‘I know.’ Ottenshaw supped heavily. ‘The truth is, Benning,’ he said uncomfortably, ‘I have an apology to make to you.’
‘The Masterman Pope Project for Vietnamese immigrants is the hard end of the business,’ the cab driver said. ‘Their prestige international offices are located just there.’
Across the vacant lot the low clapboard hut stood on a cracked concrete apron. Hard packed brick and mortar formed its drive; colour washed graffiti covered every wall section between doors and wire-mesh windows. The tar-paper roof was torn in several places. A few cars were parked haphazardly on the cement pad in front of the building. A sign-board, remarkably new and still undamaged, read Masterman Pope Project in black on bright white.
Paying off the cab, Nan Luc crossed the oil-stained cement pad to the double swing doors. A confused hubbub of voices seemed to penetrate the clapboard walls of the hut.
She pushed on one side of the doorway and found herself staring into a room in which about ten desks and their occupants were almost swamped by the drifting crowd of people. Some of the desks bore cardboard signs in Vietnamese and these seemed to collect a line of people, Vietnamese, young and old, ill-dressed and hopeless.
A young Vietnamese with a German shepherd dog came towards Nan as she entered the big room. ‘What you want here?’ he asked, letting his dog to within inches of Nan’s leg. ‘Masterman Pope is for poor people,’ he said. ‘No black, no Hispanic, no rich. Only poor Vietnamese people.’
‘I have business with Louise,’ Nan said coolly.
‘Louise Cartwright?’
‘Yes.’
‘You need appointment,’ he said, looking at her silk shirt and cashmere sweater. ‘Or you a friend?’
‘A friend,’ Nan said. ‘Where can I find her?’
The Vietnamese looked again at Nan, then turned. Pointing to a half-open door at the back of the hut, he dragged at the dog and turned away as if whoever entered the building was none of his business. Nan walked across the room. Knocking briefly, she pushed the door.
The Vietnamese woman in her late-thirties pushed a few files into her desk drawer. ‘Hi,’ she said, glancing up. Nan watched the colour drain from Louise’s cheeks. She stopped dead; to her astonishment she saw fear play across her aunt’s face. For a moment the older woman’s mouth gaped. Then with a visible effort of self-control she stood up. ‘Enquiries are dealt with at the appropriate desk in the main room,’ she said. She forced a smile. ‘I take over after they’ve run out of ideas.’
‘You must know me,’ Nan said.
‘No, I don’t know you.’ She spoke with too much finality.
‘Nan Luc,’ Nan said. ‘I’m Nan Luc, Pham’s daughter.’
Louise had no strength left. She leaned back against the window sill behind her.
‘You recognise me now,’ Nan Luc said. ‘Even after all these years.’
Louise nodded silently.
Chapter Thirty-Three
There had been no embraces, no sign of pleasure on Louise’s part. ‘I’m happy for you,’ Nan Luc said. ‘You married an American. In Vietnam today life is harsh.’
‘You escaped, too,’ Louise said.
There was no relaxation between them. No sign of a family reunited. Nan Luc watched the signs of caution in her aunt’s face change to fear.
‘When did you leave Saigon?’ she asked Louise in English.
‘I got away a few weeks before the evacuation. It was already chaos. Everybody knew it was a matter of time before the soldiers from the north arrived.’
‘Was my mother still alive?’
‘A few months later I heard from some other refugees here in New York that your mother had come back to Saigon looking for you. They said when she didn’t find you she killed herself. Listen, Nan, I’m not going to be held responsible.’
‘Why didn’t my mother find me when she came back?’
‘You’d already been taken to an orphanage I guess.’
‘She had left me in your care?’
‘In anybody’s care!’ Louise exploded. ‘You don’t understand what those days were like.’
‘Tell me,’ Nan said.
‘I’m not reliving all that again,’ Louise said angrily. ‘Your mother should have stayed and looked after you in Saigon. Girls like us worked in bars. There was nothing else. That or the Army. In the Army she had the luxury of being respectable.’
‘Perhaps,’ Nan Luc said.
‘She thought she was better than she was,’ Louise said bitterly. ‘She could have worked in the bar like I did. She had no right to expect me to look after her child.’ Louise sat behind her desk, pale-faced and tense.
‘What happened to me?’ Nan Luc said carefully. ‘After you left.’
‘I don’t feel guilty about it,’ Louise said. ‘I’m not going to let you do that to me. OK, I left you there. In the Eros. I’m not proud of it but I was eighteen, for God’s sake. I’d met a good man. I had a chance to live. I took it.’
‘I’m not blaming you, Louise. I was too young. I don’t remember enough of those times. I grew up in an orphanage. OK, it wasn’t that bad.’
‘Where was Bernadette?’
‘She came back from Paris when the north took over Saigon.’
‘And she left you in the orphanage?’
Nan Luc shrugged. ‘She knew I was there. I wouldn’t expect her to have wanted me out.’
‘We’re in America now. Forget the past, Nan. It can ruin you.’
The silence in the room hung heavily. Through the door voices from the reception area came in waves of bird-like chatter. From where Nan Luc sat she could see a police patrol car bump across the rubble-strewn grass to pull up outside the tenement blocks opposite.
‘Why did you come?’ Louise broke the silence. ‘You live in California. San Diego. You didn’t come all the way to New York to look up your mother’s sister, someone you barely remember.’
‘I came to ask you about my father.’ She watched her aunt’s eyes. ‘There’s no one else I can ask.’
‘I never knew your father,’ Louise said. ‘You were already three or four years old when your mother found me at the Eros. I hadn’t seen her for five or six years since we all left Hanoi.’ She stood stiffly, her back to the window of her office. Behind her head Nan Luc could see the grey layer of cloud hanging over a line of broken tenements.
‘But you know who my father was.’ She shook her head. ‘His name, at least.’
‘I know nothing, Nan Luc,’ Louise said, facing her with finality. ‘Your mother was my elder sister, four or five years older. Most of the time we were apart. In any case she was different from me. She kept her own secrets. You don’t understand perhaps. She wasn’t like the rest of us. People respected her. They knew better than to ask Pham questions like that. As far as we all knew you never had a father.’
Nan came forward. ‘Let’s go out and get coffee somewhere, Louise,’ she said. ‘There are things I must know.’
‘Some other time, Nan Luc. When you’re next in New York maybe.’ She pointed to the outer office. ‘You can see what it’s like out there. People need help, attention, advice. I’ve no time for coffee.’
‘You’re afraid, Louise,’ Nan Luc said. ‘What of?’
Louise was shaking her head. ‘Listen, Nan Luc,’ she said, her voice rising, ‘try to understand. The past could ruin me. If my husband guessed I’d worked a bar…’ Nan Luc watched her silently. ‘It was the times, Nan,’ Louise said. ‘Everybody was crazy. Crazy for sex, drugs, drink, blood. Times when soldiers went about with peace bandannas round their helmets and used their rifle barrels for smoking dope.’