White Christmas in Saigon

by Margaret Pemberton

  At Go Vap, a state-run orphanage, the conditions were horrendous. Food was simply put out for the children to help themselves to, and in the mad scramble, the smallest and the weakest received nothing. Serena tried to count the number of dark heads in one courtyard alone and gave the task up in despair after she had reached three hundred and twenty. There was no laughter in the orphanage, no toys, no personal care for any child. Physical chastisement seemed to be the only way that any sort of order was enforced and, as at the first orphanage she had visited, the air was redolent with the smell of soured milk and sodden bedding.

  As she wearily left the misery of Go Vap behind her and told her taxi driver to take her to the last-named orphanage on her list, she felt physically sick. The scale of the problem was stupefying. There weren’t simply hundreds of children in Saigon’s orphanages, there were thousands.

  The next orphanage was situated in a rat-infested alley not far from Tu Do Street. Serena took a deep breath, prepared for the worst, and entered.

  It was like entering another world. The attendant who opened the door to her was not a nun, but neither was she an untrained peasant girl, as many of the assistants at the other orphanages had been.

  ‘Can I help you?’ she asked in a pleasant New Zealand accent.

  Serena didn’t stoop to the lies she had felt necessary previously. ‘Yes,’ she said, looking beyond the girl to a small courtyard where dozens of tiny babies were lying kicking their legs in the sunshine. ‘I’m British and I’m going to be in Saigon for quite a while. I’ve been trying to find an orphanage that would appreciate whatever help I could give it.’

  The girl’s face broke into a broad smile. She was in her early twenties with a mass of thick dark hair held away from her face in a ponytail. ‘Then you’ve come to the right place,’ she said zestfully. ‘My name is Lucy Roberts. Step right inside.’

  Within minutes Serena was aware that her initial instincts had been correct. The nursery was small, packed to capacity, and lovingly and efficiently run. Some of the staff were young Vietnamese girls and not trained nurses, but their attitude to the children in their care was heartening. Apart from Lucy, the girl who had welcomed her inside, there were four other trained members of staff, another New Zealand girl, an American, and a German.

  ‘And who has overall responsibility?’ Serena asked as Lucy handed her a baby to hold and feed while she began to feed another.

  ‘Dr Daniels. He’s a New Zealander too. He isn’t here at the moment, as it’s his day for taking a clinic at Grail, the former French military hospital. He’s an eye specialist,’ she added.

  Serena awkwardly adjusted the tiny baby in her arms. She had never bottle-fed a baby before, and it was proving to be a far more difficult operation than she imagined.

  ‘Why are the majority of the other orphanages in the city so badly run? Why is this orphanage, and to a lesser extent the orphanages run by the Sisters of St Paul, the only exceptions?’

  Lucy sighed, deposited the baby she had been holding back on to the rug, and picked up another little mite who was noisily demanding to be fed.

  ‘The main problem is that there are far too many abandoned and orphaned children needing to be looked after. The orphanages can’t cope, and the majority of people employed in them are untrained. Hence the conditions that you have seen today.’

  The baby Serena was holding finished its bottle and copying Lucy, Serena lifted the baby and laid it against her shoulder, rubbing his back to encourage a burp.

  ‘What do you mean by abandoned? Do you mean that some of these children do have parents?’

  As the noise of crying babies demanding to be fed increased, Lucy had to raise her voice.

  ‘Probably fifty percent of them.’

  Serena nearly dropped the child she was holding ‘Fifty percent? Then why are they in orphanages? I don’t understand.’

  ‘That’s because you haven’t been in Vietnam for very long,’ Lucy said gently. ‘The poverty that exists here is something nearly impossible to comprehend if you have only lived in the West. Many women abandon their children because they cannot feed them. Others are abandoned because they are deformed and will be an economic liability. Others are unwanted because they are of mixed race. Many are the children of prostitutes who simply want to be free of the child so that they can return to work. And in Vietnam it is easy to be free of a child. There is no documentation of birth. The charity wards of the maternity hospitals have two and three women to a bed. It is the easiest thing in the world for a woman to walk out, leaving her baby behind her.’

