Separation, The (25 page)

She lay on her bed at Cicely’s, watching sunset turn the sky purple. As a breeze from the fan cooled her bare skin, day became night, and when the stars and moon came out, she thought of Jack. She felt him against her, as clear as if he were there, his large hand splayed across her stomach, the soapy coal tar smell still lingering on his skin.

She let her mind drift. A woman in blue came out of the ocean, moving gracefully, hair shining pale gold, even though it was night. When Lydia tried to reach her, the vision evaporated, and she was left with squabbling gibbons swinging from branches. She woke, weeping uncontrollably, to find Cicely sitting by her bed.

‘Come down. For drinks.’

‘How long have you been there?’

‘Not long. Did you hear what I said?’

Lydia wiped her eyes and covered herself with a sheet.

In Cicely’s elegant sitting room, decorated in subtle creams and palest ice blue, Ralph mixed them each a G and T, clinking in the ice and swirling it round. Lydia, perched on the delicately gilded French chair, felt awkward.

‘You’ve lost weight,’ Ralph said with a grin. ‘Suits you.’

She lowered her eyes, thinking of Jack. ‘It wasn’t intentional.’

‘Ralph darling,’ Cicely purred, a manipulative look on her face. ‘Come and sit down. We need your help … Lydia needs your help.’

He didn’t seem to notice the look, but puffed out his cheeks and plumped down next to his wife.

She smiled at him. ‘We don’t know why, but we think George
Parrott is hiding something. It may have been to do with Jack, or the whereabouts of a child called Maznan Chang.’

She turned to Lydia for confirmation.

‘He was very prickly when I asked to see the list of people who died in the fire,’ Lydia added. ‘Said it was well-nigh impossible.’

Ralph frowned. ‘Probably true.’

Cicely, watchful and self-assured, patted him on the thigh. A spot of red appeared on both his cheeks.

‘I know, darling. But, Ralph, we wondered if you’d heard anything on the grapevine.’

Lydia stared out through open curtains into the darkness, surprised by how well Cicely and her husband got on. Despite all the hints Cicely had dropped, there was an ease between them. And, as if they had a pact, he didn’t seem to mind the cupboard love one bit.

He shook his head. ‘All the talk was, Alec got caught up in the fire when they moved out of the offices in Ipoh and … well you know the rest. A new influx at the rest house, overcrowding, nothing on paper, records burnt. Remains unidentifiable. So no complete list. Sorry, Lydia.’ He gave her a sympathetic smile.

‘Well, Lydia thinks George does know something.’

He raised his eyebrows in surprise. ‘About the fire?’

‘No …’ Lydia said. ‘Well, maybe. It might be about the boy, or even about Jack and Lili.’

‘Lili?’

Lydia’s breath caught. ‘She used to be Jack’s lover. I think she had something to do with his murder.’

There was an embarrassed silence.

Cicely raised her brows. ‘How intriguing, darling. Why didn’t you say?’

Lydia shrugged.

Cicely turned to Ralph, kissed his forehead and ran a frosted pink fingernail down one cheek. ‘Could you get into George’s office on the quiet? As his ADO I mean.’

He shifted uncomfortably in his seat. ‘And do what? It could take a while …’

‘But will you do it?’ Cicely interrupted. ‘Check out his office I mean?’

Lydia’s heart lifted when he nodded, but as he started to question her, there was a loud rap at the door. It was late. He and Cicely exchanged looks.

‘Not expecting anyone?’ he asked, as he left the room.

Lydia watched Cicely fiddle with her necklace, seeming lost in thought. She thought of Jack again, and the row of frangipani trees that edged the graveyard where he lay. There was a sound of voices in the hall, and when Ralph came back in, his face was pale.

He looked from one to the other. ‘I’m afraid the task is quite impossible now. It seems George Parrott has shot himself.’

Late afternoon. Outside, the wall of sound almost knocked her over. She glimpsed him waiting on the corner of Cicely’s street, and couldn’t pretend she hadn’t seen. As she got closer, he raised his eyebrows, and nodded at her with a look of quiet determination.

