The door swung open.
Dwarfish Mrs Wiseman walked in with a sour look. My heart stopped, though her anger was nothing compared with my father’s rage.
Hands clasped at her waist, her black eyes widened. ‘What do you think you’re doing? Give that to me.’
I broke out in a sweat as I held out the last of the paper.
She snatched the pieces from my hands, and I swear I saw hairs sprout from her chin.
I quickly ran through my options. ‘I … I … I thought the handwriting wasn’t good enough,’ I said. ‘I was going to start again.’
‘That is a barefaced lie. There are drawings on this paper.’
Her eyelids flickered, she stepped back and the pieces slipped to the floor. Her short body swayed, straight hair bobbing as her head went up and down, jowls wobbling. Every bit of her seemed to move separately from the rest. For a moment I thought she was having a fit, and any second would start foaming at the mouth, and I’d be able to gather up the bits, and get out. But she wrung her hands, and in an accent so strong it sounded as if she was choking, squawked at me. ‘Go to your dormitory. Get out! I’ll deal with you later.’
I darted from the room. They’d send for Father. I could explain, tell, but if I did that those girls would come again. And anyway, after this my father would never let me leave the school.
Instead of making for the dorm, I raced along a corridor to the other end of the building, and through a door marked Private. In the storeroom I grabbed a packet of Rich Tea biscuits. In a shadowy alcove near the back door, I hid. I held my breath when I heard one of the maids coming. Was she going outside for a quick fag? Oh, please no. She’d walk right in front of me and see. Please make her go into the storeroom.
Another of the kitchen staff called out to her. She stopped and turned on her heels, hesitating for a moment. ‘I was going for another slab of butter.’
‘More like a sneaky fag. Come along. Back to work.’
The moment the kitchen door closed behind them, I let out my breath and slipped outside.
I needed to cross the grounds, without being seen from any classroom window overlooking that side. As the gardens were in full view of dozens of pairs of bored eyes, all scanning the horizon for possible gossip, it wasn’t easy. Especially as their most likely subject for chatter was the new gardener. He was gorgeous, with tightly curling dark hair, and the look of a gypsy. The older girls drooled over him, but the rumours were he’d been seen going to the cinema with the French mademoiselle, and they were arm in arm. All of us younger girls were out to see if we could catch them at it: something to taunt the older girls with. I checked the lawns – luckily he wasn’t working on this side. My best bet was to wait for the bell at the end of the lesson, then make a dash for it.
My idea was to make for the woods, where Susan and I found hiding places when we wanted to get out of cross-country. There were hollow trees and great stacks of branches we’d piled up. If I could reach one of those, I’d be able to hide while I decided what to do.
The only way was to the left, where rose bushes lined a path leading to the woods at the back of the school. They provided little cover but it was my only chance.
A man’s voice stopped me. I swivelled round and hid the biscuits in a fold of my tunic. For once I was glad of its baggy fit. It was just the baker, on his way to his van.
I heard the bell go and needed to run, but he held out a tempting iced bun. ‘Yes, please,’ I said. ‘I’ll save it for later. Thanks.’ And I ran like a maniac without glancing back.
In the woods, I found a place beneath a large oak, and wolfed my bun, deciding to save the biscuits for later instead. I had no plan.
When it got dark, people with torches tramped between the trees, calling out my name. After they went, the trees swayed about. I thought of men shooting crocodiles and diving for crayfish. I imagined the jungle, and the bandits who hid under leaves, just like me. I thought of Malacca and the smell of fried fish, and our old gardener burying bowls of rice for the spirits of the earth. More than anything I wanted Mum, but I covered myself with even more leaves and branches, and listened to the wind.
Protected by oaks and elms, and smelling of mould and damp, the scratching of unknown creatures reminded me of the hantu hantuan. I had never before been so frightened of the dark. I curled up small, and longed for a mug of hot chocolate and some scrambled eggs on toast.
Stow away and return to Malaya, that’s what I’d do. Find my mother. But I was only a child; what could I do? Veronica might be friendly but she could hardly put me on a ship heading back to a country at war. I stifled a sob. It isn’t fair, I thought, I haven’t done anything wrong.
