There was a long silence.
‘Belle?’
She gulped a mouthful of air. How could she have been so naive? How could she have put her faith in someone who would think it was acceptable to sell her personal family history, their tragedy even, and make it the subject of gossip on the streets? A film for heaven’s sake! She felt a chill and stood abruptly.
‘Story?’ she stammered, too upset to say anything more.
‘Belle, I –’
She shook her head. ‘I can’t do this.’
As disappointment eddied around her in painful waves and the truth sank in, the heat in the room grew more intense. ‘That’s what I am to you? A scoop?’
‘No. I didn’t mean –’
‘Stop right there.’ She backed away. ‘They warned me about you.’
His jaw stiffened and he stood completely still as he gazed back at her. ‘They?’
‘I chose not to believe them.’
Her chest tightened. She had been so stupid. Now she only wanted to get away quickly, and never be reminded of his duplicity again.
‘It isn’t Edward I shouldn’t trust, is it? It’s you.’
‘Belle, you’re overreacting –’
She held out a hand to silence him. ‘You’re spending time with me because you’re after the big story. You need me to help unravel the truth. Oliver Donohue’s big scoop!’
He gave her such a curious look she felt her heart might break. Then he shook his head. ‘You’ve got this all wrong,’ he said with a hollow laugh, ‘but I guess you’re more of a Brit than I thought. Be it on your own head if you put your trust in Edward and his cronies.’
She felt sad and lonely and terribly disappointed but, mustering her courage and determined to preserve her dignity, she gulped down the lump in her throat. ‘I’m sorry my friendship with Edward doesn’t meet with your approval. I shan’t bother you any further. You don’t care about me. I was a fool for thinking you did …’
He stared at her for a moment in disbelief and then shrugged.
As Belle left the building, she made an instant decision. To hell with the story! To hell with the river trip. That was not going to happen. Not now. Not ever. Blinded by the angry tears which fell the moment she reached the street, and fuelled by the hurt of having been duped, she was shocked by the savagery of her own response to what had happened. The nonchalance of his final shrug had sealed it. Now the pain whipped through her. How? How could he have been so uncaring of her feelings? So insensitive to her family sorrow? It was hard to have to face the fact that the person you had put your trust in wasn’t who you thought he had been. And then she remembered the anonymous note. Think you know who to trust?
31.
Diana, Cheltenham, 1922
Simone has been staying with me for three weeks and I must say I’ve never felt better. Once I recovered from the reckless stunt that had landed me in hospital we started to take short trips outside, beginning with standing in the front garden for two minutes while gazing at the park. She holds my hand and moments before the point when I feel everything is about to fold in on me, she seems to sense it, and we go straight back inside. Each day we have walked a little further and each day I’ve endured a little longer.
Simone is the most accepting person I’ve ever known, never judging or hinting at anything to make me feel worthless. She has absolute faith that one day I will recover completely, and her calm and soothing presence is exactly what I need. I try to believe it will happen, but yesterday the whispering voice sent me spiralling down again and, even after only a few minutes outside, my heart felt as if it would leap from my chest. Simone told me to keep my breathing slow and encouraged me not to run back indoors but to concentrate on the flowers lining the beds in the front garden. And I did it. I actually did it.
She’s helping me pack up all my possessions ready for the move. We hope before long I’ll be able to withstand the journey by car. I’m not so worried about being in the car if someone is with me. It’s being in the open that makes me feel as if I’ll be swallowed up.
She’s sitting on the floor now gazing at the few photographs I have from our life in Burma. Simone believes I shouldn’t avoid the thing that terrifies me. She tells me avoidance only makes matters worse and she thinks that’s why I hear the voice. She thinks the darkness I refuse to face or even acknowledge must find its way out. So now, each day, to try to defeat the voice, we take control by spending fifteen minutes looking back. There’s no map to show me the way. I have no choice but to take it as it comes. Dead ends and all. So, we attempt to weave in and out of the past, even though it seems mad to me and I only do it to please her.
