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The Hungry Ghosts
Anne Berry


A novel for those who loved Behind the Scenes at the Museum, The Poisonwood Bible and The Lovely Bones.Raped then murdered in Japanese occupied Hong Kong, 1942, Lin Shui’s �Hungry Ghost’ clings tenaciously to life. Holing up in a hospital morgue, destined to become a school, just in time she finds a host off whom to feed. It is 12-year-old Alice Safford, the deeply-troubled daughter of a leading figure in government. The parasitic ghost follows her to her home on the Peak. There, the lethal mix of the two, embroiled in the family’s web of dark secrets and desperate lies, unleashes chaos. All this unfolds against a background of colonial unrest, riots, extremes of weather and the countdown to the return of the colony to China. As successive tragedies engulf Alice, her ghostly entourage swells alarmingly. She flees to England, then France, in a bid to escape the past, only to find her portable �Hungry Ghosts’ have accompanied her. It seems the peace she longs for is to prove far more elusive that she could ever have imagined.The Hungy Ghosts is a remarkable tour-de-force of the imagination, full of instantly memorable characters whose lives intermesh and boil over in a cauldron of domestic mayhem, unleashing unworldly spirits into the troubled air.









The Hungry Ghosts

Anne Berry









blue door


For my matchless husband Anthony, and my amazing children, Andrea, Antonia, Ivan and Ruth.

The value of their unflagging support continues to be of inestimable worth to me.


Be thou a spirit of health or goblin damn’d,

Bring with thee airs from heaven or blasts from hell,

Be thy intents wicked or charitable,

Thou com’st in such a questionable shape

That I will speak to thee.



WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE, Hamlet, Act 1, scene 4




Table of Contents


Cover Page (#u911ec05c-df40-59fa-8f60-cc5ad46381f6)

Title Page (#u32b3da4b-774a-50f2-8ff2-e33872cf82d3)

Dedication (#u5b8b3df1-d418-5969-9c4e-a47cc404183b)

Epigraph (#ub9b3f120-ae73-5357-9dac-ca00323a7e4a)

Prologue—Ghost (#u2b0cc2b1-013f-56ef-abd8-1f4274da33ff)

Ingrid—2003 (#ud182aaee-172e-5733-8883-fd0d379c2542)

Myrtle—2003 (#u0f463e77-102d-51a2-8175-34e854989144)

Nicola—1965 (#u0a0f3061-619d-566b-aac7-1abe1735e5b0)

Harry—1966 (#u0c2ea685-9116-5dfe-a28a-d25328e49ac0)

Ghost—1967 (#ud1de7039-55ae-577e-a9ed-94b6655f495c)

Ralph—1967 (#uadf17e8a-3e10-5635-b837-3e2ddf2e0a04)

Brian—1970 (#uaa6b81f6-8254-50a3-ae23-facd55bb2b16)

Myrtle—1970 (#u579e595d-5477-54f3-b9bf-4cc50cde251c)

Nicola—1970 (#litres_trial_promo)

Ghost—1970 (#litres_trial_promo)

Harry—1970 (#litres_trial_promo)

Ghost—1970 (#litres_trial_promo)

Jillian—1971 (#litres_trial_promo)

Myrtle—1971 (#litres_trial_promo)

Ghost—1971 (#litres_trial_promo)

Nigel—1971 (#litres_trial_promo)

Ralph—1971 (#litres_trial_promo)

Nicola—1972 (#litres_trial_promo)

Ghost—1972 (#litres_trial_promo)

Ghost—1972 (#litres_trial_promo)

Myrtle—1972 (#litres_trial_promo)

Ralph—1972 (#litres_trial_promo)

Ghost—1972 (#litres_trial_promo)

Myrtle—1974 (#litres_trial_promo)

Ghost—1974 (#litres_trial_promo)

Ralph—1974 (#litres_trial_promo)

Myrtle—1974 (#litres_trial_promo)

Ghost—1974 (#litres_trial_promo)

Audrey—1974 (#litres_trial_promo)

Ghost—1974 (#litres_trial_promo)

Ghost—1975 (#litres_trial_promo)

Audrey—1975 (#litres_trial_promo)

Ghost—1975 (#litres_trial_promo)

Myrtle—1980 (#litres_trial_promo)

Bear—1986 (#litres_trial_promo)

Pierre—1986 (#litres_trial_promo)

Myrtle—1986 (#litres_trial_promo)

Pierre—1996 (#litres_trial_promo)

Ghost—1997 (#litres_trial_promo)

Ralph—1999 (#litres_trial_promo)

Myrtle—1999 (#litres_trial_promo)

Ingrid—1999 (#litres_trial_promo)

Ralph—2003 (#litres_trial_promo)

Nicola—2003 (#litres_trial_promo)

Nicola—2005 (#litres_trial_promo)

Ghost—2006 (#litres_trial_promo)

Harry—2006 (#litres_trial_promo)

Ghost—2006 (#litres_trial_promo)

Ghost—2006 (#litres_trial_promo)

Ghost—2007 (#litres_trial_promo)

Ghost—2007 (#litres_trial_promo)

Epilogue—Ghost (#litres_trial_promo)

Acknowledgements (#litres_trial_promo)

Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)

About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)




PROLOGUE Ghost (#ulink_361d4f83-af5b-544c-830e-0f15ecf39b0e)


I am dead. No, strictly speaking that is not the truth. I am neither fully alive nor fully dead. I am �undead’. I am unable to relinquish my present and consign it to the past. I am unable to accept I have no future. Thus I am static, earthbound, my feet anchored in mud, while my essence, my Chi, is being pulled, tugged, drawn towards the ghosts of my ancestors, towards the dominion of death. Sometimes I feel like a bone being worried at by a dog. This is an appropriate image because that is exactly what happened to me. This �half-death’ does not make for a peaceful spirit. I am troubled and I am trouble. You see I just have to stir things up, play with the laws of physics to prove…to prove what? That I may still be the cause and have an effect. When the ancestors clamour I tell them to be patient. I am not prepared for death I say.

My name was Lin Shui. I was the daughter of a fisherman. I lived on the island of Hong Kong and I was not ready to die. But nor were thousands of others, dying all around me every day.This is not what keeps me here. It is my gnawing hunger that fixes me to the earth.

I was murdered on a perfect summer’s morning. It was early June, the year 1942. We had seen a black Christmas come and go. Our tiny island was infested with Japanese soldiers.They had invaded our shores. They held us in their vice-like grip. Father told me that the British could not withstand their venom, that, though they fought with courage, a time had come when they buckled and fell. He explained to me in his customary soft voice that our Governor, Sir Mark Young, had gone in person to the Japanese headquarters in the Peninsula Hotel, and surrendered on Christmas Day. I thought that was odd, to hand over our island home in a place where people had once come to dine and dance, and wear fine clothes and sparkling jewels, and talk of nothing in particular. But Father told me that everything in the time that was coming would be odd, and often not just odd but terrible as well. He told me the devils of war were unleashed, that we must bear their madness with fortitude. I listened like a child, and feared like the woman rising up within me. Father told me the worst that could happen had happened, that we were an occupied island now, that they could take no more from us. But in this he deceived me, for one day a Japanese soldier was occupying me, and what he took from me was my life.

My death is like a tune that plays over and over in my thoughts. I cannot rid myself of the melody.

I am alone. My father and our junk have been taken. My mother, who paved my way into this world with her own life, is no more than a shadow to me. For months now hunger has been my constant companion.With each passing day it consumes more of me. I know that soon there will be nothing left.When you are stripped of everything, I reason, it is good to climb a mountain, for then you will see the way ahead. So I slip through the busy streets of Aberdeen dodging the soldiers, ducking out of the way of jeeps, and diving into the maze of alleys. I find the narrow path that winds its way up to the Peak. I will climb this path, I resolve. When I am high up, I will look down on Aberdeen harbour and I will know what to do. Perhaps my spirit mother tries to warn me, but I am headstrong and do not listen. Perhaps the ancestors barrel into me, a wave of consciousness holding me back. But I am stubborn and plough on. Perhaps he has been watching me for days, my murderer, has seen that I am alone, vulnerable, an easy target? Like the hunter he stalks me as I ascend.

It is already warm when I set out. A June day when the sky is clear as glass, and when the sun, as it swells to its zenith, exudes a smouldering heat that makes your skin prickle, and your head throb. The blood drums in my ears. I can feel the sweat pool in the dip between my shoulderblades, and trickle down my back. I can hear birdsong and the sounds of distant traffic. Sometimes a gunshot rings out, and then the birds, startled, fly up from their perches in the thick green canopy that surrounds me. From time to time I stand at the edge of the path and gaze down the slope, judging how far I have come, how high I am, how much further I have to go before I gain the summit. I look across a tangle of trees and vines and grasses. I am cocooned in confusion. But I am climbing the mountain that will spin lucid strands from all that is dense and opaque, I whisper.

I hear him then, his boot on the dusty ground behind me, and a stone slipping away, falling into the untidy green expanse. I turn but see nothing.Three times I spin round and the third time he is there. Neither of us speaks. We both freeze for a moment, statues on the rutted path. Even then I realise I am on the cusp, on the brink of stepping out of time, of sinking in the bottomless well. He glances over his shoulder, and when he is certain we are alone he walks purposefully towards me.

�Run,’ cries my mother, wrapping around me. �Run and together we will shun him.’

There are only a few yards between us now. I can hear his short breaths, and smell his stale sweat. If I face him he will not harm me, I tell my ancestors. They mock softly, but my mother keens. He pauses feet from me, and there is a space between us where our breaths mingle. I can see wet patches on his khaki uniform, under his arms, across his chest, around his groin. He is wearing a cap and his face is partly shaded. He has a rifle slung over his shoulder. He mutters something in Japanese, his voice harsh and dissonant, specks of cloudy spit fires from his mouth. His eyes narrow to thin wet lines. His mouth splits in a yellow-toothed sneer.

Someone will come by and by, and all will be well, I tell myself.

This is in my head as he swings the rifle off his shoulder and rams me in the chest with the butt of it. I feel a shock of pain, a sickening thud, a splintering crack. I reel backwards, lose my footing, and fall against a hard bed of dirt and stones. He has knocked the air out of me. I am gagging, trying to bite in breath. The soldier does not wait for my lungs to fill. He throws the rifle aside along with his cap, leans over me, seizes the top of my blue cotton tunic, and rips it from my body. A slither of oxygen filters into me.Looking down I see my small breasts, the nipples raised, tight and hard against the cedar brown of my flesh. I am going to crawl away, but the pain in my chest blossoms now like a flower. Again the soldier lurches forwards.This time he grasps my trousers.As he wrenches them away my slippers tumble off. My bare feet scrabble in the dirt. I try to draw my knees up to hide my shame, but he lays hold of my legs and thrusts them apart. He thrusts them so wide I think I might split in two. Here, hunched between my open legs, with one hand he frees his penis, with the other he jams fingers inside me, tearing at my soft virgin centre. My scream dies in my throat, paralysed with terror.

He waits a single interminable beat before he drives into me. In that beat his immutable eyes lock with mine, and he brings his fingers up to his mouth. I see they are coated with flecks of blood and matter.While I watch, he sucks at them ravenously. I have found my voice but he smites it with this same hand. My cry is suffocated and becomes no more than a gurgle. I taste myself in the blow, the sea-musk at the core of me, and my own blood, the metallic sweetness of it on the fingers that are clamped across my mouth. As he slams into me I feel rivers scorch and become runnels of ash.With his free hand roughly he kneads a breast, bruising and crushing it, pinching it so hard I am sure his fingers will meet, claw through my soft flesh.

But when the moment comes and he shudders out his power, I cheat him of victory, for I have left my body and am looking down from a great height. My eyes, which have been stretched wide, aflame with fear, are smothered. They set in a dead fish stare. The stare enrages him. He lets go breast and mouth, and sits back heavily. He is gasping, his penis still ramrod straight between his sweat-slicked loins. He clenches a fist and then slams it into my face.The force of the blow breaks two teeth and cuts into my cheek. A trickle of blood courses down it like a single red tear. From above I snigger at him, and the face of that other girl below breaks into a toothless grin, as she joins me, coughing and hacking with laughter. His manhood shrivels then. It becomes a poor thing at the peal of our contempt, and we can see it is no better than a worm. In the same moment he glimpses it too, and his sallow skin is empurpled with fury as he grapples at his belt.

�What have you got for me now?’ I taunt him, my voice as light as the breeze at his back.�You have occupied me and I am still whole. How will you plant your filthy flag with its rising sun now?’

It is then that I see the glint of the knife, the bayonet he has freed from its leather sheath, and I know how he will plant his flag. The red of his sun will be stained with my blood when it flutters in the wind. He thrusts forwards with all his might, up beneath my broken ribs where he hits his mark. My heart gives a mighty shudder, unreels in a final leap and freezes, the blood curdling within it. I watch him come back to himself, caging his demon deep within, hefting out the knife, and springing back before the rush of red that fountains up to meet him. He drags my body to the edge of the path and rolls it roughly into the deep green cavern. But the ragged tear in my chest snags on a branch and my body hangs there. My blood spills onto the bark, cloaking it thickly, dripping darkly, and even now drying to a crisp beneath the unforgiving sun.The soldier cleans his bayonet blade in the earth, slicing the wetness off it, slipping it back in its sheath. He adjusts his uniform, stoops to retrieve his cap, slips it on, takes up his rifle and slings it back over his shoulder. He gathers up my garments and slippers, wipes his hands on them, balls them in his fists and hurls them after my body. They do not snag on the branch but unfold as they spin, performing mid-air acrobatics as they shake off their creases, before landing, hidden in the undergrowth below. He scuffs the pool of blood over with earth, kicking at it, as if the merest sight of his sin is now abhorrent to him. Then he is gone, the beat of his boots ebbing away on the dusty tide.

I watch from my perch in the tree where I rest now, beside Lin Shui’s body. Soon all is still once more, but for the �drip, drip’ of my blood against a waxy leaf, scalding red, striking cool virgin green. How easy is it then, this business of dying, the ancestors trumpet, preparing to welcome me into their starry fold. That is when the fury unfurls inside me. I shrink from them.

�I am not ready to go with you,’ I say, clinging to my body, smelling the black hair with just a trace of the mineral sea, and the skin, cotton fresh, and blood that oozes still, salt and copper and cloying with sweetness. And when their rhapsody swells and they pluck at me in their impatience, I hiss and lash the air up into a wind.Then they are frightened and disperse.

The flies come first, bent on blood, crazed with the rancid whiff of decay. And while they swarm over Lin Shui, I consider the shame I might bring on my family if I am found like this. If my father returns and discovers me with the blood bubbling between my thighs, it might prove too great a disgrace for him. I reflect over the buzzing of the flies that it would be better if I was never found. I summon all my strength, pushing the flesh that had once been mine, trying to dislodge it, but it is heavy as lead. When the chorus of cicadas start, I implode, gathering up all the spidery range of me. I slip into the branch, where the limb that bears Lin Shui’s body angles from the tree. I seep into the taut, woody fibres there, already stretched with the weight of their load. I saw at them, fuelled with anguish, and at last there is a great crack. The branch breaks, and Lin Shui’s bloody corpse, my corpse, pitches downwards, the green opening up to her like water, and closing over her when she is gone. Now you can no longer see her from the path. She is hidden, a covert child. I slither down to her. She has landed with a twist. She lies on her belly, her head corkscrewing round, her face still wreathed in its broken-toothed smile, crowning her back.

That night the dogs come. At first there is only one, a sad creature, all ribcage and weeping sores, that skulks nervously around my body, snarling and baring his dripping fangs for several minutes before tucking in. He laps and licks the blood thirstily. He tears at sinew and muscle and flesh. He crushes and crunches bones. His teeth grind and grate. The cacophony of his feeding frenzy appals me. He is joined by another. First they scrap, hackles up, wearing what fur they have on their mangy carcasses like ruffs, gnashing their teeth, growling and snapping over their prize. In the end they realise there is enough for both of them, and they settle down together to feast on Lin Shui. I cannot stay here, I think. If I stay here I shall be reminded that I am dead. So I rise up and shiver on the thermals, and see days come and days go. I soar with the birds. But even here there is buzzing, silver planes somersaulting and diving and chattering, and far below me a seething sea, carved up with sail-less pewter ships, all hard lines against the scrolls of the sea. I want somewhere I can repose and gather my wits, some refuge that I can lose myself in.

I know it is ironic for someone cheating death, but I settle at last on a morgue, the morgue of a British army hospital. Perhaps I have more in common with the dead than I realise. It is a gigantic red-brick building, three storeys high, with tiled floors and wide staircases.The patients’ wards, the operating theatres, the laboratories and the offices, which nestle within it, are bordered by long corridors, open to the elements but for the arched colonnades that line them. There are smaller barrack blocks standing on the terraced slopes above it. The edifice is reassuringly solid, rooted comfortingly, as I still am, to the earth. It rises grandly from its site in Bowen Road. My morgue lies in a roomy basement at one far end of the hospital. It is quenched of light.

This then is how I come to stave off death, with nothing but my will for weaponry. And it is how, paradoxically, I find myself housed in a sepulchre of death. Above me a battle rages, but I choose to reside below with the defeated.They lie stiffly in the tenebrous ward that all mankind must come to, with their shattered bones and gory stumps. Some have empty red sockets where the jelly of an eye once swivelled, some ragged flesh where once an ear thrilled to the music of life, some scorched bloody caves, where tongues wagged and lips were bellows, pumping the body’s elixir of oxygen. Beneath their shrouds I trace the puncture patterns of bullets, reliving the impact of each one, the flesh yielding with a judder to their sting.

These then are my playmates, my companions, these cold rigid cadavers. Sometimes I concentrate very hard and jerk their waxy limbs.I make their petrified,pale eyelids twitch.As I move over their ruined bodies like a lover, my presence soft as gentle rain on their ugly wounds, they tell me their sad tales of death. They speak of lovers left behind, of mothers longed for, and of filth and gore and carnage.They tell me how they grew fluent in the language of horror, of shrieks torn from bodies racked with pain, of groans dredged up from a Hades of everlasting torture, of grief that had not the luxury to linger.Theirs was a lottery of limbs yielded up to blade and bomb and bullet, their drama, the inestimable tragedy of war. And in turn I croon them to sleep with memories of breath, and the urgency of it, and the beat of blood, and the flood of sensation, and the tick of life. I tell them stories of our junk, Heavenly Sea, bucking and pitching across a bowl of liquid gold. I recount how my father, a simple fisherman, was taken by the Japanese, a suspected informer for the Gangjiu Dadui, one of the Chinese resistance forces. I confide my yearning for the inconstant ocean, the salt smack of her rough embrace. I impart that it was the South China Sea that bore me up, when my child’s body grew weary with its chores.

