Forgotten Life (16 page)

Mr Tan Senior spoke some English. Of course he had heard nothing from Medan, but he made promising noises. I left it for a week before returning, by which time the repaired
Van Heutz
was again operating its timetable.

On that second occasion, none of the Tans was about. I returned in the evening. With the resourcefulness of their race, all had got jobs of some kind, leaving the smallest children to be looked after by an old lady in the bungalow. They had an income; they were on their way up again. But they had received no letter from Medan.

Ten days passed. I did not know what to fear or what to hope. I spent some while on guard duties in the abysmal Nee Soon camp, which was either intolerably full, with five thousand men passing through it and all facilities overstrained, or it was almost empty and those unfortunates remaining were tied to duties of various unpleasant kinds.

Meanwhile, 26 Indian Division had been dissolved. Our Indians had all been shipped back to India. There had been no passing-out parade. A post-war lassitude had set in. Over all was that gloomy feeling that the Sumatra operation had been a disaster, reflecting no credit on men or officers, to be forgotten as swiftly as possible.

No posting came through for me, for which I was relieved. There were rumours, those eternal army rumours, that I might be posted to Shanghai – rumours which in ordinary times would have delighted me.

The days went by. Something was wrong; otherwise, why had Mandy not appeared, or at least sent word? The
Van Heutz
laboured into harbour once more after having made her rounds. I was there to meet her, but no familiar figure disembarked. I went back to the Tans' place in the evening.

Of course Mandy had not arrived. But there was a letter for me.

She wrote quite briefly. The ship had been delayed. Then Ginny became more ill and had to go back to hospital. The cancer had spread and she had died there. Ginny sent me God's blessing.

It was impossible for Mandy to leave, at least for a while. She had transferred her booking to the sailing on October 10th. ‘Then I give myself to you. Please be there for me. Poor Jean weeps.'

It was a Tuesday evening when I read this letter. I took it away and wept. On the Thursday morning my posting came up. I was to leave for Hong Kong on the following day, when a lorry would collect me at 0600 hours.

I never saw Mandy again. Circumstances had come between us, and the great grinding machine of the world. I wrote to Mandy from Hong Kong and eventually received a letter back. It was very terse, from grief or because, not understanding the workings of the army, she felt betrayed. She had arrived in Singapore, but there was nothing for her in the city, and she was going to return to Medan. ‘I did not visit Happy World without you.'

Something happened to me. I had kissed the joy as it flies. But whether to be glad or sorry that it had escaped me I knew not, and not knowing was part of the torment I then underwent. After the war, I imagine, many men and women must have suffered a loss of wartime love, the most painful kind of affection, which pits its spark against annihilation's waste.

How my gentle girl fared under the Indonesian Republic without her protective sister, I never discovered.

In Hong Kong, that luxurious commercial capital of the flesh, I fell into a debauched way of life. Every temptation was there, and I applied myself to it. The flesh tried to drown out the soul.

More than once, staggering from one knocking shop or another,
in Hong Kong or Macao, the vision of Corporal Jones would rise before me, as he coughed his unused life out in the Medan gutter. At least he had not had to face an existence after the high tide of it had fallen away.

By this time I was an old man of twenty-one. The two campaigns of Burma and Sumatra had been more than enough. After either, I should by rights have been drafted home. But the army in the Far East did not work that way, preferring to drain the young life out of its soldiery. In Hong Kong I fell into the same stained, cynical way of thought that had afflicted the men of 2 Div when I joined them as a pale reinforcement at Milestone 81. Such was the price to pay for being a cog of Empire – an empire which was even then disintegrating, just as I felt myself to be. The sacrifice of years was for little, for nothing. Burma went back to the Burmese. Sumatra went back to the Indonesians. Glory was not to be had. Such disillusion was inevitable in the tide of history, that notorious disrespecter of persons.

Clement shaved in mild good humour. He had no objection to the start of another day. Sheila was still dozing in bed. Peering through the bathroom window at Friday, he saw every sign that sunshine would prevail again. The smell of coffee floated to him from downstairs. He mingled with it the tang of his salvia after-shave lotion.

