by Janet Tanner
‘It’s all right, Katy.’ Elise’s smile was indulgent. ‘Stuart, this is my grand-daughter. Katy – Mr Stuart Brittain.’
Brown eyes flecked with hazel met his and a generous mouth curved upwards.
‘How-do-you-do.’
‘Stuart is here from Hong Kong. He is a relative of someone I knew a very long time ago.’
‘When you and Grandpa lived in Hong Kong?’ Katy asked.
‘Yes. And he is particularly interested to meet you because …’ Her voice tailed away and Stuart read the sudden expression of dawning horror on her face.
‘When you and Grandpa lived in Hong Kong’said it all, somehow. There must be quite a story behind the locket, the photograph and the obvious love that softened the older woman’s face whenever she mentioned his great-uncle’s name. But it would hardly be the sort of story that was told at family gatherings. His own family had pleaded ignorance of the woman in the locket – no doubt hers was as much in the dark. Now, caught unawares, she had put herself in the position of having to explain something, which might have been better kept hidden, as it had been for forty years.
‘It’s nice to meet you, Katy.’ Stuart stepped swiftly into the breach, but he need not have worried. Katy, too, had noticed her grandmother pale suddenly and with almost disconcerting single mindedness she turned all her attention to her.
‘Granny! Are you feeling all right? You ought not to overdo things in this heat.’
‘I’m quite all right, darling.’ Elise hand held steadfastly to the back of the chair.
‘Well, I’m not so sure that you are. I was worried about you when you came up to town yesterday – that’s why I’m here now. And I shall stay until I am quite certain that you’re taking proper care of yourself.’
‘Katy!’ Elise laughed a little. ‘This heat, as you put it, is nothing compared with what I was quite used to in the East …’
‘But you were much younger then!’
‘… and we can discuss the state of my health at some other time! Mr Brittain hasn’t come all this way to hear something so boring.’
‘All right. Granny – just don’t think you can fob me off in that way,’ Katy warned.
Then she turned to Stuart. ‘You actually live in Hong Kong, then?’
‘I am afraid so.’
‘Why afraid? My grandmother loved it, didn’t you, Granny? I can’t understand why she never went back after the war.’
‘Because I didn’t think there was anything to go back for, Katy.’
Briefly she glanced down at the locket she still held in her hand and the sadness was there again, etched in the fine-boned face. ‘The business was finished,’ she went on after a moment, ‘and your grandfather swore he would never take the chance on trying to build it up in that pan of the world again. He said that from then on he would concentrate on establishing himself in the UK. I suppose after four years of being a prisoner-of-war of the Japs, he felt he had seen enough of the East to last him a lifetime.’
‘Grandpa put Granny on a boat at the last minute, before the Japs came. It was touch and go, but she made it to the Philippines and then the Americans flew her out,’ Katy said to Stuart. ‘But Grandpa was taken prisoner. He was in Stanley Prison Camp for four years and when he came out he was like a skeleton.’
Elise said nothing and Katy turned to her for confirmation.
‘It’s true, isn’t it, Granny?’
‘Yes,’ Elise conceded. ‘He was very lucky to survive. There were many who did not. Poor food, contaminated water, no proper medical treatment – it was like living in a hot steamy sewet.’
‘And you were very fortunate to get away, weren’t you, Granny?’ Katy continued, her enthusiasm conveying the way she had fed on the stories along with Hans Anderson’s tales and Narnia. ‘She had Uncle Alex with her – he was just a little boy – and she was expecting Mummy. Mummy was born at the US base in the Philippines, wasn’t she?’
‘Yes.’ The faraway look was back in Elise’s eyes and Stuart looked at her sharply. There had been a baby in all this, then, a baby whose arrival had been imminent when his great-uncle had aided her escape – an escape which Katy wrongly attributed – uncorrected by Elise – to her grandfather.