So we share our burden of loss, the dead and I, robbed of our lives and of our loves. Once, one of my soldier playmates is brought to the morgue, like me hovering in the half-light between life and death. Before he slips away, he makes a gift to me of his ethereal British army jacket.

�To shield your modesty,’ he says, insisting as he departs that he no longer has a need for it.

Then a dawn breaks, that is marked by a ringing silence. Gone is the clattering, booming, jarring disharmony of war.The staccato guns have stopped firing. The crescendo of marching feet is stilled. The medley of horses’ hooves is muffled.The dreadful ululation is spent. My dead companions no longer come to see me, and the building above my head grows thick with quietude. I am thinning with loneliness, for dust motes and dried blood make for poor company. Curious, I creep out of obscurity. It is dusk. I alight on a curve of railing. I am aware that time has rolled by and all is changed. I stare down the skirt of the mountain at the harbour,Victoria harbour. I see it transformed, the dimpled sea freckled with crafts of every imaginable shape and size. Ribbons of road packed with cars and lorries and buses wind about the slopes. There are more buildings beaded with lights than I could ever have dreamt of—buildings so tall they seem to brush the clouds. I am blinded too by the shimmering pictures facing some of the tall towers, pictures that bounce out across the water, luminous sea snakes, electric colours that crackle and spit into the night. Lin Shui’s life is faded now, like an old book left in the sun and rain too long. Some days I allow myself to drift towards death.When I do, I think I see a small boy crouching in the shadows, an urchin with hair of spun gold, and skin that shines like varnished teak. He is barefoot and clad in black rags. I start to sink into the soporific infinite blackness at the centre of his eyes. And he stands and smiles, and opens his arms to me in greeting. Like a moth drawn to a flame, I am drawn to him. But always just before he enfolds me, I rouse myself and kick out.

My voice might be weaker but still it cries, �I am not ready yet. Not yet.’

Then one day the children come. Among them is Alice.




Ingrid—2003 (#ulink_39bcfdae-470a-5df9-b2b0-70747823fb13)


The one person you can reliably guarantee will be missing from a funeral is the deceased. Then why, at the funeral of Ralph Safford, did I have the distinct impression that two people were missing? I suppose that my charge, Lucy Holiday, the deceased’s sister, was largely responsible. I had been employed as a carer for Lucy for several years now. Childless, widowed, in her eightieth year and in fragile health, Lucy defied expectations, clinging tenaciously onto life. On the day of her brother’s funeral, Lucy, with her wisp of wild, white hair, and bright, periwinkle-blue eyes, was enjoying a rare moment of lucidity. She sat in her wheelchair alongside the pew-end, humming tunelessly to all the hymns, her eyes darting around the congregation, and alighting first on one face then another.

At length, she gestured for me to lean closer, and closer still, then whispered in my ear in her scratchy-record voice, �Ingrid, where is Alice?’

To which I naturally replied, �Who is Alice?’

She fidgeted with the fabric of her black polyester dress, and rubbed her matchstick legs before answering, and so long was she that I couldn’t help wondering if I’d lost her again.�Alice is my niece,’ she said at last, on a rising note of triumph.

�The daughter of your brother Ralph?’ I sought confirmation.

Lucy nodded her affirmation. I was puzzled. As far as I knew, Ralph Safford only had three children. I had met the family a few times since they settled in England four years ago. I recalled the first occasion being held at the Saffords’ home, Orchard House, at a party to celebrate their return from abroad. Besides this, Lucy had spoken of them, if not often, certainly enough for me to be well acquainted with their names. Jillian was the eldest, and Nicola the middle child, while Harry was the baby of the family. But of this �Alice’, up to now I had heard nothing. With Lucy’s customary fits and starts, I had also gleaned a little of the deceased’s life, certainly enough to whet my appetite for more. Here, it seemed, was no ordinary man. Apparently Lucy’s brother and his family had lived overseas, in the then British Crown Colony of Hong Kong, where he had been employed by the government. �A high-ranking official,’ Lucy had confided to me with a knowing wink, on more than one occasion, often adding enigmatically, �In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.’ Quite what this meant I did not know. However, it only seemed to enhance the impression that Lucy’s brother had been out of the ordinary. Apparently too, the Saffords lived at one of the most enviable addresses at the summit of Victoria Peak. This, Lucy had explained, was the highest mountain on the island, and was known locally simply as �The Peak’. I had also discovered that Ralph and his wife Myrtle only returned to England a year or so after Hong Kong was handed back to China in 1997, though it seemed the children departed some time earlier. But of Alice, until today, there had been no mention. I was intrigued. However, the middle of a funeral service was neither the time nor the place to probe family history, unearthing who knew what skeletons. So when Lucy asked me yet again where Alice was, I did my best to bring the matter to a close for the present.

�I expect she’s up at the front with Myrtle, your sister-in-law,’ I whispered. Then, without thinking, I added, �All three children are sitting alongside their mother.’ But to my relief Lucy gave another nod, and seemed satisfied.

The priest was offering up prayers now, and a bald patch on the crown of his head loomed somewhat indecently into sight. I could not help noticing that it was a surprising shade of mustard yellow, and gleamed dully with beads of perspiration.

I straightened up, and tried to concentrate on the proceedings once more.Though this was easier said than done, I thought, as the vicar’s nasal voice see-sawed on monotonously. But again Lucy beckoned me down to her, frantically flapping her crêpe-paper hand, freckled with age-spots, and roped with prominent, deep-blue veins.

�Four,’ she said, and for a moment I was nonplussed.

�Four?’ I repeated at a loss.

This time Lucy raised her cracked voice to its very limit. �Four,’ she huffed.And then,when I still looked blank,�Four children.Ralph had four children.’ This last, she said so loudly that several heads turned to glare in our direction.

�I’ll find out where she is later,’ I hissed, enunciating each word as clearly as I could, without causing further disturbance. Luckily at that moment the organ struck up, and though I could see Lucy was speaking again, her words were drowned out by a thunderous rendition of �Onward Christian Soldiers’.

And to be honest as the service went on, and, it seemed, Lucy quietened down, I let her supposed concerns slip to the back of my mind. Naturally, with a job like mine, funerals have a way of cropping up regularly. But for the most part these occasions have the sting taken out of them. The death of an elderly person who has lived their life to the full is both inevitable and, in a way, a cause for gratitude.They have managed to reach the end of the game despite the many hazards life would have thrown in their path. Bearing this in mind, my primary concern as a carer for those of advanced years is that my patients make a good end. And yet…and yet, the more times I witness death, no matter how peaceful it is, the less comfortable I am with it.These days, I can’t help wondering if behind that pallid face, those fluttering breaths, that seemingly limp body, a tussle with death is playing out, fuelled by regrets, opportunities missed, words left unspoken, and last but not least, the indignity of it all.

But for now I abandoned this unsettling train of thought, and cast my eyes around the beautiful old Sussex church. I took in the small sober congregation, clad in their suitably melancholy outfits. These faces were, I noted, no different from the many others I had seen at past services, obviously more unsettled by this grim reminder of their own mortality than distraught with grief at the passing of another. The prickle on the back of the neck, the leaden sensation in the stomach, the feet squirming in their shoes, the longing to be outside filling your lungs with fresh air, the sudden shadow subduing the chirpiest of characters, these were not signs of sorrow, oh no, but of their own disquiet. Nor could I claim that I was exempt from such reflections. Sooner or later, the service, you knew, would be yours. And at sixty-two the �sooner’ undoubtedly applied to me.

Despite this, I let my eyes linger on Ralph Safford’s coffin, set to one side of the altar.There was no denying it made a fine spectacle, fashioned in a rosy mahogany, or at least the veneer of it, with flowers draped luxuriously over the lid. I picked out some of my favourites—fragrant lilies, golden roses with tight corollas of whorled petals, fluffy cream carnations, lacy lilac delphiniums, and strident white and yellow gerberas, all arranged in glorious sprays.The soft colours were echoed in the arrangements that were decked throughout the church. The magnificent stained-glass windows drew me too, weathered by time and changing seasons. The summer light, as it poured through them, was transmuted into magical colours, iridescent beams moving over the patina of old wood, transforming the wan faces of the mourners into something unearthly. For a while I became wholly absorbed in a particularly lovely pair of arched windows, depicting two cloaked women in lucent blues and purples and silvery greys.

Then my attention was drawn back to the service again. Nicola Safford was addressing the congregation, delivering a eulogy to her father. Impeccably dressed, she had shown no sign whatever of nerves, or indeed heartache, as she strode confidently up to the lectern.Then, like a consummate actress, she had paused, her eyes sweeping over the pews to ensure she had the full attention of her audience. Now, unsurprisingly, her delivery was flawless—word-perfect, in fact one might almost have said a little too well rehearsed. She spoke of the years of sublime happiness the family spent together in Hong Kong, of her father’s absolute devotion to his wife and his children, and of the invaluable contribution he had made on the island.

�He was at the helm in good times and bad, serving his Queen and country without flinching. He faced the challenges of keeping the colony on an even keel throughout the period of unrest that culminated in the riots of 1967. With immense bravery he stood proud, in the front line. He defended the citizens of Hong Kong from the bloodthirsty insurgents who threatened the stability of the island. Under my father’s auspices order was restored. And for his exceptional contribution to his monarch,Queen Elizabeth the Second, and to the British government of the time, he was awarded the OBE, and made an Officer of the British Empire.’

I listened, rapt, as Nicola Safford’s clear, well-modulated voice, echoed off the stone walls of the thirteenth-century church, revealing yet more admirable facets to her father’s character. Finally softening her tone, lowering her gaze, and blinking back tears that very nearly convinced me, she spoke of the love she had for her father.

�I was so grateful…grateful for the opportunity to demonstrate the veneration in which I held my father, grateful to be close to such a fine man, doing what little I could to ease his passage through those final years.’Her last words,delivered at a slower pace,the volume swelling, the pitch deeper, resonated like the closing chord of a great symphony. Nor do I think I imagined the slightly awkward moment that followed, in which the impulse to applaud had to be quelled by the mourners.

Nicola Safford’s address had certainly pushed Lucy’s perturbation to the back of my mind. But if I thought I had heard the end of Alice, I was mistaken. In fact it was just the beginning. Later, when the service had finished, and my charge and I joined the little queue, to pay our condolences to Myrtle Safford and the children, Lucy took up the same refrain. Where, she wanted to know, was Alice? She could see Harry, Jillian and Nicola, but surely Alice should be with them. It would have mattered to Ralph that his youngest daughter was here. Alice would have wanted to attend too. Even, more ominously, what had they done with her? There was no doubt about it, I had a Miss Marple kind of curiosity awakening inside me.

I soothed Lucy as best I could, easing her forwards in her chair and plumping up the cushions behind her, checking that she was comfortable. Then, as we neared Harry Safford, I promised her that I would make inquiries about Alice. I shook her nephew’s clammy hand, reminded him of my name, told him how sorry I was for his loss, how beautiful the flowers were, and how moved I had been by the service. This over, I had the distinct impression that Harry had already dismissed me from his mind. But once set in motion I am like an ocean liner: it takes considerable effort to stop me. I leaned in towards Harry, resolved not to move on until I had questioned him on behalf of my charge. I took a deep breath. Suddenly I felt nervous. How ridiculous, I told myself, as I sent out the first scout in search of Alice.

�Your Aunt Lucy is feeling a bit anxious,’ I told him, pushing my rimless spectacles more firmly up my nose with a fingertip.�She wants to know where your sister Alice is?’ Did I imagine it or was there a flicker of something in his cold, bluish-grey eyes. Recognition? Anger? Or perhaps even fear?

�Alice?’ he queried with a dry little laugh.�Really? Who is Alice?’ He placed crossed hands over his rotund belly, almost defensively.

�Forgive me. I thought that Alice might be your sister,’ I explained. �Your Aunt Lucy seems convinced you have another sister. Alice?’

�Well, my aunt is mistaken,’ Harry said curtly, looking at my charge with undisguised displeasure. He bent over the fragile form of Lucy and bellowed, �What rubbish are you talking now, Aunty, getting Ingrid all upset? Ralph would be ashamed of you making up such silly things.’ I detected, though subtle, a slightly lazy �r’ in his speech.

�I’m not upset,’ I assured Harry Safford. �It’s just that your aunt seems so certain. She keeps saying that Alice should be here. She seems concerned that something may have happened to her.’ Harry arranged his features in an expression of extreme bafflement. But I was not to be so easily thwarted. I pointed my next words.�To Alice I mean. That something may have prevented Alice from coming.’

�What is all this nonsense, Aunt Lucy?’ Harry blustered, his face reddening, more with annoyance, I guessed, than embarrassment.

�Why is Harry shouting at me?’ Lucy wanted to know, hunching further down in her chair. �I’m not deaf. But then he always was a bully.’

Now it was my turn to colour. The old, like the very young, do not screen their words, parcelling them up and sending them out in acceptable packages for this world to receive, as most of us do.

�I’m sorry,’ I apologised on behalf of Lucy. �She’s a bit tired, and probably a touch overwrought with the emotion of the day.’

�It’s quite understandable,’ Harry said shortly, eyes unblinking, giving me a perfunctory smile. He turned away from us then towards his mother and sisters, ruffling back his short ash-grey hair in an impatient gesture.

�It’s just that Lucy appears to be quite fractious about…well…about Alice you see,’ I persisted.

Reluctantly Harry turned back. But this time he recruited his sisters to add weight to his own voice.

�Aunt Lucy has been bothering Ingrid with foolish stories about someone called Alice,’ he said, with the air of a parent whose tolerance is being pushed to its absolute limits. Again, I thought I saw a furtive glance pass between Nicola and Jillian.

Jillian, a large lady, whose considerable height was diminished by her width, gave a slight shiver before speaking. She tossed back her startling, shoulder-length red hair, greying at the roots. �Poor Aunt Lucy,’ she said at last. �She gets very muddled.’ She reached out a hand tentatively and touched her aunt’s bony shoulder. It was hard for me to read the expression in her flint-grey eyes, with her large, square-framed glasses reflecting back the bright sunshine at me. She did not, I observed, have her sister’s dress sense. The variation in shade, however slight, from the black tailored trousers, to the dark navy jacket, was disconcerting. Added to this, the jacket appeared rather snug and the trousers at least one size too large.

�That’s right,’ Nicola chimed in, her tone liberally soaked in pity, �poor Aunt Lucy hardly knows what day it is, bless her.’ She shot me a swift appraising look, critically taking in my own cheap black suit, practical flat shoes, and hurried attempt to pin up my straight salt and pepper bob.

She was a little shorter than her sister, and slimmer in build. From a distance her outfit had looked smart, but close up it was stunning. The knee-length black dress with matching jacket, delicate gold flowers stitched into the fabric, had the unmistakable sheen of heavy silk.The outfit was finished off with inky stilettos, a designer’s golden tag glinting at their heel backs. Her hairstyle was eye-catching too. The overall shade was altogether more natural than her sister’s, a deep mocha-brown, aflame with red and gold highlights. It was cut into irregular bangs that suited the fine bone structure of her face. But bizarrely her hands, I noticed, were those of a nineteenth-century scullery maid, rubbed red and raw. Now she fixed me with her own inscrutable eyes, just the colour of the slab of liver I had purchased for Lucy from the butcher’s that week.

�You really shouldn’t be concerning yourself with Aunt Lucy’s ramblings, Ingrid. Surely you’re experienced in caring for the elderly? You should know what to expect.’ And I could have sworn there was a warning edge to a voice that had an unsettling, forced brightness in it.

�Of course,’ I said, understanding that the conversation had been brought to a close.

I pushed Lucy onwards, briefly shaking Myrtle Safford’s hand. The matriarch of this family was a tall woman with a proud but guarded face, gimlet eyes, glittering jewels, and outdated clothes which nevertheless screamed quality. However, I barely had time to express my sympathy, before her children whisked her away to speak to a less troublesome mourner. My thoughts in turmoil now, I steered my charge to a quiet spot in the churchyard, beneath the shade of an oak tree encircled with a wooden seat. I tucked a cheerful tartan rug I had brought with me about Lucy’s knees, and told her gently that she must be mistaken about Alice. Was she perhaps thinking of someone else, from her husband’s side of the family? Another niece or perhaps the child of a friend? When she said nothing, I crouched before her, my hands resting on the arms of her wheelchair, levelling my gaze with hers. For a moment her sharp blue eyes had a promising intensity about them. She opened her mouth and took a shaky but deliberate breath.

�You see, Ingrid, Alice is…is…’

�Is what?’ I urged her eagerly. But the elusive thought had wriggled away, and Lucy’s eyes suddenly shut tremulously. �You’re tired. I’ll take you home now,’ I told her, unable to keep the disappointment from my voice.

But just before I helped her into my car she grasped my bare arm. I had peeled off my jacket by then and was only wearing a short-sleeved cream blouse. Now Lucy’s fingers scrabbled against the flesh of my forearm, splayed and light as birds’ feet.

�Where is Alice? Alice should have been here. Ralph would be most upset,Ingrid,you know,’she croaked. Shortly after this I bundled her into the car, and she immediately fell into a deep sleep, snoring lightly.

I was staying overnight with Lucy in her small terraced house in Hailsham. After her tea, cottage pie and raspberry jelly, I decided a warm bath might settle her for the night. I never quite got used to the shrivelled bodies I handled daily, with their spun-glass bones and their tracing paper flesh. As I sponged the curve of Lucy’s back, knotted and wrinkled as the bark of some ancient tree, my mind played over the events of the day. No matter which thread of thought I plucked at, they all seemed to lead back to Alice, as if by merely uttering her name Lucy had conjured up her ghost. Later, when my charge was tucked up in bed, just before I slipped out her false teeth, I tried once more.

�Are you sure your brother Ralph had a fourth child, a child called Alice?’ I asked softly.

The last thing I wanted to do was to distress Lucy just before she fell asleep. But I needn’t have worried. She looked at me blankly, and then the coquettish smile of a flirtatious young woman wreathed her wizened face.

�Who…is Alice?’ she said.

For the remainder of the evening I watched a bit of television, and then settled to a crossword puzzle. I like doing crosswords, everything fitting into its correct space, all the words connected, interdependent. Just before turning in, I drew back the green velour curtains, and stared out into the tiny garden.The pane had misted lightly with the cool of the night. I wrote the name �Alice’ very carefully on it with my index finger.

