The Forgotten Promise, page 28
‘Of course I won’t. But you’ll take good care of him, won’t you? It’s going to be hard for you both, having been apart for so long. Be as patient and gentle as you can with him.’
On the platform, they waited and waited and eventually the train pulled into the station. Doors opened and slammed and suddenly the platform was a sea of people in uniform with the odd civilian distinguishable between them. Ella and Melody scanned the descending passengers for Edward.
‘Oh, Ella,’ Melody said, taking a deep breath. ‘I think that’s him.’
‘I’ll wait until you’re certain, then I’ll leave you, shall I? I’ll call you next week.’
But Melody had already stepped forward to greet a man. Ella stared at the figure, trying to recognise the remnants of the person she used to know. Edward had always been so tall, so proud, but the man she saw now was stooped and painfully thin. She watched for a little longer as Melody and Edward stood still and took each other in while the crowd surged around them.
Edward lifted a hand to his wife’s face and ran his fingers over her features as though he could hardly believe she was there. His other hand he kept in his pocket. After a time, he used the hand he had been touching her face with to take something from his other pocket. He held out a small box, which he gave to Melody with an air of awkwardness. Ella didn’t wait to see her open it but turned away, the sight of them reunited once more blurred by the tears filming her eyes.
The following week, Ella returned to London to visit them both.
As she walked along the street towards their apartment, all she could think about was Grace and Johnnie. Where was the letter she had written Noor? Would anyone ever receive it? She kept picturing Johnnie as he had been the last time she saw him, standing on the steps waving to her, sunlight in his hair, the blue of his shirt reflecting in his eyes. He had been so strong and full of vigour. He wouldn’t look like that now, she knew, he would have aged like Edward. He too would probably be skin and bone.
Ella had to knock twice before Melody answered the door. She was full of smiles, but dark shadows circled her eyes.
‘Thank you for coming,’ she said with an air of shyness Ella was surprised to see. ‘Please come in.’
Ella followed her to the living room and there, sitting on a sofa, was a dozing Edward. Words stuck like fish bones in Ella’s throat. It was sad to see him so broken. Something must have alerted him to her presence because he lifted his head.
‘Ella?’
Slowly, he struggled to his feet but immediately slumped down again.
‘He’s still very weak,’ Melody said.
Ella’s eyes fixed on Edward: his hair was the same colour, a little thinner perhaps with a hint of grey at the temples. And his eyes, once the colour of sapphires, had faded to a grey-blue. His cheeks were hollow and his skin sallow. As she took him in, she could see how much his muscles had wasted away; beneath the line of his shirt, she could see his ribs, and his trousers hung loose from his waist. His shoulder blades protruded beneath his shirt. But the worst thing of all, the thing she hadn’t been expecting, was his hand – his right arm seemed wasted and the hand twisted.
‘Edward,’ she said as she stepped towards him to give him a hug. He flinched at her approach. ‘Oh, Edward. It’s so good to see you.’ She took his good hand and held it in her own; his skin felt hard and callused.
‘Can’t tell you how good it is to be home,’ he said. ‘Although Melody’s been fussing non-stop, baking and cleaning, making constant cups of tea.’
‘Of course I have.’ Melody kissed his forehead. ‘Nothing’s too good for him now that he’s home. Now then, how about some tea and cake?’
‘Please,’ Ella said. ‘I’m never going to pass up the option of cake if it’s available.’
Melody returned to the kitchen and Ella listened to plates clattering before following her. She leant against the doorframe.
‘How’s he doing?’ she asked.
Melody’s shoulders sank. She turned and faced her friend.
‘To be honest, it’s been hard, though I’m so glad to have him home.’
‘What happened to his hand?’
‘I don’t really know,’ Melody replied. ‘A punishment. I think the Japanese crushed it between two stones, but he breaks out in a sweat every time I raise the question.’ She hesitated before continuing, ‘To be honest, he starts to shake at almost anything. One minute he’s fine, the next—’
‘Poor Edward. I’m sure it will get better.’
