“You must have loved her very much,” she said softly, her eyes sincere and searching. “Whatever happened?”
I paused. I felt the pain returning. It was never really gone. But sometimes it was hidden, tucked away in the shadows of my heart.
“You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to.” “She died,” I whispered.
She was stunned, shaken by my reply, never expecting an answer so final. “I’m so sorry,” she said. “I had no idea.” She hugged me. It felt really good.
The rest of the story somehow tumbled out of my mouth, like water splashing over a dam. I described the whole horrid, tragic accident: falling asleep while driving and the car hurtling over the cliff. I explained those few painful minutes that changed life forever. “I survived...but Maggie didn’t.”
It was the only time I had told the whole story and the first time I ever admitted what happened. I had blurted it out, rushing to finish before I broke down. I could see the sorrow in Lady Jane’s face, genuine and sincere. She felt what I felt; she saw what I saw.
“Oh, George,” she said, the sympathy mirrored in her eyes. “I am so sorry. I know I shouldn’t have asked. But from the moment we met I could see your pain; you wear it like a halo.”
I searched her face, finding only sincerity. “Just don’t tell anyone,” I said softly.
“I won’t. But only if you promise me something.” “What is that?”
“You have to move on,” she whispered. “You can’t hold on to something you can never have. You have to let her go.”
Then she hugged me again. This time she held me tighter and longer. I could smell the remnants of her perfume, what hadn’t been washed away by the sea, and feel her hair brushing against my face. I savored the heat of her body and the warmth of her heart.
She was the first woman I had held since Maggie died. I wanted to gently push her away, to tell her that it wasn’t right, and that I couldn’t do it. But she held on, pulling me closer and holding me tighter. Then I didn’t want her to let go. But eventually she did.
As soon as I had finished telling her Maggie’s story, I felt an immense sense of relief wash over me, like I had been carrying the universe, as if all the problems in the world had rested on my shoulders and had suddenly been peeled away. It was like I had shed all the grief and heartache and guilt and pain I had been carrying. Even if it was only gone for a few minutes, it still felt good.
Lady Jane sat quietly, and after a few moments of reflection passed, she spoke. “Do you want to hear my story?”
I suspected it was about Balraj. I wasn’t sure if I wanted to hear it, not sure if I wanted to be involved. But she had tried to help me, so I would try to help her. “If you trust me enough to tell it.”
“I do,” she replied. “Especially after what you told me.”
“All right, then tell me.”
“As you know, I’ve spent most of my life in India. Even though my family had been in Northern Ireland for centuries.”
“Yes, I do,” I said. I thought of what I knew about the Smythe family. They were wealthy aristocrats, a dominate voice on the Indian subcontinent.
“Sometimes tradition dictates that families like mine choose their daughter’s future husband,” she continued. “This is often done at a young age and for a variety of reasons. In my case, my husband was chosen for me when I was fourteen.”
“Who was it?”
“Sir Gregory Millburne,” she replied.
I recalled the name. “I’ve heard of him. But we’ve never met. Hasn’t his family helped to govern India for the last fifty years?”
“Yes, that’s him.”
“But you never married?”
Her eyes averted mine. “I delayed it as long as I could. I wasn’t ready. I felt like I was in a cage, cornered and trapped.”
I knew all about cages. Polio had been my cage, keeping me prisoner for my entire childhood. I knew it wasn’t exactly the same, but I was sure the trapped feeling was similar.
“I had to escape,” she continued. “There had to be some way to leave and start a new life. To get everyone to leave me alone. Something or someone...”
“Balraj Patel,” I said tersely.
She paused, not expecting the interruption. “I suppose it was easy to figure out.”
“What better way to end your arranged engagement and get your entire family to leave you alone? Run off with a man who is not only a commoner but who is from a different culture. And a different race and religion.”
“Yes,” she said. “I know it sounds horrible.”
