by Janet Tanner
‘But what about Alex?’
‘He’ll be all right with Su Ming.’
‘But supposing …’ She broke off, letting the rest of the sentence hang in the air. Supposing the Japs were to come …
‘You worry too much, Elise,’ he said smoothly. ‘Nothing’s happening here.’
Yet, she added silently. But the thought of Gordon meeting her at Singapore was welcome.
Dear Gordon, always so considerate, so kind and gentle. The best of husbands. She doubted whether any girl would ever be able to say the same about Brit.
‘Time up, caller.’ The voice with the Eastern lilt interrupted.
‘Can we have extra time?’
‘Sorry! The lines are heavily booked.’
‘I’ll call you back, Elise. And don’t worry, darling, you’ll soon be home and we shall all be together again.’
Don’t go, Gordon, please don’t go! she wanted to cry, but instead she heard herself say, ‘I know. Kiss Alex for me?’
‘Yes. I love you.’
‘I love you too.’
Crackles, a loud click in her ear and then the line was dead. She sat back on her heels with the receiver in her hand, feeling utterly alone.
Oh Gordon, why did I leave? I can’t bear to be separated from you a moment longer. And Alex … oh, Alex …!
The tears began again, running through her fingers, and she let them come. They would heal the rift, hold her close to Gordon and Alex, drive away the crazy desires.
Afterwards she felt better and never more determined. In front of the mirror she tidied herself as well as she could, combing her hair with her fingers. There would be plenty of warm water and soap in the luxury bathroom that adjoined her bedroom, and in a moment she would ring for a maid to run her a bath. In a moment, too, she would send for the dressmaker and for someone who could bring her a selection of lingerie.
First, she intended to pull herself together – here, now and all on her own. In this uncertain world, her self-reliance was the one thing she could hold on to.
But the face that looked back at her from the mirror, tearstained and stripped bare of make-up, looked so young that it gave her little comfort, and with a sigh she reached for the telephone.
For the remainder of that first day Elise had little time to dwell on her thoughts.
First, as she had planned, there was the luxurious bath in the sweetly perfumed water, soaking the salt out of her pores and washing her tangled hair. Then there was the dressmaker, with the array of fabrics she had been promised; suggesting this and that, measuring, trying patterns – and all with the same deferential manner she would have used if her client had been a duchess instead of a virtual refugee.
Elise, used to wearing haute couture clothes, selected the fabrics and styles she thought could be made up here most successfully – simple, flowing designs in jewel colours, trimmed in the fashion of the East to resemble brilliant butterflies, and several cheong-sams, the well-fitting Chinese dresses made from shining silk brocade.
Then a maid arrived with a selection of lingerie from some of the best shops in Georgetown, pretty Italian shoes and Parisian perfumes. Elise selected some, but was aware as she did so of a hollow feeling. After the brush with death and her days on the tramp steamer, when she had been glad just to be alive, she was very aware that her possessions were only material things. To the disappointment of the maid, used to extravagant guests, she bought far less than the girl had hoped, sending her back with boxes and bags not even opened.
But it was a joy, all the same, to go down to dinner that evening feeling human for the first time in days, dressed in a flowing gown of Thai silk. As the waiters bowed her into the beautiful black and white dining room, she found herself looking around for Brit and being aware of a stab of disappointment on finding he was not there.
I’m just so tired of dining alone, she excused herself – but knew it was not only that. On the one hand she wanted to see him – on the other, she wanted him to see her looking attractive again after the days of squalor.
Vanity, vanity, she scolded herself as she ordered a simple grill and thanked the head waiter for the long-stemmed rose he brought to her table with a charming bow.
But throughout the meal her eyes kept wandering to the door, and whenever someone else came in she felt a ridiculous sense of let-down.
He had not appeared by the time she had finished her meal and she decided to go up to her room. There, tired as she had thought she was, she found herself too tense for sleep and had the idea of writing down an account of the events she was living through.
Diaries which she had tried to keep in the past had never been kept up for long, but then she had never begun them with much enthusiasm. I never really had anything to write about before, she thought. Now she sat down at the rosewood writing desk and took out a sheet of embossed E & O paper. Where to start? If she went back over the dramatic events of recent weeks she would probably never catch up with herself. Better by far to start now and fill in as she went along.
Heading the sheet Penang she set down her early impressions, glimpsed briefly on her way from the boat to the hotel – the streets, less busy than most of the colonial cities of the East, where coolies pedalled their tri-shaws: the strange vehicles that were half bicycle, half rickshaw; the colourful blend of Malay, Chinese, Thai and Indian cultures; the numerous temples and the shops, some selling rattan and paper goods to be burnt at funerals as offerings for the ‘hungry ghosts’.
These shops were to be found in Hong Kong too, of course, and she knew the custom – paper money and effigies of everything from houses to motor cars, all burnt to ensure the departed spirit would have everything it needed in the next world. But she wrote it down anyway. Maybe they would not always live in the East and it would be nice in years to come to have a record to show to Alex and any other children she might have.
