Lydia pushed herself up and paced about Adil’s apartment. She picked things up, looked at his books, tried to work out what the place revealed. She took a large illustrated text on Monet from shelves stuffed with records and books, mainly philosophical works and books on art, and flicked through it. In Adil’s absence, she thought about him too much. On the coffee table, a few neat models brought to life the animals of the jungle, and on the walls, large, heavily layered abstracts were interspersed with black and white photos of people.
Adil had left no indication of when he’d be back and didn’t call, so she made a light meal of toast and tinned sardines. The bread tasted stale and the tin of sardines was the only thing she found at the back of a cupboard, his fridge mainly containing soft drinks and a few bottled beers.
She thought of going back to Cicely’s house but wanted to see Adil again, so she sat in the window and watched the people passing by, noting how they dressed, the way they moved. When she dozed off, hair-swinging visions of Lili tormented her.
When Adil turned up after midnight, he found her sitting in the dark, paralysed with guilt, her face ashen.
‘Lydia?’
For a moment, she barely noticed him sit beside her. He took her hand and gently stroked her cheek. A dull rumble of traffic and the sound of a piano came from the street. She covered her face with her hands, then, feeling his breath on her neck, she cried.
He held her very close, their breathing in tune, but a blast of noise in the street broke up the moment.
He coughed, and she pulled away, feeling a little foolish. ‘Who painted the pictures?’ she asked, avoiding his eyes.
There was a pause.
‘Someone I used to know,’ he said at length. He seemed to be studying her face in the half-light. ‘I’m sorry it took so long. I have to tell you my news.’
Her feelings under control, she looked at him. ‘Is it good? Your news?’
‘I hope so …’
38
Veronica popped into my room to say she was off. I really wanted to talk to her before she went, but considered for a moment. If the school found out how I’d rifled through the files, more than a year before, I’d be in big trouble.
I took a breath, crossed my fingers, and smiled at her. Then I explained how I’d found out a solicitor was paying my fees.
‘So I wrote to him, but he said they couldn’t divulge the name, client confidentiality or something.’
I felt slightly nervous when she looked a bit dismayed.
‘I won’t tell your father, Emma,’ she said, ‘if that’s what you’re worried about. It’s not that. It’s just I thought he was paying.’
‘I thought it was Dad too, but Gran says he’s broke.’
She tilted her head to one side, narrowed her eyes and began to smile. ‘You thought it was me, didn’t you?’
I reddened.
‘That was the reason for the grilling you gave me that time, wasn’t it? About Freddy, my solicitor. I thought it was strange, your sudden interest in my legal concerns.’
I pulled a face.
‘Well, darling, it really isn’t me. But next time I see Freddy, I’ll ask if there is a way he can find out.’
‘Thanks.’
She gave my shoulder a squeeze and left.
Half an hour later I went out, humming. My collar up, I stared at the pavement as I walked, trying to get to one hundred without walking on a crack and disturbing the frighteners who hid in there.
I liked the quiet of the May half term holiday. It was nice in a way, not knowing what would happen next, even though nothing much ever did. At school everything happened to a timetable, even down to when you brushed your teeth or went to the loo, and heaven help you if you hadn’t done a number two, because then they’d dose you with cod liver oil.
Between the tall trees lining the road, the wind was blowing wildly. I was counting, and didn’t see him approach from the shadows, only glanced up because there was the smell of smoky bacon coming from a house nearby.
‘Emma,’ he said, and made to walk past.
I caught his eye, and saw, behind him, the morning clouds were black and broken, with silver light in the gaps between.
‘Billy! Sorry, I didn’t see you.’
I was close enough to smell the shampoo he must have used. Peppermint. And close enough to see the way his frayed shirt collar stuck up at the back.
‘Thought you were ignoring me.’ He looked at the ground, and the tips of his ears turned red.
‘Don’t be daft. It’s just I was miles away.’
He shuffled from foot to foot. ‘How’s school?’
