The Hour Before Dawn

by Sara MacDonald

  ‘I wish you could come to the funeral.’

  ‘So do I, Fleur. But we’ll all give David a wonderful memorial service when you come back.’ There was a big exercise coming up in Malaya and it was impossible for Fergus to leave now. He was doing David’s job as well as his own and one of the squadron pilots was still in hospital. ‘Take care. I’ll see you in two or three weeks.’ He shook her gently. ‘The twins need you…You’ll have help keeping them occupied on the plane. I’ll ring Laura and Peter when I get back to the mess to say the flight has just left.’

  ‘Thank you,’ Fleur said dully.

  Fergus suddenly wanted to shake her, wanted to say, This is me. For God’s sake, Fleur. React. The man we both loved is dead and he was a huge part of my life as well as yours. Don’t shut your children out…or me.’

  As the coffin disappeared into the bowels of the plane Fergus felt like weeping. ‘Keep an eye on her,’ he said to one of the air stewards, as Fleur and the children climbed the steps into the plane. ‘She’s still in shock and I’m not sure if she is capable of looking after her little girls.’

  ‘Don’t worry, Sir,’ the corporal said. ‘We’ve got army wives on board. We’ve also made arrangements for the stops at Gan and Cyprus. The colonel’s wife is going to be with her.’

  Fergus walked back to the car and stood to watch the huge plane prepare for takeoff. The heat beat down and drenched his uniform, shimmered over the tarmac in the lee of the plane revving up and moving noisily along the runway, gathering itself for flight.

  Last week he and David had played tennis. They’d swum together at the club…But that had been before the barbecue…the barbecue where Fleur had worn the shimmery red dress to shock. And it had shocked the older officers’ wives, and caused admiration and envy in almost everybody else.

  At first, David had been highly amused at her entrance, had let out a whistle of pride. Fergus had felt startled, almost dismayed. Fleur was making a sudden statement. Her beauty hit him between the eyes, but this wasn’t the Fleur he knew. She was glittery and hard and…hurting. It had been disturbing. As if that night she had to prove to David, and perhaps to him, the power she had to attract. It had been awful watching them hurt each other and using him to do it. He loved them both.

  He watched the plane carrying his friend’s body take off in a roar over the paddy fields, signalling an ending: to everything.

  Ah Heng, in the back of the cool, air-conditioned car, watched her babies fly away in a plane like a heavy, pregnant bird. The sun radiated in waves over the ground where it had been standing. She watched the glint of silver in the sky until it was a speck and wondered if she would ever fill the hole that was opening making each and every breath painful.

  Every time a British baby left it hurt, but this time it tore out her heart. There were no babies in her next job, back in the city with the British High Commission. No babies at all.

  NINE

  As the plane started to descend for Changi airport, Fleur looked down, but the paddy fields had gone. No black-clad figures, knee-deep in water, bent to the rice in their wide-brimmed hats.

  Yet, excitement gripped her. If she closed her eyes she could almost be a child, a young wife again, with a safe, happy life and children before her.

  The smells as the doors were thrown open were as she remembered. Shimmering wet heat, petrol, and spices. No frangipani this time; the vague, pervading scent of blossom was missing.

  Fleur sat in an airport bus as the rain sprayed out from the wheels, splashing cyclists. The luggage, balanced precariously at the front, wobbled and swung behind the driver. The heat was swallowed behind cloud and air-conditioning. The other passengers were as dazed and tired as Fleur, and the bus was oddly silent.

  Fleur, looking out at a changed landscape, still felt she knew the basic geography of it. She had driven so often on this Changi Road, to the sailing club, to the military hospital, to see friends. She supposed all the buildings must still be there in a different guise. Was the prison still standing; the atmosphere around it heavy with despair and death; full of the ghosts of captured servicemen imprisoned there by the Japanese in the Second World War.

  As they reached the outskirts of the city she recognised the long Bukit Timar Road and thought she remembered some of the older buildings hidden beneath and between vast skyscrapers. Land reclamation started so long ago had continued and the city had spread out into places once underwater. Spread out and out and up.

