Child With No Name

By Mary Valentine Williams

A little girl is orphaned in the Boxing Day Tsunami. No one knows who she is or what language she speaks. An aid worker visiting the orphanage discovers her name and wants to reunite her with family members, but the orphanage is in rebel held territory. A ransom is demanded. Aid worker Claire enlists her mother in a daring rescue attempt to free the child, and is punished. Based on a true story

• Language: English
• Publisher: Mary Valentine Williams
• Release date: May 4, 2013
• ISBN: 9781301418534

Mary Valentine Williams

Mary V Williams was born in a Hampshire village and spent most of her early childhood playing outside with mud, sticks and a dog, before being captured and made to go to school where she discovered books, poetry and art, which was a small consolation.With an artistic, loving, but deaf mother, and a father who was an eccentric engineer and inventor, life was never dull. After school she devoured poetry and novels and began writing her own.A nice safe job in a bank was proposed when she left school. Hating it, she found herself work with a charity caring for Polish and Tibetan refugees instead. Later, she studied at Manresa College in Roehampton, accompanied, she feels, by the ghost of Gerard Manley Hopkins who had been a Jesuit novitiate there, and met her husband, Peter. Together they made the most of Sixties London and traveled around Europe and North Africa before getting married and settling in Stoke Newington, a melting pot of radical political activity in those days. Mary continued to write poetry and teach but missed green spaces and the outdoor life.After the birth of their two sons they decided reluctantly to seek quieter surroundings outside London and when Peter was offered a job in Lancashire the family moved Up North. Once the culture shock had worn off, the friendliness, scenery and the prospect of a larger house, made this a good move, despite the precipitation. She loved the humour and down to earth attitude of the people. She kept on writing and teaching.As a family, they swapped houses with a Danish family, traveled by coach to Moscow and Estonia, camped on the Belgium coast, shared a house in Holland and had annual camping holidays with other families. The addition of another son soon after moving north and then a foster son three years later entailed a lot of cooking and mucking out of rooms. Odd socks and raids on the fridge were repeating motifs. Mary felt she needed a different career, and psychotherapy training and an MA in English led to a commission to write self-help books. Later she worked in child mental health, and for the NSPCC, until the war between Psychiatry and Psychology got in the way, then for seven happy years was a staff counsellor in a University.Left with a huge, empty house once the children had left home, they sold up and moved south to Shropshire, where Peter had embarked on a career as an art therapist. Mary now had time and space to write. A series of books followed: The Poison Garden of Dorelia Jones, A Far Cry, Losing It, and recently The Marsh People (recently republished by Victorina Press). She won the Hippocrates Prize for poetry and the Ware Prize. Her poetry has been published in many journals and anthologies, and her published collected short stories, Unconfirmed Reports From Out There, is available as an e-book. She also founded the Drayton Writers’ Group.She and her husband presently live in an old cottage and try to keep the garden at bay, though there’s a well under the living room floor and anything could be lurking in that.

Book preview

Child with no Name

by Valentine Williams

Smashwords Edition

Copyright 2017 Valentine Williams

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

This book is available in print at most online retailers.

M.V. Williams

Author's notes

All the main events in the book really happened, but the names and identities of the people concerned have been changed. I am indebted to the many people who offered first-hand accounts of the tsunami and its aftermath and posted these accounts on YouTube and MySpace, for filling in the details of this disaster.

Also, many thanks to the people who encouraged me with this project along the way; especially my husband, for whom the welfare of children has been so important.

Contents

Prologue

Chapter One: Earthquake in Sumatra

Chapter Two: Tsunami

Chapter Three: St Anthony's Orphanage

Chapter Four: Life at the Orphanage

Chapter Five: Sumatra, 2006

Chapter Six: Connie gets a letter

Chapter Seven: Chloe makes a discovery

Chapter Eight: Chloe meets Ilse

Chapter Nine: Chloe meets the Consul

Chapter Ten: Connie hatches a plan

Chapter Eleven: Fire in the forest

Chapter Twelve: Rescue!

Chapter Thirteen: Jack gets worried

Chapter Fourteen: Chloe is locked up

Chapter Fifteen: The grandparents

Prologue

Reported on the BBC programme 'On This Day' 26.12.2004:

Thousands die in Asian tsunami:

Massive sea surges triggered by an earthquake under the Indian Ocean have killed over 10,000 people in southern Asia, with many more feared dead.

An 8.9 magnitude earthquake under the sea near Aceh, North Indonesia, at 0759 local time (0059 GMT) generated the biggest tsunami the world has seen for at least 40 years. The wall of water fanned out across the Indian Ocean at high speed and slammed into coastal areas with little or no warning. Officials in Indonesia, Sri Lanka and India have all reported death tolls in the thousands and the figures are expected to rise sharply over the next few days. This may be the worst natural disaster in recent history. – UN Emergency Relief Coordinator, Jan Egeland.

