Oriental Hotel (57 page)

Elise Sanderson indicated a sofa upholstered in deep, rich green.

‘Won't you sit down? Perhaps I can offer you some tea …?'

‘Yes, thank you. If you are sure it's not trouble.'

‘None. In any case, it is the least I can do when you have gone to so much trouble to return a locket.' There was a breathless quality in her voice, a youth that did not quite coincide with the maturity of her appearance.

She crossed to a bell-pull which was almost concealed behind the rich velvet curtains and jerked it smartly.

‘Please, do sit down,' she said again. ‘Then perhaps you will be so kind as to tell me how you came by my locket.'

He nodded. The sofa was as soft as its appearance promised, moulding to his long back, and as he sank into it Elise Sanderson sat down in a Chesterfield chair opposite him – legs crossed, hands folded, but still holding the locket so that she could look down at it. From the way she handled it, he was aware that it meant a great deal to her, but in spite of her cool demeanour he was also able to sense her shock and he tried to choose his words accordingly.

‘As I said, my grandfather is Charles Brittain,
tai-pan
of Cormorant, and he virtually brought me up. My father, William Brittain, was killed in a car accident when I was a small child and my mother and I lived in my grandfather's house at Shek-o.' He paused for a moment, remembering though not mentioning the rows and the strained atmosphere. Sylvia, his mother, had hated the steamy heat of Hong Kong and had wanted nothing but to go home to England and take him with her, but his grandfather had insisted on him staying. He was the only grandson, the only natural heir – now that William was dead – to the Cormorant empire. Zoe, his father's only sister, was a woman and women did not count in the scheme of things. ‘It was a large and lonely house for a boy,' he went on after a moment. ‘I spent a lot of time wandering about on my own, poking into cupboards and chests and inventing adventures to surround the things I found there. One day I found what seemed a real haul of treasure to me – the personal effects of my great-uncle, Gerald. And amongst them was this locket.'

Her lips moved and he had the impression she was trying to say something, though no words came. He had been right to assume they had been very close, he thought.

A tap at the door interrupted them and a plump, bustling woman with flushed cheeks appeared. Mrs Parsons had only just returned from the village when the bell had rung in the kitchen.

‘You rang, Mrs Sanderson, Ma'am?' she sounded vaguely surprised and perhaps a little offended.

‘Yes. Could we have some tea, please, Mrs Parsons?'

‘Bless you. Ma'am, yes! China or Indian?'

In spite of his preoccupation, Stuart smiled. He knew the type well – determined to show the world that she was more than a mere servant, more even than a housekeeper. Mrs Parsons, he imagined, would see herself as friend and confidante – mother figure, almost – to the mistress she served, and he understood now the offence in her voice when she first entered the study. It was not that she was annoyed at being summoned. It was that she felt she should have been given the opportunity to intercept any visitor just as she had intercepted him on the telephone last night – firmly demanding to know his business before she let him anywhere near her beloved Mrs Sanderson.

He became aware that Elise was addressing him.

‘China or Indian – do you have any preference?'

‘No. Either is fine.'

‘In that case we will have China – considering we both have connections with Hong Kong.' Elise Sanderson smiled faintly and he caught a glimpse of the way her unguarded face could light up.

The housekeeper withdrew and Elise opened her palm once more, looking down at the locket which she had concealed while the other woman had been in the room.

‘But how did you know it was mine?'

Her question surprised him. He knew of the evasiveness which had blocked all his interest, but she did not. If she had been close to his great-uncle, it would have been reasonable to suppose that she would be known to the family.

‘Did you know my grandfather?' he asked. And met that self-same blank evasiveness.

‘No.'

Disconcerted, he answered her original question.

‘I didn't know it was yours until the other day, when I saw a photograph of Katrina Fletcher in a London paper and read that she was the grand-daughter of the founder of Sandersons. She was so much like you that I knew you had to be related – the photograph in the locket
is
of you, isn't it?'

Elise snapped open the locket and looked at the miniature for a moment.