How blessed, he thought, was domesticity.

Michelin was laying out a few breakfast things when he arrived downstairs. It happened that as he entered the dining room in his slippers, the French woman was reaching across the table, in such a way that he was presented with the long inviting line of her trunk, buttocks, and left leg – all veiled in blouse, skirt, and tights, but pleasing nevertheless. Of course, Michelin was sexless; Clement and Sheila had established that long ago, otherwise there would have been nothing of the stability the three of them enjoyed together.

They had given Michelin a lift while driving about France on holiday in the mid-seventies. She had helped them to find a particularly well-hidden hotel in the Gorges du Tarn, and they had christened her ‘Michelin' then, on the flimsy basis that her name was Michelle. Somehow, the joke had stuck. So had Michelin. She was then a delicate little woman in her early thirties, hoping to get to England to teach. The Winters, still suffering from the loss of their child, had virtually adopted her. She came back to England with them, and stayed.

Michelin was now a sturdy woman in her mid-forties, with a regular teaching job at St Emma's just up the road. She acted as a kind of unofficial housekeeper to the Winters in exchange for free board and lodging. She enjoyed a wide circle of acquaintances in Oxford, many of them French.

Within the close confines of Chalfont Road, where the Winters then lived, Clement had entertained luxurious thoughts concerning the young woman they had picked up. On a sunny autumn afternoon when Sheila was away, he had made what for him was a determined attempt to seduce her, after cornering her in the little room he used as a study.

‘I like you very well, Clem,' Michelin said, pushing him away. He still remembered her words. ‘But my soul is in China.'

He had not understood her meaning. Had she translated an obscure French saying, meaning she was sexless, or a lesbian? He found somewhere that the phrase might imply that she was mad; but Michelin was clearly sane. In any case, the ambiguity served as a barrier between them. With time, Clement and Sheila persuaded themselves that their companion, who never once showed any interest in the opposite sex, was without the normal passions which bedevil humanity.

Clement had several theories as to why Michelin had no sex life, but all had been run through and exhausted long ago. He exchanged a few pleasantries with her and lapsed into his chair with the
Independent
, thinking about adultery and the prestige in which it was still held.

Possibly he had dreamed of Tristan and Isolde. Had he in some way been Tristan, in a gold tunic? After Sheila left for the States and before he followed her there, he had gone with friends to see a performance of Wagner's opera, with its music reinforcing the hopeless passion of the lovers. Although the origins of the legend were obscure, he understood well that it represented the triumph of passionate love over conventional morality. In his student days, he had written a paper on it,
Irresponsibility in the Tristan Legend
.

His brother's love for the Chinese woman, Mandy, had tragic
elements. Although neither of them had died on stage, as it were, it was possible that Joseph had sealed Mandy's fate by leaving her in Sumatra. In Wagner's opera, the passion between the couple was represented as a transcendent value, necessitating the deaths of both parties. The passion between Joseph and Mandy had not been strong enough either to overcome all obstacles or to bring about their deaths directly. Life had brought compromises which were not the province of Art. And yet, Clement knew, his brother always considered himself marked by this youthful affair.

Of course life tried to imitate art. What else was there to imitate? Two rival artistic stereotypes held sway over his colleagues and friends, causing much confusion in their lives. On the one hand lay the old Sentimental view of the happy family, with wife and home as the centre of the world; on the other was the Romantic ideal of love – or at least sex – conquering all. Many of Clement's patients subscribed to both as and when it suited them. The torment of these two conflicting theories was reflected in the popular arts.

Even in Sheila's fantasy world of Kerinth, both rival theories flourished, with no attempt made to adjudicate between them. In
The Heart of Kerinth
, the lovely Queen Gyronee had laid down her life for her thankless children, whereas, in
Kerinth Endures
, the noble barbarian Thek died a Tristan-like death for love of the Princess Zimner, who was married to the ruthless Marlat of Cyn, the Dark Planet. He could write a paper on
Confused Moral Attitudes in the Kerinth Novels
for who, except for a few injudicious fans, knew those novels better than he? – apart from the certainty that it would destroy his marriage.

