The Silk Merchant’s Daughter

by Dinah Jefferies

  ‘I haven’t got enough milk. Look at her.’

  Sylvie seemed to wake up. ‘I can fix that. No need to worry. I’ll do the bottles. I’ve already got three and the milk powder too. No, this is fine. Great, in fact. Great.’

  ‘Why have you already got them?’

  ‘Always be prepared. That’s my motto.’

  Nicole stood up while cradling the baby with her free arm, hoping the gentle rocking movement might calm her daughter. Maybe it was the worry over Mark that had dried up the milk. As she was thinking this, Sylvie was clattering about boiling water and mixing powder in a jug.

  ‘Here we are,’ she said at last. ‘All done. Now let me.’ She held out her arms for Celeste, then sat at the table holding the baby and began to bottle feed her.

  ‘If she’s going to be bottle fed, I can eat garlic again.’ Nicole added some chopped garlic to the stew, then she picked up the newspaper but couldn’t concentrate on it. A moment later she flung it down and came over to plant a kiss on the baby’s cheek.

  ‘I’ll feed her,’ she said and reached out for her baby.

  ‘No, she’s fine. Look, her eyelashes are fluttering.’ Sylvie got to her feet and danced around the kitchen, rocking Celeste as she did so. ‘She’s fast asleep. Go and have a lie-down. I’ll look after her.’

  ‘Very well. If you’re sure?’

  ‘I love this little girl,’ Sylvie said, and she kissed the baby on the nose. ‘You are my little beauty, aren’t you?’

  ‘Is the phone line fixed?’ Nicole asked.

  Sylvie stopped dancing. ‘It was, but now there’s something wrong again. There’s such a lot of sabotage just now.’

  Nicole sighed. It was true. The electricity frequently failed too and they never knew why. It was a dark, unsettled time and horrible to feel so cut off. The post office had been bombed, so the lack of mail was hardly surprising. She smiled as she watched her sister kiss Celeste’s fat little cheeks.

  ‘Shoo!’ Sylvie said. ‘Go and lie down.’

  ‘I’m going.’

  ‘I’ll give her a bath too.’

  Nicole tried to bury her fears about Mark by continuing to mentally plan the silk business she would develop if they lived abroad. When Celeste was a little older she would begin again. If Vietnam was no longer possible it might be something she could do in either France or America. She knew about silk and, after all, there were other silk-producing countries. When she thought about Sylvie she hoped her sister might one day have a child of her own. Looking after the baby seemed to be good for her. When she wasn’t with Celeste, she seemed jumpy and distracted, and didn’t always hear what was said, and that worried Nicole.

  She still hadn’t told Sylvie the truth about the day of her own birth and felt rather cowardly for avoiding it. She couldn’t put it off for much longer, but it was such a sensitive subject. She worried that if it went badly, it might shatter the hard-won peace between them, and that wouldn’t be good for Celeste. A resentment so deep couldn’t be handled casually.

  A day or so later they were both in the little dining room reading while Celeste was sleeping. Nicole had decided that now was the moment to tell Sylvie the truth, but kept losing her nerve. Playing for time, she glanced up at the ceiling. ‘God, how I hate those flying cherubs,’ she said.

  ‘I rather like them,’ Sylvie said. Seeming to spot something in Nicole’s face, she tried to be encouraging. ‘We mustn’t give up, Nicole. We must keep believing.’

  ‘If you think believing will be enough to win, I reckon the Vietminh believe a lot harder than we do.’

  ‘Was that why you ran away to join them? You thought they were stronger?’

  ‘It was less of a running to join them than a running away –’

  Sylvie interrupted. ‘From us? You were running away from us? I’m sorry, if I’d known the house arrest was going to have that result … I only wanted to protect you.’

  ‘Control me, more like! But it wasn’t that – at least, not only that.’

  ‘Then?’

  ‘Lisa told me the truth about what happened to our mother the day I was born.’

  Sylvie frowned. ‘But we already knew.’

  Nicole got up and walked across to look out of the window at the thatched pavilion. The wicker chairs looked faded and there was no longer a glass table beside the lily pond. In fact, the pond looked thoroughly neglected.

