Separation, The (3 page)

At the sprawling colonial residence, the Malay servant led Lydia through a large, glass-ceilinged hall, with a crystal chandelier. A framed picture of the queen faced you as you entered, the floor was tiled in black and silver chequered marble, and heavy furniture edged the pale green walls. The formality, intended to impress, made her heart pound.

Harriet Parrott’s husband, George, was District Officer, or DO as they were generally referred to. Apart from the Commissioner, it was the highest position you could hold in the British Administration of Malaya, with a key role supporting Britain’s armed forces. If he doesn’t know, she thought, who will?

The hall led to a veranda, where she was asked to wait under the shade of a mature angsana tree. Glad of protection from the morning sun, she looked about and tried to steady her breath. At the front of the lawn, a crimson-bellied sunbird flew over two bushes of fragrant golden hibiscus. In the distance, coconut palms stretched tall trunks to the sky.

This felt all wrong. It was time to take the children to school. She closed her eyes and saw herself drive there, but her head felt muddled. Something stopped her, like in a bad dream. A voice kept repeating, Where are the girls? Where are they? She saw the main school buildings in her mind’s eye, and willed the girls to race across the gravel at the front, satchels flying.

An aroma of chilli-pepper reached her from the kitchens. She felt her throat close. Was it Friday today? She managed to swallow. Whatever day it was, there would be no drive to school, and once the heat descended, it was impossible to travel without a car. She looked out at the blue sky. The car. She hadn’t checked
the garage. Could it be that Alec’s driver had taken them somewhere in an official car instead?

At the sound of footsteps, she turned to see a tall, heavy-bosomed woman approach: Harriet, poised and self-assured. Orange lips in a plump face full of powdered wrinkles, dyed black hair loosely piled on top of her head, and, famous for her citrus colours, she wore only silk. Today it was green and yellow. And though Em’s description of her was less than flattering, Lydia could see why her daughter called her the matriarch.

‘Lydia. Dear,’ said Mrs Parrott, holding out her fleshy hand, nails lacquered in Chinese orange. She wore a half smile in sharp, black eyes.

Aware of the early hour, Lydia gulped, her skin flushing deeply. ‘I’m so sorry – but the phone’s down,’ she said.

Mrs Parrott inclined her head, and settled herself into a wide rattan armchair. Lydia perched on the edge of her own and took a deep breath.

‘Alec and the children aren’t at home. Everything’s gone.’ Her voice rose as she raced through the words, and she held her hands together to stop them shaking. ‘I came by taxi. Sorry it’s so early. I don’t know what to do. As Alec’s boss, do you think George might?’

Harriet raised high pencil-drawn eyebrows. ‘My dear. Have you no idea? Have you been to the police?’

Lydia shook her head, holding back tears. ‘I should’ve gone last night, but I didn’t dare leave the house. Stupid of me. I thought they might come back.’

‘Maybe no need. I’m sure George will know. Thick as thieves, Alec and George.’ She picked up the hand bell. ‘You’re lucky. He’s working from home.’

Within minutes her thin-hipped houseboy, Noor, was sent off to bring the master to the salon. Immediately.

Lydia stared out of the window and prayed Harriet was right. She heard George’s deep voice echoing off the walls of the
corridor leading from his office. Even from where she sat, Lydia could tell he was annoyed.

‘What’s all this, Harriet? I am busy,’ he said, exploding on to the patio, his large square frame filling the doorway.

Without missing a beat, Harriet indicated Lydia, sitting sideways to him.

‘Lydia is desperate to know where Alec and the children are.’

Dressed in tropical linens, George came round to face Lydia, his heavy eyebrows meeting in the middle. He coughed, ran a hand through short salt and pepper hair and scratched his chin. ‘Sorry. Didn’t see you there.’

She stared up at the sweat shining on the skin above his top lip.

There was the slightest pause.

