Return to Mandalay (25 page)

They moved into the bright sunlight outside the monastery, where the wood was faded and sun-bleached. Eva turned to Ramon. ‘Will your grandmother bring the chinthe back with her when she returns to Mandalay?’ she asked him. ‘Or will she leave it in Pyin Oo Lwin?’

He frowned. ‘Why?’

‘I just wondered.’ Together they strolled back along the weathered teak flooring. The truth was, that she was concerned.

‘You wonder about things a lot,’ Ramon observed. ‘I do not think that she will let it out of her sight.’

They walked down the steps of the monastery and back towards the cart.

‘Then she should be careful.’ Eva took the hand he offered to help her back in.

He eyed her gravely as she settled herself once more against the red cushions. ‘For what reason?’

Eva leaned forwards. ‘Because she told me that the Li family live in Mandalay. They might hear that she now has the other of the pair. They might try to steal it just like they stole the other one.’ Why couldn’t he see that something must be done?

‘They will not hear.’ Abruptly, he turned, went round to the front of the cart and swung himself up next to the driver. The driver took the reins and the little horse with the pink flower in its harness trotted off.

Ramon sat stiffly in front, his back only inches from her. His mobile rang and he pulled it from his belt in an impatient gesture. He listened for a few moments, then hurled a torrent of fast and furious Burmese into the phone.

Eva glimpsed the expression on his face, it was thunderous. What was the problem? She thought of Maya. His grandmother was right, something was certainly troubling him.

Ramon let out a final curse and ended the call, shoving his mobile back into the belt of his
longyi
. It amused Eva that in this country which was in so many ways old-fashioned and behind the times, where it was hard to find an internet connection or an ATM machine, that even the saffron-robed monks and market traders could be seen with mobile phones.

‘Trouble?’ she asked tentatively.

He didn’t look round. His back was straight and unyielding.

‘It is the factory.’

‘I thought everything was fine?’

‘It is not.’ He half turned and glanced back at her.

Eva was touched by the sadness in his eyes. She knew how important his father’s company was to him. If he lost that … ‘What is it?’ she asked.

‘The company is not doing well.’ He shook his head in despair. ‘How can we hope to succeed when our prices are undercut by so many unscrupulous companies?’

‘Unscrupulous companies?’ she echoed.

‘How can we be appreciated? If we respect our workers and pay them a good living wage, if we respect the environment and buy only legitimately sourced timber … If we
do these things, we must ask a fair price for our furniture, yes?’

Eva was surprised at the outburst. ‘Yes, of course you must.’

Some children passed by on their bicycles, their books in a basket, woven Shan bags slung over their shoulders. They waved cheerily at her and she gave a quick wave back. But her attention was focused on Ramon. She was beginning to understand. ‘Buying timber from sustainable forests is more expensive,’ she murmured. The felling of trees must be regulated, just as it had been in her grandfather’s day, and trees needed time to dry out before they were ready. ‘If others don’t do the same …’

‘How can we compete?’ Ramon’s voice broke and he put his dark head in his hands. ‘It is another order lost,’ he muttered.

Eva’s heart went out to him. She wanted to reach towards him, tell him it would all work out in the end. But something stopped her. He was so fierce, so proud. ‘I’m so sorry,’ she said. He couldn’t compromise on his father’s ethics and standards. There would be no other way for Ramon.

‘It is not your concern.’ He lifted his head.

This was what he had said to her before. Eva watched the children slowly disappear down the red dirt track by the lake. But this time she saw the dignity in the set of his shoulders and the tilt of his head and she knew she had caught him off-guard. But at least she had found out what was troubling him. ‘How bad is it?’ she asked.

‘Bad enough.’

‘And who are the people using the illegally felled timber and undercutting your prices?’ she asked. ‘Who’s your main competition?’

He turned around until he was facing her. His eyes were hard, his mouth unsmiling. ‘Those who produce poor quality goods and pay their workers a wage they can barely survive on,’ he said. ‘Those who make their money by damaging the credibility of other Burmese traders. Those who care this much …’ He snapped his fingers. ‘For our country and our forests.’

‘Who?’ Eva asked again. It couldn’t be just one company, could it?

‘The most unscrupulous company of them all,’ he said, ‘is Li’s.’

