by Clare Flynn
‘Was it out of pity? Did you think it would be a consolation prize after I told you about Susan?’ His voice is jumpy, nervous. ‘Please tell me. Did you seduce me because you felt sorry for me?’
I am aghast. ‘I didn’t seduce you. Your screaming woke me up. I was concerned about you. You were having a nightmare, so I got into the bed and held you until you calmed. That was all.’
He lets out a sigh. ‘Nothing happened? We didn’t…?’
The lie is out of me before I can stop it. It is much easier. Much kinder, much less complicated than telling him the truth. ‘No, we didn’t. Nothing happened. After a while you fell asleep. I went back to bed and when I woke up you’d gone.’
Reggie grins, his relief palpable.
I feel quite insulted – but I am hardly an attractive prospect with my thinning hair, rough hands and skinny body with its little pot belly.
Before I can say anything else, he reaches for my hands and holds them in his. ‘Only I’d hate to get off on the wrong foot with you, Mary. I’ve been worried sick all morning that I might have… you know… taken advantage of you. I’d like to see you again. I’m not a free man until my divorce is finalised, but I hope we might spend more time with each other in the meantime and then who knows…’ His voice trails away.
I stare at him, taken aback. I hadn’t expected that at all.
‘Only I think we got on rather well last night,’ he says. ‘We have a lot in common with what we’ve both been through. I could never replace Frank for you, but maybe, in time, we might make a go of things. I know I can only be second best. I don’t expect more.’
I am still tongue-tied.
‘I’m no great shakes in the good looks department, but I’m a hard worker and a good provider. We’re both lonely and I’d like to take care of you.’ He looks at me intently. ‘You haven’t said anything. I’ve embarrassed you, haven’t I? I’ve rushed things and frightened you. I don’t want to put you under any pressure. Just give me a chance, Mary. Let’s see how it goes. One day at a time.’
I swallow. I hate to burst his bubble, but I have to do it. ‘I’m sorry, Reggie. I can’t. It’s not you. It’s me. There’s a curse over me. I’m the woman who’s had two fiancés and both died on me. I can’t go through all that again. I’ll never marry. I don’t want to have that kind of relationship anymore. Too much pain. Too much heartbreak. I want to be alone. It suits me.’ My voice sounds cold, sharp, even to me.
His face falls, and he drops my hands. ‘I see,’ he says. ‘I’m sorry. I thought…Goodbye.’ He walks back to the house, his shoulders hunched. At the French windows, he turns back to face me, ‘Please forget this ever happened. I won’t bother you again. I’m sorry, Mary.’
After he’s gone, I sit in the chair, gazing into space. What I’d said was the truth, so why do I have this hollowed out, empty feeling? Why do I have the desire to weep?
14
The Visitor
December 1946
After my encounter with Reggie, I started to write my memoir of what happened to me in Singapore and after. I needed a project to fill the long empty days. And I needed something to take my mind off what happened with Reggie Hyde-Underwood.
Getting the words onto paper was a strange experience. I dreaded doing it, but the process proved to be cathartic. Re-living what had happened to me in those long terrible years of the war, helped me to remove myself from it. Writing it down made those experiences seem to have happened to someone else, someone outside of me, like watching a film show. Remembering, recording, then letting go, made me feel at once calmer and at peace.
I still haven’t returned to teaching at the school. I have a sense that the place they are holding for me probably doesn’t exist; that they are paying lip service to my stated intention to return to work and we all know it will never happen. Besides, the school seems to be functioning fine without me. There are significantly fewer European pupils than before the war – many mothers, like Susan and Evie, have returned with their children to Britain. It will doubtless take a new generation of white children to be born out here before the numbers return to their pre-war levels – if indeed they ever do.
The writing of my war memoir has filled my days until now. If I am not going to teach again, I will need to find some other form of employment. I am still living on my meagre savings and Mum and Dad’s more substantial, but still modest ones. You have to hand it to the British, they may have been a disaster at hanging onto Singapore but they are highly skilled at running and preserving banking systems. Yet even though my funds are there and accessible, they will not last for long. I refuse to let myself think about that yet. I shall be like Mr Micawber and assume that ‘something will turn up’.