At last her eyes began to feel heavy and she put away the closely covered sheets of paper and crossed to the bed that had already been turned down by a room boy. The sheets of fine linen, changed every day, looked inviting and after the hard bunk in the steamer captain’s cabin the soft mattress felt heavenly.
Two different worlds and I have lived in both of them, she thought, turning her head sensuously on the monogrammed pillow. But now I’m going home.
And without any thought of the dangers still ahead of her, Elise turned out the bedside lamp and slept.
When she entered the dining room next morning, Elise saw that Brit was there before her. He got to his feet, indicating to the waiter that she should join him, and at the sight of him she felt her body come alive.
So she hadn’t exorcised him despite speaking to Gordon, she thought, and found that a small, perverse part of her could only be glad.
‘Good morning.’ His eyes took in her simple top and skirt of Indian cotton, chosen from amongst the items sent in by the stores. ‘Looking less like Robinson Crusoe, I see.’
She smiled, sliding into the soft cushioned chair.
‘You too.’
He was not wearing uniform, but a white open-necked shirt and well-cut slacks. Against the light colour of the fabric his skin looked very tanned.
The waiter took her order – for fruit juice and cereal, followed by scrambled eggs and a pot of tea.
‘I feel I could just go on eating for ever,’ she said apologetically.
‘It’s all that sea air.’
‘Too much! How can you joke about it?’
‘You know the old saying – if we didn’t laugh, we’d cry. There’s something in that.’
How true! she thought. How closely laughter and tears are connected, and how we hide the way we feel behind ordinary, everyday actions and reactions.
Her heart was beating a fraction too fast, her stomach was churning, yet here she was having a perfectly normal conversation.
‘You didn’t come in to dinner last night.’
‘No. There were some things I had to do – people
I had to see.’
She looked at him questioningly but he did not elaborate. After the sinking of the Maid, they had spent more time in one another’s company in the close-confines of the tramp steamer than at any previous stage of the voyage and she had become even more aware that she knew nothing about him or what he was doing. It was as if there was a veil around him – sometimes she thought she was on the point of glimpsing something she was not even aware was there; then it would be gone again.
The waiter arrived with the orange juice in a crystal jug and a silver teapot on a heavy silver tray. She waited until he had moved soundlessly away again before asking, ‘Have you any idea yet when we will be able to go on?’
‘Not yet. I’ll find out about it today, though it shouldn’t be difficult to get a ship from here to Singapore. I think you can say the worst of the voyage is over – as long as the Japs don’t take it into their heads to move in now.’
A shiver of fear went up her spine; then she mentally shook herself. Don’t even think about it: just take one day at a time.
She sipped her orange juice, cold and delicious, the sharp tang of freshness tickling her nostrils.
‘The news from Egypt is disturbing,’ he said, spreading coast with curls of yellow butter. ‘Hitler has decided to poke his nose into Greece, and numbers of O’Connor’s troops are being withdrawn from Egypt and sent there.’
‘What does that mean?’ It was strange how her world had shrunk since the torpedo. A little while ago she had been in Egypt and on the doorstep of O’Connor’s push along the North African coast; events in the Mediterranean had been real and vital. Now, cut off from news for days on end, it could have been the movements of toy soldiers they were discussing.
‘Instead of pushing on to Tripoli as he intended, he will have his work cut out holding on to the ground he has gained,’ Brit explained. ‘And German aircraft are being sent to Sicily, which could make life awkward for the British in the Central Mediterranean.’
‘I see.’ Her face was clouded. German aircraft on Sicily. German subs in the Indian Ocean. Germans occupying Holland, Belgium and France, and bombing the heart out of England. Was nowhere free of them?
Briefly her mind returned to the day, nearly two years ago now, when war had been declared between England and Germany.
‘A diplomatic gesture,’ Gordon had called it and although she was disquieted by stories of the Germans attacking Poland – as they had Czechoslovakia – and the racist policies of the Nazi dictator, it had never occurred to her that the situation would become as serious as it now was.
Gordon had been convinced it would all blow over like a storm in a teacup, and as someone who knew little about world affairs she had accepted his judgement. Perhaps that was why the Japanese threat worried her so, she thought. Gordon, always the peacemaker, simply could not imagine that the Chinese Japanese struggle which had been going on for so many years would ever blow up into something that could affect them.
But he had been wrong about Germany and she was terribly afraid he might also be wrong about Japan …
She drained her glass. She would not think about it now – there was no point.
Outside the window where they sat, the terrace was already bathed in glorious sunlight, though the cool white flounced curtains prevented it from getting into their eyes.
‘It’s a lovely day,’ she said. ‘ February in England is so awful – cold, wet, even snowy. But here …’
Brit was drinking coffee, black and scalding.
‘Have you any plans?’
‘Plans?’ Without knowing why, she was trembling.
‘Shopping? After losing all your belongings.’
‘Oh, I don’t think so. It won’t be much longer before we’re home, will it?’
‘I suppose not. I just thought all women liked to shop at every opportunity. And you have a cast-iron excuse! Well, if you’ve nothing planned, why don’t we have a look round Penang? Several of the temples are well worth visiting, and there’s a funicular railway.’
