Return to Mandalay

by Rosanna Ley

  ‘How can we compete?’ Ramon’s voice broke and he put his dark head in his hands. ‘It is another order lost,’ he muttered.

  Eva’s heart went out to him. She wanted to reach towards him, tell him it would all work out in the end. But something stopped her. He was so fierce, so proud. ‘I’m so sorry,’ she said. He couldn’t compromise on his father’s ethics and standards. There would be no other way for Ramon.

  ‘It is not your concern.’ He lifted his head.

  This was what he had said to her before. Eva watched the children slowly disappear down the red dirt track by the lake. But this time she saw the dignity in the set of his shoulders and the tilt of his head and she knew she had caught him off-guard. But at least she had found out what was troubling him. ‘How bad is it?’ she asked.

  ‘Bad enough.’

  ‘And who are the people using the illegally felled timber and undercutting your prices?’ she asked. ‘Who’s your main competition?’

  He turned around until he was facing her. His eyes were hard, his mouth unsmiling. ‘Those who produce poor quality goods and pay their workers a wage they can barely survive on,’ he said. ‘Those who make their money by damaging the credibility of other Burmese traders. Those who care this much …’ He snapped his fingers. ‘For our country and our forests.’

  ‘Who?’ Eva asked again. It couldn’t be just one company, could it?

  ‘The most unscrupulous company of them all,’ he said, ‘is Li’s.’

  Li’s … Eva thought of what Ramon had shown her today: the Burma of her grandfather’s time, the spirituality, the search for enlightenment. And she thought of the artefacts that Thein Thein and Myint Maw had shown her. The treasures of Burma. Soon to be shipped to the UK, to the Bristol Emporium and sold on. Was this her destiny, she wondered. To buy from someone else’s culture, to follow someone else’s lead? Or was there another path she should be taking?

  CHAPTER 28

  She stood by the bed, keeping watch over him. Blood pressure, heart rate, pills for this and pills for that … Lawrence was getting more than a little fed up with it. Life was more than that, surely? It always had been. Lying in this bed, struggling to think, struggling to breathe … That wasn’t living.

  But he remembered his life, his real life. All of it. Not just Burma, like she’d said. Not just the war and his life with Maya. But England too.

  West Dorset, 1939

  Lawrence had been in Burma almost two years when he got a long leave to go to England. Home. They all said it, at the club and the chummery. You’re going home, you lucky bugger.

  Lawrence had mixed feelings. Of course he wanted to see his parents and some of his friends, those who were still around. And he was tired, God, was he tired from the endless heat and rain and sun, from the logging, from the malaria that he’d shaken off only a few months before.

  But … Burma was warm and vibrant and it had got under his skin. And there was Maya. Their relationship had grown into something that meant so much to Lawrence. When he was away from her, he longed, more than anything, to see her, to sleep with her, to feel the warmth of her silken body. But it wasn’t just sex – he’d known that from the start. And it wasn’t just passion, though the passion burnt and flared in him like nothing he’d ever known. It was also her quiet and her calm. It was the long conversations they had in the sweet dead of the night when they were alone, it was the touch of her cool hand on his brow, it was the serene expression in her dark eyes. It was love. That’s what it was.

  And in England … Yes, he missed that green and pleasant land. But England also meant Helen.

  She’d written to him – he could hardly stop her from writing to him – and her little notes, affectionate and sweet, all held a subtext that Lawrence didn’t want to acknowledge. He knew that she was waiting for him. And he knew that he should be honest with her. This would ultimately be to his advantage. If Helen knew that he was in love with another woman, a native woman at that, wouldn’t she free him from this family obligation? Wouldn’t she have too much dignity to want him when she knew that Lawrence could never think of her that way?

  He’d tell her, he’d decided, face to face when he was on leave. It was the most honourable thing to do.

  *

  In the event, his leave had flown by.

  ‘You’ve hardly seen Helen,’ his mother pointed out, the night before he was due to return to Burma.

  This was true. He’d flunked it.

  ‘My fault, darling.’ She’d hugged him and he’d smelt the familiar fragrance of her, the powder and the lipstick and the light, floral overtones of her cologne. ‘I wanted you all to myself.’

