Songs from the Violet Cafe

by Fiona Kidman

  She had walked into the Foreign Correspondents’ Club with the girl on her hip. Annette Gerhardt watched her as she came up the stairs. The child was barely awake, but she clung to Jessie with a grip like a frightened monkey, scrabbling up and trying to attach herself to her hair.

  ‘Nice to see you’re alive then. You’ve been on a mission of your own.’

  ‘I’m sorry I left. You seemed to be managing.’

  ‘Oh don’t worry about it, we never expected a nurse. You’ve only got half the world’s press banging down the door of this place looking for you. I reported you missing.’

  ‘God, no. Please don’t tell them I’m here. I don’t want prying eyes.’

  ‘So what are you going to do with her?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Jessie said. ‘I haven’t thought really.’ She was struggling to hold the child, afraid she might fall from her arms. ‘I’m not giving her away, if that’s what you mean.’

  ‘But you’ve paid for her, perhaps? Oh I can see it in your face. It’s so obvious, or you would want to be out there in front of the cameras, telling your latest great adventure.’

  ‘I didn’t think you were a woman who judged others. I thought we were friends.’

  ‘Friends. Pah. What you have done is a crime.’

  ‘It was not like that,’ Jessie cried.

  ‘Like what? An impulsive moment. A rush of blood to the head. When we do good in the world, we have to be committed to it. We either leave it to others or we go on and on, even when it is difficult.’

  ‘You’re not modest, are you, Annette.’

  ‘Look at you, look at the child. She needs food and clean clothes. That is what she needs in the next five minutes and you haven’t an idea how you will provide even those necessities. She’s not a puppy or a kitten. You can’t put her in a basket, you know.’

  ‘I have a friend who will help me.’

  ‘Your Mr Messenger. Oh now you are going down a dark tunnel, Miss Sandle. I would take care if I was you.’

  One day, in the nursery, when Jessie and Sister Mary Luke were bending over the babies changing their napkins, the nun said, ‘Why don’t you stay here? You’ve never married. You could become a bride of Christ, like us.’

  ‘It’s not that easy,’ Jessie said, wiping hair out of her eyes with the back of her hand.

  ‘What is harder than this?’

  ‘I thought you were happy here, Sister.’

  The nun crossed herself quickly. ‘I am, but I have children now. Isn’t that what you want too?’

  ‘You need a better building,’ said Jessie. ‘You need money and equipment.’

  ‘Bopha needs a mother.’

  ‘She has several mothers,’ Jessie said dryly. ‘You’d soon get sick of supporting me. I think you need someone to help you keep the children in better conditions.’

  The convent moved to a concrete building with tile floors, and an open dormitory with fans on the top floor. Alongside the orphanage stood a small chapel, painted white and adorned with a plain cross, although it was difficult to see in the dust. The rooms in the orphanage were cooler than most in the city, with a sweet dimness that gave them a mysterious feeling. Whenever Jessie entered the convent, as she was to do many times, she was filled with a fulfilment of spirit she had never expected to possess. Sometimes she knelt in the chapel and put her hands together and prayed, even on days when she had gone to a stupa and placed incense before an image of Buddha. A slow unravelling had begun to take place within her, of how she had come to be part of this place, and the role she now played in shaping its future. For a long time she had held to the view that history needed witnesses, and that what she had done when she had lived in the heart of danger and war had a meaning and purpose, that it was more than just adventure. Now that she had given the world stories, it seemed not enough just to tell people what had happened in this uneasy and restless country, now she must be responsible for changing it too, or at least restoring it. She never saw Annette Gerhardt again, but what she had said left its impression — that one must stand by goodness of purpose, not leave it to others. But there was more to it than that. In this wilderness of inscrutable shifting morality, she had had to commit a crime in order to do right, and there was so much she had to learn about reconciling the values of one culture with another. Her own life had been overwhelmed by a tremendous change that had occurred one wet night in a small town halfway across the world. When she was younger, she had held herself responsible in some way for what had taken place at the Violet Café.