‘I thought he’d have left instructions,’ he said, puffing out red cheeks. ‘Been posted north. Up at Ipoh. Bit of a rush job. The chap running financial admin up there kicked the bucket suddenly. Heart I think.’

She let out her breath, felt the room spin, put a hand to her chest. ‘Oh my Lord. Thank you. That explains everything. Thank you so much, George. I knew there had to be an explanation. His note must be missing.’

‘Alec went ahead a few days ago. Maybe he left instructions with the bank. You know, in case the house was reallocated before you got back.’

Harriet nodded. ‘That makes sense.’

‘Bad roads to Ipoh,’ George said.

‘How long will it take?’

‘A couple of days by car, depending on land mines and what have you. Longer by bus, of course. By train could be best. Fantastic Moorish station at Ipoh.’

‘I could phone Alec. Ask him to meet me there.’

‘No phones or postal service working in the district. Lines all cut. Terrific chaos. Not as bad as getting to Penang, but still.’ He dashed off, mumbling a few words to Harriet as he passed.

‘Can you let me have the address?’ Lydia called after him.

He looked back over his shoulder. ‘Just the rest house up there. Larger than usual, fifty or so rooms I believe. Temporary, until they get allocated a house, but they should still be there. Best be careful, travelling alone in the Emergency.’

There was a silence as he headed for the door.

Harriet peered at her.

‘I’m not going to give you the third degree, but you don’t seem too good. A bit less Rita Hayworth than your usual look.’

Lydia dabbed the moisture from her hairline and slapped at the flies settling on her skin. At thirty-one, she was shapely and vivacious, and knew how to make a splash, but apart from the hair, the resemblance to the film star was slight.

‘An old friend has polio. Suzanne Fleetwood. I’ve just got back. I hated having to leave the children for so much longer than I expected, almost a month actually, but her husband is in Borneo and she couldn’t reach him. You know he’s in intelligence.’

Harriet shot a look at George’s disappearing back.

Lydia sighed. ‘I know. Keep it under my hat. The awful thing is they’re shipping her back to England in an iron lung.’

‘A sad business. You will have been a great help to her. But you must feel better now, knowing where your family are?’

Lydia’s eyes lit up. ‘Oh yes. It’s just I was so looking forward to seeing them again.’

‘Have you had breakfast?’

She shook her head.

Harriet’s lips tightened. ‘Right. I propose to get something brought out. You know as well as I do that one must keep up one’s strength in this God-awful climate, or one’s done for. I should know.’

Lydia raised her brows.

‘Oh, it was nothing in particular, but if you don’t take care of yourself you’ll go downhill damn fast. Now, will pancakes do you?’

With no wind to stir the air, Lydia felt damp beneath her clothes. She walked quickly, glancing up. Only distant specks of cloud
littered the clear horizon, with not a sign of rain. She hopped on a local bus back to Malacca, and made her way through noisy streets, where, trapped within narrow alleyways, the air was already thickening with the smell of saltfish frying and open latrines. She fought the choking sensation in her throat.

At the bank, two ceiling fans ineffectively blew warm air. She waited in the queue, scalp prickling. At the Parrotts’ she’d made light of it, but now she felt edgy about the journey ahead. She went through a list in her head. Bus timetable for a start, train times too, check the garage, pack. How far was Ipoh? All she could remember was that it was in the Kinta Valley. A hundred miles? No. More like two hundred. Two hundred miles of possibly mined roads. And, if she had to go by bus, it might take days.

In her haste, that morning, she hadn’t pinned up her hair. Hands clasped behind her head, she lifted the heavy bulk off her neck and flicked the hairs that clung to her face. Most English women opted to crop their hair; she hadn’t. Symbol of womanhood, Sister Patricia used to say, but the other women had the right idea; she’d get it chopped. She shuffled forward, flexing her shoulders to release the tension building there.

