10

Laura balanced herself precariously on the pull-down seat of the ambulance. She clung with slippery hands to a metal bar, lurching from side to side as they raced through the dark streets. She could hear the wail of the siren. It sounded as if it came from a long way away.

She watched in anguish as the paramedics worked on her father.

Don’t leave me, Dad, she pleaded silently. For God’s sake don’t leave me.

The ambulance slowed down. She glanced out of the window. They were moving along a narrow residential street, manoeuvring between badly parked cars.

‘We’re getting near the hospital now,’ one of the men informed her, looking up. He had an Irish accent. His eyes were bloodshot and exhausted. He must see this all the time, Laura thought.

‘Try not to worry,’ he said. ‘We’ll be there soon.’

She swallowed.

‘Is he going to be alright?’

‘We’re taking good care of him. As soon as we arrive we’re going to take him straight into the trauma room. Someone will tell you where to wait. Try to keep calm.’

When the ambulance drew up under the hospital canopy, they opened the back doors, and bright lights from the entrance flooded in. Hospital staff surrounded the stretcher and carried it swiftly from the ambulance, placed it onto a trolley and wheeled it inside. Once through the doors, more people in white coats joined the convoy and rushed the trolley down a long corridor. Laura had to jog to keep up with them. Everything around her was a blur.

Suddenly the little crowd disappeared through a pair of swing doors marked ‘Intensive Care. Medical Staff Only’. She was alone in the dingy passage; it was not unlike the corridor in the police station, except this one smelled of disinfectant, the other of sweat and despair.

She sunk onto a plastic chair and put her face in her hands. Nobody had told her where or how long she would have to wait.

Unable to sit still, she got up and paced about. She strode to the end of the corridor and stared out of the window onto an empty car park lit by the harsh glare of floodlights. She didn’t want to go any further or turn the corner, in case someone came through the double doors with news. She turned round to see that the corridor was deserted. Would they forget she was there? She had an impulse to run back to the doors and push them open. How could they be taking so long? Why didn’t someone come and tell her what was going on?

She wondered what life would be like without her father. She shuddered. It was impossible to contemplate such a thing. He’d always seemed so healthy, making light of his constant cough and his bad leg.

The doors opened and a doctor came through. He was shorter than Laura. He had oriental looks and was probably Chinese. She walked towards him and he looked up at her and smiled briskly.

‘Your father is stable now. You can see him. He won’t want to talk much. Better not to tire him.’

‘Is he going to be OK?’ she faltered.

‘He has a very weak heart. It has been weakened … He may have suffered from malnutrition in the past.’

‘Malnutrition?’

‘Yes. Was he short of food when he was young? For a sustained period perhaps?’

‘He was a prisoner of war … Of the Japanese. I know that.’

‘I thought so. I have seen it before. There is even a name for the condition – bamboo heart. It means that the heart has been permanently weakened by starvation. He needs to be very careful.’

She swallowed and stared at him, trying to take in what he had just told her. Bamboo heart? It sounded incredible. Starvation? Dad had never even hinted at that.

How little she really knew about his life, of his time in Malaya before the war, the woman in the photograph, his time as a prisoner. She knew nothing of the horrors he might have suffered. How could I have taken you so much for granted all these years? And by the selfish act of a teenager, throwing the letter from Penang into the flames, she had probably denied him contact with someone he had once loved.

How can I ever make it up to you? How can I make up for being selfish and callous, of always putting myself first?

‘Can I see him now please?’

‘Of course,’ the doctor pulled open the door for her.

Dad was lying on a high bed on the other side of the room, surrounded by tubes and monitors. Laura rushed over to him. His face was grey, but he parted his lips in a weak smile. She kissed his cold cheek.

‘Sorry,’ he said in a whisper.

‘Sorry? I’m sorry. I wasn’t there. And I left in a bad mood this morning. How could I have done that to you?’

He clasped her hand. ‘It was my fault.’

She shook her head, feeling that if she said any more she would break down in tears.

‘How are you feeling?’ she managed to say feebly.

‘I’ve felt better.’ His lips moved slowly, and he attempted a smile.

‘You must have been terrified.’

He shook his head. ‘No. Not by that …’

He fell silent, and she wondered what he meant. She sat down beside the bed. She couldn’t bear to have secrets from him anymore. She knew she must tell him about the letter. She opened her mouth to speak, but then hesitated.

He was watching her face, waiting for her to speak.

‘I’m so glad you’re …’

‘Still alive?’ He said the words she couldn’t bring herself to say.

Her eyes filled with tears, but before she could speak again, a West Indian nurse with an ample frame and smiling eyes came in and began fiddling with one of the monitors above her father’s bed.

‘I’m sorry, my dear, but we need our rest now,’ she said to Laura. ‘Could you come back again tomorrow?

