by Rosanna Ley
She was, Eva supposed, in her late sixties, her hair still dark but greying and smoothed away from her face. She possessed the same look of serenity as Maya and there was definitely a resemblance between them; she must be another relative.
‘I told you I had something to show you,’ Maya said, almost impishly, her old face wreathed in smiles, her dark eyes bright.
‘You did, yes.’ Eva smiled back.
‘But it is not a “something” to be exact,’ said Maya. ‘It is a “someone”.’ She indicated the woman beside her. ‘This is Cho Suu Kyi.’
‘Oh.’ Eva looked from one to the other of them in confusion. ‘You have almost the same name as …’ Maya’s grandmother. The loyal maid-servant to the Queen who had first been given the pair of chinthes by Supayalat.
Maya nodded. ‘We do not always use family names here in Myanmar,’ she said. ‘But we often name our children after our ancestors, as well as according to the day on which they were born. It is auspicious.’ Once again, she smiled.
Eva’s mind was racing. ‘I’m pleased to meet you,’ she said to Cho Suu Kyi.
‘Suu is my daughter,’ Maya said proudly.
Another daughter? Ramon had called her ‘Auntie’. So was this …?
‘Yes.’ Maya took Eva’s hand and then Suu’s hand and joined them, one to the other, so that Eva’s hand was clasped in Cho Suu Kyi’s. ‘Suu is my first daughter, Eva,’ she said. ‘Cho Suu Kyi was named after my grandmother who left me the legacy of the teak chinthes. I gave your grandfather one of those precious chinthes. And this is the child your grandfather gave me.’
CHAPTER 40
Maya said goodnight to Cho Suu Kyi and went to her room. The evening had, in the main, been a successful one. There was a problem between her grandson and Eva, she could see that, of course. Something, or someone, had come between them and they were not the friends she had hoped they would be. She was old. Perhaps she was growing fanciful. But somewhere inside had been a small spark of hope …
She had agonised long over whether to tell Eva about her first daughter, the daughter she shared with Lawrence, but had never shared with Lawrence. Telling Eva would be to tell him, and that would be hard. But the girl had come all this way to Myanmar. Not only that, but she had brought back the chinthe, which told Maya that Lawrence had never forgotten her. It gave her such joy – a joy she had thought she would never feel in her life again.
And then … Cho Suu Kyi had wanted to meet Eva too, and why not, for she was family? And so the decision had been made. She must give Lawrence the gift of knowledge of his daughter, a gift that might also bring some pain, she guessed. But so often in this world, happiness and pain combine.
Upper Burma, 1943
It was exhausting work and sometimes Maya felt almost too weak to stand. But the matron and her two other assistants worked tirelessly day and night and Maya did the same. Matron Annie taught her how to carry out simple medical procedures and she had always been practical and capable. She learned fast because she had to.
The Military Hospital nearby had lost almost all of its staff and so they took on most of the patients, transporting them by a couple of bullock carts, which had somehow been overlooked in the mass evacuation from the town. Refugees, the hospital saw more than its fair share. Thousands of them lined the roads to India, often dying by the roadside from malnutrition, malaria, dysentery or cholera, if not from their wounds. The hospital was full to overflowing. Mattresses were put out on the verandahs and makeshift beds in the storerooms.
Maya often attended to the soldiers who had been brought in. She would chat to them and ask them, if it were not too traumatic, to talk about their experiences. She always hoped she might, by some wonderful coincidence, hear something of Lawrence. And she wondered too, one day, would it be Lawrence who came here to the hospital? Or would he be cared for by another woman such as she? Silently, she thanked that imaginary woman from the bottom of her heart.
One morning, she had to rush to the sink when she was in the middle of dressing a soldier’s particularly nasty wound. It had become infected. Matron Annie had already carried out one emergency amputation, though she was hardly qualified to do so. Perhaps she would have to do another.
When she returned, Matron Annie was standing by the bedside looking serious. ‘I see how it is,’ she said gravely.
‘Matron?’
‘Soon, you will not be helping any longer, is that not so?’