She thought of her girls, imagined herself in the car, waiting as they came out of school, waving and waving, tearing along the flower-lined paths that wound between squat buildings. At the makeshift stall opposite, lollipops stuck like flags into a board, sold for a couple of cents. The ones she allowed only on Fridays. It wasn’t just the sugar that bothered her, it was the combined sale of sweets and gambling, for concealed round the end of just one or two was the prize of a one-dollar note.

She shook her head. She didn’t want them learning that so young. You had to be so careful.

At last she reached the front of the queue. The young Malay, with soft wavy hair and dusky skin, smiled.

‘I need to withdraw some money,’ she said.

He inclined his head. ‘Certainly, madam.’

‘Cartwright. The name’s Cartwright.’

He turned to face a bank of filing cabinets, and after a moment, withdrew a file.

‘I think fifty dollars should do it.’

He flashed her a look, then bent back down to study the papers.

She frowned. ‘Is there a problem?’

‘According to this balance, there’s only fifteen dollars left in the account.’

‘But that’s ridiculous,’ she said, cheeks burning. ‘We were nowhere near the red last month.’

The man’s lips tightened. ‘Mr Cartwright came in a few days ago and withdrew a large sum.’

‘Did he say anything?’

‘Something about a journey.’

‘He didn’t leave a letter for me?’

‘I’m sorry. Just that from now on he’d be using a different bank. He left fifteen dollars, and instructed me to close the account after it was withdrawn.’

Lydia took a deep breath, and let it out very slowly through her mouth.

‘So he left no other instructions?’

The man shook his head.

Finely balanced, she managed to keep hold of her temper. The important thing was to get to her girls. But fifteen dollars to get all the way to Ipoh? It wasn’t the teller’s fault, but what was going on?

Dad told us not to budge, but to wait beside some metal stairs on the deck, while he went down to talk to one of the ship’s stewards about our cabins. I stood still and listened to the sounds.

‘Shush,’ I said to my sister as we leant against the damp rails and looked into the stairwell. ‘Can’t you hear them?’

Fleur pulled a face. ‘No.’

I frowned. It wasn’t difficult to hear footsteps that echoed in the salty gangways below.

‘This ship is haunted,’ I whispered, and made a scary face. My sister rolled her eyes and turned away.

‘Sorry. Come on, Mealy Worm, let’s run.’

Mum’s favourite name was Emma. Her lizard earrings had the letters E and M engraved on the back. It was my name, but also Fleur’s second name was Emilia, sometimes known as Floury Millie, or Mealy Worm by me.

We ran up and down the deck shouting to each other, and when we were out of breath we doubled over and held our sides. Then stood to watch the ocean, as the red sun dropped into the water, and the day was gobbled up. Spots of pink and yellow bobbed up and down in water as dark as liquorice, and the sound of sea birds carried all the way from the harbour to our deck.

‘See the traders, sailing across in sampans,’ I said.

‘What’s sampans?’

‘Little boats, silly. Can’t you see?’

We shrieked as they ducked out of the way of bigger boats to come alongside our ship, their reflected lantern lights wobbling in the water. Men stood up and shouted, then passed stuff up in large baskets. We got told off by the sailors, but not before we saw sparkly oriental slippers and strings of glittery beads.
To Fleur and me, running up and down, the ship felt like fairyland – until we saw our father.

‘I don’t want to spoil your fun,’ he said, as he marched over. ‘But you can’t run wild out here.’

‘But, Daddy!’

‘No buts, Emma.’

‘We won’t go too close,’ Fleur pleaded.

‘Nice try, sweetie, but no dice. Only with an adult, out here, especially at night. Never on your own. And I thought I told you to wait by the stairs.’

‘Not fair,’ I grumbled under my breath.

‘I mean it, Emma. Anything could happen.’

I didn’t say a word, but listened for ghostly voices behind the deck chairs, and imagined a shadowy figure creeping up to tip me over. And if not that, the sea would pull me from the deck and into the place where Orpheus danced with water sprites. I’d learnt about Orpheus at school.

‘Emma?’

‘Okay.’