  He laughed. And he hadn’t complained. It had been good to see her, and his father too, though he’d had more than one grilling about how long it would be before Lawrence returned to the family firm and stopped all this ‘messing around in foreign parts’ as he’d put it.

  ‘But you must see her tonight,’ his mother decreed.

  ‘Of course.’ Though he felt a dip of foreboding. He’d have to tell her tonight.

  ‘There’s a dance at the Assembly Rooms. You must take her.’

  Lawrence had bowed his head. It was out of his hands once again. His mother was right. He must see Helen. But he hadn’t intended to tell her at a dance.

  He drank a large glass of whisky before he even left home. Dutch courage. And God knows he’d need it.

  *

  How had it happened? He hardly knew. They were outside, round the back of the dance hall, for Christ’s sake. It was so bloody tacky. They’d danced and he’d drunk a lot. He’d felt sick and he’d needed some air. Next thing he knew …

  It was the whisky. He should never have had all that whisky. ‘Oh, God. Oh, God.’ He put his head in his hands. His own breath stank. He wanted to die. He was sweating and he wanted to die.

  Helen wrapped her slim white arms around him. ‘I’ve always loved you, Lawrence,’ she murmured into his shoulder.

  ‘It shouldn’t have happened. It was a mistake.’ He remembered that day she’d kissed him at her parents’ party when she was only twelve. He remembered other times too. Times when he should have stopped it, when he should have told her ‘no’. They had never gone this far. And all those occasions had been before he went away to Burma. Before Maya. But now, it felt as if all those times had led inexorably to this moment.

  Helen guiding his hands to her breasts, Helen lifting the hem of her dress, slipping the buckle of his belt. Helen’s kisses. Now, Lawrence … I want you now.

  ‘It wasn’t a mistake,’ she said. ‘It’ll be alright.’ Already, she had adjusted her clothing. No one would know.

  He thought of Maya. Oh, but it won’t be alright, he thought.

  ‘You’re mine now,’ Helen whispered.

  Every sense and fibre in his body screamed ‘no’.

  ‘We should never have done it,’ he said. He thought of what he’d intended to say to her. How could this have happened instead? How had everything gone so horribly wrong? How could he ever justify it? How could he explain? ‘I should never have done it. Helen, I’m so sorry …’

  ‘I don’t want you to be sorry …’ she fired back at him. Her lip curled. ‘Why should you be sorry? And why should we wait?’ Her eyes were like liquid in the darkness.

  ‘Wait?’

  ‘Till you come back from Burma. You know what I mean.’

  Oh, God. She had got it all so wrong. ‘Helen,’ he said. How could he break it to her gently? ‘I love you …’

  ‘I know you do, darling.’ She began once more to pull him towards her.

  He resisted. ‘But I love you like a sister.’

  She laughed, a tinkle of a laugh that had always sounded forced to Lawrence and had always irritated him. ‘Like a sister,’ she echoed. ‘I hope not, my darling. Not after what we’ve just done.’

  He gripped her shoulders. ‘Which was why we shouldn’t have done it. Don’t you see?’

  ‘No.’
Her blue eyes hardened. ‘I don’t see. I only know that we’re promised to one another, you and me, Lawrence, and that we always have been. I know what I feel. And I know that you’ve just made love to me.’

  ‘It was wrong, I tell you.’ He was angry now and he pushed her away. They shouldn’t even have gone dancing. He should have refused to take her. But it would have been impossible, his mother would have seen to that. So, he should have seen her, told her the truth, even gone dancing … But he should never have allowed her perfume and the music to seduce him in a weak moment. And he certainly shouldn’t have drunk all that bloody whisky.

  ‘How can it be wrong?’ She was crying, hanging on to his arm and crying.

  He felt like a total bastard. He was one. And he was a fool. Acting like a sex-starved boy. Why couldn’t he have been stronger? ‘I’m sorry, Helen.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter,’ she said. ‘I wish you’d stop apologising. I’m glad we did it. And I don’t care what you say, because I can see further than you can see.’ And she wiped the tears from her face, suddenly composed. ‘We’ve sealed our promise. You’re mine now, Lawrence.’