�Alice who?’ I whispered and climbed the stairs to bed.




Myrtle—2003 (#ulink_1c098c40-0c1c-5756-b180-72b16bca13f7)


I am sitting in the back room of Orchard House. I am always sitting in the back room waiting for something to happen. And when you sit, as I do, for hour after hour, you find yourself reminiscing. You cannot help it.You begin to wonder about how it all came to pass. The young look forward. The old look backward.

I remember the child I once was, the child who visited Kew Gardens with Mother and brother Albert. I craned my small neck, looking at the red pagoda that rocked upwards, diminishing into the unremitting drabness of an oyster-grey sky.And I dreamed my dreams. All the way home, as the bus rumbled and coughed, and juddered and spluttered, through London traffic, I watched a fly fling itself against a sooty pane of glass. Turning my head, I could see Albert, beautiful Albert, with his piercing ice-blue eyes, sensuous red mouth, and dark curls. And I could see my mother, her brown hair neatly crimped, her own prim mouth, bright with deep pink lipstick, her round cinnamon eyes, dancing with obvious delight. Their heads were touching, mother and son, their voices low and intimate, washed into one another. Close as conspirators they were, oblivious of me, gazing at them from across the aisle. So I turned away, back to the fly buzzing and battering itself against the glass, its frenzy futile. I imagined smashing that pane of glass with a closed fist, hearing it shatter. I pictured the fly bursting out into the infinite space, and whirring away, hardly daring to believe its luck.

I recall how years later, shortly after the war, my gentle giant of a father died. His disease-ridden heart, the organ that had prevented him fighting for his country and earned him a coward’s feather, finally gave out in peacetime. It seized up and froze before a plate of pink blancmange. As the breath trickled out of him he keeled over, right into the cold, gelatinous pinkness of it, a single bubble of breath breaking the surface seconds after. I remember my dismay looking on, knowing I had lost my only ally in the gloomy red-brick house in Ealing.

And I recollect my first sight of you, Ralph—dark, tall and dashing, with alert steely-blue eyes, clasping a camera before you.You were covering an amateur show for the local rag, and had come to photograph its parochial stars. I was numbered among them. Gwendolen in Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest. At best, my performance could be described as lacklustre; at worst, wooden. But you, it appeared, had seen a different play altogether, as you posed me for your photographs, your face so animated, those beguiling eyes of yours sparkling. Next to your striking looks, it was the enthusiasm that captured and held me. It was as if there was nothing you couldn’t do with it. Take a shabby little amateur production in a village hall, with threadbare costumes and tatty scenery, and transform it into a glittering spectacle, showcasing the astonishing talent that lay at the heart of a thriving community. Or, perhaps, take a dull British girl destined for banal suburbia and transform her into a shimmering princess?

�What a superb show! I don’t know when I’ve laughed so much. And you, well, you were wonderful Miss Lambert, entrancing. I brought Lucy, my sister, along too.And she loved your performance.’

That’s what you said to me, as you pushed a strand of hair back from my face and, with a finger under my chin, adjusted the angle of my profile. You were wonderful. I knew I wasn’t. Hadn’t the director, Ron Fowler, spent eight weeks informing me of the fact? And all the while his invective boomed out, those expressive fingers of his would spear back his leonine mane, and his fleshy cheeks would colour plum-red.

�Do lighten your delivery,Myrtle.This is Wilde at his finest,witty, effervescent repartee. It’s a comedy, darling, not a wake. Must you keep clinging onto the furniture, lovey? Anyone would think you were on the Titanic, hanging on for dear life, seconds before the bloody thing went down. Sweetheart, do pick up your cues a bit more promptly, you’re slowing down the pace to a deathly crawl. Must you keep folding your arms, darling? You look like the genie from Aladdin, not the alluring Gwendolen Fairfax.’

They just kept coming, and the worst of it was knowing the comments were completely justified. I had no talent: my foray into amateur theatre only served to confirm what I had always suspected. I did not have the fascination of the sea about me, no glittering treasure lying undiscovered many fathoms down. It was disheartening to realise the truth. Oh Ralph, I just wanted to shine for a time, the way Albert did, for Mother to be just a little in awe of me…as if…as if I really was an interesting person. Is that too much to ask?

You did that. Looking back, I think something in your exuberance answered to my reticence. I was self-contained, you were abandoned. Opposites attract, isn’t that what they say? But I knew, almost immediately I knew. As I sat there wishing I was not quite so tall, that my hair would not fall so stubbornly straight, that I could instil some mysterious depths into my eyes, like Rita Hayworth or Bette Davis, and your camera clicked and flashed, I knew. You were my ticket out of there, away from Mother and the ever-present reprobation in those grim button eyes of hers, away from Albert, the brother, the boy, the son and heir, who had been given so many gifts that there were none left over for me. And away from the gloomy corners of the red-brick house, and the grey that I felt my soul was steeped in.

I sensed you were attracted to me that first meeting. It was quite enough to be going on with. Had director Ron only known it, I followed my dismal debut as Gwendolen Fairfax with a breathtaking improvisation of Myrtle Lambert, the woman every man wants by his side, his perfect helpmeet, the accomplished hostess, the contented housewife, the adoring lover. I gave it everything I had, because, you see—and here, believe me I am not exaggerating—my future relied upon it. And when you didn’t ask for your money back, but seemed entirely swept away by the illusion,indeed,just kept following curtain-call with curtain-call, I knew I had a triumph on my hands. Maybe not worthy of the Oscar which all Hollywood actresses hanker after, but then who wanted some old statue gathering dust on their shelf when instead they could have handsome, dynamic Ralph Safford for their very own. And more, a life as far away from dreary Britain as it was possible to get, thrown in with the bargain.

So we were married—you for love, and me for…ah Ralph, for a force much stronger than that: the longing for freedom. I was entirely satisfied with the arrangement, and be honest, so were you, to start with anyway. When you were posted to Africa, Kenya, as a government photographer, I was by your side.You whisked me away, leaving Mother seething far behind in the red-brick house, claiming she had been abandoned by the pair of us.

I used to love sitting on the veranda of our bungalow in Kenya, sipping scotch. I close my eyes and I am there. It is very hot. The air pulses with the heat. The chill of England seems so distant. I open my eyes sleepily, just a fraction, smile and take another sip of scotch. Having a drink together in the evenings was all part of the ritual. Do you recall, Ralph? The servant bringing the bottle of scotch on a tray, together with the ice tub and two glass tumblers, each already filled with chunks of ice. I loved the way the ice cubes chimed as I rolled them round the glass. I loved the whisper of the cold, golden liquid going down, a thread of flame tightening inside me. I was enthralled by the extremes, the last rays of the dying sun scalding through me, the cold of the frosted glass against my cheek. Sunsets were very different in Africa, weren’t they, Ralph? The sun was a fireball that sank very slowly into the parched red clay. The skies were almost obscenely brilliant—topaz, coral, mauve, malachite, banks of radiance shifting from second to second. Actually, I found the evening displays a trifle vulgar, wasteful, the squandering of so much colour.

It’s raining now, an insistent drumming on the rooftop, runnels of rain coursing down the sash windows,the sound of spattering droplets closing in on me. It always seems to be raining here in England. It wasn’t like that in Hong Kong, was it Ralph? Except of course during the typhoon season, or when the mists settled on the Peak, and the mizzle closed in.

God alone knows what possessed Nicola to choose that dreadful wallpaper for this draughty room.White flowers plastered over a red background. It calls to mind the new regional flag they’ve chosen for Hong Kong. An uninspiring design if you ask me. It looks like one of those handheld windmills you buy at a fair, or at the seaside. Hardly something you can take seriously. It can’t be compared to the Union Jack. Now there’s a flag you can be proud of, a flag that means something.

The roof of this wretched building leaks. Why Nicola persuaded us to buy it I will never know.

�Orchard House.The two of you will love it.’That’s what she said, as if we didn’t have any choice in the matter. And, quite honestly, looking back, I’m not sure we did.

There are buckets placed at strategic points to catch the drips. I can hear them plinking now. It is a bit like a form of Japanese water torture, waiting for the next plink, watching the buckets and pails slowly fill, wondering when the silvery skins will rupture, and the collected rain will trickle down the sides and soak into the Persian rugs. I think I can say that the state of the roof is the most weighty problem here, but there are others. Damp in general, peeling wallpaper, rotting window-frames and cracked panes, missing floortiles, banging pipes and a faulty central-heating system, to name but a few. I think we may even have a bit of woodworm on the first floor that needs treating. Oh, we have mice too. Larry, my son-in-law, claims he’s dealing with them. But I doubt it. He says a great deal, and as far as I can see does very little. And Jillian’s not much better. What I wouldn’t give for a couple of amahs to set the place to rights. I thought Nicola said that having Jillian and Larry living with us was going to make life much easier, that it would alleviate all our difficulties. What’s more, I could have done without the boy being foisted on us. Amos. What a ridiculous name for a child! It’s not even as if we’re great ones for religion. Besides, I have never been maternal. I can’t think why Jillian and Larry spent all that money trying to have a baby.When the doctor told her they had problems (something odd about Larry’s sperm, not that I pressed them for any details you understand), in my opinion she should have just accepted it. I would have. Gladly, as it happens!

I’m sorry, Ralph, but you know I never really wanted children. Not all women hanker after a family you know. We aren’t all programmed for reproduction. Some of us don’t need miniature replicas of ourselves to make our lives complete. Conversely, in Alice’s case, far from completing me, she very nearly destroyed me. I had her for your sake you know, so you can’t blame me entirely for what happened, what happened to our daughter, Alice. You were determined to have your son, weren’t you? Oh, you never put it into so many words,but the understanding was implicit.I did my best,Ralph. You must give me that. I tried my hardest to produce your boy, your heir. And if it did take me four goes, I managed it in the end. Don’t judge me, Ralph, wherever you are now.You have no idea what it was like for me producing girl after girl, producing Alice at that hospital in Ealing. I had to feel Mother’s scorn at my inability to get a son for my husband—not once, not twice, but thrice. After all, she had managed the feat first time, hadn’t she?

We didn’t put Alice’s name on your gravestone. The children wanted to make a dedication to you, a personal thank-you to their father. We talked about adding her name after theirs, but in the end we decided it wasn’t appropriate.We felt she hadn’t earned her place there. And Ralph, this once you weren’t around to make a fuss. So there it is, Jillian, Nicola and Harry, but…no Alice. If you want my opinion, and you never really did when it came to Alice, this is as it should be.

�Is it a boy?’ I asked the midwife repeatedly. She was quite terse with me in the end.

�It’s a girl,’ she snapped. �I’ve told you it’s a girl, a lovely girl.’

That was an oxymoron to me by then, Ralph. Can you understand that? I’d had Jillian and Nicola, and each of those pregnancies cost me dearly. But as a man you could never appreciate that. Besides, delivering Alice was meant to be my last messy natal performance. I deserved to have a boy. I deserved a son by then.You know what they say, Ralph, third time lucky.Well, it wasn’t for me. Having Alice was the most unpropitious thing that ever happened to me. Our daughter, our third daughter filled me with dread. But not you, oh no. You adored her, didn’t you?

The midwife was a big, hearty woman, with apple-red cheeks, and large pink hands, butcher’s hands I recall. She reached towards my chest and started fumbling with the tie of my nightie.

�No! No, no!’ My voice was pitched too high. It reeked of panic.

�Put her to your breast,’ she urged, still pulling at the lacing. She had a slight burr to her voice, though what the accent was I couldn’t tell you.

I thrust her hand away.�I am not feeding it myself.I need a bottle,’ I told her succinctly. I had an image of a stray dog then, a dog I had seen on the streets of Nairobi, its dugs heavy with milk, puppies suckling frantically at them. Its eyes were rolled upwards to heaven, you could see their whites, but it lay in the gutter, and was coated with filth.

I suppressed a shudder. She stopped scrabbling at my painfully engorged breasts and nudged the baby forwards instead. I took it awkwardly, as if I thought it might bite me at any moment. I looked into the face. The wispy hair was lighter than Nicola’s. The mouth that rooted hopefully towards me was pretty enough. But the eyes unsettled me.They were the rich brown of tobacco, and preternaturally alert.They were needy too. I have been told a newborn cannot focus immediately, but as this child stared steadily up at me I had my doubts. Returning her gaze, what I felt was not a trickle of love, but a wave of cold dislike. �She’ meant that I would have to do it all once more. She was unnecessary, surplus to requirements. She did not even have the decency to look abashed,as Nicola had done.And quite suddenly, with the smell of disinfectant and warm sweet blood, and the distant muted sounds coming to me from far corridors of rolling trolleys and muffled voices and footsteps, I felt afraid.

�Shall I show your husband in?’ asked the determined midwife, her tone brisk, business-like. And when there was no response, she added with unnecessary emphasis,�To see his beautiful baby daughter?’

For a second I wondered who she meant. Then Ralph, in you came. You took the bundle carefully in your arms, studied it for a moment, and then your face lit up.You looked so delighted.

�It is a girl,’ I explained, thinking you had not grasped this. It was the year 1956 and I had given birth to yet another baby girl.

�I know,’you said.�She’s beautiful.’To my amazement, your shining eyes proved the sincerity of your words. The baby seemed to sense this, following the sound of her father’s voice. Father and daughter’s eyes locked. Ralph, you looked smitten, mesmerised. I felt a pang just under my ribcage and had to turn away.

�I think the name Alice suits her,’ you said. �Oh…yes, definitely. Alice. What do you think?’

I shrugged indifferently. �If you like,’ I said. I wasn’t really bothered one way or another. Alice would do as well as the next name.

There was black magic involved in the coming of my son though. Oh, scientists would say that I was just being fanciful, but I know. I was in my sixth month. We had since moved to the British Crown Colony of Aden. Having developed extreme eczema, blistering and bleeding over your hands and lower arms—a reaction to the chemicals you used in photography—you had been persuaded by George Walbrook, your friend in the Foreign Office, to apply for a posting in government information services in Honduras. Failing to secure this, you were offered instead an administrative post in Aden. And it was here, in the merciless heat and chaos of this busy port, with its shark-infested harbour, that we settled with our growing family.This time, I had decided not to return to England for the birth. I did not think I could bear Mother’s disapproval if yet again I failed to produce the necessary male. Besides, I had been assured that they had the very best of facilities and doctors here in Aden.

We were having a party when it happened. Do you remember, Ralph? We had many friends there, British and Arab. I was wearing a voluminous midnight-blue affair. Quite suddenly a tall Arab gentleman, with sable skin and very white teeth—dressed, I couldn’t help thinking, with his turban and glittering tunic, a bit like a fairground magician—seized hold of the hem of my dress, folded himself in half, and with his other hand flung some white powder up under the bell of my skirt. It coated my mound. The gentleman’s name was A…A…Akil, that’s right, and he worked with you.

He fixed me with his black hawk eyes, Akil, and straightened up. As I moved away the remaining powder fell softly about my ankles, like a dusting of snow. I was taken aback. I had not been prepared for someone shoving handfuls of unknown substances up my maternity dress, and did not know quite how to react. He bowed to me graciously.

�The baby you are carrying, it shall be a boy now,’ he said in a deep, sonorous voice.

I was so delighted with his prediction that I forgot to be annoyed. At least he understood the turmoil inside me.The thought of another girl growing there, another Alice…dear God! Later that night as you and I tried in vain to slumber in the heat, you mentioned the encounter. I didn’t think you had seen it. Even in my tangle of sheets, hot and bothered, with the child stirring restlessly inside me, as if it too was finding the intense heat unbearable, I was surprised.

�That Akil has a cheek,’ you mumbled through a yawn.�Throwing talcum powder up your dress, and coming up with that mumbo-jumbo about our baby.’You thrust the sheet back from your body, and I saw that your skin was slick with sweat.

We were sleeping beneath mosquito nets, and I found the effect of that claustrophobic haze disturbing.

�He took me unawares,’ I responded primly, pushing down my own portion of our sheet, sitting up, and resting back against the pillows. �He told me that now we will have a son.’

You laughed. �What, as if it was down to him!’

Outside the netting, the high-pitched whine of a mosquito could be heard, fading and then coming back, as it attempted re-entry.

�It might be true. It might be a boy,’ I commented casually, as if I couldn’t have cared less.

�And it might be a girl,’ you said equably.

After that you fell asleep. But I remained awake for some time, my hands exploring my bump, glossy with moonlight. I could not bear to go through this again. There was no choice in the matter, and the child should know this. It had to be male. Our son was born three months later. Clearly he had been paying attention to our Arab friend.But he had obviously been a touch overwrought at the prospect of his much longed-for arrival, and had wound the umbilical cord around his neck like a noose. He emerged not a healthy shade of pink, flushed with his first breaths of life, but milky-blue, his lips an even deeper hue, kissed with death. The doctors were uncertain if he would make it through the night. They took him away to wrestle with the black prince, promising to do their best to snatch my son from his grip. I lay alone in bed that night, in a white nondescript room, in a hospital in Aden. I felt bleak. I had produced a son. Finally I had produced a son, and now he might die. I thought about our three healthy children—my firstborn, Jillian, a girl, but welcome for all that, and my second, Nicola, impossible not to like, with her indomitable charm and her discretion. She understood the boundaries so well and never overstepped the mark. And then our third daughter, Alice. Alice had already made it apparent that she did not understand about boundaries. She was colouring outside the lines. I felt annoyed just thinking about her. If I could…if…I could…swap her life for his, then…At first the thought was so terrible that it floored me. It had all the menace of dark fairy tales. I will give her up if you will…

But gradually in the dullness of that room my wicked thought glowed like a hot coal.You may take Alice but leave me my son. I will never renege on the contract. Take her. Take Alice. Take Alice. Take Alice, was my incantation. She’s yours. I shall never want her back, only leave me my son. It seemed the demons were not listening, or perhaps they didn’t want Alice either because as it was they both survived.The next day you brought our daughters to see their new brother. You stood, Ralph, and the girls sat on the low wall that surrounded the hospital.They squinted up through the fierce sunlight as I stepped onto the balcony from my second-floor room, my fragile son in my arms. The doctors felt it would be better to keep my sickly babe away from any possible source of infection for the time being, until he grew stronger.They recommended no direct contact with our other children during those first crucial days.