We went inside with him, but I crossed my fingers behind my back. I couldn’t help myself. I loved the ocean as the world turned purple and then darkest inky black.

In secret, I pretended it was an adventure, and waited until Fleur was asleep. Then I slipped out of the cabin, crept up the narrow metal staircase to the deck, and waited until nobody was about. I ran across to one of the lifeboats. It was quite high off the deck, but I found a crate someone had left behind, stood on it and hauled myself over, head first into the boat. I rolled on to my back and looked up at the sky. The air was still warm, and all the stars were out. The little boat shook if I moved, so I kept very still, just like the sea.

It reminded me of lying on the grass in our garden, and watching clouds fly over like puffs of sherbet lemon. I had to remember as much as I could, because I didn’t know when we were coming back. When a little voice in my head said
if
you’re coming back,
I sat up and stared at the sea. I hugged myself and took a deep breath of salty air. I wanted to jump into the water and swim back to the place where Mummy was. But the quiet sea made me feel calm, and I stayed in the lifeboat until I got too cold.

We shared our dining table with Mr Oliver and his sister. Her name was Veronica, and his was Sidney. Veronica was tall and thin, nearly as tall as Dad, with soft swishy skirts, tight blonde pin curls and a quiet voice. She patted her hair to keep it tidy. Both of them had white skin, as if they’d lived hidden away from the Malayan sun, though her cheeks were pink, as pink as the tiny glass beads that sat round her neck. She seemed to like us, especially Father, smiling with pretty blue eyes and giggling at his jokes.

Mr Oliver and Veronica were late for lunch, and we were alone at the table. While we waited, Dad told us she had a flat in London but used to live in a place called Cheltenham, not far from where we were going. He said hers was an unhappy story, and that we should be kind to her. She didn’t have any children of her own, and her husband had been a schoolmaster, a man who’d died from a sickness called cholera.

‘What’s cholera,’ I asked. ‘Does it make your eyes pop out?’

He sighed heavily. ‘No, Emma, it does not. It just makes you very tired and grey until you get worse.’

‘And then you die.’

He nodded. ‘Probably.’

In the background, Doris Day was singing one of my mum’s favourites: ‘Secret Love’
.
I felt sad when I thought of Mum’s pretty oval face and her shining eyes. The hazel colour was speckled with green and blue like the tail of a peacock-pheasant, and one of her eyebrows was a bit higher than the other. I liked to sit and watch her try to make them level. She never could.

It was a Malay meal for lunch, with the sweet smell of kaffir lime leaves, which I loved. The pudding table wasn’t great, but I still ate too much peach melba and had a tummy ache. I asked
Daddy if I could leave the table and go to my cabin to lie down.

Veronica smiled at him. Tanned from being outdoors so much, Father was lined and kind of dry, and he wore round tortoiseshell specs. I noticed he’d made even more of an effort than usual to look smart.

‘I’ll look after Fleur if you like,’ Veronica said, in a bubbly voice. ‘Then Emma can have an undisturbed sleep and wake up feeling better.’

In the cabin, I lay on top of the blue candlewick bedspread, ears buzzing. I was on the bottom bunk, Fleur’s, because I didn’t want to climb a ladder with my stomach hurting. Our tiny cabin smelt stale and salty. You could hear the ship hum, and the waves thump against its sides. I shut my eyes and the noise of the engine quickly sent me to sleep.

A little later, a tap at the door woke me, and Mr Oliver came in. I suspected Dad must have sent him to see how I was, though I was surprised he came, and not his sister.

He sat on the edge of my bed, out of breath and puffing.

‘Shove over a bit, love,’ he said, with a grin.

His face was so close I could see broken red veins in his nose.

‘Close your eyes, my dear,’ he said, and started to stroke my forehead ever so softly. I forgot it was him and at first it was nice. It reminded me of Mummy. I drifted in a sickly sort of dream. I missed her so much and Dad wouldn’t say when she was coming. But then I had a funny feeling in my tummy and my legs. Something didn’t feel quite right, and I let out my breath when Mr Oliver left me on my own.

