White Christmas in Saigon

by Margaret Pemberton

  ‘I am a nephew by marriage of Colonel Duong Quynh Dinh, the North Vietnamese Army officer who was killed in the bombing raid,’ Gavin repeated, trying to keep his growing fear under control. ‘I am on a mission to die North to see and to report on the sufferings of the Vietnamese people.’

  His interrogator eyed him disbelievingly and then put a telephone call through to Hanoi. There was no quick reply from Hanoi, and Gavin was taken away and held in a cell.

  ‘Don’t panic,’ he told himself repeatedly, as first one hour went by and then another. ‘The authorities in Hanoi know who I am. They will authorize the officer here to return me to Hanoi. In Hanoi my troubles will be over.’

  The door of his cell opened. ‘Come,’ an unsmiling officer commanded.

  He went. He was not met with a smile and an apology. ‘The authorities in Hanoi have ordered that you be placed under arrest,’ his interrogator said curtly. ‘You are to be taken further north, where you will be held with other enemies of our country.’

  It was the nightmare he had feared ever since the moment on the Ho Chi Minh Trail when he had thought that Dinh was dead. ‘No!’ he said forcefully. ‘You are making a mistake! I was invited to the Democratic Republic of Vietnam! I am a friend of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam!’

  ‘You are an Australian,’ his interrogator said flatly. ‘You have no papers, no authorization.’

  ‘I am a journalist!’ Gavin protested, ‘I am here to serve the Democratic Republic of Vietnam!’

  None of it was any use. He was taken away, bundled into a truck, and driven north.

  The camp he was taken to was small. Any hopes he had entertained of finding American pilots there were soon dashed. All the other inmates were Vietnamese. His cell was furnished with a sleeping pallet, a slop bucket, and nothing else. He tried to keep control of himself. It wouldn’t be for long. There had been some confusion. When the authorities in Hanoi realized who he was, orders would be very swiftly given for his release.

  No such order came. The hours merged into days, and the days into weeks. For twelve hours out of every twenty-four he was taken from his cell and put to work alongside the other inmates in nearby fields. Unlike them, he was never ill-treated, and his conviction that his captors knew perfectly well who he was, and what his status, had been in Hanoi, grew. No one ever interrogated him. It was as if they knew all they needed to know about him.

  The daily diet was rice and a minuscule sliver of dried fish. When rice and chicken and a flat round of dough with a candle pressed into the centre were brought to him one day, he stared in amazement.

  ‘It is Christmas,’ his guard said beamingly. ‘At Christmas there is celebration, yes?’

  He wondered where Gaby and le petit Gavin were celebrating Christmas. Would she have been told of his arrest? Would she know that he was still alive?

  Time no longer had any meaning. He had no means of keeping track of the date by writing it down, and he began to scrape a small notch on the wall for every day that passed.

  Occasionally he would overhear snatches of conversation between the guards, but their conversation was almost always centred on when they could next expect leave, and very rarely on world events.

  On one memorable day he overheard the guards talking of huge antiwar demonstrations that were taking place in America, on another day he even heard Joan Baez singing an antiwar song on a distant radio.

  In between there was nothing. Only the stifling heat or the freezing cold of his cell, depending on the season, and backbreaking daily toil in the fields.

  At the beginning of 1969 he contracted malaria and most of the year was spent in delirious spells. He was unable to faithfully notch each day that passed on his cell wall, and in periods of lucidity he panicked, unable to remember if le petit Gavin was two years old or three years old.

  He no longer believed that Gaby still thought he was alive. How could she? How could anyone? Sometimes, late at night, he wondered if she was still singing at the Black Cat, and he conjured up her image, imagining the song she was singing, the dress she was wearing.

  Towards the end of the year he was given his first piece of official news. Ho Chi Minh was dead. Formal truce negotiations had begun in Paris.

  There were times when he wondered if he was living in an extended dream, if any of what was happening to him was real. And then there were other times when he wondered if it was the life he had lived before Vietnam that was the dream. If Paris, and Gaby, and le petit Gavin were nothing more than the products of malarial hallucination.

