As they trailed through empty suburban streets the sky swallowed the sun and began again to spit fat drops of rain. It was impossible now to tell whether it was artillery they heard in the distance or the rumble of thunder. Crumbling villas sat in silence behind high walls and fleshy-leaved trees. Elliot carried the semi-conscious Serey in his arms. At first she had seemed feather-light and fragile, as if she might break if he handled her roughly. But now she was a dead weight, his arms aching with the strain, his khaki T-shirt black with sweat. McCue’s rifle hung down at his side, an admission of impotence in the face of overwhelming odds. He turned his face upwards to let the warm rain splash down on his burning skin. They had not seen a soul.
The city was empty, abandoned to history and the Vietnamese. Ny walked mutely ahead, glazed eyes registering the familiar landmarks of her childhood — a time that belonged to another life in another world a million years ago. She heard the faint echo of children playing in the street. Some of the faces she saw quite clearly. Others remained obstinately obscure. Her mother’s voice rang out in admonishment, scolding. They must stay in the garden. It was dangerous in the street. Such simple dangers, so easily avoided.
‘What’s wrong?’ Elliot searched her face with concern. She had stopped, suddenly, in the middle of the road, trembling fingers toying tentatively with each other.
‘We’re here,’ she said simply.
Elliot’s eyes strayed past the broken gates to the streaked facade of the villa beyond. Its smashed shutters hung from windows opening into a gloomy interior. Gently, he put Serey back on her feet and held her arm as she wobbled unsteadily, blinking to focus on the house she had thought she would never see again. ‘You’re home, Serey.’ His voice was husky. A mighty crack of thunder broke overhead and the heavens opened. Elliot could not tell if it was the rain or tears that streaked Serey’s face.
Slowly he led her through the rain up the broken driveway, past the buckled remains of an old bicycle, up a short flight of steps and through the open door. The house was a shambles of dust and debris, the air hot and rancid, and thick with the smell of human excrement. Flies clustered around them, filling the stillness with their incessant whine.
McCue stepped quickly past them and into a front room, stooping to pick up an AK-47 from amongst the rubble. He shook the dust from it and checked the magazine. He looked up at Elliot. ‘Half full.’
Both men turned as a tiny cry escaped from Serey’s lips, and she shuffled through the darkness of the hall to pick up a threadbare teddy lying abandoned in the dust. She clutched it to her chest and dropped, sobbing, to her knees. Elliot glanced at Ny. She shrugged helplessly, almost overcome by emotion.
‘It belong Hau.’
Elliot went forward and crouched to put his arms around Serey. She was shivering and let her weight fall against him, her body racked with sobs. Her thin grey hair clung to her wet face as he pressed it gently to his chest. He could find no words of comfort or hope, and for a moment thought how strange it was that he should even try. Facing him, a door torn off its hinges lay on the floor, thick with a dust broken only by the tracks of small, bare feet. His eyes flickered up, penetrating the darkness of the room beyond. There, crouched against the wall, the naked figure of a small boy, knees pulled up under his chin, stared back at him. Time hung suspended, like the dust, for long seconds. The boom of artillery, the crackle of small-arms fire and the roar of trucks and tanks carried on the rain from the distant edges of the city. ‘Serey,’ Elliot whispered. And, again, more urgently, ‘Serey!’ Something in his voice made her lift her head from the depths of despair. She saw light reflected in his eyes and turned to follow his gaze.
A cry of anguish tore from her throat and she broke free of him, scrambling over the door and into the room.
‘What is it?’ Ny’s voice came from the other end of the hall. Her bare feet padded through the gloom. She stopped in the doorway, her eyes filling with tears at the sight of the skinny, naked figure rocking back and forwards in Serey’s arms on the floor, clutching at her soaking black tunic. Wordlessly, she walked into the room and knelt to put her arms around her mother and brother and bury her face in theirs.
Elliot slumped back against the wall and lit a cigarette, his eyes gritty and stinging from lack of sleep. He heard footsteps crunch across the debris and looked up as McCue turned his eyes from the room to meet his. They held each other’s gaze for a long moment, then Elliot looked away. He had nothing to say.
Chapter Thirty-Two
Sunlight slanted through the shutters in long yellow stripes, cutting through the dark interior to zigzag across the contours of the bedroom and the bed. Lisa’s slender white body lay twisted among the sheets, frozen in the final turn of a restless sleep as though bound there by the strips of light. She seemed caught in time, like the dust suspended in the still air. Somewhere, far off in the depths of the house, the faint sound of breaking glass disturbed the silence, seeping into her troubled dreamland to force her up through unfolding shrouds of darkness to the waking light of day.
For several drowsy moments she lay still, feeling nothing but a vague awareness of the slats of light that lay across her like hot fingers. She turned her head a little to the side and saw the oil lamp on the bedside table. A blurred memory pricked her consciousness, fighting to find focus. And then it all flooded back in a sudden shocking wave of recollection, horrifying in its clarity. She sat bolt upright, a fluttering in her chest, a sick feeling in the pit of her stomach. She tasted the choking, cloying smoke of the opium, saw the face of the General hovering over hers, twisted to ugliness by the force of his passion.
She looked around her, suddenly anxious that he might still be there, but the room was empty. Only the stale smell of the opium lingered. For a moment she wondered if perhaps it had all been some kind of nightmare induced by the drug. Then she saw the stain of her blood on the sheets and let out a cry of shame and hurt. She turned quickly on to her side as bile rose from her stomach, burning her throat and mouth to spew out on to the pillow. Her eyes blurred as they filled with tears.
She lay for several minutes sobbing painfully, increasingly aware of the raw, tender feeling inside her. Then, slowly, she eased herself from the bed and rose unsteadily to her feet. Still trembling, she picked up the General’s black gown from where it had been dropped on the floor. She slipped into it, hugging it tightly around her, and crossed to the door, each jarring step a painful reminder of her lost innocence. The hall was dark. She made her way along it, pushing each door open until she found the bathroom. The light switch yielded a hard bright light that glared back at her from white-tiled walls. Light-headed and on the point of fainting, she staggered to the washbasin and was sick again, a dry, retching sickness. She looked up and saw, with a shock, her face staring back at her from the mirror. It was a face she barely recognized, eyes swollen and puffy from tears she had no recollection of spilling. She saw the disgust in her expression and turned quickly away to run back along the hall to the bedroom.