‘I do not understand.’ Though of course she did.
They completed the work on the soldier’s injury and then moved away. The matron took Maya to one side. ‘You are pregnant?’ she asked.
‘Yes, I am.’ She held her head high. She had known it, a few weeks after he had first left. She had known it when the town was bombed. And she was glad. She was proud to be carrying Lawrence’s child. She would always be proud.
‘What do you want to do?’
Maya knew what she was asking. Did Maya want to get rid of it? Did she really want to bring a child into this world and at this time in this place? It was madness, was it not? ‘I will have the child,’ she said softly. ‘But until that day and after that day I will work as much as I can, here at the hospital. I will not need much time off, Matron.’
Gently, the matron touched her arm. ‘I should tell you that you are a fool,’ she said. ‘And you know all the reasons why.’
Maya bowed her head.
‘But I cannot help but admire you for your courage.’
If she only knew, Maya thought. It was not courage. It was just that she might lose him and so desperately she wanted to keep a small part of him. And she could not kill what they had created together in love. It was not possible. She could not live with that.
‘And it is good to think of the possibility of new life,’ said the matron. ‘When this …’ And she gestured to the ward full of injured and dying men, ‘is all around us.’
*
Maya’s daughter was born in the middle of the night on a Tuesday. It was a warm night and a long labour and she was attended by Matron Annie herself, who held her hand and boiled the water, examined her, comforted her and encouraged her to push when it was the right time.
When Matron Annie finally handed her the baby girl wrapped in a thin cotton sheet, Maya touched the screwed-up wrinkly little face and she wanted to cry. After all this pain and all this bloodshed all around her, it was down to this. Death and new life, and she held that new life in her arms.
By the following day, Maya was on her feet again and working. Wards must be cleaned, medicine administered and wounds dressed. She had a baby girl strapped to her chest. Apart from that, nothing had changed.
*
One day, a colonel turned up at the hospital and spoke to Matron Annie and Maya. They were more or less running the hospital between them now; everyone else had left. He was in command of a special unit trained in bridge demolition and this unit had been detailed to carry out an extensive programme of bridge blowing which would, he said, affect everyone remaining in the town. The Japanese were close and the unit must delay their advance in order to buy time. The unit had also been ordered to take possession of funds from the nearby Government House to keep the Shan riches out of the hands of the enemy. Silver, rare jewels, bullion, the place was full of the wealth of the Shan princes, much of it deriving from the profitable opium trade, as Maya was only too aware.
She thought of her own Shan grandmother, Suu Kyi, and the pair of rare and decorative jewelled chinthes she had given her. Like so many families she knew, Maya had buried her treasure in that safe place where she knew she could retrieve it when the war was over. Her aunt had even sewn jewels into her clothes, hidden in the knot of her longyi. It wouldn’t be the first time the Burmese had used their family jewels to barter and survive. And Lawrence’s treasure …? She could only hope that somehow the little chinthe brought him back to her safe and well when the war was over.
After the demolition, the unit would be pulling
out and who knew what would happen to their town. ‘You are British,’ the colonel reminded Matron Annie. ‘They may not spare you. And you …’ He looked at Maya who was walking now with the baby tied to her back like a papoose. ‘The child is very pale,’ he said.
Maya felt a tremor of fear. She understood his meaning. The light skin of her daughter gave her parentage away. She would be an innocent victim, but her mother would be viewed as a traitor.
‘You could both be raped or killed without further thought,’ the colonel told the two women. ‘The Japs don’t take any prisoners. Or at least they do, but they won’t give you that dubious privilege.’
But would they be any safer upcountry or on the road to India? Maya and Annie exchanged a look. Maya had heard how many of the refugees were dying from disease and starvation. And there were so many bandit gangs on the loose. People were desperate. At least here there was kindness, there was shelter and there was food. Their hospital store was meagre, but they had condensed milk, which was vital for a mother with a young baby, there was vegetable soup, there were eggs, rice and flour and there were occasional hens and ducks donated by villagers and refugees. And here Maya could continue to work and nurse – she would feel she was doing something to help the war effort, to help her people and the injured soldiers too.
