Separation, The (34 page)

At last, after several weeks, the article was published, but with no reply to the telegram she’d sent Emma, and nothing on the passenger lists, Lydia’s spirits remained in turmoil. At the post office, she requested an airmail sticker, folded the article in four, and slipped it into a large brown envelope. With an aching head, she wiped her brow, then flipped open her diary, and searched for the address. She didn’t believe he’d gone to England, nor that he’d informed his parents of his whereabouts, but she had to try.

Somerset House had written back with a kind letter, but had no marriage to report. The Inland Revenue in England had not been at liberty to divulge information, and so far, there’d been no reply from the Ministry of Pensions. Adil had even driven to the new British High Commission, in Kuala Lumpur. While housed in a stunning building, with multiple pillared verandas and a leafy garden, the systems were in disarray. Come back in a couple of months, they’d said. She and Adil agreed to work through each country, systematically, until something turned up. But letters, even airmail, took an age, so what was she going to do for cash? Her savings from Singapore would only last another month or two, with enough for one long trip besides, but any more than that, and she’d be looking for a job again, this time in Malacca.

Back at Adil’s, she took a sip of bitter black coffee, and glanced uneasily at the street hawkers. The hum of city life melded in an indistinguishable noise. Chinese, Indian. The strains of jangly Malay music. A single movement opposite drew her eyes. In the shadow of a doorway she saw a woman stare up, her eyes narrowed against the light.

Lydia stared back and the woman beckoned. She blinked. The
woman in the doorway wore a pale blue dress, blue flowers at the hem – surely not – it couldn’t be. She felt dizzy and rubbed her temple. Side effects from the Chinese pills Adil had given her for her headache? She picked up her bag and slipped down the stairs, noticing an envelope on the mat and stuffing it in her bag on her way out. Outside, the heat hit her like a wall. She swivelled to check the street, packed with rickshaws and traders. The woman had gone. She turned to go back in, but then caught a flash of pale blue skirt at the street corner. The woman beckoned again, and Lydia couldn’t help herself. She followed, sweat beginning to drip beneath her dress.

The woman continued deep into the maze of streets that crawled down to the old Chinese quarter by the docks. The sounds around her clashed. Bells rang, dogs barked, and birds sang in cages. A pack of feral children chased thin Malays on bicycles. She stepped back. The Malays escaped, but amid a mass of noise and fingering, the kids hemmed her in. She panicked, heart pounding. The woman in blue heard, turned, and yelled in standard Chinese. The children melted away.

At the juncture where torn posters of acrobats fought for attention with propaganda leaflets pasted by the old British Administration, the streets narrowed, and she blundered into strings of washing hanging right across. She hesitated. Fear of assault closed her throat. The woman remained a few steps ahead, slipped across a bridge and turned to summon Lydia with a quick gesture. It was midday, and from the open door of one building came the aroma of chilli and crispy duck, from another tamarind and coriander.

At close quarters, the houses were narrow and squashed. Lydia clung to her bag, pressed it hard into her chest. Her head spun with the noise. She’d reckoned without the crowds of people and found it hard to breathe, but she wiped her forehead with her hand and picked up her pace. The woman was too far ahead to see clearly, but still Lydia went after each flash of blue, further into the depths of the quarter. Once the people thinned
out, she sped past herbalists, jewellers, and the shops selling paper goods for burning at the graves in the Chinese Cemetery. In one window she glimpsed a paper guitar, a pagoda, a tiny paper sampan.

On one of the narrow bridges that crossed the canals she stopped for a moment to get her breath, and looking down, caught sight of minnows flashing by in glittering silver shoals. She had no idea where she was, hadn’t seen any cabs for ages and she realised she’d never find her way back. But then she saw the woman standing near the edge of an open sewer.

The smell was sickening, and now that she had a chance to look properly, it was obvious the woman wasn’t well. Her skin was pallid, her body too thin. A spark of dislike fired in the woman’s eyes as she waited, then she spun round and threw open a pair of dragon gates on to the dock itself. She took a few steps to the left, turned into a narrow passageway, and stopped at one of the shabby tin huts at the water’s edge.