‘Yes, it's me. Hard to believe now, isn't it?'

‘No, not at all!'

Her amber eyes glinted through her lashes. ‘That is very kind of you, but quite untrue. It must have been taken when I was about seventeen.' She paused, looking closely at the miniature. ‘Katy is like me though, isn't she? It's strange – people have always told me she resembled me, and I couldn't see it. But when I look at this …'

A tap at the door announced the arrival of Mrs Parsons with the tea. When she had put down the tray and left again, Stuart said, ‘ I have to admit I have always been fascinated by my great-uncle. I know next to nothing about him, but he has always seemed a very romantic figure to me. In fact, I must admit to a selfish ulterior motive in coming here today. I was hoping you might be able to tell me something more about him – fill in my very sketchy knowledge.'

He saw her eyes narrow slightly as if she was uncertain whether he was serious in his request. Actually she was thinking how little she really knew about Brit – how little she had ever known – but he was not to know that.

‘I mean – he was a pilot in the Royal Air Force,' he continued, ‘and I know that after coming through the Battle of Britain with severe wounds and doing dangerous espionage work in China, his number came up on a stray bomb that landed on the beach at Repulse Bay.'

‘Yes.' Her lips curved slightly; behind the faraway expression was a hint of fiery intensity which seemed to electrify her cool demeanour and contradict the superficial veneer of sophistication.

‘You knew that of course?' he said.

‘Yes. I was there!'

That took him by surprise. ‘
You
were? But I thought all the women and children had been evacuated to Australia before the fall of Hong Kong.'

‘Many were. Your father was evacuated as a little boy; your great-uncle flew him out in the Cormorant company plane. But no, I didn't go. In fact, I had spent eight or nine months trying to get back to Hong Kong from Egypt, and it was thanks to your great-uncle that I eventually made it. I met him in Cairo just when I was at my wits' end and he arranged my passage. We travelled together.'

Stuart's lips formed a silent whistle of surprise.

‘That must have been a pretty dangerous voyage to make in wartime.'

‘It was. We were torpedoed, actually.'

‘Really?'

‘Yes, really.' The distant look had gone from her eyes momentarily; she was stating facts as if she was talking about someone else. ‘It wasn't much fun, but we survived it. People did, you know, in those days. Looking back, I sometimes wonder how. But at the time … When there is no alternative, you just carry on. And of course, Brit was absolutely the right person to be with.'

Brit. The nickname, unfamiliar to him, rolled off her tongue with such ease that he had no way of knowing it was almost forty years since she had spoken it aloud.

‘What was he like?' he asked after a moment. ‘I don't mean in appearance. Obviously, from the shock I gave you he must have looked something like me. But what son of person was he?'

Her lips curved; the faraway expression was back in her eyes.

‘What a question!'

‘You must have known him pretty well.'

‘Yes – but how to describe him? Strong, I suppose, strong-willed, doing his own thing without constantly looking for approval, not caring what people thought of him. A rebel, really – otherwise he would never have broken away from the ties of the family business – but a quiet rebel, a bit of a loner, with no time or inclination for socialising.'

‘It must have caused quite a stir when he left the Company,' Stuart said. ‘If his father was anything like my grandfather, the only thing of importance is Cormorant. Anything less than total loyalty is, in his own words, ‘‘ heinous crime.''.'

Elise Sanderson pushed aside her untouched tea-cup.

‘I didn't know him then, of course, but yes, I think it had caused quite a rift between him and his father. He had been determined to fly – it was all he really wanted to do. Then of course, after he was shot down his wounds put an end to an active RAF career.'

‘Do you think he would have gone back into the business if he had lived?'

‘I doubt it. The business incorporated everything he disliked most – but I doubt if he would have lasted in the RAF after the war either, even if he had been fit. Wartime flying was one thing, but I don't think he would have liked the discipline in time of peace. No, he was a …'

‘A bit of a black sheep?' Stuart suggested. ‘ That's the way I have always imagined him – I suppose it added to his attraction!'