A moment from the past returned to embarrass me. The memory of undressing in front of him. He might have had the same thought, because his whole face turned red. In the uncomfortable silence, he laughed. ‘Fancy a trip to the barn?’ he said, though his voice sounded unnatural. ‘For old times’ sake.’
As we stood face to face, I reckoned he just said it for something to say, and I didn’t know what to say. I hadn’t seen this tall gangly boy for ages, but suddenly the devil inside me piped up, and I agreed.
My feet moved somehow, and we made off in the direction of the barn, neither of us speaking. The sun came out brighter, and from the field behind the trees a smell of cow dung drifted our way. Each blade of grass was emerald, backlit like in a film, and the sky turned yellow between the dark clouds. As we walked, every noise seemed emphasised, the birds, the wind, our footsteps clunking and shuffling, not walking in time. In the distance an occasional car beeped its horn. I was buzzing all over, so much so that I had pins and needles in my toes.
He was still shabby, but when the sun touched his face, from the corner of my eye I saw there was something sweet too. He sloped rather than walked, hands in his pockets, dark blond hair falling over his eyes. And he’d grown into his teeth. In fact they looked white and sparkly. He said he went to the grammar school.
‘How is it?’ I asked.
‘Yeah. Good.’ He paused and touched my arm. ‘Em.’
Something fierce about the look of his face made me blush, and the gap between us suddenly shrank.
‘Sorry about before. You know … I had no choice.’
My heart flipped over. He was referring to the day he’d been forced into telling them where I was hiding. ‘Don’t be daft, Billy,’ I said. ‘That was zillions ago. Forget it.’
We walked on, chatting a bit more easily, though the feeling of awkwardness hung on a bit. At the barn he stopped at the bottom of the ladder, stared at his feet, then looked at me with eyes shining like mirrors, and a strange expression on his face.
‘You’re really beautiful, Em,’ he said. He half smiled but looked self-conscious.
At once I knew why we were there, and it wasn’t for old times’ sake. I didn’t care. He called me beautiful and in that moment, more than anything, I wanted to be.
We avoided the rotten boards and sat with a gap between us, our legs dangling over the edge. He leant across as if to kiss me. I moved the wrong way and his lips caught the side of my nose. He turned scarlet but I giggled and shuffled up close. He kissed me again and this time it was in the right place. He put an arm round me and I leant up against him. He was warm, really warm, but a voice in my head repeated words I’d overheard my father say to Mum.
‘Blood will out, Lydia. Emma is uncontrollable. She’ll follow in your footsteps – and your mother’s – if she remains out of control.’
He’d slammed the door, but I stayed glued to the spot. What was it my mother had done, and exactly where would blood come out?
Before Billy and I left the barn we lay on our backs holding hands. We didn’t do anything more after the one kiss. He smelt of cigarettes and though he no longer wanted to be a magician, he still had magic in his hands. I knew because when he squeezed mine, the tingle spread to my chest. It was like being in another world, safe and out of the way.
Back at school again, and it was Saturday. I sat i
n the hall outside the office, waiting to pick up my letters. The odd job man appeared with a ladder and chucked me a toffee. I watched two nuns pass by, heads together, looking serious. Three girls came by and one of them winked: Rebecca. We seemed to have reached a truce of kinds.
The black and white hall floor had chips round the edges of the tiles, and dirt impacted in deep scratches. The walls were dull brown, and a houseplant took up one corner of the hall, a spindly rubber plant, grown too tall, missing half of its lower leaves. Nothing like the rubber trees of Malaya.
Once, Father took me up in a helicopter, early. As the light came up, I looked down on our house and the school, and saw the mist that lay above the rocky boulders in the river. Then we flew above rubber plantations and the jungle. From above, the land looked dense and frightening. Father said the spirit of the jungle had a voice, a Chinese voice. I thought he was talking about real spirits, and laughed. He didn’t explain he was referring to terrorists.
My mum and dad were so different. An image of my mother’s wide smile appeared, full of life. Dad never laughed as much as her. I tried to remember what she was wearing the last time I saw her, when she drove us to school. I remembered getting out of the car and us waving as we ran backwards. But that’s all I could remember. My eyes grew damp. It upset me that I was losing my memories.
