by A. M. Stuart
“I don’t know much about rubber plantations, but there seems to be an air of neglect over this one,” Harriet remarked, indicating the weeds and creepers that had claimed the orderly rows of straggly rubber trees incised with the V-shaped cuts that allowed the sap to run into the collection cups.
Julian agreed, his lips tightening as they passed a kampong of derelict huts where once the workers may have lived.
The familiar shape of a long, low plantation house came into view as they rounded a bend. In an earlier time, it would have been a pleasant house with its outlook over the river. Now the paint on the wooden boards cracked and peeled and the neglected atap roof probably leaked and housed who knew what vermin. Untamed purple bougainvillea circled the verandah posts, casting it into a deep shadow. Like the garden that surrounded it, the house looked lonely and uncared-for.
John Lawson waited for them on the steps to the bungalow, his hands on his hips. Julian ordered the driver to wait for them and helped Harriet dismount from the buggy. They stood on the overgrown driveway and looked up at Lawson. Harriet raised her hand to shield her eyes but Lawson did not move or stand aside to offer them hospitality out of the bright midday sun.
“Headmaster. What are you doing here? Is everything all right with Will?” Lawson’s tone held no welcome.
Julian mopped his forehead. “Will’s fine. Do you mind if we come in, Mr. Lawson? It is a trifle warm out here.”
Lawson twitched and, as if recalling his manners, stood aside and spoke to a white-robed house servant who appeared at the door.
“Of course, come in.”
Rather than show them into the house, he gestured to the odd assortment of chairs on the verandah. Julian glanced at Harriet. She quirked an eyebrow but kept her face impassive as she sat down in one of the heavy planters’ chairs. These reclining wooden chairs were meant for taking one’s ease in and, trying to keep an upright posture, she perched awkwardly on the seat.
“I’ll come straight to the point,” Julian said. “Why did I have to hear it from your son that you intend to withdraw him from the school this week and send him back to England?”
Lawson ran a hand through his hair. Harriet tilted her head and considered him. The change in him in just over a week was dramatic. His bloodshot eyes were lost in dark smudges and heavy bags, and the very muscles of his face had sunk into bristly jowls. His clothes were crumpled and stained and up close he had the stale odor of a man who had not washed for several days.
“I was going to telegram the school today,” he mumbled, and gestured at the house. “No telephone.”
“Is there a problem with the school, Mr. Lawson?” Julian pushed.
Lawson shook his head. “No, no. I just . . . it’s something I have to do. He’ll be safer in England.”
Harriet frowned. “Safer? Are you concerned about the security at the school?”
“No. It’s not that.” Lawson rose to his feet and paced the length of the verandah. “Things have been getting on top of me. I’ve already lost a wife and three children to this damned climate. I cannot . . . I dare not risk the life of my only remaining child.”
“I understand,” Julian said, “but stop and consider how disruptive it will be for the boy to arrive at a new school in England in the middle of the last term. At least let him finish his school year here.”
Lawson shook his head, fumbling in his trouser pockets for a tortoiseshell cigarette case. His hand shook as he took several attempts to light a cigarette. He leaned on the verandah, his right foot tapping impatiently as he took a deep draught, watching the smoke dissipate.
He glanced back at Julian. “If it’s the fees you’re worried about, Headmaster, then don’t. I don’t give a toss for them and I don’t expect them to be refunded. Will is going to England this week, and that’s the end of it.”
A desperate need to defend the rights of a small boy who had no say in the matter overcame Harriet’s good manners. She rose to her feet to face the man.
“Mr. Lawson. Please spare a thought for Will. He has taken his mother’s death hard and now he feels like you’re sending him away as some sort of punishment.”
Lawson threw the half-smoked cigarette into the tangle of bougainvillea and turned his red-rimmed eyes on her, his mouth working as if he struggled to control his own emotions.
