The Silk Merchant’s Daughter

by Dinah Jefferies

  Nicole felt the cold on her cheeks and realized she was intensely aware of her sister’s every move. ‘Not so often now.’

  ‘You must be happy.’

  She noticed an odd expression on Sylvie’s face, a reckless look that disturbed her.

  ‘I have something I need to say,’ Sylvie said. ‘It’s about Huế. It was my idea to go out in the boat, not yours. I lied and told them it was you. I’m sorry.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter now.’

  Sylvie grew agitated and began to rub her hands together. ‘Everything matters. Don’t you see? Some things have to be said. It’s what I’m learning. All the things I thought didn’t matter … well they do. And I’m sorry.’

  There was a short, uncomfortable silence.

  ‘It was my idea that you should jump into the water too.’

  Nicole felt a chill as her sister spoke. After all this time, to hear Sylvie admit that she had wanted her to drown was more than she could bear.

  ‘I knew it was deep.’

  ‘Sylvie, I’m not sure I … you don’t have to do this.’

  ‘I do. I wanted to maintain the illusion that you were the one who always caused the problems.’

  They both stared at the lake and watched a gull skim across the water.

  ‘Do they remind you of Huế? The gulls?’ Sylvie said.

  That day came racing back. Nicole could see the sun spanning the entire horizon and the stream of silvery bubbles of her breath. The terrifying feeling of sinking had never diminished and she felt the heat of tears pricking her lids.

  ‘You wanted me to drown.’

  Wide-eyed with shock, Sylvie shook her head. ‘No. Did you think that? Really, no. You mustn’t cry.’

  Nicole frowned, feeling uncertain. Sylvie reached for her hand.

  ‘Nicole, I tried to save you. As soon as I saw you were in trouble, I jumped in too. I held on to one of the boat’s ropes with one hand and kept on trying to reach you with the other. I wanted you to see that I was there and that you weren’t on your own.’

  ‘When I dream of it I always see your face. I thought …’

  Nicole gulped and there was a slight pause as she listened to Celeste’s happy shrieks and her laughter at the ducks squabbling over bread.

  ‘I thought you pushed me under.’

  Sylvie seemed to fold in on herself.

  ‘Are you all right?’

  Sylvie nodded. ‘I couldn’t reach you, so I screamed for help. A fisherman dived down. When he brought you up I thought you were dead. He pumped your chest, you spluttered, water spurted out and, thank God, you were alive. But when I think of what so nearly happened …’

  Nicole could hardly take it in.

  ‘I would never have forgiven myself.’

  ‘I thought you wanted me dead.’

  ‘I resented you, yes, but never that. I was so frightened. I knew it was my fault but I lied about the whole thing. Told Papa it was all your idea. Told him I’d said we mustn’t jump in. I’m so sorry.’

  Nicole warmed Sylvie’s icy-cold hand in her own.

  ‘It’s in the past. I’m glad you told me, but let’s leave it back there now, shall we?’

  Sylvie nodded. ‘I miss it, you know. Hanoi. Huế. Our old life together.’

  ‘I miss it too.’

  Sylvie’s face dissolved and for a moment it looked as if she would collapse into tears, but then the old Sylvie came through and she held up her head. ‘We have to carry on, right?’

  Nicole reached for her other hand too and her sister gave her a bleak smile.

  ‘I wanted to secure my place in the world back then. It seemed to be the only thing that mattered.’ She let go of Nicole’s hands and reached for a brown leather-bound book lying beside her on the bench. ‘Here,’ she said. ‘Take this with you. It will tell you everything you need to know.’

  ‘About?’

  ‘About you. And me. Our childhood. How it was when our mother was alive. I want you to know everything. I never could bear to share her before.’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘I want you to have it.’ As she passed the book to Nicole, her hands were trembling.

  At that moment Mark and Celeste came up to the bench. The sisters both stood.

  ‘I think we should be heading off now that Celeste is flagging,’ Mark said, and held out a hand to Sylvie. She took it, squeezed, then let go.

  ‘Will you come round to the front to wave us off?’ Nicole asked.

  Sylvie shook her head. ‘I find goodbyes too difficult.’

  The sisters hugged again and then Sylvie picked up Celeste, kissed both her cheeks and, with unshed tears in her eyes, put the child down.

  ‘We will see you,’ Nicole said.

  They began to walk away but as they neared the house Nicole twisted round to gaze at the figure of her sister still in exactly the same position as they had left her. In air that smelt of wintery dampness and smoke, Sylvie raised a hand and waved, looking so terribly alone it was all Nicole could do to stop herself rushing back and gathering her in her arms.

  As they left the château behind, Nicole gazed out of the car window and thought of Vietnam. After the fall of the French garrison at Dien Bien Phu on 8 May 1954, the Geneva Accord was finally signed in July the same year. People in Paris asked them how they had lived their lives back then. How could they live not knowing if they were going to die? How could day follow day? Meal follow meal? Sleep follow sleep? She would tell them you did what you had to. Just as they’d had to in Paris during the German occupation.