  The notches on the wall ran the entire length and breadth of his cell. Year followed year. His guards were no longer coldly polite, but were his friends, friends who did not allow him to leave the compound.

  When he was told that all American troops had been withdrawn from Vietnam, he did not believe them. How could they be? How could the war be over? There were still Vietnamese prisoners in the camp. He was still being held prisoner. Nothing had changed and he could no longer imagine anything ever changing.

  When the camp commandant came to him and told him that he was being moved from the camp to another prison camp nearer to Hanoi, he was distraught. He didn’t want to leave his possessions behind. His sleeping pallet, the tin bowl from which he ate, the conical hat he had been given to shade him from the sun when he worked in the fields.

  He cried when they bundled him into the back of the truck that was to take him away from everything that was familiar. Gaby. He had to think of Gaby. He always thought of Gaby whenever things became too much to bear.

  He no longer knew if in the flesh the titian-haired, emerald-eyed, kitten-faced, huskily laughing image that brought so much comfort even remembered him. It was something he tried not to think about. He remembered her. He loved her now as he had always loved her. As he would always love her, until the day he died.

  ‘Gaby,’ he said brokenly, passing his emaciated hand across his eyes. ‘Oh Gaby, Gaby, Gaby!’

  Chapter Thirty-one

  As Christmas approached, Gabrielle found her despondency returning. She had made no new contacts, discovered no new information about Gavin’s whereabouts, and it seemed very unlikely that any new information was going to be forthcoming.

  It was two and a half years since she had last seen him. Sometimes she would wake in the middle of the night filled with panic, unable to remember how his face looked when he laughed, unable to recall the exact timbre of his voice. Her body ached to be held, to be made love to. Only Serena’s companionship had made the last year bearable, but now it was bearable no longer. She yearned for male company; to be able to flirt a little; to be made to feel womanly and sexy and desirable.

  ‘It’s two and a half years, Gavin,’ she would whisper heartbrokenly into the darkness. ‘Would you mind so much, mon amour? Would it be so very great a betrayal?’

  No answer ever came. She knew that if the situation were reversed, he would never be unfaithful to her. Not in any way. It wasn’t in his nature. Why, then, was it in hers? Not to be totally unfaithful. Not to fall in love with someone else and out of love with Gavin. That she would never do, it would be impossible. But surely an affair would not be so very terrible? She would toss and turn and eventually fall into a restless sleep, the dilemma unresolved.

  With the coming of Christmas and the approach of the Vietnamese New Year, the American and European community in Saigon became increasingly edgy. Memories of that year’s Tet, and the Viet Cong offensive that had accompanied it, were still fresh in everyone’s mind, and though it was unlikely that the Viet Cong would have the resources to launch another, similar attack in Tet ’69, it could not be completely ruled out.

  ‘Perhaps you should take le petit Gavin home to France for Christmas and the New Year,’ Serena suggested tentatively. ‘Just in case there is another attack on the city.’

  ‘I will think about it, chérie,’ Gabrielle had said noncommittally.

  The thought of leaving Saigon terrified her. In Saigon s
he was able to fight the temptation to take a lover. In Saigon there was no Radford.

  Serena had looked across at her, puzzled. Gabrielle was a fiercely protective mother, and she had expected the mention of another possible Tet attack to have sent Gabrielle scurrying to the nearest Air France office in order to fly le petit Gavin out of the country until the sensitive few weeks of Tet were safely over.

  Deeply ashamed of her motive for doing so, Gabrielle had decided to risk staying on in Saigon. Two events, both on the same day, changed her mind for her.

  On 21 December a grenade was thrown into a street café full of American soldiers. Gabrielle and le petit Gavin had been walking back from the park that lay just behind and to the left of the Roman Catholic cathedral. Though they were thirty yards, away from the café, they were spattered with shards of glass and a piece struck le petit Gavin on the forehead, terrifying him and making a deep and ugly gash.

  When they returned to the Continental, there was a letter from her mother. Her father had suffered a heart attack. It had only been mild and his condition was not serious, but her mother suggested that it might be best if she and le petit Gavin were to return home. At least for a little while.