As I join her on the rug, she pulls out one of only two photographs I have of Elvira and even before she hands it to me I feel the panic rising and turn away.
‘Come on, Diana. Take a look. It won’t hurt you.’
Her expression is hard to read but I eventually agree and glance down at the blurred younger version of myself cradling my firstborn. As I gently trace the image with my forefinger a strangled noise escapes from my throat.
‘Diana?’
I look up in anguish. ‘But I don’t know what I did.’
‘Do you think you would have hurt your child?’
I shake my head. ‘I loved her,’ I say, but my voice is little more than a whisper.
‘Are you worried the voice told you to do something? Is that it? Had the voices already started then?’
I sigh. ‘I can’t remember. If not then, soon after.’
There’s a long silence as images from the past come hurtling back. The pram, always the pram beneath the tamarind tree and me gazing up into the branches and listening to the birds. I’d drunk two large pink gins over lunch and was feeling tipsy. I didn’t tell the policeman, though one of the servants might have done. I remember I’d been feeling relieved that at last Elvira had gone to sleep. I won’t pretend I didn’t find her crying hard to bear. It wasn’t the sound so much, although it could drive a mother crazy, it was the fact that no matter what I did I couldn’t help her. The doctor said it was probably colic and it would pass but I felt helpless listening to her pitiful cries.
‘You’ve done well,’ Simone says and tucks her arm into mine. ‘Are you all right?’
I’m only half listening, but I come back to the present, nod, and then hand back the picture.
‘Tomorrow,’ she says with a confident smile as she helps me up, ‘I think we might get Mrs Wilkes to donate some stale bread and then we’ll feed the ducks on the pond. What do you think?’
‘Lovely,’ I say. But what I mean is really? Can I really get as far as the pond?
32.
Righteous indignation fuelled Belle’s footsteps as she marched away from Oliver’s apartment building. Silently fuming, she barely noticed the usual mix of people, vehicles and animals in the streets, nor was she aware of the sun high in the sky and the sweat trickling down her back. All she could think was that she would definitely go to Sydney after all, leave everything else behind – leave him behind – certain now it was the only thing to do.
By the time she’d regained her composure she glanced about and found she had ended up in an unfamiliar area of the city riddled with alleyways. She came to a stop when a huddle of Burmese men, dressed only in skirts, blocked her path. One man was painting black signs on the bare chest of another and more waited in line, eager to be ornamented. Engrossed in this strange activity, they paid Belle no attention. As more men attached themselves to the group Belle sidled past and headed for what she hoped was the road leading to the Secretariat. She wanted to find Edward to tell him she was delighted to accept Clayton Rivers as her agent.
As she rounded a sharp corner and then headed towards a crossroads she heard a throbbing, rhythmical sound. The hairs on the back of her neck pricked up. What was this odd noise? She stood still and listened to the thump, thump, thump, and then it dawned on her. Marching feet. She was listening to marching feet.
A moment later dozens of Burmans wielding swords, iron bars and axes came into sight. ‘Jesus,’ she whispered. What on earth was happening? She spun round trying to figure out the best way to get out but now men seemed to be pouring from every direction. In a flash she knew she was hemmed in. She flattened herself against a doorway, heart pounding, fear stealing her breath. As she stared, the mob tripled in size and a huge number of men were now beating a path towards her.
Rooted to the spot, she attempted to scream. Nothing came out. She willed herself to move but, glancing about, could not see a route through. She squeezed her eyes shut in a hopeless effort to block out the petrifying sight. Dozens of men, bent on attacking her, were brandishing their weapons, gesticulating and shouting. Marching. Thumping. In a state of shocked disbelief, she had frozen. Was this how her life was to end? Was she to be beaten to death on a street corner? She desperately wanted her mother, her father, anyone to come, but could only take a ragged, terrified lungful of air and wait for her fate.
