The Hour Before Dawn

by Sara MacDonald

  The image of the small grave was etched clearly behind her eyelids. But so were other memories, stirred by the heat and smell and sounds she had almost forgotten. It seemed possible, to go back, to go back and start again and be more careful of the life she had had, the life she had lived out here in the heat and the dust and bustle of a foreign posting.

  It was not that she had been unaware of her happiness then, it was that she had wanted too much. She had wanted perfection and there was no such thing, it did not exist. Human beings were flawed, you had to accept what you had, not try to improve it.

  Why couldn’t you have had this wisdom when you were young, when you needed it?

  David seemed suddenly near her in the room, as if he too had been conjured here by the possibility of finding their lost child. She could see his face, clearer than for years, young, still young of course. It was difficult to age while the memory of David remained young and vital. She turned over on her side, heavy with exhaustion, and let the memory of their time together play across her brain until she fell into a troubled sleep.

  Mersing, Malaya, 1968

  In the Easter holidays Laura and Peter arranged a house party in Mersing for the Easter weekend. Ten friends rented three rest houses near the beach. They were a mixed group of young officers and teachers and a couple of older friends of Peter and Laura’s.

  The plan was to catch one of the small boats across to the island of Palau Tioman, take a picnic and spend Easter Sunday swimming and diving down to the acres of coral that lay beneath one of the most beautiful islands in the world.

  The boats chugged across the aquamarine water full of noisy singing people and diving gear. The boatmen deposited them in the shallow translucent water and waited while they waded back and forth to the beach carrying their picnics and diving equipment. Then the boats turned and disappeared to the horizon to fish and sleep and wait for evening.

  Diving canisters, barbecues and drink were held aloft out of the water and lugged ashore, and the parties broke up roughly into age groups and spread around the small curved beach under the shade of palm trees.

  Peter and Laura were conscious of days like these drawing to a close. They wanted to make the most of the time they had left because they had been posted to Aldershot and it was still a shock.

  ‘We’ve been incredibly lucky up to now,’ Peter said to Laura as he stuck beer cans in the shade. ‘It could have been worse.’

  ‘Not much!’ Laura retorted, but she knew he was right. They had had some wonderful postings.

  ‘It’s certainly going to be a short sharp shock for Sam and Fleur,’ Peter added. ‘Aldershot doesn’t quite have the cachet of the naval base, does it?’

  Laura laughed. ‘No bad thing, darling, they have had a magic three years, perhaps it’s time real life reared its ugly head. Sam’s really going to miss his sailing, though, and David and his group of friends.’

  They both looked across at their children spreading rugs and towels out under the bent palms. Sam and Fleur, dreading an army quarter in England, were making the most of their last Easter holiday. They both sailed with David most weekends from the naval base or raced from Changi yacht club and Sam seemed to be spending a lot of his holiday setting up his summer crewing with some of the subalterns who were also returning to England.

  ‘Fleur is going to feel adrift too,’ Peter said. ‘Especially with Sam off to medical school. That little crowd seem to do an awful lot together. I must say I’ve been very lucky with my subalterns out here.’

  He was watching his daughter, knowing she considered her world was going to come to an abrupt end when they left. David had another five months in Singapore and then could be posted anywhere.

  Laura, following his eyes, sighed. Poor Fleur! She was far too young to interest David. He was always surrounded by pretty girls and was constantly teased about it by the other officers. ‘I think we’re going to have problems with Fleur when we get home.’

  ‘Oh, Laura,’ Peter said mildly.

  ‘Darling, Fleur has always been able to twist you round her little finger. She has such talent and is capable of working so hard when she wants to. I hope she doesn’t just throw it away.’

  ‘Let’s wait and see. Fleur must live her own life, darling.’

  Peter knew what was bugging Laura. She was working for a degree she might never be able to use. It was likely that from Aldershot he would be posted to Northern Ireland where she would not be able to work for security reasons. For the first time he had begun to sense a resentment that seemed more and more directed at their daughter, who might casually turn her back on her own chance to excel.

