The Scarlet Macaw

by S. P. Hozy

  Only one thing remained, and that was for Rose to meet George’s mother and sisters. They took the train to Birmingham and both of them were nervous during the trip. George was absolutely certain they would love Rose, but he wanted Rose to love them, too. Rose, on the other hand, was prepared to like them and hoped they would like her. Her family had embraced George as one of their own and had high hopes for their marriage. It would be perfect if George’s family felt the same.

  She wasn’t disappointed. Although George’s mother and sisters would probably have accepted anyone he brought home because they wanted so badly for him to have a wife and family, they couldn’t have been happier with Rose. She was ideal, they thought, and the two of them made a very handsome couple. So it was settled. George proposed and Rose accepted and the marriage date was set for a week before his scheduled return to Malaya. He booked a second ticket, requesting a larger cabin, and plans for the wedding were undertaken. For his part, George left it to the women. He agreed with whatever they wanted, including the colour of his tie. He was prepared to stand on his head and walk on his hands if that was what Rose wanted. Anything, just to be happily married to her at last.

  The wedding day arrived and the wedding took place at Rose’s village church, going off without a hitch. The men were all scrubbed and stuffed into their best clothes, and the women were glowing with happiness, especially Rose. Rose’s father gave the bride away and her brothers acted as groomsmen. The bridesmaids had known Rose all her life and treated her like a queen on her wedding day. Everything was perfect. Birds sang gloriously; flowers bloomed in profusion; people laughed heartily and wiped away tears of joy. The dinner was a sumptuous banquet and the liquor flowed like a river.

  Rose and George set off for a week’s honeymoon in Brighton before boarding the ship at Southampton that would take them “home” to Malaya. Rose’s excitement was palpable; she had a husband and would soon have her own home to take care of. In time, she hoped, there would be children. George had never been happier.

  And then, as if copied straight from a Victorian melodrama, it all came crashing down. They arrived during the monsoon when flooding was at its worst. Rose’s luggage, containing all her worldly goods, including her carefully packed trousseau, was soaked on the pier and didn’t dry out properly for weeks. Rose herself was soaked to the skin from her first day on Malayan soil. But there could be no waiting it out. George had to get back to the plantation and his job. They would need to travel for days in torrential rains, enduring muddy roads and gloomy skies. A heavy grey pall hung over them. Water ran down hillsides in buckets, often washing out the road. At times, they would be forced to wait in the car, or sit it out in a café if there was one nearby. It seemed to Rose there wasn’t a dry place in all of Malaya.

  “At least it’s not freezing cold. In Yorkshire there would be hailstones,” she said, in an attempt to remain positive and cheerful in the face of such disaster. “I said I wanted to live in a warmer climate, didn’t I?”

  “Well, you got your wish,” said George, who would have given anything to change all of it in a single stroke. He didn’t tell her that it would be much, much hotter after the monsoon rain stopped and the sun came out.

  Rose’s auburn hair hung damply around her face, the lovely waves of her portrait washed away. “It’ll be better once we get home,” she said, imagining clean sheets and dry towels. George knew better, but he remained silent. She’ll adapt, he thought. She was game.

  But Rose wasn’t game enough. When she saw the cramped and gloomy bungalow that was to be home, she tried to hide her disappointment. Dreary on the sunniest of days, it was plain and lackluster in the rain. “It’s not as spacious as I thought it would be,” she said, surveying its smallness.

  “We can add on some rooms,” George said. “It might take a bit of time, and we’ll have to wait for the rain to end, but it can be done.” He was nothing if not optimistic.

  “Yes. That’s a good idea.” Rose was looking at the lumpy bed that took up most of the space in the main bedroom. There was a wardrobe that held what few articles of clothing George possessed, and a wooden rung-back chair. There were sheets on the bed, and they were dry, but the mattress beneath felt damp.

  George sensed that things were not going well. “Cheer up,” he said, putting his arm around her shoulders. “It won’t rain forever. When the sun comes out, you’ll forget all about the wet.”

  She smiled in an effort to appear unfazed. “You’re right,” she said. “It won’t rain forever.”

  But it continued to rain for several more weeks. When the clouds parted and the sun came out, it was only briefly, and not long enough for anything to dry. Rose could see mildew beginning to appear on her leather shoes and handbag. And there was a musty smell to everything, including the furniture — what there was of it. All of this can be changed, she told herself. I can make this into a comfortable home, as soon as it stops raining. But in the back of her mind, a little voice kept saying: It rains like this every year, and maybe twice a year. I guess I’ll just have to get used to it.

  The problem was that she truly loved George and wanted to be married to him. But as the days went on, each seemingly wetter than the previous one, Rose began to feel that she had been deceived. Still, she tried to give him the benefit of the doubt. Perhaps she just hadn’t been listening properly. Although she had vowed not to be “silly” about George, maybe she had been. Surely it was her own fault that she was disappointed. She blamed herself for having inflated the whole thing in her mind into a blissful tropical paradise. It’s only rain, she reminded herself. It’s not the end of the world. She told herself she would just have to get on with it. If you don’t like something, make an effort to change it. That had always been her motto. She would buy new furniture and sew curtains. She would meet other women and find out how they coped. There were plenty of things she could do.