  The bus weaved in and out of the fronts of hotels, dropping passengers and their spreading pools of luggage in front of ornate glass doors with tall turbaned Indian porters. Fleur and two couples were the last to be dropped off at the Hilton in Orchard Road. An old couple who looked on the point of collapse and a young, possibly honeymoon, couple. They all smiled wanly at each other, tiredness and jetlag making everything distant.

  The young couple hauled their suitcases up the hotel steps before the porters had time to rush out with their trolleys and admonish them for even thinking of seeing to their own luggage. Fleur and the old couple stood waiting, knowing, unlike England, that their cases would be loaded carefully onto a trolley, and when they had checked in they would be seen efficiently into the lift and up to their rooms.

  Once in her room the young Malaysian porter showed Fleur how everything worked and she dived into her bag to tip him, trying to find her Singapore dollars. The porter held his hand up. ‘Later, later, you tired, Mem.’

  Fleur smiled gratefully and thanked him. ‘Terima kasih.’

  He gave her a wide smile. ‘Sama-sama. Selamat tidur.’

  ‘Selamat tidur.’

  Night was approaching. Fleur went to the window and looked down on Orchard Road, at the streams of traffic heading home or into the city to eat and shop. The pavements were full of people and the volume would increase as the night wore on. Singapore was a city for serious shoppers.

  She had wanted to be in the centre of the city where she could walk to shop for presents for Nikki and Jack. Right here, in the centre where, even after all this time, much would be familiar. Fleur smiled, leaving the curtains open, and went to the fridge and took out water. Then she had a shower and lay on the bed, the hum of the air-conditioning masking the noise of anything outside the room.

  Fleur knew she must not sleep or she would never come up from the depth of jetlag, but she closed her eyes and let her body relax. She longed to phone Nikki, to say, Here I am in the Singapore Hilton and so, so looking forward to seeing you the day after tomorrow, darling; to meeting Jack; to looking at your lovely face, which I miss every single day…

  But she couldn’t. She had brought a phone that would work anywhere in the world, but she could not ring her estranged daughter. There were no small intimacies or concerns or chit-chat that could be exchanged as comfort. Not yet.

  It was the thing Fleur missed most of all with the death of Fergus, having anyone to tell, I got here! I’m fine! You needn’t have worried. Really, the journey was wonderful…no problems at all.

  The room hummed around her. She knew she must get up if she wanted to go out into the streets before she collapsed. So strange that hotels could be the loneliest places in the world when they contained hundreds of people.

  She dressed quickly in clean clothes and went out into the corridor. There was a lounge eating area on the same floor which served snacks and light food. Fleur ordered a coffee and helped herself to some fruit and nuts beautifully laid out on a table. She went and sat in a corner where she would not be self-conscious on her own and looked out at the night.

  As she stood in the lift going down to the foyer the old couple joined her. ‘We’re just going to have a quick look round the hotel and call it a day, we’re much too tired to explore tonight.’

  Fleur smiled. ‘I’m just going out for an hour or so.’

  ‘Well, you be careful, on your own…’

  ‘I think,’ Fleur said, ‘Singapore is probably the safest place I know. Certainly safer t
han London. Sleep well.’

  She swung out of the glass doors and down the steps into the street and turned right and walked slowly up Orchard Road. She wanted to buy Nikki a Chinese blouse, green silk. All the little night markets seemed to have disappeared, to be replaced by glittering designer shops and huge stores. There was even a Marks & Spencer. Fleur, tired, did not think she could tackle working out the currency tonight. She would scout and return in the morning. She walked, jostled and pushed by the good-natured crowds. There were no rickshaws any more and she was glad. She used to be horrified at the huge varicose veins that stood out like spreading roots of trees on the rickshaw driver’s legs.

  She stood on a corner waiting for the lights to change and suddenly saw, across the road in a space between the shops, a children’s play area and some market stalls. She crossed the road with the surge of people and went to look.

