White Christmas in Saigon

by Margaret Pemberton

  Vanh gave a small, inarticulate cry of protest and Gabrielle said gently, ‘It is right that he should see the city in which his mother was born, and it is also right that he is there when his papa is released from captivity.’

  ‘But the conditions!’ Vanh said in distress. ‘Nhu says that the city is choked with refugees! That on the streets air-conditioner and refrigerator packing boxes house up to ten children at a time! Those are not the kind of sights that a little six-year-old boy should be seeing!’

  ‘No, they are not,’ Gabrielle said gravely. ‘Neither are they the kind of conditions that six-year-old boys should be enduring. It will not harm le petit Gavin to be made aware of the dreadful suffering that war entails. Such awareness is far more preferable to his playing at war, thinking it glamorous and manly.’

  The subject had come to a close. She was leaving for Saigon just as soon as she could arrange the flight details. And le petit Gavin was going to accompany her.

  Breaking the news to Radford proved to be a far more highly charged affair. She had known it would be, and though he had asked her to drive to his mansion in Neuilly where, after just returning from a major tour of the States, he was supervising the building of a recording studio in the basement, she had declined.

  ‘Meet me at La Coupole,’ she had suggested, and he had agreed. At La Coupole in Montparnasse it was unlikely that their sophisticated fellow diners would pester them for autographed menus.

  When she entered, her mink slung carelessly around her shoulders, he was already seated, sipping a bourbon.

  ‘Bonjour, chéri,’ she said, kissing him lightly on the temple, ‘Ça va?’

  ‘That depends on why you want to see me,’ he said darkly as a waiter removed the mink from her shoulders and discreetly withdrew.

  She grinned, slipping into the high-back seat across the table from him. Another waiter had approached, and she ordered a kir, saying, when they were alone again, ‘It is because I have something to tell you, chéri.’

  Despite the subdued lighting, he had been wearing a pair of sunglasses. He removed them with the panther-wary grace that characterized his every action, saying, ‘Unless it’s to say that you’ve come to your senses and that you’re going to move your bags and possessions down to Neuilly, I don’t want to know, baby.’

  She didn’t reply to him immediately. Whenever they met, it always took her a few minutes before she was able to come to terms with his dangerous, overpowering masculinity. She steadied her breathing, looking around the art-nouveau-decorated dining, room, recognizing several of the other diners.

  ‘You’ve been so unavailable lately,’ Radford was saying, not taking his disturbing gaze from her face, ‘that I’ve been wondering if you’d make it today. You keep so busy all the time.’

  Her mouth twitched in the beginnings of a grin. She had herself in control again, and Radford being provokingly sarcastic was a Radford that she could easily handle.

  ‘You’re not the only cat in this town with a career to think of,’ she said affectionately, turning to face him. ‘I’ve been singing at a new club in Saint-Germain-des-Prés. The mix there is very exciting. Jazz, African, Brazilian.’

  ‘And you?’

  ‘And me.’

  ‘As you say, baby, quite a mix!’ His voice was lazily mocking, and he flashed her a sudden smile, his teeth very white against the dark, arrogant, almost Arabic planes of his face. ‘But that isn’t why you invited me into town, to tell me about the new club.’

  ‘No.’ She paused again. She was dressed starkly in a beautiful cut black wool dress. Her legs were sheathed in sheer black stockings and her shoes were black suede, ridiculously high, ridiculously insubstantial. She wore a large baroque, carved ivory bangle on one wristband apart from her wedding ring, no other jewellery. In the subdued lighting her short springing curls were fox-gold, her wide-spaced, tip-titled eyes as green as a cat’s. She looked sexy, and stunning, and he wanted her now as he had always wanted her.

  He said with sudden harshness, ‘Let’s cut all this crap, Gabrielle. We’re wasting time and both of us know it. The dude you’ve been seeing at the embassy is stringing you a line. Gavin isn’t alive. Not after all this time. Even if he was alive, the two of you would have nothing going for each other. It’s been too long.’

  She shook her head, pushing her untouched drink away from her. ‘You are wrong, chéri. He is alive. I know it in my heart and in my blood and in my bones. That is why I wanted to see you today. To tell you good-bye. I am going to Saigon with le petit Gavin, and I am not returning until Gavin returns with me.’

