The Silk Merchant's Daughter (14 page)

As autumn got under way, the streets of Hanoi were carpeted with red eagle tree leaves and before long it was the opening night of the show. Astonished that her life could carry on in the way it did, Nicole thought of Yvette every day. Now, as she made up her face in the tiny dressing room, she also thought of Trần. She began to see her meeting with him as one of those milestones, when you sense everything is about to change; if you allow it to happen, you know you’ll never be able to go back. Rather like the night her father had shot Trần’s brother and the certainties of her French life became blurred. One thing was clear: whichever side she chose, it would mean losing the other. If she turned her back on her family she’d lose them, and Lisa too. But she couldn’t help feeling drawn by the awakening of her Vietnamese side. She had been so touched by Trần’s hope for a better future. He’d spoken passionately, but also rationally, and now she had no choice but to question her own allegiances. What if he was right and it had been the French who were responsible for Yvette’s death? She shook her head, suspecting the truth would never be known.

Trần had asked to come to the show, but with both Mark and her father likely to be present, she’d managed to dissuade him.

As she put the finishing touches to her make-up as a woman of ill repute, she sniffed the air. Greasepaint! It was something she couldn’t explain, but from the moment she’d first held the little Leichner Grease Sticks wrapped in gold foil, her heart had flown. She sighed, slipped into her costume and went to
wait in the wings. Her character didn’t appear until halfway through the first act, so she was able to peer through a slit in the curtain and watch the audience. Her character was not considered a good woman, but she had a heart of gold; Nicole loved the liberation of being somebody else, if only for an hour or two, especially when she so often felt uncomfortable being herself.

At first she couldn’t see them, but as her eyes grew accustomed to the darkness of the auditorium, she made out her father sitting in the third row. She glanced to his left and caught sight of Sylvie sitting with a blond French soldier on her left and Mark on her right. As she watched Sylvie lean towards Mark, Nicole’s eyes began to smart. But she held her nerve. Nothing could be allowed to ruin her one chance to excel and, even though she had seriously considered Trần’s proposal, impressing Mark and her father still mattered to her.

The chords of her first number began. She stepped out into the bright lights and began to sing. As she gave herself to the song, the world stopped turning. Aware of her voice soaring as it filled the entire auditorium, it was as close to joy as she had ever been. There was the music and nothing else, and the elation felt like a huge relief. At the end of prolonged applause, one glance at her father revealed him beaming with pride. Then, shocked to see Trần standing right under a single wall light at the back of the hall, her heart gave a little jolt. He wouldn’t be safe.

After the interval she noticed Mark had left and only her father and Sylvie remained. It was too dark now to see whether Trần was still there at the back. She hoped he’d slipped away. The show progressed with a couple of lighting mishaps and a few prompts, but as first nights went, it was a great success.

Once it was over, Nicole removed most of her make-up, changed, then slipped into the small coffee bar where the
performers and their families and friends were congregating. Sylvie came across to her smiling broadly and clapping her hands, accompanied by the blond soldier.

‘
Chérie
, you were absolutely wonderful. I was so proud.’

‘Thank you.’

‘Of course, I always knew you could sing but you sounded like an angel. It was truly astonishing. By the way, this is André,’ she said, introducing the soldier.

Nicole raised her brows.

‘Just a friend,’ Sylvie whispered and gave her a wink.

Her father joined them. ‘Wonderful,’ he said before kissing her on both cheeks and ruffling her hair.

Nicole glanced about the place. ‘And Mark, what happened to him?’

Sylvie had been smiling the whole time, but now her expression changed a little. Was there a touch of nervousness in the way she kept scratching her neck and fiddling with her earrings?

‘He had a little bit of business to see to,’ Sylvie said.

Nicole couldn’t hide her disappointment or her worry. ‘Couldn’t it wait?’

‘It would seem not,’ Sylvie said, still looking uncomfortable. ‘But never mind. We are so delighted to see you come into your own, aren’t we, Papa?’

Their father nodded and linked an arm through Nicole’s. ‘You are my little star, but I’m afraid André and I must leave you for a moment. There is someone I need to speak to.’

Sylvie turned to Nicole. ‘By the way, I’m pleased with you. The accounts you sent over were good.’

Nicole nodded as she watched her father walk across the room.

He hadn’t said much but at least he had come. She remembered when she’d been chosen to sing a solo at the Christmas
festival at school and Sylvie had taken ill. Her father hadn’t been able to come and Nicole couldn’t shake off the feeling that Sylvie had pretended to be ill to prevent him from attending.

She watched him stop and clap another man on the back. Giraud. The policeman looked over and smiled at Nicole as if they were conspirators.

‘What’s he doing here?’ she asked Sylvie.

‘I have no idea. Probably came to see the show. You were divine. I’m so proud of you. But you mustn’t let it go to your head.’

‘Thank you, I think.’

‘By the way, I hope that little problem over Mark has passed.’ Sylvie scrutinized Nicole’s face. ‘It has passed, hasn’t it? Because I never meant to hurt you and now … well, he’s away a lot but let’s just say I’m very happy.’

