Return to Mandalay (34 page)

At night, he used the light from the pressure gas butties to read and study the training manuals, details of weapons, drills, and soon Lawrence became an expert. But later, when the mosquito nets had been drawn over the bed and all he could hear were the crickets and the occasional far-off cry from someone in the village beyond, Lawrence thought of Maya. He thought of the seriousness in her dark eyes, the poise with which she walked around her father’s house and
the streets of Mandalay, the sleek sheen of her hair. And, worst of all, he thought of those nights spent close to her, drinking in her musky perfume and the faint fragrance of coconut oil, incense and sensuality that hung in the darkness, her supple body lying curled around his, her slender fingers tracing and trailing their way over his arms, his legs, his chest until he wanted to scream with frustration. Maya. In the day, he thought of his mother and sometimes he even thought of Helen. But in the night, always, he thought of Maya.

How was she? Where was she now? He had heard that the Japanese had carried out a series of damaging air raids on Rangoon and that people were fleeing and travelling upcountry towards Mandalay and beyond. Would she be safe? In the depth of the night, Lawrence found himself praying for her.

In June the following year, Lawrence was commissioned into the Gurkha Rifles, with men recruited in Nepal from dependable tribes such as the Magars and the Gurungs, who’d already experienced crushing hardship. They were loyal, trustworthy and energetic; it was an honour to serve with them. Meanwhile, the Japanese had moved on. Their army had come up through Burma and was pushing India. The men were growing more restless, they wanted to be off, they wanted to be part of the war. Wingate’s Chindits had done some damage to Japanese communications, having taken them pretty much by surprise, and now a force must be built to penetrate the back of the enemy and compel its retreat. This meant harsh jungle training to harden up the troops,
build self-reliance and develop a knowledge of vegetation so that they could live off the land if needs be. There were many tricks. Some they learnt beforehand, some were instinctive or someone’s bright idea, like the Gurkha who had the clever notion of catching lizards by putting a drop of Carnation milk in an empty tin. They’d used that a few times on the march, some of the little buggers weighed as much as half a hundredweight and tasted surprisingly good too.

Lawrence opened his eyes once again. Was it another morning or the same one? There was a shaft of light filtering through the curtain, reminding him that this was West Dorset and he should get up.
Mustn’t let things slide
. He often said this to himself. He supposed he knew only too well how easy it would be.

He sat up slowly and reached for his dressing gown for it was chilly and he hadn’t yet switched on the central heating. Sometimes it seemed almost a crime to be too comfortable, after everything.

At first, he thought as he tied the cord around his waist, the British had been slow and ill-prepared and the Japanese had made them suffer their worst military defeat for centuries. But … He chuckled to himself as he slowly made his way out into the hall and along to the kitchen to make his tea. None of that sweet char now. Now, he liked it strong and bitter. He looked around him. It was odd, but his kitchen seemed different and he couldn’t remember coming in here for a while. He was feeling a bit wobbly. With some difficulty he groped his way to the rocking chair and sat down.
But once they realised what it would take to get going, the British had done it in style.

Because, despite everything, Lawrence remained a staunch patriot. Like terriers, the British forces were. There had been those who were little more than stuffy colonials and there were those who took advantage of the system they’d been born to. And then there were the others. The fighters. He straightened his back, heard the heating come on. Had he switched on a timer? Had he drawn the curtains? He heaved himself out of the chair and put the kettle on to boil. Sat down in the rocking chair again, just for a moment, and adjusted the red-tasselled cushion at his back. Had he taken advantage of Maya? He hated to think so. And yet … She had said he was a free man and it hadn’t been true. He had never been free of her and he never would be. That was the sadness of it all.

In the dream-memory of his war, tramping through the heat of the jungle, his regiment had finally come to the end of the day’s march. They had cut down banana leaves and bamboo to feed the mules – sensibly the animals preferred the latter, as if knowing they contained more roughage and less water – and they had unpacked them of the heavy burdens they carried: ammunition, reserves of food and the precious wireless of course, without which they wouldn’t know what the hell was happening. Then they let them loose to graze. They had to look after the mules, they were more important than the men in many ways, especially when the air drops weren’t getting through. The mules were their means of survival and the men got bloody fond of them too.