  His hands tightened into fists. Ever since he had heard that the American POWs were to be released, he had known what it was that she would do. He was losing her. And to a man she hadn’t seen for nearly seven years. It was crazy. So dumb he could hardly believe it.

  He leaned forwards across the table, saying fiercely, ‘I’m wild about you, lady! Doesn’t that mean anything? Christ! At this particular moment in time I could probably have most any woman I want. And I want you! I want you so much that if marriage is what you want, then we’ll get married. What else can I say to you? What more can I do to show you that I love you just as much as your husband ever loved you, that I love you more, that I love you more than anyone else is ever going to love you!’

  She knew that heads were turning in their direction, that if they weren’t careful an enterprising photographer would soon be on the scene. She didn’t care. She reached out, taking hold of his tightly balled fist, prising the fingers apart, interlocking her fingers with his, saying in her touching, broken-edged voice, ‘I am sorry, chéri. Truly sorry. I, too, have loved you. I have loved you too much, and that is why I have to say good-bye. Gavin came into my life first, and when I told him that I had given him my heart, I was speaking the truth. He still has my heart, just as I believe that I still have his.’

  As she had been speaking, his face had drained of expression, hardening into an impenetrable mask. He was not going to allow them to part as friends. She had been foolish to have ever imagined that he would do so. Gently she disentangled her fingers from his and rose to her feet.

  He watched her, tight-lipped and cobra-eyed. A waiter slipped her coat around her shoulders and she was grateful for its warmth. The restaurant had become suddenly cold. Almost Arctic.

  ‘Good-bye,’ she said, and before he could say a word in reply, before temptation became too much for her to overcome, she turned away from him, walking quickly between white-naperied tables and out on to the boulevard du Montparnasse.

  At the end of March, as another batch of haggard American POWs flew jubilantly out of Hanoi, Gabrielle and le petit Gavin flew into Saigon.

  Serena was at Tan Son Nhut to greet them.

  ‘Gavin! My goodness! I wouldn’t have recognized you!’ she exclaimed laughingly as Gavin hurtled towards her. She hugged him tight, delighted that after so many years he still remembered her.

  ‘And me?’ Gabrielle asked teasingly. ‘Would you not have recognized me, chérie?’

  She was wearing a shocking-pink crossover sweater with a deep décolletage, skin-tight; three-quarter-length black pedal pushers, and high-heeled, backless patent sandals.

  ‘Gabrielle, I would recognize you anywhere,’ Serena said truthfully, hugging her even tighter than she had hugged le petit Gavin.

  ‘That is good, chérie, I would hate to think that I had become inconspicuous!’

  They grinned at each other. Even though she had driven straight from her work at the orphanage and was wearing a T-shirt and jeans, Serena still managed to look elegant. A Christian Dior scarf covered her hair and was tied at the nape of her neck. Her short, unlacquered nails were exquisitely manicured and buffed a pearly pink.

  ‘How is Saigon?’ Gabrielle asked as they walked across to Serena’s jeep. ‘Do the Saigonese think that the truce will last?’

  ‘No,’ Serena replied briefly. ‘Everyone knows that it won’t. The South is going to last
only as long as President Thieu’s ammunition lasts.’

  ‘I thought that under the terms of the peace treaty, it had been agreed that America would replace weapons and ammunition as they were expended?’

  Serena slammed the jeep into gear and began to speed towards the airport’s exit. ‘That’s what the small print says, but only a fool would put any trust in it. More to the point is Article Four of the peace agreement: “The United States will not continue its military involvement or intervene in any way in the internal affairs of South Vietnam.” America wanted out. She’s now got out. No matter what happens in the future you can bet your life that she’s going to stay out!’

  They drove straight to Nhu’s, where le petit Gavin received such a fierce embrace that he was almost smothered. From Nhu’s, leaving a happily chattering Gavin behind them, Serena and Gabrielle drove to the centre of the city.