“With respect, Mrs. Gordon, what decisions I make about my son are none of your business.” He waved a hand at the world beyond the verandah. “He’s a damn sight better off in England than he is in this godforsaken hole. If I’d stayed in England, Annie would still be alive and so would the children who are buried with her. I want Will somewhere safe. Every minute he stays on this island, I am in fear for his life.” His lip curled in a sneer. “And who are you to lecture me on how I should bring up my son? You have no children.”
A hurt and furious response formulated in Harriet’s heart but before she could say a word, Julian laid his hand on her arm and shook his head. Little would be gained by retaliation. This had to be about Will, not Harriet and not Thomas Gordon.
“I assure you, Mr. Lawson, we take very good care of Will,” she said.
Lawson turned his head so he wasn’t looking at them as he said, “I’m not questioning the care he is getting at St. Thomas, Mrs. Gordon. Believe me, he will be safer and happier in England.”
Harriet tried one last time. “Mr. Lawson, I will be frank. Will thinks he has done something to make you angry. Won’t you at least come back with us and take the time to explain it to him?”
This time the anguish on Lawson’s face as he turned to look at her was raw. “I can’t . . . I can’t go into Singapore.” He broke eye contact and looked away.
Julian glanced at the gharry driver squatting in the shade of a rain tree. “Nothing more to be done here, Harriet. We better get moving if we want to make the one thirty train.”
Lawson leaned both hands on the rail of the verandah, his shoulders sagging. “There is something you can do for me,” he said. “I’ve packed a trunk for Will to take on the boat. Can you take it with you?”
“Of course,” Julian said.
Lawson seemed to brighten and summoned the servant. Like his master’s clothes, the servant’s once-white robe looked stained and crumpled.
Harriet glanced at the front door, which the servant had left open as he went to fetch the trunk. “If you don’t mind, Mr. Lawson. I wish to avail myself of . . .”
Lawson reddened. “Of course, Mrs. Gordon. At the back of the house. You can go around the verandah.”
But Harriet had no intention of going around the verandah. Before he could stop her, she had marched through the front door, stopping at the sight that met her. Books and papers littered every surface along with empty whisky bottles and ashtrays filled to overflowing. The room smelled of stale cigarettes, alcohol, damp, dust and decay. Despite the cloying heat, she shivered. Little wonder he wanted to be rid of the boy. This was not a suitable home for a child.
As she passed a side table, a small pile of papers balanced precariously fluttered to the ground in her wake. Automatically she stooped to pick them up, intending to restore them to their place. Glancing down at the topmost paper, she took a breath. The paper had had only four words, written in a bright-blue ink and a firm hand. Unless she was very much mistaken, Sir Oswald Newbold had written, Consignment 6: 5 March.
“I apologize for the mess.” Lawson stood in the doorway behind her. “I wasn’t expecting company.”
Harriet turned to face him, setting the papers down without glancing at them again. She brushed her hands and looked around her with what she hoped seemed like disapproval.
“Clearly,” she said in an icy tone.
Drawn by several photographs in tarnished silver frames, she crossed to a pine dresser that stood against the wall, its homey Englishness so out of place in this setting. All the photographs
were heavily mildewed but she could make out a family picture of a man, a woman and four small children with a female servant standing to one side. She picked the frame up, peering closely at the faces. She recognized a younger and happier John Lawson and assumed the woman to be his wife, Annie.
“When was this taken?” she asked.
Lawson swallowed. “Four years ago, in Mogok.”
Harriet looked up. “Mogok?”
“You’ve heard of it?”
“Yes. Burma, isn’t it? Your family . . .”
Lawson took the photograph from her. “The baby . . .” His voice cracked. “The baby Annie is holding died a few weeks after that photograph was taken. Annie was distraught. She wanted to go back to England then and there but I persuaded her to stay. I’d been offered this job in Singapore. It was a compromise but it killed Annie and the other two children as surely as if I had stayed in Burma.”
“Did you know Sir Oswald Newbold?”
“I worked for him.” Lawson glanced at his watch and said, “You better hurry if you’re going to make the train.”