The woman went in and squatted on a worn rush mat. Lydia followed and looked for a chair. There was none. The dismal room smelt of cheap scent and rotting pineapple, and the ceiling was black with flies. But for a dented paraffin lamp at one end, and a pair of trousers hanging from a nail, it was bare. Mat-covered wooden planks formed a bed that wobbled when Lydia perched on the edge. As she grew accustomed to the gloom, she focussed on the woman’s face and saw that, though her appearance was shabby, her manner declared her to be proud.

When the woman spoke again, her words were deliberately slow.

‘You do not recognise me?’

Lydia shook her head. ‘Should I?’

The woman gave her an exasperated look and spat on the ground. ‘No. Your sort never does.’

‘My sort?’

‘Spoilt white woman sort.
Mem
.’ She spoke the last word scornfully.

Lydia was taken aback by the open enmity. ‘What do you want?’

The woman narrowed her eyes. ‘Did you read it?’

Lydia frowned.

‘You did not read it?’

Lydia thought for a moment, then reached into her bag. ‘You mean this?’

The woman nodded as Lydia pulled the envelope apart, and a slip of paper floated to the floor. She reached down and picked up a cheque. She couldn’t read the name, but someone had received a cheque from Alec worth several hundred dollars.

She was puzzled.

‘My price for silence,’ the woman said, without removing her eyes from Lydia.

‘Your silence?’

‘You cannot be that stupid.’

Lydia bristled. ‘I have no idea what this is for.’ She studied the cheque. Dated three weeks before Alec had vanished, it obviously hadn’t been cashed. She turned it over. Nothing on the back.

‘Your husband paid me to keep my mouth shut. Gave me that cheque.’ She spat on the ground. ‘What use is a cheque to me? I told him. Cash. No cheque. So he turned up with cash, demanded I give the cheque back. I told him I threw it away.’

‘He believed you?’

‘I do not know, but what could he do? It is my insurance policy.’ The woman laughed, but it was a bitter laugh that didn’t reach her eyes.

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

‘Not what – who!’

Lydia frowned.

‘Maznan. My silence. Never to say who his father is.’

She stared hard at the woman. Could it be true? She took in the compacted dirt floor, the rough wooden walls, the flies on the ceiling. Surely Alec hadn’t come here. It was unthinkable.

The woman stared with a satisfied smile, and then nodded her head.

‘Let me get my mind round this,’ Lydia said. ‘You’re surely not telling me that Maznan is Alec’s child?’

‘Ah. She understands. But that is just the first part.’

Lydia suspected a demand for money, but none came.

‘Take Maznan to his father.’

Surprised, Lydia shook her head. ‘I have no idea where Alec is … and isn’t Maz happy in the village?’

‘Resettlement village!’ The woman snorted. ‘Without money my sister will not keep him. I have no money and I am sick. Soon I will be dead.’

‘Why should I believe that Maz is Alec’s son?’

The woman pulled out a small pile of photos from a pouch at her waist and handed them to Lydia. Every one showed Alec naked with this woman, each shot more compromising than the one before.

‘He didn’t know these were being taken?’

The woman smiled. ‘Of course not.’

‘But why?’

‘Insurance policy. I told you before.’

She shook her head. ‘What a way to live!’

‘We cannot all have your comfortable life,
Mem
.’

Lydia flicked through the remaining pictures. Four showed Alec holding a small boy on his lap, the child cuddled up to him, with one arm curled round Alec’s neck.

‘Very cosy.’ She spoke more confidently than she felt. ‘This doesn’t prove anything.’

She threw them back at the waiting woman and watched them flutter to the floor. The woman carefully returned them to her pouch.

‘What about Maznan’s grandparents? Wouldn’t they want to look after him?’

‘Too old,’ the woman said.

‘Even if I believed you, why should I help?’

The woman considered her words. ‘It is not for me. It is for Maznan.’

‘What about Jack? Nobody helped him.’

‘I stopped them from killing you too. They wanted to.’

