Return to Mandalay (5 page)

She pricked the ripe sloes with a fork to release the flavour and weighed them out equally, tipping them into the jars. She weighed out the sugar too and added that. Measured the gin. Sealed the jars. And so … Eva was going to Burma – of all places.

Rosemary shook the jars, one by one. She shook them to dissolve the sugar but she felt as if she were shaking something
out from deep inside of her. She shook them and shook them and then finally, she put them on a tray and carried them to the cupboard under the stairs. Placed them on the shelf in the dark. All she had to do now was wait.

She sat down on the cream leather sofa. It gave gently under her, cushioning and comforting. But cold, Rosemary thought. As she had been cold.

The fact was, that when Nick died, something had died in Rosemary too. After his death, she was only half living. And since then, she had never been able to get it back. Perhaps she never would. But so much, she realised, was lost when you only lived half a life. And the other people she had tried to love: her father, Alec, Eva. Would they ever find it possible to forgive?

Eva woke up from a restless doze, the kind you have on a long-haul flight, still conscious of those around you, sensitive to your neighbour needing to squeeze past or the stewardess nudging you awake with a
sorry to disturb you, madam, but did you want breakfast/lunch/a snack/coffee
, whatever, each long hour was punctuated by something.

She’d been dreaming about her mother. She was five years old and her mother was reading her a bedtime story about Mister Fox; she could see that fox with his red waistcoat and bushy tail so clearly in her mind’s eye. And hear her mother’s voice, low, sing-song, her laughter that seemed to bubble up inside and tip from her like fizzy lemonade. She could feel her too, her warmth and her kisses better, she could even smell her scent, of springtime. Eva focused in hard. There were other sounds, her parents’ banter and the rhythm of their voices, her father’s booming:
What d’you reckon then, love? Don’t give me that!
And then she was being swung between them.
One, two, three, up she goes
. The security of a hand being held.

Was she still dreaming? Somewhere inside, Eva knew she was in that strange state between sleeping and waking. She heard his voice again. Her father. Her memories were sketchy
at times and at others clear as glass. He had taught her to swim in the sea, which she loved to do, even now.
Don’t tense up, love. Let yourself go …
The water cool on her skin, the wave rising.
Ride with the swell. That’s the way. You can’t fight it
.

Eva couldn’t fight it when she lost him. One day he was there, the next gone. No chance to say goodbye.

She blinked as her memory skittered back. She remembered that first day, that dark day. Grandpa picking her up from school. A hop, a skip and a jump. ‘Where’s Mummy?’

‘She’s busy. You’ll see her soon.’

Eva didn’t mind. She loved the secret games she always played in her grandparents’ garden. But it was different today. Her grandparents were talking in hushed voices, watching her. Her grandmother turned to her in that too bright, birdlike way she had. ‘How about a special treat for tea, Eva, dear?’ Something was wrong.

When her mother arrived, she walked down the path very slowly. Her eyes were blank and red and when Eva shrieked, ‘Mummy!’ and ran towards her, she hardly seemed to hear or see. ‘Mummy!’

It was as if her mother weren’t there. She glanced at Eva and she seemed to look right through. Were neither of them there? Eva was scared.

‘Hello, darling.’ Absently, her mother touched her hair. She didn’t lift her up and spin her around, she didn’t hold her tight, she didn’t kneel down and look her in the eyes, pulling a funny-mummy face. She just touched her hair. Eva knew that something was very, very wrong.

Every hour they were nearer to reaching their destination. Eva shifted in her seat. It had been a long journey, broken up in Doha for just an hour and a half before they were reboarding. Fourteen hours in all, and the little sleep she’d had was fitful and crammed with these scenes from her past. How reliable were these memories? What she knew for sure was that life without her father had been as different as life could be. There was so much missing: his voice, his laughter, the presence of him. Even the house became silent and brooding, a house that had lost somebody. But at least there was still her mother. She had that to cling to.

Eva waited for her mother to come back to her. She waited for the stories, for the warmth of her arms, for the bubble of her laughter. But they never came. Her mother might still be there. But as the months went by, Eva finally learned the truth. There was something missing. Her mother had lost the heart of her. And so Eva had lost her mother too.

