The Pearl of Penang by Clare Flynn (best books to read for students txt) 📗

think it soppy and sentimental. Love was not a thing for fathers to admit feeling for their sons. So, she said, ‘Just be here for him. That’s all you need to do.’

Douglas frowned. ‘But he’s so small, so helpless.’

‘He won’t be for long.’ She tried to convey reassurance. She was about to add that Douglas should just be himself, then told herself that if ‘being himself’ meant constantly changing moods, frequent absences and impatience, it was hardly a recipe for good parenting. ‘Look, Doug, your father wasn’t around for you. All you need to do is make time for this little chap, talk to him, spend time with him.’

Her husband nodded, his face grave. ‘It seems such a weighty responsibility now that it’s happened. He’ll inherit the business. I have to make sure he’s prepared.’

Evie shook her head, smiling. ‘There’s plenty of time for that.’ She stroked the baby’s cheek lightly with a finger, marvelling at the perfection of his tiny, perfectly-formed, rosebud mouth. ‘We’ll have to choose a name for him.’

’That’s already decided. He’ll be named Hubert.’

‘What? Don’t I get any say?’ She was indignant. Her little boy was not going to be a Hubert. Far too serious and stuffy. Not to mention old-fashioned.

‘In this instance, no. The firstborn Barrington son is always named Hubert. My father was and his father and so on for generations back.’

‘You weren’t!’

‘That’s because I wasn’t the firstborn son.’

Evie stared at Douglas, shocked. ‘You have a brother?’

‘I did. He died.’

‘When? How? Was it in the war?’

Douglas tensed. ‘I don’t want to talk about it.’

‘For goodness sake, Doug. I’m your wife! Don’t I deserve an answer to that? You can’t just announce you’re calling our son after your late brother without so much as telling me a thing about him. Until now, I wasn’t even aware he existed.’

Douglas stared at the backs of his hands where they lay flattened on his thighs. ‘It happened when I was nine. Not long before my mother died. Hubert – or Bertie as Mother and I called him, was eleven.’

Evie felt a swell of emotion, and instinctively held her new son closer to her. ‘How awful that must have been for you. I’m so sorry, Doug.’

He turned his head away and stared into the middle distance. ‘It was my fault.’

Evie could barely breathe. ‘Your fault? How could it be? You were only a child. Not much older than Jasmine.’

‘We were playing hide and seek. At our family home in Lincolnshire. I climbed out of one of the attic windows onto the roof. We weren’t supposed to go into the attic and certainly not out onto the roof, so I thought Bertie would never find me. I was going to wait up there until the time ran out so I’d be the winner. But he spotted me from the terrace and came rushing upstairs to tag me.’ Douglas squeezed his eyes shut and took a few short breaths. ‘I heard him come into the attic and so I hid behind a chimney stack. When he climbed out onto the roof I crept up on him and said boo. He jumped out of his skin with fright, lost his footing and fell from the roof, screaming.’

Evie’s free hand shot to her mouth and clamped over it. Sensing her distress, the baby began to cry. Evie stroked his head and the child calmed at once.

‘I climbed back down into the attic and ran downstairs. When I got outside, the gardener was already there on the terrace. He yelled at me to go back into the house. He didn’t want me to see what had happened to Hubert.’ He looked up at Evie. ‘But I did see. And I’ve never been able to un-see what I saw that day. Or un-hear his scream as he fell to the ground.’

‘Oh, Doug.’ She reached her hand out to take his but he got up and moved away to stand by the window.

‘I never owned up to what happened. I didn’t tell them I was up on the roof too. That makes me a moral coward.’

‘No. You were a frightened little boy who was probably in shock.’

‘Bertie was my father’s favourite. After he was killed, Father couldn’t bear to look at me. It was as if he was always thinking the wrong son had died. When my mother got ill and died too there was no one left to object when he sent me away.’

He turned back to look at her. ‘So you know my terrible secret, Evie. Do you see why I have to call my son Hubert?’

She looked at the little bundle in her arms. ‘Hubert it is.’ She shivered. It was neither the name nor the legacy she wanted for her child. Bending over she kissed her son’s plump cheek.

He can be christened Hubert she told herself, but we’ll call him Hugh.

While the war raged on in Europe, and the Blitz began in England, life in Penang continued much as before – but with some token efforts by the expatriates to ‘do their bit’. Douglas was increasingly involved in exercises with the defence volunteers. He remained scathing about the value and relevance of what they were doing, claiming that no war on the peninsula would ever be fought that way, if indeed it were to be fought at all. Like many of the planters, he suggested that his local knowledge and familiarity with the language might prove useful in assisting the regular army with planning and liaison, but all such offers were rejected as impractical or unnecessary. Objections to the traditional warcraft they were drilling in were always brushed aside by the regular army, with the assertion that they may well be required at some point to return to help defend Britain or assist in a counter attack on the continent of Europe. No one appeared to take seriously the threat of an invasion of Malaya itself – including Douglas. Eventually he resigned himself to participating anyway, and acknowledged that the small-arms training