The woman could be lying. Where was the proof? The cheque might have been for something else, and the child might not even be Maz. She hesitated. No, that wasn’t true. In one of the shots it had been clear the child was Maznan, and Alec would never let an unknown mixed race child snuggle up close.

The woman folded her arms across her chest. ‘Did you never think about his pale eyes, almost blue?’

Lydia held her breath, completely shaken. My God, the deception was bad, but a child he had simply abandoned. That was far worse.

‘So that was why I was the perfect person to accompany the child,’ she said. ‘Keep it in the family, so to speak.’

There was a pause, as Lydia rubbed her temples, the pain there beginning to throb. She thought of Alec’s sneer when she’d told him about Jack. Yet he had slept with Cicely, and if this was true, had a son by his driver’s daughter. Another unwelcome thought occurred; had Adil known about this but hadn’t said? Was that why he had discouraged her from taking the child, when they first spoke on their way to Ipoh?

She then thought back to when she had first met Maz. ‘He was injured when your sister brought him to me. Why was that?’

The woman smiled, ‘Just an accident, but it helped you to decide.’

There was a noise at the entrance. An elderly woman with white hairs growing from her chin, pushed a child into the room, smiled toothlessly, and left.

Lydia stood. ‘Maz!’

His mother got up, put her arm round the boy and took a step forward, the sneer gone. ‘So will you take him?’

Lydia was struck by the sadness in the woman’s eyes.

‘But he’s your son.’

‘I cannot give him a life. Your husband can.’

Lydia felt torn. She was very fond of Maz, but this was crazy. She recalled Adil saying Maz’s mother would end up dead, and then what would happen to the child?

With a grin Maz came across and put his hand in hers. Lydia knew when she was beaten and smiled back.

The woman led them out through the maze of alleyways and back to Adil’s district. Lydia felt she was juggling with life, hoping she’d find the place where Alec had taken her girls. And now that fate had thrust Maz into her care for a second time, she had to find Alec, for the boy’s sake too.

The woman kissed Maz on the forehead, and handed Lydia a folded scrap of tissue thin paper. ‘You need this for the passport.’

Lydia opened it out. My God, she thought, it’s his birth certificate. In the space where it requested father’s name, Alec Cartwright was clearly printed. Why on earth hadn’t the woman shown it to her at the start?

As they walked away, Lydia thought of the poverty she’d seen. Remembered how her old gardener scraped together his living. How he scared the girls with stories of spirits, snakes that swallowed small children alive, and witches who only came out at midnight, in search of people to capture. Emma raced in once, breathlessly telling a tale of a frog-faced demon that killed a Siamese cat in the back garden.

Fleur insisted they needed a demon catcher, and Lydia came up with using an old doll. They dressed her in white, and stationed her outside the children’s window. The next day, the gardener appeared with a rag doll made by his wife. So then they had two, and of course he wanted money, and she’d felt tricked.

But life was hard, not just in the new resettlement villages, but in the outside world too. And now she’d seen at close quarters the way people were forced to live, she saw how they had to do anything to make a dollar. Truth was, the gardener had been quite creative.

Maz chattered happily, despite leaving his mother. He was too
young to really understand the finality of what had happened. She squeezed his hand, and before they turned the corner into Adil’s street, she turned back to catch a glimpse of blue skirt disappearing into the crowd. How odd, she thought, if the woman hadn’t worn blue, I might never have followed.

It was Friday, the last day of the autumn half term holiday. At the town hall, where Veronica had asked to meet me, she requested the electoral register. In her left hand she held my old letter from Mr Johnson and flapped it at me.

‘See, Emma,’ she said, and pointed at a reference code in the top right hand corner.

I read it out. ‘E C-Mb/0557/002.’

‘Okay. The first part, E C-Mb. Those are initials.’

‘And the rest?’

‘0557 means the fifth month of nineteen fifty-seven. And 002 refers to the numbers of letters sent that month, concerning the owner of a particular file. In this case who E C-Mb is.’

‘I get that. So?’

‘Well, it confirms the news I didn’t get a chance to tell you yesterday.’

‘But you said there wasn’t much hope.’