  ‘Where do you want to go first?’ Serena asked as she crossed Nguyen Hue, the street of the flower sellers. ‘To the Continental, to check in? To the orphanage? Or to Givral for coffee and croissants?’

  Givral was a little air-conditioned restaurant on the corner of Le Loi and Tu Do, across from the Continental. It baked its own croissants and baguettes, and when, they had first begun living in Saigon, Gabrielle and Serena had quickly realized that breakfast at Givral was far preferable to breakfast at the Continental.

  ‘Givral,’ Gabrielle said unhesitatingly. ‘I want to go back to all our old haunts and reorient myself as quickly as possible.’ She began to chuckle. ‘When we first arrived in Saigon, I was the one who showed you around. Now it’s you who are the old hand and I am the one feeling a little like a tourist!’

  ‘You won’t feel like a tourist for long,’ Serena said soothingly. ‘Not only are all the old haunts still here, so are a lot of old faces. The debonair Paul Dulles has been recalled to Paris, but one of Gavin’s old colleagues, Lestor McDermott, is still in town, and you have missed Jimmy Giddings only by inches. He left for the Philippines at the beginning of February in order to cover the POWs’arrival and from there he was sent on to the Middle East.’

  They were both silent for a moment, thinking of the American POWs who had returned home alive, and those who hadn’t. Thinking of Kyle.

  At last Gabrielle said quietly, ‘Was the funeral very difficult for you, chérie?’

  Serena thought of the imposing bronze casket; the waiting frost-hard ground; Kyle’s mother’s face, harrowed and tear-streaked; the hatred emanating from Royd Anderson and directed solely towards herself; the terrible feeling that the funeral had nothing to do with Kyle.

  ‘Yes,’ she said truthfully. ‘It was difficult. But it was more difficult to break the news to Trinh. Mike had already told her for me that Kyle was dead, but she had refused to believe it. She was certain that I would return from the States with the news that it was all a mistake and that he was alive. Even now I’m not sure if she truly believes that he is dead.’

  ‘What will she do?’

  They had parked the car and were walking across the square towards the restaurant. ‘I don’t know. She has family home in the city which she shares with her sister. Perhaps life will continue for her just as it has for the past six and half years. She will continue with her job, Kylie will be looked after at the orphanage, and one day, God willing, she’ll meet a man she loves and who loves her, and they will get married.’

  Gabrielle hesitated slightly and then said a little cautiously, ‘And Kylie? How do you feel about Kylie, Serena?’

  They sat down and ordered coffee, and it wasn’t, until they had done so that Serena said, ‘I try not to think too much about Kylie. I’ve tried never to have too much to do with her.’

  ‘Because you haven’t wanted to become too fond of her?’

  ‘Because I am too fond of her,’ Serena said with, stark truthfulness. ‘It was the moment I set eyes on her. She’s far more American than she is Vietnamese. She has Kyle’s hair and eyes and mouth and charm. And she has other qualities of his as well. Where Kyle was recklessly devil-may-care, Kylie is impishly mischievous. She is a loving, intelligent, exuberant little girl who is very, very hard to resist.’

  ‘And will it cause any problems for you if she and le petit Gavin should become friends?’

  Serena’s sombreness vanished, and she flashed Gabrielle her wide, dazzling smile. ‘Idiot,’ she said affectionately. ‘Of course it won’t. Is that what you intend doing? Spending time with le petit Gavin at the orphanage?’

  ‘I shall have to occupy myself somehow,’ Gabrielle said with an answering grin. ‘Do you think I shall make a good nurse? Or will the fearsome Dr Daniels be as rudely and as unjustly disapproving of me as he has always been of you?’

  Serena’s smile widened. ‘You have just reminded me that there are some pieces of news that I haven’t quite brought you up-to-date on. Come on, finish your coffee and we’ll drive to the orphanage. The fearsome Dr Daniels is waiting to greet you.’

  Gabrielle was ecstatic when she realized what the situation was between Serena and Mike.

  ‘I knew it,’ she said complacently to them both as they stood holding hands in one of the orphanage’s sun-filled and child-filled courtyards. ‘The minute that Serena told me you were not remotely handsome, and that you were pigheaded and obstructive and the most annoying man that she had ever met, I knew that she must be falling in love with you!’