  There it was, pale green, the perfect Shantung blouse with small daisies embroidered on the front. Fleur held it up to judge its size. Of course she couldn’t be sure, but it seemed to be about right. She saw it had a price tag on and hesitated to barter. Perhaps people no longer bartered?

  Did she have enough Singapore dollars? She opened her wallet to look. The small Cantonese stallholder touched her hand. ‘I take card. You have this one too, velly good for you. Good colour for you.’ She took up a red blouse and held it against Fleur.

  Fleur bought both blouses and a length of batik for a sarong for Jack and paid with her credit card. She was feeling sick and dizzy now with the heat and the crowds and she turned back towards the hotel. Even at this time of night the sweat trickled down the inside of her shirt and thin trousers.

  Back in her room she made tea, nibbled a biscuit and fell into bed feeling pleased with herself. She had at least small gifts to give to Nikki and Jack. She fell asleep almost instantly.

  In the morning Fleur woke disorientated and went to draw the curtains. The steamy rain of yesterday had gone and the day glared and flashed against the window. She felt excited and rested. She had the whole day, until four thirty, when the airport bus would come to collect her. She could do anything she liked.

  She made coffee, showered quickly, and put on a thin dress against the heat outside. She opened the glass doors and walked out onto her balcony that looked down on Orchard Road. She leant out and watched the cars snaking along bumper to bumper through the city and saw what you could not see from the road.

  A line of trees edging the pavements made a long green snake through the heart of the city, as if the trees had sprung from the roots of the buildings, so that the city could constantly be reminded of the jungle from which it had sprung.

  Hundertwasser! Fleur felt astonished to see so clearly and by chance a view he must have looked down on, here or in some other eastern city that steamed with heat and vibrant colour. The ghosts of the jungle and dead tribes rising from the pavements in leafy green, their wavering branches, the arms of the dead, re-created to live again, to breathe again in the heart of a city. Forever alive, forever continuing the pattern of life. A city that had once been jungle.

  The Garden of the Happy Dead.

  If I had not come, if I had not stood on this balcony eight floors up, I would not have seen so extraordinarily dramatically what Hundertwasser meant and what he practiced so clearly in his colours and architecture.

  She smiled, drinking in the snake of green trees below her, a wavy line through the flash of metal cars and spirals of buildings. She could have read and read and studied and stood in front of one of his paintings or buildings, but she might never have glimpsed the exactness of meaning, that bolt of sudden understanding of something deep and fundamental which drew her and thousands of others to his work and philosophy.

  Fleur turned away, back into the room. It was like a small sign from the gods. Hope for her and her daughter; new life in the grandchild to come. She ate a quick breakfast and took the lift downstairs. The young Malaysian porter stood by the huge glass doors. He beamed at her.

  ‘Selamat pagi! Apa khabar?’

  Fleur beamed back. ‘Baik. OK. Terima kasih. Can I walk to the Botanical Gardens from here?’

  ‘Yes, Mem, turn left out of hotel. About fifteen minutes’ walk.’

  ‘Terima kasih.’ ‘Sama-sama.’

  Outside on the steps she blinked in the glare and put on her sunglasses. She turned left, waited for the lights and crossed the intersection. The heat bore down on her. Fleur lifted her arm for a taxi. She could not walk far in this heat without melting and she wanted to explore the gardens.

  The taxi turned off Bukit Timar Road and into a wide road full of colonial-type buildings that had probably been embassy houses. At the end of one leafy road stood the Botanical Gardens with its gated entrance. Fleur remembered none of this. The taxi took her inside the gates and dropped her in front of the building where groups of taxi drivers waited for fares. She walked through the entrance and inside.

  Years ago, there had been no formal entrance. Fleur remembered entering from a small side gate off a busy road. It must have been at the other end of the gardens. It had been more of a park then; people picnicked on the grass. There had been one small place to eat and buy drinks. Amahs and Indian ayahs pushed prams or ran after toddlers and flitted like exotic butterflies round the small paths through the trees. There had been a fountain and in the pool fat yellow fish hid behind lily leaves. There had been monkeys swinging from the trees and down beside you to pinch your food. Grumbling and fighting up in the branches, their tails switching, their voices screeching ominously above you. There had been a man in uniform leaning against a tree by the fountain, waiting for her.