  ‘Will you able to get seats on a flight so near Christmas?’ Serena asked, a worried frown creasing her brow.

  ‘I do not know, chérie,’ Gabrielle said with a Gallic shrug of her shoulders. ‘All I can do is to try.’

  For several hours it looked as if she was going to be unsuccessful, and then Air France called her back, saying they had two seat cancellations on a Christmas Eve flight, leaving at eight in the morning.

  ‘And you?’ Gabrielle said to Serena. ‘I do not know how long I will be away. It may be for quite a while. Will you be all right in Saigon by yourself? Will you stay on here?’

  Serena thought of Bedingham at Christmas. Of the huge log fire that would be burning in the Adams fireplace in the yellow living room; of the enormous, gaily decorated fir tree that would be standing in the grand entrance hall; of walks over crisply frozen ground, her father’s ancient spaniels at her heels; of mince pies and traditional turkey and carol singing in the little local church that was almost as old as Bedingham itself. And then she thought of the children in the orphanage. Of those whose parents had died in B-52 attacks; of the malformed who had been abandoned because they were an economic liability; of the mixed-race children whose mothers were prostitutes, and who had voluntarily relinquished them.

  ‘Yes,’ she said, pushing all thoughts of Bedingham to the farthest recess of her brain. ‘I shall stay on. And I shall be okay. Maybe I’ll move in with Lucy. She has an apartment on Phan Van Dat.’ But she knew she would not.

  Gabrielle had packed two bags, one for herself and one for le petit Gavin. He was two and a half years old now and full of ebullient energy and curiosity. She couldn’t imagine how he was going to endure the long, tedious flight, and she put several nursery rhyme books and a notepad and crayons into her shoulder bag hoping that they would help to keep him amused.

  ‘I would not hurry back to Saigon,’ Nhu said to her sombrely when she went to say good-bye to her. ‘I do not think there is anyone who can tell you anything further about Gavin’s whereabouts. All we can do now is to wait.’

  It had been a dispiriting note on which to leave the city. As the Air France Boeing climbed into the sky, Gabrielle looked down on the rose-red rooftops and wondered how long the wait would be before she would do so with Gavin at her side.

  When she arrived home, not only were her parents there to welcome her, but Michel as well.

  ‘Alors! How on earth did you know that I was coming home?’ she asked delightedly, hugging him tight.

  ‘Your mother telephoned me,’ he said sheepishly.

  He hadn’t changed. He was still as thin and gangling and awkwardly clumsy. His bony wrists projected a good inch from beneath the bottoms of his shirt cuffs, and his tortoise-shell glasses ensured that he looked more like a schoolmaster than a musician. He was laden with gifts. There were handmade Belgian chocolates for her mother, a box of Hoyo de Monterroy cigars for her father, a giant bottle of Chanel No 5 for herself, and an armful of toys for le petit Gavin.

  ‘I was afraid he would have forgotten me,’ Michel said, hunkering down and opening his arms wide to catch le petit Gavin, as Gavin gave a joyous crow of recognition and began to toddle eagerly towards him.

  ‘He is like his mama,’ Gabrielle said with a happy chuckle, ‘He does not forget his friends.’

  It felt amazingly good to be back in Michel’s undemanding company. Already she was thinking about songs again. In order to pass the time on the long flight from Saigon she had occupied herself by writing a lyric. It was the first one she had written in over a year and she had found the exercise deeply satisfying.

  ‘Are you too busy writing arrangements for other people to write any arrangements for me?’ she asked, knowing very well that he would never be too busy to write arrangements for her. Not ever.

  He stood upright, le petit Gavin in his arms, saying heavily, ‘Gabrielle, you have no idea how desperate I have been for you to return to Europe so that we can write some more songs together. Radford and the band have now recorded, six of your songs that I arranged. The song that made it into the top thirty has now been covered by three other singers and is currently at number twelve in the American charts. You have a lot of money coming to you, and an accountant who is going demented because he says you never reply to any of his letters.’