The next morning, Dad, the headmistress and two policemen stomped through the woods. Wet through, I was actually glad that they’d come.
‘Come out, Emma, we know you’re there.’ My dad’s voice, firm and controlled, though I knew, underneath, he’d be twitching with anger.
‘Come out, dear. You’re not in trouble. Better to come out now,’ said one of the policemen, in a kinder voice.
‘Emma Cartwright, show yourself immediately.’ That was the headmistress.
I hesitated, but when I judged the policemen to be nearest, I shook the leaves and branches off and stepped out. On jelly legs, I called, ‘I’m here.’
Then I felt my legs give way, and after that I don’t know what happened.
In sickbay once again, I woke up to see my father sitting across the room, looking thin and stern. I heard the doctor talking to him in a quiet voice, about blood pressure.
‘Dangerously low. Any history of heart problems in the family?’
‘My father died from a stroke,’ my dad replied.
‘What about other grandparents?’
Through my eyelashes, I saw him purse his lips and shake his head.
‘My wife was brought up at St Joseph’s. Didn’t know her parents.’
I wanted to talk to them, but my lips stuck together. I drifted a bit as they went on murmuring. Questions, answers and scribbling. A nurse moved about, carrying things and tidying up.
‘Can we have your wife’s current address?’ the doctor asked.
I heard Dad take a sharp breath and pause, before he spoke in a very low voice.
‘I’m afraid Emma’s mother abandoned her family. Now she’s missing, presumed dead.’
The ceiling raced towards me, and I felt myself fall backwards. I could only see a circle of light from the window. The light pulsed in and out, yellow with an orange rim, all the time growing smaller and smaller, until it was just a pinpoint. The room went black. I was pulled down into a dark well, but with my arms reaching out for help, I fought against it, desperate to find the light from the window again. For a moment it came, then I heard my own voice screaming. ‘Mummy. Mummy. Help me.’
But my voice and I were far away. In Malaya, at the island, running in and out of the sea, as Mummy sat with ice-cold beer bottles in her armpits, to numb the jellyfish stings. The sand was white and fine, soft, soft sand, and the water warm like a bath. It was clear as day and felt like real life.
I was shocked when I came round to find I wasn’t there. I swung my head from side to side, trying to make sense. Where had I been? What had happened? I saw two bags of fluid attached to thin tubes going into my arms. And then as the fluid went down, and was replaced by more, I remembered. Mummy. Mummy. Mummy. Tears poured down my cheeks, and I knew my heart was broken.
22
September 1956. And on the day hope returned, over eighteen months had passed since the terrors of the fire. Lydia stood in the centre of the sitting room, unsuspecting, looked out of the window and took a step towards it. First, the idea of eating popped into her mind. She swivelled round, and caught sight of a grey lizard flash across the ceiling. She watched it disappear into a jagged crack, then absentmindedly picked up a mango from the coffee table. She ran her palm over the smooth grain of the table, then felt the mango for ripeness. It
was soft beneath her thumb but still firm underneath. Perfect.
In the bedroom, she put the mango down and opened the bottom drawer of the chest. Lili’s clothes were gone, of course. Her own plain blouses and skirts lay quietly folded there. She missed her old clothes, the delicate raw Indian silks, the bright satins, the harem jackets. Her chest tightened at a memory. She and the girls buying fabric. She remembered fingering the satin, pink and patterned with fiery dragons. It reminded her of Cicely too, her old friend from Malacca, who had the same material, but in lilac.
The day before, Cicely, now back from travels in Australia, had arrived out of the blue. Cool as ever, dressed in a turquoise linen dress, with a rope of silver hanging from her neck, she’d said she was just dropping by on her way to Penang. When Lydia asked why she was going there, she just shrugged her shoulders and wouldn’t be drawn, but did offer to pay another visit on her way back south. Lydia had muttered some kind of excuse.
