White Christmas in Saigon

by Margaret Pemberton

  She waited to feel betrayal, bitterness, hurt, grief. Nothing happened. She only felt sad. Sad for Kyle, in Hoa Lo; sad for Trinh; sad for Kylie.

  When she finished reading it, she said quietly, ‘I’m glad you didn’t show me it when we first met. If you had, I don’t suppose I would ever have gone to Saigon. I would never have found a purpose in life, never have discovered what it is that I can do, and do well.’

  ‘And that is?’ he asked.

  She looked across at him and smiled. ‘Let’s go back to bed,’ she said, ‘and I’ll tell you.’

  ‘And so Bedingham is going to get a whole new lease on life,’ she said contentedly when they had made love again. ‘It’s near enough to London for you to continue to receive the kind of treatment you’ve been receiving at Walter Reed, and it’s deep enough in the countryside to be an absolute paradise for the children.’

  She didn’t notice how very still he had become.

  ‘What children?’ he asked, and this time it was he who lay propped up on one arm, looking down at her.

  ‘As many Vietnamese orphans as the authorities will allow me to adopt. Money isn’t a problem, or at least, it’s not an acute problem. I’m hoping to be able to leave Saigon with at least ten children, maybe more.’

  He sat upright, swinging his legs from the bed. For a long moment he remained with his back towards her, and then he twisted around, saying in an oddly offhand voice, ‘And you expect me to shack up with a houseful of Viets?’

  She stared at him for a moment, nonplussed. ‘It won’t be a crush,’ she said, uncertain as to whether he was teasing her or not. ‘Bedingham could house fifty children quite easily.’

  It was his turn to stare at her. His eyes were dark, almost expressionless, as if he were carefully beating down whatever emotion he was feeling. ‘You really don’t understand, do you?’ he said, and this time the tone of his voice left her in no doubt at all that the conversation had turned suddenly and deeply serious.

  She pushed herself up against the pillows. ‘No. No I don’t,’ she said in genuine bewilderment. ‘Tell me.’

  He reached across to the bedside table for his cigarettes and lighter, so obviously delaying the moment before he spoke that she no longer felt bewildered, only crazily, irrationally, afraid.

  He lit a cigarette, inhaling deeply, still not speaking. It was very, very quiet. A clock could be heard ticking, but that was all. She was seized with the passionate desire to silence the clock. To halt time. A few seconds before they had been joyously happy. She wanted to go back to that moment. She didn’t want him to speak. She didn’t want her terrible premonition of dread to be realized.

  He blew a thin plume of smoke upwards and said in the tone of voice in which he might have asked her if she wanted her drink freshened, or milk in her coffee, ‘I never want to see another Viet as long as I live.’

  She closed her eyes for a moment, knowing that it was a reaction she should have anticipated, should have been prepared for. When she opened them again he was looking at her steadily, waiting for her response. There was a gleam of perspiration on his shoulders and slight scratch marks where her nails had dug deep into his flesh. The faint, polleny odour of semen still clung to their bodies and the rumpled sheets.

  She said carefully, knowing that their whole future was at stake, ‘You feel like that only because of what happened to you in ’Nam. But there’s no need to feel like that. The children didn’t cause the war and the atrocities. They are not responsible. They have suffered terribly because of it, just as you have. When you see them, when you meet them, you will feel different.’

  His eyes held hers for a long moment. From somewhere unseen the clock continued to tick. ‘No,’ he said at last, turning away from her, reaching out for his jeans. ‘No. It isn’t so simple. It goes too deep.’

  She pushed the sheets aside, kneeling towards him, saying urgently, ‘You don’t feel hatred or revulsion toward Trinh. Why should you feel any different about the children? Why should…’

  ‘It’s no good.’ There wasn’t the slightest trace of doubt in his voice. It was flat. Unequivocal. All emotion carefully excluded. He began to pull on his jeans. ‘Trinh is one of a kind. When I met her I had no feelings about the Vietnamese one way or another. And afterwards, after Kyle was shot down, after I was injured’ – he shrugged dismissively – ‘she was Kyle’s girl. That was how I thought of her. It’s how I still think of her. I don’t think of her as being a Viet. I think of her simply as being Kyle’s girl.’