  Fleur’s heart pounded in memory as she walked the wide tended paths that were all signposted now. Large glasshouses stood on a hill and a new pavilion was being made. The grass was neatly kept and there were fewer trees to hide in the shade. Fewer places to hold hands when you should not; to kiss, shaking with the possibility that all might become well and whole again if you did not think, if you pretended for an afternoon away from the army base, away from the uniforms, in this one anonymous place in the centre of a city. If you clung to the only sure and safe person in a life so suddenly turned on its head.

  Restaurants and cafés were now placed strategically in clearings. There was no anonymity any more. Wealthy Europeans and Chinese walked together, pushing expensive buggies full of children down the wide cleansed paths. It had all been sanitised and commercialised. It was beautiful still, but the gardens had lost their mystery. Without the monkeys and the deep shade of trees and the hint of danger, it was a place that could have been any botanical gardens anywhere in the world.

  Fleur made her way to the Orchid House and bought a ticket. Instantly she was back in the army quarter in the naval base with Ah Heng bringing orchids back from the market and placing them in Chinese vases all over the house. Ah Heng arranging them just so, her stiff little back and dark glossy hair drawn back in a bun, bent to the blooms, her face inscrutable.

  She took some photos, unable to compete with some Japanese tourists who had cameras the size of matchboxes. She stood still, watching water trickling on polished stones and small tendrils of ferns arranged against trees. One orchid stood in a wooden vase by a sculpture.

  Ah Heng had slept in a little room in a block behind the kitchen with a lavatory and shower. Her small shuttered room had contained so much: an aged sewing machine, materials bought in Chinatown, chairs of ironing ready to bring into the house, toys and books for the twins. Baskets of personal things, hanging chimes, but always, always flowers for luck in a little wooden vase outside her door.

  The heat trickled down the inside of Fleur’s dress. She was not used to the humidity any more and her tongue stuck to her mouth. She had left her bottle of water in her room. She made her way slowly back to the café; she had seen. The gardens were not the same, but she was glad she had come; they were still an oasis in the middle of the teeming city; still somewhere you wo
uld come for peace again and again.

  She bought a cold drink and ordered nasi goreng. She glanced at her watch. Plenty of time; she had nothing to pack. Everything was still in her suitcase. All she had to do was change into trousers and check out, and then she would wait in the foyer with her book for the airport bus.

  This time tomorrow she would be with Nikki. The Chinese waitress flip-flopped over with her food. Fleur got herself another drink. The nasi goreng was wonderful; familiar. Ah Heng had made it once a week, usually when David was flying, because it was light and Fleur and the twins loved it. She smiled as she remembered how proficient their tiny hands were with chopsticks, which they used long before a knife and fork.

  The couple at the next table got up to go and Fleur leant over to pick up a paper in English they had left behind. It was The Straits Times. She flicked through the pages looking for headlines that used to make David and Fergus laugh when she pointed them out. AN AMOK CAUSES PANIC IN CHINATOWN. BUSINESSMAN CHARLIE CHAN FOILS INDEFATIGABLE ROBBERY.

  She turned another page and another, smiling. Suddenly a small headline with a photograph caught her eye, near the bottom of the page. She started to read it. Her heart jumped painfully making breathing difficult. Her hands began to shake and her eyes became blurred with shock. She placed the paper flat on the table, her food forgotten. She blinked and made herself read the words over again, very slowly, sickness rising up in her throat.

  She placed her hands over the page and stared down at them as they trembled over the print. She thought for a second that she would pass out and she gripped the edges of the table until her knuckles were white. She made herself breathe again. Breathe.

  The gardens and the people around Fleur receded, leaving her beached and isolated at her small table. She did not know how long she sat staring down at her hands. Then, infinitely carefully, she tore the page out and placed it in her bag. She paid for her unfinished food and walked to the entrance.