‘You can hardly blame Gordon for not wanting to go back after what had happened,’ Elise said now. ‘He had what was left of our things shipped over – and heaven knows, after the Japs had had the run of the place for four years there were few enough of them. They had used it as a bawdy house, I understand. Most things that were breakable, they broke, and what was small enough to pocket they stole or sold.’
‘They left this, though, didn’t they?’ Katy crossed the room to where an intricate bronze urn in the shape of a dragon stood on its rosewood plinth. ‘He frightened them off, I should think.’
Elise smiled, a warm glow that lit up her face. ‘My lion.’
‘Dragon, Granny,’
‘My Singa Pura lion.’
She did not elaborate, but her expression told Stuart that it held a special significance for her.
‘No, you’re right, they didn’t take him. One of the brightest moments of the whole sad business was when I opened the packing case and saw him glaring up at me.’
‘You lost practically everything else, though, didn’t you?’ Katy continued. ‘ Quite apart from what happened in Hong Kong, she was torpedoed, you know. How long was it that you spent in an open boat. Granny? More than a day, anyway. And all her clothes and possessions went down with the ship – including her mother’s precious things which she was bringing home from Cairo.’
‘I have already told Stuart how I was torpedoed,’ Elise said with a smile. ‘What I didn’t tell him was that it was thanks to his great-uncle that I still have one of my mother’s most treasured possessions – an oak chest. When he arranged my passage, he refused to allow me to take it with me. At the time I was furious, but afterwards I had cause to thank him. Throughout the war my mother’s chest was safe in the vaults at the British Embassy in Cairo, and afterwards I was able to get it shipped home.’
‘I’m not surprised that after all that, you never wanted to go back to Hong Kong,’ Stuart said.
She touched her lips thoughtfully with well shaped but unvarnished nails.
‘I wouldn’t say I have never wanted to go back. There have been times when I have thought I would like to see it again – to see how everything has changed. And now you tell me …’ Her voice ebbed away, then after a moment she nodded. ‘ Yes, there are things in Hong Kong I should like to see.’
Without being told, he knew that she was thinking she would like to visit Brit’s grave. How was it possible for him to understand her so well when he had never met her before? When there was still so much of her story that was shrouded in mystery for him? It was not that her thoughts were transparent either, just that what she said and did somehow formed an integral part of a pattern he had known and studied since he was a child.
Without thinking, he said, ‘I’m flying back tomorrow from Lulsgate in the Company plane. You are very welcome to come with me if you would like to.’
‘Good heavens!’ Her eyes had opened very wide. ‘ That’s a very generous offer, but …’
Sensing she was about to refuse, he leaped in with a swiftness which surprised even himself.
‘Not at all! It’s a Lear jet – there is plenty of room and should be quite comfortable for passengers. I know it’s a longish flight, but to someone who has travelled the world and spent a day in an open boat after being torpedoed, it would be nothing. You would sail through the journey with no trouble at all.’
She smiled again. ‘Do you know, you remind me of your great-uncle in more ways than mere physical resemblance, Stuart! But you must give me some time to think about it.’
‘You’re not turning me down out of hand, then?’
‘I wouldn’t be so foolish! This could be the best chance I will ever have to see Hong Kong again – maybe the only chance.’
‘Oh no,’ she said quickly, ‘I certainly wouldn’t impose that far, kind though it is to suggest it. I could stay at the Peninsula – I would rather like to stay at the Peninsula Hotel.’
He sensed the excitement beginning to bubble beneath that cool façade.
‘Then it’s yes? You will come to Hong Kong with me?’
‘I didn’t say that. You mustn’t rush me!’
‘Granny – think before you make rash arrangements,’ Katy warned. ‘She is not a young woman to go rushing about nowadays, Mr Brittain.’
There was a determined set to the pretty face, a hint of character which was engaging, challenging and totally individual. As Stuart felt the wicked tingle of anticipation within him, he knew there had been more to his offer than a nostalgic trip for a fascinating lady.
‘All right, you come too and make sure she’s well looked after!’
