Separation, The (13 page)

Lydia had no recollection of her stay in hospital. No memory of waiting for her smoke burnt lungs to heal, no memory of the journey up to the rest house, nor her wild dart through the embers of the building. When Jack tried to speak about the children, she turned her face to the wall. For a week he fed her, forcing her to swallow, and when she couldn’t sleep, he read to her. She heard the sounds but couldn’t understand the words. Instead she stared into a past where her children lived and breathed, where they smiled and laughed and argued in the way they did.

Mummy, come and see. Mummy, watch us. We’re dancing.

In an atmosphere of artificial calm they dressed her cuts and burns, then sedated her. When they opened the shutters for the first time, she lay blinking, blinded by the light. Under the midday sun she dreamt of escape, deep into the trees, where she could fall into one of the dark streams and feel the water close over her head.

She heard Jack murmuring to a doctor. ‘Clearly an intense heat, signs of flashes, and traces of accelerants placed right round the building, which means multiple points of origin.’ She listened as his words carried on. ‘Fire investigation now complete. Terrorist activity, aided by wind direction. No identifiable bodies.’

‘Stop!’ she shouted. ‘Stop!’ She pulled up her knees, covered her ears with her hands and rocked back and forth. Two nurses, one on either side, tried to force her back down. She freed her right arm and lashed out, but a nurse managed to slide a needle into her thigh. On the other side of the room Jack gulped back sobs, tears pouring down his cheeks. One by one the lights went out. What was the matter with Jack, she wondered, as she slipped
inside the walls of a cold underwater world, which she shared with silver fish and overgrown terrapins.

On the morning she woke from dreams of palm trees and white sands, she heard tapping feet in the corridor outside her room, and heavy rain thundering on the roof. She wanted to shut her eyes and for them all to be gone, stretch out on white hospital sheets and for that to be an end to it. When they came in, she shook to discover she’d been wandering and spinning for weeks. Though time had inched past, it appeared to have gone in a flash. She looked up from her hospital pillows and saw a row of yellow flowers on the windowsill. A man with concerned eyes stood beside her bed.

‘Can I go home now?’ she asked, and took a sip of lukewarm tea.

The man nodded. ‘Mr Harding’s here to collect you. The burns are healing and your lungs will be right as rain in a few weeks.’

She caught her breath. ‘Harding?’

The man nodded.

‘Oh, you mean Jack.’

As soon as Jack came into the room with a look of worry behind his smile, her tears welled up.

‘Tell me it isn’t true,’ she said. ‘Please, Jack.’

She watched him swallow.

‘Lydia –’

‘I have to know for certain. Can you go to Ipoh? Or phone George? He’ll know. Ask him. Please, Jack.’

‘I’ve already done both. I’m so sorry, but the children were there. George had it firsthand. Alec had not been allocated a house, and there’s been no further record of them anywhere else.’

‘Maybe they went to Borneo?’

‘Lydia, Alec and the girls were at the rest house. George says there’s no doubt whatsoever. They died in the fire.’

On their way to the plantation the heavy rain turned into clammy, warm mist, and she was aware of a deep nostalgia for England and steady English rain. Her daughters’ images ran through her mind, sometimes fast, sometimes slow. She had no control of her emotions. Grief clawed at her chest, unrelenting, sent tears dripping down her cheeks, and was followed by hollow wordless fury. She stared straight ahead, not caring to go on living in a world in which it was possible for her children to die. One day you have a family and then you don’t. How could that be? She thought of Em’s stories, and slammed her fists into her eyes.

Maz slept on his own in the spare room. She chose to sleep with Jack: sleep, nothing more, though she feared them in her sleep, feared them waking from graves they had not lain in and turning accusing eyes on her. Jack held her hot sweating body when she cried out in defence. I didn’t know, I’m sorry, I’m sorry. By day she remained curled up in bed, longing for oblivion, her face buried in the pillow to soak up the tears. How do people survive, she thought, how do they exist?

It was the physical pain that forced her to move. She showered with slow deliberate movements, her body stiff, doubled up like an old lady. She rubbed the steam from Jack’s shaving mirror, examined the fragile woman who looked back at her, poked the waxy skin, stared at the eyes sunk back in their sockets. Where had she gone? Nothing about her looked the same, but for the one eyebrow higher than the other. She raised and lowered it, then spun round hearing their voices, did not imagine it, heard them clearly inside of her. It’s all right, darlings, Mummy’s here. But it wasn’t all right, and Mummy had not been there.