She shook her head. ‘Well, I guess I’ve not got much choice then.’

He came across to her. ‘Here,’ he said, offering his arm.

She shook him off. ‘I’m perfectly capable of walking on my own.’

‘Suit yourself. Now let’s get out of here.’

She looked at him, alarmed.

He grinned and his solemn face softened. ‘You look very nice today, Lydia.’

This was the most personal Adil had been, and she realised she rather liked it. She suppressed her smile by looking up at the blazing sky, and stepped straight into the path of a rickshaw. He pulled her back, looking closely at her face. ‘Why are you asking for trouble?’

‘I feel nauseous. It’s the heat … Why not come in and meet Cicely.’

He shook his head. ‘Not a good idea.’

Lydia frowned. ‘You don’t even know her.’

‘On the contrary. I work with her.’

Lydia drew back. ‘But you said you do undercover stuff.’

‘I do.’

‘And not for George Parrott any more.’

‘You’ve heard then.’

She nodded. ‘But Cicely?’

‘What about my flat? We can put our heads together there.’

She glanced back at Cicely’s house. The rules were changing fast. She wanted to go with him, felt she ought not; but somehow she needed to trust this man.

He smiled. ‘Just for a while?’

At the taxi rank on the main road, next to an open-fronted shop bursting with exotic birds, an Indian snake charmer sat on the pavement blowing a wooden whistle. She stopped.

‘So Cicely is …’

He nodded. ‘Of course, I can’t actually say.’

Lydia sighed. That explains Cicely’s cool, she thought, the way nothing ever gets to her.

‘I live on the other side of the Chinese quarter. You’ll like it. Great places to eat. But I’m forgetting you lived in a colonial house on the outskirts. Not so many rats there.’

She shrugged. ‘I still had to check the toilet for snakes and spiders, and there are rats everywhere!’

He laughed.

He lived in the Street of the Three Dragons, close to the crumbling red light district. Though it was a peeling old building, it retained a faded chic, its arched windows and pale slatted shutters covered with the red, lantern-like flowers of coral vine. It had seen better days but it wasn’t a bad address. Upstairs, she settled herself in a rattan chair by the window, and leant back
against a black silk cushion. He brought her a Singapore gin sling.

With gin gradually flooding her veins, she watched the movement of the ocean in the distance, and felt like throwing caution to the wind. A faint breeze made her cheeks tingle. Strains of eastern music and oriental voices leaked up from the street, but at least up here she was away from the smell. The room itself was uncluttered and elegant, a bit like Adil, she thought, with a smoked glass vase placed on a teak coffee table, and ripe rambutans in a bowl. More dark cushions lay scattered on a diamond patterned rug that covered a section of the polished floor. In one corner, decorative dried grasses fluttered as the ceiling fan began to pick up speed. She narrowed her eyes as she looked at him.

‘Why were you waiting for me?’

His face was thoughtful as he lit a bronze incense burner, but he didn’t reply. Then he went to his room to change, leaving the door slightly ajar. The sound of a piano drifted up from the flat below. South American music. She imagined dancing a tango with him or a sultry rumba, her in sequins, him in a tuxedo. As she looked out at the building opposite, a stunning Chinese ancestral home, the evening sky rapidly turned inky blue, pinpoints of sparkling light standing out in the water beyond.

He came back through wearing a long-sleeved, freshly laundered turquoise shirt. Against it, the dark skin of his face, neck and hands shone. His was a different kind of masculinity. Athletic, lean, powerful.

She flashed him a curious look. ‘Who are you?’

He grinned. ‘I told you. A friend.’

She struggled with her feelings, wasn’t sure, yet she wanted to believe him.

They were to eat at a tiny Chinese restaurant a couple of streets from his flat. To get to it they passed the Cheng Hoon Temple. Its red pillars were coated in black Chinese script, the rafters painted with lions and tigers, and the roof dipped in the middle
to curve upwards to a point at both ends. To Lydia it felt very foreign.