  ‘And the others?’ Serena asked, aware of a dizzying, fundamental change taking place deep within her.

  ‘The others are casualties of the war. Thousands of civilians are being killed in the fighting. These pathetic scraps of humanity are the result. Babies and children without parents or grandparents. We do the best we can, here at Cáy Thóng. We are funded entirely by voluntary subscriptions. Mainly from the western embassies and from various military units based in Saigon. It’s a very hit-and-miss affair, and we need all the help we can get.’

  Serena laid the baby that she had been holding back on to the rug and picked up another one. She had taken off her Burberry, and where she had been holding the baby, her lime-green Mary Quant minidress was damp with regurgitated milk stains. She did not care. For the first time in her life she was seized by a sense of mission.

  ‘I can help you financially,’ Serena said, thinking of the money she had been left by her grandparents and which had always enabled her to live in comfortable ease. ‘But I would also like to help practically.’

  ‘Then you need to speak to Dr Daniels. He’ll be here in half an hour. Don’t be put off by his abrupt manner. It comes from having a crucifying workload and working eighteen and nineteen hours out of every twenty-four.’

  Mike Daniels regarded her unenthusiastically. ‘Are you a trained nurse?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Are you a trained child-care attendant?’

  ‘No.’

  He didn’t look like a doctor. He was a strongly built man of about thirty, carelessly dressed in slacks and a sleeveless Sea Island shirt that exposed a chest and arms that might have belonged to a professional weight lifter. His hair was thick and unruly and very dark, as were his eyes. Her first impression was that he was a purely physical personality, and then she noted the sensuality and the sensitivity in the lines of his mouth. Aggressive he may be, but it would be rash for her to make any hasty judgements.

  ‘Then you can’t possibly be of the slightest use to us here.’

  Serena gasped in indignation. ‘Why not? I’m intelligent. I can certainly look after children a damn sight better than most of the people I’ve seen looking after children today.’

  ‘Those children were not in Cáy Thóng.’ Mike Daniels’s eyes flickered over the waist-length fall of silver-blond hair, the exquisitely cut and ridiculously short minidress, the beautifully shaped and vibrantly pink-lacquered fingernails. ‘I’m well aware of your motivation in offering us your help, Miss…?’

  ‘Mrs Kyle Anderson,’ Serena said frostily, aware that her title and maiden name would cut no ice with Mike Daniels and would probably only antagonize him further.

  ‘You see yourself swanning around the nursery, being an angel of mercy, though not, of course, soiling your expensively manicured hands in the process. Vietnam, to you, is a romantic adventure. Well, I’m sorry, Mrs Anderson, but I can’t accommodate you. If time is hanging heavy on your hands, as I’m sure it is, then you’ll have to find some other way of occupying yourself.’

  Serena’s right hand itched to slap his face. She controlled the impulse with great difficulty, saying through clenched teeth, her eyes blazing, ‘Has anyone ever told you that you are an arrogant, insufferable, ignorant, prejudiced bastard? I want to work at Cáy Thóng because there is a sea of human misery around me and I want to do something, anything, to help relieve it! I’m quite capable of feeding ba
bies, and changing nappies, and washing laundry and sitting up with sick children. I’ve seen the children here and I know the sort of ailments they’re suffering from. If I am shown, I am more than capable of simple medical tasks such as giving injections and treating skin eruptions. I have a far more realistic idea of what is involved than you seem to think I have, Dr Daniels! And I have every intention of being here at seven in the morning and helping out with whatever task you wish to give me, even if the task is cleaning the floors!’

  Before he could reply, she spun on her heel, marching from the courtyard, terrified that even a second’s delay would enable him to say scathingly that if she came, she would not be admitted.

  When she reached the Continental she was still seethingly angry. How dare Mike Daniels suggest that she would be less than useless, and that her motives were selfishly suspect! Even if he did not need her, his nursery and the children did. She had had to sidestep a rat as she had left the alley outside the nursery. She shuddered, wishing to God that she could round up every abandoned and unloved child she had seen and miraculously transport them to the open spaces and green lawns of Bedingham.

