Return to Mandalay (28 page)

‘I was listening to the radio earlier,’ he said. ‘Catching up on the news.’ He stretched out his legs. They were seated on low bamboo chairs on the verandah of her aunt’s home and had just eaten a simple supper of noodles and
Ah Sone Kyaw
, stir fried vegetables cooked in a tamarind sauce. It was dark and clear, the stars sharply visible in the night sky, a perfect half-moon. Maya’s aunt’s house was more basic than her father’s. It was made of bamboo and, like many of the traditional houses, was built on stilts. The furniture was plain and unsophisticated and this, too, was made of bamboo. The floor consisted of rush matting, but you still took your shoes off when you came inside.

‘News of the war,’ she said. She took a cloth to wipe the table and moved towards the back door.

‘I want to enlist.’ He hadn’t meant to come out with it just like that. He hadn’t fully decided, or so he’d thought. Clearly, he had. He remembered only too well sitting around the radio set in the logging camp with some of the other men on 3
^rd
September 1939, glass in hand, listening to Neville Chamberlain telling them that once again the British were at war with Germany. Some of the men had wanted to book a passage west there and then, but there had been an immediate government order to block it. The British Empire had wide
boundaries. Who knew where their skills would be most needed? It was far too soon to tell. But now …

She returned to the table. Observed him head on. ‘You need to fight for your country,’ she said. It wasn’t a question.

‘I can’t not fight.’ He was young, wasn’t he, and fit? He couldn’t do the work he did without possessing stamina. He had not yet received a call-up for military training. But it seemed like sheer cowardice to be out here in Burma living in relative peace while poor old Blighty was suffering from air raids and rationing and who knew what else. How could his mother be coping with that? He simply couldn’t imagine her making do. And he was here being waited on by this beautiful woman while other men were fighting the enemy. Fighting, as Maya had said, for his country.
Your country needs you
. Lawrence wasn’t a coward. He was more than willing to do his bit. But up till now he’d been playing the waiting game along with the rest. How long before it played itself out? How long before more countries got involved? Was this just the beginning? He feared so. Men were being enlisted into the Indian Army, the Burma Rifles, the Navy. It was time.

‘You will return to England?’ Maya asked him.

He examined the serenity of her face framed by her hair, almost indigo in the darkness of the night, lit only by the flickering lamplight on the porch. There was not a frown on her brow, not a flicker of anxiety in her eyes – or so it seemed. Like many Burmese people, she was Buddhist. But did she mind? He had no idea. Did she understand? Clearly.
Sometimes he believed she understood him better than he did himself.

And perhaps it was this that most drew him to her. On the level of language their communication was fluent but simple. But on a deeper level, there was a connection that made them as one. It wasn’t sexual, as he’d realised long ago, though sex between them seemed natural and real, unfettered by convention. And it wasn’t because she was different, other and exotic, though she was and he relished that too. It was, he realised, something in their twin souls. It was deeper even than love. It had scared him at first. But he had given himself over to it. It was, he thought now, a kind of peace.

England, Maya had said. For a moment he pictured the look of the docks when he had left last time. Last time … He tried not to think of Helen, though he could still see her in his mind’s eye and she still wrote to him. Occasionally, he even wrote back: short, polite notes that said nothing and yet everything. But she didn’t seem to understand what he was telling her, or she didn’t want to. War had not yet been declared when he’d left the country. And yet there had been an uneasiness about England as if she might be preparing for it. He recalled the shouts and the whistles, the people rushing here, there and everywhere, boarding ships, standing on the docks with backpacks or suitcases, milling over the gangplanks, saluting, waving, shouting their last goodbyes into the grey skies and the murky sea. And he pictured his mother’s face, her nod of encouragement.
This is what is expected. This is what you must do
.

‘No,’ he said to Maya. He spoke Burmese pretty well now. He knew the jungle and he had some understanding of the people. These skills would be appreciated in wartime situations. He had no military training, but Lawrence knew where he would be needed.

She poured him some green tea and he lit a cigarette. He drew in deeply, considering, and exhaled, watching the smoke spiral and disappear into the night. ‘War is not only happening in Europe, my love,’ he told her gently.