“And now, as you told me, you’ve alienated family and friends and loved ones. Is the loved one Sir Gregory Millburne?”
“Yes,” she said. “I realized when Balraj ended our relationship just how foolish I had been. I thought I loved him, but maybe he was just a means to escape. But I’m not a horrible person, George. Really I’m not. I just wasn’t ready. And Gregory did nothing wrong. All he did was love me. I could never say anything negative about him because he is a good man. He really is. With many desirable traits. And look what I’ve done to him.”
I was quiet for a moment. I thought about my battle with polio, my cage, and how difficult that fight had been. Then I finally spoke. “No one can understand a cage unless they’ve been in one. Sometimes it doesn’t matter how you escape. It only matters that you do.”
She studied me for a moment. Then she leaned forward, her lips tantalizingly close. I kissed her, gently. She hesitated, and then her arms wrapped around me and she pulled me closer.
I marveled at the softness of her lips, the gentleness of her fingertips caressing my face. It felt so right, so natural, so inviting, that I never wanted it to end. I wanted to hold her in my arms for eternity.
Thomas’s voice boomed across the dunes, his frame visible coming just over the rise. Lady Jane pulled away abruptly, but I don’t think it was fast enough. I was certain he saw us as he approached, climbing gingerly over a small dune. He looked at us curiously, hid a sly grin, and dropped two buckets on the sand. One was filled with rice, while the other bulged with fruit, bananas and melons. Three fish lay in the bucket of rice.
"Dinner," he announced. “Anything interesting happen while I was gone?”
I glanced at Lady Jane. She was a bit flustered, but she recovered quickly. "I’m starved,” she said. “Where did you get that?"
"There's a road a hundred feet from here," he said. "And a farmhouse a short distance away. I went and talked to the owners. They supplied us with dinner."
"Where are we?” I asked.
"Fifteen miles from Batavia," he said.
"We're in Java?" Lady Jane asked.
"Yes, we are very fortunate," Thomas said. "I hired the farmer I met today to take us to the city in the morning. We'll meet him on the road at dawn."
"What a relief," I said. “The nightmare is almost over.”
"It is," Thomas agreed. "Tomorrow will be the last leg of our journey."
"Where are we staying tonight?" Lady Jane asked.
"Under the stars," Thomas explained, his arms outstretched. “And there’s a pond on the other side of the road. We can wash and clean our clothes.”
“That sounds marvelous,” Lady Jane said.
“You two go first,” Thomas said. “I’ll start cooking,”
We bathed separately in the pond, washing the salt water from our bodies and doing the best we could with our clothes and what was in our suitcases, much of which was riddled with bullet holes. When we returned, Thomas had cooked dinner, frying the fish over a makeshift fire and laying some bananas and melons on a small carpet of dried seaweed. We ate dinner, quiet and subdued, grateful for our good fortune but mourning the loss of Chin.
After dinner I surveyed the cove where we now camped. The empty expanse of beach was sheltered by trees, so peaceful and picturesque, the ocean gently rolling onto the shore. The sky was cobalt and clear, sprawling across the heavens to kiss the distant horizon. G
iven our fateful arrival, I hadn’t taken time to appreciate its beauty. I admired the scene for a moment, the peacefulness and serenity.
We sat quietly, not in the mood for conversation. An occasional remark was made, about the stars or the relief that the sea breeze offered. But for the most part, we were each lost in our own thoughts.
Thomas rose and sat beside Lady Jane, gently touching the swelling on her head. The bruise had turned a purplish color. “How are you feeling?” he asked.
“My head is throbbing,” she said. “But I don’t want to complain. It could be worse.”
“I wish I had something to give you for the pain,” I said.
“In India, we used coffee for headaches,” she said. “Made very strong and drunk black. I don’t know if it works for a bruise, though.”
“I find that shots of gin work well in curing headaches,” Thomas said.
I laughed. “That’s interesting. I was taught that shots of gin create headaches.”