  In the convent, she had begun to re-examine the events of that night, peeling away this guilt, slowly beginning to understand that it was not one, but several stories unfolding about her at the café, and that her own story was, in fact, that of her and her mother. Her mother’s face, in dreamy repose, would sometimes float before her, eyes on some distant object or idea, finger marking the place in a book. And in this respect, Jessie believed, it was not what she had done that mattered, but what she had not done earlier that day. Or in the days before, when her mother had first asked her to come home. Action changed things, she concluded, not vague longings and indecision. Morality could not be defined in any tangible way unless someone took a stand and said, ‘This is what I believe and this is what I will do.’ Sometimes she wished that the old man Hugo had lived longer. Certainly, his death had changed the course of her own life, but she would like to have known him better, to have talked to him more. Now that she understood he was not John’s father, she divined some quality of goodness that must have stretched his resources to the extreme. If he had been able to take a child, so casually delivered to him, so too could she.

  This and other feelings — among them love for the child, Bopha — were what led Jessie Sandle to build a convent and support the women who ran it.

  After a period of turbulent unrest in the city, the sisters were anxious for the children. In 1985, Mary Luke said to Jessie, ‘I think you should take Bopha out of here. Things aren’t getting any better.’

  ‘You know I don’t want to do that,’ Jessie said. ‘She may still have a mother and father alive. You don’t know how she was passed over to the market woman. Besides, you know my situation, I can’t claim her as my own.’

  ‘You could adopt her.’

  ‘I don’t want to take her from her own country.’

  ‘That’s very admirable, but not realistic. There’s nothing here for her. I wish it weren’t the case.’ Sister Mary Luke’s voice had a soft Irish burr, but she had grown in authority since she had begun taking care of the children and spoke her mind more often. Her chin strap was pulled tight over a fold of flesh that quivered round her chin, giving her an air of solidity. ‘What is the greater evil? Look at Bopha, she’s at least eight years old now. This country is still struggling for a system of justice, still selling stamps off letters at the Post Office, so that children can be fed.’

  ‘What’s that got to do with Bopha? She’s fed.’

  ‘You know what it has to do with her. She’s beautiful and clever, and things will take a long time to come right here. She might be too old to get an education by the time the schools are working properly again. What do you expect her to do with herself in the future? She’ll grow up and marry perhaps, and live an unequal life.’

  ‘She might rebuild the new Cambodia.’

  ‘Or she might not. We might be overrun by bandits and the children taken away in the night.’

  ‘Are you serious?’

  ‘Of course I’m serious. You know there are so many of the people living abroad now, so many refugees. She’d find other Cambodians overseas, if you encouraged it. Or is it simply that, now you’re famous, you don’t like the idea of giving up your life in London to take care of a child?’

  ‘I’d have to talk to the British authorities in Bangkok.’ Jessie had dual British and New Zealand passports, but there was no diplomatic presence in Phnom Penh from whom she could seek help. ‘I’d have to see what the procedure wa
s about adopting her and taking her out of the country.’

  ‘I’d do that,’ the nun said. ‘Perhaps you’ll find, after all, that it’s impossible. But I think you should try.’

  The British Embassy in Bangkok was in a vast compound in Wireless Road, a magnificent piece of real estate in the heart of the city. A long drive led from the walls that lined it, through beds of orchids and other bright teeming flowers, both English and Oriental, past a flagpole flying the Union Jack. The whitewashed buildings with their shingle roofs were gathered together like a complete working town within a town, surrounded by long verandahs. They made an oasis of calm, a few steps removed from Bangkok’s insane sound and pollution and the smell of durian, which was ripe and vile at that time of year. Inside the compound, the scent of frangipani was overpowering, reminding Jessie of Phnom Penh.

  Other times when Jessie had come to the embassy, it was in an official capacity, flashing her press card to security. This was different, or so it seemed until she offered her name. The man at the desk in the Consular Section asked her if she was by any chance the well-known war correspondent, and when she agreed that she was, said that he would have to pass her on.

