Inside, Lydia’s hand flew to her chest. Broken china littered the floor. Books and clothes were dumped in heaps, and an underskirt hung over a lampshade. She felt a flash of anger at uninvited hands touching her things, picked up a broken teapot and threw it at the waste paper basket. She had the satisfaction of the teapot crashing.
‘What were they looking for?’ she asked.
He shook his head, squared his shoulders and got out his revolver.
‘Tell me, Jack. I’m not made of glass.’
He scratched his jaw. ‘Search me. They didn’t find the cash under the floor, and apart from that and a few estate lists, there’s not a lot here. Nothing that would merit this.’
Jack alerted the police, fixed a hole in the barbed wire fence, and replaced the back door lock where the intruders had broken in. The three of them ate supper in silence, then after rushing their usually drawn out bedtime story, and although Maz complained, she put him to bed early.
On the veranda, the insect repellent they burnt at night let off a faintly antiseptic odour, the bitter smell of it mixing with that of latex and rotting foliage. She watched giant moths circle the one lantern they placed at a distance from their chairs. Other than that it was dim, and the whistling noise of night birds in the trees unsettled her.
‘The house will be surrounded by fresh barbed wire in a couple of days,’ Jack said. ‘The old wire won’t last. I’m afraid until then, security isn’t great, even with the extra guards.’
Her shoulders slumped. She usually enjoyed a cool drink in the evening, especially after a trip to the pool, when her skin tingled from sun and cold water. Tonight nothing felt right. Her skin prickled and she felt the familiar red patches appear on her chest. Jack absentmindedly rubbed his arms, looking troubled.
Over a second Tiger beer he opened up. ‘Thing is, Lyd, it isn’t just the break in. I’ve had this.’
He reached into his back pocket, drew out a letter and handed it over. She scanned it twice. It was from Jim Dobson, Jack’s manager. She read the words aloud.
It has come to my notice you are keeping a European woman and a native child at the house. It is my duty to remind you of your contract. I understand the special circumstances, but advise making alternative arrangements, at least for the child. Accordingly, I recommend a Scottish couple living not far from Penang. They run a school for local displaced children and can probably be persuaded to take him.
Her heart sank, as Jack puffed out his cheeks and sighed.
‘Jim’s a good type. He wouldn’t recommend this if he didn’t rate the couple. But it does mean I have to take notice. I could lose my job, and as I haven’t saved enough yet, the penalties would be high. On the bright side, the sea at Penang’s great. We could visit.’
Lydia looked up at the ink black sky, and remembered being at the seaside with a woman in a blue dress, the woman she always believed might have been her mother. She wasn’t about to let just an occasional visit to the sea be the only contact Maz would have with her.
She looked Jack in the eye. ‘So you’re saying I can stay, but he has to go.’
Jack cleared his throat, the muscles of his broad neck standing out. ‘You know the score. No wives, no kids. Not on the first tour.’
‘He can’t go. He needs me.’
‘I have to get back to Jim tomorrow. I’ve already had this letter three weeks.’
‘You should have said.’
‘You’re attached to the child. You know, things were getting better. I didn’t want to –’ He shrugged.
Lydia was accustomed to Jack sleeping with a gun beside the bed, but that night it looked ominous. On the whole things had been quiet, but now she keenly felt the danger they might all be in. The police promised Jack extra guards, and Lydia hoped they’d already installed themselves at the plantation perimeter.
Despite a restless sleep, she didn’t hear Jack get up, yet in the middle of the night she woke, and found him gone. She threw on her robe, and picked her way over the still-littered floor of the living room.
He was hunched up on the sofa. Gold reading glasses hung from the tip of his nose, gun on his lap, the book he’d been reading upturned at his feet. He peered over the top of the specs, and smiled a lopsided smile.
‘Honestly, Jack. What the blazes is going on? You stink of whisky.’
‘We can’t go on like this.’
She frowned. His eyes were feverish.
He looked around the room and balled one fist hard into his open hand. ‘Let’s just clear off. Damn the blasted contract.’
