CHAPTER 18 #3
Beside her, James fiddled with his phone and Annabel gave him a grateful smile when she realised he was switching off the voice recorder.
He gave a brief shake of his head, silently communicating to her that he didn’t think it right to record while Mei was upset.
The more Annabel saw of James, the more he differed from her previous impression of him.
He had always been so quiet and strained around her, so aloof and distant during their university days.
Had she read him all wrong, she wondered, or had life altered him?
Perhaps a bit of both. But he was a decent guy, Annabel thought to herself, and, in her experience, they were few and far between.
‘Mama is worried that you may find it all too upsetting,’ Julia explained. ‘Douglas Llewellyn did not treat your grandmother well, I’m afraid, and the story does not have a happy ending.’ She turned to her mother and spoke in slow, clear English, ‘Mama, you want to tell the story or I do it?’
‘I do,’ the older lady said, with a determined nod. She paused for a moment, then took a deep breath before she began in her accented English.
‘Mr Llewellyn, he not nice man lah. Ah Ling don’t like him, ’cause he very mean to Miss Dorothy. And Ah Ling really love Miss Dorothy, you know. Like sisters, they so close.’ Mei smiled, thinking of her mother.
‘That Mr Llewellyn ah, always go and love another woman, but that one already married! But, he don’t care, still always go visit her all the time. Ah Ling say some nights he never even come home leh.’
Mei shook her head, tsk-ing softly.
‘Aiyoh, that Miss Dorothy, so poor thing. She love him so much, but hor, he treat her so bad.’ She picked up her teacup, pausing for a moment.
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 be nurse, 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 no idea. 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.’