The Hour Before Dawn

by Sara MacDonald

  After David died, she had stayed with Peter and Laura in the one nearest to the beach. There had been only a few steps down to the long stretch of sand, much easier for the twins to play there.

  Fleur marked her progress across the sand, seeing the twins’ little fat feet running after the spider crabs which scuttled in small waves before her now. Ahead of her lay the rocks and boulders at the end of the beach and then a steep track up to the jungle path which led to the lighthouse.

  It was odd to see the beach shops; the water sports and holiday complexes set back on the road. A different world. She could hear voices and the sounds of people cleaning and sweeping leaves from the hotels, getting ready for the first guests to rise and take breakfast.

  She pulled herself upwards, shivering slightly at the thought of the darkness of the trees above her. The photograph was indelibly imprinted in her mind. She knew those small bones would have been removed. She knew the jungle would swiftly cover over the grave; that the only marker would be gaudy ticker tape to say where a dead child had lain.

  She moved out of sunlight into shade. Above her, unseen, she heard monkeys swinging from the branches and letting them go with a screech. This had always been an eerie place, lonely and haunting, full of exotic birds calling out into the silence. She climbed on and saw ahead of her trees toppled, their roots skyward and raw on the hillside as the undergrowth was cleared to make jungle walks past the lighthouse. Who had found the small grave she was making her way towards? A Malay workman resting in the heat of the day? A walker or a tourist? Looking at the devastation made by the bulldozer, it seemed to Fleur surprising that it had not razed all evidence of the hidden grave forever.

  As she rounded a corner she saw the ticker tape and stopped abruptly on the path, her breathing laboured and painful. She inched forward towards the metal posts and looked down on a grave full of leaves and dead branches.

  She imagined the curled bones of her child lying among the bared roots of the trees and the small insects that must have moved invisible and sure over her face, crawling over her skin as she lay cold and still in the undergrowth.

  ‘Saffie.’ A small sound escaped and her legs folded under her. She crumpled in the clearing silently, her eyes gazing downward to the place where her child had lain.

  She is calling my name. Over and over she is calling my name.

  Nikki! Nikki!

  She is in some place where light can only filter through the darkness of trees. Water glints on the near horizon. I run towards her, to a place icy, stark and lonely as death. I run towards her but the landscape fades and disappears with Saffie in it. She is swallowed into darkness and I am the one left searching and calling…calling out her name.

  It is always the same. I run towards Saffie but the dark landscape fades ahead of me into blackness and she fades with it. I can never catch up with her. She just disappears. I can never catch up with her no matter how fast I run. I wake to an overpowering sense of loneliness.

  James Mohktar watched the small woman. He did not want to startle her but he must now make his presence known. He stepped from the shadows using her name in an effort not to alarm her.

  Her head swung round and her hands flew to her mouth in fright.

  ‘I am Detective Sergeant James Mohktar, Mrs Campbell. We have been searching for you. Your daughter is very worried.’

  He flashed his card at her and she stared at it in incomprehension, then up at him. His face was gentle and her fear subsided. He put out his hand to help her up and she took it. She had the air of someone who was suddenly unsure who they were or how they came to be in this place.

  James Mohktar said again, ‘Your daughter has been very anxious for you, Mrs Campbell. I came here because I believed this to be the place you might come. I would like you to come with me now to Seremban. It is there we can explain to you…what was found here.’

  Fleur shivered as if waking up. She met his eyes. ‘You found my five-year-old daughter here. I know this.’

  ‘Mrs Campbell, we will have to do DNA. tests before we know for certain it is your daughter. Come, my car is a little way only, up on the road. Let us go to telephone your other daughter, to tell her that you are safe.’

  Fleur closed her eyes. ‘Nikki! Oh…God…I…What was I thinking of?’

  Mohktar reassured her quickly. ‘It is okay, lah! Your daughter flew to Singapore when you went missing. She is on her way here as we speak.’

  Sitting in the back of James Mohktar’s car, Fleur said inconsequently, ‘I asked a taxi to wait for me, further down on the road.’

  ‘I will speak with him as we pass. Do not worry.’