  Another thought occurred to her, so startling that it took her breath away. There was no reason why at least one of those children shouldn’t have the benefit of growing up at Bedingham. After all, they were orphans. And it was customary, where possible, for orphans to be adopted. She began to giggle to herself, imagining her father’s reaction and Lance’s reaction. But she didn’t dismiss the idea. It was far too obvious and sensible.

  ‘Mon Dieu! You’re going to do what’? Gabrielle exclaimed incredulously as they drank Manhattans in the Continental’s cocktail lounge.

  ‘I’m going to do voluntary work at the Cáy Thóng orphanage, and I’m going to see if, when I return to England, I can take one of the children with me.’

  ‘You mean adopt one of them?’

  Serena grinned. ‘Well, I don’t think they would let me take one home under any other condition.’

  ‘I think that is a very good idea, chérie,’ Gabrielle said when she realized that Serena was serious. Her pert face was unexpectedly sombre. She was missing le petit Gavin more and more each day and was seriously considering whether or not she should fly him out to Saigon. Only the night-time sounds of distant gun and rocket fire deterred her. If the Viet Cong attacked the city and le petit Gavin were harmed, she would never be able to forgive herself.

  ‘How did your meeting with the Vietnamese journalist go?’ Serena asked, well aware that the sombre expression on Gabrielle’s face meant that she was thinking longingly of her son.

  Gabrielle took a sip of her drink and with great difficulty turned her thoughts away from le petit Gavin. ‘I think he is going to be a very important contact,’ she said, lowering her voice so that no one could overbear them. ‘He admitted having been in contact with Dinh when Dinh was last in Saigon, and he said that he had heard rumours that a round-eye was travelling north with Dinh when Dinh left the city.’

  ‘Did he know where they were heading? Was he able to tell you why you had been told that there would be no further information about them?’

  Gabrielle shook her head, her sumptuous red hair gleaming beneath the soft lighting. ‘No. He did not know who the source was. But he said that he would make what inquiries he could. And he trusts me, that is the important thing, n’est-ce pas?’

  ‘It is indeed,’ Serena agreed.

  The last of Gabrielle’s gravity disappeared. ‘You have not yet told me about this doctor who made you so angry,’ she said, her eyes dancing with mischief. ‘Is he very handsome? Is that why you are prepared to be a Cinderella and to sweep floors?’

  ‘He is not remotely handsome,’ Serena said emphatically, conveniently forgetting Mike Daniels’s hard-muscled body, and his dark eyes and dark mop of unruly hair. ‘He is pig-headed, obstructive, and the most annoying man I have ever met.’

  ‘Alors, to have aroused such a passionate response, I think he must be very handsome,’ Gabrielle said complacently. ‘Which is more than can be, said for the men that I am at present meeting. The Vietnamese journalist was pockmarked, and Paul Dulles, Gavin’s bureau chief, though he is pleasant, is certainly not the kind of man one would suicide oneself for.’

  Almost the first thing Gabrielle had done on arriving in Saigon had been to visit Paul Dulles. She had made up her mind before she went that, hard though it would be, she would not tell him of Gavin’s disappearance. Dulles was a professional newsman and would be incapable of keeping such information to himself. All she had told him was that she was confident that Gavin was still alive, and that, as she had relations in Saigon, she intended staying in the city for an indefinite period of time.

  At the thought of a man handsome enough to suicide one-self for, Serena sighed. Right from the start she and Gabrielle had realized that where the opposite sex was concerned, they both had similar naturally adventurous appetites.

  ‘Unlike Abbra,’ Serena had said not unkindly when she and Gabrielle had been alone for a few moments after, the three of them had met at the Washington peace march. ‘Abbra would never even be tempted to indulge in an extramarital affair. It’s impossible, in a million years, to imagine her sleeping with anyone for the sheer fun of it. She would have to be totally and irrevocably in love with someone before she would go to bed with him.’