Nicole felt tense but concealed it behind a fixed smile. She might feel as if she was coming apart at the seams but she had enough dignity to want to conceal it.

‘So you’ll come back in the car with us?’ Sylvie was asking.

Only when Sylvie turned away could Nicole give in to the horrible fear inside her. Even if Mark and Sylvie were together, she still cared about him. But she had no way of knowing if Mark’s ‘bit of business’ had actually been something to do with Trần, and worse, she had no way of knowing if either of them was safe.

Nicole moved into the apartment above the shop, hoping that away from her family she might feel more settled. She still couldn’t get Mark out of her mind and the days she hadn’t spoken to him felt like weeks, and the weeks felt like years. She wasn’t ready to join Trần, but she was intrigued by him, and worried for his safety. Her sadness over Yvette’s death hadn’t dulled, but she busied herself with selling and, as the aroma of beef pho and shrimp noodles drifted through the open windows, she could feel herself becoming more truly Vietnamese with each passing week. It made her feel different. Not better. Not worse. But as if the French shell that had been enclosing her had now begun to crack.

She made it her business to order even more colourful silks than before, but as her customers grew fewer she took refuge in reading everything she could lay her hands on. By night she performed in the show, but when it came to the end of its run, she learnt that because of increased tension in Hanoi people were staying home and there was not to be another. Few spoke of their fear, but Nicole knew some people were already planning to leave for Paris or Saigon. She ignored the possible risks and spent her evenings making silk lampshades and mobiles of butterflies and birds; the soft feel of the silk in her hands comforted her.

She constantly turned over everything Trần had said. He was idealistic and believed in the Vietminh cause, and she had begun to think that he might be right. But the truth was nobody knew how it would turn out for sure. Perhaps
the French would hold on to Indochina after all, perhaps they would not. They certainly wouldn’t give up without a fight. She went over the night of the show in her mind and the way Mark had disappeared so suddenly; and she worried constantly that something dreadful had happened between the two men.

In the following weeks, living away from her family, Nicole often felt lonely. She had too much time to think, and spent endless hours roaming around the city when the shop was closed and wondering how to view things. How to choose. These had been the questions of her life: she still had no answers.

But as she began to really know the city, she understood how much the city planners had intended to keep the French and Vietnamese sectors separate. Right from the start they had demolished ancient buildings and temples to make way for their new city. Now wide streets dominated in the French areas, with spacious villas and grand government buildings, while in the Vietnamese area, even where the French had rebuilt, they’d retained the narrow tube-like buildings and merely added a French-style facade.

While dodging the bicycles in the ancient quarter, Nicole thought she spotted Trần one day. With a feeling of trepidation she followed him, got lost, and found herself at the entrance to a market she’d forgotten about. Feeling hungry, she poked her head round the open gates hoping there might be somewhere to grab a doughnut and maybe a condensed milk coffee. It was dimly lit and from the initial smell – there had been chilli peppers laid out at the entrance – she thought it might be a spice market.

She ploughed on, but beyond a curtain of dried figs, a strong smell of fish hit the back of her throat. She’d made a mistake. She hated the smell of fish. It clogged up her throat and
prevented her from swallowing. Thinking there might be an exit at the other end, she carried on past a queue of women waiting to choose from grotesque live fish still swimming in buckets. She quickened her step but worse was to come and her skin crawled as she passed a stall where flies swarmed around fish laid out on ice.

The rest of the market was mostly devoted to vegetables and fruit, although there was another section where pigs’ feet, frogs and snakes seemed to be lumped together. Once she reached the end she found the exit was padlocked, so had to retrace her steps. Eventually she found the way back to her shop but by then she was drenched in sweat, the smell of fish clinging to her hair and to her clothes. She undressed and ran through to the little bathroom where she washed every part of herself.

Fish reminded her of the river in Huế. Some memories of Huế were intensely happy, especially the ones involving Lisa. But along with the strong smell of fish, something else nagged at her, something much older, something insistent. She heard Sylvie’s voice in her head and frowned with the effort of trying to remember.

‘Go on. You first, then me,’ her sister had said.

She remembered Sylvie laughing and laughing, and she remembered the water. It had seemed so big, so endless.

And then she had woken up in hospital. She heard Lisa’s voice and the mechanical noise of the trolley clicking, the sound going on and on until she wanted to scream.

She brought herself back to the present with a jolt, but her hands were still shaking at the fragmented memory. She could remember little of that day now but did recall the following weeks, when the sun had been so bright on the water it hurt her eyes, and all the birds were pecking and flying and squabbling as if nothing had happened. It took weeks for her to go
near the water again, and ever since then she’d loathed the smell of fish.

Her thoughts moved on to how much everything had changed. When had she really stopped trusting? Had it happened over a series of days? Had she only ever seen what she wanted to see? Believed what had made her feel better? Truth could be bent, switched, altered to suit you, and she felt it had been.

What if there had been clues all along? Clues that would have alerted her to the fact that something bad was going to happen. There had been those boys bullying Yvette, and long before that there had been the move to Hanoi. Had her father been lying when he’d said it was all over for the Vietminh? Had he brought the family here knowing the dangers they might face? It had been bad enough after Trần’s brother was shot at the hotel – he would always be dead and there was nothing any of them could do about it – but since Yvette’s death, the cracks in Nicole’s world had grown even wider. She felt as if she was falling through one and before long might be lost for ever.