‘There really wasn’t. But a few weeks ago when I was up in town, I treated Freddy to a good lunch and begged him to intercede on your behalf.’

I was puzzled and pulled a face.

Veronica held up a hand. ‘It will come clear. He decided to ask Johnson, Price & Co
.
if they’d be prepared to contact their client and explain your interest. Mr Johnson had received your letter, of course, so already knew about you.’

‘And did Mr Johnson contact the client?’

‘Well, he was reluctant at first, but Freddy is very persuasive, and in the end he agreed. The idea was to see if there was any chance she might allow disclosure.’

My heart thumped. ‘She?’

Veronica nodded. ‘Well, she considered it, and eventually agreed. Miss E. Cooper-Montbéliard. That’s who it is. Such an unusual name, isn’t it? Look at the reference again.’

I glanced down. ‘Oh.’

She grinned. ‘Exactly!’

‘C-Mb stands for Cooper-Montbéliard.’

She nodded. ‘Yes, the clue was there all along, though it would have been impossible to figure out.’

‘So now we check the electoral register. Make sure the address Freddy was given is correct.’

‘But it’s the last day of the holiday,’ I wailed. ‘There’s only tomorrow, then I’m going back to school on Sunday afternoon.’

She patted me on the arm. ‘But you can write, can’t you?’

The next day, after I had written my letter, I sat down with one of my stories while I waited for the rain to stop. I was having trouble with my main character. The hero, a tall man of Spanish extraction, who went by the name of Pedro Gonzalez Montes, was in the process of climbing up a ladder to rescue Claris from her evil grandfather. As he approached the top, the ladder slipped and he fell, not dead, but blinded and permanently disabled – no use as a hero at all. Unless he was Mr Rochester.

Writing wasn’t as easy as I thought when I was younger. My characters used to do what I told them, now they fell from ladders, made unexpected announcements and generally misbehaved. With a disgusted snort, I abandoned Claris to lie on blood-encrusted sheets, with the sound of rats scuttling behind a thin partition wall.

It had turned into a drizzly autumn day with lumpy clouds full of moisture, the kind that isn’t wet enough for an umbrella, but you get damp all the same. After I posted the letter, and as I neared the gate on my way back, Fleur darted from the house, and bumped straight into me, cheeks wet with tears. I put an arm round her, held her against my chest, and patted her back until she stopped crying.

‘Come on, let’s go down the road a bit, then you can tell me what’s wrong,’ I said.

She looked up at me, red eyed, then glanced back over her shoulder at the front door. She gave me a nod and between gulps managed to say, ‘I heard them fight.’

I asked her what about, but she couldn’t speak for stuttering. It might have been funny, except she was deadly serious. We walked slowly down the lane and I waited for her to squeeze all her tears out.

She tried again. ‘It was awful, Emma,’ she said, but stopped and rubbed her eyes. ‘It came in the post after you went out. Veronica and me were sitting at the kitchen table when Daddy came in with a large brown envelope. When he opened it, a newspaper fell out and slipped on to the floor.
The Straits Times
. I saw it.’

She started to cry again. So far none of it made sense.

‘Veronica picked it up … I saw it, Em. A picture of Mummy and us, when we were younger. Veronica went white, absolutely white. It had a big headline. Daddy tried to snatch it, but she stood up and read out loud.’

I bit my lip hard.

‘I was so scared.’ She stared at me with huge shiny eyes, and tears ran down the side of her nose. I patted her back again.

‘Mummy isn’t dead. She didn’t abandon us. She isn’t even missing.’

She’d spoken in such a small voice, I wasn’t even sure I’d heard her right. ‘If this is a joke, Fleur, it’s not funny.’

‘It isn’t, Em. It isn’t. She’s looking for us. She doesn’t know where we are. She thought we were dead, and then she found out we weren’t, and now she’s looking for us.’

I took a sharp breath. I was so hot, I thought my head would burst. The bare trees lurched and pitched, the still air came to life, and the world turned upside down. Dozens of questions fought for space but none of the answers made any sense.