This morning I wake to sunshine cutting through a gap between the faded bedroom curtains, washing a pale light across the bedroom floor. From outside I can hear birdsong. There is something so normal and ordinary about it. This is the first time I have woken and not travelled back in time to the camps. The heavy weight of sadness that has dragged me down since I returned to Penang has at last lifted – at least temporarily. I find I am smiling and filled with hope. It’s not a specific feeling, but a general sense of wellbeing – of being in the right place and feeling secure. After washing, I go downstairs, eat some toast and drink my way through a pot of strong tea. Such simple pleasures are still such a luxury to me after the years of drinking brown rice coffee and eating rice porridge.
But I won’t let myself think about all that today. I no longer need to. My memoir is written, and safely stowed away at the bottom of an old leather suitcase on top of the wardrobe. I have written it out of my life and have broken free of the burden my time in the camps placed upon me.
Yesterday, I wrote to the school confirming that I will not be returning to teach there. I thought I’d feel bereft, but another weight has lifted from my shoulders.
As I finish washing the few dishes, there’s a knock on the front door. Surprised, I get up but delay going to answer it. No one comes to call on me these days. I stand behind the door, trying to make up my mind whether to open it. Hoping it’s not someone from the school, wanting to change my mind, I tell myself I am being ridiculous and open the door tentatively.
Evie Barrington is standing on the path, looking up at my bedroom window. She must have imagined I was still in bed as the curtains are still closed. I am stunned at seeing her. Surprise turns to joy and I open my arms and embrace her, holding her tall frame against my gaunt misshapen body. For I am still that oddity, a wraithlike creature with a swollen rice belly and puffy ankles in a body that is otherwise a bag of bones. Evie hugs me back, as happy to see me as I am to see her.
‘Look at you!’ she says. ‘Wearing a sarong. Quite the native.’ She gives me a warm smile.
We go through into the garden, where we drink real coffee, sitting under a frangipani tree, the sweet scent wrapping around us.
‘How I love being here,’ Evie says, waving her hand through the air in an expansive gesture.
The garden is neglected, overgrown, the lawn a bare dry patch, the plants rampant, yet the tree flowers are even more profuse than they were before the war.
‘Everything is so lush, so colourful. Everywhere smells so…so exotic. London is filthy and full of thick smog. It’s impossible to breathe. I couldn’t wait to be back here.’
‘But what brings you back to Penang? You told me you were going to live in England. What’s happened to change your mind?’ My heart lifts at the prospect of having Evie back in George Town.
‘Everything’s changed, Mary!’ She is grinning, bubbling over with joy. I don’t think I have ever seen her so happy. For a moment I feel a twinge of jealousy.
‘I’m not here for good. Just long enough to sort out some things with the solicitor and with Reggie.’ She takes my hands in hers. ‘I’m getting married, Mary!’
I gaze at her open-mouthed.
‘Married? Who to?’ For one terrible breath-stopping m
oment I think she is about to tell me it’s Reggie. And I don’t like the thought of that at all. Not one little bit.
She looks at me and grins. ‘Arthur Leighton of course. Who else?’
My eyes widen. ‘He’s alive? You found him?’
‘All my detective work came to nothing. It was Jasmine who found him for me. We were having tea in Lyons Corner House and she spotted him through the window. What was the chance of that happening?’
I am still trying to absorb this information. I had assumed that Arthur must be dead, and Evie was deluding herself in her conviction that he had survived the war.
‘Why hadn’t he contacted you?’
Evie gives me a knowing look. ‘Things were very tough for Arthur in the war. He went through a horrible ordeal and afterwards he thought I wouldn’t want to be with him because of all the terrible things that happened to him. He was filled with self-loathing.’ She gives her head a little shake, conveying her incredulity that he could ever have thought such a thing. I, for my part, know all too well how Arthur must have felt.