  He handed Laura a cool drink. ‘To this lovely day, surrounded by our friends on one of the most wonderful, unspoilt islands it is possible to imagine.’

  Laura lifted her glass, met his eyes and smiled. He was right. How gently he managed to reprimand her. ‘And to our two, who I do love, you know,’ she said quietly. ‘Are you going to dive?’

  ‘I certainly am. I wish I could tempt you. The coral is out of this world. See you later, darling.’

  Peter hopped away over the hot sand towards the group standing by the diving canisters and snorkelling equipment.

  Fleur never dived because despite being a good swimmer she hated anything over her face. Her father had tried to get her to go down with him over the years but at the last moment she always tore off her mask. Fleur was convinced she had absorbed Laura’s fear at an early age.

  That Sunday as Sam and David prepared to dive, Fleur hovered beside them wistfully. She hated to miss out on anything.

  David was watching her. ‘Come down with us, Fleur? You’re missing an amazing experience. Sam and I’ll look after you.’

  Sam looked up. ‘She won’t come, she’s claustrophobic.’

  Fleur hesitated. ‘I’d like to…it’s just…’

  ‘Come on, have a go. Come down with Sam and me,’ David coaxed.

  He held out his hand and Fleur, her mouth dry, reached out to take it. He helped Fleur into a buoyancy control device and handed her a weight belt. Then he started checking all their equipment. Sam, who was ready first, bent and helped her with her flippers, then adjusted her mask and snorkel. When David was ready he gave her the thumbs up sign and Fleur stood anxiously between them.

  David told her to breathe from her regulator until they were in deep water then switch to her snorkel to conserve air as they needed to surface swim before descending.

  All three flapped sideways into the water, Sam and David grinning at her encouragingly. They started to swim as soon as it was deep enough. A little way out Sam signalled to her and both he and Sam checked her equipment again and then each other’s. Fleur tried to ignore the panic that threatened to send her swimming madly for the shore.

  Sam indicated that she should deflate her device and exhale. Fleur hesitated. David touched her arm and gave her the thumbs up again, and trembling, she began to descend feet first with Sam and David each side of her, all adding small amounts of air as they neared the bottom.

  Once she was underwater and she could see the bright fish and Sam’s and David’s legs securely each side of her, Fleur tried to relax. The mass of coral lay beneath her, alive and intricate, the patterns of it causing waving shadows on the seabed; a great mountain of faded pink and white. Small, brightly coloured fish darted in and out of her legs in this silent world and Fleur was enchanted. David took her hand and pointed with his other hand to show her rays moving delicately through fronds of seaweed like dancers.

  Fleur, gripping David’s hand, turned this way and that in excitement. Her fear all these years had made her miss out on all this. Now she knew why people became hooked on diving; it was a different world, an unknown and unmapped place, full of unexpected and undiscovered wonder. When they surfaced she felt euphoric. One of the teachers was waiting for her diving gear and she peeled herself out of it and turned to David, laughing.

  ‘That was out of this world! Amazing! It w
as incredible!’

  Sam surfaced and grinned at her. ‘I told you! Think what you’ve missed all these years!’

  David, sitting in the shallows, smiled and handed her a small pink piece of coral.

  ‘There you are, to remember your first dive! Have you got rid of your fear? Will you dive again?

  ‘Oh, yes! Well…I will if you or Sam are with me.’ She took the small piece of coral, self-consciously. ‘Thanks.’

  David smiled. ‘It takes guts to conquer a fear, Fleur.’

  They moved back to their party. Fleur picked up her towel and threw it around her. She placed the small piece of coral safely in the pocket of her canvas bag.

  Sam handed David a beer. ‘What do you want to drink, Fleur?’

  ‘I’ll have a glass of wine, please.’

  Sam grinned. ‘Here you are. You’ve certainly earned one.’