After they’d seen to the animals, they dug the slit trenches to protect themselves from the enemy, built their own shelter and laid out their sparse bedding, using the one blanket and groundsheet that each man carried in his pack. And they stayed on the alert. Two men stood watch in two-hour stags. Those bastards were never far away.

Lawrence thought he would collapse, from the heat, from the march, from sheer exhaustion. But he had dug because he had to dig. And as darkness fell he heard it: the whinny from a mule, the restlessness that could mean only one thing. The enemy approaching.

Where had they sprung from? Lawrence and his men were used to being taken by surprise. The Japanese were bloody good. In daylight, snipers sometimes stayed up the trees for hours; they had a roll of cloth round their waist full of cooked rice with bits of dried fruit and coconut, so the bastards weren’t even going to get hungry. They always came down in the dark, though, to move position and to get drinking water as they only had small bottles. And they kept so bloody still. But when you spotted one, you knew there’d be others, so you had to spray the surrounding trees with a burst of Bren gunfire. That would bring the buggers down.

Lawrence crawled to the trench along with the rest. And as he peered over the edge, he saw him. A man. A soldier. Christ. His stomach lurched. The enemy.

Like lightning, Lawrence loosened the pin of his grenade, counted
one two three
, the longest three seconds he’d ever known. He chucked it and threw himself face down into the
trench. He tasted the dusty earth and he waited for the crump of the explosion.
Him or me
.

Now, Lawrence shuddered at the memory. The kettle was whistling and he got up to see to it, but his legs were so weak that he had to sit down again.
Oh my Lord …
He had no strength. He had no strength to remember.

In that moment he had thought of her too, of Maya. A man like this might have denied her food. He might have hurled abuse at her, hit her on the back of her head with the butt of his rifle, raped her, shot her.
Him or me
. In an ideal world, he should have been a man before he was the enemy, with a wife, a family perhaps. A man like this could even have been a friend. But there was no time to think of such things. And Lawrence had been close enough to see the whites of his eyes.

At 8 p.m., Eva was waiting in the hotel lobby when Ramon’s car drew up outside. She was conscious of a feeling of dread in the pit of her stomach. She had even considered cancelling their date; she really didn’t want to see him. But there was Maya to consider. The evening had been at her invitation. And besides, Maya had said that she had something important to show her. Eva thought of her grandfather. She simply couldn’t not go.

The doorman swung the door open as she approached and Eva stepped out of the cool air-conditioning of the hotel into the humid early evening of the street outside. Immediately, she was conscious of the noise of the traffic, the dust, the smell of the food sizzling in oily cauldrons nearby.

‘Eva.’ Ramon had got out of the car and now he approached, bent to kiss her. ‘You look lovely as always,’ he murmured.

‘Hello, Ramon. Thank you.’ After some deliberation, she had chosen a simple long white linen skirt and loose shirt, which she was wearing with her velvet Burmese slippers and embroidered Shan bag. Her hair, she had swept and pinned up, and, once again, she was wearing her mother’s pearls. Rather primly, she offered her cheek.

‘Are you feeling better? Did you have a rest?’ He was all solicitousness and concern. He opened the passenger door and Eva climbed in.

‘A lot better thank you,’ she said. ‘My head’s so much clearer.’

He gave her an odd look, but shut her door, walked round and got into the driving seat. ‘And did you meet up with your contact?’

‘I did, thank you.’ His back was to her now. Hypocrite, she thought. He had given her such a hard time about buying antiques from Myanmar, when all the time he was involved in … What was he involved in exactly? And what was the Emporium involved in? She still didn’t have a clue.

‘And you?’ she asked politely. ‘How are things at the factory?’ She could hear the barely concealed sarcasm in her own voice.

Ramon edged the car out into the heavy traffic. ‘There is some good news,’ he said.

‘Really?’ Crime obviously did pay.

‘Yes. I have had talks with a man I know. He has agreed to become my new business partner.’

