Dragon Land (41 page)

He stopped and wiped his eyes.

‘Then Alex found out about Sue Lin and he almost went out of his mind. He went looking for her, but the dead people at the amusement park had been buried and he couldn't find her grave. Then I saw your letter and was grateful that you had all got out alive. I told Alex I was going to Hong Kong to find you and he said he was leaving as well, as there was nothing left to keep him in Shanghai. I cleared out our bank account and packed a few things while Alex packed his photographic equipment and all his negatives, and then we set off.

‘We arrived just after the typhoon and there were hundreds killed in it. I had no idea when you had left, but when there was no sign of any of you in the colony and when I found out the shipping office had no booking for you and neither had the British Consulate, I had to face the fact you had all perished at sea. The school was closed and Mr Wang was dead, so I had no one to ask about you. Alex and I decided to come back here.'

‘How is Alex?' I asked.

‘He's just the same. Consumed with grief. He went to see Sue Lin's parents in Glasgow, but he's now in London working as a freelance photographer. He works night and day, and he says it's the only way he can cope with losing Sue Lin. I said I was the same, but I had Peter to look after so I couldn't let myself go mad with grief. I came here, as I knew Elsie was bringing Peter here. Margaret couldn't believe you were probably dead and she was grief-stricken. I told her I would take Peter to my uncle's house in Dumfries, but told her I would be back with him after my uncle and his family leave to go back to Ireland.'

‘Are they leaving the farm?'

‘Yes, they are, and they leave this week. I didn't know about Margaret's accident, otherwise I would have come back sooner.' He turned and looked at me. ‘Now what happened to you and Zheng Yan and Ping Li?'

I told him of the terrible voyage during the typhoon and how we ended up in Macao.

‘You ended up in Macao?' he said incredulously.

I said we had and related the whole story before finally saying, ‘Zheng Yan and Ping Li are staying there with the Alveres family and they are happy and settled, Jonas.'

He sighed. ‘I'm so glad about that.' He lay back on the sofa. I looked at the clock. It was three o'clock in the morning.

‘Come on, Jonas, it's time for bed.'

We lay in each other's arms and said we were so happy that we were together again. Then Jonas, with his usual romantic streak, fell sound asleep while I gazed out of the window and listened to the sound of the sea.

The next morning Margaret looked much better and her memory seemed to be improving. After breakfast, Jonas, Peter and I went for a walk along the beach.

‘I don't know what your plans are for where we will stay, Jonas, but I don't think I want to leave Margaret alone.'

He smiled. ‘I was intending to stay here anyway, Lizzie, so this will be our home. That's if Margaret wants us to stay.'

‘Oh, I think she does. She'll just love all your stories of adventure and she'll tell you all about her times in foreign countries.'

I couldn’t believe how easy it was to slip back into a normal life again. Jonas was in contact with Alex, as they were planning another book on their experiences in Peking. He would travel down to London every few months to stay with his friend in his flat in Holland Park. I missed him terribly, but I had Peter to look after and Margaret for company.

I hadn’t realised that a lot of Margaret’s friends had either died or were now living with their families, which meant she didn’t have a great social life like she used to, but she said she was quite happy at home.

‘When you get to my age, Lizzie, going out and about doesn’t hold the same pleasure, and I’ve had a lot of memories to look back on from when I was married to Gerald.’

‘I’m sorry I wasn’t with you when he died, Margaret. It must have been a shock.’

‘Yes, it was, but then I realised he had died doing what he enjoyed, and he did say should he die in another country he wanted laid to rest there, so I obeyed his wishes.’

If the weather was good, Margaret and I would take Peter in the pushchair to the shops, where she liked to browse, especially the chemist in the High Street, where she would buy scented soaps. ‘It’s always been my one luxury,’ she said as the assistant handed over the fancy box in a paper bag.

I wrote letters to Milly and Elsie, and Elsie said she would be coming for a visit. I was dying to meet her again and to thank her for looking after Peter. One day I took Peter into Dundee to buy him new shoes, and after leaving Birrell’s shoe shop in the Overgate we made our way to the Hawkhill to see Irene and Wullie. I hadn’t seen them since coming home but had written to Laura, who had written back with the news that she was now married to her teacher boyfriend. She said her mother had sent on my letter.

