‘Without trial?’ Lydia said.
He nodded. ‘I’m afraid so.’
They went over to Bert and she asked him about Maz.
The policeman shook his head. ‘The local Malay cops told me about a missing child. Sorry, I’ve not heard anything. Come on. I’ll look with you, then see you back to the exit.’
They turned into a shop a hundred yards down. It was dark inside with two pools of light from Kerosene lamps. Jack questioned the shopkeeper and asked him to keep an eye out for the boy.
They continued to ask at each shop and coffee house for another half hour, then Bert led them past the smell of the swamp again and back to security, where a crowd seemed to be heading. Lydia felt her skin prickle. A baby screamed, and a row of beggars lined the rubbish-strewn street. Jack held Lydia’s elbow and barged his way through the crowd.
All the time, she searched for Maz.
She missed his trusting pale eyes, his sweet face, the way he counted and chased butterflies. Couldn’t bear that he was lost somewhere in this alien world. She prayed again that his mother had taken him, but not to be with the rebels in the jungle. She glanced up. Even against the darkening sky, the jungle still stood out, black, hump-backed, and ragged. Birds of prey circled overhead. She wanted to cry.
Shrill voices reached them from a group clustered at the exit. She felt an undercurrent of fear. Jack stiffened and she craned her neck to see. Her mouth fell open and she grabbed Jack’s arm.
Two corpses had been thrown in the mud inside the enclosure, stripped naked and riddled with bullet holes. In the gloom Lydia stared at their broken emaciated bodies and lifeless eyes. Somebody’s son, somebody’s brother. She heard the sound of counting, and looked round to see a row of old women in black, pointing out the number of holes to each other and shaking their heads.
‘It’s a great deterrent,’ Bert said, viewing the bodies.
Lydia let go of Jack’s arm and stepped back. ‘So on the one hand we entertain them and on the other we scare them half to death.’
‘That’s pretty much it,’ Jack said.
‘But they’re people, Jack.’
‘Probably the same ones who burnt down the rest house,’ Bert said, stony faced. ‘They want to frighten us, make us feel so unsafe we give in.’
At a loss for words, Lydia stopped listening. The smell, the sights, the noise were too much. She felt herself sway, noticed Jack scowl, then hold out a hand to steady her.
‘Don’t fool yourself,’ he said. ‘They call it an Emergency for the insurance, but mark my words it’s war. And everyone’s on the make.’
‘Well, heaven help us,’ she said.
Jack snorted. ‘Heaven. I don’t think so.’
The floodlights at the gate came on, and a tall man let them through and across the moat, his shaven head and upright stature a reminder of Adil, the man she’d met on her train journey. For a moment she even thought it was Adil. Wished it might be him, come to help them with his knowledge of how things worked in this country. Help them find Maz. But, of course, it was not, and as they passed she saw the resemblance was only slight. They were on their own. Though Jack would do his best, there would be no help to find a little half-caste boy. Not from the police, not from anyone.
26
My mother’s disappearance was an unbearable hurt I kept hidden almost all the time at boarding school. She might be missing but I didn’t believe she was dead. At night I returned to Malaya, to pounding rain that splashed a yard up in the air as it hit the pavement, and monsoon drains swimming with dirty overflowing water. I heard my mother’s voice, woke drenched in sweat and shaking from the loss, terrified she had never loved me.
By day, Susan Edwards and I poked fun at teachers and pupils. It was our only way to survive. She told me her mother had come home from India, pregnant, and had given birth in a hostel for unmarried mums, in Birmingham. The social found a family who wanted a little girl, but even after they adopted her, Susan didn’t fit in, and this had resulted in banishment to Penridge Hall.
‘Who’s paying your fees?’ I asked her, during an unofficial break in a trudge through the countryside. Cross-country trekking they called it.
‘The local authority. There was nowhere else to put me. Rebecca’s the same, though she won’t admit it. I overheard the head telling a teacher no one will have her. She’s actually funded by a charity for disturbed children, and it was either here or borstal.’