‘We will have to let you know,’ Elise said. ‘ Don’t try to stampede us, Stuart. Katy and I will talk it over. But I am very grateful to you for the kind offer, and also grateful to you for taking the trouble to look me up.’
Sensing the conversation was at an end, he moved towards the door.
‘As I said before – my pleasure! And don’t forget, my offer is quite a genuine one. You can reach me at this number if you decide to take me up on it.’
In the doorway he paused, looking back at the two women: one young and vital, with the glow of youth; the other older but in her own way no less striking, with a pride in her bearing and a promise of hidden fire that made him feel suddenly envious of the great-uncle he had never known. Elise Sanderson was quite a woman, and she had passed on a great many of her attributes to her granddaughter.
With a sense of anticipation he crossed the gravelled drive and got in his hired car. He was extremely glad that he had come – and he was fervently hoping that Elise Sanderson would take him up on his invitation.
‘Granny, what was all that about?’ Katy asked suspiciously as the hired car crunched away down the gravel drive. ‘Who was that man, turning up like that? You didn’t tell me you were expecting him when you came to see me last night.’
‘No, darling, I didn’t know about it then.’ Elise felt as if she were spinning in a vortex. From the moment she had heard, on heir return the previous evening, that a Mr Brittain was coming to see her, her ordered world had turned topsy-turvy, and when she had seen him standing there on the doorstep she had felt as if she were being dragged down a time tunnel to forty years ago.
He had looked so like Brit! Even now she couldn’t get over the likeness, although half an hour in his company had shown her the differences, too. But the similarity had been so great that for a wildly insane moment she had almost believed it was Brit – a Brit not only alive but unchanged by the years between. And he had evoked the same emotions – an echo of the charged attraction that had existed between them, the forbidden passion which had ripened into love.
Now, coming coldly back to the present, somehow she felt cheated, as if everything she had held dear had been snatched away from her for a second time; only now the grief was muted and shadowy, the emptiness filled – partially at any rate – by a lifetime lived without him. Yet she was also warmed by the contact – to know that part of her, the locket with her photograph – had been in his home in Shek-o all these years, pondered over and romanticised by a boy who looked so like him it could have been Brit reincarnated: a boy who had grown up with the determination to find her one day and piece together the story which had fascinated him.
Would he be disappointed, she wondered, to know what her life had been after all the storms had quietened? Would he be surprised to know that she had eventually gathered the strings together and rebuilt a marriage which had almost disintegrated along with the life she had led in Hong Kong? It had not been a bad marriage or a bad life, though it had never attained the heights she had once glimpsed. The scars had healed, even if they had never completely disappeared, and the knowledge of how close their relationship had come to failing had somehow been a source of strength to both her and Gordon.
She remembered the long months when she had thought that he, like Brit, had died in the invasion, the guilt she had felt for making him unhappy and the joy and relief at discovering she was to be given the chance to make amends. She recalled too the apprehension with which she had met him again after his release, his own relief at finding her and Alex unharmed, his tentative acceptance of the baby he knew – though he never again mentioned it – was not his own. And she remembered his changed attitude towards her, mellower, as he recognised her as a person – flawed as all human beings are flawed and not a young goddess to be placed on a pedestal. As they rebuilt the business together, he had treated her as a partner and an equal, sharing with her where before – he had patronised her, allowing her to play her part and find her own identity.
And she had loved him for it. Yes, in her way she had loved him truly, though never in the way she had loved Brit. Together they had raised their family, together they had built Sandersons to what it was today, together they had made Durscombe Park their home. And when Gordon had died, there had been another empty space to fill.
Momentarily her eyes misted and she clenched her hands. Gordon and Brit. Brit and Gordon. Two men I loved, two men who loved me. I have been very fortunate …
‘Granny, you still haven’t told me who that man was’.’ Katy’s young impatient voice broke into her reverie and her eyes focused with fond love and a hint of perplexity on her grand-daughter.