‘But as soon as we saw each other again, it was all right. He and I have always known we were meant to be together.’
I remember what Veronica had said to me that afternoon in the camp. About how hard it was for her to discover she loved her husband, only to realise that it was too late, and he loved someone else. Now I know that someone else was Evie.
‘I loved Arthur from the moment I first set eyes on him on the quayside in Tilbury, when he and Veronica travelled out to Penang with me the first time. I just didn’t want to admit it to myself. He felt the same. Those two years I was married to Douglas, and the year after he died before the war began, I was desperate not to let myself admit I loved Arthur. I had tried so hard to make my marriage work and after that to honour Doug in death. Arthur wasn’t the kind of man who would walk out on his marriage – especially when Veronica was so fragile and needy.’ She studies the back of her hands for a moment, then lifts her head to look at me. ‘You know that, as well as having a problem with alcohol, Veronica suffered from terrible bouts of depression? Suicidal.’
I nod. ‘We became close in the prison camp.’ I give her a sad smile. ‘Odd as that friendship may seem. Veronica was a complex woman. I’d never have come through those three-and-a-half years if it were not for her.’
‘Did she ever speak of Arthur?’
I hesitate. ‘She told me she realised too late how much she cared for him, but she knew he was in love with someone else. Oh Evie, I’d no idea it was you. She wouldn’t tell me who it was.’
She nods. ‘Poor Veronica,’ she says. ‘Arthur said she knew. He always claimed he owed his career to her. She worked tirelessly to play the part of the Foreign Service wife.’
I think of how Veronica had played the courtesan to Sergeant Shoei. How she had told me about her past infidelities and how she used her body to gain advantage. ‘Veronica was a great fixer. An organiser. And the person most responsible for keeping my spirits up in captivity.’
I take Evie’s hand. ‘But she was never right for Arthur. Just as Doug was never right for you.’ I smile, pleased for her. Now that my memoir is done, I can afford to be generous about her good fortune. I have put the bitterness and anger behind me.
Evie is paler. The English climate has bleached away the tropical sun from her skin. But her happiness is so evident that she looks beautiful, glowing, radiant.
She reaches again for my hand. ‘We’re going to live in Africa. Arthur has accepted a position with the Colonial Office, working in Kenya. He’s already out there. I’ve stayed in England to sort things out – the children’s schooling, Doug’s affairs, that kind of thing. That’s why I’m here in George Town.’
While I’m disappointed that she won’t be moving back to Penang, I am genuinely happy for Evie. I really am. Happy for the children too and for Arthur. The more I think about it, the more I have to acknowledge they are indeed perfect for each other. I tell her that.
‘Thank you, Mary.’ She squeezes my hand. ‘So, when are you going to tell me about the baby?’ She gives me a little nudge.
I look at her, puzzled. ‘What baby?’
She touches my distended stomach. ‘This one, silly.’
I sigh. ‘That’s not a baby. It’s my rice belly. It won’t go away.’
She raises her eyebrows. ‘I know what a rice belly is. Arthur had one, a little round pot, but it didn’t take long on a normal balanced diet for it to disappear. That, my darling, is not a rice belly. You can’t fool me. I’m a mother, remember?’ She reaches for my hand, but I draw it away before she can grasp it.
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about. It’s impossible.’
‘Have you seen a doctor?’
I shake my head, shocked at the import of her words.
‘When was your last period?’
‘I don’t have them. They stopped when I was imprisoned. It happened to us all.’
‘But since you were liberated? They must have started again?’
I feel the blood drain from my face. My hands are shaking. ‘I did have one or two. But very light. Almost nothing. Then nothing at all for a long time.’ I look at her. I am in shock. ‘Months.’
‘I’d hazard a guess you are at least six months gone. And the father?’ she asks, gently.
I start to cry. She passes me an embroidered linen handkerchief and puts her arm around me. ‘You can trust me, Mary. No matter what the circumstances. You are my dearest friend and I love you. I will always support you.’
‘I had no idea, Evie. Are you sure?’