  Mohktar spoke into his crackling phone in rapid Malay and then he dialled Nikki’s mobile phone. She answered breathlessly. ‘Yes?’

  ‘Miss Montrose, we have found your mother. She is safe and quite well.’

  ‘Oh, thank God! Can I speak to her?’

  Mohktar turned to Fleur. ‘Will you speak with your daughter to reassure her you are safe, please?’

  Fleur hesitated and then nodded and reached out for the phone.

  ‘Mum?’

  ‘I’m so sorry, Nikki…I…’

  ‘Don’t be sorry. It’s all right. Please don’t be sorry. I’m just so relieved you’re safe…’ Nikki’s voice quavered. ‘Mum, I’ll be with you in about two hours. Wait till we get to you…don’t do anything on your own…I want to be with you…We’ll…do this together, OK?’

  ‘Thank you.’

  Fleur’s voice sounded so old to Nikki. Old and defeated and without hope.

  SEVENTEEN

  When the call came from DS Mohktar to say he had found my mother I was sitting up in the chair waiting for morning. Jack was still fast asleep and I had shaded a lamp and begun to read Fleur’s Hundertwasser book.

  Of course, I knew a bit about him. There is a public loo in Kawakawa that attracts a lot of Germans and I had gazed at his prints in touristy shops. He was one of those painters you stared at for a long time, revelling in his sense of colour without really understanding what he was about; a painter you knew you would return to one day to delve deeper.

  My mother had left notes to herself among the pages of his book and I found these sometimes as revealing as the paintings themselves. She had marked one page in the book that had a painting called, Half Siena, Half Paris. It had obviously resonated with her and reminded her of Singapore, with its sprawling mix of races and cultures.

  The painting was of a view, as if looking down upon a city full of tall buildings of differing architecture; a strange, uncaptured image of two cities in one place. The text suggested that the painting was meant to convey an impression of a place that never was, yet contained some source and emotion from both cities.

  I stared down at tall buildings jammed together, all human nature behind a myriad of windows laid bare, filling the time and space.

  I felt, without seeing the original painting or a large print, the aching loneliness of a polyglot of human beings milling round in Hundertwasser’s make-believe city, just missing something essential which might have connected them as they lived crammed and hemmed-in without space to breathe. Lonely, like inhabitants living behind any façade, in any city, anywhere in the world.

  But who was I to interpret this guy’s work. What did I know?

  Fleur had scribbled on a file card: ‘A multi layer of images. Mixed lives, different cultures; giving permission for schizophrenic mingling of one person living many lives. All there in one place, a hundred cities, all the lives you’ve ever led in one lifetime. All the different people you’ve been. And how strange it would be, to hear yourself described by other people – to this person, you – who have little idea who you truly are at all, yet sometimes know too well the way you are perceived. I see myself too clearly through my daughter’s eyes – the dart of hurt – because I know a ring of truth. This shallow self I was. Yet I have become wise enough to know I will never shift her image of me. It is set in Singapore and
the unchanging landscape of her childhood. There it is, literally written in blood; the mother I was, not the woman I became or the woman I am now.’

  My hands shook as I read my mother’s words. She was right: I didn’t know her any more. I had taken trouble not to and now it might be too late. Who on earth was she, this middle-aged woman reading Hundertwasser and taking a degree?

  Not my mother. Not Fergus’s wife, that’s for sure. So who had evolved from a decade of playing the pretty little woman needing a big strong man? And how had it happened without me noticing? The answer was clear enough: my total self-absorption and years of studied disinterest.

  Did it always take tragedy to know the thing you had so carelessly lost? All my life I had carried the suspicion, no, the knowledge, that her affair with Fergus had caused my father’s death that dreadful night of my childhood. This I had pieced together over the years, and from listening when I shouldn’t to my grandmother, Laura. I had carried this information like a little stick I never mentioned. And boy, had I used it.

  I wanted another chance. I desperately wanted another chance. That was when my mobile phone rang and James Mohktar told me he had found Fleur.

