by Rosanna Ley
Finally, a woman nodded. ‘He was here,’ she said. ‘He moved on, to the next village, I think.’
Maya’s heart soared. He was alive then! And off they went to the next village where conditions were only slightly better. More of the houses here had survived, but they had been abandoned, looted and were now housing families of refugees. ‘Have you seen or heard of my father? His name is Sai Htee Saing.’ The search went on.
‘Does he play the piano?’ an old woman asked her.
‘Well, yes, but …’ Maya was at a loss.
The woman pointed. ‘The white bungalow at the end,’ she said.
It was perhaps incongruous, considering his anti-British sympathies, that her father should be living in a colonial bungalow left by a British family who had simply locked the doors one day and left. But there he was.
Maya ran to him and at last in his arms she let herself weep. For he was thin and gaunt, but he was alive and she had found him.
‘But who is this?’ He was looking curiously at Annie, who was holding Cho Suu Kyi in her arms.
‘This is my friend, Matron Annie,’ said Maya.
‘And her child?’ her father added. ‘How sweet she is.’
Cho Suu Kyi looked up at him and she beamed. It was clearly love at first sight.
Maya took her from Annie. ‘My child,’ she said. ‘This is your granddaughter, Cho Suu Kyi.’
*
Maya and her father, Annie and Suu remained in the village until after the war ended. Annie’s nursing skills soon came into play when people discovered her profession, and in turn this helped the little family to survive. Maya and Annie even took to using some of the old native remedies, taught to Maya by an old woman in the village, which meant foraging roots and herbs from the nearby jungle, some proving more effective than others. It wasn’t easy, though, to get enough food. The black market flourished, Japanese currency was almost worthless and they were increasingly dependent on gifts of eggs, rice or scrawny chickens from patients who often had nothing else left to give.
At first, Maya’s father was wary of Annie. After all, she was British, and, having expected the Japanese to liberate the Burmese from British imperialism, here he was living with what must have seemed like one of the enemy. Only now though, was he realising that the second master of his beloved Burmese people was more cruel and much less forgiving than the first.
‘But will her presence not inflame any Japanese soldiers who come into the village?’ he asked Maya. ‘We must put our own survival first, especially now that there is the little one to think of.’
Maya tried to persuade him that this wasn’t the case, that in fact the Japanese had tended to treat Annie and Maya in exactly the same manner. ‘And you have no idea, Father,’ she added, ‘how often Annie has put Suu and me first.’
What eventually changed his mind was Annie’s generosity in treating anyone and everyone who needed her nursing skills, regardless of nationality or situation, and the way she had with Cho Suu Kyi, his granddaughter. That was what really made the difference, Maya thought.
And then news reached them that General Aung San, who had been made Commander-in-Chief of the Burmese National Independence Army, had changed allegiance, that he was no longer fighting with the Japanese and that he was supporting the British in driving back Japanese forces. He was not happy, it was said, with the Japanese treatment of Burmese soldiers, he had first responded to the Japanese in 1942 for the sake of Burmese independence, not to help Japan take control of his country. And had he also begun to doubt that Japan would win? Whatever the truth behind his decision, the British were gaining ground and the Japanese were staring defeat in the face.
‘So be it,’ Maya’s father said, bowing his head.
Maya was aware that this news was another blow. They had received no word and believed her aunt, like so many others, had died as a refugee. And now this. Politically, her father had always supported the Nationalist Minority Group and General Aung San had certainly inspired some of his anti-British sympathies. ‘Never mind, Father,’ she said. ‘It is for the best.’
‘We will wait for Burmese independence,’ he told her. ‘That is all that matters. And it will come.’