‘It’s my favourite place,’ Adil said, at the restaurant, smiling broadly and scanning the menu. The red glow from a dozen lights, hung from a central beam, provided the only light, though a burst of brighter light and a wave of hot steam blew in from the kitchen each time the waiter passed.

‘The walnut chicken is good and so is the saffron rice. How about a starter of shark’s fin soup?’

‘You choose. I’m too tired to think.’

While he sipped chilled water, he poured her a Tiger beer. She gulped noisily and held out her glass for more.

‘Careful,’ he said. ‘It’s stronger than you think.’

‘For Christ’s sake, I’m not a child,’ she snapped. ‘You’re as bad as my husband … I mean as bad as he was when he was alive.’

He frowned.

She knew she shouldn’t say it but couldn’t help herself. ‘It’s what we whites do, you know. Get plastered.’

Tendons appeared in his neck and there was a sharp look on his face. ‘If that’s what it takes, Lydia, but don’t we have plans to make?’

Still sullen, she gazed at him.

When he looked her straight in the face, it seemed he could see right through her. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I shouldn’t have said that.’

He smiled. ‘Don’t lose heart, not now you’ve come this far.’

‘It’s just that I feel so damn tired.’

‘Are you ill?’

She shook her head. ‘No. Let’s make plans.’

‘Good. Well, first, I hope to locate the boy.’

‘You reckon you will?’

He thought for a minute. ‘I will. Like Cicely, I have many contacts.’

She was surprised at how sure he sounded. She tilted her head and looked at him. ‘A lot of things seem so odd.’

She thought he avoided her eyes by turning to the waiter and
ordering for them both in rapid Chinese. While he was looking away, she studied the angles of his face.

‘There’s more than work between you and Cicely, isn’t there?’ It was just a hunch, but she could tell by the faint flush in his cheeks that she’d hit on something.

‘You’re mistaken.’ He didn’t meet her eyes.

It hung between them, this unspoken thing.

She sighed, blowing out her cheeks, then looked at Adil, smelt a trace of lemon spice and cardamom. He was decent. Good. She felt sure of it. His face was trustworthy, that was the only word for it.

‘Have you ever been married?’

His lips tightened. ‘No. Now can we just concentrate on the matter in hand.’

Stung by the rebuke in his voice, and her own lack of sensitivity, she muttered an apology.

He sighed. ‘It doesn’t matter.’

There was a slight pause. ‘Where do you come from? It’s hard to tell.’

‘I’m really not in the mood for an interrogation.’

She pulled a funny face, as if she were one of the children, and he relented.

‘Okay. I’m part Malayan, part Portuguese, with a dab of Sumatran and some Chinese somewhere. Probably descended from pirates. Does that satisfy you?’

She smiled. ‘Exotic.’

He let his stony expression go and Lydia felt happier.

‘I’ll go to Singapore or Johore,’ she said. ‘See if I can find a lead.’

‘You can’t just stray from place to place. You need to rest.’

‘I can’t. I’m going to have to get a job.’

He spread his arms wide. ‘Lydia, you’ve got guts, but you must recharge your batteries, or you’ll end up ill. You look exhausted.’

The thought of finding Maz tugged at her. ‘Okay, but what will you do?’

‘Well, as I said, first the child, and then the girl you spoke about.’

‘Lili.’

‘There isn’t much to go on. But someone will know. Someone always does.’

She scratched her head and yawned. He was right. She needed rest.

‘I have a contact, an ex-colleague of George’s. I’ll see what he can do. We’ll take it from there.’ He looked at his watch. ‘Look, it’s late. We can look for a taxi if you like, but you’re welcome to stay at mine tonight. It’s okay, no need to look so worried. I’ll sleep on the sofa.’

His eyes were amused, but it wasn’t worry he’d seen on her face.

‘Thanks,’ she managed to say. ‘I’ll stay.’

I woke at dawn, skin prickling, the blanket tangled round my legs. I sat up, and pulled out the letter from Veronica. I knew it by heart, but held it at an angle to catch the light and read the words again.