Harriet availed herself of the bathroom, an experience she did not wish to repeat. In a generally disorganized and uncared-for home, the bathroom facilities were always the first to suffer.
The driver had brought the gharry around to the front door and a medium-size metal-bound trunk had been placed in the footwell.
Julian clapped his hat on his head and held out his hand. “Thank you for your time, Mr. Lawson. I shall inform the board of governors of your decision but I would appreciate confirmation in writing.”
“Will is booked on the Europa on Thursday. I’ve arranged for him to be properly escorted and he will be met by Annie’s sister in Portsmouth.” Lawson’s lips tightened. “I have every intention of getting down to see the little chap off myself, but if I don’t . . .”
Julian frowned. “Please make that effort, Lawson, but you have my assurance that everyone at St. Thomas will try to make it as easy as possible for Will.”
Lawson clasped Julian’s hand. “Thank you for giving up your valuable time to come all this way. The boy will be right as rain as soon as he gets to England and I will sleep sounder for knowing he’s there.”
Lawson helped Harriet into the carriage. She maneuvered herself around the trunk and unfurled her parasol. “Mr. Lawson, I want to assure you that my brother and myself are very fond of Will and there is nothing we wouldn’t do for his happiness.”
The man nodded. “Thank you. A letter of recommendation to the school in England is all I need from you but . . .” He paused, the muscles in his throat working. “. . . tell the little chap that I miss him and I’ll join him in England as soon as I can. I just need a bit of time to wind up things here. Oh, here’s the key for the trunk, Mrs. Gordon. Might be better if you keep it at your house until it comes time to leave and then it can go straight into the hold. There’s nothing in there he’ll need.”
Harriet took the small, flat key and secured it in her reticule as Julian climbed into the carriage beside her.
“Wait!” Lawson turned and ran back into the house, returning out of breath. He held up a small leather-bound, traveling photo frame. “Can you give this to Will? It’s his mother. He might like to have it with him.”
“Of course,” Harriet said. “Good-bye, Mr. Lawson.”
As the gharry turned away, Harriet glanced back. Lawson stood in the driveway, his hands thrust into his pocket, his shoulders sagging, a picture of abject misery.
They made the train in good time, and on the trip back to Tank Road, Harriet sat with her chin propped on her hand, staring out with unseeing eyes at the passing countryside.
“Harri, he’s right, you know; it is none of our business,” Julian said at last.
She turned to face her brother. “I know that. I just need to be sure that the decision has been made for the right reasons. Didn’t you think there was something odd about Lawson?”
“Clearly he’s been drinking,” Julian replied, with a faint sniff of disapproval.
“He seemed to be afraid of something.”
Julian scoffed. “He’s been through hell. To lose three children and his wife? Snakes, tropical diseases . . . of course England looks like a safe alternative for his son. I must agree with him; it is his son’s best interests he has at heart. Plenty of other boys of Will’s age, and younger, get sent home. It’s a sensible thing to do.” He paused. “Particularly the state he’s in.”
“That all sounds perfectly acceptable, Ju, but why pay up two terms of school fees only last week, if he was intending on sending the boy away? The decision has been made in haste.”
Julian leaned forward and laid a hand over hers. “Harriet, don’t get emotionally involved.”
“Easy for you to say,” Harriet said, and sniffed, fighting back a sudden urge to cry.
Her brother squeezed her fingers. “I understand. Will reminds you of Thomas and, God knows, you have better cause than I to know how quickly this climate can kill.”
The sob that had been scratching at the back of Harriet’s throat escaped. She shook off Julian’s sympathy and scrabbled in her reticule for a handkerchief. “Tom would be the same age as Will now.”
“I know.”
She blew her nose and wiped her eyes, stowing the handkerchief in her sleeve. “You’re right, Ju, I’m letting my emotions cloud my judgment. If John Lawson thinks the best thing for Will is to go back to England, then that is his decision and all we can do is make the transition as painless as possible.”