CHAPTER ONE: Earthquake in Sumatra

Just as Chloe Yarborough was about to turn off the television and go to bed, a news flash came up on the screen. Her tired brain took in the words earthquake – South East Asia – Indonesia – Sumatra. All a long way away, but still she paused to listen.

Chloe had never been to Sumatra. She wasn't exactly sure where it was. Somewhere near the Equator, she guessed, and probably hot and tropical. The pictures on her mother's television showed a map. There it was, with Singapore, Kuala Lumpur, Indonesia – yes, a big island. Her parents had lived in Singapore for a while before she was born. Wasn't there trouble there in Sumatra, with one region trying to go it alone? She leaned towards the map. Banda Aceh. There it was, a small area on the north-west coast of Sumatra, with an undefined border. There were many earthquakes, they said, in this region; often under the sea. Concentric circles rippled out from the centre of the quake on the screen.

Sumatra, Indonesia – she pictured it as an island, covered in jungle, home to small rare rhinos, orangutans, fearsome plants that smelled of rotting flesh; with tropical rainforest, spice plantations and sandy beaches, and it seemed as though it was constantly renewing itself after earthquake and typhoon.

Why do disasters always seem to strike at Christmas? Chloe wondered. Her own Christmas at home with her mother, Connie, and other family members coming and going had been good. Traditional, with log fires and church and mulled wine and candles. What must it be like to spend Christmas in the Tropics?

Chloe was bored. Since leaving school in July, she'd done a variety of jobs and hadn't enjoyed any of them. She'd been a kennel maid and dog walker, worked behind a bar, done a bit of waiting-on. Her German pen friend felt the same, but she, unlike Chloe, seemed to know how her life would develop and had made plans to study maths in Munich. Chloe had no idea what she wanted to do, except travel. It helped that she was good at languages. Sumatra, that would be interesting now, a mix of languages, all difficult, and yet... No, the very thought made her weary. She turned off the TV and went to bed. The time zones were confusing. Yesterday the earthquake hadn't happened. Now, just after midnight, it had caused untold damage, with the possibility of a tsunami to follow. Yesterday, Christmas Day, the people of Sumatra had been blissfully unaware of what was in store for them. She puzzled over this until she fell asleep.

Far away, in a different time zone, it was Christmas morning at the Villa Hibiscus, in a village overlooking the bay near Calang, Sumatra.

Uwe Wassermann, peeping out through the sun-blinds of his room on the top floor, realised he had no idea what Christmas here was going to be like. There was a plastic Christmas tree and some decorations on the verandah, which the monkeys hadn't stolen yet, but inside the villa it was hardly decorated in the way he remembered from his last Christmas.

Last year there had been snow and spiced wine and lots of twinkling lights at his grandparents' home in Vienna. He didn't expect Sumatra to be the same, but he didn't mind: it was exciting and at least his father could be with them.

At seven years old, Uwe felt he'd seen a bit of the world. Vienna was good. He'd liked Vienna. He was used to London now, too, and the school he went to was okay most of the time. He wished his father could be around more. Dad's posting to Indonesia meant the children and their mother were separated from him for months at a time. The embassy staff who owned the Villa Hibiscus did their best to make this a holiday for the family when they came out, but Uwe often felt impatient with them as well as the other female adults in his life.

Here in the Villa Hibiscus these adults were his mother and the Ayah who was paid to look after them when their mother had to go to an embassy function. He longed to do things with the cook and the driver, who were male, but they didn't pay him much attention. Liani, the Ayah, was exasperated by his cheeky disregard for her authority.

You very naughty boy! she'd shouted at him, as he jumped out and startled her for the third time that day.

Liani spoke Malay and basic English and no German, and he spoke German, no Malay, and pretended not to understand her English. As he had been in a small embassy school in London for several years and spoke quite good English, his mother knew he understood perfectly well.

He looked at his little sister Ilse still asleep in her bed with her thin damp cotton sheets around her. They'd slept a bit late, despite it being Christmas morning. He prodded her.

The party last night had gone on until well past their bedtime. They'd had such fun with the other children, playing silly games and singing carols. Even their father had let his hair down a little and joined in with the game of Soldiers on Parade. Uwe supposed he'd have to go to church today with his parents, but at least he'd see the other children there. He was impatient to go downstairs to open his presents. His father was having breakfast and was irritable first thing in the morning, so Uwe thought it best to wait until Ilse and Liani were ready. To hurry things along he dressed himself and gave Ilse another prod. Ilse yawned and opened her eyes:

Stop it, Uwe, she protested. The mosquito netting made a little tent around her. She liked that. She smoothed her creased pink cotton pyjamas as she untangled her small body from the sheets. Where was Liani? Before they could open their presents downstairs, Liani had to help them wash and dress. Ilse got out of bed just as Liani appeared at the top of the stairs wielding a hairbrush, her sleek black hair tied back in a knot and wearing her best sarong.

