‘Adorable creature.’
‘Lucky Edward.’
‘I’ll drink to that.’
‘Tall for a Vietnamese girl.’
‘Some sort of marriage counsellor, apparently.’
‘Hope she never needs her own advice.’
‘Will it last?’
‘Can it last?’
‘How long do you give her?’
‘Superb looking woman.’
‘Lucky Edward.’
‘I’ll drink to that.’
When the last cars had gone Ed and Nan walked together back down the drive and on to the covered terrace. Across the bay, lights sparkled through the thin mist.
‘Let me pour you a drink,’ Nan said. ‘I have something to talk to you about.’
He lifted his head towards her. He had an irrational hope that she was going to tell him that she was pregnant, but her expression presaged something else. ‘OK,’ he said. ‘Say I have a Scotch. Is it something serious?’
‘Yes.’ She poured an inch of whisky and lifted it towards him. He nodded. ‘How serious?’
A cold chill was creeping through him. He had known, or perhaps just feared, that the simple happiness he had known with Nan Luc could not last. He watched her as she crossed the terrace, put the drink on the table in front of him and sat down in the garden chair opposite.
‘How serious?’ he asked again.
‘I want to go to New York, Ed.’
‘OK,’ he said uncertainly. ‘As soon as I have time free…’
‘Alone,’ she said.
‘Alone?’
‘Yes.’ He waited, his finger circling the rim of the glass. ‘I’m coming back, Ed. As soon as I’ve found him.’
He nodded slowly. ‘Look Nan,’ he said after a moment. ‘Why not just leave it as it is. He was a lousy father from what you say, abandoned you there in Saigon. Why the need to confront him?’ He could see her body tense although her expression was unchanging. He tried to fill the gap that was opening between them. ‘C. Stevenson, a businessman who once lived in New York City, is not much to go on. The private investigator got nowhere.’
‘I must try myself. I’ve already asked for enquiries to be made about my aunt, Louise. I’m sure she’s living in New York somewhere. She could know where to find my father.’
‘The PI had her name too, Nan.’
‘But the detective wasn’t Vietnamese,’ Nan said carefully. ‘He didn’t speak the language, didn’t have access to the Vietnamese community in New York.’
‘Nan, listen to me.’ He leaned forward across the table. ‘He was a bad father. After your mother’s death he deserted you at the worst possible time. At a time you really needed him. But what’s the point of looking for him? What’s the point of finding him? What are you going to do? Tell him what a lousy human being he is? Or maybe even just was. He was probably some boy soldier in his teens, or early twenties…’
‘Don’t try to dissuade me, Ed. Try to understand. I can’t be at peace until I’ve found him.’
‘And then what?’
‘Don’t, Ed, please. I know this makes no sense to you.’ She reached out a hand and covered his. ‘I’ve got to try, Ed. I can’t explain. It’s part of being Vietnamese, part of the way we think of the family. Let me do this and I’ll come back and we can take up the thread of our life together.’
Through one of the open orangery windows a wind came off the ocean and he shivered. New York. He had never liked the city. Now he felt something like a sick, jealous hatred for it. But there was nothing he could do. He had known from the beginning that at one point she would go to look for her father. She had never really told him what drove her. Or what she wanted to say to him when she found him. But Ed Brompton knew it was something he had agreed to when they were married. It had never been a spoken condition on Nan’s part. Never overt, like one of the contacts she drew up for her Vietnamese clients. But it had been there all the same. Something she would do as soon as she herself had earned the money to do it. Something she was driven to do by her extraordinary will, by some depth of feeling about her father that he could not begin to understand.
‘How long will you be gone?’ he asked reluctantly.
‘A month perhaps. I’m not sure. But I will be back. You must have no doubts about that. As long as you want me, I will be back.’
He shook his head slowly. He was a naval officer, instinct had never meant a lot in his life and he wasn’t sure that it was instinct that was worrying him now. But the cold chill of presentiment would not leave him. He stood up, his whisky undrunk. ‘Let’s go in,’ he said, ‘I’m finding it cold out here.’
In the Meyerick Fund offices on Constitution Wharf, Meyerick City, Cy Stevenson shook hands with General Brogan and walked with him to the elevator. ‘Good of you to take an interest in what we do,’ Cy said.
‘It’s more than an interest in what you do, Cy. A lot of us feel we’d like to do something to help. You may not believe it but a lot of retired military feel like that. Those that served there. No apologies, you understand.’
‘I understand that.’
‘I guess it’s a feeling,’ the general said, ‘of a job left uncompleted. I think a lot of Americans feel that way about Vietnam.’
‘I think they do,’ Cy said.
He pressed the button to open the elevator door. ‘You’ve been very generous, general.’
‘I’m sure we will be able to meet that commitment. We’re an informal body as I explained to you. Some people think the name we chose, “Alumni of the Vietnam War” is a little pretentious.’
The door slid open. ‘Pretentious or not, general,’ Cy said. ‘That’s what a lot of us were.’
‘It certainly taught me the difference between my ass and my elbow.’
‘It taught a lot of us that.’ Cy held the door open.
‘We all live on this planet together, Cy.’
Stevenson nodded, felt the door kick against his hand and pressed it back again. He thought that if the general wanted to indulge in a little homespun philosophy they should have done it over a drink in his office.
‘The same planet,’ the general repeated to himself. Then, as if shaking himself free of such ideas, he walked briskly into the elevator.
Cy released the door. Compressed air hissed.
‘You’ll get your donation, Cy. I personally guarantee it.’
When the door had hushed closed Cy walked back through the main office. He stopped at his secretary’s desk. She looked up enquiringly.
‘He promised a hundred thousand dollars by Christmas.’ Her mouth turned down appreciatively. ‘Putty in my hands,’ he smiled. ‘Aren’t we all, Mr Stevenson?’
He took out a cigarette. ‘I thought he’d never go.’
‘You’re not through yet,’ she said. ‘Someone’s due at five.’
‘I have another appointment?’
‘It’s in the book. Somebody looking for a donation from us this time. She’s from the Masterman Pope Project in New York City. They’re planning to build a hostel for girls, teenage girls.’
‘And they’re raising money.’
‘And they think Meyerick might help.’
‘Well, why not?’ Cy said expansively. ‘Nothing political there, no cross lines as far as you can see?’ Cy lit his cigarette and drew on it.
‘No,’ the girl said. ‘Looks OK. The girls are young Vietnamese. Some of them very beautiful I’m told.’
‘You’ve sold me.’ Cy strolled towards his office door. ‘We’ll get through this in a few minutes. I’ll agree the donation subject to the usual guarantees and checks.’
‘Quick decision. How much will you give?’
‘I’ll have to clear it with a few calls to the other trustees but I guess we can go to twenty-five thousand dollars. Show them straight in.’