She drained the glass. She’d come for answers, but couldn’t hide the fact that now she was here, she felt more alive than all the time she’d been in Singapore, where, though she’d tried to deny it, her thoughts kept returning to him.
‘Look, George asked me to follow you, delay you where I could. How I did it was up to me.’
‘But why?’
He shrugged.
‘And what about the bus? It doesn’t make sense.’
‘I knew it would take the same route as you were taking. It was only a matter of time before you ran out of petrol.’
‘But there was petrol.’
He tilted his head ‘Not too hard to drain it off and tamper with the gauge, while Suyin brought Maz to you.’
‘I can’t believe it. I thought it was cats outside.’ She considered for a moment. ‘What if the driver hadn’t let me on the bus?’
‘I’d have persuaded him.’
‘What about the ambush?’
‘No. Even I don’t have control of the terrorists, though I knew one of the perpetrators. He’d been arrested some time before and was feeding us information.’
‘But not about the ambush.’
He shook his head.
‘But this is crazy.’ She paused for a moment. ‘You didn’t say why George asked you to delay me.’
‘I don’t know. That’s the truth.’
She looked at his high wide cheekbones, the deep-set slanted eyes, the long nose and full lips, and noticed something vulnerable. This wasn’t how it was meant to be. She wanted to feel cross with him, but believed he was telling the truth.
He took her hand. ‘Look, after I followed you on the journey to Ipoh, and delivered you to Jack, I came back and did some investigating. I wasn’t happy. As I said, George wouldn’t say why he wanted me to delay you, and I already had clues that he was involved in something unsavoury. There’s a suggestion of fraud and possibly arms dealing. I wondered if he needed Alec to take care of some business before you joined him up in Ipoh, and that was why he wanted me to delay you. It was just a guess, of course. George once had strong connections with the Singapore underworld, smuggling, Chinese triads, that sort of thing. Mostly before the war.’
She shook her head and withdrew her hand.
‘I missed you. I mean it, Lydia.’
Lydia’s thoughts spun. She had missed him too, but nothing seemed to make sense, and there was still a question she needed to ask.
‘Why did you and Cecily split up?’
His eyes went muddy. ‘She was ashamed of me, my background. When my father died we had no money. Not only am I not white, but my mother had joined the oldest profession. Cicely is a snob. She found out.’
There was a pause.
He turned to face the window, his back to her. ‘It might be hard to understand now, but I was young, influenced by her. It was slow and poisonous, until in the end I was too ashamed of my mother to visit her. I let her die alone.’
‘I’m sorry,’ she said.
‘She asked for me, but I delayed. By the time I arrived she was dead. Now, the shame …’ He looked at his feet.
She watched his chest rise and fall, and immediately felt the impossibility of saying anything that wasn’t trite.
He looked up. ‘It’s something I have to live with.’
As they sank into silence, Lydia wondered how to react. She didn’t want to pry, or cause him further pain.
‘How did you get to where you are now?’ she eventually asked, feeling it was better to change the subject.
‘I owe it to George Parrott.’
She raised her brows.
‘He was a client of my mother’s, in the days when we lived in the shanty town down by the docks. He offered me a way out. The job as a waiter was just the start. After that I worked for him. He took me under his wing.’
‘I see.’
He came to sit beside her. ‘I’m sorry I wasn’t honest with you about my past. And now here it is, sneaking up and spoiling the present.’
‘Isn’t it guilt that does that?’ she said, but the talk had made her uneasy.
He gave her a glum smile. ‘Or fear. Don’t you want to disown anything in your past?’
‘It’s not that simple,’ she said, thinking of her own mistakes, and seeing in her mind’s eye the zoo where she used to take the girls, and sometimes met Jack.
‘So where are we now, Lydia?’ His voice was quiet.
She inclined her head. His mood had caught her unawares.
‘Everything comes back to George Parrott. I hate it. Nobody’s the way they seem.’
