Return to Mandalay (6 page)

The first time ever he saw her face
.

Lawrence glanced at his bedside table, just for a second before he put out the light. Or to be more accurate, he glanced at the space on the table that the chinthe no longer occupied, though Lawrence could see it still in his mind’s eye.
Watching over you
. He’d always kept it there, perhaps he thought it lessened the betrayal if he had even a part of her closest to him while he slept. Yes, or perhaps he was a fanciful old man. The truth was just touching the wood could take him back there. And then he looked at the clock, frowned, tried to work out if Eva would have landed. He must get it right. He wanted to arrive there as she arrived there, at least in his head.

He couldn’t read, not tonight. When Helen was alive, she had loathed him reading in bed. ‘Aren’t you tired?’ she would sigh as if it were his fault for not doing enough during the day to make him ready for sleep. And so then he would read maybe a paragraph or two of his book and leave it at that. Why upset her? It wasn’t her fault, none of it was her fault. But now that he was alone … Now that he had the opportunity to read entire books if he wanted to, with no one to say
a word about it … Well, his eyes just weren’t up to it. He was tired in a way he had never been tired before.

The first time ever he saw her face
.

There was a song, wasn’t there, but he hadn’t heard it back then when he was first in Burma. It hadn’t even been written in 1937, though she could have been the reason why such a song had ever been born. He felt afterwards that he hadn’t heard anything till then. Hadn’t lived.

Mandalay, 1937

They were walking through the market, he and Scottie. There were market traders selling fish, vegetables and beans; many of the men and some of the women smoking Burmese cheroots or chewing betel and there were food stalls where people sat to eat under the shelter of a bamboo-walled hut crammed on wooden benches like pilchards in a tin. Steaming tureens of noodles and soup bubbled on open fires tended by proprietors in stained
aingyis
. It was hot, and a heavy humidity hung in the air like a quilt of mist. People milled around: Burmese and Indian in the main, though also a few Europeans, the men mostly dressed in thin jackets and
longyis
, the long wrap-around skirt worn by both men and women; the women’s
longyis
tucked into the waist band, rather than knotted like the men’s, and worn with bright colourful blouses, or in saris, draped elegantly around head and shoulders, falling to the dusty ground. Rain, Lawrence thought to himself. That was what they all needed.

‘Was it what you were expecting?’ Scottie had asked him when he first arrived at the chummery. Was it?

For a long time, Lawrence had craved adventure. Not just danger or girls, but travelling too. He’d wanted to see the world, at least as much of it as possible.

‘What’s wrong with us?’ his father had demanded when Lawrence had finally plucked up the courage to tell them his intention. He’d meant, of course, the family firm. The shadow of Fox and Forster had loomed over Lawrence’s childhood, a security and yet a threat. ‘Why do you need to go anywhere, eh? We need you here.’

‘He’ll be back,’ his mother had said. She was a diplomat, every glamorous inch of her from the top of her fair coiffured head to her immaculate shoes and stockings. ‘Let him go and he’ll come back.’ She knew how to keep them both happy. It wasn’t even a tightrope for her. All her life she’d twisted her father round her elegant little finger; it had become second nature to do the same with her husband and son.

Lawrence’s father had grumped and growled and reached for the whisky decanter. But his mother had understood and so his father had let him go. He could never refuse her anything, all she had to do was allow a tear to creep into her blue eyes and he’d bluster his way back to getting a smile out of her.
Very well, my dear, if it will make you happy
were words Lawrence had heard frequently during his childhood and beyond. If Mother was happy then so was Pa. Simple. It was an equation that worked. But for himself, in whatever life he carved out for himself with a woman, Lawrence knew he’d want more.

Elizabeth had rumpled her son’s hair affectionately. ‘He’ll
come back to us when he’s needed,’ she reassured them all. ‘When he’s got it out of his system. And be all the better for it. He wants to live a little, that’s all. It’ll do him good.’

Had it? Lawrence wasn’t so sure. It had made him dissatisfied, he knew that much. But that was when he came back. As for the rest, she was right. Life was about seeing new places, wasn’t it? Experiencing new things. Not sticking to what you knew and who you knew and staying in London working as a stockbroker in the family firm. There were worlds out there that others had explored and conquered. The British Empire was vast and he wanted to experience some of it. How could working in the family firm satisfy him? How could Helen? But he wouldn’t think of Helen.