The girls were wearing matching pinafore dresses, with white blouses, Jillian in French navy, her blonde hair in pigtails, Nicola in bottle-green, her dark silky locks cropped short, and Alice in red, blood-red, her mousy-brown bob with a side parting, held back from her face with a grip.The green and blue blended in with the flashing gold of the sun and the cooler acid green of the young palm trees. The girls waved.You waved, Ralph. I looked down at my son and felt pride wash over me.

�Here in my arms are all my hopes and dreams,’ I thought.

But the red of Alice’s dress hooked me back again. Even then she was a jealous child.

You were reassigned after that, this time to the British Colony of Hong Kong. When you first mentioned it to me, the new posting, I was intrigued.

�How would you like it if I spirited you away to a beautiful island in the Orient?’ you asked, jumping up suddenly from the wicker chair you had been sitting in. We were in the bedroom of our bungalow home in Aden.Above our heads a fan rotated noisily,doing its best to hold the heat at bay.

�I should like that very much,’ I said, only half listening, concentrating on our blue-eyed, golden-haired boy, wriggling in my arms.

�Then your wish is my command. I shall transport you to Hong Kong,’ you shot back, unable to hide your delight.

�Hong Kong?’ I said, trying out the name and finding it both familiar and unknown.

You elaborated. �It’s a small island in the South China Sea, not much more than 400 square miles I believe. But then there is the Kowloon Peninsula and the New Territories too, just across the harbour.’

�Oh,’ I said, trying to sound enlightened.�It seems odd that we should own an island so far away.’ You smiled knowingly and continued.

�It was leased to Britain after some skulduggery which involved the shipping of a great deal of opium grown by us in India into China.Very lucrative apparently. When China, unsurprisingly, protested and asked that we desist in the trade, we were so outraged we went to war with them.’ Here you paused mid-stride and chuckled.

�Ah,’ I said, switching my son from one shoulder to the other, and patting his back gently. In a while I would call for his nanny, but just for now it was nice playing mother. You packed tobacco into the bowl of a wooden pipe, then paced thoughtfully around our bed. You used to smoke a pipe back then, though you gave it up when we got to Hong Kong. I rather liked the smell of it and missed it later. �And we won?’ I asked.

�We did, and among the spoils we acquired Hong Kong Island in 1842, and a bit later on, Kowloon and the New Territories, leasehold for 99 years.’

You perched on the side of the bed, Ralph, leant forwards and gently stroked your son’s golden curls.Then you placed the stem of the pipe in your mouth, struck a match, and held the flame to the bowl, sucking hard until the fragrant strands of tobacco caught. For a while you puffed contentedly, your expression dreamy. After a bit you removed your pipe, those engaging eyes of yours searching my face. �So how do you fancy a spell residing on Queen Victoria’s ill-gotten gains?’ you asked, your eyes alight with mischief.

I thought about it for a moment—only a moment, mind. I recalled a red pagoda towering up into the sky, the roof of each diminishing segment looking like an oriental hat, the brim curving upwards into delicate points. I recalled a fly beating its wings against the grubby window of a bus, longing for liberation, and I remembered too the dull greyness that seemed to encroach on everything back then.

�I think I should like that very much,’ I said. So we packed our trunks and set off again. In the late spring of 1962 I had my first sighting of Hong Kong,as we sailed into busy Victoria harbour.We would come to know that bridge of water between the island and Kowloon as if it was an extension of our own bodies.The dull, green face of the sea was dotted with sampans and junks and ferries. From here, my gaze strayed past the mass of buildings that crowded the waterfront, and on up the verdant slopes looped with winding roads. We had docked off a bustling, mountainous island, the summits veiled mysteriously in dense powder-grey clouds. And it was a short while later up these mountains we wound in a shiny, black chauffeur-driven car.

�Our flat is set almost on the highest point of The Peak,’ you told me,Ralph.�Fabulous views.’We threaded our way higher and higher, into what seemed to me an impenetrable fog. �That is of course, unless we are temporarily lost in the mist. I understand it can be a real problem here,’ came your wry observation.

But any qualms I may have had about our mountain home were soon quelled. Here was a grand, airy, top-floor flat, situated right at the summit of The Peak, with the views you had boasted of to be enjoyed from every window.The white, flat-roofed building was only six floors high, double-sided, the central column housing the stairwell and the lift. Our front door opened onto a hall that would have graced any stately home back in England, while doors to either side of it led on the left to a lounge, this in turn giving onto a long, open veranda, and on the right to a dining room, and thence into a spacious kitchen. Beyond the kitchen was a communal sheltered area for drying washing. It led through to the servants’ accommodation, six tiny bedrooms in all, with a shared rudimentary bathroom and toilet, and for their use a separate stairwell leading down to the ground floor. Returning to our hall I explored further, the children running ahead excitedly.My high heels clicked smartly on the wooden floors of the long corridor that ran the length of the flat. Light flooded through tall wide windows to my right, while on my left doors led off it into large bedrooms, the first of which had a luxurious en suite bathroom. A second bathroom lay at the end of the corridor from which, on fine days, you assured me, you could look out over Pokfulam and the sea.

There was room aplenty for the Safford family and we had soon settled in. I told you that, for the time being, I could make do with just two servants. So Ah Dang, with her glossy jet-black hair drawn back into a tight bun, her wide girth attesting to her own passion for food, and her glittering gold front teeth, became our housekeeper and cook.And Ah Lee, with her bouncy, dark curls and her constant nervous giggling, juggled the tasks of washing, ironing, cleaning and shopping and, it seemed, found plenty to amuse herself in each.We provided them both with the standard uniform—drawstring black trousers, and plain three-quarter-length white tunics. The children were dispatched to English-speaking Little Peak School and Big Peak School respectively,both within walking distance,Alice attending the former, and Jillian and Nicola the latter. Four-year-old Harry, our son, soon followed, so to a large extent I had my freedom. Quite what we would do when Jillian finished at Big Peak School I did not know, for exclusively English-speaking secondary schools were in very short supply.

Life on The Peak in Hong Kong was punctuated by regular letters from Mother. I had come to dread these epistles. I had forsaken her. I was on the other side of the world, living a life of opulence and indulgence. I never spared a thought for her. In these aspersions, Mother was wrong. I thought about her a great deal. After careful consideration, I decided to make a sacrifice to appease her. I would give her Jillian and Nicola. They would be dutiful in my place. It would soon be time for Jillian to go to secondary school. It made perfect sense to send first Jillian and then Nicola to a boarding school in England—and not just any boarding school, but the convent at which my mother was now employed part time teaching English and Drama. Of course, she had no qualifications for the job, but apparently rearing Albert, now a professional musical actor, was pedigree enough.’

�I’ll miss Jillian,’ you admitted, as we sat sipping scotch on the veranda one evening,watching dusk deepen and the lights of Aberdeen start slowly to glimmer, appearing one by one, as if by magic.You looked shattered.These days your only escape from work was on our boat, White Jade, and even then we had been tracked down by the marine police a couple of times with urgent messages.

I freshened up my own drink, and ran the frosted tumbler between my hands before taking a hefty swallow. Cars purred by on the road below.I waited a moment then took another gulp.The whisky seemed very watery tonight; the bite was slow in coming, and the accompanying numbness even slower.

�I’m sure Saint Mary’s Convent is a wonderful school, and that the children will relish a bit of time with their grandmother,’ I persuaded you.

You sat forward in your chair and sighed. �I’m just not certain—’ you began, but smoothly I interrupted you.

�These insects can be a real problem in the evenings,’ I said, swatting away a flying ant. Even paradise has its drawbacks.�Let’s go inside. I’d better check that everything’s all right with the amahs in the kitchen. Take your eyes off them for a second and they start doing all kinds of silly things.’ I picked up the bottle of scotch and stood up.When you did not move,Ralph,but just sat brooding and staring into your glass, I told you dinner was almost ready and took the lead.

I had thought that sending Jillian and Nicola to boarding school would free me up to devote more time to you and my social duties as wife of an important government servant. I had even looked forward to seeing more of my friend and next-door neighbour, Beth Fielding, and enjoying a leisurely lunchtime drink with her once or twice a week. But this presumption was flawed. Alice, a demanding, insecure child from the outset, was becoming steadily more and more difficult. My mind teemed with a growing tally of unnerving incidents, where her behaviour was both unpredictable and extreme, incidents which no matter how much scotch I drank often refused to melt away.

The part of a king in the school nativity play became a nightmare when I tried to apply shoe polish to her face, in an attempt simply to make her look authentic.

�What are you doing, Mummy? You are making me all brown! It’s horrid of you,’ she wailed, plucking the crown from her head, and letting it fall to the ground.

My entreaties that it was just for the role she was acting were ignored.�I don’t want always to have a brown face!’ she had screamed, so loudly that several other mothers in the school changing rooms looked round and grinned.�Why have you done this to me,Mummy?’

Painstakingly I explained that with the help of soap and water, the shoe-polish would quickly wash away, but Alice only shot me a disbelieving look and abandoned herself to racking sobs. Finally she tottered onto the stage, her blotchy complexion attesting to hurried attempts at scouring her face of its autumnal hue. But even this did not assuage her histrionics, and she broke down before a baffled Mary, and had to be coaxed from the stage. This scene marked the first of several involving the parents of other children, teachers, and even on one occasion the headmistress. No matter how much I implored, cajoled and pleaded, there was no reasoning with Alice once her mind was made up.

In addition to this, you and I, Ralph, were called upon to attend many performances celebrating Chinese festivals.I had come to loathe these very public outings. Inevitably you would insist that the children attend, though goodness knew why. I felt they would do very well with the amahs at home watching a bit of Chinese opera. Certainly Alice would. But you were immovable on this, as you were on many issues involving our youngest daughter. So there we would be, in VIP seats at the front row for all to gawp at. Harry, of course, would always sit placidly, entranced by the colourful spectacle, Nicola on her best behaviour at his side. But Alice would fidget incessantly. Never content simply to be near me, she would have to keep tugging on my sleeve, stroking me, resting her head on me, reaching for my hand, tickling it, patting the necklace I was wearing, or the bracelet that adorned my wrist, or twisting the rings on my fingers. On one such occasion, a dragon dance by the harbour side, my patience snapped. Oblivious to the massive, bobbing, brilliant, red head of the dragon, with its swivelling, bulbous eyes, only feet from us, I suddenly sprang up, thrusting Alice from my lap where she had been settling herself.

�Oh do stop touching me,Alice,for goodness sake!’my voice rang out over the clanging Chinese music, as Alice tumbled to the floor. �Leave me alone. For the love of God, get away from me!’

I must have shouted. Faces turned to look at me. Alice righted herself, and gingerly sat once more in her assigned seat between you, Ralph, and me. Locking eyes with you for a second, the look you gave me would have frozen blood. The dragon head bounced and shook, its gaudy finery a blur before me. Its striped body writhed and twisted. Then it froze for an instant, the great head seemingly suspended in the air right before my eye-line. Slowly it blinked its white, fur-trimmed eyelids. And in that moment, I would have liked to dash forwards and gouge its impertinent eyes from their teacup sockets. Like Alice’s, their gaze was far too astute.Then the wretched little man who jigged by the serpent’s side put his hands on his hips and shook with pantomime laughter. Not satisfied with this, he went on to clasp both hands over the mouth that was slashed into his enormous, lobster-pink, papier-mâché globe of a head. He wagged this monstrous mask from side to side, the focus of his slit eyes on me, the butt of the joke. Briefly I glanced down at Alice. Always she was thinking, the wide, solemn eyes seeing everything. Thinking, thinking, thinking! Then the beast shivered and burst once more into life. My daughter had shown me up yet again, in front of all the important guests in the audience. Even the Governor was there, enjoying the jest I presume. It was a high price to pay for losing my control, for letting my guard slip. Alice had humiliated me publicly, before the most important British official on the island.

Our daughter was making life intolerable, Ralph, whether you were prepared to acknowledge it or not. She went for sleepovers with friends, vowing that she wanted to go more than anything she could think of, only to be returned home, sobbing and distraught in the middle of the night. The cause of these upsets remained a mystery both to you and to me. She was beset with night terrors, where she roamed the flat in strange trances, sometimes dragging her mattress great distances to find rest. And being Alice, she was not content to suffer her insomnia alone. Stricken with fear, and knowing very well that she would get no sympathy from me, she would turn instead to you, her beleaguered father, and make you sit up the night with her. She would beg you to tell her that she was not alone, for she felt, she said, as if she was the only person living in the blackness, and that all the world was dead. As a result, struggling with the demands of your high-profile job and little sleep, you were jaded and consequently short-tempered with me. Her selfishness was astounding. But if you tackled her about these episodes, the resulting dialogue simply revealed Alice to be an irrational child, deaf to reason and common sense. Often in the evenings she would scream for me, and when I came running I would find her peering out of a bathroom window at the corridor’s end, mesmerised. She would insist that I look at the sunset, exclaiming that she had never before seen anything so beautiful. She would gasp, and tell me that she could barely breathe at the wonder of it, that it made her want to cry and laugh all at once. After a time, like the villagers charging up the mountain in response to the shrieks of the boy who cried wolf, I would dismiss her summons, or just give her a cursory nod in passing.

I even spoke to you and arranged for Alice to have a dog. Of course at the time I said it would be a family pet and lovely for all of us. It was really for Alice though, to occupy Alice, to absorb her, and perhaps give the rest of us a little peace.We fetched the wretched creature from the Hong Kong SPCA.Alice chose him. If I’m honest I thought him a disagreeable mongrel, quite absurd in appearance—a motley assortment of colours, brown, black, white, grey and even a bit of yellow. He had a feathered tail far too long for the compact body, huge paws, a ragged ear, a long thin snout, and a black tongue which, when it hung out, very nearly trailed to the ground.

�Really Alice! Why him?’ I asked her, running my eyes over the scrappy mutt. �There are others that are so much prettier.’

But true to form, never taking her eyes from the dog she had selected, Alice seemed not to hear me.

�I shall call him Bear,’ she had announced, as I filled out the paperwork. I resisted the temptation to state the obvious. It was a dog not a bear! I thought it an absurd name. Why not call the thing Rover or Sparky or Rusty? But Alice was adamant. And to be fair, �Bear’ did fulfil his allotted task of providing a preoccupation for Alice. It was not unknown for the two of them to disappear for several hours at a time. Though Alice, when present, remained just as challenging.

Why, I asked myself countless times, couldn’t she just take things at face value? Why was she was forever digging under the skin, probing things best left alone.Yet despite this you seemed to relish her company, Ralph. And for her part, Alice would happily have followed her beloved father anywhere. As Alice began her final year at Big Peak School, my relief was palpable. Soon, very soon, she would join her sisters at the convent in England, and then it would just be you, Ralph, and me, and our son of course. I broached this subject one weekend after a particularly good meal, when I knew you were relaxed and mellow and would be most receptive.We were sitting at the dining-room table and enjoying a small cognac with our coffees.

�It’s probably time for us to make arrangements for Alice to join her sisters,’ I ventured. I waited. There was no response. I took a mouthful of brandy for courage and soldiered on.�I can hardly believe it, but Alice is in her last year at Big Peak School, and with the problem of finding suitable secondary education here I—’

�I’ve been thinking about that,’you said, uncharacteristically cutting me off mid-flow.

Had you indeed, I ruminated.You continued.

�I’ve heard they’re opening up a new school on Bowen Road. They’re setting it up in the old British Army Hospital while they make a start building new premises on the terraced slopes above. In time they plan to demolish the hospital entirely, making way for further expansion. I want Alice to go there.’

I drew in a breath sharply.You gave me a quick glance.�Is there a problem?’ you asked, a dangerous note sounding in your voice.

I felt stunned,as if I had been slugged over the head and temporarily my eyesight was blurred. I tried to hold onto the salient facts.You had been thinking, you had been thinking about Alice, thinking about keeping Alice here with us, despite the chaos she was causing, Ralph, you wanted to send her to a new school they were building, a school I had heard nothing about.

�But darling,’I said,reaching for the cognac bottle,�we don’t know anything about this school.’

�I do,’ you fired back. �I’ve been to see the site. Nigel has been telling me all about it.They’re considering sending Christopher and Anita there. Actually, I’m surprised Beth hasn’t mentioned it to you.’

And so was I. Although this could not quite be classed as deception, my friend and neighbour Beth Fielding’s omission to acquaint me with this startling news came a pretty close second in my book. I tipped up the bottle and refilled my glass. �I see. Well. Well, well, well.’

�Myrtle, be honest with yourself,’ you went on as I stiffened in my seat, �it would be a disaster sending Alice to boarding school.’ Under your breath you added, �I’m not at all sure it’s been a success for Jillian or Nicola either.’

I sipped my cognac, then cradled my glass, slowly swilling round the amber liquid.

�I feel we should at least discuss it,’ was my face-saving remark.

�We have,’ you said brusquely, rising from the table.

Tonight Alice is worse than ever. Sometimes you can almost believe she alters with the rising of the moon, a kind of moon-madness. She is like a lone wolf howling and prowling all through the night. Ralph is dealing with her. With Alice his patience is inexhaustible. Harry seeks refuge in my bed.We close our eyes and block our ears.Finally I drift off to sleep. I dream we are on our junk, White Jade, which we have moored in a pretty bay. We are floating on a cobalt-blue sea. I feel the gentle rise and fall of the boat like breath coming in and going out, the rhythmic lift and fall of the thing. The sun is shining. We are fanned by a light breeze. And we are fishing, Ralph and Alice and I. We have cast out nylon lines with hooks knotted at the end of them. We have speared wiggling maggots for bait. Time passes. Ralph catches nothing. I catch nothing.Then Alice reels in a fish. It is several inches long, and it flaps dripping over the wooden deck, the silver scales brilliant as coruscating diamonds kissed by the sun. We all point at the fish as it gulps in air, and slaps and slips about. Our faces are masks of delight. Then quite suddenly the fish starts to inflate, like a silver balloon spiked with prickles. It swells up obscenely until it no longer flaps over the deck. It is a motionless bubble. Its prickles become barbs, hooking into the soft flesh of the damp wood.

�It is a puffer fish!’ cries Alice in dismay. �It’s poisonous!’ She is standing now over the gasping, hideous thing, hypnotised.Then she looks up at me. �If you eat my fish you will die, Mother,’ she says, and I wake.