My dearest Emma,
she wrote,

 

On my last visit to London I discovered the name of the painter. Charles Lloyd Patterson. Unfortunately the gentleman has passed on, but I have his old address, where a small gallery of his work is kept for public viewing. I took the liberty of writing, on your behalf, to ask if we might pay a call. Yesterday the keeper wrote back.

 

If you agree, I shall collect you very early for your next exeat, and we’ll go to Cheltenham. That’s where the house is. Afterwards I thought a trip to the Gaumont cinema, if that’s agreeable.

 

By the way, I need to take you for a fitting for your bridesmaid’s dress, while we’re there. I hope you don’t mind yellow. Fleur has already had hers.

 

With fondest best wishes,

Veronica

It was too early to get dressed so I lay back, listening to the sounds of the sleeping girls and the first birdsong of the morning. More than once I heard Rebecca cry out in her sleep, and thin snores came from dark corners of the dorm. Though it was early May, it was windy, and whistles ran round the building, sending a draught to slip under our door.

As soon as the bell rang, I was up and dressed. I skipped
breakfast, rushed into the office to collect my slip, and raced from the building, wind whipping the hair into my eyes. Veronica waited, bright eyed and upright in her Morris Minor. She looked very smart in black ski-pants and a tight yellow sweater.

‘Excited?’ she said with a grin.

‘You bet.’

We drove through a pretty village and then through Kidderminster. I envied the grubby faced kids playing cricket and yelling at each other in the street, and opened the window to listen to them. Then we passed more kids swinging from rafters in a bombed-out church. To me, it seemed that boys had a particular kind of freedom that I did not.

An hour later, on the edge of Cheltenham, we passed rows of simple houses, their gardens strung with washing lines, and lined with tiny vegetable plots and smelly pigsties. There, apart from the kids, the streets were narrow and empty, but further on it changed to leafy avenues, and sweeping regency buildings. In the centre it was very noisy, with cars, bicycles and pedestrians.

Veronica parked and we walked past the Gaumont cinema, where bunting stretched right across the street, and a huge poster advertised the new John Mills film,
The Dambusters
.

‘I know Birmingham’s closer but I love Cheltenham,’ she said, with a broad grin. ‘After London, it’s my favourite place.’

‘Where will you live? I mean with Dad.’

‘In the village. Your father isn’t keen on London. Though I still have my old flat there. It’s a crumbly old place in Wandsworth. I really should sell it or let it out, but it’s so handy when I go up to town. I’ll take you there sometime.’

She stopped and grinned at me. ‘Here we are. Remind me before we go to get a pound of cheese and some sliced ham at Victoria Stores.’

We walked up the stone steps of a moderately sized town house in a small terrace. I looked back over my shoulder at the trees
spaced all along on both sides of the road, their roots lifting the pavements.

The woman who answered the bell looked about sixty, with white hair piled randomly on top of her head, very pale skin, gold specs and a look of importance in her grey eyes. Though when I glanced at her feet, the fluffy pink mules didn’t quite match. In fact, I could just imagine the rollers in her hair, partly covered by a paisley headscarf, while she smoked on the doorstep of one of the houses we saw on our way into town.

She held out her hand. ‘Bonnie Butcher. Do come into the back drawing room. You can ask whatever you like there. It used to be Mr Patterson’s favourite room. Mine now, of course.’

I didn’t know who she was. It crossed my mind she might have been the painter’s wife, but the genteelly disguised accent, and the image I first had of her, told me she was not.

‘It’s a lovely house,’ Veronica remarked.

‘Do make yourself comfortable while I fetch the tea. Would you like cake? I’m afraid I have to charge for cake and admission.’

Veronica nodded politely, as my stomach growled from lack of breakfast.

I looked round the room. There were knick-knacks on every surface, and the wallpaper was fussy, patterned with yellow willow trees and exotic blue birds. The sofa was upholstered in plush green velvet, and studded in a diamond pattern, and three gold-shaded standard lamps lit the room, their tasselled edges shifting slightly with the movement of air. I leant forward, pressing my palms down on the velvet pile of the sofa.