‘Plenty of time for that,’ his mother had told him, a gleam of satisfaction in her diplomat’s eye. ‘Plenty of time, my darling, for you to spread your wings a little.’

And fly, he thought. And fly.

*

Some of it, some of Burma, this land of dark-skinned people, overwhelming heat and golden temples, had been exactly as he had expected. It was different, it was exotic, it had a colour and a heady fragrance that made him dizzy. And it had its hard side too. It could be rough and uncomfortable. The heat could be unbearable. So could the mosquitos. There was poverty and hardship. One couldn’t – or shouldn’t – take Western comforts for granted.

Work had been a revelation. When he signed up at the company, Lawrence had given hardly a thought for the
conditions he’d work under in the teak camps, for the labour he would be commanding in all weathers under pressure, getting as many good logs as humanly possible into the river and on their way down the raging Irrawaddy to Rangoon. Although in the end, humans didn’t have as much to do with it as elephants.

And the people …

‘They look up to us,’ Scottie had said, trying to explain how things worked, how the system of the British clubs with their unquestioned luxuries, whist drives, cocktail parties and dances operated in apparently comfortable harmony with the poverty often seen on the streets, women begging, men in ragged clothes desperate to do a deal, children stealing scraps from the market in order to survive.

He seemed so sure. And yes, the Europeans were the undisputed masters, no doubt of that; the last Burmese dynasty had burned itself out in the previous century. Burned itself out, or been burned out by the British Empire, which had no qualms in using its superior weapons, knowledge and experience to get what it wanted. Or so some said. Scottie had all the stories. His father had been a witness to it all. Scottie and the rest of his family were bound up in the colonial web of imperialism more securely than anyone Lawrence had ever met. And that was good, because it was Scottie who had shown him the ropes and Scottie knew all the rules.

Lawrence had seen his fair share since he’d been here. He’d got into the rhythm of the weather, the heat and the rains which ruled everything, and he’d grown accustomed to the
food, which wasn’t so bad if you liked curry and rice. From February to May was the worst time, the hottest, when your shirt would stick to your back five minutes after you’d put it on and the white glare of the heat could drive you half-mad if you let it. In July and August the rains came with hardly a break in the monsoon, and this was when the real work was done with the timber, when the race was on to get the logs down the rivers and safely to the company’s timber yard at Rangoon. Then the rains would tail off, ending with a final squall in October. The fields would dry up and there would be, at last, a wonderful short winter, when the breeze was mild instead of burning, when wild flowers reminiscent of those in English meadows grew in the rural areas, when the paddy grew and ripened into yellow and the nights and mornings could even be cold in the upper reaches of the country, with a cooling mist that filled the valleys and hung over the hills.

The company was generous in giving leave, perhaps it knew that it had to be in order to keep its young blood healthy and content, relatively speaking, at least. Like the rest of them, Lawrence enjoyed visits to Rangoon, going to the English bookshop to stock up on reading material for those long evenings alone in camp, out to sample steak dinners with as many G and Ts and as much ice as you wanted (there was no running out of ice in Rangoon …). He enjoyed his regular bouts of R and R up at the hill-station too and the easy camaraderie of the chummery there at Pine Rise in Maymyo, the guesthouse owned by the company and used as bachelor
quarters for the single male employees. But there was something about the British clubs that left him cold.

They know who are the masters
, Scottie had said. But sometimes Lawrence wondered.
Us and them
. Was it that simple? He thought not. It was a careless racism that was little more than an assumption. Could it be right to make such an assumption? It seemed to Lawrence that there was something in their eyes …

*

There was something in her eyes. She was standing by a stall and he could see her in profile. Small, neat, self-assured. And when she looked up …

The stall holder, an Indian, was selling hand woven rugs and blankets. The girl was inspecting a piece of cloth. She held it lightly between her fingers. She wore a
longyi
of bright orange and yellow like the streak of a sunset and her hair hung down past her shoulders as dark and glossy as a bird’s wing slicked in oil. Her nails were pale pink, almost white, her lips a kind of bruised plum. And there was the slightest pucker of a frown on her brow. She was perfection, in miniature.