I was surprised. Susan nodded and pulled a face, but it made me wonder.
‘Gran said Dad’s stony broke,’ I said. ‘And she almost let slip that it isn’t him paying for me. At least I think she did.’
‘Why not just ask him?’
‘You don’t know my dad.’
‘We could find out,’ Susan said lightly.
‘How?’
She tapped the side of her nose.
‘I did attack that man. Would that make a difference?’
‘I’d have thought you’d get borstal for that.’
‘He didn’t press charges. His sister’s Dad’s girlfriend.’
‘It could be the education authority, or a charity, like Rebecca.’
I frowned. ‘But I thought her parents were rich?’
‘So she says!’
We were standing under the canopy of a wide horse chestnut, the best tree for conkers in the autumn. I looked at the view of washed-out fields and smudgy clouds.
‘If the school want us to go trekking, they should take us to Malaya,’ I said, and stuck out my chin. ‘In the jungle.’
‘Oh, shut up about Malaya. What do you think?’ She peered ahead. ‘We can dive off in a minute, and head back the quick way, through the woods.’
I thought of the night I’d spent there alone. ‘I don’t know.’
‘Or we can go down the back lane. Go on, Em. It might be your dad or it might be the council. Don’t you want to know who’s paying? It’ll be a laugh. There’s nobody in the office now. And at least we’ll get out of the bloody drizzle.’
I loved the way she swore, dark eyes shining, and she was right, the dull grey sky was hardest to bear. And on Wednesdays, straight after lunch, the whole school went on a hike across the countryside, all the teachers too.
We climbed over a fallen-down piece of fencing, jumped the ditch at the edge of the road, crossed a meadow where the long grass was cool on our legs, and immediately were in the back lane. Half an hour later, we approached the school buildings, and the only place to climb into the grounds from the back lane, unseen.
Inside the building we skulked round corridors, hung back in alcoves, and hissed at each other like secret agents.
‘I’ll wait here and watch the corridor. You just go and check the office really is unlocked,’ she said.
We had to stop ourselves getting the giggles as I padded to the headmistress’s room, turned the handle, and pushed the door open. Inside it was stacked floor to ceiling with files. I beckoned Susan over.
Her face fell. ‘Blimey. There are hundreds. We’ll never find yours in a million years.’
‘We’d better start then,’ I said. ‘But remember, put each one back exactly as you find it.’
‘I’d rather mess them all up,’ she said with a laugh, and marched round the room yanking open random drawers. She picked out a magazine from the waste paper basket.
‘Ooh get her! She reads Woman and Home.’ She held out a picture of a woman with neatly set hair, wearing a pinny, with a fixed smile on her face.
I snatched it and read the words in a posh clipped voice: ‘For every woman, happiness and fulfilment lie in the kitchen and nursery, the most rewarding and satisfying places for a woman to be. With an eight-page pull out of knitting patterns and a sensitive story by Lucilla Smythe-Watkins.’
Susan stuck out her tongue.
I grabbed a chair and almost fell into a bowl of dog food. We hardly ever saw the terrier. From the chair I was able to scan the top files close up, and saw there wasn’t any need to move them
. You just needed to crick your neck and bend your head sideways. Each one had a sticky label on the spine, with a name and year of arrival clearly typed.
‘Aren’t they in alphabetical order?’
I stared at them. ‘Some are. I’ll keep going up here. You look down there.’
‘But they go back for years. And they’re all different colours.’
As the sun came out and threw a pattern of leaves on an open newspaper on the head’s desk, Susan picked her way through more magazines piled up on a chair beside it.
‘Get her! There’s one here with Marilyn Monroe on the front.’
‘I thought we were looking for my file.’
‘The star who shines,’ she read, ‘the truth behind the dream.’
‘Oh my God, I think I’ve found it!’ I pulled out a file with my name in bold letters across the front and side.
The head’s voice carried up from below the window.
Susan froze.
‘You go,’ I said.
Susan shot me a grateful smile over her shoulder and dashed out. Seconds later I heard another pair of footsteps tapping along the corridor and a shrill neighing voice call out.