Every day she looked in the mirror and could see her face had changed. ‘Who are you?’ she said each time. ‘I don’t know you.’

The expression in her eyes had darkened, permanently it seemed. She no longer cared to look more like her sister, and only went home occasionally, mainly to see Lisa.

One morning they were having coffee in the smaller dining room at home, the one overlooking a little pavilion where a table and chairs sat beside the lily pond. Lisa and her father were there and only Sylvie was absent. The news on the radio the night before had spoken of escalating French losses in the north.

‘You have to leave Hanoi,’ Lisa said. ‘You must see.’

But Nicole’s father did not answer. At the sound of planes overhead she gazed up at the fluffy white clouds and cherubs flying round the central chandelier. How ridiculous they seemed at a time like this. Then she studied her father. Lisa was right. He should go back to France. Brows permanently furrowed, he didn’t look well, and the strain also showed in his pale, pinched face. Whoever won the war, it didn’t seem as if life would be settled enough for him as he grew older.

‘And you too, Nicole,’ Lisa added. ‘You’re so different. I hardly know you. I’ll come with you, if that helps, then I could go to my sister, Alice, in the Languedoc.’

But Nicole wanted to stay and shook her head. ‘Where is Sylvie?’ she asked.

Her father and Lisa exchanged anxious glances.

‘There’s no need for anyone to leave,’ her father said. ‘We will win as we have always done before. Have a little faith.’

‘What about the losses last night?’ Nicole asked.

‘There were losses but the extent of them was exaggerated, as usual.’

‘I thought I heard gunfire.’

‘The wind carries the sound,’ he said.

‘And Sylvie?’

‘Your sister has taken a little break on her own.’

‘Break? Why?’

He twisted his mouth to one side and scratched his chin. ‘She was a little under the weather.’

‘She’s unwell?’

‘She’s been a bit up and down, that’s all.’

‘She takes pills, I know that, though she wouldn’t really explain what they were for.’

‘She doesn’t take them now. They didn’t suit her constitution.’

‘But what is actually wrong with her?’

‘Your sister is more delicate than you realize, more delicate than I thought too. Now consider the matter closed. I promise you, there is no chance the Viets will win the war.’

But where Nicole had once believed him, now she did not. At least, not so much. And neither did Lisa.

‘You’re not well either, Papa. And don’t you see, Indochina is changed for ever?’

He was standing by the French windows and had turned his back to her. He didn’t say anything.

‘You know, many have already gone,’ she said. ‘Too disheartened to stay. Can’t you see?’

Finally he turned round and his face looked sad. ‘No, Nicole, I cannot and will not see. I have always loved Hanoi and I will not consider letting it go.’

And yet, no matter what he said, they all knew it had become a more dangerous place.

Lisa sat down and looked close to tears. Nicole crouched down beside her and tried to give comfort, murmuring that everything would be all right. Her father watched them for a moment with no expression on his face. Only when Lisa seemed to recover did Nicole get up and, not wanting to think about it any more, she and the cook went down to the kitchen together.

In the place Nicole had always felt happiest she gazed at the familiar white brick-shaped tiles and the row of copper pots hanging from an iron bar. While she had been waiting for Trần to come back she’d felt as if she had no roots. Not in the French world, nor in the Vietnamese world. Now all she wanted was to be certain of something, and being with Lisa usually made everything feel better, if only temporarily.

She sat herself at the table next to Lisa but still her old ally was looking unusually morose. There was a distinct feeling of something being wrong throughout the entire house. Even
the kitchen felt hotter than usual, and stuffy too. The blinds were only half up, and worse, there was no delicious smell of cooking.

‘What’s going on?’ Nicole asked. ‘Where’s Bettine? And why are the windows and door closed?’

‘I forgot to open them. And Bettine has gone.’ Lisa shrugged. ‘Not that I miss her, except for the extra work, that is. It’s impossible to find a replacement.’

‘Nothing’s quite right for me either.’

‘Well, you know the solution.’

‘Open the blooming windows and bake some Camembert?’

‘And we could make a cherry clafoutis. What do you say?’

As Lisa searched in the cupboards for the ingredients for the pudding, Nicole went to open the windows and the back door. The kitchen felt instantly cooler.

‘So what’s been happening?’ She raised her eyes to the upstairs. ‘Here, I mean.’

‘Your sister has been unsettled lately. Then last week she went to Huế with Mark.’ She pulled a face.

‘Don’t you like him?’

‘I like him. It’s not that. When she came back … well, let’s just say it’s clear that all is not well in paradise. I’m not saying I don’t feel sorry for her, but –’

‘Are you saying Mark doesn’t love her?’ Nicole couldn’t ignore the little flip her heart had made. ‘Do you think that’s why she’s gone away?’

‘Well, she has been a bit downhearted.’ Lisa paused. ‘Look, what do I know?’

‘You know more about what’s going on than anyone, Lisa. You always have done.’