She looked up, startled. ‘It will come here? To Burma?’

‘I believe so.’ He drew on his cigarette once more. He had heard rumours, you couldn’t help but hear rumours if you kept your ear to the ground. The Japanese were already at war with Britain and, after Pearl Harbor, the United States of America. In his opinion they were on their way. ‘The Japs are taking advantage of all the argy-bargy, no doubt about that.’

They needed to extend their boundaries. Japan, unlike Malaya and Burma, wasn’t rich in rubber, oil or wood. In point of fact, when you looked at the history, Japan had long been after extending its power. They’d had an aggressive foreign policy for twenty years, since their invasion of Manchuria, and this had only fuelled their war machine. They had forces at the ready in Asia. They’d been fighting China and since the pact they’d signed with Germany a year and a half ago … Who knew how much else was going on behind the scenes? He had heard the Japanese described as a nation of fanatics. Maybe they were, although Britain had the fanaticism of Hitler to deal with at this moment in time. But
he’d also heard that Japanese forward-planning was second to none.

Maya sat down opposite him and took his hands in hers. This was unusual. She, like many Burmese women, was not given to displays of affection. Often, she seemed strangely detached and unemotional. But he never doubted her love or loyalty. And more. Maya had set him free. ‘They are striking while the enemy is looking the other way,’ she said. ‘Collecting the water while it rains.’

He smiled. ‘I’m very much afraid that you are right.’ Her hands felt so soft as they held his, so smooth where his were rough and calloused these days. He enjoyed the work and just the muted wooden tinkle of elephant bells could make his heart leap as he approached camp. Most of this was down to Maya, he knew that. And he had also long known that being in charge of a teak camp was a tough job, far from the whiteskinned civilisation of an office job back in the UK. So how long did he have here, realistically? For how many years could he work here and survive the ravages of dengue fever and malaria and the rest, before he grew old before his time? This was not the job for a middle-aged man, only a young one. The company who employed him knew that, and Lawrence knew it too.

‘So you will fight in Malaya?’ Her eyes were wide. ‘Or Burma?’

He brought her hand to his lips and kissed it. ‘I will enlist with the Indian Army,’ he said. ‘Try to obtain an emergency commission. And then we will see how things develop.’

Another woman might have wept and begged him not to go. Another woman might have made him feel bad, as if he were deserting her. But Maya, of course, was different. And she had shown him the different possibilities for his life too.

So. It didn’t matter how much he regretted what had happened, how bad he felt about Helen, and Maya too. Now, there was a war.

‘You may never come back,’ she quietly said. Her eyes were like the soft satin of the night sky. He wanted all his senses to sink into them and be lost.

‘Perhaps not.’ He released Maya’s hand and held her face in his. ‘But if I am alive, I will come back, my love.’ And he meant it. God, how he meant it.

‘Hush.’ She put a finger to his lips. She did not believe in wasting words. She had a secret strength that had always drawn him, a dark strength of knowing. ‘You do not have to give me your promises. You are a free man.’

*

They made love that night with a tenderness such as Lawrence had never known. Her dark and sinuous body seemed to wind itself around him in a way it never had before. Her hair, long and lustrous, trailed over his chest and his thighs, and her skin was silky to his touch, scented with a musky fragrance that seemed to take him to greater heights of passion.

‘I love you, Maya,’ he gasped as he felt himself climax inside her.

Her eyes were closed now, her brow smooth as a child’s,
her lips slightly parted. ‘And I love you, Lawrence,’ she said softly.

It was, he realised, as he drew the mosquito nets over their bed and took her again in his arms, the first time.

The moment Eva had said goodbye to Klaus, she grabbed her bag, left the hotel and took a taxi to Thirty-Sixth Street. She hadn’t been here yesterday, but she found the showroom easily, though showroom was perhaps too grand a description for the rickety shop situated halfway along. It seemed to go a long way back and she saw that it was divided into two halves. One side was crammed with contemporary furniture, the other with what looked like old wooden artefacts. Dusty enough to be antiques. But … She decided to take a closer look. It was quite safe. She didn’t even have to speak to anyone. She would look around and then work out her next move.