Back in Singapore, they hailed a gharry at the station, which, like its dilapidated counterpart in Woodlands, barely fit the two of them and the trunk. Lokman and Aziz were summoned to carry the trunk into the house, and over their complaining, Harriet ordered it to be taken to her bedchamber and stowed under the bed.
Alone in her room she removed the hatpins and tossed her hat onto the bed. Sitting down at her dressing table she stared at her reflection in the mirror and wondered what, if anything, she could do to prevent what seemed to her an inescapable descent into tragedy. The state of the plantation house and John Lawson’s obvious distress concerned her, and why send his child away?
The heat did that; it got inside people’s minds like an insidious worm, twisting and turning until there was no escape but oblivion. She had seen it in Bombay often enough among the expatriate community. The misery ended with a revolver to the temple or a rope over a beam.
She placed the photograph Lawson had given her on her dressing table and unhooked the frame, opening it to reveal a daguerreotype of a young woman still in the flush of her youth, her unbound hair proclaiming her single status. Annie Lawson had probably never been a beauty but she had a bright, lively face and a wide smile. Harriet touched the glass with her finger.
“Oh, Annie,” she said. “We have more in common than you will ever know.”
She closed the photo frame and decided it should be put away safely with the rest of Will’s things. She took out the trunk’s key, weighing it in her hand as she wondered about whether she was breaching a confidence. Then again, it would be the responsible thing to look through the contents of the trunk and ensure that Lawson’s packing was appropriate for a child heading back to England.
Kneeling on the floor, she pulled the box out from under the bed. The key turned stiffly in the lock but that was no surprise. Everything rusted so quickly in the humidity. She tutted with disapproval at the state of the interior. The contents of the box appeared to have been flung in with no particular order or symmetry. A man’s idea of packing or a man in a hurry? she wondered.
Her opinion of Lawson worsened as she shook out each article of clothing. Most would have been far too small for Will and few were appropriate for a new life in the colder English climate. She decided she would take the boy shopping on Wednesday to ensure he had at least a
few decent clothes for his arrival in England. April could still be cold and nothing in the trunk would provide the boy with any warmth for the hideous voyage around the Bay of Biscay.
Among the clothes were a box of tin soldiers and a selection of children’s books—E. Nesbit and a well-read copy of Shakespeare inscribed with Annie’s name—and, poignantly, a disreputable cloth rabbit. It looked homemade and had been much patched and was missing an eye. She wondered if this beloved object had been made by Annie Lawson for her son.
At the bottom of the trunk she found a wooden box about eighteen inches square. Harriet grunted as she lifted it out of the trunk and onto her bed. Whatever it contained was heavy and accounted for the weight of the trunk. She shook it but nothing rattled.
Curiosity overcame her. The lid had been nailed shut and she went in search of Julian’s toolbox. Julian liked to tinker with woodwork in his spare time and had set up a workshop in one of the outside sheds.
Using a screwdriver, she carefully pried the lid off without damaging the nails and stood back, puzzled by the contents. Nestled in the sawdust shavings the benign face of Buddha smiled serenely at her. She brushed the dust from his face.
“I know you,” she said aloud.
Without pulling the statue from its resting place she recognized the same long earlobes and tightly curled hair as the Buddha Sir Oswald had kept in pride of place on his desk. Only this one was on a smaller scale.
She shouldn’t be surprised. The Lawsons had lived in Burma, and from what she could see of the house, under the dirt and detritus, they had accumulated one or two nice pieces. It was probably an antique purchased by Will’s mother.
Guiltily Harriet nailed the lid back on and replaced the box in the chest, followed by the rabbit, the toys and the books, and added the photograph Lawson had given her to the top of the pile. She locked it and returned it to its place under the bed.
She carried the pile of discarded clothing out into the parlor for discussion with Will tomorrow. Needing a distraction, she dispatched Aziz to the school to fetch her typewriter while she began sorting through Newbold’s papers, trying to distinguish a starting point for the task Curran had set her. The sight of the firm penciled strokes of Newbold’s shorthand, interspersed with notes written in a now-familiar blue ink, gave her pause.