  When we arrived, Fleur and DS Mohktar were still in Seremban Police Station. They were sitting in a stuffy little room with a ceiling fan. There was another fan on the desk moving stale air around. It was a deeply depressing room.

  Mohktar got to his feet in relief and smiled at Jack and I. Fleur got up too, and she seemed so small and bewildered it made my heart jerk with pity and an urge to protect her. I saw her so rarely I had not watched her age and it was a shock to be confronted with the fact that she was, inevitably, older.

  I went over to her and took her hands awkwardly. ‘Mum? Are you all right?’

  She tried to smile. ‘I’m all right, darling, but how about you? I hear you had a bit of a fright?’

  ‘It was nothing, just the heat. I’m fine.’ I looked at her face; it was drained. ‘You’re exhausted. You need to sleep.’

  ‘I have slept…’ she said vaguely, ‘…it seems to make no difference…’ She looked past me at Jack.

  ‘Oh!’ I said quickly. ‘Mum, this is Jack.’

  Jack stepped towards her and took her hand between both of his for a second and then stepped back. He didn’t say, ‘Glad to meet you…’ He didn’t say anything trite and I really loved him for it.

  Mohktar coughed gently. ‘Mrs Campbell, if you can just answer some questions; Miss Montrose too. We need a DNA sample from both of you and then I will try and arrange accommodation for you.’

  A Malay inspector came in with a record sheet. He spoke hardly any English so Mohktar translated. The few questions he asked were about the past, about Saffie and when we were last here in Malaysia. Could we remember which rest house, the date, the time, the year? It was as if they needed to verify that we were who we said we were. Fleur’s eyes did not leave the inspector’s face.

  Those hours when Saffie disappeared were a blur to me, frightening, like a dream, not quite real. I could not remember the sequence of what happened in the hours and days afterwards. Fleur remembered every little thing.

  The Malay inspector got up and smiled at us and said something in a different tone of voice and Mohktar translated.

  ‘Inspector Ibraham says to tell you he is most sorry for your tragedy in losing your daughter and for your sadness about the small body found. He says every effort will be made to verify the identity as quickly as possible to avoid more pain. He urges you to relax as much as possible in this lovely place and accept our hospitality and help. If there is anything that you need you must immediately let us know, lah?’

  We both smiled at the inspector and thanked him. He left us and an Indian lady doctor came and took Fleur and me away. She took swabs from our mouths and two minutes later we were back with Jack and Mohktar. Of course I understood DNA, but I felt amazed that this quick little swab from the inside of our mouths would determine our link with some small bones found in a shallow grave.

  Mohktar was on the phone and Jack came over and put his arm around me. ‘He’s trying to find private accommodation for us, where we won’t be bothered by any press or interested voyeurs. It would be better than a hotel, wouldn’t it?’

  ‘Oh, God, yes. Don’t you think so, Mum?’

  ‘Yes, I do. How kind of him.’

  Mohktar put down the phone and beamed at us. ‘We go now to look at this bungalow I have found for you. It belongs to my mother’s aunt. She normally rents it to visitors but she had cancellation. It is not so very modern, but comfortable I think. Come, I take you, and if you are not happy we think again.’

  ‘I am sure it’ll be wonderful,’ Fleur said, almost in her old voice.

  She got into Mohktar’s car and Jack and I followed in the hire car. We drove out of Port Dickson and stopped at Fleur’s hotel, collected her few things and paid the bill. We drove for a few miles before turning off on the coast road towards Cape Rachado and the lighthouse. I tried to remember. I tried to remember us all purring down here in Dad’s car, but I couldn’t recognise anything at all. That time had long gone, it lived on only in my head.

  We bumped down a track that ended in a small car park. ‘We cannot get any nearer, I am afraid. I think we leave your luggage in the car until you have seen. It is important it is all right for you. That you can feel relaxed while you wait for events to unfold.’

  We walked across the sand to two wooden bungalows set above the beach a little way apart, much like the rest houses used to be. James Mohktar confirmed that the rest houses had lain in the curve of this beach. To the middle and further end lay the new – to us – hotels and self-catering accommodation.