‘Clear off where?’
He flashed her a sad grin. ‘I’ve had it, Lyd. The mosquitoes, the heat, the swamps. Most of all the bloody rubber trees. Let’s just make a run for it. We can take the kid. Say he’s ours.’
‘Oh sure!’
‘Why not? You said yourself he doesn’t fit in anywhere, not Chinese, not Malay, not white.’
She noticed his drawn face, paler than usual. He looked suddenly beaten.
He picked up the gun and held it to his head. ‘Bang,’ he said. ‘Bang, bang, bang!’ And dropped the gun on the table.
She went to him, cradled his head. ‘Oh, Jack.’
He carried on looking at the place where he’d dropped the gun.
She spoke softly. ‘You said it yourself. Aren’t things a little better now? I mean with us.’
There was a long silence. If Jack was depressed, his was usually a more reserved kind of sorrow.
In the end he shrugged. ‘It’s just the drink. You know I’d do anything for you, Lyddy.’
He picked up his gun, lifted her too, and carried her to bed. While he fell asleep quickly, she lay awake, curled herself round him and listened to him breathe.
After Jack set off for early muster, she cleared up, and jumped each time the house creaked. In the living room she flicked through the book Jack had been reading: A Survival Guide. On the hall floor she found an English recipe book, earmarked oxtail stew and steamed pudding. It’d be good for Jack to have a reminder of home, something to cheer him up.
She made pancakes with cinnamon and sugar, then strolled across to wake Maz. We’ll eat on the veranda and watch the lizards, she thought, then glanced through the hall window before opening his door. A heavy mist still circled.
She walked into Maz’s room.
The window was wide open, the bed empty. She felt her heart thump. This wasn’t like Maz. He always closed the shutters, understood they did it so their rooms wouldn’t overheat. She closed them herself, and went through the house, calling his name. There was no sign of him.
On the veranda, hearing branches snap she spun round, but saw nothing. All round the place, she sensed the presence of the jungle.
She hurried along the covered corridor. In her day room, Channa sat cross-legged on the floor, eyes closed.
‘Is Maznan with you?’ Lydia asked. ‘I can’t find him.’
The woman looked into Lydia’s face, her deep brown eyes calm and centred. She shook her head and got up. ‘I help look.’
‘Do you think it could be serious? You know. After the break in last night.’
Channa put a hand on her arm. ‘He probably close by. I look round the back.’
Lydia nodded. She continued to call Maz. He’d been told often enough not to go far, but what if he had? What if he was lost, unable to find his way home?
Channa came round from the back.
Lydia took an eager step towards her. ‘Anything?’
The woman held out a hand and opened her palm.
With a sharp intake of breath, Lydia took Maz’s beads from her.
‘They were on path,’ Channa said. ‘Near break in wire.’
‘Could he have run away?’ Lydia said, and began to peer through the fence surrounding the house.
‘Boy happy here. No run away.’
She’s right, Lydia thought, he feels at home here. He wouldn’t go alone.
Channa put a hand on her shoulder and
squeezed. The women exchanged looks. It seemed both knew what the other was thinking, though Lydia couldn’t bring herself to say the words. Channa shook her head, and Lydia swallowed the lump in her throat. An image of Maz’s smiling face came to her, the two of them writing letters and laughing at their animal drawings.
‘The insurgents,’ she eventually said.
Channa shrugged, but Lydia caught the look in the woman’s eyes, saw that was what she believed.
‘What shall we do?’ she asked.
‘Go back in,’ Channa said. ‘Wait.’
‘I’ll call the police.’
They went in. There was no point trying to find Maz without a guide. The plantation went on for miles, and to an untrained eye, it all looked the same. Endlessly, endlessly the same.
On the phone to the local police, she explained the situation as calmly as she was able, and managed to hold back her tears. But as she gave the man Maz’s full name, her eyes filled and the tears spilled over. She put a hand to her temple, felt herself sway as the memory of finding the deserted house engulfed her. Malacca: her children gone. Her throat constricted. Not again. Surely, not again. It couldn’t happen twice.
