He cleared his throat. ‘I told you we worked together.’
‘That’s all?’
A brief silence followed. At the back of her mind something wasn’t right and she realised she didn’t quite believe him.
He ran a hand across his smooth head. ‘She’s a dangerous woman.’ There was a pause as he looked about. ‘Come on. Let’s go. I hate this place.’
‘Is it just the place?’ She tried to meet his eye, but he snorted and avoided contact. She watched him carefully, his face in profile now. ‘I’m right aren’t I? There is something else?’
‘I didn’t realise it showed.’
‘Why?’
‘You sure you want to know?’
She nodded, but had become used to searching for clues and felt a twinge of fear. If he was about to fill in the gaps, she wasn’t sure if she really wanted to see the whole picture.
His voice was distant as he began to speak, and she was reminded of how he had seemed when they first met. She’d almost forgotten that cool haughty man, and watched as he turned his back on her.
‘A jeep full of Japanese soldiers took my mother to a place very like this. This and other buildings like it. Mainly they wanted underage Chinese girls, but even though she was older, she still had a freshness about her and an air of fragility, so they gave her to the young green boys who treated her brutally. She was lucky to live. Most were kicked to death, or had their throats slit.’
Lydia looked through the broken glass in the window at the darkening sky. She closed her eyes and concentrated on his voice.
‘They put her in a tank of cold water up to her neck. She had to stand for forty-eight hours or drown. How she survived …’
He paused, and she opened her eyes. He seemed somewhere else, and the shrug of hopelessness he gave, palms held uppermost, twisted her heart.
‘They kept her for six months. Then one day they threw her out on to the street, naked, stinking of faeces and vomit, and covered in sores from where they put out cigarettes on her flesh.’
He pulled at a rope of dark leaves that twisted through a broken window. Picked a large, intensely pink rose, brought it to his nose, then let it drop to the ground. Very deliberately, he placed his heel on it and ground it into the dirt.
‘As I said, she was lucky, if you can call it that. Many were forced to dig their own graves, then buried alive. She never recovered. Not really. Later, in her greatest hour of need, I …’
He hesitated.
‘I was just too busy. The last time I saw her, she barely recognised me. Can you imagine how that feels, Lydia? I will never forgive myself. Never.’
Lydia sat completely still, the air between them thickening. As his words sank home, she felt for the first time the pain in them, the inaccessible place he kept hidden.
‘I’m so sorry, Adil.’
He shrugged. ‘That was the world then.’
‘Do many Japanese remain?’
‘All I know is, very few bastards were born. They had a habit of killing the women they raped. I know all men are capable of cruelty, but because of my mother …’
‘Adil.’
He clenched his fists. ‘The war here ended in the middle of August, following the dropping of the bomb on Hiroshima. Thank God for it!’
She gulped, shocked by his words.
He lit a cigarette.
‘I didn’t know you smoked,’ she said, wanting to help, but not knowing how.
‘Only sometimes.’
‘What will happen to Lili?’
‘She’ll get better. They’ll let her out. She might get a chance to work in one of the troupes of actors. Or she’ll turn to prostitution.’
‘And Maznan’s mother?’
‘Come on,’ he said. ‘I think we’ve had enough. I’ll tell you on the way.’
They left the summerhouse and passed back through the lonely gardens. A flat, black Malayan night descended with the rapidity of a curtain, and a depth of blackness like no other. She kept close to Adil. She didn’t want to stumble in the dark, but she didn’t actually touch him either.
‘In the end Maznan’s mother came out. She’ll be in detention by now with her son.’
‘Maz will be all right?’
‘I think so.’
‘Won’t she be a target for the terrorists?’
He shrugged. ‘Hopefully not. More and more are surrendering.’
‘Why?’
‘There’s suffering on the inside. It’ll be over soon. Since Templer took over in nineteen fifty-two, it’s only been a matter of time.’
Lydia knew. Alec said Templer was a tough, hands on Commissioner, who, along with the Psychological Warfare Department, used every trick to counter terrorism.
