The Silk Merchant's Daughter (11 page)

She turned away, sickened.

‘Seen enough?’ Trần whispered, reaching out to her.

She closed her eyes for a moment and lifted a hand to wave him away. ‘Let’s get out of here.’

He led her back along the corridor, through the opium-infused room and out on to the street again where she gasped for air.

‘This is just one of many brothels. There are thousands of people engaged in prostitution. The least salubrious are in Meteorological Street.’

She turned in shock. Worse than this? How could anything be worse? The day had started so well; she had decided to leave the
past behind, and for the first time in ages she’d felt hopeful again. Now her nerves were frayed, and she felt angry at the shameful duplicity of the French and their exploitation of the girls.

‘There are hundreds of gambling dens too.’ He helped her straighten up. ‘Are you all right?’

She nodded and concentrated on calming herself down. When she could speak again she said, ‘The gambling seems less awful.’

‘Except the Vietnamese are great gamblers. From wretched debt there are many suicides. This is what we wish to change.’

‘I thought you just wanted to get the French out.’

‘That’s only the start. We need to re-educate the Vietnamese people too.’ He paused for a moment. ‘Come, let’s get away from here.’

As they walked, the smell of opium still seemed to cling to her clothes and she felt dirtier than she’d ever been. ‘Why did you show me this?’

‘To help you understand we are not bad people, but working for the common good.’

‘But against the French.’

‘How can it be any other way? We want to raise our people up, not keep them squashed by poverty. We want to give them hope for the future. We want to control what is ours. Do you not see?’

Chastened by the experience, she nodded.

As they left the streets behind Nicole thought of the river in Huế. She used to see the boats and watch the poor cooking rice in clay pots as they paddled along. Had they been happy with their simple lives? What if the reality was different? What if all along they had been struggling and miserable?

‘You need me to get your thoughts in order,’ Trần said with eagerness. ‘Like I said, the French encourage the use of opium but only so long as it is government opium.’

‘That can’t be true!’

‘I’m afraid it is. The French seized control of cultivation, manufacture and the trade itself. Now it is being smuggled across from China too, and they don’t appreciate losing out to a bunch of black-marketeers.’

‘Was that why your brother was killed?’

He shrugged.

Nicole hurried back to the comforts of home, thinking about what she’d seen. Had Trần sensed the discontent in her and decided she might be ripe for conversion? Perhaps he’d spotted that her relationship with her family had come loose. Well, he was wrong. Despite her Vietnamese looks, her mother was dead and her father had always maintained the illusion of a predominantly French family. The Vietnamese blood in her family had been buried for too long.

The heavy rains and high winds were increasingly dreary and Nicole couldn’t wait for September and October when Hanoi’s dry season would return with its clear, cool days. That was Nicole’s favourite time of year and, at the beginning of September, the show would finally open. Now, during a break in rehearsals, she sat down in her dressing room to try to deal with the uproar going on in her mind. She ached for those girls but felt angry with herself for having gone with Trần; no matter how much she wished, she could not see a way to make things better.

She came to the conclusion that Trần’s brother must have been shot because of smuggling opium. It didn’t make the shooting right, but at least it was a reason. If opium was government controlled, he shouldn’t have broken the law, though she couldn’t rid herself of the thought that any opium trade was wrong. Legal or illegal.

She decided to put it to the back of her mind. She couldn’t let herself be overwhelmed and wouldn’t let him persuade her again. What use would it be if he opened her eyes still further? She’d wandered too far away already.

A knock at the changing-room door startled her and she heard Jerry call her name. She hadn’t been singing well so came out of the changing room expecting a dressing-down.

‘Are you all right?’ he said.

‘A bit tired. Sorry I’m not up to scratch today.’

‘We all have off-days. Don’t worry. The thing is, Simone has
been taken ill. With less than a month until we open I need a replacement.’

She stared at him blankly.

‘So?’ he said. ‘Do you think you can do it?’

She felt a wild surge of excitement as she realized he was asking her to take on the main role.

‘Can you learn the songs quickly enough?’

She felt herself blush with pleasure. ‘I know them.’

‘It’s settled then.’

She grinned. ‘When do I start?’

‘Right now. We’ll carry on with Act Two.’

She hesitated. ‘What about a script?’