And the end of the war would come, too. Rumours were rife that the British were advancing and would arrive soon. Let it be very soon, Maya prayed. Everyone was getting nervous, Burmese, British, Japanese alike. Air raids intensified as the British got closer and Maya began to worry that they might actually be killed, albeit accidentally, by their new liberators. But the air raids were concentrated on the railway, and their little village was spared. Soon Maya could almost smell it, the air of change. It was just a matter of time and once again, she started breathing his name with a new hope, that soon they would be reunited once more. Lawrence …
And then it really was over. A convoy of British and Ghurkhas arrived, a column of bullock-drawn carts led by two British officers on horseback. Maymyo had been taken and another force was heading for Mandalay. This convoy had broken away from the main platoon, travelling over little-known mountain tracks used by opium smugglers, catching the Japanese garrison to the east of their village unawares.
The people in the village were delirious with delight. ‘We are free! We are free!’
Maya held her daughter close in her arms. And she prayed.
*
‘Will you go back to Mandalay?’ Maya’s father asked her some weeks later. ‘Will you try to find him? See if he is still alive?’ It was the first time he had mentioned Lawrence since she and Annie had arrived here.
‘I believe that he is,’ she said. ‘I feel it.’ It was against the odds, she knew. But she did feel it, in her heart, and she was certain that the bond between them ran so deep that if he had perished, she would know. She looked up at the little decorative teak chinthe with the ruby eyes. Once again, he was guarding their Buddha in the shrine, once again he was on show, where he belonged. But what of his twin? Had he guarded Lawrence as well as she had hoped?
‘It is unlikely.’ Her father’s expression was grave. ‘And if he is still alive …’
‘What, Father?’
He avoided her gaze. ‘If he is still alive, he will have changed, my daughter,’ he said. ‘That is what war does. It changes everyone.’
Maya thought about this. Yes, he was right. War did change everyone. A man, or woman, could not witness a friend or comrade’s pain and suffering, could not kill or maim, could not live in the conditions which Lawrence, as so many, must have lived, and not change. ‘But that does not mean …’ She faltered.
‘That he no longer wants you? No, it does not mean that.’ Her father reached out and patted her hand. ‘Of course it does not mean that. Any man would want you.’
‘And so how can what there is between us be wrong?’ she asked. Her father had not said it was wrong. Indeed, he had never suggested it was wrong, even back in Mandalay before the war. ‘Everyone has the right to do what she or he must do’ had always been his watchword, the philosophy he lived by. He believed in individual independence as strongly as he believed in Burmese liberation.
‘It is not wrong,’ he said sadly. ‘But you are from two different cultures, my daughter. Two different countries. And those countries have a relationship that has never been …’ He hesitated. ‘Equal.’
Maya digested this. She was aware, of course, that many British men had taken native Burmese women for their mistresses before the war. She and Lawrence had often discussed it. And she knew that those mistresses never dreamed that their lovers would stay with them, let alone marry them. They were there to provide pleasure and comfort for their British masters who happened to be far from home. It was an accepted situation, by Burmese and British alike.
‘But it is not like that for us,’ Lawrence had told her, holding her close. ‘For us, it is different, it is real. You know that, Maya, don’t you?’ And she had known it, she had told him she had known it. It disturbed her that her father hadn’t known it too.
> ‘It was not like that for us, Father,’ she said, trying not to sound reproving. ‘You know he loved me.’
‘Yes, he loved you.’ Her father left her side and wandered past the piano which had apparently been here when he moved in and which he still sometimes played, but not so often these days. He lightly ran his fingers over the keys, then walked slowly towards the window of the bungalow in which they still lived. Who would claim it now? Would someone simply return one day and tell them to go?
‘Then why shouldn’t we be together?’ Maya asked.