‘Have you heard of Cormorant, Katy? They are a massive organisation of companies who could buy and sell us several times over.’
‘Oh!’ Katy looked impressed. ‘And you knew one of them really well in the old days?’
‘Yes, he was …’ She broke off as a half laugh, half sob constricted her throat. How easy – and how difficult! – it would be to say, ‘He was your grandfather!’ Her teeth sank into her lip, cutting off the words. ‘He was a great help to me,’ she said inadequately.
Katy smiled suddenly, tossing her head so that her hair bounced.
‘Well, all I can say is that it’s a great pity you’re not still in contact with him! Maybe he would bail out Sandersons instead of us having to sweet-talk Gunther.’
Elise froze. There was a pool of silence inside her suddenly; so deep, so chilling that it took her breath. Only last night, before the advent of Stuart Brittain had diverted her attention, she had been desperately worried about the future of Sandersons – worried not only for the company itself but for the effect the situation might have on her beloved Katy’s future. But Katy was, by her birthright, an heiress. As Brit’s grand-daughter, she should be entitled to a stake in Cormorant – the company which could, in her own words, buy Sandersons several times over. Katy should not have to sell herself for a paltry three-quarters of a million – without knowing how she could prevent this happening, Elise had nevertheless sworn she would not allow it. Now, staring her in the face was an avenue that might present a means of escaping such a hideous possibility.
‘Granny …?’
Elise became aware of anxious hazel-flecked eyes probing her whirling thoughts, as determination so strong that it made her dizzy penetrated her deepest consciousness. Katy should not sell herself short – she must be given the chance to find the love Elise herself had found too late. She would not stand by and allow Katy to sacrifice her happiness to a bloodless company. And if preventing that meant making a journey into the past, then she would do so – and do it willingly.
‘Granny, is anything the matter? You do look awfully pale today.’
‘I’m fine, darling. It’s just that …’ She broke off, then continued with the directness which her family found both endearing and disconcerting, ‘I think I should like to take up Stuart’s offer!’
She saw the amazed lo
ok on Katy’s face and almost laughed aloud. It was one thing for Katy to talk proudly about her grandmother’s youthful exploits and adventures; nevertheless, Elise thought she probably found it impossible to relate these to the elegant middle-aged woman who now seldom travelled further than London and who visited Gstaad and the South of France with monotonous regularity for her annual vacations.
‘You mean – take off for Hong Kong?’ Katy’s tone was sufficiently horrified to have followed a statement that Elise was going to the moon.
‘Why not?’ she asked, still amused by the impact her words had made.
‘But he said tomorrow, didn’t he?’
‘That’s right. I presume he finishes his business here tonight.’
‘It’s too short notice, Granny. It’s crazy!’
‘Why is it too short notice?’ Elise asked. ‘ I have my passport and I’ve had so many vaccinations over the years I should think I must be immune to every germ and virus between here and the Equator. And Mrs Parsons could pack everything I need within an hour if necessary.’
‘But perhaps he didn’t really mean what he said. Maybe he was just being polite, never thinking you would take him up on it?’
‘I don’t think so.’
‘And you are really serious? You intend to go flying off with someone you had not even met until an hour ago?’
‘Katy, you are beginning to sound like your mother,’ Elise reprimanded. ‘Why is it that when one reaches a certain age, everyone starts behaving as if one was a child again? I have grown used to expecting it from some of my family. But I thought that you, at least …’
‘I’m sorry. Granny.’ Twin dimples played momentarily in Katy’s cheeks. ‘I don’t mean to be a bore. It’s just that I am very fond of you and I want to make sure you know what you’re doing.’
‘Oh, I know what I’m doing, all right,’ Elise said with determination.
‘And you are quite set on going?’
‘Yes, I believe I am.’
Katy crossed to the window to look out for a moment, then turned to fling herself on the velvet-covered curved seat beneath, arms spread expansively along the back, legs crossed neatly at the ankles.
