Nan Luc thought back to the day when she had been interviewed at the registry by a Belgian reception officer. She had sat in a small room in a wood and tarpaper hut with a huge fan lifting papers on the desk and causing the ash in a full Ricard ashtray to drift across the room.
The man behind the desk had nodded to her as she came in. ‘Nan Luc Hyn.’ He pushed a paper towards her. ‘Please verify the spelling. Please check the date of birth and date of arrival at Gulanga UN camp. You understand,’ he intoned by heart, ‘that your acceptance and registration at this camp in no way entitles you to claim rights to visas from member states of the United Nations and that, furthermore, registration here implies no United Nations responsibility for accident or loss during your period of stay.’
Nan glanced at the paper. ‘The spelling, date of birth and date of arrival are correct,’ she said crisply.
The Belgian looked up. He smiled. For a brief moment the determined self-contained manner of the beautiful girl in front of him made him pause. Then he thought of all the other confident, beautiful girls who had arrived at the camp in the past. She would be worn down by the system as they all were. Worn down by the impossibility of resettling a refugee people nobody wanted. He looked down. ‘Your papers say you are making a claim to US citizenship. Correct?’
‘Yes.’
‘Based on part American parentage.’
‘Yes.’
‘Father’s name?’
‘Stevenson,’ Nan said. ‘C. Stevenson of New York City.’
‘Will your father accept responsibility for your maintenance? Will he act as guarantor?’
Nan hesitated. ‘Of course,’ she said firmly.
The Belgian looked up, his eyes hooded with disbelief. ‘OK, Miss Hyn. From here on you’ll go through a verification process.’
‘How long will it take?’
‘Don’t hold your breath,’ the Belgian said, pleased with his use of American idiom. He looked up into a pair of steely eyes. ‘It could take maybe a month or two. Maybe longer,’ he added apologetically.
On that day Nan Luc became one of the army of displaced persons the twentieth century has created. Jews, Poles, Palestinians, Tartars, Germans, Kurds, Ukranians, Ugandans… among nearly fifty peoples displaced by force or choice the Vietnamese boat people were only the most recent. Now on this South China Sea island of thick forest and huge wild flowers the Vietnamese girl lived a strange, unreal life. Her home was shared with twenty others, a single boarded room with a tarpaper roof. Her daily work was scrubbing floors and cleaning house for the tyrannical wife of one of the UN officers. Her spare time was spent as a leading member of the refugee committee appointed by the administrators to deal with refugee complaints.
Small children grew up knowing only the camp as their home. Young couples married; old people died. And all the while only a dribble of people ever left Gulanga Island.
Young single men and women were required to work for the small UN allowance they received. The men worked on land clearing and ever more necessary water and sanitation projects and the young women worked as cooks and kitchen hands in the vast canteens or as maids to the wives of UN administrators.
Freda O’Keefe had not chosen Nan Luc. The Vietnamese girl was too tall, too imposing a figure for her. The assignment had been made by the camp domestic staff officer. Mrs O’Keefe had a deep, gnawing suspicion that her husband had been behind the assignment. Each day a tiny piece of theatre was played out between them when Freda O’Keefe tried to get her husband to comment on the Vietnamese girl’s attractions.
‘You mean to say you never noticed the figure on that girl?’ John O’Keefe would grunt into the papers he was working on. ‘Does that mean yes you do notice or no you don’t?’
‘It means yes, she’s got a good figure.’
‘You notice these things.’
‘Every man notices these things. It’s not important.’
‘I only have your word for that.’
‘True.’ John O’Keefe got up to pour himself more coffee. He had already decided on a divorce as soon as they got back to Sydney. For the present he just wanted to avoid the questions. Of course he’d noticed what an incredible looking girl their maid was. He also knew she was intelligent, pleasant and thoughtful with the children. It was because of them that O’Keefe was desperately anxious to avoid open warfare with his wife.
‘If you want to get another girl, that’s OK with me, Freda,’ he said pouring coffee.
‘I’ll get rid of her when I’m good and ready,’ Freda O’Keefe said. ‘Meanwhile I’ll keep her here where I know more or less what she’s doing all day.’
‘You decide,’ he said. ‘It means nothing to me either way.’
She seethed with anger as he collected up his papers and walked into his office. She too knew their marriage was over.
To John O’Keefe it was another tiny battle won. A victory which meant Nan Luc would continue to be in and out of the house all day, moving before his eyes, laughing with the children, occasionally even speaking directly to O’Keefe himself. Within a week he had found himself wildly in love with her. A generally cool-headed, balanced civil servant, he had been astounded at the impact the Vietnamese girl had had on him. And it was an impact which grew daily, which caused him to entertain, even luxuriate, in impossible dreams; to do things he could not imagine contemplating before.
To be with her just a few moments while she worked he would walk half a mile in the humid midday heat to collect a file from the bungalow that he had deliberately left that morning. He had twice altered appointments with the Nigerian camp administrator in order not to miss Nan Luc with the children at the beach.
But most of all he had done the unforgivable. The idea that she might receive a US visa before his own term of service expired, was intolerable to John O’Keefe. Haunted with guilt about it he had nevertheless removed her name from the central registry computer. He would replace it, he promised himself, as soon as his own term expired in two months. He would replace it and add a glowing employer’s recommendation. She would lose barely a month’s seniority. Perhaps not even that.
The system had a rough and ready fairness. Refugees were required to fill in questionnaires as soon as they arrived and once cleared for international criminal records their names placed on the register. It was from that point the complexities began. Applicants could be moved forward or backward on the basis of categorisation as political or economic refugees. Most damning of all was to have a camp offence recorded against you – theft, assault, prostitution.
Thinking of the incredible young woman who had unwittingly entered his dreams, John O’Keefe was confident his wife’s suspicions could be held at bay until he could file for a divorce back in Sydney.
Chapter Twenty-Six
‘You want to marry this girl?’ the English policeman said.
Max looked out over the cramped skyscrapers of Hong Kong. ‘Yes,’ he said patiently. ‘I am making enquiries because I want to find her and I want to marry her.’
Inspector Ottenshaw lifted an eyebrow. Surprise. Disapproval. Something of each, Max thought.
‘You know for certain that she’s a refugee?’
‘Yes.’
‘In Hong Kong?’
‘No. I know she left Cahn Roc over a month ago. I’m told they could either have sailed north to Thailand or round the Mekong Delta and headed for Hong Kong.’
The inspector was a balding red-faced man, his heavy blondhaired arms were crossed on the desk in front of him. ‘It’s a needle in a haystack,’ he said, not unkindly. ‘But if the needle’s there, there’ll be some record of it.’ He turned in his seat and tapped the keyboard on the L section of his desk. ‘No,’ he said, watching the screen, ‘she’s not reported landing in Thailand either. You don’t know the names of any of the people with her, of course?’