My hands itch all day. When Alice returns from school we have a row. I do not like rowing. Some people can shrug off rows like a dog shaking water from its coat. I cannot. Brutal words stay with me…well…sometimes for a lifetime. I keep count of them. I notch them into the bark of my life, so deeply that they will never grow out. I tell Alice she cannot carry on with her deranged nights. My voice is quite calm, quite steady. I tell her they are taking a dreadful toll on her father. I tell her how hard he works, and that she is making him very ill.And when none of this seems to have any effect, I tell her that she is coming between us, that she is forcing us apart, her mother and her father. Alice’s voice rises up like a snake with its egoistic jingle-jangle, as if she really is the only person alive in the world, and not just through the long, dark nights but through the long bright days as well. My voice shifts key. I feel the �demon rasp’ tolling in me then, purifying, abrasive, because Alice smiles a foolish smile. The demon is full of wrath, and he spits words out at the smiling, loon-faced child.

We are in the bathroom, the same bathroom where Alice has summoned me so many times with her games. The window is open and the sky is red. I feel it bleed into me. I am dimly aware that my mouth is still working, and that my voice has grown deep and masculine, a war cry, and that my limbs are flaying. Alice is bold and stands her ground. And still she is smiling, smiling! I want to wipe that smile off her face. I draw back my hand and deal her such a blow across her grinning visage, that she is sent reeling backwards, covering the distance of several feet to the window, sliding down the wall, crumpling on the floor, while incongruously, above her head, Alice’s wondrous sunset is framed. I am transfixed by the white face looming through the long brown hair. The eye is already puffing up. The cheek is split with a deep gash. Her blood is such a vivid shade of red. It dribbles from the wound and down her chin. It drips onto her summer school uniform, flowering on the white cotton.

I think: I am wearing my wedding and engagement rings and they must have cut into her cheek, a marital knuckleduster. I think, I have committed a mortal sin, somehow or other the Mother Superior at the convent back in England will know of it. I am envious of Alice. I am envious of my daughter. Alice, who has roared through so many nights, is silent now. I cannot even hear her breathing. I watch the blood spill and grow more copious. It pools in a crease at her neck. This creates the impression, reminiscent of a horror movie, that her head has been severed from her body, and that, if you push it, it will tumble off and roll over the green, marble-effect rubber tiles of the bathroom floor. I wonder what time Ralph will be home. I have an idea he is out tonight and will not be back until late. By tomorrow it will not look so bad. Besides, a story can be told. I feel sure a story will come that fits my purpose. Alice, I know, will never tell. She will hold it all in, keep it contained. Like Iwazaru, one of the three wise monkeys, she will speak no evil. She will gag herself. I gaze unmoved at the sunset, then my eyes slide downwards and hold Alice’s.

�At last,’ I say,�when I come, there is something to see.’ My voice scrapes the silence. My hands have stopped itching. They are trembling now. I need something to steady my nerves.




Nicola—1965 (#ulink_b42aff6c-a30f-5f66-a9a0-0e09ca0d071b)


I never really grasped why Jillian made such a fuss about boarding school.True, it was a bit of a blow the parents choosing Gran’s school, it being Roman Catholic and we being…well, heathens. But it didn’t really worry me. I knew we would have a laugh. I told Jillian so, as she sat on her bed, in the flat on The Peak. The Easter holidays were drawing to a close, and she was red-cheeked and wretched. She was flying back to England the next day and I was helping her to pack.

�In September I’ll be joining you,’ I told her with a grin. �We’ll shake things up, Jilly.’ She managed a weak smile.

�I hate it there,’ she said brokenly.�I’m miserable.’ She took off her glasses and I saw her eyes were swimming with tears. �The nuns are bitches!’

I tossed in a T-shirt with a picture of kittens on it, shunted the case along the bed, and sat down next to my sister. I put an arm over her shoulder. This was an awkward gesture for me. I am not a touchy-feely person. It is nothing personal but I experience a kind of revulsion when things get sloppy. That day there had been a scene at lunch, a spectacular scene. It was a roast dinner. We generally have a roast on the weekends. Jillian, already feeling as if she was fading away, as if she was only half visible, with her return to England imminent, was upset even before we sat down. Alice kept asking her silly questions. What was it like at boarding school? Did she have a boyfriend? Was she excited about the flight tomorrow? That sort of thing. Jillian loathed Alice. She had told me late one night that she would like to slap her, that she could not bear her enthusiasm, her eagerness, her desire to please.

�She can afford to behave like that,’ Jillian had said bitterly, screwing up her eyes behind their lenses, as she watched Alice chatting to one of the amahs.

I sympathised with Jillian. From time to time Alice got on my nerves too. But it was plain to me that my elder sister hadn’t thought this through. Anyone could see that Jillian’s vendetta against Alice did not work in her favour. For a start it maddened Father, who seemed to feel he had to keep riding to Alice’s rescue, like some paternal knight in shining armour.

�Why not make a friend of Alice, then make that friendship work for you,’ I suggested reasonably to Jillian.

But to no avail I’m afraid. Jillian’s revulsion for our little sister knew no bounds. She gave long-suffering sighs when Alice walked into a room. On car journeys she insisted on winding up the window, claiming the draft was blowing her hair out of shape, knowing full well that Alice was prone to travel sickness. And she would stoically ignore our little sister when she bounded up to her full of adoring compliments. How lovely Jillian was looking, Alice would say. How she wished her brown hair was fair like Jillian’s, and would Jillian help her pick out some new clothes because she had no idea what was fashionable in London at present. It astonished me that Alice did not seem to realise she was antagonising Jilly. But then she can be a little obtuse sometimes.

So when we all trooped into lunch that day, I had an idea that something was going to happen. Father carved the meat. It was roast beef. Jillian wanted an outside cut and so did Alice. Neither of them liked bloody meat, whereas I liked mine nearly raw. I was happiest with a middle slice, all pink and oozing blood. Father served Alice before her older sister, and Jillian clearly felt the snub. She made up her mind that all the best bits had gone to Alice, and that the cut she was dished up was undercooked. She took Father to task over this, complaining that Alice always got the choicest pieces of meat. Mother piled in.As a matter of course,Harry,son and heir,had been taken care of first. Now he looked perturbed by the delay. Catching his mother’s eye, he was given the go-ahead to start his meal. So while hostilities were breaking out, Harry was slowly masticating a mouthful, like a cud-chewing cow. All the while, his eyes focused hypnotically on two black and silver angelfish, gliding about in a tank, set up on the dresser behind the dining-room table. Then Alice made matters much worse by offering Jillian her meat.Typical.Why couldn’t she just shut up?

�Here Jillian,we can swap plates if you like,’Alice suggested,lifting her plate and offering it to her sister.

�I don’t want it now you’ve touched it,’ Jillian cried, shoving the plate back towards Alice, so hard that the piece of crispy outside meat was launched off it, orbited briefly in the air, before landing with a �plop’, quite fortuitously as it happened, on Harry’s plate. Harry’s eyes rolled from living fish to dead meat, and stayed glued to the unexpected arrival, his jaws temporarily locked.

�That was uncalled for,’ Father said angrily, hurriedly flipping over the joint, carving a slice from the other end, and delivering it to Alice’s plate.

�No,’ pleaded Alice. �I don’t mind really. Jillian can have it.’

�Didn’t you hear me the first time?’ Jillian shrieked, shooting a slaughterous look in Alice’s direction. �I don’t want anything of yours.’

Alice began protesting that she hadn’t touched it, so it couldn’t be called hers yet.Then Mother, who kept running a thumb up and down along the blade of her own knife, where it lay at the side of her plate, told Alice to be quiet and to get on with her dinner.The colour was draining from Alice’s face now, and she began clearing her throat as if she had something stuck there. Father wanted to know if she was okay and would she like some water.

�Oh for goodness sake, if you’re feeling sick,Alice, leave the table,’ Mother snapped.�You’re ruining everyone’s dinner.You are making us all lose our appetites.’

As Mother spoke, I saw she had taken up her own knife and fork. She was grasping them about their middles as if they were weapons, and then suddenly she threw them tetchily a little way from her, across the table. Her fork struck a serving dish full of vegetables, and her knife clanged against the metal gravy boat.Alice rose slowly from her chair. She looked bewildered, unsure if she should go or stay. Father smiled kindly at her and told her to stay put. Mother looked livid. Jillian slid malevolent eyes towards her sister, but her head remained motionless. Staying calm amidst the storm, Harry was moving his fork imperceptibly to snag Alice’s slice of meat, all his concentration focused then on edging it towards the centre of his plate. At last Alice moved away from her chair and backed out of the room, bumping into the dining-room door once, before turning, opening it and disappearing through it.

�Come back as soon as you feel better,’ Father called after her.

Alice closed the door with infinite care, as if terrified she would disturb a sleeping baby. After Alice’s departure, I had thought things would improve, and was just tucking into a succulent morsel of red meat when father placed two fat roast onions on Jillian’s plate. Now, if it was a fact known to one and all in our family that Jillian and Alice preferred outside cuts of meat, it was also virtually printed on Jillian’s birth certificate that she hated onions, that no earthly force could induce her to swallow what she described as a single slimy mouthful of them, that even God would have his work cut out if he wished Jillian to polish one off, let alone two. Jillian eyes were riveted on the onions.Mother made a squeaking noise.Harry jumped, and then started mashing up a roast potato with admirable intensity. Father sat back in his chair, and with immense care loaded tiny portions of meat, potato, vegetables and onion onto his fork, patting the whole into a small, sausage shape with his knife, inspecting it for a second, popping it into his mouth, and chewing energetically before washing it down with a glug of red wine. Mother had more than a glug, polishing off nearly her entire glassful. The appearance and following inquiry from one of the amahs as to whether she should clear away, and were we ready for dessert, was met with sour faces, and she quickly scurried off again.

�I will not eat an onion,’ announced Jillian in a voice of reinforced steel.

This was ignored by Father who made a great drama of having forgotten to say grace, something he hardly ever remembered anyway. He bowed his head piously.

�Dear God, we thank you for your bounty, for the food on our plates, for the meat, the roast potatoes, the gravy, the vegetables and the onions—’ Father broke off.

He opened one eye. It rotated, taking in Jillian’s raised head, her own eyes held wide open, flashing with defiance, and her folded arms. I ensured Father observed my willing participation in the rare ritual by making quite a drama of unclasping and re-clasping my hands. The fingers of Harry’s hands were plaited together as well. His eyelids fluttered as he snatched sneaky peeks at his food, clearly distressed that the serious business of eating was being held in abeyance for the present. Mother’s head drooped, but I had my doubts that she was lost in prayer.

�Why were you not praying, Jillian?’ Father demanded, when at last grace was over.

�I am not thankful,’ Jillian retorted.�I don’t want to be a hypocrite.’

Mother refilled her glass, and took several gulps in quick succession.

�I am just going to have a quick word with them in the kitchen,’ she said gaily, her eyes a little too bright, her cheeks inflamed. She rose unsteadily to her feet. �These servants need their hands held if they are going to produce a meal that is half decent you know.’ She gave a shout of raucous laughter. No one seemed to share her hilarity. �You will sit there until you eat those onions,’ Father decreed to Jillian.

Mother scratched the palm of one hand with the fingers of the other, a nervous habit of hers I’d observed countless times, then made a dive for the kitchen door and was gone.To her credit Jillian slowly ate up everything on her plate…except the onions. Mother reappeared carrying another bottle of wine, hugging it to her under one arm. The remainder of the meal played out in silence, but for the �pop’ of the cork. One by one we were excused from the table, all but Jillian. At four o’ clock Jillian was still sitting at the dining-room table, together with her two onions. By now I thought they looked a little dried out. Hovering in the hall, I shot her a sympathetic look through the open dining-room door, which she acknowledged with a flicker of her eyes. Father strode up and down the long corridor seething.Why, he demanded, couldn’t Jillian just eat her onions? They were good onions. They had cost money, money that he worked very hard to make. Perhaps Jillian would like to go out, work hard and make money, so that other people could waste the onions she had bought, he thundered.

Alice was nowhere to be seen. Harry was out on his bike. Mother had passed out on her bed, snoring intermittently. And I was watching the Flintstones in the lounge, and feeling levels of anxiety uncommon to me, occasionally dashing out to check on Jillian. I would have scoffed the onions up myself if I could have reached them, but sadly Father was still patrolling the No Man’s Land of the corridor, beady eyes scanning the hall. Finally, when the tension had reached a pitch that was unbearable, Father marched Jillian and her plate of onions to her bedroom, and said she was to stay there until she had eaten them. He slammed the door and stood vigil outside. At this point something must have exploded in Jillian, because she chose to take the two onions and fling them out of her window. Although I didn’t actually see her do it, I certainly witnessed the aftermath.The onions must have gathered momentum as they fell. Beneath Jillian’s bedroom window was the much-prized garden of the Everard family, attached to their ground-floor flat. Mr Everard was gardening that afternoon when the onions came hurtling down from above, he told Father later, decapitating several of his prize orchids in the process. He stood on our doorstep, the crushed pink flowers in one hand, the beige mess of onion pulp in the other. I had heard the front door and was peeping out of the lounge.

�Really, Ralph, this is too bad.’ Mr Everard looked deeply offended. �This is not what you expect from your neighbours when you settle down for a pleasant afternoon of gardening.’ Mr Everard very nearly wiped his perspiring brow, but then he caught sight of the squashed onions nestled on his open palm. Mr Everard had a bald patch over which he arranged his nut-brown hair, disguising it carefully. Now his hair was all mussed up and a shiny pink patch of scalp exposed. �Luckily I just happened to look upwards and I saw them. I saw them come flying out of a window from your flat, Ralph. I leapt out of the way just in time. Imagine that! You simply do not expect onions to start raining on your head on a fine afternoon. I could have been hurt, Ralph, seriously hurt, not to mention the damage done to my orchids.’

I nearly burst out laughing when Mr Everard said this. I imagined Mrs Everard wailing to Mother that her husband had been minding his own business, when he had been flattened by two onions and rushed to Queen Mary’s Hospital.

�I’m sorry, Peter,’ Father said, wisely in my opinion opting for brevity.

Mr Everard looked down dejectedly, first at his flowers, then at the onion mush. Mother appeared, walking blearily up to the front door.

�Hello, Peter,’ she greeted our neighbour, her words just a touch thick and sticky. �To what do we owe this unexpected pleasure?’ She smiled graciously, dipping her head. Her bun had come undone and her plait was beginning to unravel. Her hands went automatically to her hair and deftly she pinned it up again.

�I was gardening, Myrtle, when two onions landed in my garden, just inches from my head,’ Mr Everard said without preamble, his tone piqued. A drip of sweat made its way slowly down the side of his face. It trembled on his lower jaw before falling.

�Really!’ exclaimed Mother, not batting an eyelid. �How dreadful for you, Peter.You must have been very shocked.’ Father looked as if he had been winded. He caved in slightly, and I saw that his cheeks were suddenly glowing.�I do hope you weren’t hurt?’ Mother asked solicitously.

�Luckily no, Myrtle. But I might well have been,’ Mr Everard reported peevishly, while Mother gave her appearance a quick once-over in the hallway mirror.

�Well, thank goodness for that,’ Mother declared fervently, her expression one of immense relief. She snatched a little look heavenwards, as if touching base with God, and expressing her personal thanks to him for looking after her people.As her gaze left the celestial sphere, and returned to the tarnished world of mortals, she became aware of Mr Everard’s hands, held aloft and brimming with onion paste and petals.

�Peter, won’t you join us for a drink?’ she invited smoothly. �It’s a wee bit early I know, but after all it is a weekend, and you’ve had a terrible scare.’ She gave her most beguiling smile and winked at Mr Everard. Mr Everard hesitated. �Ralph, tell Peter I shall be desolate if he doesn’t join us.’

My father, lost for a moment in Mother’s consummate performance,roused himself and reiterated her invitation.Mr Everard wavered a second longer and then gave in. The day was won.

�Do let me show you to the bathroom, Peter, to wash your hands,’ Mother said, leading the way, Mr Everard, now fully tamed, trotting after her.�Ralph,be a dear,and fix the drinks.’She paused and waited for Mr Everard to come alongside. �Don’t tell me, Peter…let me see, if my memory serves me right your poison is G and T, ice no lemon.’ Mr Everard was duly flattered. �When friends are important to me,I make a point of remembering these things,Peter,’she breathed. Then, as I watched, she tucked her arm through Mr Everard’s, careful to avoid contact with the squashed onion, and they ambled down the corridor towards the bathroom. Pausing outside the door Mother leant in to him, and whispered in achingly manicured tones,�This is such an unlooked for pleasure, Peter.’ She was magnificent.

Father never spoke of the matter again. And the next time Jillian returned to England, I went with her.




Harry—1966 (#ulink_88a53ea4-b909-5abf-bc07-4cffe0c8e75b)


Mr Beecham carried me in his arms, holding me like a baby.Although I felt woozy and my eyes kept closing, there were little flashes that I recall, like going to see a play and not watching it all the way through.That’s it, each time they opened I found myself in different scenes.

In the beginning there were his curls, the grey of the clouds moments before the rain comes, and the tips of his upper teeth, tinged with a yellowy-brown, digging into his lower lip, and the specks of sweat breaking out on his large nose. I could feel him panting as well, with the effort, feel his lungs pushing against the weight of me. And the jolt, jolt, jolt, of my body held in his arms as he went down the steps, the several flights of them that ran from the playing field to the school building. But mostly I remember his eyes flicking down at me and what was in them.You see, it was fear, I’d recognise it anywhere. We were old friends.Then, in the middle, there were the blocks of blue sky that seemed to go on and on, and the glitter of the sun making my head throb and my skin prickle. And lastly there was the medical room, and me being laid down so carefully on the bed, how firm it was, how solid. You knew, just knew, that bed wasn’t going to let you down. It was cool in there after the scalding sun, and quiet too. Like walking into the St John’s Cathedral on a hot morning.

�Harry? Harry? It’s Mr Beecham.You’re going to be fine, Harry. You’ve had an accident but you’re going to be fine.’ Mr Beecham’s the deputy head. He takes me for English. He’s kind, doesn’t make me feel stupid when I can’t answer the questions, the way some of the teachers do. He smoothed my brow as he talked. I could feel his fingers tickling back my damp hair, smell the faint trace of tobacco that clung to them.

And the way he said it, I knew it was true. I was going to be fine. Then he said the doctor was coming and that was alright too. He said the doctor would make it all better, make me well again. I wanted to believe him, that someone, anyone, really had the power to do that.To make it all better. Only when he told me my mother would be here soon, I laughed. Of course it was in my head. I couldn’t let it out. It would have hurt too much with my head pounding so hard. Besides, that would have been telling on Mother, on them. I’d never do that, not even if I was dying.