‘What are you doing in this corridor, girl?’
‘I felt sick, Miss,’ Susan said, in a loud voice, so that I’d know.
‘Did you ask permission to leave the walk?’
‘No, Miss. I’m going to be sick, Miss.’
‘Well, hurry along to sickbay. Though I can’t imagine why you came this way.’
I quickly scanned the room. What if she brings the terrier too? He’ll be sure to growl.
Behind the desk, two sash windows overlooked the playing fields, with floor-length curtains blocking out some of the daylight. I had no choice. There was nowhere else. I slid between the semi-drawn curtain and the window, clutched the file to my chest, and hoped the twilight wouldn’t make the headmistress close them and therefore catch me there. I held my breath, scared that with eyes in the back of her head, she would be able to see right through the curtain.
She turned on a lamp and golden light filled the room. Thank goodness, no dog. She sat at her desk only a yard from me, pushed the newspaper aside and started to write. It went on for about an hour, though I daren’t risk a peek at my watch. The walkers laughed and joked as they arrived back, and a car accelerated in the distance. I heard the mistresses’ voices hurrying them along, sounding grumpy from the walk. They’d be doing evening register soon. I was dying to spend a penny, and my foot had gone to sleep. It went on and on, the curtains smelling so badly of chalk dust, I struggled not to sneeze. When the phone rang, I crossed my fingers and sucked in my breath.
‘Hello. Miss Watson. Penridge Hall.’
Oh, please let it mean she has to go.
She swung in her creaky swivel chair, talked for a few minutes then got up and yawned. As she cleared the desk, it felt like an age. Finally she switched off the light, and only then walked out of the office, locking the door from the other side. Oh no! That was it. I’d be found. In the morning. All I could think was I’d have to go to the loo in the waste bin. Then I realised the office was only one floor up, and beneath it, to the left, stood the bicycle sheds. Could the other window be directly over the sheds? It was a sash window and a bit stiff, but I pushed hard, and opened it enough to look out sideways at the blue-black sky. I crossed my fingers, looked down, and with a sigh of relief, saw one end of a bicycle shed directly below.
27
In the six months following Maz’s disappearance, Lydia swung between hope that he was with his mother, and fear that he was not. Not knowing for certain was hardest to cope with. But all her calls to the District Officer’s office, to the police, to anyone she could think of, had turned up no leads. Jack looked for him in Ipoh, and all the nearby villages, but Maz had simply vanished.
Lydia felt low. The suffocating iron-grey sky didn’t help. It was the afternoon and there was more terrorist trouble on the plantation. Jack, on the phone to his boss, was having a hard time persuading Jim to allow her to stay longer. His thick blond hair all over the place, he ran fingers through to flatten it, and sighed. Some of Jack’s Malay police had been found to be corrupt too, and that wasn’t helping.
Jim was amenable, but Lydia knew he wouldn’t care for the disruption her presence might cause to the smooth running of the estate. It took time for an assistant manager like Jack to find his feet, cope with the loneliness, understand the harsh complexities of plantation life, and earn trust. It was physically tough too. He had to be strong, have the resilience to stumble through squelching undergrowth, hacking his way through thick grass, and dealing with hostile tappers every day. And that was without the constant threat posed by Chinese rebels. If danger was present, as it usually was, Jack had no choice but to ignore it.
Lydia looked up as he put down the phone. He shrugged. ‘He’ll let me know.’
She thought of all the times she’d shut him out and felt guilty. He had a good heart, but had never expected any of this when they met. She looked over at him. Now they only had each other, Jack talked of their future with shining eyes.
‘Come to bed,’ he said. ‘It’s too hot for anything else.’
It was tender gentle lovemaking they had now. They fell back on the pillows, his tanned arm resting across her middle. She ran a palm over the fair hairs on his arm, a silver bangle on her wrist glinting in the light. Sunlight streamed through the shutters as he repeatedly tickled her ribs, until tears of laughter ran down her cheeks. They listened to a magpie robin sing outside the window, then he hung an orange and gold sari over the shutter. Pink light washed over the room.