Melody lowered her voice. ‘Sometimes I wonder if he’ll ever be the same again. I have to mash his food and spoon it for him like a baby. And as for the sores on his skin – they’re so painful, he can hardly lie on them even though I keep applying a soothing cream. And I can’t tell you about the lice … We were so lucky, you know, getting away when the Japanese invaded. However hard things might have seemed here, we really had no idea what it was like to be left behind.’
Ella gave a wry smile as Melody turned to the kettle and made the tea. She watched as the pot was warmed and leaves spooned out, her thoughts on the plight of the returning prisoners. If only Grace and Johnnie were among them.
She noted that there was sugar in a bowl, as well as milk, proper milk, not the powdered stuff Ella used in her tea. It was clear that Melody was doing everything she could to help her husband. If only Ella could have that chance herself.
‘Ready?’ Melody picked up the tray, but when they got back Edward was fast asleep on the sofa. Melody set the tray down on the table and then placed a hand on her husband’s shoulder.
‘Do you want me to help you to bed or to close the curtains?’ Melody asked him. ‘Then you can sleep properly.’
‘No, thank you.’ He pulled himself up, wincing. Melody sat down on the sofa next to him; there were tears on his cheeks and she wiped his face with her hand as though she were comforting an injured child.
But then his tears turned to sobs and she put her arms around him.
‘Shhh. You don’t need to think about it now. Rest. Take your time. We can take each day as it comes.’ Melody’s voice was soothing. It pained Ella to watch the tenderness and love she was giving to Edward.
Ella didn’t stay long. She told her friend she’d visit again in a couple of weeks when Edward was feeling stronger.
When she got back to Oxford, Polly was sitting in the kitchen, folding washing.
‘You look done in,’ she said, placing a towel on the pile. ‘How were they both?’
‘Oh, it was so pitiful to see him.’ Ella sank down into one of the chairs. ‘To think that he used to be such a strong man. Now Melody has to mash all his food into a pulp so he can swallow it – after all those years of not eating anything other than rice he can’t manage very much.’
Polly came to her and slid one arm around her shoulders. ‘It’s dreadful, and I know what you’re thinking, but there’s no point in trying to picture yourself and Johnnie in this situation. What will be, will be. Now the fate of those left behind rests in God’s hands.’
Ella started to cry. Slowly at first, then wild sobbing. When finally it ceased, she pulled away from Polly, pain and exhaustion rippling through her body.
‘Oh, Polly, I don’t know if I can take it anymore. I thought that once the war ended, I’d get an answer, but I don’t feel any closer to it today than I did when I first arrived here. What else can I possibly do?’
Her mother-in-law shook her head. ‘You’re doing everything you can. I know it’s hard, but you have to wait.’
‘I can’t.’ Ella’s thoughts turned to Melody and Edward – she needed what they had so much. ‘There’s only one thing for it. I need to go back to Malaya. It’s the only way I will ever find out what has happened to them.’
‘I think you’re right,’ Polly soothed her. ‘And you know I’ll do all I can to help you. And if you do go back, I will look after Toby for you. The house is empty now without all the visiting servicemen and evacuees. It would be a pleasure to have him. Why don’t I make you some Ovaltine and then you can get to bed? When I’ve cleared all this away, I’ll bring it to you, and we can talk things over again.’
Ella nodded. ‘Thank you. But you’re right, I’m exhausted. I think it would be better if I went straight to sleep.’
In the days that followed, Ella wrote to everyone she thought could help, to see how she might get back to Malaya. No one was cleared for return yet, she was told, it wasn’t safe for British nationals. There were no commercial flights, and a voyage, even if she could find a passage, wouldn’t be safe yet and would take forever. She’d have to think again.
She wrote to the Red Cross one more time, not expecting an answer, but a reply came back almost by return.