Outside the birds were chasing a monkey that had strayed too close to the garden and were making a noise in the yard. Uwe shouted at them to shut up from the next room. Ilse put her head out of the window. She couldn't see Mungo, their dog, anywhere. It was usually Mungo who barked and frightened away the monkeys.

Happy Christmas, said Liani. You go wash now. Ilse did as she was told.

Liani stood behind her, checking that she had washed properly and handed her a fresh set of clothes. Once dressed, Liani brushed Ilse's hair, as she tossed her head impatiently like a pony.

Liani gestured to Uwe, who was already dressed, to wash his neck.

You wash, she shouted, making vigorous scrubbing movements on her own neck. She chased him with a flannel. He grinned and ducked away, snatched the flannel from her and gave his neck a half-hearted wipe.

I'm going down now, he told her, evading the ayah's hairbrush. When they got to the kitchen the cook appeared with some scrambled eggs and set them down on the table in front of them. They wanted to open their presents first, but the presence of their father in the room, pacing back and forth to the veranda with his large mug of coffee as if looking for something, prevented them. They sat down and began to eat. Their father had a worried look about him. His children irritated him at times. Finally he stopped his restless pacing and sat down at the table. Their mother came out of the kitchen and sat down next to him, helping herself to more coffee from the houseboy's tray.

Happy Christmas, everyone! She smiled at them all. Heinrich was thinking about other things:

Beata? I've been thinking. It's possible you may have to leave with the children a little earlier than we planned. She looked at him with her round hazel eyes.

Why, Heinrich? She glanced at the children who were listening intently but pretending not to. Ilse put more scrambled egg on her fork.

We'll discuss it later. She sighed and put her coffee down. Beata was determined the day would not be spoiled by whatever new information Heinrich was about to impart.

Let's let the children open their presents now. To the children she said: I've told you that you won't have so many presents this year. We couldn't carry too much on the plane, and Daddy's been too busy to buy many things here. When we get back to England there'll be some more for you. They nodded. She'd explained this all before.

Under the watchful eyes of their parents the children opened their presents.

Be careful, Uwe, said their mother, in German, as he ripped off the paper from the parcels and threw it on the floor. Put the paper away tidily. Uwe brandished the contents of the last parcel. It was a red and black Chinese kite. He swept his arm back and forth, imagining what it would look like flying. Ilse, surrounded by discarded wrappings, was busy with her doll, which sat on the floor in front of her, its eyes now fluttering half-shut. She half-heartedly swept the papers into a pile with one arm.

Do you like your present? her father asked, in his stiff way. She smiled at him; then turned back to her doll.

I shall call her Isobel.

What do you say to your father for the toys? asked their mother, nervously.

Thank you Daddy, they chorused.

Uwe wondered if his father might help him fly the kite. He didn't have to go to work again until Monday, unless there was an emergency. Maybe there'd be time. Lately, because of the terrorists, there had been times when he hadn't come back until late. That was why they were going to be sent back to England when Christmas was over. Daddy would have to stay and sort out the bad men, along with Uncle Victor and Rose.

They got ready for church and were about to leave when their mother looked round the yard.

Where's Mungo? She looked at Liani and the houseboy, thinking that they would know. They shook their heads.

Not seen, Madam.

The small black and white terrier was usually loose in the yard, where he kept the birds and monkeys at bay and warned them of any visitors approaching. They went into the dusty street and called his name, but he didn't come running up to them with his tongue out and his little stumpy tail wagging, as he usually did, and his biscuit bowl was half full.

Come, ordered their father, getting in the car. He'll turn up. We need to go or we'll be late.

The service in the small Christian mission was short. Most of the congregation were Batak –speaking local people who were delighted to have visitors. In some areas, particularly in Aceh, churches had been vandalised, even burned. After the service, they stayed to talk to the other church-goers, who said they were worried about the way things were going. However, there was no sign of any problem today; the only worrying thing was the disappearance of Mungo. Maybe he'd be there when they got home.

But when they returned he was still missing, and Ilse began to cry.

Stop fussing, her father told her. Mungo will come back. And if he doesn't it means he's been stolen and there's nothing we can do anyway. Ilse cried more loudly, until her mother took her upstairs.

Why don't we make a nice cot for Isobel? Wouldn't that be nice? Ilse nodded and dried her eyes. Her mother fetched a shoebox and some pretty paper and soon Isobel was placed in her own little bed, her blue eyes flickering ever so slightly.

Cook had made a special meal for them all, and Heinrich and