‘I cannot leave my patients,’ said Matron Annie.
‘And I can make her skin darker,’ said Maya. With mud if need be. Fortunately, the baby had inherited her mother’s dark eyes and Burmese nose, she did not look like a European child, although Maya would swear already that she had Lawrence’s smile. And Maya and Annie had become close; they had already been through so much. If anything happened to Maya, she was sure that Matron Annie would look after her baby.
‘So?’ said the colonel.
‘I will stay here at the hospital,’ said Maya.
‘We both will,’ said Annie.
*
Maya told Eva some of this story over dinner. Ramon and Suu had heard it before, of course. And the girl listened, clearly enthralled, looking from one to the other of them as if she could hardly believe it.
But there was one part of the story that Maya did not tell them. She didn’t think that she would ever tell another living soul.
CHAPTER 41
In 1943, after their parting, Maya had given birth to a child. Eva’s grandfather’s child … Eva continued to roll the knowledge around in her head as Ramon drove her back to her hotel. What a bombshell. And her grandfather didn’t know. Which meant that Eva would have to tell him.
The tension between Eva and Ramon, so palpable she’d almost felt she could cut it with her butter knife, had increased during the evening as Maya told her incredible story. It was a tale that held Eva riveted. Of her nursing, of how she had kept her and her daughter alive in an occupied and poverty-stricken country at war, while Eva’s grandfather had been fighting in another part of the country, with absolutely no idea of his daughter’s existence. Her grandfather had wanted to know about Maya’s war experiences and it had turned out that Maya’s war had been an awful lot more complicated that he could ever have guessed.
Her grandfather had left Burma and returned to Dorset, still not knowing. If he had known, Eva wondered, would he have stayed?
The streets of the city were much quieter than when they had left a few hours ago. The street sellers had cleared their stalls and gone home, leaving just the hint of oil and fried spices in the air, the shops were shuttered and the bars were closing up too. Very few people remained on the dark pavements, for there were no street lights and this, along with the rickety kerbs and loose, broken paving slabs, plus the fact that it was virtually impossible to cross the road, was why it was hard to walk anywhere in the city at night. ‘It is a lot to think about, isn’t it?’ Ramon said, as they drew up outside the hotel. ‘It was a shock for you, finding out about my aunt, Cho Suu Kyi.’
‘Yes.’ And it would be a shock for her grandfather too. How would he react? How would he feel when he found out he had a daughter he had never known about, never had the chance to acknowledge, living on the other side of the world in Myanmar? And as for Eva’s mother … Eva shuddered at the thought of what she might say.
‘Tell me about your mother,’ Cho Suu Kyi had said over dinner, which had consisted of a selection of delicious curries and salads. She served a small portion of Bae Tha Hin, a type of Burmese duck curry, on to Eva’s plate, along with some rice. ‘My mother has told me much about my father, I almost feel I know him. But I would so like to know about my other half-sister.’ She smiled at Ramon and then back at Eva. ‘About Rosemary, your mother.’
So would Eva. She would very much like to know about her mother. But she couldn’t say that to Cho Suu Kyi. Even so, she wasn’t sure where to start. ‘She lives in Copenhagen,’ she said. ‘My father died when I was seven.’ Which was nothing compared to Suu’s experience, she realised. She had never even known her father. ‘She married again when I was seventeen.’
And I chose to stay in Dorset. She didn’t say this though. It would only confuse this new family that she now seemed to be part of. It confused Eva too. She knew why she’d chosen to stay: her grandparents and Dorset were her security, their home her home. They had seemed like the only thing that was holding her family together. But she didn’t know why her mother had left. Was it out of love for Alec? Or did Dorset represent everything that she’d held dear and everything that she’d lost?
‘Do you think your mother would come over here to visit?’ Cho Suu Kyi was so excited, her dark eyes shone. And Eva could see why she had immediately found her familiar. She had the dark eyes of Maya. But her cheekbones, her mouth, her smile … She had the look of Eva’s mother, even of her grandfather too.