Li’s … Eva thought of what Ramon had shown her today: the Burma of her grandfather’s time, the spirituality, the search for enlightenment. And she thought of the artefacts that Thein Thein and Myint Maw had shown her. The treasures of Burma. Soon to be shipped to the UK, to the Bristol Emporium and sold on. Was this her destiny, she wondered. To buy from someone else’s culture, to follow someone else’s lead? Or was there another path she should be taking?

She stood by the bed, keeping watch over him. Blood pressure, heart rate, pills for this and pills for that … Lawrence was getting more than a little fed up with it. Life was more than that, surely? It always had been. Lying in this bed, struggling to think, struggling to breathe … That wasn’t living.

But he remembered his life, his real life. All of it. Not just Burma, like she’d said. Not just the war and his life with Maya. But England too.

West Dorset, 1939

Lawrence had been in Burma almost two years when he got a long leave to go to England.
Home
. They all said it, at the club and the chummery.
You’re going home, you lucky bugger
.

Lawrence had mixed feelings. Of course he wanted to see his parents and some of his friends, those who were still around. And he was tired, God, was he tired from the endless heat and rain and sun, from the logging, from the malaria that he’d shaken off only a few months before.

But … Burma was warm and vibrant and it had got under his skin. And there was Maya. Their relationship had grown into something that meant so much to Lawrence. When he
was away from her, he longed, more than anything, to see her, to sleep with her, to feel the warmth of her silken body. But it wasn’t just sex – he’d known that from the start. And it wasn’t just passion, though the passion burnt and flared in him like nothing he’d ever known. It was also her quiet and her calm. It was the long conversations they had in the sweet dead of the night when they were alone, it was the touch of her cool hand on his brow, it was the serene expression in her dark eyes. It was love. That’s what it was.

And in England … Yes, he missed that green and pleasant land. But England also meant Helen.

She’d written to him – he could hardly stop her from writing to him – and her little notes, affectionate and sweet, all held a subtext that Lawrence didn’t want to acknowledge. He knew that she was waiting for him. And he knew that he should be honest with her. This would ultimately be to his advantage. If Helen knew that he was in love with another woman, a native woman at that, wouldn’t she free him from this family obligation? Wouldn’t she have too much dignity to want him when she knew that Lawrence could never think of her that way?

He’d tell her, he’d decided, face to face when he was on leave. It was the most honourable thing to do.

*

In the event, his leave had flown by.

‘You’ve hardly seen Helen,’ his mother pointed out, the night before he was due to return to Burma.

This was true. He’d flunked it.

‘My fault, darling.’ She’d hugged him and he’d smelt the familiar fragrance of her, the powder and the lipstick and the light, floral overtones of her cologne. ‘I wanted you all to myself.’

He laughed. And he hadn’t complained. It had been good to see her, and his father too, though he’d had more than one grilling about how long it would be before Lawrence returned to the family firm and stopped all this ‘messing around in foreign parts’ as he’d put it.

‘But you must see her tonight,’ his mother decreed.

‘Of course.’ Though he felt a dip of foreboding. He’d have to tell her tonight.

‘There’s a dance at the Assembly Rooms. You must take her.’

Lawrence had bowed his head. It was out of his hands once again. His mother was right. He must see Helen. But he hadn’t intended to tell her at a dance.

He drank a large glass of whisky before he even left home. Dutch courage.
And God knows he’d need it
.

*

How had it happened? He hardly knew. They were outside, round the back of the dance hall, for Christ’s sake. It was so bloody tacky. They’d danced and he’d drunk a lot. He’d felt sick and he’d needed some air. Next thing he knew …

It was the whisky. He should never have had all that whisky. ‘Oh, God. Oh, God.’ He put his head in his hands. His own breath stank. He wanted to die. He was sweating and he wanted to die.

Helen wrapped her slim white arms around him. ‘I’ve always loved you, Lawrence,’ she murmured into his shoulder.

‘It shouldn’t have happened. It was a mistake.’ He remembered that day she’d kissed him at her parents’ party when she was only twelve. He remembered other times too. Times when he should have stopped it, when he should have told her ‘no’. They had never gone this far. And all those occasions had been before he went away to Burma. Before Maya. But now, it felt as if all those times had led inexorably to this moment.