Thank you for your letter, Mrs McCain. We suggest you contact anyone you know in Malaya – you could try the government offices, in Singapore, Ipoh or KL – but I hope you appreciate that our offices here are inundated and any help we can offer is limited and would take several months to complete. It would be better at his stage for you to start your own enquiries but be advised that any return to Malaya at this time is unwise.
‘Honestly,’ she finished reading the letter aloud to Polly who was sitting in the coach house with Toby on her knee, ‘I don’t know what to do next – it will take me months to write to all the Malayan government offices and receive replies. I’m at my wits’ end.’
Polly placed her hand on Ella’s. ‘I know it doesn’t seem like it now, but I’m certain it will sort itself out.’
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
Naoki was buried in a secluded part of the jungle. In the following days, Noor focused on cleaning and tidying every room in the villa.
‘But won’t my parents be coming back now?’ Grace asked one late-September afternoon as she watched Noor place dust sheets over the furniture.
It was a question she had asked herself many times since the surrender, and one to which she still didn’t know the answer. She had been waiting and wondering about it for days.
‘They will come eventually,’ she said. ‘And when they do, everything will be ready for their return.’
But her thoughts kept turning to what she should do. She couldn’t stay here without money or purpose forever; in reality, it could be years before the McCains came back – if at all. She had made a promise to Mr McCain to look after Grace, come what may, and she would honour that vow until he returned. And then there was Naoki. She couldn’t help thinking, over and over again, that he had done what he had for her sake. There must be a way that she could honour him, but she was at a loss to know how.
She was cooking rice parcels stuffed with chicken when her thoughts crystallised. Her mind had been focused on Grace, helping her wrap the parcels in palm leaves. Now as they cooked gently on the edge of the pan, giving off a tempting aroma, she knew that she must go to Ipoh to find a fresh start. She could make something of herself there, be the woman she knew, in other circumstances, Naoki would have been proud to have at his side.
‘You have been asking me about when your parents come back,’ Noor said. ‘Well, I’ve decided that while we wait for them, we’ll go to Ipoh.’
Grace lifted her face to Noor’s.
‘Why?’
‘For a change of scene, but only for a bit,’ she said, not meeting the girl’s eyes. ‘If we go, you won’t need to pretend to be a boy anymore, either. You can be yourself again. Don’t you want that?’
The girl nodded.
She didn’t want to tell Grace how the villagers here ignored her whenever she went to the kampong to buy food. Why, only the other day, her old friend Suyin had refused to sell her vegetables in the market. Then she’d started to hear that horrible rumours about her were spreading. Omar eventually told her that people didn’t trust her as they thought she had collaborated with the Japanese soldiers. They said she’d been Naoki’s mistress, living in comfort, and had turned her back on her old friends. He’d tried to defend her, of course, telling them that she was acting as a spy for him, but they didn’t believe him.
And it was more than that, she realised, as she turned the parcels in the pan. As a child born half-caste, she had been neither completely British nor Malaysian. She had been the odd one out who received favours from her master’s family, without any of their security or privilege, while the other servants had treated her with suspicion, and she had never quite been one of them either. People would always judge her, she knew that now – they would always think of her as a conspirator one way or another, if not for the Japanese, then for the British. There was a real fear in the country that Britain would step in and take complete control of Malaya again, and no one wanted that. If the McCains did return, she feared the villa would soon come under attack from the communists and then they could be forced out of the area. Only the other day she had heard on her wireless how Ching Peng, the new MCP leader, was more determined than ever to take back control for the nationalist party – meaning that anyone mixed-race like her would need to watch out.
It was a curse on her, being Eurasian. Her thoughts ebbed and flowed like a wave, and she muttered under her breath, hoping Grace couldn’t hear, ‘We can’t stay here. This place is full of ghosts.’
Two weeks later, the house was clean and covered in dust sheets and Noor and Grace’s belongings were tied in sarongs on the hall floor. Noor sat at Ella’s desk. Omar would be arriving in half an hour or so with the truck he was borrowing to take her to Ipoh. Before she left, she had one last thing she needed to do: write a letter for Mr and Mrs McCain in case they returned. She picked up a pen.
