Separation, The (28 page)

The bus rumbled along the rugged shoreline of the Malacca Straits. Tiny fishing vessels dotted the water, and on the distant headland, Lydia spotted the lone ruin of a Dutch fort. She slid open the window to sniff wild orchids tumbling over wide spreading fig trees, their scent mingling with the hot salty air. White metallic sunlight suddenly blazed on the water. Blinded, she drew her head back in, and looked ahead instead, where the clouds spun out in a fan.

She longed for a sense of elation, a chance of hope, or, at the very least, some courage to face the future. She thought she’d become used to it, but when they picked up speed across the causeway between Johore and Singapore, her heart caught with memories of being there with her daughters. She felt the full weight of the loss bear down on her. How would she ever endure this?

Once in Singapore, the bus followed Connaught Drive, the sweeping road that paralleled the harbour, before stopping beside the Cenotaph, at the edge of Raffles Square.

As soon as the bus disappeared from view, she looked eastward and out to sea, and managed to resist a descent into sorrow. She squared her shoulders, and without even a glance towards the arched verandas of Tanglin Road, she ignored the tree-shaded boulevards of the European quarter. She turned her face up to the sun – it’d be fine. For her, like many others, that life was gone; instead, she made her way back along Victoria harbour, and the busy wide river that sliced the city in two.

A group of Englishmen in white hats, shorts, and long socks smiled as she walked past. She nodded in acknowledgement, carried on until her case grew heavy, then stopped to take in the
old-fashioned trading vessels loading and unloading. Surprised to see them still there, she threw back her head, and laughed at the chaos. She began to feel better, watching cars and rickshaws ignoring the turbaned Indian traffic cops, and streams of people crossing the streets, kamikaze style. Singapore hadn’t changed.

She hopped on another bus. As she got closer to Chinatown, Chinese music blasted from ornate buildings, and washing hung like flags from poles thrust haphazardly from every apartment. Singapore. Crossroads of the East. Isn’t that what people said? The cheapest shopping centre in the whole world.

Most of the cheap hotels were cathouses, and she was lucky to find the Welcome Retreat, a tall thin building on three floors, with the unexpected odour of wood wax on every level. She clattered up the narrow staircase, dragging her bag to one of the three rooms at the top, which shared a bathroom.

In there, she struggled with the metal catch on the window. She wanted it open to let in air. It wasn’t the Oceanview Hotel, but at least it was clean, and though the room was musty, it didn’t stink of rancid fat, or cheap perfume. She took in the shabby furniture, then counted her dollars, for now still decorated with the portrait of the queen. With so little left, and needing a job, Singapore was the right place to be. Then maybe, with enough cash, she might get back to England: make a real new start.

Outside, a car’s tyres squealed. On the floor below, a door banged. There was something else. Strained whispers from the room next to hers; a couple having a tense argument. She sat on the edge of the bed, trying not to listen. Time crawled as she wandered round the little hotel room, wanting something else to do. She told herself this was a decision she had to make. She couldn’t rely on Adil for ever, and, in any case, it was time to be independent. Strong. She thought of his powerful face, remembered his breath on the nape of her neck when she’d cried.

The room reminded her of the dormitory at the top of a winding back staircase at the convent. Three of them had shared. She hadn’t come very far, she thought, as she lay on the bed and
closed her eyes. She tried to remember the person she’d been, but the girl she saw in her mind’s eye seemed like another person, someone from another life altogether.

She saw herself just before her sixteenth birthday. The war had already begun. It had been summer, a sunny day with a totally blue sky, and she was expecting a visitor. Hair, fiery then, and wilder, like Emma’s, and Sister Patricia, hands on hips insisting she have it cut. She’d been the only girl left, the only one with nowhere to go in the holidays.

She remembered waiting on the bench in front of the convent. Eleven o’clock came and went. They brought her lemonade, and an hour later, fish paste sandwiches. She couldn’t eat and threw them on the ground for the birds. She leapt at the sound of every passing vehicle but didn’t leave the spot. Sister Patricia gave her a copy of
The Family from One End Street
to read, but the words wouldn’t lie still on the page.

Her visitor never came.