Helen guiding his hands to her breasts, Helen lifting the hem of her dress, slipping the buckle of his belt. Helen’s kisses.
Now, Lawrence … I want you now
.

‘It wasn’t a mistake,’ she said. ‘It’ll be alright.’ Already, she had adjusted her clothing. No one would know.

He thought of Maya. Oh, but it won’t be alright, he thought.

‘You’re mine now,’ Helen whispered.

Every sense and fibre in his body screamed ‘no’.

‘We should never have done it,’ he said. He thought of what he’d intended to say to her. How could this have happened instead? How had everything gone so horribly wrong? How could he ever justify it? How could he explain? ‘I should never have done it. Helen, I’m so sorry …’

‘I don’t want you to be
sorry
 …’ she fired back at him. Her lip curled. ‘Why should you be sorry? And why should we wait?’ Her eyes were like liquid in the darkness.

‘Wait?’

‘Till you come back from Burma. You know what I mean.’

Oh, God. She had got it all so wrong. ‘Helen,’ he said. How could he break it to her gently? ‘I love you …’

‘I know you do, darling.’ She began once more to pull him towards her.

He resisted. ‘But I love you like a sister.’

She laughed, a tinkle of a laugh that had always sounded forced to Lawrence and had always irritated him. ‘Like a sister,’ she echoed. ‘I hope not, my darling. Not after what we’ve just done.’

He gripped her shoulders. ‘Which was why we shouldn’t have done it. Don’t you see?’

‘No.’ Her blue eyes hardened. ‘I don’t see. I only know that we’re promised to one another, you and me, Lawrence, and that we always have been. I know what I feel. And I know that you’ve just made love to me.’

‘It was wrong, I tell you.’ He was angry now and he pushed her away. They shouldn’t even have gone dancing. He should have refused to take her. But it would have been impossible, his mother would have seen to that. So, he should have seen her, told her the truth, even gone dancing … But he should never have allowed her perfume and the music to seduce him in a weak moment. And he certainly shouldn’t have drunk all that bloody whisky.

‘How can it be wrong?’ She was crying, hanging on to his arm and crying.

He felt like a total bastard. He was one. And he was a fool.
Acting like a sex-starved boy. Why couldn’t he have been stronger? ‘I’m sorry, Helen.’

‘It doesn’t matter,’ she said. ‘I wish you’d stop apologising. I’m glad we did it. And I don’t care what you say, because I can see further than you can see.’ And she wiped the tears from her face, suddenly composed. ‘We’ve sealed our promise. You’re mine now, Lawrence.’

The last day of his leave was a miserable one. Lawrence said goodbye to them all, Helen’s parents (though he could hardly look her father in the eye), his parents and Helen herself.

‘I’ll write to you, Lawrence.’ Helen was weeping. ‘Come home soon. For good.’

And their parents, looking on fondly, clearly thought they’d come to some sort of understanding. Christ. How could he ever come back to Dorset now? Worse, how would he ever be able to get that night out of his head? Not only had he given Helen the very hope he had intended to stub out completely, but he had betrayed the woman he loved.

Lawrence had hugged his mother, waved farewell and boarded the steamer that would take him back to Burma, back to Maya’s arms. But Helen’s words still echoed in his head. And perhaps they always would. ‘
You’re mine now, Lawrence. You’re mine now
.’

Eva dressed for dinner in a cream silk blouse and the embroidered indigo
longyi
she had bought in Yangon. She wore her velvety Burmese slippers, and around her neck, the antique pearls that her mother had given her on her eighteenth birthday. She took a thin silk wrap in case it turned chilly later. Not that there seemed much chance of that, she thought, as she stood at her bedroom window looking out into bustling Mandalay at night. She could see the illuminated golden dome of a nearby pagoda outlined against the black velvet of the sky, and the distant moat that encircled the Royal Palace. There was a crescent arc of moonshine and the stars were like sequins stitched on to the night.

Ramon smiled his approval when she appeared in the hotel foyer. He was dressed in linen trousers and a light shirt and jacket. It was the first time she had seen him in Western clothes and it took her rather by surprise. He seemed though to have recovered his composure since yesterday afternoon. She wondered how bad things really were and if he regretted telling her about the problems with his business. Surely the company weren’t in danger of actually going under?