She stared out of the window at the blanket of cloud below and thought of what her grandfather had told her in the kitchen a week ago. Everything was a lot clearer now. She’d always known how much Burma meant to him, but this new story was different from any of the others. It was about the decorative teak chinthe that even now was tucked safely away in her cabin bag, protected by her bottle-green silk wrap. And it was about the woman whose address was written on the slips of paper in her purse.

‘Take him back to Burma for me, Eva,’ he’d said to her,
handing her the little wooden animal. ‘Take him back to her family. Where he belongs.’

Her family …
The family of the woman called Daw Moe Mya, or Maya, as he called her. This story was about what her grandfather had lost, and what he wanted to return to its rightful place.

‘There is another chinthe,’ he’d said, his faded gaze drifting off beyond Eva and the farmhouse kitchen in Dorset, back to the past and a far off place. ‘This is one of a pair.’

‘Yes.’ She supposed it must be. They always came in pairs. They were guardians of temples and pagodas and were a feature of many Asian cultures, sometimes with animal, sometimes human faces and made of stone, wood and even bronze. Eva sipped the mineral water that the stewardess had just given her. She was so looking forward to seeing them in situ, particularly the famous fourteenth-century bronze Angkor Chinthe in Mandalay. She’d only seen a picture but open-mouthed and snarling, he looked satisfyingly ferocious.

‘They need to be together, my darling,’ her grandfather had said. ‘To restore harmony.’ But that was only the half of it. ‘I should never have brought it back to England,’ he murmured. ‘It wasn’t the right thing to do.’

Eva scrutinised the progression of the flight path of the Boeing on the screen in front of her. They were only forty minutes from touching down in Yangon. Her heart seemed to skip a beat. She peered through the window, anxious to catch her first glimpse of the place, longing to see what
her grandfather had seen, feel what he had felt. She could make out the land mass already. The cloud was breaking, but with uncertainty, as if at any second it might fold into a blanket of leaden grey and unleash its contents on to the ground below. She felt the rush of adrenalin. It wouldn’t be long …

‘I loved her, you see.’ Her grandfather spoke softly, tenderly, the memories lights in his eyes.

Eva wasn’t even surprised. It was a moment when things from her childhood suddenly made sense, a jigsaw slotting into place. The way her grandparents always were with each other: his patience, her sadness, the polite distance between them. Eva had taken his hand in hers and squeezed it gently. A warm shiver spread through her. Her grandfather had come back to Dorset, and he had married her grandmother Helen. But … And she thought she was beginning to understand. No wonder her mother and grandmother had never been interested in his life in Burma.

‘I have always loved her,’ he said.

It was there in his face. All the answers were there. He had always loved her. She had forever usurped Eva’s grandmother Helen in his affections, no matter how hard he must have tried for it to be otherwise.

‘Then, why did you leave her?’

‘It’s a good question, my darling Eva,’ he said. But he didn’t give her the answer.

‘And what makes you think she’s still alive?’ How old would she be? In her early nineties, Eva guessed.

Her grandfather nodded. He seemed very sure. ‘If she were no longer alive,’ he said, ‘I think that I would know it.’

Now, as she watched, the dark sky lightened into streaks of pink and blue and began to give way to a misty dawn. The morning sun illuminated the crenellated tips of turrets of cloud. And there it was. Burma. What was it Kipling was supposed to have said?
It is quite unlike any place you know about
. Eva didn’t doubt it. It was spread out there below her, kite-shaped, surprisingly green – but why not? The rains had barely finished. And the string of the kite was that winding river. She could see its many branches and the delta below. She checked the map in front of her, pushed her seat to an upright position, so she’d feel more ready for it all. The Irrawaddy, muddy brown in the milky morning light. It was another world.

Since her grandmother Helen had died … Eva frowned at this sobering thought, the rift between her grandfather and Eva’s mother had grown. And she had to face it – the rift between Eva and her mother had done the same, as if moving in a perfect parallel. Did Rosemary blame her father for not making her mother happy? And if so, was it true? Eva gazed out of the window at the place that had perhaps been part of it, at the place that might give her the answers. But her grandfather was a good man. Whether it was true or not, Eva believed that he had done his best.