You know what I thought then, in that cool, still room, where other faces were appearing now, like masks hung on the white walls. I thought that if I was really lucky it might be true. I might be dying and then it would be over. I wondered if Alice would come and join the other masks, but then I remembered that she’d had an upset tummy that morning and stayed home. Sometimes my sister Alice doesn’t eat for ages. Mother says that’s why she gets stomachache so much. Mother said she does it to get attention, starving herself. But I’m not so sure. Still, imagine being able to go without food for an entire day. Amazing!

�Fatty! Fatty! Blubber boy! Harry is a blubber boy! Nah, nah, sweaty Harry! Nah, nah, smelly Harry!’

It was Keith, Bobby and Andrew that morning. Following me around the playing field. They’re like the wasps you get on picnics that just won’t go away. Every few seconds one of them would dash forwards and push me, or try to grab the roll of fat that shows when my shirt rides up, or they’d run ahead of me, spin round and poke me in the tummy. It isn’t so bad. It doesn’t really hurt. Sometimes I even like it, because…well…because it makes me feel alive, the pain.Anyway, they usually get bored after a while and go away. I can read the signs, clear as the time on a wristwatch.The jeering is loud as can be to start with, like a football flying in the air and everyone screaming cos they think it’s gonna be a goal.Then, after a bit, their voices start to drop, as if they know this next shot is going to miss. I name it �the game-over slump’, wait for it, cos I know it will come, eventually. After that, with a few more feeble taunts, they slouch off.

Nah, I don’t mind them really, the boys. It’s the girls that make me go burning red, and want to cry so bad that it takes everything I have to hold it in.They never touch me.They don’t have to.Their bright eyes slide over me, over my pockets of fat, over my thick arms, my wobbly tummy, my plump legs, my big bottom.Then they snatch little sneaky glances at one another and smirk. It’s like a knife going in, that shared smirk.

I used to imagine it you know, a knife sliding into a slab of my flesh. I used to watch Ah Dang in the kitchen slicing the fat off some huge piece of dripping, bloody meat, and I used to dream that someone could do that for me. Lie me down on a chopping board and trim the oily fat off me, slash, saw, slash. And then I’d get up all slim and lean, and I’d have muscles, and one of those bellies that was hard and dipped in like the other boys’.Then, when we changed for PE, and I pulled on those bright green shorts, shrugged on that white cotton T-shirt,no one would giggle.They’d say stuff like,�Hey Harry, want to be in our team?’ or �What about being our goalie today,’ or �We’re sure to win cos Harry’s batting for our side,so there!’Sometimes they’d row over me. They would. In my head, they’d squabble and say,�It’s not fair, you had him last week. This week it’s our turn with Harry.’ Instead of me standing alone in the playground cos no one wants to pick me, with them all rushing to get into pairs, into groups, into teams, just in case they get landed with the fat pig, Harry Safford. And then I’m paired up with the teacher, who makes it worse by pretending to be really pleased about it.You know,�Lucky me,I get to be with Harry.’ Oh yeah, sure! Nobody wants me. It’s as if I stank or something. Ah, who knows, maybe I do.

Anyway, it was after the boys got bored and left that the accident happened.There was this roller thing in a corner of the field. I think they use it to flatten the grass. There was no one over there, and it looked kind of peaceful. The roller was all gritty-brown and grey, flecked with pearly-white too, like slithers of soap shining in the sunlight. Attached to it was a thick black handle, balanced up against the playground’s surrounding wire-mesh fence. Round about were tufts of tall green and yellow grass, like it hadn’t been moved for ages. So I wandered over. It was more impressive close up, bigger somehow, sturdier. I touched the handle. Ran a finger along the uneven surface. It was metal, iron I think. Then, for a while I just circled the roller, not all the way round cos of the fence you understand, but nearly, and then back again. It looked so heavy, like you’d need a giant or something to shift it. After a bit I sat down on it and stared out at the kids in the field, all playing their games, skipping and chucking tennis balls about, shrieking and laughing too, like they were having a really good time. And the girls’ hair was flying all about, brown and black and blonde, and their white socks were glinting in the sun.

The roller felt very warm under my backside, through my grey flannel shorts.Not so hot you couldn’t stand it,just kind of comforting. The flesh of my thighs spread out against it, like a cushion. I squinted up at the sun, right at it, something Mother says you should never do. �Because if you do, you’ll go blind, Harry’, she liked to sing at me. But I didn’t care.Then there were dark spots rushing at me and I was so dizzy. It was the way you get when you spin round and round with your arms stretched wide, and you have to throw yourself down on the grass, and the world just carries on spinning, tilting under you. That’s when I decided to do it, stand right up on that roller, plant my feet squarely on the warm curve of it, and see how things looked then. I know it’s daft, but I wondered if it might be different up there. Perhaps I’d pick out something I’d never seen before, and seeing it would change everything.

I hauled myself up on the hot hump of stone. It was quite difficult actually, higher than you might think. I had a few attempts before I managed it. At first my back was to the playing field, and I was balancing with my arms out. It was great. Just like I’d imagined it would be. Only I couldn’t see the field, just through the wire fence and across the slope of road. I glanced back over my shoulder. I couldn’t help it, cos I wanted to see if any of the girls were watching me. Especially June Mullery. She is so pretty, June, with pale, yellow hair and soft eyes. She never teases me, and once I was sure she smiled at me. At least I think it was me. I suppose it might have been her friends behind me, but anyhow it felt as if it was for me. Her face lighting up and her eyes so sweet and kind. It made it hard for me to swallow, seeing her smile like that…At me.

So I tried to turn round but something blinded me, something like a bit of the sun glaring at me from the field. I lost my footing, and I was falling, falling back, and without thinking I made a grab for the iron handle propped up against the fence. Only it just fell away with me, like seizing a stick of bamboo in a landslide. I tumbled backwards on the field, and the metal bar chased me, the way the jeering boys had earlier.The long horizontal handle at the top of it, the thing they grip to push it about with I guess, came crashing down across the brow of my head.Then it was pitch black, with the sound of the bar striking me, tolling inside my skull, a great underwater bell clanging on and on. When my eyes opened next Mr Beecham was carrying me down the steps.

I didn’t die.The doctor came and went. Mother took me to Queen Mary’s for X-rays and that was quite fun. And the doctors there said I was going to be okay as well. That’s when the laugh came back.

�You’re not very good doctors then, are you?’ came the cheeky voice I hear sometimes in my head, the voice that longs to speak out loud, but I know never will.

We’re back at the flat now. Mother’s fussing loads and kissing me, so that I have red marks from her lipstick on my face, and have to rub hard to get them off. I can smell her perfume as well and that’s nice, warm and comforting, like the roller before it flattened me. Then later she smells of something else, something sour, the whisky I guess, and that isn’t so nice, because then she gets a bit sloppy. She looks good. If anyone was watching they’d say, �There’s an excellent mother, a mother who really loves her son.The way she strokes and pets him! Oh my, and can you hear the lovely things she says to him.’ But what they wouldn’t know is that it’s not real. It’s pretend. Like acting. And you know before long the performance will be over, or the show will be cancelled because the actress doesn’t feel very well, and has to go and lie down.

As it happens Mother does have to lie down after a bit. Dad is away, or working late or something. ’Course Mum said she rang him straight away. She said he was terribly worried, but very relieved later to hear his only son was going to be fine. She’s always calling me that. �Only son!’ As if that makes such a big difference to how much I’m worth to them. Like, if there were more sons, if say Alice had been a boy, they couldn’t possibly have loved me as much. Who knows, if she had been, perhaps they wouldn’t have had me at all?

�Harry, you have to know your father would have raced home if it had been serious,’ Mother says, staring straight into my face and looking all grave.

And I understand what she means. That if I’d been going to die or if I had died even, he’d have come; my father would have come then, no question.

�He was frantic, Harry,’ she tells me, her finger stroking the side of her glass.�You know how much he loves you.He wanted to come, darling, of course he did. He’s so busy. Important, clever men like your father always are. But I told him you were being a brave little man, our brave little man, and that there was no need.’

She puts down her drink, then gives me one of those funny hugs of hers, a bit awkward, as if she doesn’t quite know where to put me. It lasts longer than normal of course, on account of the accident. By then she’s on her second drink. Afterwards she holds me at arm’s length.

�I’m so proud of you,’ she tells me smoothing back my hair, careful not to touch the raised purple line, where the bar struck me. �My precious only boy.’

�If it had been really bad, you’re sure Father would have come?’ I want to know. I can’t meet her eyes. I might cry if I did, like with the girls at school, might make a big baby of myself. Hmm… Mother would hate that. She doesn’t like you to show feelings, not real ones in any case.

�Of course he would have, darling!’ she says now, her eyes, that glow amber like a cat’s sometimes, wide open. �You know he would have, Harry.’

I want to say that it might have been too late, if I was dying or worse, already dead. If he’d come then, after I’d died, after my heart had stopped beating and I was all white and icy, well…there really wouldn’t have been much point, would there? But Mother has turned away by then and the drink is in her hands again.We’ve had supper but that doesn’t matter. I’m still hungry. I’m always hungry.

They’ve got this creepy festival here—actually they’ve got lots of weird festivals on the island, but this one is the spookiest.Yue Lan. The Festival of the Hungry Ghosts. It’s the end of May now, so I guess it’ll soon come round. Anyway, for a few weeks in July the Chinese believe that hungry ghosts, the ghosts of their dead ancestors, and people who’ve been murdered, or died at sea, or in a war and haven’t had a funeral or been buried properly, will come tearing back to earth. And these ghosts who swarm back down here at Yue Lan, they’re are not just hungry, they’re starving, ravenous even. All the stuff they didn’t get in life, like marriage and children and love, and all the money and food and houses and cars, and junk like that, for these few days you see they’ve just got to have them.You know, like nothing will stand in their way.

Sometimes at night, lying in bed watching the orange stripes of light slide across the ceiling as a car drives by on the road below, I picture them, the hungry ghosts. It’s bit like the stampedes you get in cowboy movies, the image in my mind. Hordes of ghosts charging towards you, the air thick with the dust their trailing misty feet are stirring up, and their mouths gaping wide open, like the mouths of caves. Gigantic, black, frozen, empty caves, with those gleaming icicle things hanging down and reaching up at the opening, rows of razor-sharp teeth, waiting to gobble you up, to gulp down your blood. They save your still beating heart for last, a special treat.Then crunch up your bones until all that’s left are a few splinters.

I expect they’d be delighted to find me, Piggy Harry, oink, oink; that I’d make a really tasty meal, keep them going, well…for a bit anyway. I see their eyes in my nightmares sometimes, like balls of fire, and the whites of them showing, only they’re a dirty green colour, rolling about and all wild and scary in their smoky heads. I understand their hunger, like there’s a living thing eating away at them, like they have to feed it, have to! Cos I feel it too, feel I can never cram in enough, that no matter how much I stuff into my mouth, chew and swallow and chomp and gnaw, it’ll never stop the hunger, it’ll never fill up the hole.

The Chinese do some neat stuff to frighten them away though: they make these brilliant paper models, like three-dimensional kites of all those things you need in life. Then they pile them on huge bonfires and burn them to ashes. They say you have to be careful for a whole month, but that the days in the middle are the most dangerous. They steer clear of the sea as well, stay indoors, and get the kids home early, in case the ghosts jump out and get them. Beaches are especially dangerous over Yue Lan.The spirits lurk everywhere, in the curl of a breaking wave, and in the currents that pull swimmers out of their depth, and in whirlpools that swallow up boats.They leave them food and pray, and burn joss sticks, but as far as I can tell they do that all the time anyway.Those joss sticks really smell if you ask me. Make my eyes water. As if that would satisfy them, with the kind of hunger they’ve got growling in their tummies. It wouldn’t satisfy me, that’s definite.

Mother is miles away now, on the phone to Beth next door, making her voice all dramatic, the way she does, describing what happened to me. She’s talking about me but…well…the crazy thing is I feel left out, like I’m not really part of her story, that it’s another �only son’. I mooch into the kitchen and tell Ah Dang I’m hungry, and can she fix me something. She likes that. Makes her feel all needed. She always grins and wags her head, as if she understands the appetite I’ve got, what a beast it is, and her gold teeth glitter sort of magically.

While she’s getting a plate together, Alice comes in. Up till then Mum’s kept her away. She’s always trying to do that, keep Alice and me separate.You’d think Alice was some kind of snake full of poison. And it’s true, my sister goes into these fits sometimes, yowling and moaning, and you do tend to feel a bit jumpy about her, cos you don’t know what’s gonna come next. But I get it. I know where all that noise comes from, all that rage. I’m jealous of Alice cos I want to scream too, scream until they all cover their ears, and screw themselves up. But I can’t. I just can’t.

�How are you feeling?’ Alice asks then, and she smiles in that shy way she has.

�Oh not too bad,’ I mumble, glancing back at her. I don’t think Ah Dang put very much butter in my sandwich and it’s bothering me.

�Ah Dang can I have some more butter please?’ I ask. I’d like to talk to Alice, but if I take my eyes off Ah Dang, even for a moment, who knows what she might skimp on?

�Ai ya, ai ya!’ mutters Ah Dang, peeling back the top of the sandwich and starting again. She isn’t really angry. She fakes it. She tosses her head, making her plait whisk all over the place, and her hands fly about, and she gabbles in Cantonese, but you can tell. In her eyes she’s still smiling.

�That’s some bruise you’re going to have, Harry,’ Alice says.

I guess she must have seen it when I turned round.Ah Lee appears then through the back door. She sees all the food out, and me looking worried, and Ah Dang slamming things about. And she gives one of her silly hysterical giggles.

�Ai yah! Ai yah!’ she echoes Ah Dang, and pinches my bare arm. �Fei zhai! Fei zhai!’ she squeals, and she’s off again.

I know what she said. Fat boy. I hear it lots. The Chinese can’t resist my chubby arms. Can’t stop themselves from pinching me. Even strangers. Pinching me and grinning, �Fei zhai, fei zhai’. I might as well be back at school.You know what it makes me think of.The story of Hansel and Gretel. When the witch locks Hansel up in a cage and every day she brings him lots of food, because you see she’s fattening him up. Fattening him up for the day of slaughter, when she’s going to kill him and chop him up, and pop him into her huge cauldron, and cook him over her roaring fire till he’s all tender and delicious. I like closing my eyes and imagining the witch’s cottage, imagining being with Gretel, deep in the heart of the dark forest, then suddenly the two of us coming upon it. I think about how hungry we’d both be, our bellies rumbling, hungry and tired, with nothing to eat but dandelions and grass. Then we’d step into this clearing and together we’d gasp.

My cottage isn’t made of gingerbread though, because I don’t really like it. It’s built of cake bricks, chocolate, and plain sponge flavoured at least six different ways, toffee and orange, and lemon and mint, and strawberry and coffee. And the bricks are cemented together with butter icing, and jam and cream. The windows are huge glacier-mint squares framed with marzipan. The front door is made entirely of caramel,and the doorknob is a shiny ball of liquorice. As for the roof, it’s tiled in thick slabs of chocolate, milk and dark and white. There’s even meringue smoke coming out of a butterscotch chimney. The biggest problem we have is where to start. I run up to it and take the most enormous bite off a corner brick of rich, moist chocolate. Gretel, she walks nervously up to the door and starts licking it, as if it’s a ginormous lollipop. In my version we’ve virtually polished off the entire building before the witch appears; there’s only a few spadefuls of cake crumb rubble, and some broken chocolate tiles left.While Gretel and I are clutching our stuffed stomachs, the witch throws back a hatch in the floor, made, incidentally, of royal icing, and pounces.

�Fei zhai, fei zhai,’ squeaks Ah Lee again. Pinch, pinch.

And I want to ask, in that voice inside me that never speaks up, �Am I ready now,Ah Lee? Am I ready for the pot? Is my flesh plump and juicy enough yet? Are you sharpening your knives ready to slice me up? But I don’t of course. I glance at Alice. In the story Gretel saved her brother, made him hold out a twig to the short-sighted, croaky, old witch instead of his finger, so when she pinched it she thought he was still all thin and stringy. Still, that’s a story isn’t it? Not real life. Not like it is here in the flat on The Peak, where none of us can do anything to put off what’s coming. I think Ah Lee’s finished her pinching now. She’s wiping down the sink.

�Hmph!’I grunt.Ah Dang’s only put one slice of ham in my sandwich and barely any cheese at all. At this rate I’ll never be ready for the pot. �Ah Dang, I’m hungry!’ I wail. I try to imagine what a hungry ghost would sound like.�I’m really, really hungry! HUNGRY! There’s not enough filling in my sandwich, Ah Dang.’

Then Ah Dang’s cursing me in Chinese and pounding her drum tummy, and picking up the butter dish and hurling it back down, and going at the lump of cheddar as if she’d like to murder it. I look back at Alice and our eyes meet. And Alice gives a �hup’ of laughter, and then she claps a hand over her mouth and tries to stifle it.Well, that only makes it worse than ever, because now I’m laughing too, a great boom of a laugh that make my tummy jiggle about under my shirt, like it’s alive and it wants to escape. Alice falls back against the fridge and she’s helpless now, arms limp, head tipping about, and that makes me lose it completely. I shuffle over to her, and my sides are really splitting, my shirt busting at the seams, and Ah Dang’s screaming and brandishing the knife with the butter on it, like she’s going to stab us both. And just for a second I let my throbbing head rest on Alice’s shoulder, and the peals of laughter rock from her into me and back again. It’s good, so very good laughing like that with my sister Alice that I want to sob.




Ghost—1967 (#ulink_7f01be60-a4d0-5561-a62e-43997937278b)


I watch many children come and go before Alice arrives. I observe them through the grid of an air-vent set high into the wall of the morgue.Their heads are dull and ordinary, and I know they cannot sustain me. True, I am curious. But when Alice comes I am spellbound. She appears one afternoon when all the other children have gone, and lies back on a patch of scrubby grass. She is a slip of a thing, pale as a creaming wave, her long hair always moving, her eyes moons of contemplation. It does not seem to worry her that the building above her is growing silent, that soon she will be alone. For a bit she stares up at the sky, follows the occasional fleecy cloud. Then she rolls over and sits up. As she does so, the golden-haired boy in the shadows fades away, as if he had never been.