  The last day of his leave was a miserable one. Lawrence said goodbye to them all, Helen’s parents (though he could hardly look her father in the eye), his parents and Helen herself.

  ‘I’ll write to you, Lawrence.’ Helen was weeping. ‘Come home soon. For good.’

  And their parents, looking on fondly, clearly thought they’d come to some sort of understanding. Christ. How could he ever come back to Dorset now? Worse, how would he ever be able to get that night out of his head? Not only had he given Helen the very hope he had intended to stub out completely, but he had betrayed the woman he loved.

  Lawrence had hugged his mother, waved farewell and boarded the steamer that would take him back to Burma, back to Maya’s arms. But Helen’s words still echoed in his head. And perhaps they always would. ‘You’re mine now, Lawrence. You’re mine now.’

  CHAPTER 29

  Eva dressed for dinner in a cream silk blouse and the embroidered indigo longyi she had bought in Yangon. She wore her velvety Burmese slippers, and around her neck, the antique pearls that her mother had given her on her eighteenth birthday. She took a thin silk wrap in case it turned chilly later. Not that there seemed much chance of that, she thought, as she stood at her bedroom window looking out into bustling Mandalay at night. She could see the illuminated golden dome of a nearby pagoda outlined against the black velvet of the sky, and the distant moat that encircled the Royal Palace. There was a crescent arc of moonshine and the stars were like sequins stitched on to the night.

  Ramon smiled his approval when she appeared in the hotel foyer. He was dressed in linen trousers and a light shirt and jacket. It was the first time she had seen him in Western clothes and it took her rather by surprise. He seemed though to have recovered his composure since yesterday afternoon. She wondered how bad things really were and if he regretted telling her about the problems with his business. Surely the company weren’t in danger of actually going under?

  After they had left Inwa they had driven back to the city and down to the port. Eva thought that she might perhaps take the boat when she travelled to Bagan. It was a long journey but it would be a good opportunity to see some more of the real Myanmar on the way. She’d collected the departure information from the office on the portside and walked down to where Ramon was standing rather disconsolately on the muddy sand looking out to the Irrawaddy. A barge was moving slowly along the river. She could make out the logo on the hull. A peacock in blue and gold.

  ‘One of Li’s boats,’ he said.

  She watched as it motored past. They had a lot to answer for.

  *

  ‘Shall we go?’ Ramon asked now. He escorted her to the car, swung the passenger door open for her to get in and closed it behind her. He went round to the driver’s side and climbed in. For a moment, he leaned in close. ‘May I say that you look beautiful,’ he murmured. ‘I love that you wear our traditional longyi.’

  ‘Thank you.’ Eva smiled back at him. Yesterday, their outing together had been a bit fraught, this evening, perhaps they could both forget their troubles for a few hours, relax and enjoy.

  In his Western clothes, Ramon seemed so different, almost not part of this Eastern landscape to which she had already become acclimatised. It unsettled her slightly and she looked away, out of the window, as they drove alongside the dark still waters of the moat.

  ‘How do you feel about our country now that you are wearing our clothes?’ Ramon teased. ‘Are you getting used to it yet?’

  ‘I think I am.’ She was getting used to the white heat that lay so heavy on the city, to the constant thrum of the air-conditioning, to the heavy rain that was still falling once a day without warning, tumbling from the sky and turning the dust to mud. She was used to the hooting and bell-ringing of endless streams of motorbikes, trishaws, bicycles and cars and the street sellers squatting on broken paving slabs beside rickety stalls, frying noodles, rice and fish, sorting heaps of crimson chillies, lentils and tiny peanuts, and peeling giant pomela fruit, while the fragrances of dried fish, cloves and anise rose thick and pungent in the warm air. She was getting used to it and she was loving it. Myanmar, with its vivid colours of landscape and longyi, its raucousness and its calm, its intense flavours and fragrances, was a country of extremities. No wonder its people liked to smile. Many of them were poor, yes, but perhaps they were rich in the things that mattered more: in spirit, in their quality of life. After the grey November days she had left behind in the UK, Myanmar was like a hothouse bloom. ‘It’s everything I hoped for,’ she told Ramon. ‘And more.’