  But one by one, Rose’s ideas and plans were flattened. There were worms in the flour; the butter and oil were rancid; the water needed boiling, even to wash the clothes; the mosquitoes were horrendous — small and silent, they struck without warning, leaving red, itchy welts on the skin. There seemed to be test after test of Rose’s resilience. Yet time and again she bounced back with another idea, another plan. And then, one day, the rains stopped as suddenly as they had begun, and the sun came out. The relentless, scorching sun. Rose’s fair skin burned and blistered; she was constantly thirsty but daren’t drink anything unless the water had been boiled for half an hour. And she didn’t trust the servants to tell the truth, so she monitored the boiling of it herself. She felt her energy draining away as the temperature rose. And then there was the humidity, the stupefying humidity that poured sweat into her eyes and onto her blisters.

  By this time, Rose had come to understand that there were no neighbours, no other women she could commiserate with. There was no one and nothing that was less than half a day’s journey away. She had brought books with her, but she found it difficult to focus her mind on them. The days became long and stultifying. She barely saw George most days, and when she did, he was too exhausted to give her much attention. The servants all spoke a foreign language or their English was limited and often incorrect. She spent her whole day trying to communicate simple things. She longed for real conversation.

  Then, finally, when she couldn’t hold it in any longer, it all came pouring out. Why hadn’t George told her, warned her even, that it would be like this? What had possessed him to think she could be happy here? That she would come to like it? How many lies of omission had there been? At first, she said, she’d thought it was her fault that she was miserable. But in time she came to realize that he had deceived her. She had been mightily deceived. She had been brought here under false pretences. He had known and he hadn’t told her. It was unforgivable. He had no right. She wanted to go home. It was over. She had loved him once but now it was over.

  “I’ll never trust you again,” she said. Her expression was sto
ny, unyielding; she was long past tears by now. Her mind was made up.

  “And so,” George told me these many years later, “I had to let her go back. I couldn’t hold her. I couldn’t ask her to give it more time. She had changed and there was no going back to the old Rose that I had fallen in love with.”

  “Do you wish now,” I said, “that you had been more truthful?”

  “I do,” he said, “but who’s to say she wouldn’t have been scared off sooner? Who’s to say she would have come at all if I had been more truthful?”

  “Ah,” I said. “Yes. Who’s to say?”

  Chapter Thirty

  In 1928 Sutty made yet another trip to Singapore to see Annabelle. He found her greatly changed from the year before. Whereas the previous year she had been “herself,” this year she wasn’t. It was as if the part of her that was Annabelle, the core of her, had shifted a few degrees off its axis. Something had slipped out of place and she wasn’t quite Annabelle anymore.

  She had gradually become nocturnal, which Sutty already knew. Her nighttime wanderings in Chinatown had extended further and further into the night until she was coming home at daybreak. She had begun to spend more time with the prostitutes and their clients (or maybe they were pimps; Sutty didn’t know) and now she was smoking cigarettes and drinking whisky, something she had never done before. It troubled him greatly.

  “Annabelle,” he said, “what are you doing?” It had taken him a long time to find her, and when he did find her, it was four in the morning and she was in an all-night bar with a young man she called Dicky.

  “What does it look like I’m doing, Sutty?” she said. She seemed to speak more slowly than she had in the past. “I’m having a drink with my pal Dicky.”

  Her pal Dicky was well past the point of sobriety, and although he was probably only about twenty-eight, he looked forty. He had a round baby face that was attractive in a young man but didn’t age well. His eyes were puffy and bloodshot, his jaw was already slackening, with little pouches at the corners, and his pale brown hair was thinning.

  “Hello,” he said, standing up unsteadily and extending his hand. “My name’s Dicky. Who are you?”

  “This is Sutty,” said Annabelle. “An old friend of mine. From before.”

  “Oh,” said Dicky. “How do you do?”

  “How do you do,” said Sutty, shaking the man’s limp, damp hand. He pulled up a chair and sat, signalling the barman for a drink. It didn’t look like anybody was ready to leave yet.

  “How have you been, Annabelle?” he asked her because he couldn’t think of anything else to say.

  She looked at him. “You know,” she told him. “It doesn’t get better.” She lit another cigarette. “How’s my little Frankie?”

  Sutty didn’t want to talk about Frankie in that place and in that company, but he said, “Frankie’s wonderful, Annabelle. Full of mischief. A right little devil he is, into everything. He’s going to be four soon.”

  “I know,” said Annabelle. “I remember.”

  “Of course you do,” said Sutty.

  He remembered the time he had searched all day for Annabelle with little Frankie in his arms. She had disappeared from the flat, leaving the baby alone. Sutty had been frantically worried, imagining the worst. He had finally brought the baby back, put him to bed, and waited for her to return. She did finally and couldn’t, or wouldn’t, account for her absence. She just said she’d been walking. He told her he’d looked everywhere for her. She said she was sorry but she just had to be alone for a while.