One trouble with Joseph, Clement thought, was that he had been dogged throughout his Sumatra affair by a sense of shame, a false sense inculcated by their parents and the hypocrisies of that generation to which in fact the war would give the kibosh. Had Joseph been able to relish his conquest of the Chinese lady fully and completely, perhaps even to boast of it in the sergeants' mess, instead of keeping it as an uneasy secret, then perhaps he might have been bolder in general and won the lady … if, indeed, that was what he really
wanted. It seemed to Clement that Joseph fully realized there would have been no place for his and Mandy's union in the forties. By the eighties, such colour prejudice had worn a little thin. Air travel had brought miscegenation into every home.

He could give his brother's story to Sheila, to turn into a suitable Kerinthian fiction. And of course he could use its outline in his thesis on adaptability.

But what to do regarding Sheila's performance as Isolde? That was the question. Clement thought he saw this morning, as he munched a piece of toast, that that Hispanic fellow in Boston had been merely an interlude, a
boffe de politesse
– her coupling with that phantom lover, Fame. Boston, to all intents and purposes, was now as far distant as Joseph's Sumatra. He should be as complacent as Mandy's husband Wang had been. Clement was prepared to forgive the action; it was the words at which he stumbled. ‘
I'm enjoying it too much to stop
…'

As he was finishing his breakfast, Sheila came down to breakfast in a paisley blouse and a long cream linen skirt. Smiling, she waved the mail which Michelin had left for her on the hall stand.

‘Another lovely day,' she said, kissing his forehead. ‘Have you had a swim?' He was momentarily enveloped in her perfume.

‘Couldn't be bothered. Got to see the Bursar about the heating in my room at ten.' He put only a minimal grumpiness into his voice.

She ignored his remark, sat down at her end of the little table, and prepared her bowl of All-Bran and Alpen with milk and sugar, topping it up with a sliced banana and cream. As she ate, she put on her reading glasses and commenced opening her mail.

Opening mail was a serious business for Sheila. Clement immersed himself in the pages of the
Independent
.

Sheila's post contained bills, which she set carefully aside, several periodicals, and a number of notes and letters from her public, her fans, all excited and begging for autographs, photographs, or locks of hair. All the fan letters were full of praise for the Kerinth romances. Sheila made a pile of them, handing them over without comment for her husband to read. This morning, she received as well a letter
from her London publishers, Barrage Sims, containing copies of reviews from English newspapers and magazines of her new novel
War Lord of Kerinth
, in its English edition. All the reviews were disappointing, as Clement could judge from Sheila's pained cries as she read: ‘Oh, no!', ‘That's wrong, for a start!', and ‘You bastard!'

The review from the
Guardian
was insulting, brief, and righteous.

‘They hate me!' she cried, screwing it up in her fist.

‘They don't understand,' Clement said.

‘They just can't see …'

She sipped at her coffee, freshly made and topped with cream.

Removing her spectacles, she said, without particularly looking anywhere, unless it was at the cornice, ‘Why do I bother to ensure that my English editions come out first? Why struggle, out of some misguided idea of patriotism? What do the bloody British care? Why do I insist that Barrage send out review copies, simply for these bastards to piss on? I'm just not appreciated in this country. The Germans like me, the Americans love me. In future, I shall sell all rights to Swain, and Barrage can jolly well negotiate English rights from them. To hell with them. Bastards.'

Her lips closed in a firm line, revealing the determination that had made Green Mouth the commercial success she was. Clement had put down his newspaper, so that she was able to look him in the eye.

‘It's not Barrage Sims's fault,' he said. ‘They've done their best for you. Just the typical English lack of enthusiasm. We still have the genius – as you prove – but the Americans have the enthusiasm.'

‘It's class, that's what it is. Just because I write genre novels.'