  ‘Good.’ Ramon nodded as they drew up outside the restaurant. He glanced across at her. ‘There is just one thing missing,’ he said.

  ‘Oh?’

  He got out of the car and came round to her side to open the door. Eva took the hand he offered to help her out and felt the weight of the warm air settle over her once again.

  Ramon turned to a boy selling flowers on the street corner, handed over a few notes and was given a string of tiny white blooms in return. Eva had seen similar street sellers at the temples; the Burmese bought garlands of flowers and fruit to lay at the feet of the resident nats of the pagodas and shrines. Nats, who must be charmed and appeased. In Myanmar almost everything had one.

  ‘Jasmine.’ Ramon held the blossoms out to her.

  Eva sniffed. ‘Wonderful.’ She didn’t care if he was trying to charm or appease her. Their scent was like honey, it sweetened the night air.

  ‘May I?’ And before she could even wonder what he was doing, he had moved behind her and she could feel his hands on her hair, which she’d worn loose tonight, deftly weaving the flowers through, as if she were a bride. ‘There.’ He stood back to survey the effect. ‘Now you are a perfect Burmese lady.’

  She laughed and put her hands to her hair. He had a gentle touch. She could feel the furry softness of the tiny white flowers and smell their scent, far superior to any bottled perfume.

  ‘Shall we?’ Ramon indicated the restaurant.

  ‘Of course.’

  A boy pulled the door open and Eva felt the light pressure of Ramon’s hand on her back as he followed her inside.

  She looked around. ‘What a fabulous place.’ It was colonial in decor and style. The high ceiling had decorative cornicing and a teak staircase with a polished banister rail rose gracefully on the left side of the room. The walls were painted white, there were fat teak pillars from floor to ceiling and people sat in cane and wicker chairs at wooden tables laid with white linen cloths. The bar in front of them was a sheet of solid black granite.

  Ramon spoke to a waiter who led them to their table.

  ‘I wondered, would you like to visit my factory tomorrow morning?’ he asked her when they were seated. ‘Or do you have more antiques to inspect?’

  Eva laughed somewhat warily. That was a tricky subject. She picked up th
e creamy linen napkin by her plate and spread it on her lap. ‘I am seeing some more,’ she said. ‘But not till the afternoon. So of course I’ll come. I’d be delighted.’ Myint Maw had telephoned her earlier today at the hotel with the news that some more items had become available. ‘They very good,’ he had said. ‘You come see tomorrow 3 p.m., yes?’ But Eva couldn’t help wondering where they had suddenly appeared from. She had put in a quick call to Jacqui before she’d come out tonight, but she’d had no idea either. Go and see them, her boss had advised, take care and keep me informed. Eva had spent the day wandering around the markets and antique shops of Mandalay, but had purchased very little. It seemed that to buy anything of quality, it was indeed a case of who you know. Jacqui was right then to stress the importance of their contacts.

  They both studied the menu. A jug of iced water had been put on the table by the immaculately dressed waiter and she poured them both a glass. ‘I’m looking forward to seeing the furniture you design and produce,’ she said.

  He smiled warmly and she was reminded of that moment when he’d first opened the door to her at Pyin Oo Lwin. It transformed his face and she couldn’t help noticing that he was attracting admiring looks from other female diners.

  ‘We should order some wine,’ he said.

  ‘Wine?’ Eva was a little surprised.

  ‘But, yes. There is a reputable vineyard just outside Mandalay.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Really. It is run by a Frenchman.’ His green eyes gleamed. ‘They produce an excellent pinot noir which I recommend we try.’

  The food was Chinese, and they ordered river prawns which arrived nestling in a ginger salad with sesame seeds, chicken with peanuts and fish steamed with lime along with various vegetable side dishes and rice. And Ramon was right. The wine proved to be delicious.

  Conversation flowed easily between them, but although they talked about styles of furniture and wood, about English antiques and even about British colonialism, they hadn’t yet touched on the subject that had come up at Inwa yesterday.