‘The day you visited him, the day you spotted me, I was in the room next door, waiting. After all he’d done for me, it wasn’t easy to tell him I was on to him. We quarrelled.’
‘You’re not saying that’s why he shot himself?’
Adil gave a wry smile. ‘Not while I was there.’
Lydia felt a spasm in her chest. How had she got caught up in this? She stood up. ‘So who do you work for now?’
His eyes clouded. ‘The police. I thought you knew.’
‘Okay. Just one more question.’
‘Fire ahead.’
‘Did you love her?’ she asked as casually as she could.
He cleared his throat. ‘She was difficult to love.’
‘But you did?’
He nodded.
When they went out that evening, the sky was pink. Seconds later, night rolled down a curtain of black. Starless, moonless. Fast. Soon the stars would come. From the alleyways they heard shouts, laughter, the desolate howl of a dog, and the stink of privies, which were never far away. It still felt deeply foreign to her. A low wail came from a building behind her, more a lament than a cry. She tried to remember the incantation the gardener taught the children, to keep the demons of night and darkness at bay. At times like this, Malaya seemed impossible. An impenetrable world of myth and magic, a place where colonial officialdom fought Chinese rebellion, where falsehood was rife, and having a white skin made you a red-haired devil.
She stood still, but under the blackness, the heat was building up. In hope of finding a breeze, they headed for the docks. But there, the sailing boats were still; further out, the scattered pinpoints of light from fishing boats split up the dark. There was no breeze at all. Irritable patches appeared on her neck. She rubbed her skin, and then noticed a Chinese medicine man selling ointment and herbal remedies from a makeshift stall. She looked at Adil for confirmation. He shook his head.
‘Another cold drink,’ he said, and pulled her through an archway.
They headed for a corner table at the back of the smoky bar, where a radio was playing slow music, and two or three couples danced beneath the ceiling fan. She watched green lizards dart across plain grey walls. A bare electric bulb drew enormous whirring moths that slammed into it over and over, so that they crisped and fell to the floor. He ordered iced beer for her, flavoured with cardamom.
‘Would you like to dance, Lydia?’
She opened her mouth, then closed it without speaking.
He held out a hand. ‘Come.’
Their drinks arrived. She sipped hers for a moment, then took his hand.
‘Cicely said you wanted to tell me something,’ she said as he placed a hand in the small of her back and they started to move together.
‘No.’
‘She said you were looking for me.’
‘Certainly I hoped you’d come back, you must know that, but I wasn’t looking. If you wanted to come, it would be because you decided. I didn’t say anything to her. Haven’t even seen her.’
She felt the tingle of his breath on her neck, forced herself to concentrate on his words, and decided to believe him. She closed her eyes for a second before she spoke again.
‘Are you sure you don’t know why George paid you to delay my journey to Ipoh?’
‘I really don’t know. At least not yet.’
She looked into his eyes. ‘Is there any r
eason I should trust you?’
‘I think I might be able to find a way to persuade you,’ he said, with a gentle smile, and led her back to the table. She noticed his hands, strong, well shaped, with a few dark hairs curling just above his wrists.
From across the bar a man watched them through sinister puffy eyes. Adil walked over to speak, waving his hands as he spoke. He had the advantage of speaking most of the vernacular languages of Malaya, though Lydia only caught the odd phrase. He slipped the man a couple of dollars. An image of Jack came back to her, bent over the table, reading in the light of a single lamp. She squeezed her eyes shut to block out the past and turned her face to Adil.
He smiled as he walked back. ‘Just getting the information we need for tomorrow.’
She felt confused. He felt foreign to her, unknowable.
Back into the night, an oily expanse of cloud was moving quickly.
‘It’ll be cooler now,’ he said.
He was right. All round them, shop signs flapped, litter picked up and drifted, and the boats had started to bob in the water. With the wind came air, and though she could breathe more freely, she felt constricted by troubling emotions. They hurried back as an increasingly livid sky delivered the first few drops of warm rain.