  She twisted back to look at Sylvie. ‘It was a lie. Our mother didn’t die because of me. Not directly. She died because of our father.’

  Sylvie gave her a puzzled look but didn’t speak.

  ‘Our mother found him in bed with one of the maids that day. She’d come home early from some trip.’

  ‘Stop!’ Sylvie covered her ears with her hands. ‘Why would you say that? I don’t want to hear it.’

  ‘It’s the truth. And later that day our “perfect” father refused to believe she was in labour. He heard her crying and screaming and forbade anyone to go to her. He said she was seeking attention. In the end Lisa disobeyed him and found mother bleeding to death. She called the doctor, but it was too late.’

  Sylvie was white as a sheet and absolutely motionless.

  ‘The shock of seeing him in her bed with another woman caused the labour to start prematurely.’

  Eyes downcast, Sylvie was still not moving.

  ‘Say something, Sylvie.’

  At last, Sylvie looked up. ‘He wouldn’t. It’s a terrible, wicked lie.’

  Nicole shook her head but, seeing her sister so stricken, began to wish she hadn’t brought the subject up at all. Sylvie was knitting her fingers together, twisting her hands repeatedly, and Nicole felt sorry for her.

  They avoided each other for the rest of the day, but in the evening Sylvie came into Nicole’s room with red eyes and a pinched look on her face.

  ‘Now you have Mark, you don’t need me, do you?’

  ‘Of course I still need you.’

  Sylvie stood frozen to the spot then gave Nicole a strange smile. ‘It’s not true, is it, what you said about Father?’

  Nicole sighed. ‘It is true.’

  With an air of defeat, Sylvie sat down. ‘You are never to speak of it again. Is that understood?’

  Then she folded her arms on Nicole’s dressing table and, resting her face on her arms, began to sob.

  As the days passed by Nicole was becoming more and more certain something had happened to Mark. The thought that he might already be dead caused a knot in her stomach and sent her rushing to the bathroom to be sick. By April, the general situation looked as if it was changing and not for the better. With tension in Hanoi so high, Nicole felt sure they must prepare to evacuate even if, in the end, it wasn’t necessary. She was halfway through preparing a bag for herself and Celeste, in case they needed to leave quickly, and had tried to persuade Sylvie to do the same. The responsibility was daunting but she’d do anything to provide her child with a safe and happy life. If it had to be in France without Mark, or Sylvie, then so be it.

  One afternoon she took Celeste into her father’s study and thought about him. Even after all this time the air still seemed to retain the smell of him, though the trace of alcohol and cigars was stale. She sat down in his leather chair and longed to be able to go back and change things. With a sigh of regret over her past relationship with her father, she got to her feet. Just then she heard the rattle of keys in the front door and went into the hall, where she saw Sylvie looking white-faced. Nicole stopped in her tracks. Sylvie sat down on the hall chair with her head in her hands. Then she looked up and, twisting her hands in her lap, told Nicole she’d heard some bad news. The French-held garrison in the valley of Dien Bien Phu was large and strategically important; Sylvie, like everyone else, had believed the Vietminh could never take it, but she’d just heard that the French army had made tactical errors.

  Sylvie got to her feet and paced back and forth in the green light of the hall. ‘Oh God. Oh God. What is going to happen to us?’<
br />
  ‘What kind of errors?’

  ‘Terrible errors.’

  ‘Tell me.’

  ‘Calamitous losses and the chance of a Vietminh win growing imminent. Assistance from China is boosting the Vietminh war effort; the only hope will be if America send further aid.’

  ‘Who told you?’ Nicole asked.

  ‘André left a message at the office.’

  Nicole sucked in her cheeks as she considered this. ‘What does he think we should do?’

  ‘He didn’t say. But it looks like the Vietminh fighting spirit means they may succeed where we have failed.’

  ‘It’s exactly what I’ve always said. So does that mean it’s actually over?’

  Sylvie sighed before she replied and when she spoke her voice seemed brittle. ‘Not yet. We may be losing through overestimating our strength and underestimating theirs. As I said, with more American aid it could change for the better. We can still win.’