  Gabrielle had the grace to look a little abashed. The accountant had written to her with monotonous regularity over the last few months but somehow, in Saigon, it had seemed an intrusion, a reminder of a way of life that she had temporarily left far behind her.

  ‘I will go and see him,’ she promised, picking up the cuddly toy elephant that le petit Gavin had dropped in order that he could secure his hold on a wooden train set more firmly.

  As her mother set a place for Michel at the table, and began to bring in dishes of hot spicy food from the tiny kitchen, Gabrielle said with studied casualness, ‘How has the band been doing? I understand Radford soon found a singer to replace me. Is she very good?’

  Michel blushed slightly. ‘Yes. Though not as good as you,’ he added hastily.

  Gabrielle tilted her head to one side and waited, intrigued by Michel’s embarrassed reaction.

  ‘Her name is Rosie Devlin and she is an Irish girl. Very petite and vivacious, like you. And full of incredible energy, also like you.’

  ‘And?’ Gabrielle prompted him, wondering if he was embarrassed because Rosie was having an affair with Radford and, if she was, wondering how she was going to react to the news.

  ‘And I am in love with her,’ he finished bashfully.

  Gabrielle was aware of an incredible feeling of relief. ‘And is she in love with you?’ she asked without giving herself time to analyse the reason for her response.

  Michel’s blush deepened, ‘Yes,’ he said with a happy grin. ‘Incredible though it may seem, and she is very cute and sexy, she is in love with me.’

  Gabrielle laughed delightedly. ‘And are there going to be wedding bells, chéri?’

  ‘I haven’t asked her yet, but I want to. I was hoping that perhaps you would have a word with her first. You know, see if a marriage proposal would be welcome …’

  Gabrielle shook her head in mock despair. ‘I can’t do that, Michel. I have never even met her!’

  ‘But you will be meeting her,’ Michel said, and at his next innocent words her smile faded and all her old anxieties returned in full measure. ‘You will meet her tomorrow at the rehearsal room the band is using. Radford and the boys are throwing a welcome home party for you.’

  It was a party impossible not to attend. The rehearsal room was over a café in the rue de Charenton, not very far from the original rehearsal room where she and Radford had first met. The band hadn’t changed. There had always been a great bond of affection and musical respect betw
een herself and them, and she was touched to discover that the affection had survived her thirteen-month absence. There was a loud cheer and a cacophony of whistles the instant she and Michel entered the room.

  ‘Welcome back to Paris. Gabrielle!’

  ‘Great to see you, baby!’

  ‘You been away too long, honey!’

  Only Radford was silent. He stood at the far end of the room, slim and supple in hip-hugging faded denims and a T-shirt with the words BLACK LOVERS ARE BEST immodestly emblazoned across his chest.

  They looked across at each other, neither of them attempting to make the first move, and as the whistles and shouts of welcome began to die down and as attention began to be focused upon them, Michel saved the moment by saying guilelessly, ‘Gabrielle, you must meet Rosie. Where is Rosie? Rosie!’

  A vivacious, merry-eyed girl, her dark hair scooped up and secured on top of her head, a frizz of curls cascading forwards forties-style over her forehead, stepped forwards from behind the bass player.

  ‘I’m very pleased to meet you,’ she said perkily to Gabrielle.

  Her French was heavily accented with a beguiling Irish brogue, and despite teeteringly high-heeled white boots she was no taller than Gabrielle.

  ‘I’m pleased to meet you too,’ Gabrielle said sincerely, warming to her immediately.

  Out of the corner of her eye she was aware of Radford moving lazily forwards towards her.

  ‘Don’t be worried that I may be resentful about you coming back into the band,’ Rosie was saying, ‘I’ve always known what the deal was, right from the beginning. However, Radford thinks there will be room enough for both of us.’ She began to giggle. ‘He says we’re so similar in build and personality that we will complement each other onstage, not detract from each other.’

  ‘It’s very sweet of you to take that attitude,’ Gabrielle said, aware that Radford was now at her side. She could no longer put off the moment she had been both dreading and looking forward to, the moment when their eyes would meet. ‘But I have no intention of returning to the band. Rock singing was fun for a while, but it’s not really what I do best …’