The secretary came out of her office and stood in the doorway, a clutch of envelopes in her hand.
‘Penny for them,’ she said with a smile.
I stood up, feeling defensive, as if she could see into my heart. She reached across, holding an envelope by the tips of manicured fingernails, lacquered in sugar pink. I slipped it into my pocket, and went to the bench in the middle of the shrubbery. With the summer holidays approaching, I would get a chance to talk to Dad. He worked in Birmingham now, smartly dressed and travelling long distances.
I felt in my pocket for his letter and ripped it open. They were usually brief and today’s was no different, except for a fact tucked away at the bottom. I hugged myself when I read that Mr Oliver was ill.
Just the thought of the wedding made my heart lurch. My fantasy was that if Veronica found Emma Rothwell, alive and well, we’d go to stay with her after the wedding. I didn’t consider she might not want us with her, or might refuse to accept us as her grandchildren, or might not even be our grandmother.
I went to the quiet room to write more of my latest venture. Lose myself in a story.
It was a large airy space with high up windows, so you couldn’t look out, and where we sat our dreaded end of year exams. Supervised by a rota of sixth form monitors on Saturdays, anyone who felt inclined could go there to get on with what they wanted. Talk was forbidden, so it became my only opportunity to write uninterrupted. Most girls avoided it like the plague; I guarded it jealously. I wanted to work on my current story, a melodrama in which my new heroine, Claris de la Costa, was locked in the suffering caused by her evil grandfather. Sinking into the silence around me, I needed to come to a swift conclusion. Something that would have the reader gasp, open-mouthed with surprise, at my wit. But I kept losing the thread, so relieved by the contents of Dad’s letter that I couldn’t concentrate. I crossed my fingers and made a wish that Mr Oliver would stay ill for a very long time. In fact, for ever.
39
The decaying hospital, once a palatial District Officer’s residence, had been taken over by Japanese during the war, and used as a prison. The sombre building, halfway up the hill, now a place to house the mentally ill, was entered through an intricately carved wooden door. Inside, Lydia shrank from the stench. With no natural light and a series of locked doors spaced round an octagonal hallway, it wasn’t hard to imagine the screams of torture victims. She flinched at the thought of how much pain must have been absorbed into those walls.
With fists clenched, and a stern face, Adil walked over to the office. There was no trace of the previous evening’s gentleness. At the desk he flashed his ID. A reluctant guard nodded, then opened one of the doors and led them through the length of the building. From the floor above came the sound of misery: a peal of unnatural laughter, soft persistent weeping, a sudden low pitched sob. Just as they became accustomed to the gloom, the guard opened another door, indicating they should enter.
‘Press the bell when you want to leave.’ The man grunted and slammed the door.
Lydia heard the key turn in the lock and looked about her. It was a drab little room, from which all colour had drained away. A stink of urine and disinfectant came from a covered bucket in one corner, and there was the sound of water from an underground stream flowing beneath the floor. With the damp, the smells of the jungle leaked through. Lydia’s stomach turned over.
Lili sat on a metal chair. Ragged and changed beyond recognition, her formerly luminous complexion grey, her slim frame emaciated, the beautiful long hair roughly shorn. She raised a face dotted with mosquito bites, and lined with rage.
‘Are they mistreating you?’ Lydia asked, appalled.
The girl got up, spun round and hurled her chair at Lydia. It clattered against the wall, before landing on the floor, missing her target. She launched herself at Lydia. Adil caught her arm and forced her back. Eyes darting between them, she struggled, scratching and clawing at Adil’s face, and beating his chest. When she eventually grew limp, he let her go.
‘She stole him from me.’ She hissed the words and narrowed her eyes, a thin smile twisting her features. ‘Only I knew what Jack really liked.’
Pulling up her skirt, she turned round with her back to them, and made a rotating movement with her naked arse.
Lydia recoiled, suppressing the urge to retch.