When, after a few moments, nobody had touched her, she opened her eyes and realized the men leading the charge had begun pounding on the door and windows of a house two doors further up from where she cowered. She vaguely recalled being told this was the area where the Indians lived, and looked up to see Indians hurling bricks from the windows of the houses on the opposite side of the street. Panicked by what was happening, she scanned the street in the hope of spotting a policeman who might be able to get her out of there, but there was none.
She watched as a group of Burmans began crawling up the outside staircase of one of the Indian houses opposite. Aware the inhabitants were in terrible peril, Belle searched again for the presence of the police. At the top of the stairs the men hacked at the door until it fell open and then, even above the roar of the crowd, she could hear the terrified screams of the people within. She felt sure they would be slaughtered. Still unsure if it might yet be her turn, Belle wanted to weep, but now the crowd had shifted across the street she had to grab her chance. At first, panting, she slipped behind the backs of the men still gathered in the road and then, with only one thought in her head, she broke into a run with no sense of direction in mind.
As she ran she passed more and more armed Burmese men with painted chests, brandishing crowbars and bludgeons, and advancing on the Indian quarter. In one of the narrow side streets she picked her way around a few unarmed constables facing a mob of angry Indians bent on retaliation. Clearly this riot was something between the Burmese and the Indians, though she didn’t know why. Unable to understand why the authorities were largely absent, Belle knew it was even more important to reach Edward and alert him to what she’d witnessed.
When she arrived at a row of tenements in a narrow street leading off the docks, she realized she had set out in the wrong direction. The whole place reeked of drains and fish but there was something worse. Far worse. Stricken by the sickly-sweet smell of blood, she felt her throat close. The street itself, eerily silent, was empty of life and she backed away in shock as she saw the twisted corpses of half a dozen Indian men, women and children splayed out on the ground. She gazed about her in horror but saw that nobody had come to move them. She stared at the horrific purple bruising spreading across the face of one of the men and the dark congealing blood where the side of his head had been caved in. Then she saw his empty black eye sockets and felt sickened. They had gouged out his eyes. She closed her eyes and, holding her stomach, retched over and over. When she was done, she heard the buzzing of enormous flies and squinted up to see them already gorging. She looked away to where one woman lay in a pool of shining blood, her clothing ripped and with gaping stab wounds to her chest. A small child lay at an awkward angle close to her bare feet. Belle wanted to help but there was nothing, absolutely nothing she could do. No one had been left alive. She glanced over to where another man had clearly had the life beaten out of him. Horrified by the savagery, her one thought was to get away. The Strand Hotel couldn’t be far, and she twisted round to figure out the right direction. But then, hearing a baby crying, she faltered.
She had assumed everyone had been killed and longed to make her escape from this terrible carnage, but how could she leave a baby to die alone? She tried to work out where the baby might be and made her way along the street, forcing herself not to glance at the blank eyes of three more men she found lying beaten and dead on the ground. She stopped in front of one of the tenements where the crying had become more insistent but wavered in fear of the bloodshed she might discover within.
The front door was hanging open and she shouted out in the unlikely hope someone might still be alive. Fear settled in her stomach and in her bones. Get a grip of yourself, she whispered, get a grip. Then, avoiding the worst of the slippery blood-sodden wooden steps, she cautiously picked her way up, and with every step felt more and more nauseous, unable to prevent herself from heaving.
The three rooms leading off the landing were empty but for one old man sitting against a wall with a serious wound to his head and glassy, dead eyes. She let out a sob but carried on up to the next floor, the baby’s cries weaker now. Just before she reached the top she felt her legs slip from beneath her and she slid down to the landing below. She lay still for a moment, but when she tried to move a searing pain shot through her left leg. Still she tried again and eventually managed to haul herself upstairs step by step. Only now the crying had ceased.