Dear Mr and Mrs McCain,
I very much hope that you return to Malaya and the villa. For now, Grace and I have gone to Ipoh. I have looked after her the best I could during the Occupation, and she has flourished. I will continue to care for her until your return. When I have a new address, I will send it to you here at the villa, but in the meanwhile, you can always ask my cousin Omar where to find me.
Yours,
Noor
When she was satisfied, she sealed the letter and placed it on the hall table, then walked through to the drawing room. Everything had either been packed away or covered up, apart from the piano, which Grace was polishing for the last time. A shutter was partially open, allowing a shaft of light to illuminate the instrument.
As she looked about the room, Noor reflected. She was glad to be leaving this place where so many bad memories clung like cobwebs. At the same time, she was fearful of moving away to a place where she didn’t belong. But it was necessary, she thought, as she picked up a bundle from the floor, for both of them. Grace was almost twelve and growing, although the years of not eating enough had left her looking younger. It was such a relief for Noor no longer to be hiding the fact that she was a girl; a charade she had long wished she had never started as the months had turned to years and she lived with constant fear that Grace’s delicate features and form would give her away.
She held her bundle of precious possessions close as she listened for the sound of Omar’s vehicle approaching. Of course she was nervous, who wouldn’t be? She wondered if she would ever return here, and realised that although she was apprehensive about the future there was no longer anything to hold her here. Unlike Grace, she didn’t belong.
Her thoughts turned to Omar and how she would miss him. As usual, he had helped her more than she could have expected. He had a contact in Ipoh, someone who could put Noor up in a shared house. He had even found her work as a cook in one of the hotels in the Old Town in Ipoh. She wasn’t happy about that, but told herself that at least it was a start.
It was then she realised she had forgotten to collect the photograph of her mother she had hidden in the kitchen. She’d better hurry and pick it up before Omar arrived – it was far too precious to leave behind.
She ran to the kitchen to fetch it, just as she heard the chugging of the truck swinging into the drive. A moment later, she heard Omar and a friend of his entering the villa by the front door.
‘Salam,’ Noor said as she returned from the kitchen, clutching the photograph to her chest.
The men collected the bundles of belongings and she went to the window to close the shutter.
‘Are you ready, Grace?’
‘What about the piano?’ The girl looked crestfallen as she ran her hand over the shining wood veneer. ‘How can I play if I don’t have one to practise on?’
‘It will be here for when you get back.’
‘But who will look after it when I’m away? It needs polishing and to be kept out of the sun.’
‘We’ll put a sheet on it, and the shutter will keep out the sun.’
‘But the humidity – the wood might crack.’
‘I can look after it, if you like,’ Omar said. ‘I can take it to the school, then the children can use it. We can bring it back when you need it again.’
Eventually, Grace nodded, but Noor knew how much leaving the piano behind would hurt; not only had it been her salvation, it was also part of her soul.
‘Right, that’s everything in,’ Omar said.
Noor picked up her last bundle. She hadn’t had time to put the photograph inside and was trying to undo the knot and slip it in while she made her way to the truck. But as she reached the doorway, she tripped and the photograph frame fell and landed with a loud crack on the floor. She looked on in horror as the glass shattered into tiny pieces.
‘Oh, no!’
She bent down to examine the damage. The glass was completely ruined, and the frame had landed on one corner so that the sides were now out of alignment. She examined it then undid the back to take out the photograph before straightening the crooked edges of the frame.
As she did so, a thin piece of folded blue paper fell out. How curious, she thought, as she opened the letter.
‘Come on, hurry up, Noor!’ Omar shouted. ‘We haven’t got all day.’
But there was something familiar about the handwriting, so she ignored him and read the letter, hunched over the fractured frame and glass. What she read was the last thing she had been expecting to see and the words had the effect of a tsunami on her, sweeping away everything that had seemed fixed and certain in her world. And like a tsunami, the shockwaves and undercurrents were powerful and irreversible.