He raised his brows. ‘I thought you knew the songs?’

‘For the lines and cues.’

‘Very well, but you’ll need to be word perfect quickly.’

Nicole nodded and made her way to the stage.

The musical was French, written by a French-Vietnamese, and was about a Frenchman who falls in love with a Vietnamese girl. Though Nicole’s father had married a Vietnamese woman, such intermarriage had become far less common than it had once been, and so the musical had never been performed. Jerry had thought it worth reviving.

Nicole thought about Mark and wished she could tell him her news. He knew nothing of the difficult times she and Sylvie had shared: the tensions, the arguments, the rivalry. Nor could he know that he’d become a trophy that Sylvie had somehow won. As for the murder, she was beginning to believe his innocence. Her anxiety had faded and seeing things more clearly had meant she could sleep again. Mark had not been complicit; he had only been there as a witness – an unwilling witness. That was all. As for Sylvie? Her sister had already taken up far too much space in her mind.

She was walking past the Hollywood dance hall one beautiful Sunday afternoon when the music coming from inside forced her to stop and listen. In an attempt to get on with her life she had taken to walking on Sundays when it wasn’t raining, sometimes meeting friends, sometimes on her own. Today she walked alone, with her back straight and her shoulders stiff with tension. She glanced at the enormous glass doors, thrown open for air – inside it was blue with smoke – and watched the people going in and out. She was wearing her favourite black dress, cotton, with a full skirt and rounded neck, and would have liked to have gone in to lose herself in the fug. She had even considered the new gamine haircut, now coming into fashion, anything to make her feel like a different person, but she couldn’t make the leap. Instead she’d coiled her thick dark hair at the back of her neck.

How long she had been standing there when Mark appeared in the distance, she didn’t know. It was all too easy to lose track of time when you felt a bit lost inside yourself. In a state of anxious expectancy she stiffened, then glanced up as a group of birds wheeled across the sky. She had to create the impression she didn’t care about him, but couldn’t admit how much she needed to prove it to herself.

She heard him call her name.

‘Hello, Mark,’ she said, twisting back and trying for a light-hearted tone.

‘What are you doing here?’

‘Passing by.’ She smiled and made a fist behind her back, digging her nails into the fleshy part of her hand.

He leant against the wall. ‘You’re looking very pretty.’

‘Am I?’

He wore a dark blue suit that made his eyes seem even brighter, but there was something different about him, something vulnerable that touched her deeply. His eyes looked
tired with dark shadows beneath them and she wanted to reach out and comfort him.

‘I’ve missed you,’ he said and smiled.

Nicole raised her brows. ‘That isn’t my fault. Has Sylvie still not told you why you haven’t seen me?’

‘Told me what?’

She hesitated. It entered her mind that she could just come out with it; tell him she’d seen him kiss Sylvie. Pride stopped her and, though his eyes seemed to be full of questions, she couldn’t allow herself to be drawn back to that night. ‘It doesn’t matter … I have the main part in the show now. Simone has been taken ill.’

‘I knew you had talent,’ he said and smiled warmly.

‘Would you come? To the opening performance, I mean.’

She had blurted it out without thinking and stared into his bright blue eyes trying to halt the redness she could feel starting to burn her cheeks. Neither of them spoke but stood completely still, gazing at each other. She saw a flicker of something and felt sure his feelings for her were reflected in his eyes. It seemed as if there was something he wanted to say. She felt tears warm the back of her lids and longed to touch him, but forced herself to remain where she was.

‘Would you like to go for a drink?’ he said finally.

She didn’t reply and the silence grew uncomfortable.

‘So?’ He held out his hand but she didn’t take it.

He was still staring at her, expecting a response. She forced a smile and he took it as acquiescence.

He walked with his hands in his trouser pockets, so close that she bumped against him from time to time. He kicked an empty cigarette packet to the kerb and she longed desperately to feel him close again, but also felt driven to edge away.

‘Isn’t Hanoi wonderful now?’ he was saying. ‘I thought that heat would never end.’

‘Don’t be taken in. It’s not over yet.’

They reached a bar with tables set outside on the pavement. ‘Will this do?’

She nodded and he pulled out a chair for her. ‘I’ll have white wine,’ she said.

He went inside and a few minutes later came out with a glass of wine for her and a beer for himself, then lit a cigarette and blew the smoke upwards.

