Chapter 28
It was so busy and noisy! Nancy had to wait half an hour at the visa window where someone who hardly spoke English eventually stamped the forms she had brought with her, and she was finally allowed through passport control into the sea of faces, some holding up sheets of paper with names on them. Hers wasn’t there.
Sam hadn’t been sure he could get away from a meeting but if he couldn’t, he’d promised, he’d send someone to collect her; someone from the office. If he had, that person wasn’t obvious. And then she saw him! Taller and blonder than anyone else around him, striding through the crowd, doing a double take at her new look and pulling her into his arms.
It wasn’t a kiss – how long since they had done that properly? – but it was a lovely warm cuddle that made her feel that yes, she was right to come out even though part of her body felt missing without Danny’s small hand in hers.
Finally Sam released her and a small wizened woman nearby, wearing one of the pointed Vietnamese hats Nancy had seen on television, clucked her approval and said something she couldn’t understand. Sam said something back that made the woman cluck again and laugh with a gummy mouth.
‘You speak Vietnamese already?’ she asked in wonder.
‘Just a few words.’ He laughed, slightly embarrassed. ‘She says that we make a nice couple.’
Not if she knew our problems, thought Nancy, turning back to give the old woman a quick smile. Meanwhile, Sam was taking her hand and leading her through the crowds to find a taxi. ‘How was your flight? You must be exhausted.’ He glanced down at her hair. ‘I like the blonde bits. They suit you.’
As he spoke, a fleet of motorbikes shot by, making her jump. The air was dusty, making it hard to breathe, and the roar of the traffic and the constant, very fast talk around them was like four Puddleducks playgroups put together.
‘I know this is all going to seem very strange to you, especially as Ho Chi Minh is so noisy. It takes a lot of getting used to at first, and the traffic is manic. So I thought we’d have a day in the city and then I’ve booked a week-long trip down the Mekong Delta.’ She listened to Sam talk away and watched astounded through the window as the taxi made its way through the city. Motorbikes wove in and out like bluebottles, with total disregard of traffic lights or the few pedestrian crossings. Crossing the road, Sam was telling her, required a leap of faith, rather like crossing the M25. You simply had to walk at an even speed and somehow the traffic would usually make its way round you.
He went on like this, filling her in on the sights. ‘That’s a famous hotel where journalists holed up during the war writing their dispatches, and that’s the town hall with its French architecture because the French were here before you Americans. There’s the former presidential palace with the famous North Vietnamese tank that broke through when the South finally lost, and look, do you see that man crouching down at the side of that building, showering himself? Incredible, isn’t it, how you get hotels next to places that are literally falling down?’
But it wasn’t until they got to District Seven, where the litter and the ramshackle shops and shacks gave way to a crop of smart restaurants and an HSBC bank just round the corner from Danny’s tenth-floor apartment, that she realised. Sam hadn’t even asked how their son was. Nor, when she cuddled up to his back in bed, did he suggest doing anything else. Instead, he fell asleep before her, leaving her wide awake from jet lag after having slept on the plane.
The following morning, Sam had an unexpected meeting. Would she be all right waiting in the apartment for him? No, she decided, feeling an unaccustomed rush of independence. It would be unadventurous not to explore in a new place, especially as she was there for such a short time. But first, she needed to call home.
The ringing tone seemed to take ages to kick in and when it did, it took several rings before it was answered. The sound of her mother-in-law’s breezy voice brought back all the old anxiety she’d had before leaving.
‘Patricia? It’s me. Is everything all right?’
‘Not really, dear.’
Nancy’s heart quickened. ‘Why?’
‘I’ve looked everywhere but I simply can’t find it.’
‘Find what?’
‘The sage, dear.’ She spoke as though the subject had already been mentioned. ‘Where on earth do you keep it? It’s absolutely essential for my power surges.’
Her what ?
‘Sage leaves, eaten whole, are absolutely vital for the menopause. You’ll find that out when you get there. In fact, it probably won’t be long – you Americans always like to get to places before anyone else.’
She was speaking so fast that before Nancy had fully absorbed the rudeness of the last remark, her mother-in-law had moved on. ‘As for Danny, he’s as happy as a sandboy. You really ought to calm down a bit, dear, like that lovely Gemma Merryfield. We saw her in town today, you know. Danny absolutely loves her toothpaste song. Such a good idea! It makes him really enthusiastic about cleaning his teeth and in fact I had to stop him the other night, as his gums were bleeding. Isn’t that sweet? Gemma says that …’ At that point, the phone cut off, proving that Sam hadn’t been telling white lies when he’d said that communication could be difficult at times. Nancy wasn’t sorry. To be constantly compared unfavourably with the pre-school leader who seemed, at times, too good to be true, was becoming really rather irritating. Even Brigid and Annie agreed that if Gemma Merryfield had children of her own, she’d be as stressed and disorganised as the rest of them.
Nancy spent the rest of the day visiting the sights of Ho Chi Minh: she cried at the War Remnants Museum, walked through Chinatown and visited the most beautiful post office she had ever seen.
Afterwards she made her way back to the apartment. In her absence, it appeared that the maid had been in. Breakfast had been washed up in the compact kitchen and everything else, including the streamlined beech furniture, was polished and beautifully neat and tidy. She could do with someone like that at home! No wonder, as Sam had told her, many expats found they couldn’t come back to England unless they were as well off as Lily’s mother, with her nanny and driver and goodness knows who else.
Nancy poured herself a gin and tonic while waiting for Sam, and stood looking out through the window at the view below of other apartments and a park.
When he returned, not long afterwards, Nancy had forgotten her earlier resentment and now felt flushed and exhilarated, bursting with stories to tell him.
‘Really?’ he said with genuine interest at regular intervals while she was recounting her day. It made such a change having something to talk about! When he’d been at home, he would come back in the evening and dutifully ask what she had done during his absence. She had usually replied, ‘Not much,’ and their conversation had then disintegrated amidst Danny’s demands and Sam’s commuter exhaustion. ‘We’ve got an early start for our trip,’ he now said excitedly when she’d finished. ‘Looking forward to it?’
She nodded, waiting for him to suggest that he might phone their son before leaving. But no. The thought didn’t even seem to occur to him. That night, when he moved towards her, she began to go through the motions mechanically, but then found herself strangely aroused. It was, she thought afterwards when Sam had fallen asleep and she was lying listening to the constant hooting of the motorbikes and cars outside, almost as though they were a couple on their own all over again.
For the first time in her life, Nancy found herself wondering if what Sam had said right at the beginning – about not particularly wanting children – meant that they would have been happier as a couple without Danny.
Nancy shivered. How could she live without her son? If it came to making a decision between him and Sam, she knew which one she’d choose.