a way not of insulting his memory, but of honouring it.

  Kate stretched out on the bench and felt a sudden weight lift from her shoulders. Edwin was gone and would not return, but his legacy was love. She had survived, though the road had been long and painful. She felt newly hatched into the world, fragile, unsure of what was to come, but certain for the first time that there was something out there, if only she had the courage to find it.

  67

  Calcutta, December 1945

  Kate hurried along the dock. She heard the hoot of a steamer and walked faster, adjusting her straw hat. In the distance the sun gleamed off the water and for a moment she felt as though she was at the centre of a great web, with shining tendrils that stretched across the globe. From Calcutta Port ships went everywhere – even home.

  She saw the steamer and hastened towards it. The gangplank was still down and goods were being loaded unhurriedly. The ship was due to leave at any moment, but time in the east was fluid.

  A group of people were waiting on the wharf. Myia, turning, put a hand above her eyes to shield them from the sun and waved.

  ‘You came!’ she said, kissing Kate on both cheeks. ‘Thank you.’

  The young man beside her smiled, and the child in a sling on his back waved a chubby hand. Kate shook his hand and kissed the little boy, feeling unexpectedly tearful.

  ‘Myia tells me about you,’ said Denpo, lifting up an umbrella to shield his son from the fierce sunlight. ‘I am happy to meet you.’ Like most Burmese men he was slight, and his features were delicate. But he looked strong and muscular, and his eyes, when he looked up at her, were bright and fiercely intelligent.

  ‘He is shy about his English,’ said Myia. ‘I have been teaching him.’

  ‘It sounds perfect,’ said Kate. She smiled at him, feeling real warmth. She had been afraid that she would not be able to see past what she knew about Denpo; that he had fought with the Japanese. Until yesterday she had not wanted to meet him. But talking to Rama had changed all that. Even though she now knew what had happened to Edwin, and knew that men like Denpo had betrayed him, she had also seen Rama’s commitment to forgiveness and knew that it was time to look to the future.

  ‘They did what they had to do to protect their families and their country,’ Rama had said, shrugging. ‘We all do things that we are ashamed of later. They will have to live with it for the rest of their lives.’

  Denpo loved Myia. That was what she knew about him. The rest was in the past and would have to stay there. She watched him fussing over his little boy, Thagyamin – passing him a slice of pineapple, tweaking his bare toes – and felt a swell of mingled sadness and hope: for Denpo and Myia and their son, and for Burma.

  There was no time. She and Myia had talked and talked, and still there would never be enough time. Their lives had briefly intersected on a difficult and extraordinary journey. Never again would they live in the same city, never again would they talk quietly in the darkness of the jungle as the campfire flickered before t
hem. Myia was going home.

  And so must I, thought Kate.

  At last she embraced them both, then watched them walk up the gangplank together with their child. They turned at the top and waved, two small figures in bright longyis, and Kate stood alone on the dock, waving back and thinking of the great journey before them. In a few days they would be in Rangoon, and then the real adventure would start. The work of rebuilding Burma would take a lifetime, but they would be together.

  With a long, low hoot the steamer slid out of the harbour and began to make its slow way along the Hooghly River, which would take it at last to the coast. From the top deck dozens of people waved and she waved back. When it was too small to see the passengers, the crowds on the dock began to disperse.

  Kate stood irresolute for a moment, and then started back along the wharf. In several berths there were other ships preparing to leave, and some that had just arrived. All around families embraced one another while labourers loaded sacks and boxes onto ships. It seemed that the world was on the move.

  By now, she knew, Rama would be starting his long journey to the small village in the Punjab where he had been born. She imagined him climbing down from a bus, dusty and travel-worn, and walking slowly towards the old woman who waited for him, her hair covered by a bright scarf. In the years to come Kate would think of him often, and however many miles and years lay between them she knew they were inextricably bound to one another for as long as they might live.

  Reaching the end of the wharf, she stopped at the office where tickets were sold and stared up at the lists of sailings that were pinned to boards outside. Ships were leaving for Southampton every week.

  She thought of a young woman, her mother, standing on the dock at Fishguard in the years before the first war, watching the ship steam away towards Ireland. Her hair is blowing in the stiff breeze and she licks the salt from her lips. She is calm. She watches until it is out of sight and then sighs, a long, low sigh. She has no idea what the rest of her life will be, or whether the decision she has made will prove to be correct. In this moment the future is tantalisingly empty . . .

  ‘Can I help you, miss?’

  Kate, lost in a reverie, heard the young man speak, and shook her head. She made her way through the port and out onto the main road, where she flagged down a rickshaw. As they moved off towards the city, the heavy smell of salt and fish began to recede, gradually replaced by the scent of rotting vegetables, petrol, frying dough, and the sweet bougainvillea that hung over the walls on all sides.

  The rickshaw moved slowly through the traffic. All around the hordes of Calcutta walked and bicycled and drove in a never-ending stream, and looking out across the great seething mass she saw the city shimmer in the afternoon heat, like a mirage in the desert before it disappears.

  Epilogue

  Orissa, 31st December 1945

  Wrapping her dressing gown around herself, Kate stepped out of the small wooden hut. In the evening warmth the jasmine that grew around the door was intoxicating and she pressed her face into a spray of flowers.

  A number of other huts were dotted around and in the distance she could see fellow visitors making their way to dinner. An elderly Hindu couple emerged from the hut beside hers, the wife resplendent in a rich pink sari, her husband with a garland of flowers around his neck. They greeted her happily and pottered away arm in arm.