‘I’d love to come to the show. Maybe it would be nice if your father and Sylvie came too.’

She stole a look at his eyes. ‘Why?’

‘Don’t you want them to see how good you are?’

She shrugged. She wanted to be normal with him, the way they had been before, but what she had seen had changed everything. No matter what he said now, the damage was done and they were awkward with each other. Moreover, now that he seemed so ill at ease, she wondered if his previous nonchalance had been assumed. She hated not being able to read him clearly any more. She too felt artificial, as if she was playing the part of Nicole and not being her.

‘What happened, Nicole? Between us?’

She could hardly believe her ears as he continued to gaze at her, a vein pulsing in his temple, his eyes seeming so clear and honest.

‘You’re seeing Sylvie,’ she eventually managed to say, her voice sounding strained.

He frowned. ‘Of course. Now and then. Perhaps she never told you that we dated when she was in the States?’

‘Perhaps
you
never told me.’

‘It was just a few times, nothing serious, and then, when she was ill, I helped her out.’

‘Ill? Sylvie was ill? She never said.’

‘It was a long time ago. My business with your sister now is silk.’

‘I know that’s not all it is.’ She lowered her voice and was going to tell him about seeing him kiss Sylvie but at the last moment changed her mind. The curtain that had come down between them meant that she couldn’t. Just couldn’t. It would make her sound so young and childish.

He frowned and reached out for her, taking her hand in his and turning it palm upwards, then tracing the lines with his fingertips. He looked terribly miserable and she wanted to take his face in her hands and kiss away the sadness. But even though his touch electrified her, she pulled her hand back.

‘I know about the work you’re doing to fund a third army.’

‘She told you?’

Nicole nodded and drank her wine in one gulp. ‘So you’re in intelligence?’

He frowned and said nothing, the two lines between his brows deepening. A delicious fragrance of roses came from a woman passer-by. The scent reminded Nicole of the ball and she felt herself empty of everything but pain. For a moment she felt glued to her chair but she couldn’t stand the torment of being so close to him any more and eventually forced herself up.

‘Well, I have to go. Nice to see you, Mark,’ she said, and with her mind in turmoil she fled.

Just round the corner she leant against a wall and allowed herself to breathe more freely. She closed her eyes, annoyed with herself for still caring so much. But why was he making out he wasn’t seeing Sylvie? An intelligence officer would be well trained in deception and she didn’t know what to believe. A memory of her sister as a child came back and the tears Nicole had been holding in welled up. They’d been in the garden. Sylvie was showing a friend the latest photos she’d stuck into the family album, while Nicole was on the swing singing to herself.

Apart from the cloud of insects buzzing around flowering bushes and ripe peach trees, it had been quiet. On the opposite side of the Perfume River, Vietnamese children were flying kites, their paper dragons and painted fish soaring above the haze. It was January, dry and pleasant, and cake-baking day in the Duval house, so Lisa had been busy and they had been left to their own devices. A large-billed crow had stirred the air as it landed near the swing, slapping its wings against Nicole’s leg. She’d swiped at it, then watched as it screeched –
caa-haa-caa
– and rose to the highest branch of the pipal tree to stand guard with another shiny crow. It had been the most perfect day.

‘You look lovely, but have you seen Nicole?’ Sylvie’s friend had said, laughing loudly as she pointed at a page in the album. ‘She looks so ugly.’

Sylvie had laughed too and had then turned to Nicole. ‘You don’t photograph at all well, do you, Nicole?’

Nicole had jumped off the swing and come to look. She cringed when she saw the worst photo Sylvie could have picked. The dress was a hand-me-down, her hair looked as if it needed washing and she had the most awful toothy grin on her face. Sylvie, meanwhile, looked perfect.

‘Why did you put that one in? Weren’t there any better ones?’

Sylvie shrugged. ‘I didn’t think you’d care. You don’t usually care what you look like.’

Afterwards Nicole had felt so hurt and angry she hadn’t known how to deal with it. The truth was she’d always felt as if there was some invisible line she would always fall short of. She desperately cared about how she looked and constantly worried about how other people saw her. So she had sneaked into Sylvie’s room and taken her sister’s favourite doll. Then she’d cut off all the doll’s hair and drowned her in the Perfume River.