‘New business partner?’

‘I do some work with him already.’

Surely he wasn’t talking about Khan Li? This seemed to confirm what Klaus had told her. She found herself clenching her fist and forced herself to relax.
Shoulders down. Look out of the window. Breathe
.

Ramon wove his customary expert passage between lanes
of traffic, hooting sharply to indicate his intention or where he felt someone ought to be alerted to his presence. ‘But if I make him a partner,’ he continued, ‘then he will be more committed. I will have more spare time. And he will make a big contribution to my business.’

‘Money?’ she snapped.

He glanced across at her in surprise. ‘Of course, money. This is business, Eva. I told you the position we are in.’

Yes, he had. But couldn’t he see that money wasn’t everything?

Ramon gripped the steering wheel more tightly. ‘But not only money. Also his time, his professional input, his directional skills.’

Again, she heard in his voice that passion for his work. The difference now was that she couldn’t believe in it any longer. And she certainly didn’t see Khan Li possessing the qualities Ramon had mentioned.

‘And what makes you so confident that this new business partner will retain the ethics that your father held so dear?’ Eva asked him. The mention of his father might even make him think again, bring him to his senses.

Once more, he glanced across at her, though as Eva could see, the road was busy enough to claim most of his attention. ‘Naturally, I chose with great care,’ he said. Now it was Ramon who sounded cool. ‘As you know, I share the ethos and beliefs of my father. I would not do anything that might compromise them.’

Eva had to refrain from snorting with incredulity at this
statement. Who on earth did he think he was fooling? Certainly not her, not anymore. ‘And what will you do with all that free time?’ she asked.

They were driving next to the Palace moat now and she fancied she could almost see the red pagodas in the distance, but perhaps not; they were so far away. All roads in the city still led to the Royal Palace, although the palace was not what it had once been. Neither was the noisy, dirty city that sprawled untidily around it. King Mindon, thought Eva, would turn in his grave.

‘I think I told you I wish to develop the export side of the business,’ Ramon said frostily. ‘And that I wish to go to England and visit the place where my father was born.’

‘Where was that?’ Eva softened slightly.

‘A place called Ilfracombe in the county of Devon,’ he said.

‘My father told us it was very beautiful there. He often spoke of the harbour.’

She remained silent.

‘Do you know it?’ Swiftly, he glanced across at her once more.

‘I went there as a child.’ She decided not to tell him that it wasn’t far from where she had been brought up in West Dorset. What was the point? She had to remember what she’d found out about him. She mustn’t let him get to her now.

They drew up outside a restaurant with lanterns strung around the trees outside. ‘Is this it?’ Eva made a move to get out of the car, but Ramon laid a hand on her arm.

‘What?’ She looked down at his hand, warm on her bare
skin, at the slender craftsman’s fingers, calloused from working with wood. She couldn’t look up at him, didn’t trust herself.

‘What is it, Eva? What is wrong?’

She looked out of the window, tried to maintain control. She might have known this would happen. She’d never been any good at pretending everything was fine when it wasn’t. ‘I went to the Royal Palace this afternoon after I left you,’ she said.

‘Oh?’

‘I decided I’d rather go there alone.’

‘That is OK.’ He took his hand from her arm. ‘I am not offended. But did something happen there?’

She shook her head. Now, damn it, she felt like she was going to cry. ‘And before I came to see your factory,’ she said, ‘I went to Li’s showroom on Thirty-Sixth Street.’

‘You went to Li’s? For the love of sweet Lord Buddha, Eva!’ He sounded angry now, just as she’d expected. ‘Why did you go there? Did I not tell you—?’

‘That it was dangerous? Yes, you did.’ But now she had discovered his ulterior motive. She turned to him. ‘But, you see, I made a solemn promise to my grandfather to do my best to reunite those chinthes. It may not mean much to you, but for him …’ She tailed off. How could she begin to explain how much it meant to her grandfather, how much Maya and his life here had meant to him? How the chinthe had become symbolic of that life and their love and their parting?

‘Ah, the chinthes.’ He slapped his palms on the steering wheel.