When we entered the Bay of Biscay, silver clouds rushed across the sky, and at lunch the boat was rolling. Mr Oliver squeezed in next to me, and beneath the table put a sweaty hand on my bare thigh. I didn’t like it. I shuffled my body away from him, and pushed myself back in the seat. He winked at me and my cheeks burnt. Everyone was busy talking about the weather, so no one saw my face.

After lunch, I stayed on deck to watch the world turn black. Lucky for me, Mr Oliver wasn’t a good sailor, and was first to disappear to his cabin. Then Fleur was sick, so Dad and Veronica took her down too. Dad told me to follow them, but it made me feel better being out on my own, so I stayed. It was for the best. The water leapt higher and higher, the deck shuddered and shook, and even some of the sailors were sick.

I found my sea legs, and shrieked as huge waves flew over the deck, knocking me from side to side. Birds screamed, the wind roared, and I forgot Mr Oliver’s hot hand, even forgot that we’d left my mum behind. I stayed out to breathe great gulps of salty smelling air, and afterwards, ran my hand over the crusty handrails and licked the crystals from the tips of my fingers. They tasted as fishy and salty as they smelt.

The rest of our journey passed quickly, and on the last day I woke up before it was light. I climbed on a chair to look through the cabin porthole, and could just make out a long dark shape in the distance. My first sight of England. When the ship tied up later that morning, I scrambled up the stairs and on to the slippery deck. For a minute I looked at the pale sky. Then I closed my eyes, said a prayer for my beautiful mother, blew her a kiss across the sea, and asked her to get here soon.

At the Liverpool dock, crowds of people blocked the way, and there was an oily smell in the air. Men in cloth caps coiled ropes round heavy metal stops on the quay, and the air was full of the jangly sound of bells, wheels, newspaper sellers, and swinging crates that banged and thumped on the ground. Most of all it was people shouting. You had to jump out of the way, because nobody could see you through the mist. Smog, Dad called it.

I felt very small, and took a deep breath while I waited, as if the bright future Dad had promised would be there to meet me. It wasn’t. It was smelly, cold and grey. I never knew what grey was
until then, and wanted to slip my hand into Mummy’s, for her to smile at me and say, ‘Everything’s going to be fine. You’ll see.’

When he saw me looking upset, Dad did say it, but it wasn’t the same.

We had to kiss Veronica and a green-looking Mr Oliver goodbye. I screwed up my face, and as soon as it was over, ran off down the edge of the dock. It was a freezing February day, and the run warmed me up.

‘Don’t go too close,’ Dad shouted.

I didn’t go far. My feet hurt. Fleur and I usually played in flip-flops or barefoot, Dad laughing and calling us savages. Now we’d been forced into brown shoes with a strap and a button. And long itchy socks. We both complained loudly, though we showed off the red jackets that Mum had knitted ready for the next home leave. There’d only been one leave that I remembered, which had left me with a fuzzy idea of this place called England.

Thinking of Mum hurt my heart so much.

So far Dad had given no reason for her delay but I asked again at the dockside.

He took off his specs, wiped them on his sleeve, puffed out his cheeks and simply said, ‘She’s not here at the moment. I’m afraid that’s all I can tell you.’

‘But when is she coming?’

‘Emma, I don’t know.’

‘You did leave her the letter I wrote?’

‘Of course.’

Mum’s probably held up, I thought. Maybe Dad won’t say because he doesn’t want to make a promise, and have to disappoint us, if he gets it wrong. But it didn’t stop my imagination. And I saw my mother everywhere we went. Even in the big draughty waiting room where we waited for a porter, and where the smell of soot and smoke made your eyes smart. And though Mummy wasn’t really there, I imagined a fine line that wound
halfway round the world. It was the invisible thread that stretched from west to east and back again; one end was attached to my mother’s heart and the other to mine. And, I knew, whatever might happen, that thread would never be broken.