Suddenly she notices the yawning mouth of the morgue, for the door is partly ajar. I cannot tell how long her eyes are trained on it, but the shadows are lengthening when at last she climbs to her feet. She walks straight to the entrance and shoulders open the rusty-hinged door. It shudders and grumbles and sticks a bit before swinging back. Alice slips through,under the nebulous mantle.She takes a few steps, and then waits for her eyes to adjust to the gloom. She inhales a long, slow breath of stale, dead air. She fixes stains on the floor with her perceptive eyes. She let her fingers linger on walls where the paint is flaking, where the bricks are impregnated with the transience of life.As she listens to echoes of the past, I slide into her and instantly feel my strength returning. I become the scum in her blood. I garland myself with ropes of silver-stranded veins.And in the resonance of each heartbeat I know her every thought,her every memory, her every experience, her every twist and turn of emotion, often before she does, as if they are my own.

When at last she leaves, I go with her. We dawdle along Bowen Road. We wait for the Peak Tram, a funicular green cab with the cream roof to come and haul us up The Peak.We leave the terminus and stroll up a long road, past a shop called the Dairy Farm, then along a path to Alice’s home. All this is new to me. The people hurrying by, their clothes, their colour too, for up here most of them are white-skinned, the cars and buses and lorries, the houses and the flats. Hers is a top-floor flat, as large as a palace. Surely, I think, several families live here. But I am wrong. There is only one. The flat is filled with beautiful things too, the kind that an emperor might own. Carvings and paintings, jade and ivory, snuff bottles and fans, books and carpets, and shelves crowded with fine porcelain. But there is no emperor, just Alice’s family, the Saffords, and some servants to care for them, Ah Dang and Ah Lee. When I was alive there was only my father to care for me. And even then, as far back as I can recall, it had really been my job to look after him. Like me, Alice has a father, Ralph, but unlike me she has a mother too, Myrtle.And Alice has a younger brother, Harry, and a small dog she calls Bear. Alice has two sisters as well, who are being educated in England. It seems strange to me that, with so many people about, Alice should be lonely. But she is. I feel it. Still, it is lucky, because it means that she will probably welcome my company.

Together we decide that we do not like attending classes in the school that has been set up in my old army hospital. This is not because I believe education has no worth. My father was a wonderful storyteller and valued learning above all things. When we returned from a night’s fishing I would lie down, the rising sun warming the deck under me, and he’d sit beside me. He’d puff on his clay pipe and after a bit the stories would come. He taught me to read and write too, and together we delighted in the words of the great poets and philosophers.

But the smell of death emanating from the morgue has started to make me fret. No, it is life that beckons to me now. I find myself wondering if the novelty of being alive again, albeit through the medium of Alice, will ever wear off. Somehow, I doubt it. So we abandon dusty studies in favour of exploration.We have to be careful where we go, for there is trouble on the island. The tense atmosphere reminds me of the weeks leading up to the outbreak of war. I overhear Alice’s father saying that some of the Chinese people are unhappy about working conditions, and that they believe the British are taking advantage of them. Some days there are riots, people shouting slogans and fighting, even bombs exploding and causing dreadful injuries. It seems strange though that this time the enemy is not the Japanese, but the British.

Despite these disturbances, Alice and I do not curtail our outings. We visit the Tiger Balm Gardens, or we take a ferry to one of the outer islands, or we walk the length of Shek O Beach, or Silvermine Bay, kicking up the sand, or we catch a bus to Aberdeen and watch the boat people, my people, for a while.This last stirs up memories of Lin Shui for me. Sometimes I am certain I spot my father, scrambling about the rigging of one of the great junks, the rust-brown sails flapping and rippling under him, his long, silver hair swept up into a bun and skewered with a netting needle, as was his habit. Sometimes I see a young girl, just like me, her life shrunk to the wooden decks that enfold her, her days spent riding the waves, mending nets, patching sails, cooking, washing pots and pans, and doing her family’s laundry.And I wonder if she realises how fine this life of hers is, if she values it as she ought. Sometimes too, I see the shadows of my ancestors and I know they are lying in wait for me.

Of course there are some advantages to being �undead’,for example I no longer feel hunger. I share with Alice what it is to need neither food nor drink. She joins me, fasting for long periods, till her head is light as a feather, and she trips about as if she is stepping onto clouds.When she grows dizzy and black shapes detonate before her eyes, I have to remind myself that Alice is only human and must eat to live. I prompt her then to feed, reminding myself that I am leasing her body. But while Alice fasts, her brother Harry feasts until none of his clothes fit him.

The flat on the Peak is emptier than I thought it would be, reminding me sometimes of the morgue. Alice’s father is rarely at home, working constantly. Alice’s mother, though sometimes in the same room, feels far away. I am envious of Alice having not one but two sisters. But I find even this, when they return home for the holidays, is not as I imagined it. Late one night we chance upon Jillian in the kitchen. She is surrounded by tins and packets and jars. She is stuffing food into her mouth, slices of bread slathered in chocolate spread and jam and peanut butter, cramming in biscuits and cakes and crisps and chocolate. In between mouthfuls she is gulping juice and milk, and brightly coloured drinks that bubble and fizz, as if infused with life force. I amuse myself by causing one of the tube lights in the kitchen to flash for a time. Jillian barely glances up. Instead, as it flickers, Alice’s oldest sister looks as if she is jerking about like a gluttonous puppet, her blonde hair flying. Alice is pofaced, but I think it is very funny.

All the while, fearless nocturnal cockroaches scuttle about. Emerging from the drains they feast on smears and crumbs. Most are on the floor, though a few, braver than the rest, scrabble around on the work surfaces.Their antennae swivel.They are well fed these cockroaches, the size of Hong Kong dollars. Their beetle-brown bodies gleam in the glow cast by the fluorescent tubes. Fine hairs sprout from their busy, spindly legs. The wings of one that is trying to clamber up the slippery sides of a glass whirr madly. It lumbers into the air and flies about, rebounding off cupboard doors and tiled surfaces, before landing to gobble afresh on a fast-melting square of chocolate. They look as shiny as vinyl. Alice flinches. Jillian pauses in her gorging, just long enough to bring a clenched fist down on it. We hear the �squish’ as its mushy body is crushed. Jillian glances cursorily at the base of her fist. She wipes off the stuff that looks like yellow pus on a kitchen towel, and starts guzzling again.

�What are you doing?’ Alice wants to know, the juices running into her own mouth at the sight of all that food.

Startled, Jillian jumps and turns on Alice. She cannot have known we were here, watching her.�Shut up,’ she hisses, a chocolaty dribble running down her chin. �Shut up and get out.’ The face of one of the amahs appears like a ghostly apparition at the window in the back door. It is Ah Dang, her plait unravelled, the top buttons of her tunic undone. She looks first sleepy-eyed, then amazed, as if she thinks she might still be dreaming. Despite this, her face registers concern, probably at the prospect of the morning’s clean-up job. Meeting Jillian’s incensed glare, wisely she elects to creep away.

�You’ll make yourself sick if you eat all that,’ says Alice prophetically.

And that is exactly what Jillian does.When she has eaten so much that she seems barely able to walk and keep it all contained, she flicks off the kitchen light, staggers through the dining room, and down the long, dark corridor to the bathroom.We follow her and see her stumble inside, slam the door, and switch the light on.A thin, yellow stripe at the base of the door filters into the dimness.We hear Jillian lock it behind her. Then she begins to retch. For a long while she vomits and chokes. The sounds are harsh. They splinter the night. I am amazed that no one wakens at the din. Alice crouches in the murk listening to her sister disgorging herself,and her mother snoring. A few times Bear approaches her, but then he senses my presence and slinks away again, hackles high. Several of the corridor windows are open, and a welcome breeze is cooling the flat.The cicadas trill. Their song rhythmically swells and then subsides.The taps snort out water. The toilet flushes. Then silence. The cicadas too are momentarily still, as if in anticipation.The bathroom door slams open, hitting the wall with a resounding �thwack’. A square of light falls into the darkness, with the silhouette of Jillian squinting at its centre. She is not wearing her glasses.

�Bitch,’ she fires into the corridor. She stinks of bile. She wipes the back of a hand over her mouth, gives a brittle laugh and flicks off the light. The darkness springs back. I remember what it is to be starving, the acid ache of it. I remember not knowing if I would eat again. I remember that food haunted my dreams, that it had the power to bewitch me. Jillian feels her way like a blind man past Harry’s bedroom to her own, goes in, the door thumping shut behind her. Still Alice huddles in the blackness. Bear growls softly. Some time later, after several unsuccessful attempts, a key turns in a lock and scratches the dark. The front door swings open. Nicola appears with a boy in tow, silhouettes in the lobby light. Entwined they fall back against the front door, closing it with their bodies. They tumble onto the Persian rug in the shadowy hall. There is a lot of grunting and struggling. Clothes are tossed aside. White bits swim into sight. Buttocks, an erect penis, a breast, an upright V of splayed legs.They are made luminous in the moonlight, these infrequently seen body parts. The dog watches cocking his head in puzzlement.

�For Christ’s sake stop fucking about and put it in,’ snarls Nicola. The tone of her voice is bored and irritable.There is a bit of adjustment, then a good deal of rocking and panting, followed by a breathy cry. A few seconds pass. �Get off me, Mick. I think I’m going to be sick,’ groans Nicola. The boy, Mick, leaps up obediently. He begins tugging on his jeans. Nicola is slower to get up. She pulls on her pants and smoothes down her skirt. �I’m tired, so can you just fuck off now,’ she says opening the front door, unceremoniously showing the boy out, and shutting it firmly behind him. Without bothering to put on the lights she weaves her way down the corridor, never noticing Alice hugging the blackness to her. She vanishes straight into the room she shares with Jillian.

Alice’s mother, Myrtle, is on next.Her bedroom door opens slowly, and for a few seconds she stands swaying in the doorway. Then she steps gingerly into the stream of moonlight. She is wearing a pale dressing gown.There is a metallic sheen to it. Her hair is loose, falling about her shoulders. Her gait is unsteady. She finds her way to the bamboo-clad bar in the hall. She also seems to want invisibility, and does not bother with the lights. She fumbles with the sliding door of the bar, grabs a bottle, unscrews the top and takes a greedy gulp. With it clutched to her chest, she treads with the care of a tightrope walker back to her bedroom, and quietly closes the door.

�While my father is away,’ whispers Alice, whose father is on a business trip in Singapore, �the mice come out to play.’

Later Alice drags some pillows and blankets into the corridor, and nestles by a bookcase that borders one of the walls. She cannot see the titles in the half-light, but she touches the hard spines of the books, and follows the contours of the lettering printed on their covers with an index finger. Much later, when I levitate out of Alice to glide along the ceiling, until I am floating just above the drinks cabinet, Bear cautiously nears my host. He sniffs her bedding warily, until he is satisfied it holds no trace of me.Then he nudges his way into the makeshift bed. Not satisfied with his proximity to Alice, he nuzzles at the bent arm at her side. Alice, half asleep, starts, her eyes springing open. Then in a wave of recognition she enwraps Bear, her dog,and draws him close to her.At length they sleep,Alice dropping off first, Bear rolling his eyes upwards and baring his teeth at me once, and then again, before finally settling down. I peer at them with bafflement at first, and then with something very like resentment. Alice’s face is calm, like still water. Her arm rises and falls gently as the dog’s lungs fill and deflate. Soon their rhythmic breaths interlock, fitting together like pieces of a puzzle, and their two hearts fall to beating in unison. I am covetous of their shared warmth, their joint slumber. Seeing their bodies spooned together makes me recall the taste of the Chinese speciality, Bitter Melon.

On the bar is a cut-glass decanter. Dipped in moonshine, the diamond panes glint like silver sequins. Although the decanter looks heavy, I am positive I can shift it. I condense myself and slither between it and the smooth, plastic surface of the bar. I radiate heat, drawing it from Alice, from the dog, from the air, and concentrating it, as you might do with a glass concentrating the energy of the sun to make fire. I distil the moisture of the night, sucking it up from the dew-soaked air. Soon the plastic is wet and slippery. I feel the decanter move then, just an inch or so. After that it is easy, one inch more and more and more. Now nearly half of the crystal sphere hangs over the edge of the bar. The liquid inside it sloshes and slops, a storm in a bottle. I draw every drop of it into the unsupported half of the glittering bulge. The bottle vibrates a moment. Then it arcs and plummets, splitting into pieces against the wooden floor with a heavy crash.The liquid bursts, liberated briefly before it pools. The dog snarls. Alice shifts drowsily. I hear a whimper coming from one of the bedrooms. I think it may be Harry.Then the hush slowly unfurls again.

In the morning though it is anything but quiet.A shaft of sunlight falls on the jagged pieces of the fractured decanter. It makes a wondrous dazzlement of them. I am delighted by the eye-catching trinkets I have brought into being. Surprisingly,Alice’s mother is not impressed. She shrieks at Alice. The dog scurries away, head down, tail between his legs. The amahs raise their hands to their mouths, and insist they know nothing of how the decanter came to be broken. But when Ah Lee hunkers down and begins to pick up splinters of glass, Alice’s mother grabs her shoulder and gives it a little shake.

�Alice will do this,’ she cries. �She will collect up every bit of it in a bag, and when her father comes home she will show it to him.’ She lets go the shoulder and swoops on Alice. �You will tell him what you have done. Do you understand me,Alice?’ Myrtle Safford’s face looks flushed. It is fast becoming the colour of raw meat. Her fingers work busily at the embroidered sleeve of her blouse. She is bound to pull a thread if she persists in picking at the fine handiwork, I think.

�I did not break the decanter,’ Alice says, on her feet, head held high, facing her mother. She repeats this several times.

�Do not lie to me,’ Myrtle interrupts her. Her eyes look dry and sore, the lids drawing in sharply, as if the bright sunshine is hurting them.

Jillian materialises wearing one of her father’s old shirts. Her apathetic flint-grey eyes scan the tableau, amahs askance, mother enraged, Alice defiant. She wags her head slowly, knowingly from side to side. �I have a sore throat,’ she grunts, her hand stroking her collarbone. She yawns expansively, steps carefully over the broken glass, pushes past the amahs, and on into the dining room. �I need some breakfast. I’m starving,’ she mutters over her shoulder.

I cannot help wondering if she will throw it all up again later on. Nicola does not make an entrance. I expect she is tired after the previous night’s exertions. Harry peeps round his door, surveys the scene, and vanishes like a timorous mouse. It is plain to me that Alice is agitated. She does not seem the least bit thrilled with my achievement. She stoops and picks up a piece of glass.While her mother is shouting, she pushes the ragged point of it into the tip of a thumb. Ah Lee bursts into a fit of nervous giggles.

�Mo lei tau!’ Ah Dang mutters.

Alice looks down and notes there is blood on her hand. Her brow creases in confusion, as if she cannot imagine how it got there.

Days later Alice’s father returns home and is presented with a bag that rattles when he lifts it up. It is full of my pretties. He asks Alice to join him in the lounge. He tells her that he is not angry with her, but he needs to understand why she has broken the decanter.

�I didn’t break it,’ Alice insists. Her thumb still hurts, though of course it is no longer bleeding. She rubs it unconsciously.

Alice’s father looks so tired. He has dark smudges under his eyes. He presses the heels of his hands into his eye sockets for a long moment. I make the chips of glass in the brown paper bag resting on his lap, chink and tinkle. Hearing them sing he drops his hands, and his weary eyes rake the room. They alight on a book, a statue, a carved lantern, a record player, a television, on the Chinese carpet that covers most of the floor, finally coming to rest once more on the crumpled, open-necked bag on his lap. He looks, I observe, as if he has just discovered that life is not what he expected it to be. He looks as if he is staring down, not at a shattered decanter in his lap, but at his own shattered dreams.

�I didn’t do it,’ Alice reiterates. Her little fingers are crooked now, her face clouded. I explain that I did, but only Alice hears me. Her eyes dart about the room. At last they settle on her father’s drooping head. �I’m going to be good now,’ Alice says.




Ralph—1967 (#ulink_d105baa4-7173-59fb-a221-5e02e1ea5c49)


My first night home this week, I’ve been sleeping in Central, down at the office. It could erupt at any time, with each passing day it seems we come closer to the point of no return. And what will become of us then, us few servants of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth, holding the fort while the Apaches circle? I don’t hear the approach of the cavalry. We’re on our own, chaps, with only our shadows for company. Myrtle has poured me a large whisky. Don’t ask me how, but I know this is a prelude to one of her talks. I am colourless with exhaustion.My wife is making yet more demands on me.At the end of this God-awful day, she wants the only thing I have left, my attention. I feel the finger of scotch stroke the back of my throat. I wonder if Myrtle realises that I may very well be a target, on some kind of a hit list, that we all might be come to that. She is talking…talking about our daughter, about Alice.

�She has a violent temper,’ she accuses bluntly.�She is destructive.’

I haven’t the strength to contradict her.There is violence breaking out everywhere downtown. Real violence. The blood, injury and death kind of violence. The once peaceful streets of the colony blossom with exploding homemade bombs, known to locals as �boh loh’, Cantonese for pineapple. Huge banners fly high, damning the British for the pathetically low salaries of the indigenous people, for their draconian working hours, for water shortages and increasing prices. Curfews that transform the colony into a ghost town, teargas, even the threat that troublemakers breaking the restrictions will be shot on sight, serve only to contain the mêlée. But for how long, dear God, for how long? My neck aches and the base of my spine too. I need a hot bath, a good, long soak. There aren’t any showers at the office, and I am aware of the stale odour of a couple of days’ sweat coming from my armpits, my back, under my collar, between my thighs. On and on she goes, damning our ailing daughter.There is the heavy tick of the clock behind us in the lounge. We are on the veranda. It is early autumn, but still warm enough to sit outside for a short while. I used to love the tick of a clock, used to find it comforting. But now it is just a reminder that time is running out. My eyes are stinging and my eyelids are heavy. I am so shattered that I am breathless. I am sitting down, and I am gulping in oxygen as if I am running a race.

�Frankly, Ralph, I’m not at all sure the Island School is such a good idea for Alice. In the few weeks since she started there her behaviour has been worse than ever, more erratic, more…well…Peculiar. Quite honestly I feel I can’t cope much longer.’ Myrtle pauses to assess the effect her words are having on me.Then, judging it to be safe, with a swift, flirtatious smile, she proceeds.�I know you may not altogether agree with me, but please Ralph, hear me out. I really do feel that the structure of boarding school might be just what she needs. Alright, I will concede that perhaps the convent wouldn’t be suitable for Alice. But that doesn’t rule out boarding school entirely, now does it?’

The cicadas warble. There is the distant hum of passing cars. A horn sounds a long way off. A dog barks and is echoed with an answer. From where I am sitting I can see at least three cars winding their way up the Peak, and twice that many going down, yellow cones of light sliding along the curling tape of grey road that binds the slopes.There is a double-decker bus too, chinks of warm yellow light threading through the dusk, on route to the Peak Tram terminus I expect. I wonder idly if Myrtle wants to get rid of all our children? Will she carry on until we have none left? The answer is swift, light as warm air, and just as stifling.