“Did you have a nice chat while I was gone?” Thomas asked. “Or did you rest.”
Lady Jane insured Thomas wasn’t looking and then cast me a wink. “A little of both,” she said.
We chatted for an hour more and then retired for the evening, the beach as our blanket and the moonlit sky our ceiling. As tired as I was, I found it difficult to drift off to sleep. I couldn’t stop thinking about Lady Jane.
It was a restless night, the sound of waves pounding in our ears. It was just before dawn when we awoke. When the first rays of morning danced across the sea, we were surprised to see that our plane had disappeared. Not a trace remained. The waves had consumed even the smallest portion, leaving not the slightest hint that it had ever existed.
CHAPTER 17
The sun had barely risen when a wagon ambled down the road, the wood it was constructed of weathered and cracked. Although old and a bit tired it seemed sturdy with many years of life remaining. It had a large bed and was probably used to transport farm goods, having served generations of the same family. There was ample room for us and our luggage. Two oxen pulled it, huge, methodical beasts that moved steadily but slowly.
Lady Jane turned to Thomas. “Are we leaving Singapore or going to Batavia? I’m confused. Didn’t we just take this trip?” Then she laughed and playfully slapped him on the shoulder. “You sure know how to pamper a lady, don't you?"
Thomas smiled. "Lady Jane, if you live to be one hundred years old you will never repeat the adventures you’ve had in the last few days. And you will never tire of talking about it."
Her eyes twinkled with amusement. She probably agreed with him. “Perhaps,” she said. “Or maybe the real excitement is yet to come.”
I listened to the banter between them, innocent flirting, and felt a twinge of jealousy. Maybe the conversation that Lady Jane and I had had the day before, sharing secrets and baring souls, didn’t mean much to her. As I watched her trade barbs with Thomas, I realized that it certainly meant something to me.
We left the cove and proceeded onward, traveling down a rural road wide enough for only our wagon, wheel ruts marring the dirt. The sea and sand dunes, rimmed by groves of palm trees, flanked one side of the road, while acres of farm fields interrupted by trees and shrubs marked the other. We passed farmers working in the fields, most with oxen pulling crude wooden plows; some had their families working beside them. We saw one elderly farmer standing by the side of the road, stooped and gray, his plow beside him. He nodded and waved as we passed, casting a toothless grin in our direction. I suspected there weren’t many strangers that passed through this part of Java.
An hour later the fields and vegetation and beaches and palm trees vanished and we entered an immense mangrove swamp. It was the most sinister scenery I had ever seen, with gnarled roots stretching grotesquely from the water, animal-like in appearance. A hazy mist boiled off the brackish water, stinking of sulfur. We saw several crocodiles, black eyes watching us hungrily as we slowly meandered past them.
Lady Jane shuddered. “This is like driving through a horror movie.”
She was right. The swamp was eerie and surreal; it was like hell and the River Styx. Maybe this is where bad souls went for eternity, breathing the brackish stink of the marsh and eluding crocodiles, snakes, spiders and rats. I didn’t want to see it or think about it, and I couldn’t wait to escape it.
“Java has many faces,” Thomas said. “Swamps, beautiful beaches, volcanoes, rice paddies gracefully terraced into the hillsides, rural roads, and modern cities. There are beautiful flowers like the pink water lotus and purple lily, and unique creatures like yellow caterpillars and butterflies of blue and gold with wings as wide as your outstretched hand. And it’s one of the most densely populated places in the world.”
I reflected on the maps I had studied as a child, painting the topography of the Dutch East Indies in my mind’s eye. The islands that comprised the colony had been hampered throughout history with violent acts of nature, primarily earthquakes and volcanoes of unbelievably destructive force. As I recalled, some of the most powerful volcanic eruptions in history had occurred in Java or Sumatra.
“Will you be staying in Batavia?” I asked him.
"For a while, I suppose. I’m in no hurry to go anywhere.”
"How about you, George?” Lady Jane asked. “What are your plans?”