‘She’s still in Malaya. Daddy sent me to my room, but I carried on listening from the hall.’

I had to sit down on the kerb to stop the road from spinning. ‘Maybe it was an old paper,’ I managed to suggest, but my tongue had doubled in size and the words came out funny.

‘Veronica read out the date. It was recent. Why did he say she’d abandoned us?’

I leant over and put my head between my knees. Fleur sat down beside me and took hold of my hand.

‘Veronica started to cry. I heard Daddy say things quietly, but she wouldn’t stop crying and calling him names. She was shouting about how he wanted to make a
bigamist
of her, and how could he do such an evil thing. And what about the girls.’ She paused for a moment. ‘Em, what is a bigamist?’

I screwed up my eyes. ‘Oh, Mealy. It’s someone who marries two people.’

‘But then it wouldn’t be Veronica who was one of those.’

‘No. It would be Daddy.’

Even though I hadn’t believed him about Mum, to have it confirmed like this … I actually felt winded, as if someone had come along and thumped me in the back.

‘You never believed it, did you?’

I shook my head.

‘I’m sorry, Em. I’m sorry for being mean to you about Mummy. I wanted to be a bridesmaid.’

‘Oh, Mealy!’ I pulled her to me and clung on, both of us trembling. I heard a car drive past, but didn’t care what they must have thought. After a bit, I closed my eyes on the grey day, took a few breaths, then pulled her up. We turned round and headed for whatever waited for us at home. I was certain now that the telegram had been something to do with Mum, maybe had even come from her.

Veronica passed by in her Morris Minor, her face so red from crying, I don’t think I ever saw anyone look so upset. I lifted my hand and attempted a smile, but she didn’t see me.

I had never got over the ache of separation, and now I wanted to yell so all the world would know my mum was alive, but back
home, the sound of bangs and thumps in the kitchen made us hurry upstairs. Fleur held on to my hand and begged to come to my room.

‘Em, what do you remember about Mummy?’

‘Lots of things.’

‘Tell me.’

‘Her hair. The way she pinned it up and the way she was always singing in the morning.’

‘The park. She took us to the park.’

‘Yes, and the zoo. Mum loved the lions.’

She looked down and gulped. ‘I can’t remember that.’

‘Don’t cry, Fleur.’

‘I think I remember the tigers. Didn’t Mummy love us, Em?’

I put my arm round her and turned her face towards me. ‘Is that what you’ve been thinking all this time? That she didn’t love us?’

Fleur nodded.

‘Listen to me. She loved us more than anything. More than anything in the whole world.’

I felt like seizing hold of my father and shaking him till his teeth fell out, but forced myself to stay calm while we waited to see what he’d do. I read one of my stories to Fleur, not the one with the slippery ladder, but an earlier one where Claris joined an acting troupe in a bid to run away from her captor. Reading helped calm my mind, but all the time, a part of me was wondering how I’d handle Father. We’d just got to the point where Claris found the key to her salvation, when he came in and stood with hands on hips, feet wide apart.

‘Why are you looking at me like that?’ he said.

He’d spoken defiantly, but I guessed he was bluffing.

‘I know how this looks, but I did it for the best.’

Fleur stared at the carpet, and I looked over the top of her head to stare at him directly. ‘What’s going to happen now?’ I asked, as levelly as possible, while resentment simmered inside of me.

He didn’t hesitate. ‘We’re moving. That’s what.’

Fleur and I looked at each other in disbelief. He couldn’t. Surely he couldn’t. Fleur gave me a little nod, to show she was backing me up, and I decided to stand up to Dad.

‘But, Daddy, what about Mum?’ I asked, still trying to remain polite. ‘How will she find us if we move?’

‘Are you doubting me, Emma?’

I was, of course I was, but his look silenced me. I swallowed and tried to control my temper.

‘Good. I’m glad to see you’re both being sensible.’

I don’t know if it was the look of relief on his face that sparked it, as if yet again he’d somehow got the better of me, but I lost the struggle to hold back. Something broke and the words Mum used came back to me. I stood up straight, stepped forward and jabbed a finger at him.