Bonnie Butcher came back with a delicate tray and placed it on a small round table between us.

‘Help yourself to cake.’

There were two kinds. I went for a slice of chocolate layer cake, but groaned inwardly when I noticed two clear prints where my clammy palms had flattened the velvet pile of the sofa.
Transferring the cake to my other hand, I carefully rubbed one of the marks, only making it worse. I shifted uncomfortably in my seat, and hoped she hadn’t noticed.

A stretch of silence passed, with only the clink of teacups, and me trying to chew as quietly as I could. The lady drank her tea with a little finger raised in the air and kept glancing at me. When she’d finished, she patted her lips with a paper napkin, and took a breath.

‘Now, you wish to find out the name of somebody who sat for the artist. Is that correct?’

‘Yes. In the nineteen twenties. I have the picture here.’

Veronica took the miniature from me and passed it to the woman.

She nodded. ‘Oh, yes. I can help you there.’

‘Oh, please,’ I burst out.

She raised an eyebrow.

I plastered what I hoped was a trustworthy smile across my face and explained. ‘You see she might be a relative.’

I don’t know if what I said upset her, but she frowned, and with narrowed eyes looked cagey for a moment. I held my breath and crossed my fingers behind my back.

‘I know this woman,’ she said, after a long pause. ‘There are two more of her. You’d better follow me.’

I rose from the sofa with as much poise as I could, and she led us up a sweeping staircase to a room with big windows. They stretched from floor to ceiling, and overlooked a garden with tall trees swaying in the wind. Though it wasn’t cold, a fire blazed in an ornate, open fireplace.

Portraits of varying sizes covered the walls. Old faces, young faces, ugly faces, beautiful faces; their eyes followed you wherever you looked. On the wall opposite the windows, a painting of a middle-aged gentleman with a beard and a moody-looking face hung beside two other pictures of portly men.

‘This is the gallery,’ she said proudly. She pointed a finger past my shoulder. ‘And that woman is the one in your painting. Emma Rothwell.’

I spun round. The face was luminous, her cheeks soft, her face oval, and proud arched eyebrows framed hazel eyes, though flecks the colour of deep water took them somewhere between blue and green. She looked even more like my mother than in the miniature I held in my hand. I sucked in my breath. Veronica nodded and smiled, but I felt a burst of heat. The room spun and I stepped back against a table.

I must have gone dizzy, because the next thing I knew, I was leaning back on a big squishy sofa with Veronica bending over me. Bonnie Butcher had left the room.

‘Are you all right?’ Veronica said, looking worried.

‘It’s the heat.’

She reached out a hand.

I held it and the words came out in a rush. ‘My mother’s maiden name was Rothwell. She never thought it was a real name. She thought it was just a name the nuns gave her.’

‘All right,’ she said. ‘Now we know what we have to do. Let’s find out if Emma Rothwell is still alive.’

I nodded and said a little prayer. Please God let her be alive, and please let us find her. We went downstairs, Veronica holding me by the elbow. At the bottom Bonnie Butcher handed us a little catalogue.

‘Of course, none of it’s for sale. He left the place to me you know, for my lifetime, that is. I just have to keep it going as a gallery.’ She paused. ‘If you’re interested, I can show you the rest of the house.’

I grabbed the opportunity, my mind spinning with thoughts of Emma Rothwell. Who she was, what she was doing there, how she knew the painter. I hoped Bonnie Butcher could tell me more.

Downstairs was very old fashioned, just three rooms with uneven flagstone floors, and small high windows that you could only see out of if you went on tiptoe. The two at the back looked out on a yard. She saw me balancing.

‘We keep the coal out there and, of course, the original WC is there too.’

In the narrow front room an old black hob with a copper pan took up half the wall, with a mangle and Belfast sink on the other side. From the ceiling a wide contraption hung, with wheels and rope: a kind of pulley, I guessed, for drying clothes

‘He liked things kept the way they used to be,’ she said.

