2 January 1946
It took just over three months for Lucien to finally gain his release from the base in Melbourne. Three months of visiting with doctors and psychologists, eating four meals a day and filling out endless reams of paperwork, sitting with senior officers and explaining in detail, over and over again, what he had endured while he was held captive in Selarang. There had been concerns, at first, that POWs held by the Japanese had turned over secrets to their captors under threat of torture, but Lucien had done no such thing. He had been whipped, and beaten, had been starved and shamed, but he had never been put to the question. It wouldn't have done them any good, even if they had tried to pump him for information; what little knowledge he possessed about troop movements and confrontational strategies had been rendered moot the moment Singapore fell. Likely the Japanese knew that as well as did he, and he had to remind himself to be grateful for small mercies.
The business of resigning his commission took far longer than he had expected; as tensions cooled in Europe they were mounting in the Pacific, and the Army was loath to let anyone go, particularly an officer with Lucien's qualifications. It had taken a report from an exhausted psychologist to convince the powers that be that Lucien would be of no further use to them; though he wasn't privy to the exact details of that report, Lucien was fairly certain it had been far from complimentary. Since arriving in Melbourne he had grown waspish and withdrawn, and seldom spoke to anyone save for Derek. For the first few days he'd suffered from the shakes, and though he told the psychologist it was a reaction to being kept once more in a barracks house that was eerily similar to the confines of Selarang, he knew those tremors had less to do with the tight quarters and more to do with the sudden lack of bootleg liquor that had kept him afloat during his last few months of captivity. Lucien was itching for a drink and the broad expanse of sky above him, and his newfound neuroses coupled with his radical political leanings and generally foul mood had led to his having been stamped undesirable. Though he didn't relish having such a label attached to him, he would accept it gladly in exchange for his freedom.
There were all sorts of soldiers housed there in Melbourne, brought home from all corners of the globe for evaluation and treatment, and a prolific trade in information was quickly established. POWs like Lucien provided much needed intelligence about the whereabouts of missing soldiers, carrying the memories of those lost on the road and in the camps etched in their hearts. In turn the soldiers who had served on the front lines and been sent home with grievous wounds provided answers to questions about lost brothers-in-arms as best they could. The mess hall at meal time was the best place to gather such intelligence, and it was there that Lucien had discovered the fate of his family one night in early December.
After asking around for weeks Lucien had finally been pointed in the direction of a Canadian platoon commander who had been stationed in Hong Kong prior to the invasion of Singapore. At first Lucien had thought it strange, that there should be a Canadian in their midst, but he was promptly informed that the man was only convalescing in Melbourne until he was sufficiently recovered to make the journey home. Everything was muddled, in those days, and so he chose not to question his good luck further. The Canadian possessed an almost perfect memory for the comings and goings of ships in the harbor that had been under his purview, and many of the men who'd been stationed in Singapore with Lucien had gone to him ask after the fate of friends and loved ones who'd departed on ships bound for Hong Kong. Lucien did the same, telling the man the name of the ship that Mei Lin and Li had boarded, and waited apprehensively for his answer.
The Canadian had shaken his head sadly at Lucien's question. No, he'd said. She was set to arrive the day after the Battle of Hong Kong, but she never made it to port. A life raft was found, but all we found was just a couple of kiddies wailing for their mums. No adults were saved.
The children? Lucien had choked in response, his eyes clouding with tears. What became of them?
Sent to an orphanage on the mainland. I never did hear the name of the place. I'm sorry.
Lucien had stumbled away from him then, making his way back to his bunk, blind with grief, where he curled himself amongst his blankets and wept until exhaustion claimed him. Mei Lin was dead, then; oh, he intended to send a letter to the harbormaster, asking for confirmation, but he had no reason to doubt the Canadian's words. All those years before Lucien had put his family on that boat thinking he was making the best choice for them, that he was sparing them from the impending invasion, but the timing could not have been worse, and he had sent them straight into the arms of his enemies. If only he'd sent them to Australia, or to his friends in London, they might still be alive, but Lucien's choice had condemned them.