In alarm only partly assumed, he said, ‘You don't want to go and live in the States, do you?'

She laughed. ‘That depends on the tax situation if they make the movie. New York would be fun.'

He did not reply. Leaning back, she took the telephone off the dresser and dialled Barrage Sims, asking to speak to her editor, Maggie Mower. Clement retreated into his paper while Sheila talked. When
she put down the receiver, she said, ‘Whatever the reviews, the sales figures aren't bad. Their first printing was fifty thousand, and eighty per cent are sold already. That's not counting book club sales. So someone loves me.'

‘According to government claims, the unemployment figures have fallen below the three million mark for the first time in four years.'

She looked at Clement with scorn, resenting this irrelevance.

‘Yes, well, bugger the government and bugger the unemployed.'

He saw that he was dismissed, wiped his mouth on his napkin, and rose. ‘Me for the Bursar.'

‘See you,' she said, looking up and giving him one of her best smiles.

 

Fabian Bush, the Bursar of Carisbrooke, was renowned for his economies. In the long-standing grievance of the chilliness of Clement Winter's rooms he had so far managed not to budge an inch, while appearing anxious to please. Clement knew before he embarked on the subject this morning that he was going to get nowhere. Even to him, there was something unreal about discussing the sub-zero temperatures of a room at present immoderately hot and stuffy. They stood in the Bursar's crowded office, pushing back and forth a conversation about the expense of running additional copper piping under twenty feet of parquet flooring, until Clement gave up, knowing full well that if he ventured on the subject during the winter months, when the sub-zero temperatures could actually be sampled, Fabian Bush would claim, with some justice, December to be no time for fetching up floors and draining hot tanks.

Clement worked the rest of the morning and, in his lunch break, phoned his sister Ellen in Salisbury. Perhaps Salisbury had been in her stars at birth. Destiny, Clement felt, had fitted her for the blander parts of fortune. Ellen was now fifty-six, seven years Clement's senior, and still slightly unapproachable. As a child, she had always been closer to Joseph; he remembered numerous occasions on which they had run off together and left him to play forlornly by himself. ‘Just you behave,' as a farewell with a wagged finger, had made the partings
hard to bear. Now she was a not unprepossessing, rather sharp-tongued woman in the middle age for which nature had fashioned her, living, as far as Clement and Sheila could tell, alone.

Ellen, somewhat late in her day, had married Alwyn Pickering, a man who had made bank manager before forty. They had immediately had a daughter, Jean, born in 1962, over whom Ellen and Alwyn had made an immense fuss (satirized later in Sheila's
Child of Kerinth
), only to see her – as Ellen had once put it in an extra distraught moment – go to the dogs. Perhaps to pacify her parents, Jean, by no means bereft of a sense of humour, had married the chief dog in 1981. The marriage had come apart three years later, and now she worked in Salisbury, supervising social workers. Her mother's marriage had come apart over the same period. Alwyn had taken to staying away from home for longer and longer periods until finally, Clement had heard, Ellen had requested him not to return. There had been no row, only a financial arrangement to her disadvantage.

‘You got the letters safely then,' she said, when Clement phoned. ‘I never know what the post office is up to these days.'

‘Yes, I like those letters very much. It's really about Joseph's writings I'm phoning.'

‘I suspected you might be.' She added nothing to the brief sentence. He could visualize her standing watchful by her phone in that room with the patio doors overlooking the garden full of crazy paving and the odd concrete statue.

‘How are you?'

‘Not bad. Just been taking the dog for a walk. Is Sheila with you or in Kerinth?'

‘We're both in Rawlinson Road, Ellen. Joseph's letters to you showed the brighter side of his India-Burma experience. I'm sure that was deliberate. You were quite a little girl at the time.'

‘I was fourteen.'

‘Yes. Well, I think he naturally wanted to shield you from the harsher experiences. For instance, I know he suffered badly from dysentery, which he doesn't mention. Later, in Burma proper, he
hardly mentions the fighting. I wondered if you thought he was always like that, putting the brighter aspect of things forward.'