Francis and Sutty watched as the Narkunda steamed into the port of Singapore. As always, when a ship arrived from England, there was a sense of excitement on shore that exceeded the anticipations of Christmas morning and the giddiness that resulted from betting on a winning horse at the races. It seemed as if all of British Singapore turned out to welcome the arrival of the ship and everything on it, including the passengers, the crew, and the long-awaited cargo. What if the newspaper headlines were more than a month old? The jams and the tinned puddings and the salted hams would be as fresh as the day they were packed. The young women would be spirited and beautiful, and the wives and soldiers returning from a visit home would be full of stories of family and friends. The break from the monotony of life in a colonial outpost and the drudgery of a strictly regulated military or commercial routine was more welcome than a cool bath at the end of the day and a gin and tonic before dinner at the club.
Francis, who clutched a small bouquet of flowers, had been beside himself for days. While he had been anticipating Annabelle’s arrival, at the same time he was dreading that she would be disappointed and would want to turn around and head straight back to England. Sutty had tried everything to keep him distracted from his own thoughts, including playing gin rummy for toothpicks, reading aloud back issues of the London Times as well as David Copperfield, the only one of his books Francis had professed not to have read. But he couldn’t be with him every hour and Francis had turned up for breakfast the last three days looking like he’d been out all night on one of the ubiquitous fishing boats that brought in the night’s catch as the sun was rising.
“Can you see her yet?” Francis asked, standing on his toes and craning his neck to add another couple of inches to his height.
“No, not yet,” replied Sutty. “But I’m sure she’ll be in your arms within the hour.” He silently said a prayer that Annabelle was on the ship. It was entirely possible that she had decided at the last minute not to come, and had not written Francis to let him know. She had been so reluctant that Sutty was more surprised than Francis when she had agreed to come. They had both been counting the days since then, Francis because he wanted so much to be with her again, and Sutty because he wanted Francis to finally set aside his disquiet and come back down to earth. He didn’t know a man could sustain such a degree of anxiety without succumbing to something worse, like catatonia or fever, or even suicide. She’d better be on that ship or she’ll be hearing from me, Sutty thought, silently composing the cable he would send straightaway.
“I don’t see her,” bleated Francis, like a lost sheep. This must be what the poets meant by “lovesick,” Sutty thought. Francis was literally sick with love and longing.
“The ship hasn’t docked yet,” he said, trying to sound patient and reasonable. “Maybe she’s finishing her packing and hasn’t come up on deck yet. Or maybe she’s there and you just haven’t spotted her.”
But he might as well have saved his breath. Francis wasn’t listening and there wasn’t anything he wanted to hear from Sutty except: “There she is. I see her now.”
The business of docking a ship is a slow one, and Sutty wished he’d delayed their arriving at the port by at least another hour. Standing here with Francis, watching and waiting, was excruciating. It would have been easier to have a tooth pulled.
“Why don’t we go and have a drink?” he suggested. “It’s going to be a while before they start letting the passengers off, and then there’s customs and all that nonsense. No point standing out here in the hot sun.”
“No,” said Francis. “She’ll be expecting to see me and if I’m not here she’ll be frightened. I’d better wait. She’s never been outside England before, let alone in a place as foreign as this. I mean, it’s not like going to France or Germany, is it? She won’t know what to make of it.”
“All right,” said Sutty, giving in to the inevitable. “But let’s at least wait in the shade.”
They found some shelter from the blazing sun beneath an overhang and watched as the giant passenger ship slowly slid into port, guided by a couple of stubby-looking tugs. It was a thing of beauty to see and it brought back to Sutty the urge to travel that ships and the sea always gave him. How many passenger ships and freighters had he boarded, with nothing but a portmanteau and a satchel of books, to search out some distant outpost in the jungle, some place he had heard about from captain or crew, where almost nobody ever went but where there was always a story or two to be heard from lonely men sent to the outer reaches of the Empire? If Francis suffered from lovesickness, did Sutty suffer from wanderlust? Absolutely, he thought. Sometimes he ached from it, longed to be on the move, to feel the miles moving under him, taking him further away from where he was and bringing him closer to wherever he was going.
“I think I see her,” said Francis, wishing he had brought a pair of binoculars. “Over there,” he told Sutty, pointing to a section near the ship’s stern. “See?” Sutty couldn’t make out anyone, let alone a young woman travelling alone. But he went along with Francis’s sighting to keep them both occupied.
“I think so,” he said. “Bravo.”
