White Christmas in Saigon

by Margaret Pemberton

  ‘Hell,’ he had said to her with his crooked grin. ‘I ain’t come so far to hand myself over body and soul to some motherfucker who doesn’t really give a shit. When the right agent comes along, I’ll know it!’

  The right agent finally came along in the shape of Marty Dennison, an Englishman with a formidable reputation where black music was concerned.

  ‘And despite having a white lead singer and two white guitarists, your music is black,’ he had said when Radford had introduced him to the band. ‘That’s its main strength. Your other strength is your singer. Anyone that sexy could take an audience by storm without your even having to play a note!’

  Contracts had been drawn up, record contracts had been signed, a tour of England in November had been planned, new songs had been endlessly discussed and even more endlessly practised. By the time she realized that Gavin’s last letter had not been followed by any others, it was the end of August.

  At first she did not worry too much. The mail delivery to and from Vietnam had always been erratic, as she knew from years of correspondence with her aunt. And probably Gavin was not in a position to write to her. The newspapers were full of reports that United States air force jets had mistakenly attacked two South Vietnamese villages eighty miles south of Saigon, killing 63 and wounding over 100 civilians. It was likely that Gavin was down there, covering the story.

  At the beginning of September, just as they were embarking on the first of their gigs, one of their pianists was found dead from a drug overdose.

  Radford was almost beside himself with fury. ‘That son of a bitch!’ he raged. ‘Why now, for Christ’s sake? Why did the stupid bastard have to spoil everything right now!’

  They had another pianist, and they could still make music, but their unique sound came from their ability to sound like an inflated studio band – three guitars, two basses, and not one piano, but two.

  ‘Let Michel stand in,’ Gabrielle had suggested, and because Michel knew backwards every number they had ever practised, and because he had little choice, Radford had bad-temperedly agreed.

  His bad temper had faded the moment he heard Michel play. ‘Jeez! Why didn’t you tell me he was this good?’ he berated Gabrielle. ‘He may not look the part, but that boy has soul!’

  By the second week in September, Gabrielle’s thoughts were no longer centred on her new singing style but on the lack of mail from Saigon. By the end of the month, when there was still no letter from Gavin, she was concerned. Then, on the first day of November, two letters, neither from Gavin, arrived simultaneously.

  One envelope was postmarked Saigon and was in Nhu’s handwriting. The other envelope was franked with the name of Gavin’s press agency.

  She picked them up from the mat slowly, sensing disaster. In his last letter he had not said what his next assignment was to be. He had been ragingly angry about the human cost of the Americans’ free fire zone policy, and enthusiastic about his meeting with Nhu, saying that he was ‘looking forward to meeting the rest of her family quite soon.’ Was that what had happened? Had he met Dinh? And if so, why hadn’t he written since?

  She opened Nhu’s letter, her hand trembling as she smoothed out the wafer-thin paper. It was written in the manner of all Nhu’s letters. No names were mentioned. Dinh was merely an ‘uncle’. Gavin was a ‘mutual friend’. The real content of the letter had to be guessed at from seemingly innocuous information.

  —your uncle was insistent, and as it was what our mutual friend wanted too, I thought there could be no possible harm.…

  …I think your uncle wants to show off his skill as a craftsman, and certainly our mutual friend seems eager to learn…

  …so they are travelling together at the moment but I unfortunately have no address for them …

  He was with Dinh. She didn’t know whether to feel jubilant or appalled. Dinh had once again come south and had asked to meet Gavin. And they were now ‘travelling’ together, and Dinh was ‘showing off his skill as a craftsman’ to him, which meant that Dinh had taken Gavin deep into Viet Cong territory and was showing him the war from a Viet Cong point of view.

