A Dangerous Crossing

by Rachel Rhys

  It’s Ian who answers, finally.

  ‘Thanks, but I think we will all be just fine in the one car. And besides, we’re going on to Mount Lavinia next so it’s probably best if we five stick together.’

  They all know George is most likely heading to Mount Lavinia himself. It’s the tour recommended in the ship’s guide. Still, Lily is grateful to Ian for finding an excuse.

  When they crowd into the car again there’s a more subdued atmosphere.

  ‘That was rather awkward, wasn’t it?’ says Helena.

  ‘Well, he shouldn’t be so disagreeable,’ replies Edward. This time he is on the other side of the car from Lily, with his sister on his lap. Lily is relieved to be spared the turmoil of being squashed up against him. He seems so distant today, as if nothing has happened between them.

  Maria is half sitting on Lily. She hasn’t said a word since they were inside the temple.

  ‘Are you feeling all right, Maria?’ Lily says softly.

  Maria nods but does not answer immediately.

  ‘To tell you the truth, Lily, that man makes me very nervous. The way he looks at me as though I don’t have the right to be where he is. I’ve seen that look before, back in Austria. It frightens me.’

  Mount Lavinia is an imposing, white, colonial-style hotel built on a point jutting out into the sea surrounded by tall, slender coconut palms and flanked on each side by pale, sandy beaches. At last, the Ceylon of Lily’s imaginings.

  They take tea on the terrace overlooking the bathing pavilion and the beach, where dozens of wooden boats are lined up in a row, their simple canvas sails fluttering in the sea breeze. A group of children play in the sand in the shade of one of the trees. Their laughter carries up to the table like soft summer rain.

  When the menu comes, there are so many different types of tea on offer Lily feels confused. Not wanting to admit to not knowing what they are, she waits until Helena has ordered and copies her.

  ‘I wish my parents could be here,’ Lily says.

  ‘Do you miss them greatly?’ asks Maria.

  Lily hesitates. Though she doesn’t like to admit it, the truth is she goes for long periods of time without her family even crossing her mind. There is so much that is new on the ship, and no associations with home to be constantly reminding her. It’s as if she has been reborn without context or history. Home – when she thinks about it at all – is an abstract idea that floats through her mind. Then she remembers Maria’s parents in Vienna, holed up with their books and their lovely things, while all around them Jews are being stripped of their civil liberties, banned from public parks and universities, their businesses shut down, synagogues destroyed, and now, for the last weeks, no word of how they are.

  ‘Forgive me, Maria. I’m such a clumsy dolt. I didn’t mean to talk about my parents when here you are, worried sick about yours.’

  ‘Don’t be silly, Lily. Of course you must be thinking about your family. How about you, Helena? Do you find yourself thinking a lot about your parents in places like this?’

  Helena, who has been sipping her tea, which, after all, is mercifully similar to the tea at home, shoots Edward a look that Lily cannot interpret.

  ‘Our parents are quite … set in their ways. I don’t really think they would feel terribly comfortable here.’

  ‘Father would say, “Why does it have to be so damned foreign?”’ Edward laughs, but there is a hard edge to his laughter. ‘My father doesn’t really see the point in other cultures or languages or customs.’

  ‘Oh, that’s not true,’ says Helena. ‘He’s not as bad as that.’

  ‘Come on, Helena. The man is terrified of things he doesn’t understand.’

  ‘There are some things it’s not possible to understand.’

  The siblings glare at each other and Lily has the sense of unsaid things reverberating in the air between them.

  ‘Families, eh?’ says Ian, in a transparent attempt to defuse the tension.

  After tea, they take a walk on the beach. While Ian tells Edward and Maria a long story about the first time he travelled abroad with the Australian military, Helena and Lily take off their shoes and paddle in the sea. When she suggested it, Lily had been hoping Edward might join her so that they could have some time alone, but he has not even looked her way.

  ‘You don’t look very happy, Lily. Is something wrong?’

  ‘How could it be? Look at us, paddling in the Indian Ocean, so close to India itself we could almost touch it. You’d have to be sour as old milk for there to be something wrong.’