Laura got up quickly. ‘Of course. Yes. I’ll come back in the morning. What time?

‘Visiting hours is between ten and eleven.’

She leaned forward and kissed Dad, screwing her face up to hold back the tears.

‘See you tomorrow, she whispered.

Outside the room the doctor was bustling past with a clipboard, hurrying to see another patient.

‘Is he going to be OK?’

The doctor stopped. He looked at Laura as if he didn’t remember who she was. Then he glanced at his board and said, ‘Ah, yes … Mr. Ellis. He’ll be in intensive care for a couple of days. The first two days are the most critical. After that we’ll move him into the main ward. He’s done well today. It was touch and go for a while though.’

* * *

When she let herself in to the house, she found Ken and Marge waiting anxiously in the back kitchen. They were sitting at the table. Marge clasped a mug of tea in her hands with fingerless gloves. Ken had a tumbler of whisky in front of him.

‘He’s going to be OK,’ she said, sitting down at the table, taking a grateful gulp of whisky when Ken pushed the tumbler towards her.

‘Thank God.’ Marge burst into tears of relief.

Laura couldn’t face going back to the flat that night. She hated to admit it to herself, but she was not sure if Luke would share her concern about Dad being in hospital, and it was best to avoid having that suspicion confirmed.

The telephone rang as she was going up to her room to bed. It was Luke. He sounded as though he’d been drinking.

‘I thought you were coming to the flat?’ he said blearily. ‘Where are you? I’ve been waiting.’

‘Dad’s had a heart attack, Luke. I’ve been at the hospital.’

There was a long silence. Then he said gently, ‘Are you OK? Do you want me to come over?’

Tears of relief sprung to her eyes.

‘No. I’m fine. I’ll be better on my own. I’ll have to go back to the hospital in the morning.’

‘If you need me, just give me a call. Anytime. And, Laura, thanks for what you did for me today.’

It seemed so long ago she’d almost forgotten.

‘It was nothing. Anyone could have done that,’ she said.

* * *

The next morning she was outside her father’s hospital room at ten o’clock sharp. She saw that had more colour in his cheeks but his eyes were still ringed with exhaustion.

‘I’m sorry I was difficult about Luke,’ was the first thing he said to her as she walked in. ‘I had no right, and it was very foolish of me.’

‘I’m sorry I reacted the way I did.’

‘All I want is for you to be happy, Laura. That’s all I’ve ever wanted. And if he makes you happy, that’s all that matters.’

She looked away. Could she answer truthfully that Luke made her happy?

‘I wanted to ask you …’ she began once she had regained her composure. ‘It might seem a strange thing to ask, but I’ve been wondering about when you were young. Did you have other girlfriends? Before Mum I mean?’

‘What a strange question. Dozens of course,’ he answered with a smile.

‘No, seriously. What about in Penang? Was there somebody special there?’

She thought she saw him flinch at the words, but he recovered himself quickly.

‘Why do you ask?’

‘We received a letter once,’ she began carefully, ‘with a Penang postmark.’

‘Oh, it would have been from the Volunteers’ charity. They used to write sometimes, asking for contributions. Why?’

‘It got lost. I mean … I lost it.’

‘Don’t worry about it. Like I said, must have been just the Volunteers. Nothing important.’

She opened her mouth to protest. She knew it wasn’t from the Volunteers. They wouldn’t have opened the letter with ‘My Dearest Tom’. But she hadn’t the courage to tell him. Perhaps she could try to approach it in another way.

‘When you’re better, do you think you might tell me about what happened to you back then?’

He frowned. ‘Then?’

‘In the war, I mean. I’d like to know. I’ve never asked before, but I’ve begun to realise that I ought to know about it.’

‘You wouldn’t understand,’ he said wearily. ‘No-one who wasn’t there would understand.’

‘I could try. I am grown up now, Dad.’

‘I always kept it from you. And your mother, as well. I wanted to protect you both from it.’

‘Protect?’

‘Things happened then that… aren’t easy to talk about.’

‘Couldn’t you try?’

He shook his head. ‘I did it once. That was enough.’

His voice was beginning to falter. His eyelids were drooping.

‘Who? Did you talk to someone about this?’

‘Alfred, I think his name was. Arthur or Alfred … Stone. Yes, that was it. You can ask him if you want to know.’

‘But who is he?’

‘Oh, just someone I met after the war. Look, I’m tired now, Laura. Please.’

She felt miserable. She had meant to tell him about burning the letter, but had failed, and she’d now exhausted him with her questions.

The doctor Laura had met the day before walked into the room. Her father looked up and made an effort to smile at him. ‘Cha,’ he said in a weak voice.

‘Loo hoe bo?’

Tom replied, ‘Wah hoe.’

‘What language is that?’ Laura stared at the both of them.