  Mike shouted with laughter and the playing children turned to look at him, intrigued.

  ‘Is that what she said about me?’ he asked, still chuckling and not looking a bit put out by the revelation.

  Serena didn’t give Gabrielle time to answer. ‘There are times, Mike Daniels, when I still feel like that,’ she said teasingly, ‘and you haven’t given Gabrielle an answer as to whether or not she can come to Cáy Thóng as a volunteer nurse.’

  Mike looked across at Gabrielle. At her riotous mop of flame-gold curls, her sizzling pink sweater and skin-tight pants and teeteringly high, backless sandals. His grin deepened.

  ‘I’ve told Serena that she was the most unlikely-looking volunteer nurse that I had ever seen or was ever likely to see. I take it all back. You, Gabrielle, are definitely the most unlikely-looking volunteer nurse that anyone is ever likely to see, and the answer is yes, of course you can come to Cáy Thóng. I truthfully don’t see how Cáy Thóng can possibly do without you!’

  Chapter Thirty-five

  After the official notification of Lewis’s imminent release, Abbra was inundated with advice from both the military and from her father-in-law. The overriding question was when, and by whom, Lewis should be told of her now-invalid marriage to Scott. As far as Abbra was concerned, there was no decision to make. The task of breaking the news to Lewis had to be hers. The main problem was going to be the publicity. Both she and Scott were well-known media figures. The gossip columnists were going to go crazy with delight when news of their predicament became public.

  ‘We’ll do everything possible to ensure that your husband sees no newspaper or magazine and is not approached by any reporter until after he has been apprised of the situation by yourself,’ her casualty assistance officer said to her.

  No one from the military plucked up the nerve to ask the question that was uppermost in everyone’s mind. Was she going to leave Scott and return to Lewis? Or was she going to remain with the man she had, for the past two and a half years, believed to be her husband?

  If they had asked her, Abbra would have been unable to give them an answer. She looked like a wraith, her face bloodless, deep circles carved beneath her eyes. She was in a private hell where no one, not even Scott, could reach her. She felt as if she were suspended in time, impaled by her memories of the past, paralysed by the dilemma of the present, and totally unable to conceive of what the future might hold.

  Her father-in-law had insisted that he should be the family member to first meet Lewis and to inform him of the marriage that he had always disapproved of.

 
; ‘And I’ve been proved right!’ he stormed over the telephone to Scott. ‘It was a disgraceful thing to do, marrying a woman who had been, who is, married to your brother. I knew no good would come of it! I told you both so at the time!’

  Only the intervention of Abbra’s casualty assistance officer ensured that, because of the abnormal circumstances, Abbra would be the only family member to immediately greet Lewis on his return to the United States.

  It was Scott who came to a decision about their far greater dilemma.

  ‘I’ll go away with Sanh for a few weeks. Take him down to Mexico and the Sea of Cortez. I’ll arrange with the military that similar arrangements, elsewhere, are made for you and Lewis. You can’t possibly stay anywhere where the two of you are known and where you will be hounded by newsmen. He’s bound to have to be hospitalized for a little while, and his debriefing could take anything from a few days to a couple of weeks, but all that can take place in a protected environment. Once it’s over, I suggest you go off to a small hotel at Yosemite or Yellowstone. Somewhere miles from anywhere. Then you can tell him.’ His voice, so strong until then, cracked and broke as his arms tightened around her. ‘And then you are going to have to make your own decision, sweetheart… Lewis or me.’

  She began to weep, and she wept and wept, her heart breaking, hugging her breast as though holding herself together against an inner disintegration. How could she make such a decision? It was impossible. She loved Scott. She loved Scott more than anything else in the world. Yet once she had loved Lewis. She was married to Lewis. He had survived five years of terrible captivity believing that she was waiting for him. How could she let him down? It would destroy him. And living without Scott would destroy her.

  ‘Let’s take it step by step,’ he said gently, stroking her hair, his own eyes full of tears that she could not see. ‘Lewis needs to be told of our marriage. And you need to discover just how you feel about Lewis after all this time. Only then can any decisions be made.’