  We walked up wooden steps to a veranda. The shutters were thrown open and the windows had mosquito screens fitted. Memory stirred, and with it a little thrill of remembered childhood, the excitement, the possibilities of a holiday exploring. I glanced at Fleur and she smiled and moved with me through the door.

  We both stopped dead. It was full of old army-issue rattan furniture and faded chintz covers. Orchids stood in a vase on the table and a small woman in a faded coloured sam foo stood nodding and bowing to us in the corner.

  Mohktar talked to her in rapid Malay. I heard Fleur say under her breath, ‘Oh, God, it’s like coming home.’

  Mohktar said, ‘This is Ah Lin. She will look after you and cook if you like to stay.’

  ‘It is perfect, DS Mohktar,’ Fleur said. ‘Isn’t it, Nikki?’ She smiled at him. ‘I think you knew it would be.’

  Mohktar said gently, ‘It was how the rest houses were, I think. My aunt bought these two bungalows long ago, before the tourists came. My uncle worked with army supplies, as you see, and bought up surplus when the British moved out. I was only afraid it would remind you too much…of those last days here, Mrs Campbell.’

  Fleur turned to him. I thought for a minute she might cry. ‘You are very thoughtful. That last time here is always with me…But a modern hotel would feel more alienating and foreign than staying here. Thank you, it’s just what we need, a place to be private.’

  Jack and Mohktar went to get our luggage and Fleur and I looked out and down at the stretch of beach, silently watching small children run across the sand, just as Saffie and I had done so long ago. Fleur said suddenly, ‘It’s a good thing none of us can know what lies ahead, isn’t it?’

  I moved closer. ‘Mum…’ But I did not know what to say. I couldn’t find the right words.

  She turned from the sea. ‘It’s all right, darling. I’m not going to fall apart. I’m not going to go to pieces. It was the shock of picking up that paper, the total, unexpected shock…Most of my life I’ve imagined someone knocking on my door in London to tell me that Saffie’s body has been found somewhere and I always knew I would have to fly immediately to that place…in a totally irrational need to be near her. I felt the same terror of not being here, with her when I saw that photograph. I just flew…without a thought
for you or for anything…I’m so sorry, darling…’

  ‘Don’t be sorry. I would have done the same and we’re both here now, aren’t we?’

  ‘Yes, and it’s so good to have you here with me.’

  ‘You know, Mum, that it might not be Saffie…’

  Before I could say any more Jack and Mohktar were back with the luggage. Fleur’s dress looked crumpled and worn and I knew the first thing she would do was throw her clothes off, shower, wash her hair and dress in clean, spotless clothes. Then she would look like my mother again.

  The amah brought out a jug of iced water and freshly squeezed orange juice and placed it on the table. She spoke rapidly to Mohktar and he said, ‘Ah Lin will cook you a light lunch before you rest. She will cook for you while you are here and if there is anything you do not like or cannot eat you must tell her.’ I handed him a drink and he drank it down in one. ‘I must go. I will be back later. Here is my mobile telephone number. OK? Do not hesitate to ring if you have need. Rest now…’

  I walked with him out onto the veranda. ‘How long will a DNA test take?’

  ‘It depends on how busy the lab in KL is, but not long, Miss Montrose, maybe twenty-four to forty-eight hours only…’ He held out his hand as if for comfort and I took it. ‘Miss Montrose, are you hoping it is your sister or will you be relieved if it is not?’

  ‘I want it to be Saffie. I want an end to the not-knowing.’

  ‘Mrs Campbell too, I think?’

  ‘Oh yes.’

  He let my hand go. ‘Try not to worry, Miss Montrose.’

  He turned and started to walk across the sand and I called, ‘Thank you…for everything.’

  He turned round and flashed me his wonderful smile. ‘My pleasure.’

  Jack was leaning against the wooden railings. ‘He’s one of the good guys. You OK?’

  I went and leant against him. ‘T’m fine. I just want to know as quickly as possible.’

  After lunch Fleur went to her room and I fell asleep next to Jack, who was lying reading. The waiting was going to be awful. I thought I wouldn’t sleep, but I did.