‘His idea, was it, the acting troupes and film vans?’ she asked.
Adil nodded. ‘It’s working at last.’
Only the tip of his cigarette lit their way, and in the darkness she lost her balance. She tipped forward, her heel caught in a crack in the hard ground. He reached out a hand to break her fall, but when she examined the shoe, she felt the high heel hanging uselessly. She pulled it right off. Now she had no option but to lean on him as she hobbled towards the entrance where they’d parked.
‘So Maz is with his mother?’ she asked, once they reached the tarmac.
‘I told you I’d find someone who knew. That was the tip-off I had yesterday, but I wanted us to see Lili to confirm her involvement.’
That night it was her turn on the sofa. She padded into the kitchenette, mixed herself a large gin and quietly pulled up the blinds. A full moon slipped from between the clouds to silver an expanse of water, punctuated by dark sampans. She examined her nails, filed, clean, lacquered, prettier than when she lived with Jack. Oh, Jack, she thought, can I have forgotten you so soon? Only when the gin tingled in her blood and she felt light-headed could she relax.
Now she knew the truth about Jack’s death, and what had happened to Maz, what was there to keep her here? After all, that’s what she’d come to find out. And as for Adil, she couldn’t allow herself to get closer. Apart from the fact he wasn’t white, it was far too soon, and Jack still cast a long shadow.
She thought of Adil and scanned the horizon in the dark, tried not to imagine him asleep in the next room. She felt the war inside her. Her mistrust and her need. Who is he? she thought. He’d done all he said he would, but none the less, she was sure he’d withheld something.
40
The bus rumbled along the rugged shoreline of the Malacca Straits. Tiny fishing vessels dotted the water, and on the distant headland, Lydia spotted the lone ruin of a Dutch fort. She slid open the window to sniff wild orchids tumbling over wide spreading fig trees, their scent mingling with the hot salty air. White metallic sunlight suddenly blazed on the water. Blinded, she drew her head back in, and looked ahead instead, where the clouds spun out in a fan.
She longed for a sense of elation, a chance of hope, or, at the very least, some courage to face the future. She thought she’d become used to it, but when they picked up speed across the causeway between Johore and Singapore, her heart caught with memories of being there with her daughters. She felt the full weight of the loss bear down on her. How would she ever endure this?
Once in Singapore, the bus followed Connaught Drive, the sweeping road that paralleled the harbour, before stopping beside the Cenotaph, at the edge of Raffles Square.
As soon as the bus disappeared from view, she looked eastward and out to sea, and managed to resist a descent into sorrow. She squared her shoulders, and without even a glance towards the arched verandas of Tanglin Road, she ignored the tree-shaded boulevards of the European quarter. She turned her face up to the sun – it’d be fine. For her, like many others, that life was gone; instead, she made her way back along Victoria harbour, and the busy wide river that sliced the city in two.
A group of Englishmen in white hats, shorts, and long socks smiled as she walked past. She nodded in acknowledgement, car
ried on until her case grew heavy, then stopped to take in the old-fashioned trading vessels loading and unloading. Surprised to see them still there, she threw back her head, and laughed at the chaos. She began to feel better, watching cars and rickshaws ignoring the turbaned Indian traffic cops, and streams of people crossing the streets, kamikaze style. Singapore hadn’t changed.
She hopped on another bus. As she got closer to Chinatown, Chinese music blasted from ornate buildings, and washing hung like flags from poles thrust haphazardly from every apartment. Singapore. Crossroads of the East. Isn’t that what people said? The cheapest shopping centre in the whole world.
Most of the cheap hotels were cathouses, and she was lucky to find the Welcome Retreat, a tall thin building on three floors, with the unexpected odour of wood wax on every level. She clattered up the narrow staircase, dragging her bag to one of the three rooms at the top, which shared a bathroom.
In there, she struggled with the metal catch on the window. She wanted it open to let in air. It wasn’t the Oceanview Hotel, but at least it was clean, and though the room was musty, it didn’t stink of rancid fat, or cheap perfume. She took in the shabby furniture, then counted her dollars, for now still decorated with the portrait of the queen. With so little left, and needing a job, Singapore was the right place to be. Then maybe, with enough cash, she might get back to England: make a real new start.