  ‘You still believe that?’ Nicole hugged her daughter to her.

  ‘Yes. Yes. Of course. But I wish Papa was here. He’d know what to do.’

  ‘Maybe.’

  Sylvie’s eyes hardened. ‘I want to go back. Just to go back. Why is that so hard?’

  ‘Back where?’ Nicole asked, realizing that her sister was lost somewhere in her own interior reality. ‘You’re not making any sense.’

  ‘Before all this. Before.’ Sylvie stood wringing her hands and looking half mad with fear. Then she seemed to snap out of it. ‘But we’ve got to do the best we can for Celeste, haven’t we? With sandy hair and blue eyes, she’ll never survive if the Vietminh win.’

  ‘I need to decide the best way to get her out in a hurry. Saigon maybe? What do you think?’

  As Sylvie was about to reply, the lights went out.

  Nicole spun round. What did it mean? Were the Vietminh in the city? Had they blown up the electricity generators?

  ‘Here, take Celeste, I’ll go down to the basement.’

  She imagined the entire city in darkness and men and women in black sneaking through the streets. The houses either side of them were empty now and there would be nobody they could trust. She held on to her nerve and looked for the torch they always kept in the hall. When she reached the electricity cupboard, she found a fuse had blown. That was all. She sorted it out and, as the light came on again, she glanced at the old brick wall where the phone cable should enter the house. Something didn’t look right. She pulled away a board that had been resting against the wall and concealing the cable. The trouble with the phone didn’t seem to be at the exchange at all. Nicole made a mental note to get hold of an engineer in the morning. The line looked as if it had been accidentally disconnected.

  37

  For some time after Sylvie’s prediction of impending doom, nothing seemed to come of it. There was a brief lull and all the talk in the papers insisted morale had improved. Despite fierce fighting and heavy casualties, French troops could still gain an advantage, they said. The headlines continually demanded aid, and more American intervention, which had eventually come.

  But it was hard to get hold of accurate information and the atmosphere in the streets had grown tense. Nicole longed for the oblivion of sleep but couldn’t drop off for worrying about Mark. She tried talking herself out of it but as each night went on too long she felt that her heart might break. When she looked in the mirror in the mornings the purple shadows under her eyes revealed the strain. Despite attacks and counter-attacks, French successes were few. Bad news followed bad news and panic hit Hanoi. Nicole hated waiting, hated the terrible feeling of not being able to do anything and having no control over what lay ahead. And during one impossible night she decided to wait no longer. Whatever Sylvie said, it was long past the time to go.

  She decided to look through her father’s filing cabinet for anything they might need to take with them. At first there seemed to be nothing useful, but then she noticed an unmarked file. She opened the file and found two envelopes addressed to her, plus three of her own letters to Mark that hadn’t been posted. Though reeling from the physical pain in her chest, she managed to hold herself together. Both envelopes addressed to her had already been opened. She withdrew a wad of dollars and a single sheet of white paper, dated 6 February, just after Celeste was born. In this letter Mark told her how overjoyed he was about the baby and how much he longed to see them both. She could hear his voice. Actually hear it. Almost overcome with emotion, she read on – he told her he wanted her to keep safe, and he suggested it was time to sell up. She drew out the second letter, dated 5 March. Here he told her he couldn’t wait until they could be together again but didn’t understand why she’d stopped writing. He hoped it was because she’d already left for France, but insisted that if she hadn’t already left, she should wait no longer and go ahead without him immediately. There was no point delaying. He repeated that Lisa was living in Narbonne and had scribbled the address again.

  Nicole felt as if she might pass out with the relief of knowing he was still alive – or had been, at least, in March.

  He went on to say that as he was constantly on the move he was unable to leave an address but that she was to let him know where she was via the embassy. At the end he told her that he loved her and begged her not to forget that. She held the letter to her heart: as if she could ever forget.

  But it could only be the briefest moment of joy because an instant later the truth hit her. When the intensity ebbed away she was left with a feeling of shock and a growing knot of anger in her throat. How could her sister have been so cruel? She slammed her palm against her forehead and tried to think clearly. After a moment she went up to her room, hid her passport and Celeste’s birth certificate under a loose floorboard, along with the money, and covered the board with her rug.