She smiles. ‘Pretty positive, but I’m not a doctor. Would you like me to come with you to the surgery?’
I nod, still numb with shock. ‘It was only one time. It just happened. We had dinner. It was late and I offered him my parents’ room to stay over so he wouldn’t have to drive home in the dark. In the night he was screaming. A nightmare. The camps. I went into his room to calm him. One thing led to another.’ I look up at Evie, terrified, my voice barely a whisper. ‘It was only once!’
‘That’s all it takes sometimes.’ Evie stretches her mouth into a grim smile. ‘Don’t worry, I’m sure everything will be fine. I’m here for you, Mary…’ She hesitates but, knowing what she’s about to ask, I cut in to preempt the question. I want to get it over.
‘It was Reggie.’
She looks at me, incredulous. ‘Reggie Hyde-Underwood?’ As if there was another Reggie who it could possibly be. She clamps a hand over her mouth. ‘And he has no idea?’ She starts to laugh. ‘What are you two like? Reggie’s a father, for heaven’s sake. He should have been able to tell just by looking at you.’
‘He hasn’t seen me. Not since it happened.’
Evie expels a long sigh. ‘What are we going to do with you, Mary? You have to tell him immediately. It’s his child. Doesn’t he deserve to know?’
I still can’t believe this is happening. ‘Reggie’s a married man. And…’ I want to say I don’t love him but the slow realisation is finally dawning that maybe I do.
Instead I say, ‘He doesn’t even remember. He thought he’d dreamt it. What we did that night. I told him nothing happened.’ A wave of misery washes over me. What must Evie think of me? Susan Hyde-Underwood is a friend of hers. They were in Australia together. Evie must see me as a marriage-breaker.
Apparently reading my mind, Evie says, ‘Susan is getting married to a chap from Yorkshire. He’s a widowed farmer with two small children. When I first met her and Reggie, I thought they had a perfect marriage. They seemed so attuned to each other, but gradually I began to see that it wasn’t quite like that. It was a mutual awareness that arose from habit, from growing up together. Not from love.’
Evie pauses. I can tell she’s weighing up how much to tell me. ‘Susan hated Penang. And that bad feeling about the place intensified with the war and, since Reggie loves it so much here, the animosity she felt for Malaya gradually transferred into her fee
lings about him. That’s why she wouldn’t move back here. It wasn’t just her aversion to the place, it had become an aversion to the man.’
She stops, gets up from the wooden chair where she is sitting beside me, and starts to pace up and down. ‘I probably shouldn’t be telling you this, but I’m going to anyway. Yes, Susan is a friend but not in the way you are. It’s important that you understand this so that you don’t sacrifice your own happiness in some cockeyed attempt to be honourable.’ She stops pacing and stands in front of me. ‘Susan had an affair while we were in Australia. It was with one of the doctors at the hospital where we were helping out. His wife found out and he broke it off with Susan. There was a bit of a scandal.’
‘My goodness. Susan? I’d never have expected that.’
‘No. I didn’t either. I found out because there was quite a bit of gossip. I defended her when it reached me and thinking she ought to know what was being said behind her back, I told her about what I believed to be scurrilous rumours, expecting her to be as horrified as I was. But she laughed and told me it was all true. She said it had only been a fling. That she was fed up living like a nun and had picked Dr Morley simply because he was married and was happy for it to be just about the sex.’
My mouth is gaping open. This is so unlike what I had thought Susan to be – a quiet, loyal mem, the classic planter’s wife – only a mem who didn’t actually like the fact that her husband was a planter. The idea of her deliberately having an affair, regardless of the consequences, stuns me. While she was doing it, poor Reggie was suffering unspeakable atrocities during his internment. I suddenly hate Susan with a passion.
‘I had no idea,’ I say. ‘I would never have expected that of Susan.’
Evie shakes her head slowly. ‘Me neither. To be honest, Mary, I’ve not been comfortable with her since. Our boys are friends, so I’ve had to keep up the friendship with her, but I was jolly glad when she said she was going to be living in Yorkshire.’