The Hour Before Dawn. Sara MacDonald

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       SIX

       Singapore, 1966

      When Fleur saw David for the first time he was sitting on the edge of the pool at the Tanglin Club in Singapore City. She thought he was possibly the most graceful man she had ever seen. After her brother and the spotty youths she had travelled out from England with he seemed like a god.

      She was fifteen and home for the long summer holidays. Her father, Peter Llewellyn, was colonel of a regiment on a three-year posting to Singapore. It was his second posting to the Far East and Fleur and her brother, Sam, had grown blasé with flying back and forth from boarding school in England. It was Singapore that felt like home.

      They had both pretty much done their own thing that summer as their mother, Laura, bored with army life, was studying for an Open University degree, and she trusted Sam to keep an eye on Fleur.

      David was on his first posting as a subaltern. He was dark and immensely charismatic rather than good-looking and he always seemed surrounded by teachers, nurses, or young service wives. He noticed Fleur, however, watching him covertly. She was still all angles, like a colt, but she walked like a ballet dancer and had a hint of the exotic, even at fifteen.

      Fleur had her mother Laura’s dark skin, inherited from a French grandmother, that tanned easily, and a way of rolling up her hair like her mother in a quick and particular French way. Sam’s skin was fair like his father’s and he moaned about it.

      Fleur loved the water and both she and Sam were excellent swimmers having been taught professionally by a Singaporean coach. Peter had insisted on lessons for both his children as he loved sailing. People would stop what they were doing to watch Fleur dive. She would take time to position her limbs in the same way she perfected her dance steps, and once committed her body would arch and spring and break the water almost soundlessly.

      David thought her dive was the most perfect thing he had ever seen. He watched her shrugging off Sam’s friends and the schoolboys of her own age. She seemed perfectly self-contained and content with her own company. He was amused to see that, young as she was, she attracted the attention of the young naval officers who sailed into the naval base on the frigates, as well as the young army and RAF officers serving in Singapore.

      They were all fairly cautious for she was the colonel’s daughter, but Peter Llewellyn was not a fierce man, he was more like a vague scientist than an army officer. He was popular with his subalterns, and underneath his slightly bumbling exterior lay a first-class brain.

      At weekends the family would drive down to the naval base for the swimming pool, evening barbecues, and films. It was less stuffy than the Tanglin Club, which had more than its fair share of aging expats and high-ranking service wives who loved rules.

      The Officers Club with a large pool faced out to the Straits of Malacca and looked down on the harbour and dry dock below. When the frigates were in, the navy would throw constant parties and Fleur never lost the thrill of being piped aboard. She would walk with Laura in front of Sam and her father, male eyes swivelled their way. The ships were often at sea for some time and any woman from fifteen to fifty was made to feel glamorous and witty. Sam was allowed to drink moderately as he was nearly eighteen. Fleur was not and Laura watched her like a hawk.

      It was an incident at a cocktail party on board a small naval frigate that brought David and Fleur together. As they were piped aboard the sun hung low over the Straits, the sky flaring and fired by scarlet and orange. When darkness came, it came swiftly: no dusk, just velvety blackness. Fleur and Sam stood with a group of young sub-lieutenants drinking on the top deck. Her brother was eagerly discussing sailing, and Fleur, a little awed by so much attention, was swallowing a mixed-fruit cocktail rather fast as she practised the art of flirting.

      She caught sight of her parents circulating from time to time and was impressed with her mother’s practised habit of throwing back her dark hair and laughing hugely; of putting a hand lightly on a young man’s arm and leaning towards him to catch his words, as if he was the most fascinating man in the room.

      Fleur wasn’t quite ready for that yet, but she did practise the head-tossing and smiling up into young, tanned faces. The more glasses of fruit juice she had the better she seemed to get at this. A small warm wind blew in to the harbour bringing with it the smell of spices and petrol and rotting vegetation. A plump sub-lieutenant kept topping her up from a jug snatched from a passing waiter. Sam, suddenly aware of Fleur flushed and laughing louder than usual, moved over to her.

      ‘Fleur, you’re not drinking, are you?’

      ‘No. Just fruit juice and mint. Promise.’

      ‘OK.’ He looked at her closely for a second and then turned back to the group of young men. Fleur leant over the rail and looked down at the dark water. It looked invitingly cool.

      ‘Do you ever swim from the ship?’ she asked one of the naval officers.

      ‘Bit of a way down,’ the plump one said, laughing. ‘It’s not that far,’ Fleur replied.

      Plump officer stared at her lazily. ‘I can’t see a girl doing

      it.’

      Fleur looked down, feeling dizzy, but it did not seem that much of a leap. No more than a diving board. She moved forward away from the crush of people.

      ‘You think I’m too scared to jump?’

      ‘I’ll put a bet on it.’

      The other officers stirred uneasily. ‘Come on, let’s go below and get something to eat, СКАЧАТЬ