  Now she said to Gabrielle, ‘I can hardly believe it, but I’m actually living a celibate life. It’s killing me.’

  Gabrielle gave a grin of sympathy. She knew all about Serena’s superstitious belief that if she wasn’t unfaithful, Kyle would be released alive.

  Gabrielle, thinking of the times she bad been tempted to seek physical comfort in Radford’s bed, said sympathetically, ‘Me too. But whenever I think of Gavin, I know that it is worth it. And even if it wasn’t, who is there we could have an affair with? All the available men in Saigon are either pot-bellied journalists or clap-ridden GIs!’

  They both collapsed into laughter, and then strolled into the Continental’s dining room for yet another meal of impossibly tough buffalo meat and fried rice.

  Their lives soon settled into a regular routine. Despite Mike Daniel’s continuing low opinion of her, Serena continued to spend all day, very day, at the orphanage. She filed her nails short and removed her nail polish. She fastened her hair at the nape of her neck with a narrow ribbon. She forsook her stylish minidresses and high-heeled boots and sandals and began to wear serviceable jeans and T-shirts and flat-soled sneakers.

  Gabrielle’s days were spent in cultivating contacts with people who were Viet Cong, or whose sympathies were Viet Cong, in the hope that she would eventually find someone who would be able to give her hard information about Dinh. It wasn’t an easy task. For a Vietnamese to admit to being a member of the Viet Cong or to being a Viet Cong sympathizer was to risk arrest and possibly death. However, slowly but surely, once it became known that Dinh had been her uncle, some trust was extended to her. But no one could tell her where Dinh or his companion were, or even if they were still alive.

  At Christmas both she and Serena received a card and a long letter from Abbra. At the end of January, just as Gabrielle had decided that she could survive no longer without le petit Gavin, and was going to put arrangements in hand to have him flown out to join her, the Viet Cong launched their Tet offensive.

  – She and Serena were asleep in their room at the Continental where they were awakened by explosions and gunfire.

  ‘Hell! That’s near!’ Serena said, sitting bolt upright in bed and turning on her bedside light. ‘It sounds like it’s right outside, in the square.’

  ‘Impossible,’ Gabrielle said sleepily. ‘What time is it?’

  Serena looked at her little travelling clock. ‘Two-thirty.’

  There was more gunfire and then an explosion that shook the windows. Gabrielle’s eyes widened. ‘Tiens! I think you are right. It is in the square!’

  They both flung their bedcovers
to one side, running to the window. In the darkened square below them men with guns were emerging from manholes and racing towards the top end of Tu Do Street in the direction of the American Embassy. As they watched, US troops began to pour into the square from the south side, filing as they came. Bullets began ricocheting off the Continental’s walls, and both she and Serena ducked hurriedly back into the room.

  ‘What the hell is happening?’ Serena gasped, struggling out of her nightdress and pulling on her jeans and a T-shirt.

  ‘It’s the Viet Cong,’ Gabrielle said, searching frantically for briefs and a bra. ‘They are inside the city and trying to take it.’

  For the next three days, as raging battles took place between the Viet Cong and American and South Vietnamese Army troops, Serena and Gabrielle were unable to leave the Continental. Several times Serena tried, desperate to reach the orphanage and to ensure that the staff and the children were safe, but each time she was beaten back by sniper fire.

  On 3 February she finally succeeded. There was still heavy sniper fire and the sound of rocket and mortar attacks, but she ran from building to building, reaching the orphanage dishevelled and breathless.

  There was no tap water, and the electricity had been cut off. ‘God knows how we’re going to survive if the fighting continues for much longer,’ Lucy said to her, ashen-faced with fatigue. ‘We’re down to quinine water and whatever supplies Dr Daniels can bring in. And every time he leaves the orphanage for water, he takes his life in his hands.’

  The next time Mike Daniels left the orphanage on a foraging trip, Serena accompanied him. He didn’t thank her for her assistance, but afterwards a grudging respect crept into his attitude toward her.

  ‘He’s no longer abominably rude to me,’ Serena said in amusement to Gabrielle. ‘Only deplorably rude.’