In the first room two women lay dead on the floor and Belle was just wondering if she could bear to try for the third floor when she saw movement. She limped over to one of the women and, bending down, gingerly lifted the corner of a thin blood-soaked blanket to see a baby curled up inside it. With a sinking heart, Belle checked to make sure the woman was dead and then gently lifted the child. It blinked, and she gasped. The child was alive. She stared at its huge brown eyes then examined it for injury, stroking its soft skin and hair, before wrapping it in the soiled blanket again and cradling it to her. What was the right thing to do? Should she leave the baby in the hope the authorities might find its relatives, or should she take it to safety? If she left the baby it might die, or the murderous mob might return. She made a snap decision. After stumbling to the stairs, she held the baby tightly and slowly edged down.
Outside, she glanced about so she’d be able to identify exactly where she had found the child, and then she began weaving through the alleys, finally ending up in an empty street, the pain ripping through her leg now so excruciating she shouted out. She stopped to catch her breath, all the while terrified and watching for the return of the armed men. Dizzy and sick, her leg burned with a ghastly pounding throb. On the verge of fainting, it became so overpowering she knew she was about to keel over, so steadied herself against a wall before stumbling on. The baby whimpered and tried to wriggle free. Belle considered putting her down beneath the shade of a tree, just for a moment, but heard a car travelling at speed towards her. As it drew up she saw it was a police squad car from which three uniformed men alighted followed by … She blinked. It couldn’t be. But the fourth man, this one not in uniform, ran towards her. She wiped a bloodied hand across her eyes, the world tilted and then she dropped to the ground.
She woke in darkness. For Belle, unable to differentiate one hour from another, time drifted. A thing, blacker than she could ever imagine, hovered in the night-time shadows of the room. A light from the nurses’ station slid under her door. The fear had changed her. Made her cringe at sudden noises, startle when a shadow moved. Made her tight inside herself. Small. Her whole being made up of fear. She did not call out.
Her mouth felt impossibly dry when she woke again and opened her swollen eyes. Lying very still, Belle saw a clean white room with gauze curtains gently blowing in the breeze from the open window. Strangely light-headed and stiff, she sniffed the air. Disinfectant and something floral. A uniformed nurse, arranging some pink peonies in a vase on the bedside cabinet, noticed Belle was awake.
Lungs constricted, painful, brea
th rasping and raw, Belle forced out the words. ‘How long have I been here?’
She squinted in the brightness for a moment before a wave of nausea turned her stomach as memories of the massacre began racing back. She covered her eyes and groaned. Images of blood and death swam in her muzzy head. The women lying dead in the house, the people in the street, the killing, all the killing. And the baby … The poor little baby. Oh God! She remembered the feel of her warm soft skin and silky hair. And her eyes, her huge eyes. What had happened to her?
The nurse handed her a bowl and Belle sat up and retched into it, but there was hardly anything for she hadn’t eaten, had she? She couldn’t entirely remember the order of things. There had been the row with Oliver. Yes, she remembered that but what had happened directly after? Too weak to sit up for long, she fell back against the pillow and the nurse wiped her face with a cool, damp cloth.
‘Thank you,’ Belle murmured, then struggled to sit up again. ‘How long have I been here?’
The nurse passed her a glass of water.
Belle drank it and then the nurse gently helped her back down. ‘You need to rest.’
‘I need to know about the baby.’
‘Plenty of time for that.’
‘So, how long have I been here?’
‘Almost forty-eight hours.’
‘I think I woke in the night.’
‘Maybe, though the doctor gave you a sedative. You might have been dreaming.’
‘And can I go now?’ she said, wanting to get out of bed, stretch her legs and sort everything out. Wanting, too, to find a way to escape from everything she’d seen and the fear that had twisted her stomach and almost made her heart stop. Gin should do it. A few very large gins.
‘The doctor will see you later but now you have a visitor. He has been waiting most anxiously.’
Oliver, Belle thought, forgetting their quarrel, but when the nurse opened the door she saw with mixed feelings that the man was Edward. But she was grateful he’d come and attempted a smile.
The Missing Sister Page 15