  Her first recognizable reaction was relief. If Gavin was with Dinh, then he was safe. She tried to remember everything her mother had ever told her about him, ‘He was fiercely intelligent, even as a little boy,’ she had said once, ‘and because he was the only son he had a very, very strong sense of family.’ Her voice had trembled slightly. ‘And even though we have all been separated for so long, I know his sense of family is something that he has never lost. When he came south on his undercover mission for General Giap, he risked his life by entering Saigon and making contact with Nhu. He is still our brother. Still the head of our family.’

  Remembering her mother’s words reassured Gabrielle. Even though she had never met Dinh, even though there had never been any communication between them he was her uncle. Gavin was his nephew by marriage, and, despite his nationality, would be treated as family.

  Taking a deep breath, she opened the letter from Gavin’s employers. At least it didn’t contain any new or shocking information. Gavin wasn’t dead or injured. He had gone off on an assignment of his own, no one knew where, and he had not returned. Enormous efforts had been made to trace him. He had been seen leaving the bureau with a Vietnamese woman and had then entered a shabby Renault, alone. The driver, a Vietnamese, had driven off in the direction of Cholon.

  That was the last anyone had seen of him. Because of the nature of the note he had left behind, a copy of which was enclosed, no immediate alarm had been raised. Although absenting himself from Saigon without first conferring with his bureau chief, Paul Dulles, was highly irregular, it had been assumed that he was working on a story which had warranted the action he had taken.

  His continuing silence, however, had given the agency no other option but to presume him missing. His salary would continue to be paid into her account for the next six months, after which, if there was still no news of him, the situation would be reassessed. They were very regretful and hoped most sincerely that their fears for Gavin’s safety would prove to be false. If they could be of any further help she had only to telephone.

  She walked into the kitchen with both letters and sat at the scrubbed wooden table, looking down at them thoughtfully. The Vietnamese woman who had been seen talking to Gavin in the bureau only minutes before he disappeared was obviously Nhu. Had the Vietnamese driving the car been Dinh? She had no way of knowing. Whether or not it had been, Gavin was most certainly with Dinh now. Her problem was whether to reveal her information to the press agency.

  She reread both letters. If Gavin had wanted to reveal the identity of his informant, and the identity of the person he was going to meet, he could, presumably, have done so. And he hadn’t. He had said merely that ‘something huge had come up’ and that he would ‘explain all’ when he returned. But he hadn’t returned, and the only person who could explain, even in part, was herself.

  And if she did so? She rose from the table and put the kettle on in order to make some coffee, grateful that her mother was out visiting Madame Garine. Nhu would be questioned, possibly by the Americans, possibly by the South Vietnamese police, maybe by both. She would be clearly marked as having links with the Viet Cong, and it was more than likely that she would be arrested, which was precisely why Gavin had not revealed her name to his superiors. And why she could not do so either.

  She poured the boiling water on top of the freshly ground beans. There were no decisions to make. Gavin had made them all for her. All she could do was wait patiently until he resurfaced in Saigon with what she knew was going to be the biggest news scoop of the war.

  Despite the grimness of the weather, England in November was frenetic and fun. The band began their tour in the North, working the plush, giant-size, workingmen’s clubs that attracted entertainers of the stature of Tom Jones, the Righteous Brothers and Georgie Fame and the Blue Flames. As their tour progressed and they moved further south, the tra
ditional clubs gave way to a string of enormous, recently opened Mecca nightclubs. At both types of clubs they received thunderous ovations, and by the time they reached London, all of them, including Michel, were riding on a permanent high.

  ‘Baby, this is one buzz that isn’t going to die away!’ Radford had said to her with his wide, lazy grin. ‘We are really going places this time around!’

  When they reached London they made their first ever studio television performance.

  ‘What is the programme called again?’ Gabrielle asked Michel as they piled into a black taxicab that was to take them to the studios.

  ‘Ready, Steady, Go,’ Michel said in execrable English, and then, reverting to French, ‘It’s networked all over the country and this is the first time, ever, that a group without a hit record has been asked to appear. God alone knows how Marty managed it.’