She shaved her legs with Jack’s razor, selected a cool linen skirt and emerald blouse and went outside to wait for breakfast. The sun was blazing in a bright blue sky. She breathed in and out slowly, aware for the first time that she was hungry.

An Indian woman in a bright sari came out, carrying a tray.

‘Where’s Lili?’ Lydia asked.

The woman shrugged. ‘My name is Channa.’

Lydia slowly chewed dry rice biscuits and oversweetened mango jam, felt she couldn’t drink, but then held up her cup for more coffee. Maz sat opposite, watching silently.

She looked at him, noticed he’d grown taller and his hair was wild. He was so alive. How was it possible for Emma and Fleur to be dead? How could they be when he was still alive? When
she
was still alive. She could not stop the memories. The morning she’d left to go to Suzanne replayed in her mind. If there’d just been a sign. If she hadn’t taken Suzanne’s call. If she’d got to Ipoh in time. If she had only said something more than just goodbye.

Heat flooded her veins. None of it made sense. Somebody had to pay, somebody more than the faceless Chinese insurgents who had set fire to the rest house, somebody she could look in the eyes and scream at.

The burst of rage took her by surprise. Her fingers resting at the edge of the breakfast table suddenly stiffened, she closed her eyes, and with a shout she pushed the entire table over. As it tipped, coffee cup, plate, jam and biscuits slid off. She heard the crash and splatter on the veranda floor, heard Maz yelp and leap out of the way. She hung her head, kept her eyes closed, longed for her girls with the kind of longing that led nowhere, that could only bounce back at her and drive her crazy. When she opened her eyes, there was nothing. Just the day, the dust, the damp smell of the trees, and jam.

Channa came out with a broom and dustpan.

‘Sorry,’ Lydia said, and the woman looked at her with wide-set slanting eyes, but did not speak.

She listened to the creaks of the rubber trees and creatures stirring in the nearby branches. Tales the gardener used to tell the girls slipped in and out of her mind, and the way the children shrieked with delight when he did.
Mummy. Mummy.

Maz looked at her with enormous sad eyes. She held out a hand to him and he let her squeeze his hand. They smiled at each other, and briefly, it was how it had been before. She knew it wasn’t fair on Maz, and worried that he must have run wild
while she was in hospital. He went back to the kitchen and she heard him chattering with Channa’s son, Burhan. Hopefully he’d be happy counting stones or searching for butterflies with his friend.

The days stretched ahead. An image of a smart European woman she knew in Malacca came to mind. What was her name? Ah yes, Cicely. She’d sent a card. So sorry not to come, she’d said, but I’m just off travelling in Australia. Lydia didn’t want her anyway. Didn’t want anyone. It had been Cicely who warned her off Jack right at the start. An image of Jack naked flashed in her mind. Probably jealous. Gin and tonic, tinkle of ice, slice of lemon; a discreet before lunch drinker. It gave her an idea. A way for memories to be erased.

The drinks cabinet revealed an unopened bottle but no tonic. She hurried to the sombre kitchen.

‘Tonic?’ She held up the bottle and shook it. ‘For the gin?’

No reply. The woman shrugged. Lydia pulled open the door of the fridge. A tall American refrigerator run on kerosene. Plenty of beer. She tried the small larder off the sooty kitchen, wrinkled her nose at the odour of overripe pineapple, but spied boxes piled in the corner. Careless of potentially deadly spiders carried in the spiralling dust, she pulled out two cases of beer and one containing soft drinks, then dragged it to the lounge.

The first few hits of gin lessened the ache in her heart and limbs, and dulled the flashes of rage. This was the answer. She wanted a cigarette. Jack had given up some time before, but there was bound to be a packet hidden away in the back of a drawer. She hadn’t smoked since Emma was born, but once the idea arose, she became fixated.

In Jack’s bedroom there weren’t many hiding places, only a chest of drawers and the tall single wardrobe. She pulled open the top drawer. Vests, boxers and socks. Nothing else. The second drawer revealed little more than shorts and shirts. The third drawer various miscellaneous items. Odd bits of fancy dress. Bow tie. A pack of cards, Scrabble. Reading glasses. She’d never
seen Jack read much, only a paper or magazine, though the bookshelves were groaning with the weight of books.