Upstairs her eyes darted about as she showed us his studio, a high, north facing room, with a larger than usual window. She stroked the objects as we went round, as if by touch alone she could assure their continued presence. Everything seemed to be intact, as if the artist had just popped out. Tubes of oil paint, brushes, even a lingering trace of turps mingled with the smell of Ibcol disinfectant. There wasn’t a speck of dust anywhere, though I didn’t imagine it was like that when he worked there. Bonnie Butcher prefers it this way, I thought. Easier to clean a dead artist’s studio.

‘She would have sat there for her portrait,’ she said.

I looked at the faded chair in the window. That chair. Emma Rothwell sat in that chair when she wasn’t much older than me.

‘Can I?’ I asked.

She nodded, and I sat to look out on an old-fashioned garden, with a square lawn, hedges down the sides, and tangled ivy climbing over the wooden fence at the back. In front of that were tall poplars. My grandmother must have stared at those same trees, in all sorts of moods, listened to the blackbirds chirrup, heard voices from the other gardens. For a moment I couldn’t have felt more alone. The sky was sullen and dull, but maybe she looked out when sunlight threw a pattern on the grass beneath the trees. Or maybe it was winter, and the lawn and hedges would have been white with snow.

So close to her, I felt myself slip back into the past. I wondered if she wore scent, and what it smelt like. I wanted to hear her story, yet I, who could tell stories from morning until night, couldn’t think of a single reason she would abandon her baby in the way she had.

I heard a transistor radio playing in one of the gardens.
Housewives’ Choice
. Doris Day was singing ‘
Que sera, sera’
, one of Mum’s favourite songs. It brought me back to the present.

‘Did you know Mr Patterson for long?’ I asked.

‘All my life. He never married, though he was a handsome man. I was his housekeeper. He made his name as a war painter, you know. First World War of course.’

I didn’t know. There only seemed to be portraits on display.

‘The war pictures all sold, every one. After the war he turned to portraits, though they didn’t do as well. I met her, you know, Emma Rothwell.’ She gave me a funny look. ‘With the light on your face like that, you have a look of her.’

My heart was pounding as I asked the next question. ‘What happened to her?’

‘Oh, I wouldn’t know about that. I only saw them when they sat, dear. And it was a long time ago.’

We didn’t go to the park to see the boating, or to see a film, but Veronica took me to the Belle View Hotel for lunch, and then we went shopping. I couldn’t believe it when she let me choose some black ski-pants just like hers, a dark blue duffle coat that I’d wanted for ages, and a little tight-fitting powder blue jumper. I was so happy I could have cried. She told me her hair was permed and asked if I wanted mine done. I laughed and pointed at my wild curls, but I said I’d like it cut, and she took me to her own hairdresser. While my hair fell on the floor, ‘Sweet Sixteen’ played on the radio. Veronica took out a slim silver cigarette case and lit up, and I really wished I
was
sixteen. I came away with a short pixie cut and felt very grown up. We forgot the cheese and ham, though, sadly, not the yellow bridesmaid’s dress.

Taller now, Fleur was growing up too. The puppy fat was gone, and her once blonde hair, now light brown, was in a ponytail. When she came into my room dressed up in some old clothes of Granny’s – she’d pinned up a long black skirt at the back and wore a floral blouse – I saw her as if for the first time, and realised
Fleur was very pretty. Little snub nose and dimpled chin. The boys that wanted a girl who hung on their every word, while they pretended to be tough, would be after her. Unlike me. I was too opinionated to be attractive to most boys.

‘Do you want to play dressing up?’ she said. ‘We could do one of your stories, like we used to.’

‘Why would I want to do that? It’s kids’ stuff.’

She looked at me strangely.

‘Why are you looking at me like that?’ I snapped.

‘Nothing. It’s just your hair. You’re different, Em, you never play any more.’

‘In case you haven’t noticed, I’m not here most of the time.’

She looked at me with tears in her eyes. ‘But even when you are you don’t.’

‘Don’t be silly. Anyway it’s nothing to do with you.’

This wasn’t strictly true, because what was on my mind was everything to do with me and her, but if I told her, she’d give the game away.