  ‘He managed it because clips from the open air concert have been televised over here and because everyone in the country wants to know who the hell we are,’ Radford said, holding one leg by the ankle across his knee, his free arm flung out across the top of the rear seat, brushing the back of Gabrielle’s shoulders. ‘And because when we do cut a record, it’s going to go straight to the top, like a rocket, baby!’

  Michel squeezed himself on to the jump seat with angular clumsiness, resenting the easy, careless manner in which Radford had made bodily contact with Gabrielle. His initial enthusiasm for the American had cooled the instant he had become aware of the almost palpable sexual attraction that existed between him and Gabrielle. He knew very well that Gabrielle had not physically capitulated to the attraction, but he was always painfully conscious of Radford’s apparently innocent touchings, both on- and off-stage, and as the tour had progressed and they had all been thrown into one another’s company for at least eighteen hours out of every twenty-four, his disquiet had increased.

  ‘When do we cut the record?’ he asked tersely, staring out the window at the dark wet London streets so that he wouldn’t have to see Gabrielle’s fiery red hair brushing against Radford’s leather-jacketed arm.

  ‘The morning after we arrive back in Paris,’ Radford replied, his eyes dancing in amusement. He knew damn well what was bugging Michel and he wondered, not for the first time, just what Gabrielle saw in him that she valued his friendship so much.

  Michel fell silent. There had been many discussions between Radford, Marty Dennison, and their record company about the song they were to launch with. The deal was that they would cut a single, which would be released quickly, and that they would then immediately begin work on an album. It had been agreed early on that the album would include at least one song written by Gabrielle. With a backing arranged by Radford, it was the best song in their repertoire, and Michel knew that there was a good chance that it might also be the choice for the single.

  If it was, then he knew that in the future Radford would be working even more closely with Gabrielle, and that musically she would have less and less need of him. He wished that Gavin would return from Vietnam. At least his jealousy of Gavin wasn’t touched by fear for her. With Gavin he knew that her happiness and the happiness of le petit Gavin were secure. Their happiness would certainly not be secure if she had an affair with Radford James.

  Michel’s large, ungainly hands hung impotently between his knees as the taxi drew up outside the television studio. He had known right from the very beginning that she would never turn to him as a lover, but at least he was her friend. And if Gavin Ryan didn’t return soon from his mysterious assignment, then he had a dreadful feeling that, as a friend, he was going to have to give her some serious advice, advice which he was terrified she might not take.

  Except for Christmas Day, the entire month of December was spent in a recording studio. After her long absence from le petit Gavin while she had been in England, Gabrielle hated that she could not take him to the studio with her, as she had taken him to rehearsals. He was growing into such an interesting little person, holding his head quite steady and following her around the room with his eyes, gurgling with delight whenever she approached him to pick him up. She wanted to be with him when he said his first word and took his first step. She wanted to be with him, and she was determined that once the mammoth recording session was over and they were back on the road again, wherever she went, le petit Gavin would go too.

  She knew her relationship with Radford intrigued the rest of the band. The feeling of rapprochement between them was so total that it was impossible for anyone not to notice. Onstage, instead of merely backing her with guitar and vocals, he had begun moving forwards to share centre stage with her, turning several numbers into such highly charged, erotic duos that audiences had been brought stamping to their feet, howling for more.

  But the sexual attraction was given rein only onstage. She wasn’t in love with Radford. She was in love with Gavin. And although she was well aware that it was within her nature for her to enjoy sleeping with someone she wasn’t in love with, she knew that it wasn’t in Gavin’s nature. Wherever Gavin was, she was certain that he was being faithful. And so for his sake, and because she knew that it mattered to him, so was she.

  Wherever Radford was, there were girls. He treated them all with insolent carelessness, barely even remembering their various names. When she had teasingly chided him about his cavalier attitude, he had simply given her his dazzling gypsy smile and had said, ‘Honey, if you would only come across, like you know you should, and be my old lady, I wouldn’t have no need of anybody else!’