‘You fucking bastard. You absolute fucking bastard.’

Fleur’s mouth fell open, and in the second before he raised his hand to me, I stared straight into his eyes. Both of us froze. I waited for him to breathe, and when he did, his face was red and his Adam’s apple jumped up and down. I heard Fleur say in a small voice, ‘Daddy, don’t.’

His face fell and he seemed to sag. ‘I’m sorry. Oh God,’ he said. He swivelled round and left the room, leaving the door open.

Fleur and I stared at each other, both of us shocked that I dared say those words, and shocked by our father’s response. I had almost felt pity when he crumpled.

‘Why did he do it, Em?’

For once I was completely lost for words, but I couldn’t let it go. ‘I don’t know but I’m going to find out.’

No longer scared if he flew into a rage, I found him outside in Granddad’s old greenhouse. Veronica had attempted to keep it going, but all that remained were a few tomato plants with just a sprinkling of dead tomatoes, and one cucumber plant. Veronica was proud of that, slicing the bitter fruit into our corned beef sandwiches, though Fleur and I always slipped out the cucumber and dumped it when she wasn’t looking. Poor Veronica.

He didn’t acknowledge me when I opened the door, but walked right past to the bonfire, staring straight ahead. A wisp of smoke rose from the heap but there were no flames I could see.

‘Dad,’ I called after him. ‘Isn’t it a bit damp?’

He turned a sad face to me, his control shattered. I never saw my father like that before. With a lump in my throat where I stopped myself from crying, I could hardly speak. He looked old and frightened, and I felt the ground shift beneath my feet.

‘Daddy, why did you tell us Mum abandoned us, and that she was presumed dead?’ I asked in a gentler tone of voice.

Thin blue smoke spiralled up. He shook his head and mumbled something about not enough air. With a long metal bar he poked and lifted the leaves to let some in. A cloud of darker smoke appeared, and for a moment I felt I was hallucinating and that none of this was real.

‘It’s what I thought,’ he said, still not looking at me. ‘It needs air.’

‘Dad, why didn’t Mum come to England with us?’

He took a couple of steps round the other side of the fire and looked through the smoke at me with pink eyes. ‘There are grown-up things you don’t understand, Emma. That you’ll be able to understand when you’re older.’

‘I’m not a child any more,’ I said, raising my eyebrows as Mum used to do.

He saw it and there was silence. A kamikaze blackbird flew over the bonfire inches from the top.

‘I kissed Billy, you know, properly.’

‘Oh God,’ he said softly. ‘Just like her mother.’

‘Daddy, I want George Parrott’s address. I have to know where Mum is.’

He looked at me then, looked at me properly. ‘George Parrott won’t be any use to you.’ He reached inside his jacket pocket, pulled out his wallet, and unfolded a newspaper cutting. I read the words through twice and realised it was true. Mr Parrott was dead.

In the silence that followed, I was tempted to let it cover everything up, make believe we were a normal family, act as if I was outside with a dad who really loved me, and my mum was in the kitchen getting our dinner. He tried to talk normally for a bit, as if there wasn’t a wall between us. Said he couldn’t consider a return to Malaya to find Mum, because the
For Sale
sign was up, and we had to be here to show people round. Maybe a trip to Malaya when I was older, he suggested, as if that would pacify me.

‘Can I see the article about Mum? I could write to the person who interviewed her. They might be able to tell us where she is.’

He pointed as the bonfire finally burst into flame and smoke spread all round the garden.

I ran to extract a blackened corner of newsprint, tears spilling as I dropped it and the fragments fell to the ground.

He came to put an arm around me. ‘Really it’s better, Emma, if you forget her. It was that man she went to. That’s who she wanted. Not me.’

I went rigid.

‘Not
us
, I mean.’

I pushed him away, and felt my cheeks puff out. I couldn’t decide if he really had wanted to protect me from disappointment, or whether he was covering up.

‘Better for who? For me, or for you?’

His face was flushed and I could smell the odour of his armpits as he reached out to me again. He looked lonely, as if he didn’t know where he really belonged. But it was too late.