He said it so easily, so naturally; for a brief moment, remembering the day on Elephanta Island, she almost said, ‘ Oh yes!’ But caution stepped in. You mustn’t! It was five days since the Maid had been torpedoed, yet she could still experience that intoxicating surge of relief, when she had known that he was safe; she still wanted to touch him to make sure he was really there. Oh no, better not to be alone with him …
‘I’m not sure I feel up to sightseeing. Perhaps on second thoughts I should do some shopping. One or two things …’
‘It’s up to you.’
‘Yes. Thanks for the offer, but for today perhaps I should say no.’
‘That’s all right.’ He drained his coffee cup and pushed it to one side. ‘ In that case, if you’ll excuse me … Perhaps I’ll see you at dinner?’
‘Yes, I expect so.’
The waiter brought her eggs, piled in a soft, appetising mound on slices of wafer-thin toast. But she was no longer hungry.
For heaven’s sake, stop this nonsense! she told herself. You’ve never been like this about anyone in your life – what a time to start! Remember you are Mrs Gordon Sanderson; once and for all, get rid of this stupid obsession.
But all the determination in the world would not restore her appetite. And she knew that as long as she was in his company, it would be very difficult to ignore the emotions he seemed able to arouse in her all too easily.
As he left the dining room Brit had been conscious of a build-up of something almost like anger driving him along. Oddly enough, he was not quite certain where this feeling was directed, though he had certainly been cheerful enough until Elise had rejected his offer to sightsee in Penang.
You don’t like being turned down by a woman, he thought wryly. You’re just not used to it. And without bothering to analyse it any more deeply, he knew he had hit on the truth.
For too long now he had been one of the East’s most eligible bachelors, and many of the loveliest society girls had been drawn to him by his money and the standing of his family as well as his charisma. As an officer in the RAF he had radiated a certain glamour, too, which had also attracted women. And he had enjoyed their company – and the way they danced to his tune – without becoming involved with any of them.
Except, of course, Mai Ling.
Now, striding along the Golden Corridor, he found himself thinking of her as he sometimes did for no apparent reason; and was surprised as always to find that the pain of remembering was still as sharp as ever, though he could hardly recall her face unless he built it up section by section as a mental picture – high cheekbones, dark almond-shaped eyes, full cupid’s bow mouth. All the attributes of East and West were combined in her Anglo-Chinese breeding.
She had been an airline stewardess whom he had met when he was flying commercially. For the first time in his life, he had found himself beginning to want more than his flying, more than his hard drinking, more even than his freedom. He didn’t call it falling in love, since such a word hardly existed in his vocabulary. He only knew that he counted the days and hours until he could see her again, saw her face in the darkness as he flew and went to sleep with the feel of her in his arms. Everything he did began to be associated with her and when she was assigned to fly with other crews he was torn apart by jealousy.
It was then that he had realised he would have to marry her. This wasn’t something which had entered his scheme of things originally, and he knew his father would raise Cain at the prospect of Chinese blood being introduced into the sacred Brittain line. But he had put all that aside; he wanted Mai Ling and the only way to be sure of her was to marry her.
It was more of an instinctive reaction than a carefully considered plan, since at that stage Brit seldom looked very far ahead.
Having made up his mind, he wanted to do something about it immediately, so that night he had gone to the airport to wait for her flight to come in.
At first he had not worried unduly about the d
elay. He knew airlines and timetables and was well aware of the many small things that could hold up a flight. But after a while he began to be anxious and went to make enquiries. That was when he had heard the news: contact had been lost over the Indian sub-continent.
He could remember now in nightmares the cold sweat which had broken out all over his body, the reassurances – ‘ could be nothing, just radio blackout’ – the sick certainty within, bearing no relation to knowledge or experience, that Flight One-Oh-Eight would never touch down. He remembered the waiting hours, frantic at first, then weary, burdened down by anxiety and premature grief as well as lack of sleep. He remembered flying himself, fighting to keep his mind on the job, yet waiting with every nerve in his body for the news which would inevitably come when all hope was dead.
It was four days before wreckage was sighted, a week before the first bodies were brought back – or what remained of them. The cruel mountainous country had taken the lives of everyone aboard, predators and birds of prey had done the rest. Mai Ling’s remains were never found.
Now, across the years, he remembered again the musical sound of her laughter and the lingering scent of the exotic and mysterious East which had clung to her skin and her soft dark hair. Then the rage and the pain flooded in to join his earlier anger, mixing and merging until he was no longer certain which was which.
The waste – the bloody waste of it! All that beauty smashed to pieces – hell, he ached for it even now. None of the women who followed had ever been able to erase it – why should he think this one would be any different?
It was as well she had turned down his invitation in any case. The sinking of the Maid had not only meant he had lost some of his important papers, it had also reduced the time span for getting to Hong Kong. Every moment now was precious and there was no time to waste on sightseeing trips.
A touch of his old humour returned and his lip curled upwards. Back to your ciphers, Brittain! Back to your dicey Cantonese. And for the moment at least, forget about women.