43
The grass smelt of cat poo, and thistles and dandelions had spread over Granddad’s once pretty borders. The air was full of the smells of late summer. Father heaved out the old lawn mower, examined its rusty blades, shrugged and abandoned it. He went off somewhere, shoulders drooping, and, more to the point, his clothes dishevelled. He must be missing Veronica, I thought. I felt lonely too. Fleur was quieter than ever and Billy was busy helping his dad.
I was imagining the house at the end of the sea, where my next heroine would live. American, white clapboard, and surrounded by water. I’d just got her to the ocean’s edge, when I heard a voice.
‘Hello. Anyone there?’
She sounded different, and her voice caught in the way it does when you’re trying to hide your real feelings. I looked up to see her come round the side of the house. She looked awful, her usually flawless skin red and blotchy, and her hair untidy. I pulled up a garden chair and Veronica slid into it. Shoulders shaking, she dug in her bag for a Kleenex.
For a moment neither of us spoke. She gulped, then made a bottled-up hiccupping noise. Embarrassed by this display of unlikely emotion, I stared. For a moment I hoped Mr Oliver had died, then erased the bad thought.
‘I thought you were in Africa.’
She looked up. ‘It’s Sidney,’ she said and started to really cry. I bit my lip, looked at her eyes and saw the panic there. She gulped again and her face twisted. Veronica usually showed a happy face to the world, calm and in control. It was awful to see her like this. In the end she blew her nose and managed to stop the tears.
‘He wasn’t ill at all. He’s been arrested.’
I remained completely still, not even blinking, not daring to ask, but knowing all the same.
‘For …’ She trailed off.
There was a controlled silence, on both our parts. She looked at me, blue eyes watering, and my heart thumped.
‘For molesting a child,’ she managed to say, so quietly I almost didn’t catch it. She let out a slow breath and wiped her eyes. ‘There, I’ve said it. I’m sorry. I wanted to see Alec.’
‘He’s out.’ I hung my head.
‘Emma?’
I shook my head: couldn’t look up.
‘Emma.’ She put a hand on my arm. ‘Now, dear, I very much want you to tell me the truth.’
I shook my head again, this time with my hands over my ears. I didn’t want her to touch me, didn’t want to hear. I felt like a malu-malu plant, wanted to fold right up, conceal myself, so nobody could ever touch me.
She leant over, took my hands from my ears and lifted my chin. I knew from her white face, Veronica had guessed.
‘Is that why you stabbed him?’ she asked, in the tiniest voice.
I nodded and folded my arms across my middle.
‘Oh no. Please, not you, sweetheart. What did he do?’
I stood up abruptly, wanting to keep it all inside. Nothing would make me say the words. Nothing.
‘Why didn’t you tell us?’
The garden swayed. The tree at the bottom of the garden shook. I spun round. Felt trapped. Heat exploded in my head and I couldn’t get out. My voice seemed to disappear. If I spoke, the terrible words would stick to my lips. Then anything might fall from my mouth. All the secrets I’d been guarding would fall on the floor in front of my dad. All the poisonous things I thought about him, and about what had happened to Mum, all the sinful things I’d done with Billy. All my plans. Everything would come out of me.
‘Nobody would believe me,’ I managed to say.
‘You didn’t give us a chance.’
I took a step back. ‘He made me feel dirty.’
I turned on my heels, ran up to the bathroom, locked the door behind me, sat on the floor and sobbed. When I stopped crying, I looked at my swollen eyes in the mirror. All the pain of losing my mum was there. And the dread I’d never again see the person I loved more than anyone. I hadn’t been able to tell her about Mr Oliver. Hadn’t been able to ask her what to do. I thought I’d locked the pain away, but could everybody see it in my eyes? I filled the sink, sloshed water back and forth, then splashed my eyes and sat on the floor with my knees drawn up, arms wrapped round. I held on tight to keep myself together.
Voices rose from the bottom of the stairs. Dad, back again, and talking to Veronica. I couldn’t hear what she said, except for a loud sob, followed by my father’s voice, soothing and gentle. A side to my father I could never find.