He sighed. ‘Because life and love is not just about two people whose worlds collide, my daughter,’ he said. He stared out of the window, almost as if she were no longer in the room. ‘It is about their backgrounds, their experiences, their cultures, too.’ He tightened the knot of his longyi and straightened his back, as if he had come to a difficult decision. He turned to face her. ‘It could never work between the two of you. For a short time, yes, your lives did collide. But now …’
Maya flinched. Was it over? Was it possible that Lawrence no longer felt the same way about her? She too stared out of the window and into the distance, past the bright yellow flowers of the ngu wah tree in the garden outside, to the shacks and makeshift homesteads that had been built on the red earth by refugees. Her father had been lucky to find this place. He was still thin and gaunt and had a racking cough that worried her. But he was alive and now they were all safe at last.
She sighed. But was he right? Would their different cultures and backgrounds make it impossible for her and Lawrence to share a future? She could hear Annie at the other end of the bungalow talking to the baby in that sing-song way she had, her Scottish accent always able to sooth the child somehow. Was that all it had been between her and Lawrence? A collision?
‘If it was just a collision,’ she murmured. ‘It was a very powerful one, Father.’ Powerful enough to make her believe that they belonged, one to the other. She had always believed it, from the first moment they met. That belief had kept her strong throughout the war. At her lowest points, when she was in pain, terrified, or half-starving, at the time when she had killed a man, against everything she held dear, that belief had helped her through. ‘I love him, Father,’ she said. ‘And I think that he will still love me.’
Her father turned from his stance by the window. ‘If you love him enough, Maya,’ he said, ‘you will let him go.’
Maya let out a cry. ‘I could not,’ she whispered. She couldn’t even think of it.
‘It would be a sacrifice, yes.’ Her father took a couple of paces towards her. His dark eyes were fierce. ‘But think not just of yourself,’ he warned. ‘Think of Lawrence. And think of his family too.’
‘We are his family.’ Maya was sobbing now. How could he be so cruel? ‘Me and Cho Suu Kyi. We are his family.’
Her father came back to her side, cradled her in his arms as if she were a young girl again. ‘You are Burmese,’ he said. ‘I am your family. But Lawrence has family back in England. Think of them. They have not even seen him for so many years.’
Maya could feel her tears wet on his shirt. Despite herself, she thought of Lawrence’s mother. And then she thought of Helen.
‘You told me there was someone else,’ her father said. ‘You can pull back the leg, but not the committed word.’
An old Burmese proverb. ‘Yes.’ She whispered the word. She had hardly dared think of her. Helen, whom Lawrence had been promised to. Helen, who was a white British woman and everything Maya was not. Helen, the woman everyone expected him to marry. And why not? Wasn’t she from his world?
‘Perhaps now that the war is over, if you are right and he has survived …’ Her father let the words hang. ‘You should allow him to return to her.’
Maya was silent. She had always told Lawrence that she wanted nothing from him, especially his promises. She looked up at the little chinthe standing in front of the shrine. But she had given him the other, to protect him from harm and return him to her arms. And she had believed they would be together.
Her father followed the direction of her gaze. He nodded. ‘It takes a great deal of strength to turn your back on your past,’ he said. ‘On your family and your promises. On your country and your upbringing. To begin again in a strange land after you have lived through a war.’
‘He could do it,’ Maya shot back. She sat back on her heels. If Lawrence had lived through this war, he could do anything. And she would be by his side. She would help him.
‘Yes, he could do it,’ her father agreed. ‘But would he thank you for it?’
Maya did not answer this. She did not know what to say.
‘Or one day would he turn and look at you and think. If not for her …’
If not for her. Maya couldn’t bear it. If he ever looked at her that way …
‘He might be prepared to give up a great deal for you, my child.’ Her father reached out and stroked her hair. ‘His English life, his chance of promotion, perhaps even his career. But do you want him to? Do you expect him to?’
No, she did not. She never had. But she could not believe that now, after this terrible war, it would still be criticised or frowned on. To marry a native woman. If it was acceptable to bed one, why not acceptable to make her your wife?
A sound came from the kitchen. Maya got to her feet and straightened her longyi. ‘There is our daughter,’ she murmured. ‘What of Suu? Does she not have the right to know her father? To live with him? To love him?’