Outside, a car’s tyres squealed. On the floor below, a door banged. There was something else. Strained whispers from the room next to hers; a couple having a tense argument. She sat on the edge of the bed, trying not to listen. Time crawled as she wandered round the little hotel room, wanting something else to do. She told herself this was a decision she had to make. She couldn’t rely on Adil for ever, and, in any case, it was time to be independent. Strong. She thought of his powerful face, remembered his breath on the nape of her neck when she’d cried.
The room reminded her of the dormitory at the top of a winding back staircase at the convent. Three of them had shared. She hadn’t come very far, she thought, as she lay on the bed and closed her eyes. She tried to remember the person she’d been, but the girl she saw in her mind’s eye seemed like another person, someone from another life altogether.
She saw herself just before her sixteenth birthday. The war had already begun. It had been summer, a sunny day with a totally blue sky, and she was expecting a visitor. Hair, fiery then, and wilder, like Emma’s, and Sister Patricia, hands on hips insisting she have it cut. She’d been the only girl left, the only one with nowhere to go in the holidays.
She remembered waiting on the bench in front of the convent. Eleven o’clock came and went. They brought her lemonade, and an hour later, fish paste sandwiches. She couldn’t eat and threw them on the ground for the birds. She leapt at the sound of every passing vehicle but didn’t leave the spot. Sister Patricia gave her a copy of The Family from One End Street to read, but the words wouldn’t lie still on the page.
Her visitor never came.
Lydia rubbed her eyes. The past hurt. That painful need for love. More than anything it was that. She thought of how much she’d loved her children and how little her own mother could have wanted her. She thought of Em and the last fancy dress competition at the club. Emma had gone as a clown. It was not the costume that won it, but Em turning a double somersault as she passed the judges’ desk. The dismayed expression on her face when she dented her hat had made them laugh, and she bagged first prize on the strength of it. She smiled at the memory of Fleur’s love of pretty dresses, and the terrible time when she’d had pneumonia and taken so long to recover.
She remembered standing in front of the ocean at Terengganu with Alec in 1946, six months after the war in the east ended. Malaya had been torn apart by the Japanese invasion, but they had stood, arms entwined, eating brazils and drinking coconut juice from a freshly cut shell. It had been a short break before his first tour began. Emma was just three and Fleur was on the way. She thought of the salty smell of the ocean, and when they kept the window open, the seductive scent of wild jasmine at night. How the scent had mingled with the smell of Pimms, and the heat from their bodies. How after they’d made love, she’d asked him to tell her more about his childhood. Ordinary, he said, except that his father disappeared for a while when he was a kid, but that’s what inspired him to go places.
She sighed. Things had changed. All of that was gone and with so little of Jack’s money left, she had to stop thinking and get a job. That’s what it boiled down to.
The first job she found was in Singapore’s largest department store, a marble pillared place of scented counters and whispered calm, where well-heeled customers were attended by overly courteous staff.
But on her floor, household goods, it was noisy. No calm. No perfume. A hundred cleaning products were lined up in meticulous rows, the lurid bottles dusted daily. Kettles were polished, kitchen utensils kept pristine.
To Lydia, the platform where she demonstrated the use of newfangled pressure cookers was a little theatre. It paid quite well, and she liked it, just as long as she didn’t blow one of the darn things up. Required to begin a demonstration every hour, whether or not there was a crowd, she sat on a high stool on the platform overlooking the store, her long legs crossed. From there she gazed out through the large window to watch her past walk by. European women, hair freshly set, meeting for cocktails at Raffles, and the church, surrounded by palms, where English children were instructed not to run by heavily accented Chinese amahs. It was amazing that, with an end in sight, and after so much had been destroyed by war, it all still went on.