  She said eagerly, ‘And when you meet the children you will see them as being just children, children who need love and stability and a home…’

  ‘Then give them love and stability and a home,’ he said with a slight, careless shrug of his shoulders, ‘but don’t expect me to play the role of papa-san. I don’t want to live with any reminders of ’Nam. Not now. Not ever.’

  She swung her feet shakily to the floor and stood up, facing him across the disarrayed bed. ‘We could make it work,’ she said, her voice trembling slightly, ‘I know we could.’

  He shook his head, and with terrible finality she knew that she had been living in a dream world. There was going to be no future for her with him at Bedingham, just as there was going to be no future for her with Kyle.

  ‘No,’ he said again. ‘You have a choice. The children or me.’

  ‘There is no choice,’ she said, and though her eyes were full of pain, her voice was as free of doubt as his had been. ‘It’s the children. It will always be the children.’

  His face tightened. An expression she couldn’t decipher flashed into his eyes, to be instantly suppressed. ‘Then it’s over,’ he said, and walked from the room.

  He didn’t speak to her again. There was nothing more for him to say. She had paused at the doorway, her wool coat tightly belted, the collar already raised against the chill she would meet when she stepped outside. ‘I’m sorry,’ she had said simply. ‘It could have been so good between us.’

  His thumbs were hooked into the pockets of his jeans. He had given a slight, almost imperceptible shrug of his shoulders, his eyes telling her that it still could be if only she would give up the children.

  She turned away from him, unable to make the sacrifice he was demanding, and without saying good-bye, closed the door behind her.

  In the sanctuary of her motel room she retrieved a couple of Earl Grey teabags from the bottom of her handbag and made herself a cup of tea. Then she called Gabrielle.

  ‘Where are you telephoning from, chérie?’ The line was bad and Serena did not hear the urgent anxiety in Gabrielle’s familiarly husky voice.

  ‘Washington. I visited Chuck,’ she said succinctly.

  ‘Oh!’ There was a slight pause at the other end of the line, as if Gabrielle was having difficulty in marshalling her thoughts.

  Serena glanced down at her wristwatch, trying to estimate what the time was in Paris. Her brain wouldn’t function and she couldn’t do it, but she knew that it must be the middle of the night, which would account for Gabrielle sounding so unlike her usual exuberant self.

  ‘I still don’t know exactly what kind of treatment he’s been receiving at Walter Reed,’ she continued, ‘but it has been successful. He can walk.’

  Gabrielle knew all about Chuck. Even though it was two years since they had lived together in Saigon, Gabrielle was still her friend and confidante. It was a role that Lance had once fulfilled, but though they exchanged occasional letters, she hadn’t seen Lance for a long time. And it had been even longer since he had been the most important person in her life.

  She said now, knowing that she had no need to expressly tell Gabrielle that she had broken her vow of celibacy and had made love with Chuck, knowing that Gabrielle would realize that without having to be told, ‘Everything was better than I could ever have hoped – until I told him about my plans for Bedingham.’ She paused for a moment, aware that her voice was about to crack. When she had regained her self-control, sh
e continued, ‘He said there was no way he could live with such a permanent reminder of Vietnam. He was absolutely adamant. I could have him or the children. I couldn’t have both. So it’s over. End of story.’

  ‘Oh, chérie, I am so sorry…’

  ‘So am I,’ Serena said wryly. ‘However, onward and upward. I’m flying to Los Angeles in the morning to see Abbra and Scott and Sanh…’

  ‘No, chérie,’ Gabrielle interrupted her, her voice cracked and raw. ‘I have just received a telegram from Abbra. She will not want to see you. Not just now. She will not want to see anyone.’

  Serena’s heart began to thud erratically, ‘Is it Sanh? Is he ill?

  Has there been an accident? For God’s sake, Gabrielle, what’s happened?’

  ‘No, it is not Sanh. It is Lewis.’

  ‘Lewis? I don’t understand. Lewis is dead…’

  ‘No, he is not, chérie,’ Gabrielle said, a catch in her voice. ‘He is alive and he is being released by the North Vietnamese. He is on his way home right at this very moment.’

