That evening, Maris decided to show the contents of the trunk to Dinah. She thought it might help her make a decision about the letter. Since opening the trunk with Ray, she hadn’t wanted to share the contents with anybody else, but she thought it was time and Dinah was the right person.
“You know Peter left me this trunk of stuff,” she said, “and I want you to see what he left me. Maybe you can help me understand why he left it to me.”
She opened the trunk and began to remove the items, starting with the books by E. Sutcliffe Moresby. “I’ve been reading my way through them, starting with the stories. I only found Peter’s letter by accident when I opened the cover of this book and it fell out. Otherwise I don’t know how long it would have taken me to find it.”
“Maybe that’s why he left you this stuff,” said Dinah, “so you’d find the letter.”
“He was taking a chance,” said Maris. “I might not have found it for years.”
Dinah laughed. “He probably knew curiosity would get the better of you and you’d comb through the whole thing looking for answers.”
“Maybe you’re right,” said Maris. “But it’s a strange collection of stuff and I can’t figure out the connection.”
Next she pulled out the portraits of the Chinese women and showed Dinah the initials AS in the corner of each of them. “They’re quite beautiful, aren’t they?” she said. “I’m fascinated by them. I mean, who’s AS, why did she paint them, and why did Peter leave them to me?”
“I think they’re wonderful,” said Dinah. “Those faces are so expressive on the one hand, and yet so hidden on the other. They reveal everything and nothing, if that’s possible.”
“I agree,” said Maris. “In trying to hide themselves, they actually seem to be telling us a lot. I think they were probably prostitutes, don’t you?”
“Yes, probably,” agreed Dinah. “Just from the amount of makeup. And also, there’s a kind of hardness in the faces, even though they look terribly young. A pampered young woman might wear makeup but she would have a softness that these women lack.”
“But why only prostitutes? And why only faces?”
Dinah shook her head. “And was the painter a man or a woman?”
“Ah,” said Maris. “I think AS was a woman. There are two packets of letters, as well, and they’re addressed to Annabelle Sweet. At least, the ones I’ve looked at are written to Annabelle Sweet from Francis something.”
Dinah looked at her and her eyes widened. “Annabelle Sweet and Francis Stone?” she said. “Those were my grandparents. Peter’s and mine. Our father’s parents.”
“Stone,” said Maris. “Of course. I wondered about the name when I first saw the letters, but then I completely forgot about it. I figured if he was related, Peter would have left them to you. I guess I just put it out of my mind. That was when I was back in Canada, so I didn’t follow up on it at the time. Well, duh. How stupid am I?”
Dinah was shaking her head. “I didn’t even know Peter had this stuff. He never showed it to me.”
“Tell me about your father.”
“What I know is that he was taken to England as an infant by a writer who was a friend of his father, my grandfather. He, my grandfather, died of fever before my father was born, and his mother, Annabelle, refused to leave Singapore. I think she went a little crazy,” said Dinah, “after her husband died. Anyway, she was terrified that her baby would die of fever like his father, and she let this writer — who I now realize is probably this guy, E. Sutcliffe Moresby — take him to England to be raised by his mother.
“They — the Moresbys, I guess — had money and he received a public school education. Then he joined the air force during World War II. After the war, between about 1945 and 1955, he spent time in India and Ceylon, learning the tea trade. He became a successful tea merchant and married Henny in 1955 in England. I have pictures of them in an album Peter gave me.
“Peter was born in 1959 in England, but the family came to Singapore in 1960, after Malayan independence.” Dinah paused as if considering whether she should elaborate on this, then continued. “A few years later, my father took a Chinese mistress and I was born in 1969.”
“I never knew any of this,” said Maris. “I don’t recall Peter ever talking about his parents. For that matter, neither did you.”
“Our father, Peter’s and mine, was like two different men,” said Dinah. “The father Peter knew was married to an Englishwoman, Henny, who spoke her mind and took what came her way with a stubborn kind of courage and tenacity. I never knew her, of course, but I remember seeing her a few times. She was very tall and slender. Kind of like Lady Mountbatten — remember her?”
Maris nodded. “Yes, I’ve seen films of her and Lord Mountbatten in India before the partition.”
“Yes,” said Dinah, “very elegant and aristocratic. Although what I remember of Henny — and don’t forget, I was a very young Chinese kid who was raised by a Chinese mother — Henny was cool, you know, cold. Not friendly or approachable, like Lady Mountbatten seemed to be.
“The father I knew lived with a Chinese woman, my mother, a nameless, faceless nonentity who bowed to his will and was subservient in every way. Because her family disowned her, she had even less of an identity — no ancestors to worship, no parents or parents-in-law to serve. I had very mixed feelings toward my mother,” said Dinah. “I didn’t like the way she kowtowed to my father and kind of shrank from people, never speaking unless spoken to, that kind of thing. But in many ways we were very close. She didn’t have any friends and neither did I. We were kind of shunned and that pulled us together. I felt very loyal to her, and protective, too.
“I think my father didn’t really like women or their company. He didn’t really leave Henny so much as withdraw from her. He forgot she was a person with feelings. He never considered her pain or her humiliation over what he did to her. Even though I didn’t know her, I believed that what had happened had been my father’s fault. I never heard my mother speak against Henny or demand that my father divorce her. She wouldn’t have dared.”
“Your father probably did it — you know, held on to everything — because he could,” said Maris. “That generation of men felt entitled. He had the best of both worlds.”
“Yes,” said Dinah. “And in Singapore, it was common for a man to have a mistress, especially if he could afford it. I think the only woman who ever meant anything to him was Moresby’s mother, the one who raised him. But because she was always old to him, he never really comprehended young women’s passion or their vitality. Never saw them as creators and sources of life. I think that comes from never having a mother or possibly from being abandoned by his mother, which he was, in a way. She gave him up, after all, gave him away to Moresby. That probably left some scars.”
“So this Annabelle Sweet was his mother and she stayed behind in Singapore?”
“As far as I know, she never left.”
“That’s very strange,” said Maris, “because the letters from Francis were written while she was still in England and he was begging her to come out and marry him. I got the impression she didn’t want to come. He kept telling her they could live a lot more cheaply in Singapore and he could write a book, which is what he wanted to do. If he went back to England, he would have to give up his dream of writing.”
“What I gathered from my father, who didn’t say much about her, believe me, was that she went mad after his father died. According to this writer Moresby, she kept saying she had to stay in Singapore because Francis was there. She cared more about her dead husband than she did about her baby. I don’t understand how she could give up her baby, but apparently she could. Which maybe says a lot about her state of mind.”
“So he never saw her again?” asked Maris.
“Not as far as I know. I’m pretty sure she died while he was still a child.”
“Maybe the other letters will tell us something. I think they’re from Moresby to her.”
It was past midnight so they agreed to go through the letters another time. Maris was seeing Axel the next night, so it would have to wait a couple of days.