Lydia rubbed her eyes. The past hurt. That painful need for love. More than anything it was that. She thought of how much
she’d
loved her children and how little her own mother could have wanted her. She thought of Em and the last fancy dress competition at the club. Emma had gone as a clown. It was not the costume that won it, but Em turning a double somersault as she passed the judges’ desk. The dismayed expression on her face when she dented her hat had made them laugh, and she bagged first prize on the strength of it. She smiled at the memory of Fleur’s love of pretty dresses, and the terrible time when she’d had pneumonia and taken so long to recover.

She remembered standing in front of the ocean at Terengganu with Alec in 1946, six months after the war in the east ended. Malaya had been torn apart by the Japanese invasion, but they had stood, arms entwined, eating brazils and drinking coconut juice from a freshly cut shell. It had been a short break before his first tour began. Emma was just three and Fleur was on the way. She thought of the salty smell of the ocean, and when they kept
the window open, the seductive scent of wild jasmine at night. How the scent had mingled with the smell of Pimms, and the heat from their bodies. How after they’d made love, she’d asked him to tell her more about his childhood. Ordinary, he said, except that his father disappeared for a while when he was a kid, but that’s what inspired him to go places.

She sighed. Things had changed. All of that was gone and with so little of Jack’s money left, she had to stop thinking and get a job. That’s what it boiled down to.

The first job she found was in Singapore’s largest department store, a marble pillared place of scented counters and whispered calm, where well-heeled customers were attended by overly courteous staff.

But on her floor, household goods, it was noisy. No calm. No perfume. A hundred cleaning products were lined up in meticulous rows, the lurid bottles dusted daily. Kettles were polished, kitchen utensils kept pristine.

To Lydia, the platform where she demonstrated the use of newfangled pressure cookers was a little theatre. It paid quite well, and she liked it, just as long as she didn’t blow one of the darn things up. Required to begin a demonstration every hour, whether or not there was a crowd, she sat on a high stool on the platform overlooking the store, her long legs crossed. From there she gazed out through the large window to watch her past walk by. European women, hair freshly set, meeting for cocktails at Raffles, and the church, surrounded by palms, where English children were instructed not to run by heavily accented Chinese amahs. It was amazing that, with an end in sight, and after so much had been destroyed by war, it all still went on.

On the day she found her second job, it filled her with hope. This was something she could do, and do well. Thrilled by her own daring, she slipped through an archway into a tented arcade of
patterned silk, where fans gently moved the air, and clouds of voile floated like butterflies. Crammed into shelves that stretched from floor to ceiling, dragons, birds and pagodas on shiny taffeta fought for space with rich brocades. Her mind alight with plans, she ran up a couple of dresses on a machine borrowed from a Chinese waitress.

Though the job kept her busy, and she enjoyed the feel of the fabrics as she turned them into sequinned evening dresses, the feeling of excitement soon passed. Three months later, August 1957, with Malayan independence about to go through, and more than two and a half years since her girls had died, Lydia ended the song to scant applause. Singapore hadn’t exactly lost its shine, but tonight was Tuesday. And slow. Tonight, they wanted to fill their stomachs with booze and fried chicken.

Sister Patricia used to say she should do something with her voice. She hadn’t envisaged singing in the Traveller’s Inn at the Oceanview hotel. More appropriate would have been musical theatre or a choir. But when the manager turned out to be a portly man she and Alec had known years before, all he’d asked was could she sing.

She took a cold beer from the barman, smoothed down her skirt and went to sit by the window. She liked to watch the lights sparkle, loved the sound of water as it lapped the jetty posts, couldn’t resist the night time scents of cinnamon and ginger, and the fishy salty smell of the sea.

The manager approached her, with a grin. ‘Pink gin at the bar for you.’ He indicated a spot at the end of the long shiny bar.

People often bought her a drink at the end of her set. She felt a flash of despondency, but stood and forced herself to move. It was either that, or allow life to destroy her.

‘Who’s the guy?’ she asked. It was dark at the end and as the bar curved round a corner she couldn’t see more than a shape.

He shrugged. ‘Search me. Have a good night. I’m off for an early one.’

Lydia walked across. Two pink gins and a couple of double whiskys were lined up side by side.

A voice came out of the shadows, all breezy civility. ‘Glad you could join me.’

‘Cicely!’

‘How are you, darling?’ Cicely held out an arm, glossy red nails and silver bangles shining, but her words were slurred.