  But she was so glad they had decided against returning to Saigon since, as part of the Geneva agreement, the country had been divided into North and South Vietnam. The Vietminh, now known as the Vietcong, were in power in the north, but a battle was brewing for control of the south. When it came, and she and Mark were both certain it would, the war would be between the communists in the north and the Americans. But Vietnam would always be part of Nicole, and it devastated her to think there might be more bloodshed.

  She thought of their lovely old house beside the Perfume River in Huế. The river was deeper in colour in her memory than it was in reality, but in her mind she was still watching the birds fly over the river; back and forth they went, ducking and diving. And Lisa was still sitting on the back steps lighting a Gauloise. The happiest and the saddest of times. For her it would always be the most beautiful place on earth.

  Over time, though the rest of what happened in Vietnam would not be forgotten, it would be laid to rest. It had to be if they were to move on with their lives. It hadn’t been easy for those who were left behind, and stories reached them about how the people were now learning what it meant to live under the yoke of rigid communism. She prayed O-Lan was safe.

  So who was she now?

  She was Nicole Jenson Duval, half Vietnamese, half French, married to a Russian-American and, at last, no longer searching for where she belonged. In the end she didn’t have to choose one part of herself over the other, as she once thought she’d be forced to. Soon her thoroughly mixed-race daughter would live in America. She crossed her fingers and hoped the world would change enough so that her daughter would never be faced with having to make that kind of choice either.

  So that was the end. Or was it the start? Perhaps, as O-Lan so wisely said, it was both. Nicole could never have imagined what had happened to her sister. The ground had shifted beneath their feet and their relationship had changed. But an image came back of being together when she was about five and Sylvie must have been ten. Sylvie was holding her hand as they dipped their bare feet in the cool river. All her life Nicole had felt the loneliness of being different, but now she knew Sylvie, in her way, had been desperately lonely too. It was the terrible agony of isolation she’d seen in her sister’s eyes when they were on board the ship.

  After Mark parked the car – they had some shopping to do before leaving for the south – the three of them walked along the narrow Parisian street. Mar
k and Celeste went into a patisserie but Nicole stopped outside and opened her sister’s journal. Then she took a deep breath and read the first sentence.

  I am Sylvie Duval. This is the story of me and my little sister, Nicole.

  She knew she and Sylvie would always be connected in the way that sisters were, but couldn’t read any more and felt her eyes brimming with tears as she closed the book. There were always two sides to every story, but she would have to save Sylvie’s for another day.

  How I wrote The Silk Merchant’s Daughter

  When I’m thinking about a new book my first task is to choose a location. The settings and location are significant, not only because I love to bring a landscape to life and transport my reader to another time and place, but also because the place itself has to impact on the characters. Because I was born in the East, I am constantly drawn to explore the countries of that region: the Indian sub-continent, South East Asia, the Far East. It’s a powerful drive inside me, partly due to the fact that after nine years in Malaya, we came to live in England and I missed my childhood home terribly. So far I’ve written The Separation, set in Malaysia, and The Tea Planter’s Wife, set in Sri Lanka when it was Ceylon.

  For The Silk Merchant’s Daughter, I chose French Vietnam as a setting because I wanted to write about the difficulties faced by a mixed-race character as she attempts to define her identity. I also wanted to explore a different colonialism; one that wasn’t British. In the early 1950s Vietnam was caught in a struggle between the French, determined to hold on to their hugely profitable colony with its abundant raw materials and agricultural products, and the equally desperate Vietminh, in their bid to achieve independence. The French defined their purpose in Indochina as a ‘civilizing mission’ and, like the British and other colonial powers, they did build schools, hospitals and roads but, as far as I can tell, colonialism was always really about profit. So my main character, half-French half-Vietnamese Nicole, has a foot in both sides of what was to become a war. A war that almost rips her apart and that, against all the odds, the Vietminh win.

  The Silk Merchant’s Daughter wasn’t an easy book to write, firstly because the history of Vietnam is incredibly complex around the time frame I was contemplating. My aim was to explore the way Nicole is pulled in different directions, so I needed a time when that was most likely to occur. I learnt that the period between the end of the Second World War and 1954 (when the French eventually lost the final battle with the humiliating defeat at Dien Bien Phu) was a time when being mixed race was less accepted. After the terrible Japanese invasion during the Second World War, both French and Vietnamese became more suspicious and less tolerant.

  After choosing the place, the next challenge is to read up on the history and make copious notes. I enjoy researching a period of history that’s new to me, but the real test is to determine the best way to bring my chosen period alive. I want to give my readers a cultural and atmospheric read but also a gripping story. Everything I uncover at this stage will add to the book’s authenticity, and I enjoyed reading about the history, the food, the fashions and, perhaps most of all, the architecture. But I must never forget that the story has to take precedence.

  After that I’ll outline a plot for the entire novel. I don’t go into great detail at this stage, but I start putting myself in my main character’s shoes. As the process of writing continues I want to know more and more about Nicole: what she feels, what she fears, what she loves and what she hopes for. She doesn’t know where she belongs and neither did I when I came to live in England all those years ago, so it wasn’t difficult to empathize with her plight. Once I have an idea of who she is, I then create the cast around her, particularly the Duval family and the tensions within it, heightened by the world they live in; a world where the French are losing their grip on Indochina.