  Still Helena fixes her with those steady, grey eyes while, on the shore, Ian says something that makes Edward laugh suddenly and loudly, like a dog yelping.

  ‘I can see there is something, so I’m just going to come out and ask you, because I can’t bear to see you miserable. Is it Edward? Is he making you unhappy?’

  ‘No!’ Lily knows she has spoken too loudly. The three figures on the beach stop mid-conversation, looking towards the sea.

  Lily whirls around so her back is to them.

  ‘That is, maybe. Just a little. But it’s nothing he’s done, Helena. Edward is always a perfect gentleman. The problem lies with me. I just can’t seem to work out where I am with him.’

  She reaches both hands down and scoops up as much cool water as she can cup in her palms to pat on to her burning cheeks.

  Helena stands still, a pained expression on her face, and Lily regrets having spoken.

  ‘Just ignore me. I’m being so foolish. I suppose it comes of being on a ship for so long in each other’s company. Helena, forget I spoke.’

  ‘No, Lily. You’re right. Edward is behaving … inconsistently. And I’m sorry for it.’

  Lily feels as if there’s something stuck in her throat, as if the leaves from the tea they have just finished have somehow got clogged up in there in one fibrous mass, making swallowing difficult.

  ‘Is it because I’ll be going into service?’ she asks eventually. She is trying to make her voice light and conversational, but she knows Helena will be able to hear how it breaks in the back of her throat. ‘I know your parents are very traditional about such things. You told me as much when you explained why it couldn’t work out between you and Ian. Is it because they wouldn’t consider me good enough?’

  ‘No! Lily, no!’

  Helena leans over and takes one of Lily’s hands in hers, turning Lily towards her.

  ‘You mustn’t think that. Believe me, my parents would welcome you with open arms.’

  ‘But Ian?’

  ‘The situation with Ian is different. It’s different for me.’

  ‘Because you’re a woman?’

  Helena sighs, a sound that whispers like a wisp of a breeze across the surface of the ocean. A long strand of hair has come loose and she collects it absently with her fingers and repins it without a thought.

  ‘All families have their own ways of doing things, don’t they? Their own secrets that they don’t want to be known. Sometimes I think our family, mine and Edward’s, is built on secrets and without them we’d all just collapse like a house of cards. There are things I can’t tell you, Lily, that might make everything clearer. But believe me when I say that, if Edward brought you home, my parents would not object.’

  When they go back to the touring car their young guide is waiting for them, sitting back against the trunk of a nearby palm tree.

  ‘You had good tea? This hotel very good hotel. Best hotel in whole world. You tell King of England about this hotel.’

  They ask the boy to take them now to the bazaars, which are located just off the main street in Colombo. When they’d passed that area earlier it had looked very colourful and inviting and exotic, with Indian music being piped out of all the shops. But when the car stops to let them off they are appalled to find that the radios are now all playing Western music and they are to do their shopping to the accompaniment of ‘Doing the Lambeth Walk’.

  ‘I thought at the very le
ast that would be one of the joys of being so far from home, that I wouldn’t have to hear that dratted song ever again,’ groans Edward.

  ‘No. This very good song,’ their guide tells them. ‘Very new. Very modern.’

  Lily is drawn towards one shop, which is selling exquisite saris in vibrant colours that echo the flowers from the temple.

  ‘They’ll be too expensive,’ she decides.

  ‘Don’t be so defeatist,’ Edward says. ‘Let’s go and investigate.’

  The five of them make for the doorway, squeezing in past the street vendors, who are trying to tempt them with trays of shell necklaces. Lily swallows as she remembers her silk scarf, bought in Gibraltar – how long ago that seems now! – and pictures Edward picking it up, pressing his nose to it as Ida described. She wonders where he keeps it and feels an almost unbearable tenderness towards him. Edward with all his secrets. And now she is one of them.

  Inside, the shop is unexpectedly crowded, and Lily recognizes one of the first-class passengers, a handsome silver-haired gentleman with an aristocratic manner and large, flared nostrils. He is waiting outside a closed door at the back of the shop, his whole body leaning forward, as if stiff with expectation.