  Like Abbra, and like Gabrielle, Serena’s first reaction was one of dizzying relief that a man believed to be dead was alive. And then, in the same split second, came stupefying horror as she realized the nightmare of the situation.

  ‘Jesus,’ she whispered, sitting down slowly on the edge of the bed, ‘what on earth is going to happen? What in the world is Abbra going to do?’

  She didn’t stay in Washington. She left next morning for Saigon, aboard a Pan Am Boeing.

  ‘Nice to have you back,’ Mike said to her laconically when she walked into the orphanage two days later. ‘But why so soon?’ His eyebrow quirked quizzically. ‘I thought you were going to stay awhile and visit friends?’

  ‘I was,’ she said briefly. Later, as they sat in the Caravelle Hotel’s rooftop bar, she told him about Abbra and Lewis. And about Abbra and Scott and Sanh.

  He had whistled softly through his teeth, his eyes dark with compassion. For a moment she had been tempted to tell him about Chuck. She remembered the utter finality in Chuck’s voice when he had said that he would never live with Vietnamese children, would never be cast in the role of a papa-san, and the temptation faded. She couldn’t tell Mike about Chuck. They were a breed of men so different from one another that each would find the other totally incomprehensible.

  In April President Nixon announced that 100,000 American troops would leave South Vietnam by the end of the year. Serena no longer felt that such news was an indication that the end of the war was in sight. There were more refugees streaming into Saigon than ever. South Vietnamese troops, assisted by US artillery, air and helicopter support, had invaded Laos in an effort to cut the Ho Chi Minh Trail once and for all. The result was official figures of 1,146 South Vietnamese troops killed in action, and 4,245 wounded. US air-crew losses were lighter, with 176 dead and 1,042 wounded. The war was continuing and Serena could see no likelihood of it coming to an early end.

  She spent the rest of 1971 and the first half of 1972 hitchhiking lifts on military planes and jeeps in an almost incessant round of visiting provincial orphanages with Mike. The conditions were appalling. Too many children. Too few people to care for them. Not enough food. No medical facilities. Sometimes they were able to make their trips on the Lambrettas that they both used for quick and easy movement in Saigon, but tiny babies and sick children could not be transported in that way, and endless hours were spent cajoling lifts from sympathetic army personnel.

  In March 120,000 North Vietnamese troops swept across the partition line and into South Vietnam.

  ‘This is it,’ Mike said to her prophetically. ‘This, at last, is the beginning of the end.’

  The invasion did not penetrate very far, but the North Vietnamese were not repulsed. Despite savage battles with South Vietnamese and US troops, they remained on South Vietnamese soil. Cities fell and were retaken and fell again, and hundreds of thousands of refugees streamed pathetically southwards, towards Saigon.

  In April President Nixon announced that American troop strength in South Vietnam would fall to 49,000 by 1 July.

  ‘He’s obviously made up his mind that he’s going to come to an agreement with Hanoi,’ Mike said, swabbing the wound of a child who had been injured in a grenade attack on a café. ‘Let’s just hope he gets the hell on with it!’

  It took another nine months. On 27 January, 1973, the Paris peace accords were signed and the Vietnam War officially ended. President Thieu was to remain in power in South Vietnam. All American prisoners of war were to be released and returned home.

  ‘And as far as I can see, that’s all that has been achieved,’ Mike said bitterly. ‘Years of bloodshed and suffering and for what? For an agreement that could have been reached at any time. And it’s the end only for America. It isn’t the end for Vietnam. It won’t be the end for Vietnam until she is reunited into one country again.’

  Serena was acting as Mike’s nurse while he took a clinic in a makeshift shack in a refugee camp. Flies were clinging to her sweat-soaked hair and the child that she was holding, and that Mike was examining, was whimpering. She soothed the pain-racked child as best she could, trying to come to terms with the enormity of what had taken place in Paris.

  Kyle was going to be released. He would soon be flying home. She would have to be there when he did so. Even if their marriage was over and it was Trinh he was really returning to, she would have to be there when he stepped off the plane.