‘I only persuaded his mother the child was in danger. In return for helping her get Maznan back, they said …’ She paused and hung her head. ‘I did not want them to kill him.’
‘Go on,’ Adil said coldly.
Lili winced. ‘They agreed to bring Jack for me.’
Lydia’s hand went to her mouth.
‘No! Not to kill him. If I helped them get Maznan, they would take Jack away. From you. White bitch. Not kill him.’ She pointed at Lydia, then leant her skeletal body against the wall and slumped to the floor.
Adil went across to her, lifted her by the arms, placed her chair the right way up and sat her down on it. ‘Do you want a glass of water?’
She shrank back, and stifled a sob. A silence fell. Lydia looked at the dim square of light at the barred window. She wanted to blame the girl, but this wasn’t her fault. An image etched on the back of her eyes surfaced once again. Jack lying in the dust, his blood congealing.
After the girls died, she’d hoped her love for Jack would be the road to salvation. That together they’d give each other what both longed for. Instead she brought death to him and insanity to Lili. No one had been saved. She felt dizzy in the stagnant air. There was no salvation in this hellish country, only the certainty of heat, sweat and violence.
Adil motioned Lydia towards the door.
‘What happened to Maznan’s mother? Have they got her?’ Lydia asked him.
‘I never meant for him to die,’ Lili sobbed. ‘I loved him.’
Adil pressed the bell. ‘I’ll tell you afterwards.’
‘I painted the wall of the temple,’ the girl said, in a sing-song tone, staring at Lydia with a dangerous edge to her black eyes.
Lydia caught Adil’s eye. He shrugged.
‘I painted four dragons, galloping in the sky. But I painted their pupils in. It was big mistake. They flew away.’ She laughed bitterly and spat on the filthy floor.
Adil glanced back at her.
She put one finger to her mouth and gave him a fierce look. ‘Shhh! Just one remained. The one with a blank eye …’ She trailed off, still staring at him.
They left the room and were shown out of the back entrance. Relieved to be out in fresh air, Lydia closed her eyes and breathed freely. Adil was already moving off.
‘You said you’d tell me
about Maz’s mother,’ she said, catching up.
‘Maz’s mother became one of the girls who collects subscriptions. Dressed up as a tapper, in dark blue with a black headscarf.’
Lydia frowned.
‘She collected subscriptions for the people on the inside. She got access that way. To the insiders, and at the same time to the workers on the plantation.’
‘And how did Lili end up here?’
He shrugged. ‘After she was picked up by harbour police they decided she was deranged.’
Beneath a pink sky they walked on to a once beautiful mosaic floor, now pockmarked, and surrounded by white hibiscus grown ten feet high. It gave on to rambling overgrown gardens, where fragments of sound rose from the town below. A flock of birds swooped by, and in a distant part of the grounds, she heard a door swing in a sudden breeze. She looked towards the sound.
‘It’s a summerhouse. Would you like to see?’
He walked with purpose to a crumbling pavilion. The house itself was hidden in a small grove, and surrounded by half a dozen tall trees, their branches leaning in to form a patterned canopy. Chattering monkeys raced up the trunks, to swing, one handed, from the top. Flowers of intense rose pink, with dark wrinkled leaves, fought their way through the windows, and the broken glass was tinted gold as the sun sank behind the mountain.
The door was warped, but with a determined push from Adil’s shoulder, it gave way. Within, all that remained was a wooden bench and a couple of shabby rattan armchairs.
‘I used to come here you know. In the beginning, George got me a job as a waiter. Those dazzling pre-war social extravaganzas. It’s where I first met Cicely, laden with necklaces and bangles halfway up her arms, all bought from the spice market. Nineteen, penniless, and reckless.’
Lydia stared him in the eye. He was showing the strain.
‘Of course it wasn’t like this then. It was a scene set for love. Harriet Parrott saw to that. Silk cushions, scented candles, incense, flowers.’ He spat into the dust.
Goose bumps came up on her skin. ‘What is Cicely to you?’
Separation, The Page 24