Lydia took a step back.

‘No, don’t run off. Stay and have a drink. For old times’ sake.’ She pulled a stool up for Lydia and patted it.

‘You’re drunk.’

‘A teeny bit.’

Lydia sat. Unusual for Cicely to lose her cool. ‘Why are you here?’

Cicely smiled. ‘I stay here when I’m in Singapore. Can’t bear Raffles.’ She waved her hands. A mix of Chanel and sweat wafted about. ‘All those fuddy-duddies banging on about how it was before the war. What a joy to find you.’

‘You didn’t come to find me, then?’

‘No, but now that I have … I must tell you, Adil’s been looking for you.’

Lydia downed her drink quickly and enjoyed the sensation of gin burning her throat. She stared at Cicely, and imagined his lips as he spoke her name. ‘Let me get this straight. Did he send you?’

Cicely shrugged. ‘Darling, don’t be so suspicious. Why would he do that? Anyway, I already told you, I didn’t come to find you.’

‘What does he want?’

‘Search me. He seemed to think he had something to tell you. You know Adil. Mystery man. He refused to say.’ Cicely twirled her glass and rocked on her stool. ‘Something I’ve often wanted to ask, darling. Did you ever love Alec? You seemed so unsuited. Such a little man.’

A storm went off in her head. ‘For heaven’s sake, Cicely, he’s dead.’

Cicely pouted. ‘Don’t be a crosspatch.’

Lydia’s heart was suddenly heavy. The previously hidden thoughts about why she’d married him in the first place rose up. She sighed. ‘Okay. I thought I loved him. You persuade yourself, don’t you? He was handsome in a quiet way and I needed what he offered.’

‘Maybe he was more sensitive than you think.’

‘What?’

‘He believed you never loved him. Cried on my shoulder afterwards. Men don’t advertise that they’re not so hot in the sack, do they?’ She grinned.

Mild shock ran through Lydia. ‘Afterwards? You said you didn’t …’

‘I lied. Let’s have more drinks.’ And she waved some dollars at the barman.

Lydia narrowed her eyes. Cicely didn’t seem to have a stab of conscience, and chatted light-heartedly of the latest Malacca news. Lydia was on her fourth gin by the time they got to the subject of Jack.

‘You loved
him
though?’ Cicely said, then continued with a look of guarded friendliness. ‘It seems we share a similar taste in men, doesn’t it?’

Lydia frowned. ‘Not Jack! You didn’t …’ Her voice trailed off.

‘No, but it wasn’t from lack of trying. He only had eyes for the voluptuous Lydia Cartwright.’ She gulped a mouthful. ‘A bit skinnier now, mind you. But go on. Tell me. I’m dying to know. What was he like?’

They stared at each other.

‘But I was forgetting, darling. You’re one of those women who can’t live without love.’

Lydia sighed. ‘That isn’t true, and not that it’s any of your business, but at first we couldn’t keep our hands off each other, then we got caught up emotionally, and shouldn’t have. I was married with kids, and then, after the fire, he was so wonderful –’

She didn’t declare her most hidden thought, that though she had loved him dearly, and he her, there was a chance that
marriage to Jack might have ended up being no more than the dream of recreating a lost family. A substitute. How sad it would have been if the passion had died, and they’d discovered, after all, there was nothing more.

‘I understand. So that leads us to Adil, unless you’ve got a few more hidden away. Oh, do confess, darling. I’d love to think of your life littered with discarded men … or women.’ She growled and gave Lydia a look from under her lashes.

Lydia shook her head.

‘Well?’ Cicely said. ‘Where does my ex fit into the scheme of things?’

‘Pardon?’

‘Darling, it’s all right, he’s all yours if you want him.’

Lydia flushed, but whatever Cicely said, she’d seen the look of alarm in her friend’s eyes.

‘You mean naughty Adil didn’t tell. Yes, sweetie, the gorgeous Adil and I.’

‘When?’

‘I met him soon after the war, when I was only in my teens, and before it all kicked off.’ She ran a hand over her breasts. ‘Darling, it’s okay. If anyone can certify how scrumptious he is, it’s me.’

‘You make him sound like dinner.’

‘Well, isn’t he a bit of a dish, sweetie? A mouth-watering dessert, say. Or perhaps that was Jack.’