  I like to visit the country I’m writing about if I can and Vietnam was no exception. I had never imagined that I would go to Vietnam but, once I’d decided I would, it was enormously exciting. I still hadn’t clarified a story plan when we stepped on the plane and I was hoping that the country itself would provide me with answers.

  In fact, it didn’t prove to be quite so simple. We started off in a dreadfully cold and damp Hanoi. I had chosen not to go in the hot season, but I hadn’t expected a chill so profound that it seeped into my bones. I barely slept that first night. The next day I’d hoped to find evidence of the French colonial era: the graceful buildings, wide avenues and smart hotels. Some of it was still visible but much of French Hanoi had been built over, sometimes literally. Hanoi was such a fragmented hotchpotch that at first I found it frustrating. But gradually I found what I was looking for and began to see evidence of the past everywhere. The most beautiful avenue of unspoilt French villas was where the Communist Party leaders lived. You were not allowed to stop the car or even to take pictures, though I did so discreetly, using my phone through the car windows. I also took tons of photos at the Museum of the Revolution, including some of the methods of torture the French regime had used. Unfortunately, while trying to climb some railings to obtain a better shot of a faded French villa, I got stuck and dropped my phone on the other side of the railings. My husband was dispatched to find a handy branch to hook it back out while I kept watch. The Communist Party are everywhere, or so they’d like you to think. Anyway, the phone was damaged and I lost all my photos so I got my just desserts.

  After Hanoi we went to Hoi An – a UNESCO world heritage site – but so touristy that it was deeply disappointing. It is actually a wonderfully preserved village and I had thought to use it as a location in my book but the crowds put me off. The old cultured and formal Vietnam was still there but only in isolated pockets.

  Which left me with Huế and a gorgeous restored hotel overlooking the Perfume River where we stayed. I loved it. This is where the Duval family come from and I found it beautiful and mystical. The hotel had once been the mansion of the French Resident for that province. We had views across the Perfume River, which we crossed by boat, and we visited the Forbidden Purple City where the Emperor had held court until it was burnt down in 1945, though now extensively restored. After a wonderful car ride, up and over a mountain, including visits to tiny rural villages and a terrific view of the countryside, I’d seen enough to make a real start on the book as soon as I got back home. At least the sights and smells of Vietnam were firmly in my head, if not in my photographs!

  Finally, I reached the end of the novel. It was the end for the French, too. They never believed they would lose the war with the Vietminh but, like the Americans after them, they got that wrong. Looking back, it seems to me that it was inevitable that Indochina – like India, Ceylon and Malaysia – would achieve independence. And that leads me to my next stop: India, where my next novel will be set.

  For me, finally bringing a novel to completion and seeing it on the shelves is the most satisfying experience of all, and I hope you have enjoyed reading the result in this novel about Nicole, the silk merchant’s daughter.

  Dinah Jefferies

  Acknowledgements

  Once again I’d like to thank my agent Caroline Hardman. Her brilliance has made my entire writing adventure possible, from her clever editorial suggestions to her support on all other matters, large and small. She introduced me to my terrific editor and publisher, Venetia Butterfield, and I couldn’t have asked for better. Venetia has maintained her faith in my writing from the start, but I’m also indebted to the entire team at Penguin who have been super fantastic as they always are. My publicist, Anna Ridley, accompanies me on trips to the BBC, making the whole thing fun instead of terrifying, Celeste Ward-Best and Stephenie Naulls show me the way on social media, and Lee Motley makes the covers look beautiful. But I also want to thank the sales, distribution and rights teams who have all worked so tirelessly. The one thing I’ve come to realize, above all else, is that bringing a book to publication and beyond takes a whole raft of people. I am grateful to every single person who has con
tributed to this process, and to all the wonderful bloggers who carry on such sterling work. I also want to mention the people who have bought my books. Thank you so much. Experience Travel organized a great tailor-made research trip to Vietnam and I have to thank Nick Clark for that. Finally, I really do have to applaud my husband, Richard, who gets me through the up and downs of writing a novel with endless cups of tea, good ideas, technological support and delicious meals. He has been preparing me for my next adventure – in India – by increasing the use of chilli! I feel very lucky indeed to have his, and my much loved family’s, support.

  These are some of the books I found useful during my research:

  A Dragon Apparent, Norman Lewis, Jonathan Cape, 1951

  Daughters of the River Huong, Uyen Nicole Duong, Ravensyard Publishing, 2005

  Derailed in Uncle Ho’s Victory Garden, Tim Page, Touchstone, 1995

  Hanoi: Biography of a City, William S. Logan, University of New South Wales Press, 2000

  Hanoi: Traces of the Old Days, Phuong Dong Publishing House, 2010

  Indochine Style, Barbara Walker, Marshall Cavendish International (Asia), 2011

  Paradise of the Blind, Duong Thu Huong, US edition, William Morrow & Co., 1993

  The Sacred Willow, Duong Van Mai Elliott, Oxford University Press, 1999

  Uniquely Vietnamese, James Edward Goodman, The Gioi Publishers, 2005

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