  “But you left the baby alone, Annabelle. What if I hadn’t come along?”

  “But you did,” she said. “Besides, someone would have heard him. He would have been all right.”

  That’s when Sutty had realized that he couldn’t leave little Frankie with her if she continued to refuse to return to England. There was no choice but to take the boy back with him. He, Sutty, and his mother could raise him, and little Frankie would be safe and secure. The boy would have an education. Whenever Annabelle agreed to come home, she would naturally take him back. But for now, while she was in this frame of mind, there was no other solution.

  He was surprised that she agreed to his plan so quickly. And now little Frankie was almost four years old. He hadn’t seen his mother in three-and-a-half years. He thought of Sutty’s mother, Maud, as his mother, and his nurse Nancy, whom he called “Nanny,” was more of a mother to him than anyone.

  As the days went by, Sutty had a now-or-never sense about Annabelle. He believed that if he didn’t extricate her from the life she was leading in Singapore this time — he had failed so many times in the past to get her to return — that she would never go back. She was on a slippery slope right now and soon she wouldn’t have the strength to pull herself up. He feared it might be too late even now.

  Every time he had tried to persuade her to go back to England with him, she had refused, saying she couldn’t leave Francis, that he was here, his soul, his spirit, whatever you wanted to call it. But Francis had been dead for over four years now and Annabelle was more concerned about the dead than the living, namely her own child.

  As he came to see more of how she was living now — especially her dubious relationship with the wretched Dicky — the more he despaired. It was as if Frankie didn’t exist for her anymore as a real person. He was more than a memory, but less than a presence, whereas his dead father, Francis, was a constant and real being to Annabelle. She still spoke to his grave as if he were there. Because of this, Sutty decided that firm and even extreme measures were called for. He would get Annabelle onto a ship, come hell or high water.

  The next P&O passenger ship would be leaving Singapore for England in fourteen days. Sutty booked two cabins. For the next two weeks, he kept close tabs on Annabelle, watching her, spending time with her, talking to her. Yet he never once mentioned the ship or the two tickets, or his intention of taking her with him. If you had asked him during those two weeks if he had a plan to get Annabelle onto the ship, he would have said no. He had no idea, short of knocking her over the head and carrying her, how he would do it. But he had fourteen days to figure something out.

  If Dicky had been half a man, he could have enlisted his help, appealing to his better nature (if he had one) and persuading him that Annabelle would be in peril if she stayed in Singapore. But Dicky was a moron, a word Sutty was loath to use but he could think of no other that described him better. Dicky couldn’t save himself if his hat was on fire, let alone help another human being. Besides, Sutty suspected that Annabelle was buying Dicky’s drinks from her own meagre allowance, one that Sutty provided.

  With only three days left before the ship’s departure, Sutty came up with a plan. On the day of embarkation, he would meet her at Francis’s grave to bid farewell to his friend (until next time) and then ask her to accompany him in the cab to the pier. Once there, he would invite her to his cabin for a drink. But he would take her to the cabin that was designated to be hers, and lock her in until the ship left. He would deal with the consequences later. The important thing was to get her on the ship. Once they were underway, she might come to see the rightness of his decision. She would begin to focus on seeing her little Frankie and would soon understand that she hadn’t really left Francis behind, that his spirit would be with her wherever she went.

  Sutty believed there was no other way and that it must be done.

  If Dicky suspected something was afoot, he didn’t show it. And Sutty didn’t think he had the wherewithal to figure it out. Dicky was soused during most of his waking hours. Thinking wasn’t an activity he engaged in.

  Sutty barely slept the three remaining nights. He told Annabelle he would be leaving and, on the last night, asked if she would meet him at Francis’s grave the next day at one o’clock so he could say goodbye. She agreed, and as far as Sutty could tell, she suspected nothing. He slept fitfully that night, waking several times. He had left her at three in the morning at a café where she w
as drinking, as usual, with Dicky and a few other less than desirable companions. It was no different from any other night, except that this night he had pulled out the recent photographs of Frankie and shown them to her again.

  “He’s so beautiful,” she said. “He’s like an angel.”

  “He looks like an angel,” said Sutty, “but he’s a little rascal. And smart as a whip.”

  “Like his father,” said Annabelle.

  “Yes, a lot like his father.”

  She went to put the photos in her handbag. “You don’t mind if I keep these copies, too, do you, Sutty? I want a set to carry around and a set to keep at home.”

  “No, of course I don’t mind, Annabelle. He’s your son and he always will be. Maud and I are only temporary guardians.”

  She had smiled wistfully and said nothing.

  The next day she did not appear at Francis’s grave. Sutty waited an hour but Annabelle did not come. He went round to her flat in a taxi, with his luggage on the back seat, but she wasn’t there either. He cursed himself for not knowing where Dicky lived, if indeed he lived anywhere but in bars and cafés, or occasionally bedding down in Annabelle’s flat when he had nowhere else to go.

  Where could she be? And why hadn’t she shown up? Had she discovered Sutty’s plan? But that was impossible because he hadn’t said a word to anyone about the second cabin.