Nanking during the Japanese army’s entry into that city. He scanned past the descriptions of murder to the part of the report which glared by its tale of omission, But it is a fact that the bodies of no women were seen.
Clarice was firm with him. ‘Daddy, I’m terribly tired, actually. Would you mind awfully if we did the political lecture another time. I know you’ve probably got something gruesome to demonstrate, but to be honest I’d rather not hear it just at the moment. I’ll have to make an early start tomorrow. You won’t be offended if I call it a day, will you? Just go back to bed. Come on. This way.’
‘We have to get out.’
‘You have to get some sleep.’ Stifling a yawn, she kissed him good-night. ‘And so do I. Now you’ll take care of yourself, won’t you?’ She turned to go.
‘Of course,’ he said, submissive now. ‘Sorry. Sleep well, darling.’ He still held the cutting in his hand but was glad, after all, that he didn’t have to explain to her how the missing women hadn’t been chivalrously spared.
IN THE NIGHT he got up. He was very frightened. His desire to put things right, to do his duty at last as a father – that was what had turned him into this parody of a supreme commander, pacing agitated, solo, around his dining-room table as if it contained the relief map of the theatre of operations. If he could assess the situation accurately, the enemy’s strength and disposition, then and only then would he know how to act. The evidence was laid out before him. Thousands of miles away, Poland, a fully functioning European state with a considerable army and a fine cultural history, had been reduced to rubble in a week or two. Some terrible permission had been given. Reports confirmed both the astonishing German tactical brilliance and the brutality of the assault. He tapped his foot on the floorboards. Rain outside drowned out the sound. What if Britain and France got drawn in and bogged down? If America stayed on the fence? What of the imperial supply lines if the thing really got going? Any ship between Singapore and the English Channel would increasingly become fair game for a U-boat.
He rummaged for Selama’s sharp sewing scissors in the sideboard drawer and cut out a piece from the newspaper that had just arrived. It counted the total sinkings as two dozen British ships, so far. No such announcement had come through on the short-wave radio. The liner Athenia had been torpedoed by a submarine.
If his vision was right, Clarice must not stay. But he couldn’t just send her away – to nowhere, to Mattie’s family – cast her adrift as she’d been set to drift already, this time on dangerous seas. He’d been a wretched parent, if the truth were told. Booting her out once more would be to fail her utterly. The whole thing was repeating itself. Supposing England were more fire than frying-pan, and he were deliberately hurrying his daughter under a cloudburst of bombs. Then, as her father, he should at least go with her. But he couldn’t take Selama. Nor could he leave her. Every delay made the seas more perilous. The fever beat up and up; and then broke in another drenching sweat.
In the morning, in the lull, he put on a brave face. A sultry sky showed the monsoon weather, and Clarice maintained, over breakfast, her refusal to discuss change. By way of diversion, he read Phyllis’s letter. It had been weeks delayed.
Dear Uncle Stan,
I know you will have forgotten all about me. In fact when Auntie Mattie passed away you probably thought you would have got rid of us Tylers for good, and here we are turning up again like a bad penny. I’m sure I did write on the occasion of my marriage and again on the birth of our little boy, Jack, but unfortunately received no reply. Normally I wouldn’t trouble you except Victor, my beloved husband, has lost his job, he is a shipwright at the boatyard, and is finding it hard to get another start. If there was any way you could see your way to help us through this difficult time, I can assure you we would be very grateful. I hope this letter finds you well. I always remember how kind you and Auntie Mattie were to me when you used to very kindly have me to stay with you in your country house in Suffolk.
I remain
Your loving niece
Phyllis Warren (Tyler as was)
‘“I remain”,’ Dr Pike quoted, sighing. ‘She wants money, of course.’
‘Who?’
‘Phyllis. Her husband’s lost his job.’
‘Phyllis! Your letter’s from Phyllis.’
‘Yes.’
Her father saw the blush come to Clarice’s cheeks; and I can feel it too, as I describe it.
‘Is anything the matter?’ he said.
‘Nothing. Nothing at all.’ She struggled to compose herself. ‘Will you send her some? Money, I mean.’
‘Not sure I’ve all that much left.’ Dr Pike eyed her meaningfully.
‘May I see?’
She took the letter, stood up, and hurried out to the veranda. The blush still prickled violently in her cheeks. Her hand was unsteady, and her knees had gone to rubber, making the short walk feel like a lurch into unsupported space. Outside, by a gap in the chick blinds, she read the letter over twice, three times, and then stared intently out at the sweep of countryside and rain forest – as if she could see all the way to England. Victor, my beloved husband …
No, I’m not Jack, the ‘little boy’ of Phyllis’s letter. I am not yet born. I must draw up this landcape of privilege and make my portrait of the woman who should have been my mother, though her world has nothing to do with me. The past is a fable of desire, a romance, an illusion.
Why then, curled as I am, tucked away in the story, do I make these imaginative stitches, pulling Clarice Pike and my father together again? Why linger with the family connection, suturing a gash in time? And why, like my great-uncle, Dr Stan Pike, do I tackle certain monsters? Because of the hope for love, of course.
Clarice held on to the timber pole that propped the veranda roof. She tried to reinstate Robin Townely, her man of the moment – who ought to have been here by now to pick her up. But with the letter in her hand all she could think of was Vic, and London. Three years and she could still be visited by these heart-racings and shakings, these physical clichés. And still she couldn’t tell whether they were genuine, or merely symptoms of her own dislocation.
On her mother’s side was East London and a poverty she’d lived protected from. That was the London out of which her father had rescued her mother. That was also the London where her cousin, Phyllis, had grown up, so distressingly unrescued. But there, paradoxically, Clarice had found Vic. And what was Vic but an ordinary working man, a dockside shipwright …
Vic had been engaged to Phyllis; and yet instantly, shockingly, Clarice and he had been drawn to each other. They’d met for concerts, been to lectures together, stolen hours in cheap cafés. Staying at her grandmother Tyler’s house, Clarice had not had long before her return to Malaya. There’d been a secret affair; then a realisation, followed by renunciation. She’d left for Southampton and her ship. He’d consented to his marriage.
Now in her mind’s eye he was caught by cross-hatchings, staring hopelessly back at her out of darkness, trapped back in that Dickensian ménage of cobwebs and candlelight that Phyllis’s letter evoked for her. She pictured too, unwillingly, the marital bed, with its creaking springs, the couple panting at each other, Phyllis