‘It is Hokkien Chinese,’ said the doctor. ‘My family comes from Malaysia, and I gather your father learned the language when he lived there before the war.’

‘Really? I had no idea. Dad, you never told me you could speak Chinese.’

‘Well, it was a very long time ago. Besides, I’ve almost completely forgotten it, I’m afraid. I haven’t spoken a word of Hokkien for years.’

‘Your father is just being modest. He has an excellent accent,’ said the doctor with a warm smile. He turned to Laura. ‘Look, I’m very sorry, Miss Ellis, but I’m going to have to ask you to leave now. I have some checks to do on your father, and then I must continue on my rounds.’

‘Could you just give me a couple of minutes?’ Laura pleaded.

‘I’m very sorry, but he will really need to rest after the tests. We mustn’t tire him. You can come back tomorrow.’

As she trudged down the long echoing corridors towards the exit, Laura berated herself for having lost the courage to tell him the truth. Why hadn’t she insisted that the letter wasn’t from the Volunteers? Pure cowardice. But did it really matter anymore? Whoever had written the letter had never written again. If she had been that concerned about getting in touch, she would surely have done so. And what difference would it make to her father to know about this now anyway? It would just make him angry about something she had done such a long time ago.

Why, though, was he so reluctant to tell her about the war? She would try again tomorrow. She thought with regret about all the times she could have asked him: night after night through the years, when they had sat in companionable silence over the evening meal. Or afterwards, as they had sat in his study together, she working on her schoolwork, he reading at his desk or on his old settee. She could have asked him about the war anytime, but she hadn’t. She hadn’t even stopped to consider him at all. All their conversations had focused on her: her education, her friends, her career. She had simply assumed that Dad was perfectly content with his life, going to his job at the law centre each morning and spending his evenings with friends, drinking with Ken or playing darts at the pub at the end of the road.

She was nearing the hospital entrance now, and the corridor was widening out. There were more people about: doctors and nurses hurrying to and from shifts; anxious visitors, like herself, carrying bunches of flowers wrapped in cellophane; the occasional patient, marked out by a feeble and pasty look, wandering about in pyjamas, dragging drips on wheels or propelling themselves in wheelchairs.

Laura began to feel claustrophobic. She needed to escape and started to speed up, but as she passed the front desk she noticed a familiar figure talking to one of the receptionists.

‘Luke?’

He turned. ‘Ah, there you are, Loz. I came to look for you. I called your dad’s house, but the old Scottish guy said you were here. You look washed out, babe. Come here.’

She let him take her in his arms. She buried her face in his hair. She recognised the scent of her own Vidal Sassoon shampoo.

‘I’ve missed you so much,’ she said.

‘I’m so sorry I haven’t been around. You must have been through hell. How’s your dad?’

‘So so. He’s very tired. He really looks ill.’

‘Come on, let’s get out of here. Hospitals are so depressing. Shall we go to the flat?’

‘What about Rory?’

Luke laughed. ‘His mum and dad turned up this morning and whisked him away in the family Jag. His dad’s some sort of big-shot banker or something. Gave me a right bollocking.’

They walked across the car park towards the bus stop on the main road.

‘It’s hardly my fault the guy couldn’t stick university, is it? People like them make me vomit.’

‘Have they taken him home?’

‘Yeah, back to stockbroker belt. He phoned them last night. He was acting a bit strange at the pub with the guys from the protest. I know he’s been ill, but he was really anti-social. A few of the guys started ribbing him for being a toff. I guess they were a bit unfair.’

‘Well, perhaps it’s for the best that he’s gone.’

‘True. We can have the place to ourselves.’

Back at the flat he pulled her to him, and kissed her. She returned his kiss, but when she felt his hands on her breasts, she froze, and then pushed him away.

‘I’m sorry, Luke. I just can’t. Not today.’

‘It’s just been so long, that’s all. I’ve missed you so much.’

‘I know. I’ve missed you too. I just feel so bad about Dad and everything. I need a bit of time, that’s all.’

‘OK, I understand.’

‘Look. Why don’t we go down to the café in the Barbican and get something to eat? There’s no food here. It’ll be my treat. Then, would you mind very much if I had a rest? I hardly slept at all last night. I feel drained.’

‘Of course not,’ he said. ‘Let’s do that, then.’ But she saw from his expression that the rejection had irritated him.

After lunch, Luke made an excuse about having to meet somebody in Hackney and left. Laura returned to the flat alone. She did not have the energy to try to persuade him to stay. She drifted off into a deep dreamless sleep, but was awoken by the distant repeated ringing of a bell. As she surfaced, she realised it was the telephone. She forced herself to wake up and picked it up.

‘Laura?’ It was Ken’s voice. ‘The hospital has been trying to get in touch with you. You need to go back there straight away. Tom’s had another heart attack. It sounds serious.’