‘Well, darling,’ Cicely said, taking the hint, ‘if you need anything at all, a place to stay, money, shoulder to cry on, I’ll be in Malacca.’
‘I’m all right for now. Jack’s been very generous. Anyway, I still owe you for the jewellery you pawned.’
‘Oh, forget that, sweetie. And the offer is there if anything changes.’
Lydia smiled at the thought of her friend. She couldn’t really explain why she didn’t want to spend time with her, except that Cicely was so much part of her old life. Then, she dressed in her only pretty skirt, a simple printed cotton, put on some red lipstick and went out to the veranda in the drizzle.
There was a slight wind, and Maz was there, watching a troupe of monkeys appear and disappear. She felt the blood rush to her head and leant on the wooden handrail. She closed her eyes, but the colours of the rubber trees still swirled. When the dizziness passed, she wiped away the moss that appeared on the chairs overnight, and sat looking out into the trees. So many paths threaded through them, it was a wonder Jack found his way home.
Maz was first to hear a whistle, as Jack walked across the grass. ‘Jack!’ he shouted and ran towards him.
Jack held up his palm to stop Maz. ‘I wouldn’t come too close,’ he said.
Maz took a step back as Jack came closer, and Lydia reeled at the overpowering stink of piss. She pulled a face.
‘What on earth?’
‘You’ll never believe it,’ Jack said.
She raised her brows. He wore a crumpled khaki shirt with the sleeves rolled up, hands on hips, a wide grin on his face. Not drunk then.
‘We stopped off on our way back from Ipoh to clear up some burnt trees.’
‘And?’
‘Well, it seemed like rain, but the rumpus above made us look up. And then I saw the little blighters.’
‘What?’
‘A dozen long-tailed macaque monkeys, yammering away, and running up and down the branches, only stopping to piss on top of us.’
She smiled.
‘It’s good to see you smile, Lyddy. Sorry, no news.’
Lydia shrugged. Even though he believed there was no point, Jack had been to the government offices in Ipoh again, asking for details of the fire. But the destruction had been total and anyone who might have known was dead and gone. Added to that, there was no record of Alec’s work in Ipoh. His entire department had gone up in flames.
That afternoon she made friends with Jack’s house, spending silent, measured time in every room. She listened to noises that came from somewhere else, the village maybe, and there was an hour of calm, a simple kind of grace. Maz followed at a distance. When she spoke to him, his eyes were pale and watchful. He caught at her heart, and while she stood in Jack’s wood panelled office, the idea came to her. She quickly gathered paper, pencils, pens and called Maz.
In the sitting room, she shifted the bowl of mangos to one side, knelt on the floor, and laid out pencils and paper on the coffee table. In faint, easy-to-trace letters, she began to write the alphabet. She called him again, but he hung back just outside the door. She went on writing, slowly, laboriously.
‘Maz,’ she tried once more. ‘Come. I’ll show you how to write. Wouldn’t you like to learn?’
He shook his head but carried on watching.
She concentrated on the task and as she reached k she heard a shuffle. She didn’t look up. When he sidled close, she held up a darker, blacker pencil for him. He shook his head, but sat beside her, skinny elbows wrapped round skinny knees. She started to trace over her earlier letters herself. When she reached m he reached for the pencil.
‘M is for Maz,’ she said. ‘And milk and marble and mule.’
He traced the m carefully, and without glancing up said, ‘M is for mother.’
Lydia bit her lip. ‘It is, my little one. It is.’
Maz was a quick learner and Lydia took the task seriously. Without children’s books or proper learning materials she went over the alphabet, encouraged him to copy basic words, and drew pictures of animals and objects to illustrate the words. A monkey that looked like a dog. A king cobra with two heads. A long-quilled Malay porcupine with a smile on its face. They laughed over the strange creatures that grew there, and his chatter returned.
She encouraged him to draw pictures of his life: his mother, his aunt and his old home. Then she labelled them and little by little the lessons sank in, but also something else happened.
He drew the shape of a hut with seven stick figures inside. She smiled and asked him to explain.