  Determined to confront Sylvie over the letters the moment her sister came home, she paced back and forth. She had so wanted the reconciliation with Sylvie to be real, especially after her sister had been so wonderful at the birth, but was furious with herself for having believed things would ever change. Now she must save herself and her daughter. Nothing else mattered.

  She tried to find out Mark’s whereabouts through the old CIA office, calling on the few clerical officers who remained on the second floor of the Métropole. Nobody could tell her anything and they hadn’t any news of Mark. She gathered what she could to sell at an impromptu market that had sprung up in the heart of town; the more money she could raise, the better chance they’d have. Everyone was selling anything portable so she took the black mother-of-pearl tray they used to keep in the hall. It sold for peanuts. After that she successfully sold their collection of blue and white fifteenth-century Vietnamese pottery. Then she piled silk lampshades, jewellery and whatever else she could lay her hands on into the pram with Celeste before wheeling it to the market. She did it without nostalgia; only at a time of peace could there be the luxury of time and space for looking back.

  When Sylvie returned that evening she barged into Nicole’s room looking as if she’d run up all the stairs from the kitchen in the basement.

  ‘What have you been doing? Everything’s gone.’

  Nicole was lying on her bed trying to read, the baby asleep at her side. She stared at Sylvie, closed the book and sat up. ‘Don’t wake Celeste.’

  Sylvie frowned and seemed to find it difficult to keep still.

  ‘Why are you so jumpy? Can’t you see it’s what the whole of Hanoi is doing? I told you we should liquidate everything while we had a chance. Mark said it too.’ Nicole rose to her feet, but carefully, so as not to disturb Celeste, then drew herself up to her full height. ‘Why did you hide his letters, and mine to him?’

  Sylvie took a step back but didn’t speak. To her astonishment, Nicole noticed her sister’s trembling lips and eyes so wide they looked as if they belonged to somebody else.

  ‘Sylvie?’

  Her sister looked as if she was about to launch an attack, but instead st
aggered back and seemed to deflate. She sat on the edge of the bed, looking pale and drawn.

  Nicole tried to control her temper but what Sylvie had done was unforgiveable. ‘For heaven’s sake, Sylvie. You know how much I was longing to hear from Mark. How terrified I was that he was already dead. How could you do that to me?’

  When Sylvie didn’t speak, Nicole wanted to shake her. Instead she folded her arms and waited.

  ‘I felt left out,’ Sylvie whispered.

  ‘You felt left out? I’ve felt left out all my life. You and Papa made sure of that.’

  Sylvie looked up. ‘I know …’

  The moment went on as they stared at each other. Closeted together with Sylvie like this, Nicole became more aware of her sister’s unravelling.

  ‘I shouldn’t have done it. I shouldn’t have done any of it.’

  Sylvie began to weep and beneath her sobs the semi-coherent words struck at Nicole’s heart. What else had her sister done?

  Sylvie wiped her eyes with her sleeve. ‘After Mark came to see you, I felt awful. You didn’t need me. Nobody needed me.’

  ‘You weren’t left out. You must know how good you’ve been with Celeste.’

  ‘I felt I’d lost everything. Our business, our old life … Mark.’ She paused, her eyes filled again, then she bent over, holding her head in her hands.

  ‘You wanted to destroy my relationship with Mark?’ Nicole said with a break in her voice.

  Sylvie shook her head as she looked up. ‘I don’t know what’s happening. Sometimes I feel like I’m disintegrating. As if little bits of me are breaking off. I was frightened I was going to lose you and Celeste too. You said it yourself, you and Mark might have gone to live in America.’

  As the tears rolled down Sylvie’s pinched cheeks, she looked vulnerable and so touched by sadness that Nicole couldn’t hold on to her anger.

  ‘Oh, Sylvie. Why did you do it?’

  Sylvie shook her head from side to side.

  ‘It didn’t have to be like this. You wouldn’t have lost me or Celeste. She adores you. We would always have been in your life.’

  ‘Do you think so?’