‘I’m not sure.’ Ramon had told her about arnadeh, a kind of over-politeness and extreme consideration for other people’s feelings, which was part of Burmese etiquette. It was why they served food to their visitors rather than inviting them to help themselves and it was important to observe it so as not to cause offence. So how could Eva tell Cho Suu Kyi that her half-sister Rosemary had never wanted to know anything about her father’s Burmese days? She simply hadn’t been interested. To her, they represented her father’s disloyalty. Or so Eva supposed. She didn’t really know, since her mother wouldn’t talk about it. But she’d have to talk about it now. And perhaps Eva could make her see that this lovely Burmese family weren’t a threat, with the possible exception of Ramon, she reminded herself. They were part of her past, her story.
‘Would you care for a nightcap?’ Ramon wasn’t even looking at her. His green eyes were fixed resolutely on a point in the darkness in front of him.
Nothing between them had been resolved, had it? They had reached a stalemate. And if Eva were going to take any action regarding the crate she’d seen on the truck, then she couldn’t confide in him. He was, though it was hard to accept, looking at him now, the enemy.
But she’d been only too aware of that enemy as she’d sat at the round table in the restaurant, Cho Suu Kyi placed on her left and Ramon on her right. They were almost terrifyingly polite with each other. Can I pass you more fish curry? Would you like some vegetable salad? May I refill your glass? Which was almost worse than having a full-scale slanging match.
‘Is everything satisfactory?’ Maya had asked mildly at one point. ‘Has something upset you, Eva? Ramon?’
‘No,’ they both replied. ‘Absolutely not,’ Eva added.
But Maya was a wise one and despite the celebratory nature of the evening, her expression remained a little concerned.
‘He is a good man, my grandson,’ she whispered to Eva when they said goodnight. ‘But I hope you found out what was troubling him.’
Eva crossed her fingers. ‘Not really, I’m afraid.’ It wasn’t up to her to blacken his name, no doubt Ramon could manage it entirely on his own.
And now he wanted to prolong the evening?
‘I don’t think that’s a good id
ea,’ she said. She was tired. And besides, what more was there to say? He had talked of trust. But had he trusted her, by confiding in her, by telling her his supposed plan? No. Perhaps, because there was no plan.
‘Eva—’
‘No.’ She fumbled with the door catch. The last thing she needed was to be caught at her most vulnerable, especially after a night like tonight. And besides, there was so much to think about.
Ramon whipped out of the car, came round to open her door. He took her hand as she climbed out and pulled her into a close embrace so swiftly that she was there before she had the chance to wonder if she wanted to be there.
‘I cannot pretend to understand,’ he murmured into her hair. ‘But I just want you to know—’
She pulled away, but not far enough. He was holding her quite firmly by the shoulders and he didn’t seem about to let her go.
‘Ramon …’ The sense of him seemed to envelop her. She tried to remind herself of what he was, but when he bent his head and his lips met hers, she lost all that and just felt it. His lips, firm, demanding. His kiss. The scent of him – of wood shavings and polish and just a hint of cardamom. The heat of him.
It was the sort of kiss you could drown in. The sort of kiss you wanted to go on forever. But. She pulled away.
‘Eva.’
But she was gone. Literally running. Through the door of the hotel, grabbing her room key from the desk, leaning on the button to call the lift, almost sinking into it when the door opened. Thank God it was empty. She closed her eyes. Ramon …
The lift stopped at the seventh floor and she got out with a sigh, wandered down the corridor, put her key in the lock and—
And the door was already ajar.
It swung further open. The next moment seemed frozen in time. Eva stood there, taking in the scene. A man – a stranger, small, dark, Burmese, was rummaging through the clothes in her chest of drawers, her things thrown around the room, on the bed, on the floor. In that split second, she must have gasped. Because the man twisted round to face her. They stared at one another. Eva felt her legs almost dissolve with fear. She hung on to the door handle. And then she opened her mouth to scream.