  ‘My business is personal,’ Jessie said. ‘Just an inquiry.’

  ‘All the same,’ the man insisted, ‘You need to see someone higher up than me.’ As if she was not to be trusted, might be setting a trap for him.

  She found herself sitting at a long table in a teak-lined room, and decided that her hunch was not wrong; there were two people in the interview room, as well as a secretary taking notes. A man called Trevor Smith, with bland pink features and light blue eyes, was asking the questions. ‘Can you establish the parentage of this child?’

  ‘She’s an orphan who has been in the care of a non-governmental organisation in Phnom Penh for the past five years.’ Jessie said. One of Trevor Smith’s ears folded forward as if it was permanently cupped. ‘The Sisters of Holy Rescue.’

  ‘They’ll vouch for this?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Has any attempt been made to find her parents?’

  ‘She was found on a southbound boat out of Siem Reap in 1980. The child is Eurasian,’ she added. ‘A child of war, perhaps.’

  ‘Who found her?’

  Jessie hesitated. ‘I’m not sure of the circumstances in which the child was received. I first saw her at the Foreign Correspondents’ Club when I was working in the area, soon after the Vietnamese took over. It was a pretty confusing time.’

  ‘Who brought her to the FCC?’

  ‘I can’t tell you that,’ Jessie said.

  ‘There are rules governing the transfer of foreign nationals from one country to another. In what capacity are you seeking a passport for the child? As her guardian?’

  ‘As her mother. I wish to adopt the child.’

  ‘I see.’ Smith’s wild-card ear seemed to move of its own accord. ‘A great many people wish to adopt children. You’d have to go through a process of assessment in London to see whether you were a suitable parent.’

  ‘I understand that.’

  ‘There’d be a great deal of paperwork, but I expect you’re used to that.’

  ‘I think that’s the least of my concerns,’ Jessie said, attempting a smile.

  ‘Well, then, we should get started here. You realise it will take time.’

  ‘There’s no way I could take her with me on a visit?’

  ‘Now? Oh come, Miss Sandle, there’s no hope of that. Well, I’m sorry of course.’ He moved his pen carefully around his desk. ‘I do have a dinner invitation for you, if you’re free tonight. Our Third Secretary, Mr Atcheson, and his wife are giving a dinner party, and invite you to come. I was in Mr Atcheson’s office when I received the message that you were here. He says his wife knows you, and as they had a cancellation for their party, he’d be delighted if you could make up the numbers.’

  ‘I don’t recall a Mrs Atcheson.’

  ‘Mary. Oh, great gal — she says it was a while ago. I’m sure you’ll catch up.’

  As Jessie arrived back at the compound, later that evening, she learned that dinner was in honour of one of Margaret Thatcher’s junior cabinet ministers, out on an official visit.

  Brian Atcheson and his wife stood at the door receiving their dinner guests. Brian was a big man, perhaps six four in his socks, with wide but stooping shoulders, a large head with a grey prickle haircut. His wife, seeming tiny as she stood in his shadow, wore a cream silk dress with a Grecian flow that showed off her tanned arms. Her crisp iron-grey hair was swept back from a profile of such immaculate and flawless complexion that for a moment Jessie thought she must be much younger than her husband. And there was something so familiar about her raised chin, as if she was slightly scornful about receiving guests. Jessie was first in the row waiting to enter the room.

  ‘Jessie,’ the woman drawled, moving out of her husband’s shadow and extending a cool hand. ‘You’re far too important these days to be arriving first at a party.’

  Jessie glanced down, seeing how rough her own hands were from weeks of scrubbing soiled napkins and working in the convent kitchen, before looking into eyes she knew very well. Mary Atcheson was Marianne.