There was a chance, of course, that Li had been among the children found on that life raft, and Lucien knew he could not rest until he found out for certain. The reality of his search, however, was rather more complicated than he liked to contemplate. At present he had no money and no way to organize travel for himself. The Japanese had surrendered, but transports to Asia for civilians were hard to come by. Though he had contacts in Hong Kong it would take months for his letters to reach them, and longer still for them to respond, if indeed they were still living. For a brief moment he had considered staying in the Army, lobbying for a position in Hong Kong, but he thought better of it at once. A soldier has very little say in where he is sent, and Lucien didn't fancy signing his life away when he had no guarantee that he would find the answers he sought.
And so he resolved himself to waiting. When he left for his new post - a position he could not tell Lucien anything about - Derek Alderton had vowed to do his best to help his old friend, promised to send correspondence to his father's address in Ballarat should he learn anything useful. Lucien had no home of his own, and was hoping that if nothing else his father would consent to accept his mail, at least until he set himself up somewhere else. And so his plan began to form in his mind. Go to Ballarat, deliver the letter to Mrs. Beazley, speak to his father, find work and accommodations, and then begin the hunt. He could write to the Home Office in London and to the British base in Hong Kong, could ask friends for recommendations and begin the laborious process of contacting orphanages, could save his shillings and wait for tensions to ease enough for him to book himself onto a ship. Every moment he was away from his child he felt her absence as a physical pain in his chest; every moment he thought of Li stranded in a foreign country, bereft of her parents and surrounded by strangers, he wanted to weep, to rend his clothes and beg her forgiveness for his folly, for his failings as a father. The ache he felt would not subside until he held his child again, or until he knew for a fact that she had perished, but all that he could do was put his plan into motion, and wait, and hope.
With his plan foremost in his mind Lucien had walked away from the base in Melbourne on a fine summer day, wound tense and taut as a bowstring as he sat on a crowded bus, clutching a small bag of clothes the Army had provided to him upon his release. He had a few pounds and a letter in his pocket, and no place to call his own.
It was early afternoon when his bus arrived in Ballarat, and Lucien was the first passenger to disembark. He stood for a moment on the pavement, watching the people passing him by, laughing and chatting amongst themselves as the sun smiled down upon them. Though many of them no doubt had friends or loved ones who'd joined the fight, Ballarat seemed very far away from the carnage of the war that had so shaped the course of Lucien's life. There were no ruined buildings or black scorch marks of bombs upon the streets, no somber faces of shell-shocked soldiers or wailing mothers. In the twelve years since Lucien had last stood upon that street corner it seemed the city had changed very little, and yet it had changed completely, for it was no longer his home.
A young man inside the bus depot gave Lucien rather sketchy instructions to the Beazley farm; it was miles outside of town, but the boy drew a crude map on the back of a travel brochure and Lucien set out, relatively sure of his route. In the months since his release from the camp Lucien had done his best to regain some of his strength, had marched with the soldiers still required to do their physical training and spent an hour each night doing press-ups and the like beside his bunk, determined to never again be as weak or as helpless as he had felt the day he was liberated. Though he was not as muscular as he had been before Singapore fell he was restored enough to undertake a meandering stroll on a warm afternoon, and he trusted his feet to carry him where he needed to go.
As he walked along he could not help but search every face he passed, wondering if he recognized any of them, if any of them recognized him. Somehow he doubted that they would; he looked quite different from the boy he had been, before. In a fit of pique he had grown a beard, thumbing his nose at the officers who demanded that soldiers be clean-shaven, determined from the outset that he would never again raise his hand in salute to anyone. Beneath that beard his face was thinner that it had been, and his hair was cropped close. The unruly blonde curls that had made him so identifiable as a young man had been shorne by the Japanese and the threat of lice had encouraged him to keep his hair short in Melbourne, but now that he was free he was determined to let it grow long once again. His shoulders were still broad, but the faded Army greens he wore now were nothing like the finer clothes he'd favored in his youth. No, he told himself as he walked, no one was likely to look upon a weary soldier and see the haughty face of Lucien Blake.