He followed Francis, who was moving closer to the landing dock, but the surge of people ahead of them was almost impenetrable.
“Damn!” said Francis. “I hope she can see me.” He started waving his arms and calling, “Annabelle, Annabelle” at the top of his voice, but it was an act of futility. The din was almost deafening, and it escalated with each new activity from the direction of the ship. When the gangplank was finally in place, and the first of the passengers began to descend, Sutty watched Francis’s face change expression from expectant, to joyful, to disappointed, and back to expectant again every time a young woman stepped onto the gangway joining ship to ground.
Sutty closed his eyes and muttered a silent prayer. Please, please be here.
Francis, too, was saying his own prayer. For if Annabelle had come and wanted only to turn back, he would be at his wits’ end. He would have no solution to offer. He would be beaten, brokenhearted, bottomed out, and buggered. It would mean going back to England, getting a job he would hate, and giving up his dream of being a writer. He couldn’t stay on in Singapore without her. He’d learned that much in the few months they’d been apart. He’d made a few friends. There were the boys from Guthrie’s he’d met at the weekend cricket matches. They’d had some good times and were a jolly bunch. And there was Sutty, of course, who was always there to pick up the bar tab or pay for the laundry before they brought it up to the room. Sutty, trying to make his, Francis’s, life a little easier. And maybe he was also trying to help a struggling young writer, like he had once been. Of course, he hadn’t struggled so desperately, so despairingly. Sutty had an income, in perpetuity, so there was no fear of starvation on the horizon. No sense of time running out. No one he loved and couldn’t live without. Sutty was a self-contained man of purpose who never seemed to have doubts, although they must have been there in the beginning. All writers have doubts about their ability. Francis knew that. All writers questioned their talent, convinced themselves they had none, and then convinced themselves equally that they had an abundance but nobody appreciated the fact and they would die in obscurity.
But Annabelle believed in him and that was what mattered, even when he didn’t believe in himself. Or did she? I’m a hopeless romantic, he thought. Nobody wanted him to be a writer, especially Annabelle. Not even Sutty. He was alone in this game — completely and utterly alone. There wasn’t another soul in the world who knew the kind of hopelessness he felt when he faced the wall of rejection and tried to scale it without any support, any assistance, any —
“Francis!” He heard his name being called and his mind snapped out of its downward spiralling reverie. At last! She was here, throwing herself into his arms. All was well. The world was set right again and he could breathe a sigh of relief. He could begin to write again.
Sutty breathed a sigh of relief, too, and gave a silent prayer of thanks to whatever gods had granted his first wish. Annabelle had come. And what a lovely thing she is, he thought, She was small and slender, with a magnificent head of thick, auburn-coloured hair that reminded him of the sun setting in Somerset. Her skin was exquisitely pale and clear. It, too, reminded him of England, where dewy complexions were often seen and admired. Sutty had no great fondness for the Oriental complexion. Although he could appreciate its beauty on an aesthetic level, it didn’t cause his heart to swell or his loins to heat up. He didn’t think it was a racial thing, just a male to female preference.
He suddenly understood why Francis couldn’t live without Annabelle. He had forgotten how alluring, unpretentious, fresh, and adoring she was. She had flung her arms around Francis’s neck and squeezed her eyes shut with relief at finding him waiting for her. He was all that mattered at that moment. She had waited for this moment for months. And all the trauma and turmoil, the worry and indecision, the unknowing that had tormented her since he’d left, melted away as she held him, melted like ice cream on a hot day, leaving only sweetness and delight.
“Francis, Francis,” she whispered. “I’m here. At last.”
After a few minutes, they unwound their arms from each other and Francis turned to Sutty. “Annabelle,” he said, “you remember my good friend, Edward Sutcliffe Moresby? Sutty?”
Sutty smiled and took Annabelle’s hand. “Delighted,” he said, “to finally see you again. Welcome to Singapore.”
Annabelle smiled warmly at Sutty and noted that he had a few white hairs in his well-trimmed beard that hadn’t been there before. Otherwise, he was the same. His blue eyes almost twinkled as he shook her hand. He seemed genuinely pleased to see her. Annabelle looked around for the first time and surveyed her surroundings. Sutty noted that her lovely pale complexion was already turning pink from the heat and a light sheen of perspiration covered her face.
“My, it’s hot,” she said, laughing at her discomfort and fanning her face with her gloved hand. “Is it always like this?”
“Yes, my dear,” laughed Francis, “I’m afraid so. It takes some getting used to.”