  Suddenly, the door is flung open and Eliza Campbell steps out, resplendent in a sari made from vivid fuchsia silk that wraps itself like a python around her body. She has pinned her black hair up tightly and the shopkeeper rushes forward with a matching pink silk flower that he places carefully behind her ear. The result is mesmerizing, and Lily senses the other customers pausing their conversations to turn and stare.

  ‘What do you think? Will I pass for a native?’

  Eliza presses the palms of her hands together in front of her face and bows her head, just as they have seen some of the Sinhalese women doing. The silver-haired man lets out a laugh that sounds like gunfire.

  ‘You, my dear, are an utterly perfect native.’

  His voice is deep and rich and sounds vaguely familiar.

  ‘My goodness, that’s Anthony Hewitt,’ Helena whispers.

  ‘The radio announcer?’

  ‘Definitely so,’ confirms Helena. ‘My mother listens to him all the time. She says he is the benchmark for how all Englishmen should sound. Isn’t that so, Edward?’

  Edward nods but he looks tense and nervous, his top lip biting down on the bottom one until it is white instead of pink. Lily hates that Eliza is able to have this effect on him.

  Now Eliza spots them across the crowded shop.

  ‘Lily! Edward!’

  Within moments they find themselves whisked off to be introduced to Eliza’s companion, who is indeed, it transpires, Anthony Hewitt.

  ‘Hasn’t he got the most divine voice?’ Eliza wants to know. ‘I could just eat it up with a spoon.’

  Anthony Hewitt is polite and charming, but distant, and Lily gets the distinct impression he resents having to share Eliza’s attentions. She herself feels tongue-tied and stupid with nerves, unable to get past the hurdle of how far her life has come. A month ago I was waiting on tables, she reminds herself. Now I am meeting radio stars. Eliza, meanwhile, is in one of her bright moods, where her eyes glitter and her voice is louder than it ought to be.

  ‘Max has gone off in a huff somewhere,’ she says. ‘He was being very tiresome about wanting to go to a hotel to get a drink. We passed one a few streets back and he got very fed up when we refused to stop and go in, didn’t he, Anthony? He’s probably propped up at the bar there right now, on his second Scotch, boring everyone to death about his unreasonable wife.’

  ‘Then he’s a damn fool,’ says Anthony.

  Edward drifts off, but every time Lily tries to take her leave Eliza restrains her by asking her a question or demanding her opinion on this sari or that one, seemingly oblivious to Anthony Hewitt’s growing impatience. Lily thinks about Maria, waiting for her somewhere outside the shop. Eliza had hardly acknowledged her when she scooped Lily and Edward up to be introduced to Anthony and, when Lily turned to look for her, she had vanished. She hopes she is with the others. It’s getting dark now, and Lily doesn’t like to think of Maria alone in this unfamiliar place.

  By the time she manages to extricate herself and exit the shop after finally convincing Eliza that no, she didn’t want to try on more saris and, no, she didn’t think the rose-coloured one was just made for her, there is no sign of her companions. She walks in one direction, instantly attracting a crowd of Sinhalese, all trying to sell her something or take her somewhere, and all smiling, as if they are, all of them, sharing together in the most terrific joke.

  Immediately, she is back on the quayside in Aden, pushing past the Arab vendors with George Price’s ragged breath in her ear, watching the launch preparing to leave without her.

  ‘No,’ she says, shaking her head and peering through the crowds for a familiar face. ‘No, please.’

  ‘Please,’ the Sinhalese repeat, still smiling. ‘Please. Thank you. Please. Thank you.’

  Panic rises, sweat breaking out on her forehead. When the young boy who has been their guide for the day appears by her side Lily feels she could cry with relief. He speaks angrily to the crowds of people around her, who duly step back, still smiling, but do not go away altogether.

  ‘These bad people. Very ignorant people. These people not knowing how to behave.’

  The boy looks genuinely sorrowful at the state of his fellow countrymen and raises his shoulders as if to say, What can we do, we civilized ones?

  ‘Have you seen my friends?’ Lily asks him.