The buildings and orderly streets of Ballarat gave way to lush fields as he continued on his way, soy and wheat and the distant mournful calling of cattle keeping him company. He followed the directions he'd been given to the letter, and soon enough found his feet turning up a long dirt path. This isn't such a bad place, he thought to himself. Nothing but miles and miles of blue sky and farmland, no crowded houses or clamoring of cars and pedestrians. There were birds wheeling overhead, one solitary cat watching them lazily from the tall grass, and for the first time in a very long time, Lucien Blake smiled. The very air seemed rich with freedom, the breeze a warm and comforting reminder that there was nothing to constrain him in this place.
But then the road turned to the left, and the farmhouse came into view, and Lucien's heart sank in his chest.
It was not the most auspicious abode. The path stopped, rather abruptly, right at the front door, where several pairs of muddy boots stood sentinel by the steps. The building was long and low, and even from several meters away Lucien could tell the roof was in need of repair. To the left was a small henhouse, and though the hopeful clucking of chickens wafted out from inside it seemed to Lucien that the structure stood on the verge of collapse. To the right was a shed with a door that didn't sit quite flush, latched closed with twine. He could just make out the fluttering of a clothesline around one corner of the house, and beyond it long rows of vegetables languishing in the sunshine. He could almost make out the distant lowing of a single, udder-heavy cow, but the sound was so soft that Lucien couldn't quite be sure it was real.
The walk had taken him a few hours, and the sun was shifting lower on the horizon; they're probably just sitting down to eat, Lucien thought sadly, his eyes studying the dusty windows. Inside this house was a woman and her children, a little family who had no notion of the sorrow that stood just outside their door. Quite suddenly Lucien realized he had no idea what to say to Mrs. Beazley, when she opened the door; he had been so focused on getting here that he had given very little to thought as to how best to explain himself. He was not trained for this, for standing upon the doorstep and telling a woman her husband had died years before. There was a chance, of course, that she already knew, that somehow the great machinery of the Army had found Sergeant Beazley's name on some list and dispatched correspondence to his widow, but it seemed a rather small chance. There were too many men like Sergeant Beazley, and too many widows like his Jeannie, for the Army to contact all of them in the course of just a few short months. Likely Jeannie still held out some hope that her soldier was coming home, tucked her children into bed at night and held their hands while they whispered prayers for their father's safe return, and now Lucien had come to take even that scant comfort from them.
Still, though, he had made a promise. He squared his shoulders and marched up to the door, rapping on it sharply before his courage deserted him utterly.
In response to his knock there came the sudden scrambling of feet from inside, though he could not say for sure whether they belonged to a dog or a child. He reached into his pocket with one hand, curling his fingers around the envelope, and steeled himself for what was to come.
In a moment the door was opening, and when he saw who stood on the other side, he could not keep the tender smile from his face.
"You must be Lily," he said to the little girl. She must have been about eleven, he thought as he looked at her, recalling her father's recitation of his children's names and ages. A few years older than Li, Lily was tall for her age, with long, curly hair in some coppery shade between brown and blonde. Her eyes were huge and blue, trusting and somber, and she regarded him with all the uncertainty of a child faced with a stranger. She wore a plain brown dress embroidered in a pattern of pink flowers and beside her there stood a great rangy beast of a dog whose gaze was altogether less than welcoming.
"Is your mum home?" Lucien asked when the girl did not speak. The answer came, not from Lily, but from the musical voice of her mother rushing in from another room.
"Lily, what did I tell you about opening the door by yourself?" Jean Beazley chided her daughter gently as she came into view, a harried expression on her face as she wiped her hands clean on the apron tied around her waist. "Go back to the kitchen, love."
Mrs. Beazley had not yet taken a good look at Lucien, distracted as she was by her child, and so she did not see the look of agonized recognition that crossed his face. For in truth the moment she stepped into his line of sight Lucien had stopped breathing, had damn near collapsed on the spot from shock, as recognition and hope and fear and guilt slammed into him with all the force of a hurricane. So many years had passed, and so much had changed, and yet when he looked upon her he knew her in an instant. The high, sharp curve of her cheeks, the artful tumble of her dark hair, the flashing brilliance of her grey eyes, the full lines of her lips; it was a face Lucien thought he had lost to time, and yet when he gazed upon her now, he could not deny what it was he saw. Her hips were fuller, her expression more wary, but she was still Jean, the most beautiful girl he'd ever seen, the first girl he'd ever loved, the one woman who had changed the course of his life forever.
And he had come to shatter her heart.