The stewardess brought round hot flannels and Eva held her hair up with one hand and let the scented towel rest on the back of her neck for a moment. She closed her eyes. Her mother’s reply to her email had been brief and non-committal,
like most of her communications, Eva thought.
Don’t give anything away, Mother …

Take care, Eva
, she’d written.
Have a good time
. A few lines of news about Alec’s company and what long hours he was working; in the world of computer technology everything moved so fast, there was a lot of pressure not to get left behind. And that was it. Nothing about Rosemary herself or when she might be coming over to visit. The word ‘love’, easy to write. A single kiss. But what did Eva expect? Especially now.

This was a work trip, yes, and she was looking forward to seeing lots of interesting antiques and artefacts, to have the chance to obtain some for the Emporium, to examine and authenticate. But that wasn’t all. When she’d heard what her grandfather had to say, Eva had realised she couldn’t do this in ten days. She couldn’t do justice to Myanmar, to her work commitments, to her grandfather’s request in such a short time.

‘I’ve some holiday owing that I have to take before the end of the year,’ she had said to Jacqui on the Monday morning after she’d visited her grandfather in Dorset. ‘And so I was wondering …’ Her grandfather had offered to help fund the trip, Eva had some savings. Financially it wouldn’t be a problem, if Jacqui was prepared to be flexible. Eva was aware that her trip would take a huge chunk out of the Emporium’s profits, though presumably the riches to be found in Myanmar must make it potentially worthwhile.

‘How long do you want to stay?’ Jacqui asked her when
Eva had explained a little of her family’s connection to the place.

‘Three weeks?’

Jacqui came to a quick decision. ‘Why not?’ she said. ‘It could be useful. As long as you maintain email contact with me throughout, Eva.’

‘Of course.’

Eva exhaled and let her shoulders release the tensions of the flight, of her tiredness, of her apprehensions. She was going to look for her grandfather’s other life, the life that had excluded his wife and his daughter. She didn’t know what she would find, but her mother wouldn’t like it. She was going to a country that would be strange and unfamiliar in every way possible and she was doing it alone, apart from the slightly dubious contacts that Jacqui had arranged for her.

Eva opened her eyes and peered down at the great river looping its way over the marshland, dividing as if about to take some new path and then winding back again to join forces. Stronger together than alone. It had never been like that for Eva and her mother after Eva’s father had died. Neither of them had been strong. Eva had been too young then to understand, but she’d had a long, long time to think about it ever since.

Eva had turned to her grandfather. But what she had always understood was that her mother had preferred to be alone.

‘Not long to go now.’ The man in the seat beside her spoke. He was a journalist and had been a pleasant enough companion. They’d had one or two brief conversations during the
flight, which was all Eva had wanted with so much to think about.

Eva smiled. ‘Can’t wait,’ she said.

The seat belt signs had been on for a few minutes. Now, the pilot put the air brakes on, the flaps went down on the wing. The land was becoming more cultivated, there were paddy fields, and in the half-light of the dawn Eva could see how much rain there had been. She could see rectangular shacks now too, randomly built on the river bank. Some kind of small settlement maybe; she was only too aware of Burmese poverty, although she knew about the riches to be found in this country too. There were clumps of palm trees and a very long straight road.

The plane banked as it turned into the wind, ready to make its final descent and Eva’s head lurched with dizziness. Just tiredness or disorientation probably. And yet there was a familiarity to the land too. It didn’t look as alien as she had expected. What
had
she been expecting? She wasn’t really sure. She could feel the excitement though, it was tingling through her fingers and her toes, making her heart beat faster.

‘Cabin crew, take your seats for landing, please.’ The voice came over the tannoy.

And then she saw a golden pagoda, glinting in the sunlight. Its tapering spire stretched up towards the heavens, the cone of its body shimmered in the morning sun. This was Burma. Her journey lay ahead of her like the path of the winding Irrawaddy itself. She had arrived.