  ‘Yes. Friends!’ He motions to her to follow him and leads the way, shouting at anyone who tries to detain them. Eventually, they arrive at a shop selling tea in beautifully ornate tins. Helena and Ian are inside, marvelling at the array of teas on offer.

  ‘Oh, Lily, can you believe there’s a type called gunpowder tea?’ calls Helena. Her cheeks have that pink flush that Lily has come to associate with her spending time alone with Ian.

  ‘That’d make breakfast go off with a bang!’ Ian dutifully offers up the expected joke with the kind of facial expression that says, Well, someone had to say it.

  Neither of them has seen Edward or Maria.

  Hoping the two are together, Lily hurries out of the shop, accompanied by the boy guide, and stands looking first one way and then the next, in increasing agitation.

  She sees Eliza and Anthony Hewitt emerging from the sari shop, he carrying a large package beautifully wrapped in tissue paper and tied with string. She is in the midst of relating some story or other and he, a good six inches taller than her, leans down towards her with his great nostrils flaring, as if breathing in the scent of a low-growing flower. Lily steps back so she cannot be seen. As they walk past, she watches Anthony Hewitt’s hand, which has been lightly lying between Eliza’s shoulders to guide her through the throng, slide down her back to her buttocks, before she swats it away with a trilling laugh.

  Lily doesn’t understand the Campbells. She will never understand them.

  But though Lily is shocked by what she has seen, she is also, in a way she finds deeply shaming, excited by it. Anthony Hewitt’s hand going so freely there reminds her of Robert and how he liked to lay claim to every inch of her until, at the last, she’d hold him back. Not wanting to, but knowing she had to. (‘I’ll find someone who will, then,’ he’d said that last time.) Max Campbell, and even George Price, who makes her skin crawl just to think of him, have also tried to inflict their own urgent agendas on to her. Only Edward, sweet Edward, holds back. And instead of being grateful, now she wonders what is keeping him from trying, why he does not, like Anthony Hewitt, try to probe further, lower, deeper, trusting to her to turn him back.

  ‘Lily! I am so glad to find you here. I thought I should have to go back to the ship alone.’

  Maria seems out of breath, as if she’s been hurrying. Her hair is messy and there’s a blaze of high colour in each of her sunken cheeks.

  ‘It’s a strange thing, Lil
y. I used to be so comfortable travelling alone. It never worried me to walk around a new city by myself, but lately I find myself so nervous. I feel as if I’m being followed wherever I go.’

  Lily laughs and points to the Sinhalese who are even now encircling them. ‘That’s perhaps because we are being followed,’ she says.

  Maria smiles, but it is like a shadow of her former smile.

  ‘Sometimes, even on the ship, I think I hear footsteps. I fear I am turning already into a crazy old woman. There is no hope for me!’

  They have arranged with their guide that they will make the short journey back to the ship by rickshaw, just to say they have had the experience. Lily has already written in her head the letters home describing it. How jealous Frank will be when he reads her news. The rivalry they’d had as children hasn’t completely faded.

  Ian and Helena are here, but Edward is nowhere to be seen. Their guide tells them he saw him heading off in the direction of the ship and Helena is irritated that he didn’t let them know he was going back.

  ‘He can be so selfish sometimes,’ she says, and Lily is taken aback by the bitterness in her voice.

  The first pricklings of unease come while the guide is negotiating with the man in charge of organizing the line of rickshaws, and Lily realizes that they will each have to have a separate cart. Well, not even a cart, really, more like a sedan chair that has to be pulled like a barrow. Night has fallen now and, away from the bazaar, the streets begin to look dark and menacing. As if reading her mind, Maria turns to her.

  ‘Lily, I’m not so sure …’

  But now their young guide is here, ushering them into their individual rickshaws.

  Lily’s driver – what a misnomer that is, ‘puller’ might be more accurate – is small and slight, and she worries how he will cope with her weight. But at least he is young, not like Maria’s, who has grizzled hair and stubble on his face, through which his mouth glistens obscenely, stained vivid red with betel juice as if he has torn raw flesh apart with his teeth.

  ‘It’s all right, Maria. I’ll be right next to you.’