‘I like your hair long like this,’ he said, and pulled out one of the growing number of silver threads.
‘Ouch!’
He pushed the damp mass of hair away from her face, then brought her hand to his mouth and kissed her palm. ‘I like them,’ he said and held the hair to the light where it shone silvery pink.
She frowned.
‘For goodness sake, there are hardly any.’
They lapsed into a peaceful silence. He traced the blue veins of her inner wrist. ‘Tell me about the girls again.’
Her heart lifted. She had no fear of their silent presence now, called for it even, replayed over and over the days they were born, fat solid little babies. Christmases, special occasions. Now the worst was over, their deaths had become a part of her, but it was the daily routine of their lives that was in the process of becoming lost. Their first words, their huge pupils and burning cheeks when they were sick. The funny little looks, the laughter. Now, fearful of forgetting, it raised her spirits to talk of them, and Jack knew it, his arms encircling her as she spoke. She shaped her back against him, his face so close she felt his breath on the nape of her neck.
‘Emma always read lying on her stomach, waving her left foot in the air. We had this big old camphor wood chest. I kept all the old fancy dress costumes in there, and they used to fight over whose turn it was to wear the Peter Pan crocodile outfit.’
She longed for the old, jam-packed days. For Fleur to hold out a hand and say, ‘I love you, Mummy.’ For Emma to run in covered in mud and spiders. But her girls would have been older now, Emma nearly fourteen, Fleur ten. She tried to picture how they’d look but it hurt too much. She thought about Jack instead. He was strong and handsome, and she was grateful that he’d taken her in. She loved the blond hair that fell over his eyes, and his big hands as he brushed it aside.
He held her tight, as tight as if he was part of her, then drew back, moisture in his eyes. He reached under the bed and scattered some fresh petals over the sheets.
She laughed. ‘What’s this, you handsome devil? A new seduction technique?’
‘We could marry. When my tour’s up.’
‘On the level?’
There was a silence between them for a moment.
‘Don’t we need Alec’s death certificate? George did say he’d sort that out, but I
still haven’t heard.’
‘You can remind him,’ Jack said. ‘But in principle. What do you say?’
She kissed him hard on the mouth, her heart thumping with pleasure. ‘I say, yes.’
‘Well then, Mrs Plantation Officer, I have something for you.’
A wide grin signalled his intention, and after the sighs and the moans were done, he lay smoking, eyes fixed on the ceiling.
‘My sex fiend,’ she said, and rested her chin on his shoulder.
He flexed his muscles and laughed. ‘I have a question for you.’
‘Another?’
‘Where do you want to live?’
‘In Malaya?’
‘In the world.’
She raised her eyebrows. ‘I don’t know. I haven’t thought. What about you?’
‘Australia. Perth, I was thinking. There’s money to be made out there. A mate of mine is setting up a copper mine. Wants a partner.’
‘What’s it like?’
‘Don’t really know. Hills, of course. Sea.’
‘By the sea?’
‘Yeah. We could have a boat.’
She laughed and snuggled up. ‘It sounds great, Jack.’
An idea struck her and she felt hope rise suddenly. If they married she could have another baby. Together they’d make a new life. Whatever was still broken inside her would mend. The loss of her girls was a scar for ever, so total that for a long time there had been no comprehending a life without them. Yet here she was. She had survived. And could it be that at some point, the thought of them might not dominate every day?
In the intensity of the afternoon, when the urge to sleep had taken over, they were woken by the phone. Jack went into the hall to pick up.
‘Yes, absolutely, I’ll drive down immediately,’ she heard him say.
He came back in and grinned. ‘That was Bert. You’ll never believe it, but someone has found Maznan.’
She gasped and sat bolt upright. ‘Oh, Jack. Really?’
‘Better get moving. I have to go now before the curfew, though the line was terribly distorted, I could hardly make out a word. And there’s some kind of trouble with one of the tappers. But can you credit it? We’re going to collect Maznan, after all this time!’
Separation, The Page 17