  Mike finished treating the child, and she carried it outside, handing it back to its anxious mother. An army helicopter was, due to pick her and Mike up in ten minutes. Despite the horrific number of women and children still needing attention, they had done all they could for that day.

  She stepped back inside the shack. Mike was repacking his medical bag and as she entered he paused, looking across at her, saying in a voice that was oddly abrupt, ‘I suppose this is the end for you as well?’

  ‘You mean because of the POWs being returned?’

  He nodded. Although it was January, it was very hot in the shack. Heat beat through the tin roof in waves. A column of red ants were narrowly skirting their feet. She thought of London and of Boston. Of Bedingham.

  ‘No,’ she said slowly, ‘it isn’t the end for me. I shall not leave Saigon, at least not for good, until I absolutely have to.’

  Very faintly they could hear the whump-whump-whump. of rotor blades as the helicopter approached.

  He put his bag down, saying bluntly, ‘I don’t understand. Your husband is being released after six years of God only knows what kind of hell. And you say you won’t be leaving Saigon. It doesn’t make any sense.’

  ‘It does when you know the facts.’

  ‘And they are?’

  The helicopter was coming in to land and she had to raise her voice. ‘He isn’t in love with me anymore. He wrote asking for a divorce shortly before he was shot down.’

  ‘And you still came here?’

  At the incredulity in his voice she grinned. ‘I didn’t know when I came. I didn’t see the letter until a long time afterwards.’

  ‘And are you still in love with him?’

  She shook her head. ‘No. I probably never was. Not in the way that you mean. We were just kids and fellow free spirits. We never had a marriage in the real sense of the word. Just a crazy elopement followed by an impossibly grand wedding. Within hours he was winging his way thousands of miles away from me and we didn’t meet again until a few days before he was due to leave the States for Vietnam.’

  Outside the shack, the down-draft of the helicopter’s rotor blades was whipping the treetops into a frenzy.

  ‘Then why?’ he demanded, his eyes and voice light with relief.

  ‘Why did I come here?’ She shrugged dismissively. ‘A guilty conscience, I suppose. For reasons too complicated to go into at the moment, I felt responsible for Kyle’s decision to join the army, and consequently I felt responsible for what happened to him out here.’
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  ‘That’s crazy,’ he said, ignoring the shouts from outside demanding that they board the waiting Huey.

  She began to laugh, suddenly ridiculously happy. Within days Kyle would be free again. And after she had welcomed him home she would return to Saigon and Mike. And that was what she wanted, what, without realizing it, she had wanted for a long, long time.

  ‘I know it’s crazy, but that’s how I felt then. I don’t feel like that now. I know now that you can’t shoulder the responsibility for other people’s actions so easily.’

  ‘I didn’t mean that your guilt was crazy,’ he yelled across to her as the Huey’s copilot raced across the mud-baked earth towards them. ‘I meant it was crazy that your husband could possibly have fallen out of love with you!’

  Her eyes danced with mischief. Her next few words were going to stupefy him. ‘Not really,’ she shouted back. ‘He fell in love with a Vietnamese girl. Kylie’s mother.’

  The running copilot was within yards of the shack’s open door. ‘Will you two numbnuts get a move on?’ he yelled at them. ‘We’re wasting time here!’

  Mike ignored him. He looked like a man who had been poleaxed. ‘Kylie is your husband’s child?’

  ‘We’re going!’ the copilot was yelling. ‘With or without you, we’re going!’ He spun on his heel, sprinting back towards the Huey, ducking low as he approached it in order to avoid the spinning rotor blades.

  Serena nodded, so obviously untroubled by the fact Mike found his stupefaction dissolving into dizzying relief. She hadn’t been sitting out the years waiting for her husband to return to her. She wasn’t going to leave Saigon now that the war was over.

  ‘Come on,’ he shouted, grabbing hold of her hand. ‘That guy meant it when he said he would leave without us.’ And with her hand tightly holding his, he began to run with her towards the Huey.

  In Saigon, Serena reminded the military of her existence and her status as a POW wife. She was told that on 12 February the first group of prisoners were being released. Kyle’s name was not among the names they had been given.