The fourth drawer stuck a little. She knelt, pulled hard, and the whole thing tipped out, spilling a pile of Chinese clothes on the floor. She fingered the delicate cheongsams, loose flowing black trousers, pretty white tops, and smelt the same fragrance she’d found in the bathroom cabinet, gently infused through every item. She lifted a silky green cheongsam with a hint of black lace at the thigh and stood before Jack’s small mirror. She could only see part of herself at a time, but whatever part of her she could see, top, bottom or middle, it was clear the woman was diminutive. She looked inside the little high collar. At the back embroidered in gold, the word
Lili
stared boldly out. Oh my God. What an idiot she was. Lili had never once smiled, had never shown that gentle consideration so typical of the Chinese girls. Lili glowed with self-assurance, or so it had seemed to Lydia, and this was the reason why.

Lydia knew stories of the old colonial days when lone planters maintained what was once called a
keep.
A girl to look after them, to cook, clean, and warm their lonely beds, and occasionally their hearts. Why hadn’t he told her? She gave up her search for cigarettes and dashed back to the lounge. She picked up the bottle, unlocked the gate and ran from the house.

She passed the track and veered off into the darkness, fought her way through bushes of giant ferns, and dodged the catapulting branches of mischievous monkeys. Bright birds flitted through the spreading trees, and streams of sweat began to snake from her head down her neck and under her blouse. Her life was bottoming out, as if she was existing out of time, numb to the danger of forest scorpions hidden under fallen branches, or pit vipers in the grass.

She came to a wide stream and ran straight through, tore off her soaked blouse and went on. She swung the bottle, drank fast as if it was water, until her head throbbed, the breath squeezed out of her lungs, and the rage inside her exploded. With all her
strength she threw the half empty bottle against the trunk of a rubber tree. The smash was briefly satisfying, but not enough. A thousand smashed bottles would not be enough. Not caring which way to turn, she stumbled along sodden marshy pathways, still unable to block out the random act of terror that had destroyed her girls.

In a small clearing, flashing sunlight blinded her. She heard a rough metallic chirp and a crimson sunbird wheeled across the patch of sky. Lili floated by, cool, nymph like, her skin as clear as alabaster. Lydia touched her own fiery cheeks and closed her eyes. When she opened them again, the girl was gone. Through the watery green air, another shaft of light exploded. Now it was Emma fading in and out of the trees, and sucking a lollipop with an impish grin, dressed as a Chinese girl for the Christmas fancy dress ball. She heard their laughter and smiled fondly.

When Jack stumbled upon her on his way back for lunch, she was melting at the side of the road, the air thick with gorging mosquitoes. She stared with blank eyes, then vomited over his shoes. He picked glass out of her feet and with a lit cigarette burnt off the leeches on her legs before carrying her home. She retched repeatedly, but better that sickness than the one that ripped her heart to shreds.

While Jack slept, she lay down in the cool of the garden, stared at the half face of the moon, saw Emma calling from the shadows and wished she might go to her. She felt herself slipping far away beneath the surface of life, where nothing could reach her, where there was no love, no pain, and there was no point in hoping.

In the morning Jack found her there, stone cold on the ground, Maz kneeling beside her, in one of Jack’s old tee shirts. Jack stood her up, slapped her face, and dragged her inside. He gave Maz a hug and told him to go and ask Channa in the kitchen for some coffee and biscuits. As soon as it arrived, he forced bitter coffee down Lydia’s throat, then rubbed and slapped her hands to find some warmth. She passed out.

When she woke the light had changed, the room filled with the dusky pink of a setting sun. She felt pain in her legs and feet.

‘Promise you’ll never do that again,’ he said.

‘What am I going to do?’

‘You and Maz are going to stay here with me. For as long as it takes. Then we’ll see.’

‘I haven’t got anything.’

‘You’ve got me.’

‘No. I mean I haven’t got money.’

‘Lydia, for heaven’s sake. I’ve got my salary. You don’t need to think about that now. Get well. That’s what’s important.’

She nodded.

‘I know you don’t believe it now, but it will get better.’

She screwed up her face and shook her head. ‘It’s the lack of meaning.’