‘Wait until I tell Oun about this,’ he thought, and although feeling sad when thinking about his family, he smiled.
Father Eggleton, with help from the church’s legal departments, waded through the red tape in Thailand and got temporary custody for Ravuth. Once in England, they went to the Parish of St. Wulfram in Rutland, near Grantham, and moved into the vicarage.
Ravuth loved his new home, which felt strange at first.
Father Eggleton chuckled after showing him the light switch and Ravuth stared wide-eyed as the light went on and off.
“What’s that?” he asked, pointing to a large radio.
Father Eggleton tried to explain and Ravuth asked, “And what’s that?”
For the first few days, Ravuth questioned everything. He found it difficult at first to sleep on a bed, preferring the hard floor, but he soon became accustomed to the mattress as the stone floor felt cold.
Father Eggleton regained his strength and took up his position as the parish vicar.
Because he didn’t feel confident enough to speak English at first, Ravuth was shy and reclusive, but the small English community took the little lad from Cambodia to their hearts. The townsfolk were unaware and uninformed of Pol Pot and Cambodia’s plight. These were English country folk, with no interest in events taking place 7,000 miles away. They had their own concerns, trying to get their local heroin, Maggie Thatcher, into the Prime Minister’s spot.
Ravuth lived in a small room at the vicarage and assisted Father Eggleton with his clerical duties. The priest was a kind man, but the church paid him little, so the congregation rallied around to help with clothing for Ravuth, who spent his days in the church cleaning and helping organise events. He was too old to attend school, so father Eggleton spent afternoons educating him in English history, current affairs, and mathematics, which, with Ravuth’s thirst for knowledge, he soon learned. His language skills improved and as he became more confident, he mingled more with the community.
One of his duties was to go to the local bakery to collect sandwiches and Cakes for the weekly parish meetings. He loved the smell of the bakery with the aroma of fresh bread making his mouth water. The woman who owned the shop always saw the look of delight on Ravuth’s face when he came in to pick up his order and one day she asked, “The baker is preparing a new batch. Would you like to see how bread’s made? ”
Ravuth smiled, “Yes please.” He said, and the woman took him through to the bakery and over to a man in baker’s whites.
“My name is Patricia, and this is my husband, John, he’s the baker.” She chuckled and said, “I know you have been coming here for a long time, but I don’t know your name.”
“My name’s Ravuth,” he said smiling.
Ravuth watched John as he mixed the ingredients, put the bread dough in baking tins, and popped them into the oven. He showed Ravuth how to make cake sponge and Ravuth loved the silky aroma from the fresh baking products.
Ravuth went back to the bakery the next day at 6:00 am, and every day after, to learn and help John before returning to the vicarage at 9:00 am.
The bakery was a quiet workplace, with Ravuth’s permanent smile brightening up John, Patricia, and the customers.
After a while, John let him experiment with various ingredients, and impressed with the results, he used Ravuth’s recipes
John paid Ravuth £2 a week and let him prepare the morning stock of products, with the morning customers complimenting on the baker's fresh-tasting treats.
Ravuth spent lonely nights shivering in his cold room at the vicarage, clutching his banana box to his chest and remembering his family. His life and struggle in Cambodia now seemed like a lifetime away.
They had no T.V. and keeping abreast of world events had been difficult because Father Eggleton rarely listened to the radio. However, one parishioner informed Ravuth in 1979 that they had seen on the TV that the Khmer Rouge had lost power to Vietnamese liberation forces.
After hearing the news, Ravuth felt elated but knew that Father Eggleton did not have the funds for him to return to Cambodia and find his family. Despondent, he cried himself to sleep but remained hopeful.
It had taken time for lawyers, bureaucrats, and embassy officials to sort out Ravuth’s legal papers. In 1980, the necessary paperwork came through and Donal adopted him. Ravuth Eggleton was now a citizen of the United Kingdom and his old legal guardian was now his dad.
He spent the evenings with the ageing priest, learning the Gospels and reading his bible. Although Ravuth had no religious beliefs, he liked the stories of Christ and the Virgin Mary. Donal baptised him on in his 20th birthday.
The long years ticked by.
Patricia and John sold the bakery, realising that supermarket bakeries and their cheap products would push them out of business. Ravuth continued baking at the vicarage for the weekly meetings and his father. With more variety of ingredients becoming available in supermarkets, he experimented with foreign food, especially Thai and Cambodian cuisine, which he had made at the transit camp.
Ravuth was forty-two when Father Eggleton died, which devastated him. The old priest was his only family, mentor, and friend. His Cambodian family and roots were now just a distant memory. The two companions had been together as father and son for over a quarter of a century and once again, Ravuth felt a lost, desperate soul, with no family or friends.
They buried Father Donal Eggleton in the small cemetery at the side of the church. On the day of the funeral, Donal’s replacement handed Ravuth a brown envelope containing the priest’s gold crucifix on a chain, a cheque from the church’s lawyers that represented Father Donal Eggleton’s estate, and a notice to vacate the vicarage. Ravuth hung the crucifix around his neck and read the letter.
“What does it mean,” He asked, frowning.
The new vicar smiled and said, “Sorry Ravuth, but you have to leave the vicarage. My family will arrive tomorrow, so there would be nowhere here for you to stay.”
The following day, Ravuth packed his bags and moved into a room in a bed-and-breakfast in Grantham. The small room had a shared bathroom, although there was a sink in the room, there were no cooking facilities. Ravuth only owned a few clothes, his crucifix, old bible, and his banana leaf box, which the years had aged, but although now tatty, it gave off a sweet, pleasant aroma. Other than that, he had no other possessions to show for 42 years of life. His skin was now a lighter shade of olive because of harsh English winters, but he had remained active by walking everywhere.
Ravuth spent the first few days in his B&B room watching T.V. During the time, he had spent at the vicarage he had never seen a T.V., as Father Donal never had one, telling him that it took away the ability to learn from books and conversations. Ravuth had read many books and became knowledgeable in many things, except for life in the big mad world. One day, during breakfast, he met another long-term resident, a young unemployed Indian man. After several hours of talking, the man mentioned the internet, email, and computers, and took Ravuth along to a nearby internet café to show him how to use the technology.
After learning about the wonderful worldwide web, Ravuth spent most of his time in the internet café, glued to the screens. He researched events happening in Cambodia and found a renewed purpose in his life.
With the world now at his fingertips, he became intent to search for his lost family.
One day, Ravuth sat on his bed, opened the banana leaf box, took out the faded Polaroid photographs, and stroked them. He removed the archaic leaflets he’d found in the Koh Kong café and studied them. He then took out the seedpod. Memories of the adventure with Oun flooded back and made him smile as he recalled his last happy memory of his family. He sniffed the now brown shrivelled plant.
‘It still smells pleasant, like a honeydew, vanilla, air-freshener,’ he thought, as he looked at the gnarled shrivelled up pod. ‘Although