They were married the following week in the chapel of St. Andrew’s church, with a small reception dinner in the bar at the Raffles Hotel. The ceremony was attended by Francis’s cricket-playing chums from Guthrie’s and a couple of Sutty’s friends who he played bridge with on Sundays. Sutty was best man and the vicar’s wife played matron of honour to the bride. Annabelle wore the same grey wool suit she’d worn on her arrival, along with white gloves because her hands always felt moist in the heat and this embarrassed her. She wore a smart little cloche hat in a shade slightly darker than her suit that was rimmed in white velvet, and she carried a small bunch of white orchids that Sutty had paid for. Her ivory silk stockings and cream-coloured kid leather shoes she had brought from England. She looked lovely but was clearly feeling the effects of the Singapore heat. She frequently dabbed at the beads of perspiration on her forehead with a white linen handkerchief, one of a dozen that her best friend Jean had given her as a wedding present and going-away gift.
Francis was nervous throughout the ceremony and kept tugging at his collar. His Adam’s apple bobbed up and down every time he swallowed, and he swallowed deeply each time he spoke. He’d lost weight since coming to Singapore, and there was enough room between his collar and his neck to allow all four of his fingers to rest comfortably.
Fortunately, the vicar kept the service brief and they were soon able to adjourn to the hotel bar for the reception dinner. A sit-down dinner for twelve had been arranged and paid for by Sutty — “Call it a wedding gift,” he’d told them — with the Guthrie’s men occasionally returning from a trip to the bar with a full bottle of wine or whisky. They ate English-style roast beef with carrots and potatoes and gravy, thick hunks of Yorkshire pudding, and a wedding cake that tasted like coconut with lots of pink-coloured frosting. Francis and Annabelle laughed a lot and listened to speeches that the guests insisted on making as the evening progressed and the bottles emptied. It was a wedding in the spirit of all weddings — a celebration of love and hope. Even the vicar’s wife, a dour-looking woman in funereal brown crepe, made a misty-eyed declaration that love and marriage were gifts from God and that two people couldn’t be more fortunate than to embrace the Christian values of marriage and family. “Hear, hear” and “Amen” were heard around the table and Francis and Annabelle thanked everyone for sharing their wedding day. The vicar then chimed in with his blessing and all glasses were raised in a toast to the happy couple.
Sutty joined in the festivities but a small part of his heart was heavy and he wasn’t sure why. Did he have misgivings about the success of the marriage? Did he wonder if Francis could write his book? Was he fearful for the delicate English bride, Annabelle, who already showed signs of discomfort in her new surroundings? Or was he just being pessimistic in a writerly way, looking too hard and seeing what wasn’t really there?
Sutty knew that all things took time. Not everyone adapted to or thrived on change the way he did. He looked around at the young men from Guthrie’s who lent the party exuberant energy as only young men can. They shared a camaraderie that encompassed both their joys and their disappointments. These young men had all signed on for an adventure, the experience of a tour of the Far East, hoping it would give them a leg up on the future. They seemed continually to be on the brink of that future, building something that seemed intangible in the present, but that would someday be measurable — wealth, success, property, possessions: the things that came with time and hard work. Sutty knew that not all of them would achieve this, but that didn’t matter now. What mattered was the dream.
When he looked at Ronald and Maurice, his two bridge companions, Sutty saw what some of the Guthrie’s boys would become. “Lifers,” they would be known as. Men who were mired in the mud of the East and who would never leave until forced to by retirement, when they would return to a drab, dreary life in a one-room bedsit in England. They would realize that the dreams they had had twenty years earlier had not come to be. These men had become drudges, drones in the hive of trade and commerce. Time and opportunity had slipped away with each identical year and they hadn’t noticed that they were getting older and their enthusiasm was diminishing along with their energy. They had forgotten to marry somewhere along the line and forgotten about friends and family on the other side of the world. Their companions were other lifers, transients, and Orientals. Some had “gone native,” as their more mobile friends liked to say; they’d got stuck in Singapore or Kuala Lumpur or Calcutta.
Sutty shook himself out of his thoughts. This would not be Francis’s fate, nor would it be his. They had chosen to document life, not to be swallowed up and trapped in it. As artists, they could soar above the mundane; in fact, they had an obligation to avoid the commonplace at all costs. For a writer to have his feet firmly planted on the ground was a curse on creativity. He hoped Annabelle understood this because if she didn’t, she would be waging an uphill battle for the rest of her life. He didn’t wish that for Francis, and he especially didn’t wish it for the lovely Annabelle.