On the day she found her second job, it filled her with hope. This was something she could do, and do well. Thrilled by her own daring, she slipped through an archway into a tented arcade of patterned silk, where fans gently moved the air, and clouds of voile floated like butterflies. Crammed into shelves that stretched from floor to ceiling, dragons, birds and pagodas on shiny taffeta fought for space with rich brocades. Her mind alight with plans, she ran up a couple of dresses on a machine borrowed from a Chinese waitress.
Though the job kept her busy, and she enjoyed the feel of the fabrics as she turned them into sequinned evening dresses, the feeling of excitement soon passed. Three months later, August 1957, with Malayan independence about to go through, and more than two and a half years since her girls had died, Lydia ended the song to scant applause. Singapore hadn’t exactly lost its shine, but tonight was Tuesday. And slow. Tonight, they wanted to fill their stomachs with booze and fried chicken.
Sister Patricia used to say she should do something with her voice. She hadn’t envisaged singing in the Traveller’s Inn at the Oceanview hotel. More appropriate would have been musical theatre or a choir. But when the manager turned out to be a portly man she and Alec had known years before, all he’d asked was could she sing.
She took a cold beer from the barman, smoothed down her skirt and went to sit by the window. She liked to watch the lights sparkle, loved the sound of water as it lapped the jetty posts, couldn’t resist the night time scents of cinnamon and ginger, and the fishy salty smell of the sea.
The manager approached her, with a grin. ‘Pink gin at the bar for you.’ He indicated a spot at the end of the long shiny bar.
People often bought her a drink at the end of her set. She felt a flash of despondency, but stood and forced herself to move. It was either that, or allow life to destroy her.
‘Who’s the guy?’ she asked. It was dark at the end and as the bar curved round a corner she couldn’t see more than a shape.
He shrugged. ‘Search me. Have a good night. I’m off for an early one.’
Lydia walked across. Two pink gins and a couple of double whiskys were lined up side by side.
A voice came out of the shadows, all breezy civility. ‘Glad you could join me.’
‘Cicely!’
‘How are you, darling?’ Cicely held out an arm, glossy red nails and silver bangles shining, but
her words were slurred.
Lydia took a step back.
‘No, don’t run off. Stay and have a drink. For old times’ sake.’ She pulled a stool up for Lydia and patted it.
‘You’re drunk.’
‘A teeny bit.’
Lydia sat. Unusual for Cicely to lose her cool. ‘Why are you here?’
Cicely smiled. ‘I stay here when I’m in Singapore. Can’t bear Raffles.’ She waved her hands. A mix of Chanel and sweat wafted about. ‘All those fuddy-duddies banging on about how it was before the war. What a joy to find you.’
‘You didn’t come to find me, then?’
‘No, but now that I have … I must tell you, Adil’s been looking for you.’
Lydia downed her drink quickly and enjoyed the sensation of gin burning her throat. She stared at Cicely, and imagined his lips as he spoke her name. ‘Let me get this straight. Did he send you?’
Cicely shrugged. ‘Darling, don’t be so suspicious. Why would he do that? Anyway, I already told you, I didn’t come to find you.’
‘What does he want?’
‘Search me. He seemed to think he had something to tell you. You know Adil. Mystery man. He refused to say.’ Cicely twirled her glass and rocked on her stool. ‘Something I’ve often wanted to ask, darling. Did you ever love Alec? You seemed so unsuited. Such a little man.’
A storm went off in her head. ‘For heaven’s sake, Cicely, he’s dead.’
Cicely pouted. ‘Don’t be a crosspatch.’
Lydia’s heart was suddenly heavy. The previously hidden thoughts about why she’d married him in the first place rose up. She sighed. ‘Okay. I thought I loved him. You persuade yourself, don’t you? He was handsome in a quiet way and I needed what he offered.’
‘Maybe he was more sensitive than you think.’
‘What?’
‘He believed you never loved him. Cried on my shoulder afterwards. Men don’t advertise that they’re not so hot in the sack, do they?’ She grinned.
Mild shock ran through Lydia. ‘Afterwards? You said you didn’t …’
‘I lied. Let’s have more drinks.’ And she waved some dollars at the barman.
Separation, The Page 25