  She had been standing and he had been sitting down, drinking a beer, and she had laughed and run her hand tightly over his tight, crinkly hair before turning and walking away from him. Despite his smile, his eyes had been hotly serious and a flush of heat had surged down into her vagina, so ragingly insistent that it had taken her nearly all her power to have been able to laugh and walk away.

  All through January and February there was no word from Gavin. He had now been officially listed as MIA. He wasn’t the only journalist to be so. Members of the press corps who eschewed the news briefings at the Follies and instead hitched lifts on whatever air transport was available to far-flung battle sights risked their lives just as much as the soldiers in the field.

  Gavin’s salary was no longer paid directly into their joint account. Instead, she had received a sympathetic letter from the Paris office and an ex gratia payment to cover her immediate needs. She had also received a letter from Paul Dulles and had agonized about how to reply to it.

  She knew so much more than his employers did. She knew the identity of the woman who had visited Gavin at the bureau office. She knew who he had been going to meet. She was nearly one hundred percent sure of what had happened after that meeting, of the proposition that Dinh must have put to Gavin and that Gavin had been unable to turn down. She knew that he wasn’t dead, that at any moment he was likely to emerge from the jungle several pounds lighter but triumphant. He would be able to give the agency a story that no other Western reporter could give, a story of the war as seen through Viet Cong eyes by a man who had lived with them for months.

  But she couldn’t tell Paul Dulles what she knew. If she did he would immediately seek Nhu out and question her rigorously. She would be unable to answer his questions, and this contact would bring her to the attention of the South Vietnamese authorities. So Gabrielle had replied to his awkward letter of sympathy by saying that she was confident Gavin was still alive and that fear for his safety was groundless.

  Sometimes, in the long, dark hours of the night, doubt would assail her. If he were alive, surely he would have managed to get word to her via Nhu? She would toss and turn, trying to imagine circumstances under which such action was impossible. Even if Gavin couldn’t make contact with Nhu, surely her uncle could do so.

  She remembered the long years in which Nhu had heard nothing from Dinh. For men who had gone north to join the NVA, or who had stayed south and joined the Viet Cong, lack of contact with thei
r families was normal. Gavin had been out of contact with his family for only seven months. Her uncle would regard that period of time as unimportant. But what if he weren’t with Dinh? What if her aunt Nhu’s assumptions were wrong? What if Gavin had been killed months before, on the day that he left Saigon?

  It was then that she would slip out of bed and pad softly across to the crib that held her sleeping son. Gently, so as not to wake him, she would lift him up in her arms, holding him tight, tears glittering on the long, curling sweep of her eyelashes.

  All through spring and early summer, letters continued to arrive from Nhu, but they contained no further information. Nhu’s distress at being a party to Gavin’s disappearance was obvious, though carefully concealed in her wording in case eyes other than theirs should read the contents.

  In the bright light of day, Gabrielle continued to be fiercely optimistic. Gavin couldn’t be dead. If he were dead she would know. Every instinct she possessed would be telling her so. ‘He isn’t dead,’ she said repeatedly to Michel. ‘But oh! I wish that he would get word to Nhu! Just one little word and I would be able to live on it until he returned!’

  Workwise, her life was frenetic. The single had been released, and though not shooting to the top of the charts, it had entered them at a position that had pleased even Radford. Marty Dennison had asked for more songs from her, eager to capitalize on the success of the record and their British tour. He had arranged gigs for them all through the summer in places as far away as Stockholm and Dublin.

  ‘You can’t possibly take le petit Gavin with you!’ her mother had declared, aghast, when Gabrielle had announced her intention of doing so.

  ‘Yes I can,’ Gabrielle had said stubbornly. ‘Michel will help me look after him.’

  ‘But what about when you are onstage? Who will look after him then?’