‘This one is my mother, this my uncle, this my aunt and these four are my cousins.’ Then he drew another picture alongside it, almost identical but missing a figure.
‘Look Maz, you’ve left one out,’ she said.
He hung his head.
‘Maz?’
Silence.
‘Do you want to tell me who is missing?’
He looked up at her, eyes swimming with tears. ‘It is my uncle, Mem. He was killed.’
She pulled him to her and held him tight, and the little boy sobbed. She got out a clean hankie and wiped his eyes. It was clear he’d loved his uncle.
‘I lived with my aunt and cousins.’
‘Why did your mother go to the jungle?’
But the child wouldn’t say what made her go. Maybe he doesn’t know, she thought.
‘Shall we go on reading?’ she asked.
He nodded and Lydia patted his head. Though a part of her remained broken, she knew the boy was helping her turn a corner in the twisting road to recovery. I look out for you. You look out for me. Wasn’t that what he’d once said?
The next day, Jack staggered in, a large cardboard box in his arms. He looked handsome and pleased with himself. He landed it on the coffee table, then put out a hand to catch a record and some sheet music sliding off the top. He pressed them to her and pulled out a Black Box record player.
‘It’s not new. But it should work.’
Within minutes he attached a plug, put the record on the turntable, and flicked the switch. Nothing happened. His face fell, and he tried another plug. The voice of Frank Sinatra filled the room. Lydia grinned and clapped her hands. Jack caught hold of her and slipped his arm round her waist. With his cheek to her ear they waltzed round, laughing and tripping over shoes, magazines and teacups. For a moment all her old hopes came flying back. She started to hum the tune, ‘Three Coins in a Fountain’, and he joined in.
‘Bloody hell, Jack. You’re tone deaf.’ She poked him in the chest, and for a time life felt like it used to. She imagined herself back at the club on New Year’s Eve, high heels, slinky black dress with slits up both sides, far too many cocktails and her eye on Jack with his broad shoulders and big hands. An innocent life, in a way, with not the slightest hint of what lay waiting.
‘That’s not all I’ve got,’ Jack said, interrupting her thoughts.
He disappeared into the hall for a moment, then came back carrying an old Singer sewing machine.
‘Say thank you nicely to Uncle Ja
ck.’
She gave him a swipe. ‘Heaven knows where you got it!’
‘There’s fabric too.’
She flushed bright red, embarrassed by her lack of cash and thinking of Cicely’s offer of money. When she explained, he smiled as if they were an old married couple.
‘You don’t need Cicely’s help. Anything mine is yours, Lydia. Anyway it’s not as if you’re out spending money every day, is it?’
Then he revealed where he was stockpiling his early release money.
‘I used to keep it in the desk, but see, it’s under this loose floorboard under the rug. In case you ever need any.’
He rolled back the rug, tipped up the floorboard and pulled out several thick wads of ten-dollar notes, held together with rubber bands.
‘Heavens. That’s a lot.’
He nodded. ‘Quite a tidy sum. I said I was working on buying my way out.’
‘I should have taken you more seriously.’ She kissed him on the nose. ‘Thank you.’
She watched a vein throbbing in his neck. What would she have done without him? What could she have done? He’d looked after her all this time, financially, emotionally, and in so many other ways. They were living an isolated life, with only occasional visitors, though Jack sometimes suggested outings to Ipoh, or to another plantation run by a couple he knew. She felt no desire to make small talk with people she didn’t know, though maybe Jack needed to get out. He was a good man, and she’d learnt to wait for his occasional dark mood to pass.
‘Why not come to the market in Ipoh?’ he said. ‘You can get anything there. It’d do you good. It’s safe enough.’
She stared at him and sighed.
‘Sorry. I know grief takes time.’
She bit her lip. She didn’t want it to take time. She didn’t want it at all. She was getting through it one day at a time, the pain of their absence long since settled in the pit of her stomach. She dreaded that soon their absence would feel normal. Sometimes when she woke and felt them there, it shocked her that there was only air, and all that remained of them was Em’s notebook and the photos in her locket. She forced herself to think of something else.
Separation, The Page 14