The pain of Luke’s recent infidelity was still raw. Annabel’s bruised heart ached at the thought of her cheerful, loving grandmother suffering similar treatment.
‘Miss Dorothy she want to have baby, but cannot lor,’ Mei continued. ‘She got pregnant few times, but every time lose the baby. Wah, so sad, you know. Ah Ling say Mr Llewellyn got angry with her.’ Mei scrunched up her face. ‘He so cruel one. And always drink whisky.’
Annabel felt a further pang of sadness as she thought back to the conversation she’d had with her grandmother in the hospital, when she’d mentioned not being able to have children. How Annabel wished she’d had the foresight to find out then what it all meant; if she’d known it would be their last conversation, there was so much more that she would have asked her.
‘Then war start to come, everyone need to prepare,’ Mei went on in her gentle, lilting way. ‘Miss Dorothy go train to benurse, and Mr Llewellyn also go learn to become soldier lor. Ah Ling say that time quite good when he not home; house more peaceful, everybody also more happy right? But hor, good time never last long one.’
Annabel thought back to all the times when she was a small child and her grandmother had patched up injuries and cured ailments. She had a distant memory of her mentioning helping as a nurse during the war, but Annabel had assumed it had been in London. Never would she have dreamed of imagining her grandmother training as a nurse in Singapore.
Mei paused and sipped her tea. Then she turned to Julia and uttered a flurry of Cantonese. Julia sighed, then replied calmly in the same language, seeming to acquiesce to whatever her mother was asking of her. Annabel turned to James with curious eyes. He gave a small shrug in reply; he had spotted it too, the disagreement between mother and daughter.
Mei continued in Cantonese and Julia picked up the translation. ‘Then one day, when he came home from training, Mr Llewellyn had an accident. It was very late at night. Ah Ling said he was drinking too much whisky. And he tripped. He fell down the stairs and he broke his neck.’
Annabel gasped. So that was the fall that had killed Douglas Llewellyn: an intoxicated tumble down the stairs. Her initial reaction was sympathy, but then she remembered what she had just heard about Dotty’s philandering first husband and couldn’t help but feel that he had got his just deserts. She turned to James, who was looking equally surprised.
Meanwhile, Julia was talking to her mother in quick, quiet Cantonese. Although the language was impossible to her, the intention was quite clear to Annabel: Julia seemed to be begging her mother, imploring her even. To do what? Annabel had noidea. But what became fiercely evident was that Mei was not going to give in to her daughter’s request. Annabel was shocked as the old lady started shaking and her eyes filled with tears. Mei’s voice got louder and louder to the point that she was shouting at her daughter.
Julia did her best to soothe her mother, then turned to their visitors.
‘I’m so sorry,’ she said calmly. ‘But I think Mama needs to rest now. We’ll need to finish this another time.’
CHAPTER 19
Singapore
June 1941
Dorothy awoke with a start. It was happening again, the tell-tale cramps in her lower abdomen and the accompanying warm stickiness between her legs. A rising wave of panic swept over her as she stumbled out of bed and rushed to the bathroom. She looked down at her stained underwear and felt her heart break for the third time. It was so unfair. So bloody unfair. She gave a gut-wrenching moan and sobbed for her loss.
Ah Ling was by her side in seconds, wiping away the tears as she uttered soothing words of comfort. But it was no use, Dorothy thought, there was something wrong with her. It was just over a year since her wedding and this was the third child she had yearned for, and lost. The poor little being that never had a chance to grow, to live, because of her inability to be a mother.
Ah Ling gently led her back to the bedroom. She helped change her underwear and laid towels on the bed beneath her. Once Dorothy was settled, the faithful Ah Ling mopped her face with a cool, damp towel.
‘You stay here, ma’am. I call doctor.’ She paused, then asked, ‘You want call Mr Llewellyn sir?’
That was the last thing Dorothy wanted. She closed her eyes and shook her head, relieved that he had already left early forwork. She couldn’t face the look he had given her the last two times, that mix of disappointment and disdain. On both those occasions his eyes had asked the silent question ‘What’s wrong with you?’ And the worst part was that she was starting to ask herself the same question. Everyone they knew seemed to be popping out babies left, right and centre, so why couldn’t she?
Fresh tears pricked at her eyes and Ah Ling squeezed her hand.
‘Is OK ma’am, Ah Ling here.’ She nodded encouragingly then continued mopping her brow. ‘Everything be OK.’ How Dorothy wished that were true.
Since that night last Christmas, Dorothy had slowly come to a place of acceptance about the state of her relationship. She now realised that it was a marriage of convenience – of Douglas’s convenience – and she was expected to be terribly British and keep a stiff upper lip for the sake of maintaining appearances. Douglas loved to keep up the image of the perfect newlyweds, especially in front of her parents who were so infuriatingly enamoured of their handsome, clever son-in-law. Even if she had wanted to complain, they could see nothing for her to complain about; everything looked perfect from the outside.
But the reality was quite different. These days, Douglas barely bothered to conceal from her his visits to his mistress; it was an open, unspoken secret between them. At the start of the year, he would come home from the club in the early hours steaming drunk and demand his conjugal rites from his wife. But those drunken sessions ceased after Ah Ling discreetly organised a new door lock to help keep her mistress safe. On other nights, Douglas would come home exhausted from his training with the Straits Settlements Volunteer Force withwhom he had recently enlisted. And some nights he wouldn’t come home at all.
Silently, Dorothy had resolved to make the best of her lot, for, as her mother regularly reminded her, it simply didn’t do to complain. So she kept busy instead, tried to keep her head down and keep the peace with Douglas. There were brief moments of optimism when she felt hopeful that things could change between them. He would give her a kind word, a gentle touch or a compliment on how nicely she kept their home. Those fleeting moments were bittersweet, for it showed her that the man she had fallen in love with was still there, but it broke her heart that she was not – and never had been – his first priority.
The only trump card that Dorothy held was Douglas longed to start a family. Dorothy felt sure that things would be different once she gave him the son he yearned for, that he would love and appreciate her and finally give up his mistress. But with every failed pregnancy, that hope slipped further out of reach.
It was a tense time in Singapore, as talk turned increasingly to war. The fighting in Europe raged on and London was only just catching its breath after eight long months of bombing. British morale was at an all-time low and Dorothy wept as she read Daisy’s letters. Their lives in London were full of sirens, air-raid shelters, bombing raids and worlds torn apart by the German Luftwaffe. Every night, she prayed for Daisy and her family and for the safety of her brother Thomas, who was now serving with the Royal Army Medical Corps. The last they had heard, he was heading off to North Africa, but his last letter had arrived several weeks ago.
‘But we’re still safe here, aren’t we?’ Dorothy asked her father as the pair of them dined together at the family home one Sunday. She gazed out at the lush, green lawns and the palm trees gently waving in the soft afternoon breeze, and found it impossible to imagine the horrors of war coming to this peaceful island.
‘Yes, absolutely; of course we’re safe.’ Anthony Templeton nodded determinedly. ‘But tensionsarerising between Japan and the West,’ he explained. ‘Put simply, they want to expand their empire and we’re rather in the way.’ He gave a wry smile and took a sip of his Claret. ‘Strategically, they would love to get their hands on Singapore; it’s in a prime location to transport troops and supplies. And they would love to get their greedy mitts on the area’s natural resources.’
‘Like we Brits did first, with our “greedy mitts”, you mean?’ Dorothy raised her eyebrows ironically at her father.
‘Ha! Yes, you’ve got me there!’ Anthony chuckled.