‘Is he your son, madam?’ the officer asked.
‘No – I’m looking after him.’ Lydia choked on the words.
He paused. ‘Take a moment, madam.’ After a moment’s silence he spoke again. ‘Is he English, like you? Maznan Chang is not an English name’
‘No. Half Malay, half Chinese.’
The man made a sucking noise through his teeth. ‘We’ll do what we can.’
She put the phone down, and walked round the garden again, still hoping to catch sight of the child. A butterfly landed on her knee and she felt the lump in her throat come back.
By the time Jack returned for lunch, she was sitting on the veranda rocking back and forth.
‘Hey, Lyddy. What on earth?’
She stopped rocking. ‘Maz is missing.’
He sighed heavily. ‘That’s all we need.’
‘Could your driver have taken him to the village?’
Jack collapsed into the chair and leant back. ‘Channa’s his wife. Surely she’d know if Tenuk had taken him.’
‘But if she didn’t know?’
‘I guess we’ll find out when Tenuk gets back.’
She stood up and stared at him. ‘Don’t you care?’
He sighed. ‘I care.’
‘You have a very funny way of showing it!’
After she’d hurled the accusation at him, she left the veranda, slamming the door behind her, then sat on the edge of the bath, blaming herself. She should never have brought Maz here. The worried faces of her daughters flashed in her mind, crystal clear, as if they stood in the room, Emma looking upset, Fleur chewing her fingers. Their faces receded and tears spilled down her face.
Jack came in and held out a hand. ‘I’m sorry.’
She trembled as he took her hand. ‘Oh God, Jack! I can’t stand it. What have they done with him?’
‘We’ll find him. I promise.’
He held her tight for a moment, then told her to stay put and went to search, taking two of his assistants.
She wiped her face and stared at the mirror.
The afternoon passed. Dusk. Wind snatched at leaves, and dirt spiralled in gusts. She paced the veranda, the spaces between the trees already darkening. She rubbed her temple and thought of the swamps and the vicious biting insects there. What if the rebels really did have Maz? What if they forced him to wade, chest high, in water and mud? She thought of stark camps hidden away, and the bandits who used birdcalls to signal each other – and wire to choke a person to death.
A crash startled her. She imagined their thin dark faces, with nothing to eat but bowls of cold rice. How would Maz survive?
She shifted tense muscles and told herself she was letting her imagination run away with her. Maybe he was with his mother. She peered deeper into the trees, but it had grown too black to see. Nothing looked familiar once darkness fell. The jungle waited, huge and black, crawling with hostile life. And Lydia knew, unless a full moon lit the tunnels of trees, or until the stars came out, the blackness was a time for throats to be slit soundlessly, and children to be stolen.
25
The idea of the new villages was to isolate the terrorists from their supporters. Lydia knew that, but was still shocked by sharp bamboo spikes, embedded in a moat surrounding three, parallel, chain wire fences and, at intervals, huge observation towers.
She glanced at Jack. In a white, freshly laundered shirt he looked handsome, but out of place.
‘The police will let us know if they get any leads,’ he said. ‘But I reckon this place is our best bet. Unless he’s in the jungle.’
Once through security, they began to search.
Lydia held her nose. ‘It smells awful.’
‘It’s latrines,’ Jack said. ‘There’s no running water.’
The place was bigger than she’d thought, noisy, and packed with people. For a moment her heart sank. ‘This’ll be like looking for a needle in a haystack. How many people are there?’
‘A couple of thousand.’
‘What do they do here?’
‘Some are my tappers.’
‘And the rest?’
He shrugged. ‘The rest are a problem.’
Lydia brushed off the mosquitoes from her arms, and looked at the chilling rows of drab huts, none of them bigger than a garden shed.
‘It looks like a concentration camp,’ she said.
A bell clanged and a loudspeaker bellowed an announcement. The crowd thickened, and the noise stepped up a level. People began making their way to a raised platform, at one end of a bare open area. It was six o’clock and growing dark.