Irene’s close was still as I remembered it and the memories came flooding back of my many visits to the house. Irene opened the door and looked surprised. ‘Lizzie, how wonderful to see you.’ She bent down ‘And this must be Peter.’

Peter responded by hiding behind my back, and she laughed. ‘Are you normally a shy little boy?’

‘Sometimes he is, Irene, but not all the time.’

I was sitting with a cup of tea when she went to get Laura’s wedding photos. They had been taken in a photographic studio in Lindsay Street and Laura looked lovely in a pale-coloured suit, while Pat looked uncomfortable in high-heeled shoes. The groom was not much taller than Laura. He had dark hair and was wearing glasses. He also had a serious look on his face, while Laura was smiling, and Pat, dear Pat, was trying to look like she was wearing comfy old slippers instead of toe-pinching new shoes.

‘Laura wrote to you in China, Lizzie, to tell you about the wedding, but there was no answer. John was a teacher at the Morgan Academy, but he got a deputy headmaster’s post in a school in Newcastle. He asked Laura to marry him so they could both go, and she’s also working in another school in the same town. When your letter arrived, I sent it on to her.’

‘I did explain that I had to leave China in a hurry and I never got her letter. It’s probably lying in my post box in Bubbling Well Road.’

Irene looked delighted by the name of the road. ‘It sounds much better than the Hawkhill, doesn’t it?’

I said no, it didn’t. I hadn’t gone into any detail about my life after leaving Shanghai and I didn’t want to mention it now, so I said, ‘It’s so good to be back, Irene, and will you tell Laura to keep in touch and I’ll send her a wedding present.’

Irene went to take the cups away and I looked at the photo again. John was an average-looking man, just like Jonas, and I couldn’t help smiling at our younger selves when Laura and I used to swoon at the Hollywood film stars and tell each other they were going to be like the men we married. It was all fantasy, of course, and real life was nothing like it. Falling in love was all that mattered, and having a happy life.

When Irene returned, I asked, ‘How is Pat?’

‘She’s still teaching in the same school in Kirriemuir and living with her parents. Between you and me, Lizzie, I don’t think she’ll ever get married – she’s not interested in having a boyfriend.’

‘I see you still have your piano, Irene. Do you still play it?’

‘Yes, I do, but not so much now.’

I stood up, ready to go, and took Peter’s hand. ‘Please tell Wullie I’m asking after him, and I’ll hopefully see you soon.’

She came to the street to see me off and waved while I walked to the station to catch my train.

Margaret was reading the paper when we got home. She was now wearing reading glasses, but it always amused me to see her with a large, round magnifying glass, which she used to read the small print.

She saw me looking and she laughed. ‘It’s a real burden when you get old, Lizzie.’

‘You’re not old, Margaret. Maybe a bit well preserved, but not old.’

She burst out laughing. ‘You always had a way with words.’

Later that year, Jonas suggested going to see his father in Cork and I said it was a great idea. We had been writing to one another since we’d come back to Scotland, but this would be my first visit to Jonas’s family home.

Margaret was also excited because she said she had never been to Ireland before. ‘I’ve been all over the world, but I’ve never been there.’ That made two of us.

We set off in the summer, but I had a moment of panic as I stepped aboard the ferry. I still had nightmares now and again about the typhoon, but they were getting better. Now it all came back to me. Jonas must have felt my body stiffen as we boarded, and he clutched my hand tightly.

‘It’ll be fine, Lizzie. The weather forecast is for light winds and the Irish Sea should be reasonably calm.’

I nodded and felt so embarrassed by my panic attack. As it turned out, the sea crossing was a pleasure, and when we reached Dublin we caught the train to Cork. My father-in-law’s farm and horse stud lay a few miles from the city and I couldn’t get over how everything was so green.

We were made so welcome, not only by Jonas’s father but also by his uncle and aunt, Sean and Kathleen, who had a farm not far away. Kathleen was slightly younger than Margaret, but they got on famously with one another.

Jonas’s father was the same height as his son and had the same colouring. He was very thin and wiry, with strong-looking arms, which he laughingly said came in handy when controlling the horses.