Scottie followed his gaze. He leaned closer to Lawrence. ‘I know what you’re thinking, old man.’

Lawrence ignored his grin.

‘She’s a stunner.’

But it wasn’t that. Lawrence moved towards the stall, couldn’t help himself. She was attractive, yes, but lots of girls were attractive. Helen was attractive – she was a beauty – or so his parents kept reminding him, a fragile, very English kind
of beauty. And more significantly, she was the only daughter of his father’s business partner and closest friend. But the look of this woman wasn’t just striking, she’d walloped him right in the pit of his chest.

‘Yes, sir?’ The stallholder was quick to notice his interest. ‘You like a nice new rug, sir? What colour is it to be? Red, blue, yellow? What size, sir?’

‘A blanket.’ Lawrence addressed him but looked at the girl.

She glanced up as he spoke, but immediately glanced down again. The Burmese were like that. They weren’t meek, but they were self-effacing, the opposite, he thought now, of women like his mother, like Helen.
They know their station
, Scottie would say. Lawrence suspected they knew rather more than that. And no doubt were careful not to show it.

‘What kind of blanket, sir? Wool? Cotton? Silk? I have very good collection. What colour? Red? Yellow? Brown?’ Deftly, he swept first one blanket, then another, then another down from the display, flourishing each in front of Lawrence for his approval. Pretty soon the stall was in complete disarray, swathed in fabrics of every material and hue.

Scottie stood to one side and languidly lit a cigarette.

The girl seemed about to move away.

‘That one,’ Lawrence said quickly, indicating the blanket she still held lightly between her fingers. ‘Let me see that one.’

‘Indeed, sir, a fine choice.’ The stallholder whisked it away from her.

She blinked and took a graceful step backwards. Lawrence noticed her feet which were tiny and clad in red silk slippers.

‘Excuse me.’ Lawrence addressed her. ‘You were here first.’

She shook her head, took another step backwards.

Would she speak English, he wondered. Many of them did, and Hindustani too. Scottie spoke fluent Burmese. If she didn’t speak English, would he act as interpreter? Lawrence hadn’t had time to get to grips with the language yet.

‘Really. Please. So rude of me.’ Lawrence grabbed the blanket, which was made of a soft and fine wool. He handed it to her. ‘It is a good blanket, is it not?’ His voice to his own ears sounded tender, and this was a surprise.

She looked up at him. Her dark eyes were calm, but he saw in them a curl of humour that gave him hope. He’d been right. This wasn’t some poor and lowly Burmese servant girl. This was a young woman of class. She understood him, he could tell.

‘It is very fine,’ she conceded in perfect English. Her voice was soft and gentle, it seemed to stroke his senses. And as he continued to hold the blanket out to her, she reached out her hand and again held the fabric, smoothing it with her fingertips.

‘Lawrence Fox.’ He gave a little bow. ‘Please excuse my bad manners. Blame the heat, it must be affecting me.’ A weak attempt at humour, he knew. But it was all he could strum up at the present time.

Scottie cleared his throat. ‘Jimmy Scott,’ he said.

‘We are both at your service.’ Lawrence smiled.

She nodded her head in acknowledgement but made no attempt to reciprocate their introductions.

What next? Lawrence had always considered himself pretty expert at chatting up the girls. Warming them up with a compliment and a joke, making them laugh, moving in for the thaw, that sort of thing. Not that he had a wealth of experience to draw on. But somehow, knowing he was destined for Helen Forster had freed him to playing fast and loose whenever he had the chance. Cross that bridge when he came to it. But this girl wasn’t like any of the other girls. She wasn’t British for a start. He had no idea what to bloody do.

‘And may I enquire your name?’ he said, quietly so as not to intimidate her. At least she hadn’t walked away.

‘Moe Mya,’ she said.

‘Moe Mya,’ he repeated. The short syllables were small and neat like her. And yet, as he looked into those eyes, he’d like to bet she could let go. Not in the way Scottie and the others in the club might joke about it, but … Well, in the real meaning of letting go.