Outside on the street was a random collection of Buddha images, some made of stone, some wood. At first glance they looked worn and pretty ancient, it was true. She wet her finger with her tongue and traced it over the head of one of the wooden statues. The wood was dull and didn’t have the richness of teak. And … She bent closer to take a sniff. It didn’t smell of sandalwood either. A paler wood, sandalwood had a sweet sappy fragrance, even when dried and quite old. Teak, on the other hand, was deeper, it had more layers, more complexity.

She brushed some more of the dust aside. She’d hazard a guess that this was inferior wood, either felled much too early when it was too young or before it had been properly dried out. It could even have been recycled from some old or damaged furniture because the patina was uneven and inconsistent. Other pieces, she could see, had been none too cleverly distressed, discoloured, filed down in places. She ran her fingers lightly across the rough, amateur carving. It all seemed vaguely familiar. And it didn’t take an expert to see what it was, or more accurately, she thought, what it wasn’t.

Her thoughts drifted to Ramon. There was absolutely no way that he would work with these people. For one thing they had stolen his family’s precious chinthe. And for another they represented everything that he detested in furniture-making and working with wood. As did she. Even if it were the only way to rescue his company from financial difficulties, even if it were the only way to retain his father’s legacy … He wouldn’t do it.

Eva edged past the Buddhas and into the dark, dingy shop, down a narrow aisle with shelves and glass-fronted cabinets on either side housing seated and reclining Buddha statuettes, elephants, horses and water-buffalo of wood, stone and perhaps even marble, and chinthes. Eva let out the breath she’d been holding. Chinthes of all sizes and types, some fierce-looking with snarling mouths, some proud, some grim-faced and indifferent. None, though, as charming or intricately carved as the chinthe her grandfather had given her to bring to Myanmar. And these were different in another way, too.
All these chinthes stood in pairs. Ready to guard the shrine of a seated Buddha, she found herself thinking. Ready to maintain harmony. Ready to protect a household.

‘Can I help you? English, yes?’

Oh. Eva had been so lost in thought she’d almost imagined herself alone in the shop. But now she looked up. A small, Burmese man was standing, arms folded, beside her. He wore a stained
longyi
and a faded red shirt. ‘Yes, I am.’ She pointed to a chinthe in the cabinet. ‘Can I see this one?’ Though her stomach gave a little lurch of nerves. Ramon had said these people were dangerous. And he would be furious if he knew she had come here.

‘Of course.’ He produced a key from the ring on his belt, though whether the cupboards were locked to discourage theft or to imply that the contents were more valuable than they really were, she didn’t know.

‘I have a special interest in chinthes,’ Eva told him.

His expression didn’t change, not a flicker passed across it as he unlocked the door and swung it open. ‘Which one?’ he asked her. ‘This? This?’

She pointed. ‘What’s it made of?’

‘Teak.’ He reached in, lifted up the chinthe in question and handed it to her.

That was very unlikely. It was too light in weight for a start.

‘How old is it?’

He squinted. ‘A hundred years maybe,’ he said.

‘How interesting.’ If it was, Eva would eat her hat. It was
dusty, yes, but the carving was rough, the wood discoloured – possibly with chemicals – and there were some very suspect markings. It had probably been knocked up in their own factory less than a month ago. It wouldn’t even fool an amateur.

So not only were the Li family common thieves, but they were also selling fake antiques. Eva’s blood boiled. The distressing of furniture was commonplace. But passing it off as antique? That was illegal, crossing a boundary that was unacceptable – to Eva and to anyone honest who appreciated the value of true provenance. Old objects had a past, a history, which was part of their intrinsic value. So that you could sit on a Victorian dressmaker’s rocking chair and imagine her taking pins from the little drawer under the seat, rocking and sewing in the lamplight. You could open an eighteenth century casket and guess what had been kept inside. You could wear a 1920s bead necklace and almost see a girl doing the Charleston. A genuine antique had generally been made by a craftsman with love and care. And it had a story. These people were fakers and forgers. They were dishonest. Criminals, even. She took a deep breath. Tried to hold back the adrenalin.