The voices went on for a few minutes, then I heard footsteps on the stairs. Veronica I hoped. Not Dad.
‘Emma?’
It was her, but the words still stuck in my throat, and my heart jumped so much I could hardly breathe.
She tapped on the door. ‘Emma dear, I’m so sorry. I’ll do anything I can.’
A rush of anger drove me up and I threw open the door. I hurled the words at her. ‘You knew. You must have known all along.’
She stepped back as if I’d hit her, shook her head and clutched the banister rail behind her.
‘No, I swear. I promise.’
I saw the shock in her eyes and heard Dad approach. We stood squashed on the little landing at the top of the stairs, just outside the bathroom door. I wanted to run, but when I looked at his moist eyes and stricken face, I stayed put. Nobody moved or spoke. I looked past my father at the flocked wallpaper. Pink roses, sprinkled with blue forget-me-nots. Granny’s choice. I felt a lump grow in my throat. The silence deepened. The whole world seemed to stop its business. Then he held out his arms to me and with a gulp I went to him. For the first time that I could remember he held me, and gently stroked my hair.
‘Forgive me, child.’
We stayed like that for several minutes. In the end I sniffed, wiped my face and pulled away. After that he didn’t know how to look at me. I took a breath and reached out a hand to him. He frowned at it, as if he didn’t understand the gesture. He looked thin and worn suddenly. I let out my breath slowly.
Veronica put her arm round me and led me downstairs, where Fleur sat white faced at the kitchen table.
‘It’s all right now, isn’t it?’ she said, in a small voice.
44
They woke at dawn and left to the rattle of shopkeepers pulling up metal blinds and throwing their doors open to the day. The mist lay heavily over the water, giving rise to a pale morning, with wispy clouds stretched right across a surprisingly washed out sky. Out of town the trees were buried in shadow.
Lydia shut her eyes and the image emerged, always the same. A woman in a pale blue dress, with dark blue cornflowers at the hem and neck. But something was different. This time the woman turned and spoke. Lydia couldn’t see her face but felt her hands, as soft as a child’s, and hear
d the words ‘Tell her I came.’ That was all.
She opened her eyes, not realising she’d been asleep. By the time they reached a resettlement village, the sun was so bright it bleached the colour from the day.
It was an uneasy time among colonial administrators. Malaya had, at the end of August, achieved independence from Britain. Lydia had seen the new ten-dollar notes, the queen replaced by a farmer and buffalo ploughing a paddy field. A few British Civil servants, like Ralph, were retained to keep the administrative arrangements running smoothly. Others had gone. The new prime minister was setting up an Inspectorate General of Police with responsibility for internal security, though some British police stayed put. Lydia didn’t know how much it would affect her life, but was aware of feeling less comfortable in the streets. Eyes followed her where none had before, and she began to hold her handbag tighter.
Adil looked sideways at her, his slanting eyes intense. ‘What do you see when you close your eyes?’
‘Memories. Images. You know. Things I want to remember. Sometimes things I want to forget.’
‘Do you want to know what I see?’ He paused and grinned at her. ‘Well, perhaps not.’
She smiled. ‘Tell me.’
‘I see a woman who doesn’t realise how strong she is.’
‘I don’t know. Sometimes it all feels too much.’
‘Don’t lose heart. You’ve come so far.’ He made a wide sweeping gesture. ‘After all you’ve been through, you’re still out in the world. Still doing your best.’
His words brought tears to her eyes.
‘How are you really, Lydia? I can’t always tell.’
She shrugged.
‘You have good days and bad days, right?’
‘I suppose so.’
‘Well, I hope this will be a good day. There’s someone I think you’ll be happy to see.’
She noticed he carried a brown paper parcel.
‘What’s in there?’
He tapped the side of his nose.
With a gesture of authority, flashing his ID, he led her through security at the gate of the village. The smell of exhaust fumes met them, as an armoured car, packed with Malay police holding submachine guns, drove in.
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