  Marianne held sway at the table, the perfect hostess, turning from guest to guest, drawing each out to tell stories and jokes, between the main course and dessert. Somewhat to her surprise, she was seated next to the minister, a man with a satin-close shave and an inexhaustible line in stories about military engagement. ‘My dear,’ he said, leaning close to Jessie’s shoulder, and wiping his mouth with his napkin, ‘you should have been with us in the Falklands. We had a wonderful time when I was out there during the war. I was sitting taking tea one afternoon, and our boys were positioned all around the garden. Well, the Argies came jumping over the hedge and our boys just knocked them off, pop pop pop among the cabbages. Now that would have been one for you to write up.’ He slapped his hand down on the table beside Jessie’s plate, exploding with laughter.

  ‘Now, we come to Jessie,’ said Marianne, intervening smoothly. ‘Let me tell you how I met Jessie. We’ve been friends for almost a lifetime. Well, a very long time. I was a waitress, would you believe? In a pretentious little caf at the ends of the earth, owned by a supercilious old hag who thought she could run all our lives. It was right before I went to drama school — all so Bohemian, darlings. I can tell you, I’ve done the lot, you could write a book about my life. And Jessie, well, our famous Jessie was a student from down south, who’d run away from home. Oh darling, don’t look at me like that, you know perfectly well that you had. I was called Marianne in those days, God knows why my mother gave me a name like that — it’s so very sixties now, isn’t it — but seeing Jessie’s here, I’m ‘fessing up to my secret. Jessie was a star right away. Our Violet, that’s the old girl who, by the way, had purple hair, moved her up the ranks very quickly. Jessie got to be a chef. Didn’t you, Jessie?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Jessie, ‘I was a cook at the Violet Café.’

  ‘You see, we all have our secrets.’ Marianne glided on, as if everything about their lives had been revealed.

  When dinner was over, they drank brandy out of giant balloons in the sitting room, beneath soft shadowy lights, and the minister held forth. Under the layer of talk, Jessie said, ‘I’m glad that things turned out well for you.’

  ‘Thank you,’ said Marianne, tilting her glass sideways. ‘I started acting you know, bit parts in revues in Auckland, then Brian came along. He’d gone out to New Zealand on a trade mission when he first went into foreign affairs. I was his first and last foreign affair. It’s turned out very well. I like the life. A hard life for the children in boarding school, but they’re survivors. Like me.’

  ‘I don’t feel the same way about Violet as you do,’ Jessie ventured. ‘She didn’t mean things to happen the way they did. She sent me a gift later on.’

  ‘A gift.’ Marianne snorted. ‘She sent me one too. Shall I tell you what it
was? A box of sticking plaster.’

  ‘You’re joking.’

  ‘There was a note in it, telling me to put myself back together.’

  ‘Marianne.’ (She couldn’t bring herself to call the woman Mary.) ‘I’ve got something to tell you. Lou’s alive. I saw him.’

  ‘Oh, him.’ Marianne feigned indifference, but her eyes flicked around the room to see whether anyone was listening to their conversation. When she was satisfied that they were not, she said, ‘I know that. We know all the foreign nationals living in the territory. I could tell you things about yourself that even you don’t know. Don’t look so taken aback, why should I care about Lou Messenger? I’ve known for years that he was alive. Belle Hunter told me when I was buying shoes in Christchurch one day.’

  ‘Belle sold home appliances. Well, that’s what she was selling the last time I saw her.’

  ‘Belle would sell anything that people would pay money for. Oh God, you’ve got so moral, Jessie. I didn’t mean it. I don’t know. It was shoes she was selling the day I saw her. I’d slipped back home for a few days to see my mother. She married a lovely chap. They farm down south. Well, of course they’re too old for it now, they’ve got people working for them these days. Anyway, there was Belle, kneeling at my feet, shoving them into some very nice Italian leather jobs, and muttering away about Lou. She offered me a hundred dollars off.’

  ‘The shoes?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Did you take them?’

  ‘Of course,’ said Marianne, looking sideways. Then she laughed.

  Jessie was stunned by the night, and the rich food, after her weeks in the convent, and by Marianne’s smile, the way she glided through their history as if nothing untoward had ever happened to either of them. Argies. Popped them among the cabbages. Cabb-age, cabb-age, never mind the da-mage. A world of make-believe.