Sara MacDonald - The Hour Before Dawn

Her face, curled upwards towards her mother, was becoming wet. She touched her cheek. These were not her tears. She was not crying. She reached up to touch Fleur’s face. Her mother was weeping silently, motionless. Her chest was not heaving, her mouth was not open; she was crying without sound, tears cascading out of the sides of her eyes. The pillows and her nightdress and Saffie’s hair were becoming soaked. Saffie did not know anyone could cry this quietly. She heard Nikki whisper in the darkness,

‘Mummy, Mummy, don’t cry. Please don’t cry.’

Saffie leant up on one elbow. ‘It’s all right…we’re here.’ She got out of bed and padded across in the dark to the dressing table to get a box of tissues. She handed Nikki a bundle and together they tried to blot Fleur’s eyes and cheeks and neck until she slowly became aware of them, came back from a long way away and registered their distress.

Saffie thought, Mummy doesn’t even know she’s crying.

Fleur sat up and wiped her face and blew her nose, looked down at them, one each side of her. ‘Cuddle up, darlings, cuddle in close, you’re both frozen. That’s it; pull the covers up to our chins…that’s right. Now we’re like dormice…’ She held the children to her tight, rubbed her chin over their smooth hair that smelt like hay, murmured to them to sleep, that it was all going to be all right.

‘Mummy, do we have to stay here?’ Saffie whispered. ‘In this house?’

‘No, darlings, we’re not going to stay here.’

‘Where are we going? Can we go home?’ Nikki asked.

‘We can’t go home, darling. All our things have to be packed up and Ah Heng has to go and look after a new family. I have to go back to hand our house back to the army and Grandpa thought we might all go and have a last little holiday in Malaya…’

‘Where we used to go with Daddy?’

‘Yes, in one of the rest houses in Port Dickson.’

‘With the round baths, where the water comes out of a big plug and goes all over the floor?’

‘That’s right. Does that sound like a good idea?’

‘With Grandpa and Grandma, or just us?’ Saffie was unsure she wanted them to come. On the other hand, it might feel safer.

‘I like just us,’ Nikki said quietly. But she could not help wondering if her mother was going to be like she was now or like she had mostly been since they got back to England. Would she see and hear them like she did tonight? Or would she go back to a place where they could not reach her, when sometimes she looked as if she didn’t know them any more? As if she had gone somewhere else and forgotten all about them.

‘Of course they are coming with us, darlings. But after the holiday we’re going to find a little house together, just us three. OK?’

Saffie could feel her heart swelling with a strange sad happiness because Mummy was holding them and for the first time the dark felt safe again.

‘You will stay with us all the time? You won’t ever go away and leave us in this house on our own, will you? You won’t leave us even for a minute?’ Nikki asked breathlessly.

Fleur bent to her and kissed the top of her head with sudden passion and then did the same to Saffie. ‘My silly little peapods, of course I won’t leave you. There is just the three of us now and we’ll stick together always, won’t we?’

Nikki smiled and curled in for sleep. ‘Yes.’

Saffie could feel her mother’s body going slack as she fell asleep. After a moment she whispered, ‘Nikki?’ but no one answered. Nikki too was asleep.

Lying in the dark, Fleur’s breath moving her fingers like the quiver of leaves, Saffie heard a fox bark suddenly out in the garden. It was a primeval sound that made her heart jump. She squeezed her eyes tight shut, wanting to sleep too. She thought it was the loneliest sound she had ever heard.

The train slowed and stopped at a junction. Fleur smelt betel nut and curry powder and the musty smell of live chickens carried in cages. She felt a nudge and a fat smiling Malay woman with a child was holding out her bottle of water. Fleur took it gratefully, drank and then handed it back. The woman shook her head, showing her she had another bottle. ‘You keep. You keep.’

Fleur thanked her and leant back and closed her eyes.

After the funeral she had flown back to Singapore with the twins and Peter and Laura There was an army memorial service and a quarter to hand over…and then… And then I let it happen. I let my child die for one selfish craving for oblivion.

The train shunted forward again. It seemed to stop at every single station. Fleur sat up and looked out. The day was ending. The carriages were emptying. People were leaving the train in droves now.

The Malay woman and her child had gone. They were still travelling inland. Her heart jumped; she must be on the wrong train. Oh God, where was she going? She shook with jetlag and tiredness.

A large Indian with a purple turban was watching her with gentle eyes.

Fleur lent forward. ‘I think I’m on the wrong train.’

The Indian smiled. ‘I was wondering, Madam. You are on what we call the Jungle Railway all the way to Kota Bharu. Mostly workers travel this line. The journey from Singapore takes fourteen hours, no less! Where is it you are wanting to be?’

‘Seremban. I must get off there for Port Dickson.’ Fleur fought panic.

‘Well, Madam, the next stop is Mentakab. Here you must get off immediately for the next stop is Jerentut. There is nothing in between. I am afraid there will be no train back to Gemas tonight. This is where you must return to catch the train to Seremban.’

He watched Fleur’s face. ‘Madam, do not worry. Mentakab is where I alight. I will show you to the best place in Mentakab to stay and then in the morning you will catch a train back to Gemas and there change for Seremban. All will be well. Do not be afraid. I fear you are a little unwell.’

The Indian accompanied Fleur off the train and took her in a taxi to a small guest house belonging to his sister. Very good and very clean. It wasn’t, but Fleur was grateful. She lay on the hard bed, stiff with anxiety, beyond tiredness, unable to sleep or shut her mind to the image she had seen in the paper. She was hardly aware of where she was.

Early the next morning the Indian took her back to the station and made sure she got on the right train to Gemas. His sister had changed some of her Singapore dollars for her, and given her Malaysian ringgits.

‘I am sorry,’ she said. ‘I have so little money on me to thank you for your kindness.’

He drew himself up with dignity. ‘Madam, I do not wish for payment for helping a lady in a foreign land.’ He smiled, ‘I hope soon the thing that troubles you will disappear.’

‘ Terima kasih. Thank you.’

‘ Sama-sama. ’ He smiled. ‘You speak a little Malay?’

‘A very little. Selamat tinggal. Goodbye.’

‘Goodbye, Madam and Selamat jalan to you. Do not forget Gemas. Change at Gemas.’

The train drew out of the station taking Fleur backwards to Gemas, when all she wanted to do was travel forward to the sea. To reach the place where she could grieve silently and alone. Just for a moment to feel the warmth of a life lost. Just for a moment.

The name Montrose was niggling at James Mohktar as he drove home that night. It registered with him, seemed somehow familiar. It is an English name, he told himself, and you are bound to have heard it before. Yet as he lay beside his wife and listened to her even breathing in the dark, intuition told him it was important, this nebulous something he could not recall.