  Fleur went and sat beside David on her towel. He was smoking a cigarette and he idly touched the goose bumps that stood out on her arms. ‘You got cold down there.’

  He reached behind him and wrapped his blue shirt around her shoulders. He pulled her thin arms into the sleeves and bent to do up some buttons as if she were a child. He was very close and Fleur stayed still, willing herself not to tremble as his fingers touched her skin. He looked up and met her eyes, held them in sudden amusement, then bent swiftly and briefly kissed her mouth. It was small and firm and salty.

  The men began to barbecue and the groups drifted towards the smell, lugging their towels and drinks with them. Laura got Fleur to help with the plates and bread rolls, and as the last divers came up the sound of beer bottles popping got louder and the conversation ebbed and flowed between bursts of laughter.

  After everyone had eaten, people moved up into the deeper shade of the trees and lay sleeping or reading. Fleur had moved her towel to the place she always lay, under a scrubby palm where, when they were younger, she and Sam had swung Tarzan-like up on the rope that had always been there. She had had two glasses of wine and although she opened her book she fell asleep on her stomach.

  When she woke, David was asleep beside her. Surprised, she gazed at his face, glad of the rare opportunity to scrutinise his features. His eyelashes were long and dark and thick, making tiny shadows underneath his eyes. He had sweat on his forehead and top lip…His lips were square, with tiny vertical lines. Just right lips; neither too full nor too thin. Fleur longed to touch those lips with a finger.

  She knew his face well and yet not at all. She wondered how you changed things. How you made someone notice you in a different way, not as Sam’s little sister or the colonel’s daughter. How you changed from being a girl he saw often yet did not see at all, to the Fleur she really was.

  At that moment he opened his eyes and saw hers fixed on him alarmingly near. Their eyes locked. Fleur held her courage and his gaze. The moment was thick with intent. Then, David slowly grinned, reached out with his finger to touch her nose and sat up, yawning.

  The light was changing over the sea, less harsh, turning mellow and golden, lighting up the water in little sparks. People were swimming to cool down, splashing each other and calling out. Peter and Sam were preparing to dive again. Fleur watched her father pulling on diving gear. Laura was nowhere to be seen.

  David turned to her. ‘Going into the water?’

  Fleur nodded and they stood up together and ran over the hot sand into the clear, translucent sea.

  They swam out and then lay on their backs in the water, soporific and happy. Around them little clumps of swimmers and couples paired off in the late afternoon, not wanting the day to end, lying close on beach mats, huddled sleepily in the shallows on their stomachs.

  ‘I can’t believe I won’t be flying out or coming here ever again,’ Fleur said. ‘I can’t believe that next Easter and the long summer will be spent in Aldershot.’

  David swam towards her. He laughed at her solemn face. ‘By this time next year you will have moved on, Fleur. You’ll be worrying about A-level results and your end-of-term show. You’ll have boyfriends milling around you and a whole exciting, unknown life stretching ahead. Maybe you’ll come back one day and revisit Mersing with friends…This, now…these days in Singapore will fade into a lovely dream. They’ll never leave you, but maybe they won’t seem quite real.’

  Fleur trod water facing him. ‘They’ll seem more real than any other part of my life,’ she said vehemently. ‘Sam and I won’t see you for months. You can say all that because you’re not leaving yet and you know you might be posted back here one day…At times like this I hate being an army family and having to pack up and begin all over again with new friends. I long to be one of those boring families who live in one place with the same set of friends from kindergarten to university…’

  ‘Rubbish! Of course you don’t!’

  He pulled her towards him to hug her, her face was so suddenly forlorn, and they trod water together and nearly sank. Laughing, they both swam in until their feet could touch the bottom. In shallower water Fleur turned and held on to his arms.

  ‘David? I don’t know if I want to take A levels. I don’t even know if I want to go on dancing either. Laura would have a fit if she could hear me.’

  ‘She certainly would!’ David held on to her waist lightly. ‘What do you want to do with your life, then, Fleury?’