Her heart lifted. ‘Look! Over there.’
A small, brown-skinned boy hung back in the shadow of a hut.
‘Maz?’ she called and stepped towards him. ‘Is it you?’
The boy came out of the darkness, a ragged, dark-eyed child.
She sighed. ‘I suppose it was a bit too much to hope for.’
Jack put an arm round her.
‘What if he’s hurt? Is there a doctor?’
Jack shook his head. ‘Shall we hang on here? If Maz is anywhere, he’ll likely be watching.’
‘Not if he’s held captive, he won’t.’
‘Let’s just scan the crowd in case, and put the word round after. Try not to make it too obvious that you’re looking.’
She tried to ignore the stale smell of sweating bodies as they followed the horde gathering at the stage. Jack slipped them into a gap near the front, where lanterns covered with green and orange saris were hung for jungle atmosphere. A beaten gong signalled the start.
Chinese dancers, in traditional dress and elaborate headgear, came out from behind a makeshift curtain. Lydia looked past the performers, head swivelling, eyes scanning the crowd. There were dozens of children that might have been Maz. She’d start to smile, think she’d spotted him, become excited, but every time it was not.
The Assistant DO stepped out to introduce the play.
‘It’s a piece of propaganda from our side,’ Jack said. ‘To persuade young girls to stop idolising the insurgents.’
Right now Lydia didn’t care. All she cared about was finding Maz.
The play began.
‘Smile. Try to act normally,’ Jack whispered.
Lydia wasn’t listening. Blood pounded in her ears. She’d seen someone. Not Maz, but in the crowd on the other side of the stage, Lili stood squashed between two rough-looking men. No longer dressed smartly, she seemed unwell. Shocked by the girl’s thin face, Lydia tugged on Jack’s elbow and turned to him.
‘There – it’s Lili. She looks awful.’
When she glanced back, the girl had gone.
‘I don’t think it would have been her,’ he said. ‘Lili knows how to take care of herself. I’m sure she’s okay. Come on, let’s go. Maz isn’
t here.’
‘Where next?’
‘Search the outer areas. Then work back to the centre.’
After elbowing their way out, they passed a square metal container, rather like a large hut, and heavily padlocked. Dozens of birds were scavenging in the dust.
‘It’s a food silo,’ he said, seeing her frown. ‘The police control the supply.’
They carried on towards the end of the camp, where a ripe stench of swamp reached them from beyond the moat. Here the paths between the huts were muddy, the insect-laden air heavy, and no children ran about. Lydia looked past the wire and into the jungle’s dark green depths. She felt its silence even more than its noise, couldn’t bear to think of Maz out there.
‘Not much hope here,’ Jack said.
She shook her head, and crossed her fingers that he’d be here somewhere.
They retraced their steps and stopped at a coffee house. ‘Wait here,’ he said. ‘I’ll ask the owner.’
Dozens of leaflets flapped in the dust. She picked one up, and stared at pictures of fat ex-terrorists, showing off in front of their starving comrades. The Chinese letters stamped across the top were no doubt a call to surrender. She sat to wait for Jack, watched a bunch of children run along the narrow path. Could Maz be one of them? She called his name. None turned. Instead, a man came up, smelling of strong tobacco. He held out his hand, his face too close, reached in the pocket of his loose black trousers. Lydia drew back, afraid he was about to pull a knife. But all he held in his hand was a worn cloth purse.
She searched in her bag for coins, and put ten cents on the table. She felt uneasy. It was nearing dusk and paraffin lanterns shining from the huts made the place look friendlier, but her heart still thumped.
Jack came out with cups of coffee.
‘I’m glad you’re back. Any news?’
‘No. But look. It’s Bert.’
He pointed at a man keeping an eye on the crowd on the other side of the narrow street, while two soldiers went from hut to hut, and occasionally dragged people out.
‘They’re looking for anything illegal, to stop stuff getting out. If they do find something, the owner will be detained for eighteen months.’
Separation, The Page 16