The farmhouse was just as I imagined it, with a big, cosy kitchen with a log fire, and tiny bedrooms under the eaves. Jonas, Peter and I were in his old bedroom, while Margaret’s bedroom overlooked the garden.

On the first day there, Jonas said, ‘Please don’t let Peter near the horses, Lizzie.’

When I said his father might want to show them to us, he told me to make sure Peter wasn’t near them, and I promised.

Kathleen had an old but very comfortable car, and she would take us into Cork for shopping. She would go off with Margaret and they’d end up in one of the many cafés while I’d look round the shops with Peter. We would take his pushchair, and I loved walking around the town with him before joining the two ladies as they sat chatting over their morning coffee.

One morning while Jonas was out for a walk, his father said, ‘Let me show you the stables, Lizzie. Peter will like them.’

I was in a quandary. I had made a promise to Jonas, but I didn’t want to hurt his father’s feelings. I hesitated and the old man gave me a keen look. ‘Jonas doesn’t want Peter to be near them, does he?’

‘No, he doesn’t. I’m sorry, but I did promise him I wouldn’t let Peter near them.’

He sighed. ‘I suppose it is all my fault, this phobia Jonas has about the horses. He’s been frightened of them since he was a child.’

I was surprised. ‘Frightened by horses?’ All the time I had known my husband, he hadn’t been frightened by anything.

‘When he was small, he was playing near the stables and his ball went into one of the stalls. Jonas ran in after it, and we had this very skittish and frisky horse there and it reared up just where Jonas was standing. My late wife Mary managed to grab him and get him out, and she gave me such a telling off about it. She told Jonas that horses were dangerous and he should never go near them again, and he didn’t.’

I felt sorry for him, and I understood how Jonas felt. It must have been a terrifying thing to happen to a little boy. In fact, it was a wonder he had been able to go and lead a life full of danger with his work in China.

When Jonas came back, I mentioned the conversation. ‘Can I not hold on to Peter and let him look at the horses from a distance? It’ll make his grandfather happy.’

I must have had my pleading face on, because he relented. ‘Now don’t go too close.’

The next morning, much to Jonas Snr’s delight, we made our way to the stables. There were twelve stalls and everything was clean and fresh. I heard the noise from the stalls and the horses put their heads out of the doors. Peter gave a cry of pleasure when he saw them and stretched out his chubby arms towards them.

His grandfather said he could touch them if he liked, but I was full of misgivings. I edged a little bit further forward, and to my amazement the horse in the nearest stall let Peter clap him on the head, and it even nuzzled his little hand.

His grandfather stood beside him with a look of pleasure. ‘Peter loves the horses, but more importantly they love him back. Horses pick up frightened thoughts, and because Jonas was always frightened around them they reacted to his fear.’

‘But that’s just one horse who likes Peter,’ I said. ‘Maybe the others will be different.’ But they weren’t, and I couldn’t believe my eyes.

I told Jonas later how the visit had gone and he shook his head. When I mentioned about being frightened, he said, ‘Well, that’s true enough, I was frightened of them.’

Every day during our visit, Peter and his grandfather would be at the stables, where the horses would gently nuzzle Peter’s outstretched hands as he helped to feed them. In the evening, after a huge meal and after Peter was in bed, we would sit around the fire. Sometimes Sean and Kathleen would be there, and we sat with a glass of Irish whiskey and chatted. The talk was usually about the farm or the stables, but it soon turned to the state of the world.

‘There’s going to be another war with Germany,’ said Sean. ‘Yon Hitler fellow and the Nazi Party are determined to march into the Rhineland.’

My husband agreed with him. ‘It’s the same in China. Japan is going to overrun the east coast port cities and it’s only a matter of time before they attack other places. Then there’s this civil war in Spain. My friend Alex has been there to document the fighting. He tells me it’s terrible, with hundreds dead.’

I hated all this talk of war. What a terrible world we lived in when people couldn’t live in peace with their neighbours and get on with living day after day without the fear of bombs and advancing armies.

Margaret said it was the fault of the Versailles Treaty. ‘It left Germany on the brink of bankruptcy after the war, and now all this discontent and vast inflation has set it all alight again. Gerald and I saw lots of local skirmishes in the countries we lived in, but this war, if it does come to that, will be much more serious.’