  Kate picked up the towel that she had left folded outside the door and made her way down the steep steps that led away from the resort, following a winding path down the cliffs. The stairs were crooked and she descended carefully, pausing occasionally to look at the sea, which sparkled in the evening light.

  As she emerged onto the beach she stopped and gazed out across the sand. The last few beachgoers were making their way back to the hotel, smiling as they passed her. They had that look of intense happiness and relaxation that can only be achieved by spending many hours baking on a warm beach and taking regular swims.

  Finally the last family went by and made their way up the stairs, the sand-covered children scampering ahead while their parents wearily carried deckchairs and picnic bags up the cliff, obviously longing for a drink.

  At last the beach was hers. The sun was setting, and with a pang Kate remembered another sunset and a golden stupa gleaming crimson, far away. The pink sky turned slowly to navy, and the year was almost at its end. At home her mother would be preparing gifts for local children and opening a barrel of cider for the farmhands, before the countdown to midnight and then the dawn of the new year, bright and full of promise.

  Kate took off her robe and stood naked, relishing the balmy air against her skin. She glanced down, taking in the faded scars that crisscrossed her legs and feet, the callouses on her hands, and the stretch marks like a map across her thighs. Then she walked towards the sea, crunching sand under her toes, and felt the waves begin to lap at her ankles. The water was warm still and the white sand sloped gently away into the darkness.

  Soon she was waist-deep and began to swim, rising and falling gently with the waves, feeling the currents shifting beneath her. She lay back and closed her eyes and floated on the surface, her hair splayed out around her head. The sea rushed gently on all sides and she could hear music echoing across the bay.

  It was now almost completely dark, but Kate felt safer than she had done in years, lying here on the black tide, somewhere in the Bay of Bengal, a tiny piece of jetsam in an enormous ocean. The heart of Asia, she thought. She ran her fingers idly through the water and opened her eyes.

  As her hand moved under the surface, a thousand tiny stars of luminescence burst and twinkled in colours too numerous to count, following the movement of her fingers. She swished her hands again, laughing delightedly, and thrashed her legs, and suddenly the whole dark ocean seemed to be lit with sparks of light, as if a new cosmos was being formed, and as if somehow everything that Kate had seen and done had brought her here, at this moment, to be present at its birth.

  Acknowledgements

  The seed for this book was planted in 2013 when I spent several months working in Burma (Myanmar) as a volunteer teacher. I am more grateful than I can say to the many people who showed me their extraordinary country, at a time of great upheaval, and were endlessly generous and welcoming. As I write Burma is once again caught up in a struggle for its future. I hope one day to return and to see their hopes fulfilled.

  I thank my agent Charlotte Colwill, the Wilbur & Niso Smith Foundation, and everyone at Bonnier Books UK, particularly my editor Claire Johnson-Creek, for their encouragement and work on the book. After several years as an editor myself, being on the other side of the table has only reinforced my admiration for the huge amount of work done behind the scenes by many people in producing a book.

  I am grateful to Kate Pearce, Ross Meikle, and my sister Daisy Blench, all of whom read the book in manuscript form and offered suggestions and advice. My partner Mark Wheeldon provided emotional and culinary support, always managed to look interested when I was bouncing ideas off him, and never doubted that I could do it.

  I owe my parents, Pete Blench and Felicity Norman, a huge debt for their support and encouragement, and for always believing in me and my writing, as well as for reading the manuscript too and providing feedback. They have never once suggested that my ambition to spend my life writing and travelling was impractical, and I am very thankful for their steadfast love and support.

  Thank you to everyone else who cheered me on – your enthusiasm and encouragement mean the world.

  Finally, I must mention my maternal grandmother Mary Norman (née King), who went to India in 1942 with the British Army to nurse soldiers wounded in the Burma campaign and found her future waiting. Neither I nor this book would exist had she not taken that courageous leap into the unknown.

  On 1 February 2021, the military in Myanmar (Burma) detained members of the country’s democratically elected government and assumed power. A grass-roots resistance movement is fighting to res
tore democracy in the face of violent suppression. For information about how you can support the Myanmar people, including donating to charities and putting pressure on the international community, please visit: www.isupportmyanmar.com

  About the Author

  Cecily Blench grew up in Herefordshire and studied English Literature at the University of York. She worked for an independent publisher for several years and is now a freelance writer and editor. The Long Journey Home is her first novel.

  The Wilbur Smith Adventure Writing Prize supports and celebrates the best aspiring and established adventure writers today. Writers are recognised in three distinct categories with awards for published, unpublished and young writers.

  The Long Journey Home by Cecily Blench won the Wilbur Smith Adventure Writing Prize, Best Unpublished Manuscript award in 2019.

  Launched in 2016, the Prize is administered by The Wilbur & Niso Smith Foundation, a charitable organisation dedicated to empowering writers, promoting literacy and advancing adventure writing.

  Find out more at www.wilbur-niso-smithfoundation.org

  First published in the UK in 2021 by Zaffre

  This ebook edition published in 2021 by

  ZAFFRE

  An imprint of Bonnier Books UK

  80–81 Wimpole St, London W1G 9RE

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  Sveavägen 56, Stockholm, Sweden

  Copyright © Cecily Blench, 2021

  Cover design by Jenny Richards

  The moral right of Cecily Blench to be identified as Author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright,

  Designs and Patents Act, 1988.

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