  Fleur looked him straight in the eyes and twined her legs around his waist under the water. ‘I want to marry you and have your babies.’

  David, startled, stared down at her and then twirled her round, roaring with laughter. ‘Do you indeed?’

  Fleur would not let him get away with passing it off as a joke and moved her hands up round his neck. ‘I mean it,’ she said softly. ‘I mean it.’

  ‘You’re only seventeen,’ he said carefully, smiling gently into her eyes. ‘And far too lovely for me.’

  Fleur reached up and kissed his mouth, pressed her small dancer’s body against him. ‘No,’ she whispered, ‘but I suppose you’re too lovely for me. You’ve got all those teachers…especially that blonde one who was all over you in the boat. Have you taken her out?’

  ‘No, I haven’t.’ David gently disentangled Fleur from him, glancing quickly towards the beach. Embarrassing if Laura and Peter saw their teenage daughter wrapped round him.

  ‘I’m not a child,’ Fleur said, knowing exactly why he was holding her away. She felt a moment’s triumph because she had caught something in his eyes and knew she had aroused him. If he had thought of her as a little sister he didn’t now.

  ‘You certainly are not!’ David said. ‘You’re a little hussy. Race you back up the beach!’

  He had been amazed to be stirred by her slim little body which he knew so well. Amazed and a little startled. He let her words lie there, new and shiny and intricate, but sharp too, and enticing, like coral.

  FOURTEEN

  I gathered up my mother’s things and put them in with our luggage in the hired car. Inspector Chan had asked the local Malaysian police to look out for Fleur in Seremban and Port Dickson. Detective Sergeant Mohktar had travelled ahead to Kuala Lumpur where there was a main police station and would join us in Port Dickson later in the day. Apparently he had grown up in the Seremban area and been a cadet all those years ago when Saffie had gone missing. He had remembered our name and the incident of a small English child disappearing, and the fact that she had never been found and that no one had been arrested for the crime.

  I liked James Mohktar, a man with gentle eyes. I thought he looked more like a priest than a policeman. Jack had bought a map and as we set off through the traffic I tried to breathe deeply to contain my anxiety. I kept thinking of Fleur making her way to that small grave, alone.

  It was stupid but I wondered if she would think that those old colonial rest houses still lay on acres of empty coastline. Jack had used the hotel computer and all we could see were rows and rows of hotels and complexes.

  I imagined her arriving in a place that must have
been clear and vivid in her head and finding a modern world had erupted from the empty paradise she had left behind. The deserted beaches would be gone and the spaces filled with concrete buildings. The jungle that met the edge of those government rest houses would have been beaten back to make way for water sports and rampant tourism. I saw her baffled and alone, not knowing in which direction to turn, the compass of her memory and imagination muddled by progress and a world that had moved on. I wanted to be there before her and it wasn’t possible.

  Jack had ordered an air-conditioned car. The journey into Malaysia had the unreality of a strange dream and the same sense of urgency. Jack kept glancing at me surreptitiously, and although it was cool inside the car the heat beat down unbearably and shimmered on the busy road ahead and glittered on the windscreen.

  I had a sense of familiarity as we drove past the few rubber plantations left. I remembered suddenly the big black Humber my dad used to drive and this long, empty road to Malacca and Port Dickson as Saffie and I played I Spy. In those days there wouldn’t be another vehicle on the road for miles. I saw again the flash of white from the trees where the tappers collected the milky rubber and the shadows and sunlight flashing and flashing as the car purred towards the coast.

  At midday I began to feel nauseous and knew it would get worse if I didn’t eat. Jack immediately turned off for the nearest town, which was called Palah, and we found somewhere to have a meal. I stopped feeling sick but I did not feel well. My head ached and the sweat ran down my legs and arms.

  Jack watched me. ‘I’m going to book a room somewhere so you can lie down until it gets cooler, Nik…’

  He waited for me to say I felt fine and would he please stop fussing, but I didn’t. I needed to lie down.