I thought about the hug, her body close against me, the tender kiss, and her silken fingers caressing my face. I wondered if that intimate moment would ever be repeated.
"I’m not sure," I said. "For now, it’ll serve as well as Singapore. I made a commitment to report from this part of the world, and for now that’s what I intend to do. How about you?”
“I don’t know what I’ll do,” she said. Then she looked at me and smiled. “Maybe I’ll just stay in Batavia.”
It was late afternoon when we approached Batavia, a sprawling city that served as the capital for Dutch colonies in the southwest Pacific. We first entered suburbs, unique in their architectural blend of Dutch and Javanese influences, and then the city proper.
Canals cut the landscape, some bordered by impressive Dutch homes while others displayed multi-storied slums teetering on the water’s edge, crooked and poorly constructed and at risk of collapse.
We passed an outdoor fruit market crowded with people and products and intersected by lanes filled with pedestrians, patrons, and soldiers. We drove through neighborhoods, dwellings evenly spaced along broad avenues with steeply pitched, red-tile roofs.
We saw churches built in the European style and mosques that contrasted them both architecturally and theologically. Buddha complimented Christ, Europe merged with Asia, peasant fused with aristocrat, but the common theme throughout Batavia was people. They crammed streets, stores, alleys, restaurants, cars, trucks, rickshaws, and bicycles.
They were everywhere. It was one crowded, clustered mass of civilization. The city itself seemed to have a heartbeat, throbbing and beating in a rhythmic sense of humanity. Batavia was not Singapore. And it never would be. It lacked the sophistication, the homogeneous blend of cultures, and the promised gateway to utopia.
We came to a halt in front of the Hotel Duncan, a modern building about ten stories high with a whitewashed façade, arched windows, and a manicured lawn. Thomas paid our driver while I unloaded our baggage and placed it in the lobby. Our ragged appearance coupled with our bullet-riddled suitcases earned curious stares from those who passed.
We went to our rooms and enjoyed a needed wash and change of clothes. After a brief rest, Thomas found a doctor who removed the sutures from his arm. The cut on his forehead, reopened during the plane crash, was sealed with an adhesive bandage. Other than the pinkish scars, his injuries would vanish, taking their place among our memories of Singapore.
Late that afternoon I wandered across the street and entered the office of the LondonTimes. A female receptionist, an elderly Javanese woman with graying hair and round glasses, occupied a desk beside the door. The lob
by was arranged similarly to the office in Singapore, but the frantic atmosphere was absent. A dozen desks sat in the center of the room, all facing each other. Half were manned with reporters, some on the telephone, others typing. Three other offices adjoined the lobby. I saw that one was occupied.
“Can I help you?” the receptionist asked.
“Hello, I’m George Adams,” I said as I handed her a card. “I’m with theTimes office in London. I’ve spent the last week in Singapore, and I’ve fled here.”
The man in the occupied office looked up from his desk. “Come on in,” he called.
I nodded to the receptionist. “Thank you.”
The man stood to greet me. He was older, maybe sixty, with wisps of white hair covering his head. He was slight, and a bit stooped, but his pale blue eyes greeted me with a sense of energy and purpose. He seemed to love his profession.
“I’m Harry Simpkins,” he said as he shook my hand. “I was with the Capetown office before I came here.”
“George Adams. It’s a pleasure to meet you.” “Welcome. Will you be staying in Batavia?”
“I’m not sure,” I said. “I suppose for the time being. May I file my articles with you?”
“Of course,” he said. “How was Singapore?”
“Chaotic and confusing,” I said. “I think the battle was lost before the fight began.” I was surprised to hear myself repeating what Thomas had said.
He arched his eyebrows. “How so?”
“There was an air of defeat,” I explained. “On the troops’ faces and throughout the island.”
He rubbed his chin and eyed me curiously. “That’s interesting. I hope you don’t see the same thing here. What will you write about?”
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