‘Yes, there is your daughter.’ Her father drew away from her, his expression thoughtful. ‘She is lucky to have escaped detection.’
‘Detection?’ But Maya knew what he was saying.
He turned back to her. ‘She is neither one thing nor the other,’ he muttered.
‘And yet her features are more Burmese.’ Fortunately for them all. Maya had continued to darken Suu’s pale skin with a paste she made from bark and this had been sufficient for no one else to comment on her parentage. But in recent weeks Maya had let this practice slide. Could Cho Suu Kyi not now be who she was? Would she have to hide forever?
‘Yes, that is true.’ Her father frowned. ‘But if it is known that she has a British father …’
What was that supposed to mean? ‘Other children are of mixed race,’ Maya began. Where there had been mistresses, there would be children. Would it really be such a disadvantage to Suu, having an English father?
‘The British will have to leave Burma,’ her father said. Once again he went over to the window. ‘Their time is gone. What we need now is the freedom to rule our own country.’
She knew what he was thinking. Anything the British might have done for them was nothing; he believed that they had only ever done it for themselves. And perhaps this was true. The British would not want to lose a land with riches such as theirs.
‘But it will not be easy.’ He turned back to her. ‘And it will not be easy for Suu. Trust me, my daughter. I cannot say how difficult her life will be.’
*
Maya thought about this conversation all evening and deep into the night. What she wanted more than anything was to be reunited with Lawrence, presuming that he was, as she fervently believed, still alive. She wanted it almost more than life itself. And yet …
In the early hours of the morning, she got up to look at her sleeping daughter. Would Lawrence think that she had trapped him? She could not bear that. What was best for Suu? What was best for Lawrence, the man she loved? What should she do, so that the two people she loved most in the world could be happy?
*
‘So you didn’t go back to Mandalay?’ Eva asked.
‘Not for six months.’
Eva raised an eyebrow. ‘Six months?’
Maya smiled sadly. ‘No man will wait forever, my dear,’ she said. Six months might not seem very long, but it was what she had agreed with her father.
‘If it is meant to be, it will survive six months,’ he had said, when they had next d
iscussed the matter. ‘Stay here for six months. Think it over.’
It was perhaps the longest six months of her life.
‘I thought it was for the best,’ Maya told Eva.
Their eyes met. Maya didn’t say more. This young girl, the granddaughter of the man she’d never stopped loving, understood. She could see it. It was, perhaps, a sacrifice she should never have made. Only six months. But life went on.
In 1947, the entire Burmese Cabinet under Aung San had been assassinated and this was a blow her father hardly recovered from. Aung San had eventually secured Burmese independence from the British, but for what? Her father became faded and diminished, from politics as much as from his experiences in the war. As for Maya, she had met San Thein, her husband, and her life had been good enough. Not earth-shattering perhaps, but he had been a kind man, a hard-working man who had done his best for them all under the harsh regime that followed. It had all been so far from her father’s hopes and aspirations, she thought sadly, and she almost thanked the Lord Buddha that he had not lived long enough to witness the worst of it.
And if she had ever wondered about Lawrence and what she had given up … Which she did. Oh, how she did. She could satisfy herself that she had done what she thought to be the right thing – for Lawrence and for Cho Suu Kyi.
CHAPTER 56
‘Shall we have a last drink together before I take you back to your hotel?’ Ramon murmured, as he and Eva finally left the house.
She turned to him, surprised. ‘In a bar?’ She had already stayed longer than she’d intended. But it had been worth it, to find out the truth.
‘I was thinking of somewhere more private.’ He raised an eyebrow, gestured towards his own apartment.
‘Yes, let’s.’ Eva didn’t even want to resist. It would at least put off the moment of parting. And she didn’t want this evening to end.
She followed him inside.
But he walked right through the reception room and out of a door the other side on to a sheltered verandah with a bamboo roof. He held the door open for Eva.