‘To the establishment, I suppose he was,' she admitted. ‘Can I ask you something now? What else was amongst his things?'

‘Oh, his pilot's wings, a silver cigarette case, his Air Force Cross – you knew he won the AFC, did you?'

Her eyes widened. ‘No, I didn't know.'

‘He was awarded it posthumously for his work in China,' he said and watching her, he saw her face soften.

‘I'm so glad.' There was no surprise in her voice; only pride, as if she had always known he was a hero and was simply glad that others had recognised it; and clear unmistakable love, shining out across the years. ‘Oh Brit, what would you say if you knew? He was very irreverent about that sort of thing,' she added by way of explanation.

Somewhere in the house a grandfather clock chimed the hour.

‘And you say you were there when he was killed?' Stuart asked, anxious to bring the conversation back to the unknown part of the story, the part that fascinated him most.

For a moment she did not answer; in the stillness of the house he fancied he could hear the ticking of the clock that had struck. Then she drew in a long, ragged breath and he knew she was remembering.

‘It was during the invasion. Everything was total chaos. We had been sheltering in the Peninsula Hotel – I had my son and his amah with me, he was only five or six years old – and when the Gin Drinkers Line fell, the reservists came to tell us to get out while we could. I shall never forget the way Kowloon looked when we emerged. Everything seemed to be burning – there was a thick pall of smoke blotting out sun and light and air and the Chinese had gone mad. There were looters everywhere, glass smashing, people screaming and pushing and behaving like animals …' She hesitated, looking at him. ‘ You asked me just now what it was like to be torpedoed. Well, of the two experiences, if I had to relive either – which I pray I never do – I would take the torpedo without the slightest doubt. It was a terrible experience, but preferable to seeing a place you know and love disintegrate into a hell of slime, smoke, greed and death … And of course, having Alex there with me, knowing he was in danger, obviously made it that much worse.'

‘Alex?' Stuart said. He was surprised by the mention of a child.

‘My son, yes. As I say, we had been in the Peninsula for two days, waiting for Gordon – my husband. He had gone off with the reservists and promised to come back for us later. But he didn't and at that stage I had no idea whether he was alive or dead. I took Alex and Su Ming, his amah, to try to get across to Hong Kong Island, but the whole place was in utter chaos. And then, in the midst of this panic-stricken crowd, I saw Brit – your great-uncle.'

‘I see,' Stuart said. If the reference to a child had surprised him, he was even more startled to hear her mention Gordon, her husband. So she had been married to him then, before Brit (as she call him) was killed. It threw out all his preconceived ideas and made him wonder once more what their relationship had been. But she was continuing:

‘He got us across to Hong Kong Island – don't ask me how, but he had a way of making things happen. Then he took us to Repulse Bay and left us in the hotel there while he arranged for the Cormorant yacht to come and pick us up. It was to take us to the Philippines, the only place in that part of the world which we had a chance of reaching before it fell to the enemy. Pearl Harbor had been attacked the same night as Hong Kong, and Singapore was under heavy siege. It was our only hope, Brit said. But he refused to come with us. He was still a serving Royal Air Force officer and he said to accompany
us
would be construed as desertion. We were our in the bay when the Jap plane came. I saw the bomb fall …'

She broke off and he saw in her eyes the reflection of a pain that had remained undimmed down the years. I was right, he thought. Married or not, there was something between them that was more than an acquaintanceship, more than friendship, even – something that even now would not die …

‘I would never have expected the locket to have been found,' she said after a moment. ‘A bomb like that – how did they know it was his?'

The starkness of her pain was disconcerting.

‘He wasn't killed outright,' he said uncomfortably. ‘He must have seen the plane coming arid dived for cover.'

‘I see. I had always visualised …' Without her saying it, he knew what she had thought – that the man she loved had been blown to pieces before her eyes. ‘He's buried in Hong Kong, then?' she said softly.

‘Yes. In the War Cemetery at Chai Wan.'