She will carry on until Alice is gone. I sip my scotch and watch the coloured lights of Aberdeen harbour winking busily below, and the lambent stars and moon, poised and rigid above. I am so very weary these days.And I am lonely too. It eats like a maggot into my heart, this loneliness of mine. I nod and try to look as if I am taking it all in, as my wife’s voice winds around me. I frown pensively. See, my expression says, I am cogitating, entertaining your suggestion, weighing up the merits of such a course of action.

In reality I am far off. I am reliving the unrest, the coiled spring of tension that lies in wait for me with every breaking dawn. I am thinking about the riots, the faces, distorted and ugly, the gaping mouths that stamp out words, hateful, vicious words, those bent on bloodletting. I think about Central, where often I have enjoyed a coffee at the Hilton, or lunch at the Foreign Correspondents’ Club. I think of the Cosmo Club too and the Christmas parties we have had there, of the raffles and the paper hats, and of the turkey and Christmas pudding, the thick, steaming gravy, and the viscous yellow custard, so absurd in this land of sun and bamboo and sea. I recall those evil drinking games that I have tumbled unwittingly into after a Cantonese meal, games that have left me legless and the world spinning. I think of my Chinese friends, these men I have grown to love, who understand me better than any Englishman ever could, these men with whom I have spent my precious hoard of free time lavishly, and never regretted a cent of it. I think about the joy I have had rummaging in the alleys, fingering treasures in dusty boxes, imagining who could have created such beauty, such perfection in a past world. I think about the Star Ferries, their dark prows knifing through the sea, how the thrill of that journey over to Kowloon has never quite evanesced for me. I think of the banks and the money rolling in, the obscene amounts of money. And then, I think of the poverty of the locals, of the workforce, the poverty that in truth I have done little to ameliorate.

Finally the image of a small, thin, naked girl, hair, face and flesh ablaze, forces everything else out of my mind. It is a photograph on the wall of the Foreign Correspondents’ Club, in its multi-storey setting, high above Central.There are other pictures alongside it but they do not register. It is black and white, this image of the flaming child.The lack of colour does not lessen the horror, rather the stark contrast seems to highlight it. I think she is Vietnamese. I think it was taken during the Vietnamese war. But it really doesn’t matter. It might have been anywhere. Her face is split with anguish. Her mouth is racked into an �O’ of agony. She is staring straight into the camera lens as she staggers along the muddy path. Flames lick upwards and outwards from her core, they roar through her silk-black hair, they spark her eyelashes and crackle over her eyebrows, they crust and blister the jelly of her still seeing eyeballs. She holds her hands out pityingly towards…who? The cameraman? The soldiers? God? I cannot free myself of this vision tonight. She haunts me this little girl as she staggers forwards, her arms full of fire, offering up all that she has, offering it up to whoever will take it, offering up her hell on earth.

My wife is speaking again. She talks of the pressure I am under in my job during these unsettled times. She maintains it is vital that I am fit for the task of subduing these red rebels, that both Queen and country are relying on me to restore order to the colony.

�You cannot afford to be distracted by Alice at times like this,’ Myrtle insists. She takes a slow meditative swallow of her drink before she speaks again. �Neither can I. How can I support you, Ralph, if I am drained dry by our daughter,’ she wheedles, her voice as velvety as moss. �And it’s not just that,’ she continues. �She is putting such a strain on our relationship, darling.You must see that.We need time to ourselves, time free of endless worries and arguments about Alice. Besides, I am very concerned that her disruptive behaviour may eventually rub off on our son, on Harry.’

Now she is praising a school she has found in the Highlands of Scotland, of all places, an establishment founded on strict principles of discipline and regulation. She is describing its location as if she were selling me a holiday home. The cadence of her voice is very nearly poetic. She paints a scene of rolling heather-covered mountains crowned with garlands of mist, spotted with strutting stags, of the blue-black lochs, ice-cold liquid bodies stretched out for miles, mirrors to the scudding clouds above, of the swarms of midges, and of the banks of virgin snow. I picture Alice in this setting, and marvel that Myrtle believes a remedy can be found for our turbulent daughter so far away, as if geography is the answer.

I turn my whisky tumbler around and around in my hands. The peaty aroma I inhale seems most apt.As the marauding gangs charge through the streets of Central, their war cries a united tirade against colonial rule, my bowels loosen and my legs turn to water. Perched on high in my office I watch the Hong Kong Police, their arms linked, like playground children at their games. Red rover, red rover, let the rioters come over! A human wall barricading the road, poised for the impact that will surely come. A couple of days ago, peering though my binoculars at this brave force, this force whose job it is to repel the wrath of mighty China, I focused on the face of a boy…he was no more than a boy I tell you, a Chinese boy, pitting himself against the rabble, against his own people. For this I know he will earn the title of �Yellow Running Dog’, for he has sided with the �White-Skinned Pigs’, the European interlopers.

Music thunders out from loudspeakers in Central District, the volume at such a high level you can hear it in the flat on The Peak, as if it is coming from the next room. It drowns out the slogans and propaganda, being broadcast from the communist-owned buildings. People are being attacked.They are being murdered.And a Chinese boy wearing the khaki uniform of the Hong Kong Police Force stands erect, head held high, and blocks their path, while I, Ralph Safford, representative of the British government, look down from my safe offices in the sky, my bowels liquid, my heart pounding too fast, and my hands slick with sweat.

�Damned communists!’I recall saying conversationally to a colleague on one of the darkest days. I peered down at the advancing, boiling mass, at the bracelet of police standing firm. They were advancing on the Hilton Hotel. If they break through, I thought, terror jerking at my heart, perhaps they will pour up Garden Road, past St John’s Cathedral,and the lower Peak Tram terminus.Then higher,why not, half of the bloodthirsty rabble peeling off up the slopes to Government House to lynch the 24th British Governor of Hong Kong, Sir David Trench,the rest continuing their march on Victoria Peak,where they knew we lorded it over them in luxury.

�Damned Red Guards with their “Little Red Books”,’I blustered, trying in vain to steady my voice. I gestured at the angry crowds beneath our windows. �Not exactly what we Brits would call a Cultural Revolution, eh?’ I managed a chuckle, but the sound was hollow.�We simply can’t have this sort of thing.After all,these fellows are making trouble on British territory,’ I said, sounding like the stereotype of a stoic British officer in a bad war film. I tried to instil outrage into my voice, fury at this insult to my sovereign Queen. And I very nearly pulled it off.But the sudden slump of my colleague’s shoulders made it clear I was fooling no one. About now, I thought, the film camera should pan to the skies above, buzzing with British warplanes come to put an end to this rebellious nonsense. I glanced upwards, a clear, blue sky, a disarmingly beautiful day on the island of Hong Kong. I wondered if the Chinese boy in his man’s uniform was glancing up too. I wondered if he was thinking that it was a good day to die, to become a sei chai lo, a dead policeman, with no clouds to impede his soul’s flight.

My mind slides forward in time and I am back on the veranda with my wife. I raise my glass and toss back my drink. Myrtle takes it from me. She doesn’t even ask me if I would like a refill. She busies herself with the new decanter, with the ice bucket. I hear the cubes of ice clunk and rattle as they are agitated with the metal tongs. Looking down, I see a brochure Myrtle has deposited in my lap for a boarding school in Argyll. I flip through the pages. They are full of snaps of Amazonian girls with flushed cheeks doing wholesome things. I pause at a shot of one leaping in the air, arms outstretched, hands spread wide.The netball she has just shot is arcing earthwards, about to slip through the goal ring. Her thick black hair is crushed back by the wind.The expression on her face is vicious. I will mow down anyone who gets in my way, it bugles through slit eyes, ballooning cheeks, a funnelled mouth and gritted teeth. There is a malignancy about it, I decide, that I find decidedly distasteful. I toss the brochure onto the drinks table. Myrtle notes my gesture and quickly hands me my drink. She has poured me a stiff measure. If I down this too fast I shall fall asleep. My lips curl upwards longingly at the thought of slumber, of drowning in slumber.

I wonder where it will all end? I overheard talk today of the People’s Republic of China seizing control of the island, taking back Hong Kong from right under our noses. Once a remote, even a ridiculous, idea, this now feels tangible, a very real probability, a probability I am living with every day, down there in Central District. Up here on the Peak, to a great extent the family is insulated. As I listen to Myrtle prattle on about how difficult life has become for her, I smoulder with resentment. I cannot help it. I am in the firing line, the thick of it, not her. For the time being at least, she is tucked up safe in the flat on The Peak, with amahs to care for her. Still, foolish though it may be, I like to believe she’s safe, that Harry and Alice are safe, that the communist agitators will draw the line at charging up The Peak and laying siege to the flat. After all, we are British subjects. I am fighting the urge to laugh at this notion, this notion that because we are British subjects, servants of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth the Second, they will tread carefully around us. It will not make an iota of difference to the raging mob down there. No. I take that back. Of course it will make a difference. It will spur them on till they have butchered all the �White-Skinned Pigs’.

I must stop this.What with a couple of swift ones before leaving the office, and the hefty measures I am getting through now, I’ve had far too much to drink on an empty stomach. I am growing maudlin. I ignore my own caution and take another slug of scotch. I bare my teeth at the night sky. I can’t concentrate on my wife and her tribulations, tonight of all nights. Why is Myrtle bothering me with this, when what I need is pause, time to regroup, to prepare for the next onslaught, for most certainly it will come. How can I think about Alice’s future—when I’m not sure if any of us even have one.

�I think it’s for the best,’ Myrtle says again, taking a gulp of whisky herself.Then, when I turn to her, my face blank, she adds a reminder of the subject under debate, �Sending Alice to boarding school in Scotland.’ She takes up the brochure, leafs through it, and seizes on the very page with the grimacing netball player that I stumbled on. She brandishes it at me, stabbing a manicured fingernail at the action shot.�Just look at that,’ she urges.�That girl wants to win.That could be Alice in a few years from now. Think of that!’

I do not tell her this is the very thing that I am thinking of, this is what I am afraid of. I am too spent to argue. Besides, Scotland seems a long way away tonight, as does England. Sometimes I think I have forgotten what England is like, forgotten that it is home, my country. I feel as if I have been trying to create a little England, here, on the doorstep of China, and that anybody who really considers this will see that it is an impossible task, the work of a lifetime. For what? In just three short decades, as the century closes, China will reclaim her island, and she will probably do a very thorough job of obliterating all evidence of the British, as speedily as she can. And who would blame her?

�Ralph? Darling, are you listening?’ Myrtle’s voice sounds in my rambling thoughts. �About Alice? Scotland? What do you think?’

From somewhere I find the might to withstand my wife’s determination to dispense with Alice. I take a shuddering breath and meet her eyes, my gaze steady.

�No. It wouldn’t work out for Alice. She would never settle in a boarding school.’ My voice is unwavering.

�But how can you know that, Ralph, when—’ Myrtle persists.

�It’s too late,’ I interrupt.�She has started at the Island School. She has her uniform, her timetable. She may have already made new friends.’This last seems an absurd objection even to me, considering she doesn’t have any old friends to speak of. But I plough on regardless. �Moving her now would cause havoc.’

Again Myrtle, eyes alight, starts to argue, and again I break in.

�That is my final word on the matter, Myrtle.The subject is closed. Alice stays where she is.’ I lower my head and stare broodingly into my glass, daring my wife to speak again. When several seconds pass and she does not protest, I glance up. She is staring moodily ahead, chin up, mouth set. She is furious and I do not care.

The year is drawing to a close when I hear at last that an order has come from Beijing, reining in the insurgents, effectively curtailing the violence and bombings for the present. It seems the riots, that will come to be known as the Colonial Riots, have finally subsided. I feel as if I have been holding my breath all this while, and now I can release it. Again I am looking down on the streets of Central and they are blessedly safe. Of course there is the accustomed bustle of this overcrowded island, but the faces I spot are benign, and the scurrying people are devoid of menace. I indulge myself. I dare to think the troubles are behind us, that the structure is still solid, and that Her Majesty’s Crown Colony has been delivered back to her safe and sound.

I try not to dwell on the lives lost, or on those men, women and children whose futures will forever be blighted by this appalling time. I try to do what I can to improve the lives of ordinary Chinese citizens, driven now by guilt at what I know were the intolerable conditions they had to survive under. I admit, if only to myself, that corruption in both the ruling classes and the police force has been rife. I use what influence I have to combat this. My motives are not entirely altruistic though. I am driven on by guilt.

I have felt the immense might of China bearing down on me, on this tiny island of Hong Kong. And although this servant of the British Empire stood his ground waving the Union Jack, in reality I know that, like King Canute, trying to halt the rising tide, we never had a chance of holding the colony if China had really wanted to take it. Who knows what deals were done behind the scenes to persuade China to stand down when she did. But no matter the reasons, China has decided to let the British play �I’m the King of the Castle’ for a short while longer.There is no question in my mind that we are only able to continue with our precarious little lives on her say-so. For years I will toss and turn through sleepless nights, my dreams crowded with the ghosts of people killed and wounded, while I was on duty. I will wonder if I might have done better, if my actions might have been speedier, if more lives could have been saved. When the pats on the back are a distant memory, I will wonder truly if it was all worth it.




Brian—1970 (#ulink_642af429-d152-5940-aa68-fc75d165012a)


I cast Alice Safford in the role of Abigail in Arthur Miller’s Crucible, because I thought it might bring the kid out of herself a bit. As Head of English and Drama at the Island School, the annual play is my baby, as agreed when I took up the post. I select it, direct it, produce it, sort out scenery, costumes, lighting, programmes, and just about anything else you care to mention. In short, I live it for a term. With the school only open three years, there was a lot riding on this first spring production. I couldn’t afford mistakes. But I just had a feeling that fourteen-year-old Alice was up to the job. She’s so much more grown up than the other girls in her year—intelligent, observant. Even at that first reading there was something in her voice that made me think she could pull it off.Which is more than can be said for Trevor Lang playing John Proctor. But then again, what he lacked in talent he made up for in enthusiasm. And frankly I didn’t have much to choose from, well nobody actually. He was the only boy who showed up to the audition.

Alice was captivating from the outset, endlessly changing, one moment the seductress, the next spitting like a cat, then all wide-eyed innocence. In the court scene, where Abigail drives the other girls into a frenzy, she actually had the hairs standing up on the back of my neck. We even had a few visits from worried parents complaining their children were having nightmares, questioning my choice of play. But if I’d hoped that acting was going to help her overcome her shyness, or curtail some of the strange behaviour she’d been exhibiting at school, I was to be sorely disappointed. Throughout rehearsals and following the success of the play, Alice continued to prove difficult.

She’s not a favourite among other teachers, that girl.And recently, I can’t deny her conduct has been challenging. But what the heck, I like Alice. I don’t mind admitting it either. I like her. Now when I say that, I don’t mean I want to fuck her. Not like some of the older girls. And can you blame me? Sun-tanned legs peeping out from under those flimsy, striped, summer shifts. The zip down the front, with the metal ring through it, that looks like the ring-pull on a can of lager. God, the times I’ve dreamt of easing those zips down, of glimpsing those lacy, little-girl bras, of touching those firm young breasts and…The winter uniform’s not much better either, with the chocolate-coloured skirts, so short that you can sometimes see the crease in the girls’ thighs, and a hint of their curved buttocks beneath the fabric.

They know it too! Ah, believe me, they know what they’re doing to you, as they sashay about this wreck we’re having to make do with. A decrepit army hospital full of ghosts. Well, that’s what the kids say anyway, whispering horror stories to one another about the morgue. Oh yes, we have our own morgue here at the Island School, very handy if any of the kids expire before close of day. Actually most of the students won’t venture anywhere near it. Even Melvin Furse, the Head, hates it, says he can’t wait to have the wretched thing demolished.

I’ve wandered around outside it once or twice, but I’ve never had the desire or the nerve to enter. There is something really menacing about that place. Gives a whole new meaning to the nicknames the Chinese have for us British. Gweilo. A dead corpse that has come back to life, a ghost man, or gweipo, a ghost woman. Apparently, so I’m told, years of oppression earned us such unflattering sobriquets. Still, it’s easy to see how the Chinese populace first coined them, staring amazed as their new white rulers paraded before them like the living dead. The Chinese are a superstitious race.They believe in ghosts.As for me,before I came here I would have said it was all nonsense. Now, I’m not so sure. This entire building has an unsettling atmosphere you simply can’t ignore, a mausoleum, smelling of damp and mould, paint peeling off walls, loggias open to wind and weather. Completely impractical. Furse keeps promising it won’t be long before the new premises, currently under construction on the terraced slopes above us, are completed. Though quite honestly there have been so many delays, I am beginning to feel it will be little short of miraculous when it’s finished.

And yet, I maintain there’s something rather sensual about seeing a lovely girl stroll around this ancient ruin. Echoes of the dying and the dead, screams of agony, groans and sighs, rattling last breaths, mingling with the quick footsteps, fits of giggles, yelps of excitement, and whispered secrets, of ravishing young beauties hurrying to class. Like a film set: the girls playing the leading roles, the ghosts providing all the atmosphere. After all, I’m only flesh and blood, and surely there’s no harm in just looking. Honestly, what man wouldn’t let his eyes rove a bit with those slim hips swinging ahead of him, those breasts glimpsed from open-necked shirts, through the grinning teeth of an undone zipper. Seeing those swells of warm flesh lifting and falling, beads of sweat adorning them like crystal necklaces. They do it deliberately you know. Leaving one too many buttons undone, innocently hooking that ring with a curved little finger and easing it down a few inches, leaning forwards on purpose so that you can’t help but look. What can I say? I’m a good-looking, testosterone-fuelled, young man. But don’t get me wrong. With Alice it’s never like that. She doesn’t flaunt herself, not like the rest of them.

Alice has always been quiet, even from that first day in September when the school opened. Worryingly quiet if I’m truthful. But lately…well, sometimes I think she’ll disappear, drift away if someone doesn’t anchor her down. It’s peculiar. Every teacher has a different story to tell about her lately. But they all agree on one thing—that Alice is skiving classes regularly, and that, when she does deign to show up, inevitably there is trouble. In maths they tell me she’s proving obstinate and unpredictable, that she walked out of class for no reason last week and hasn’t been back since. In French apparently she’s been deliberately obtuse, pretending she can’t understand a word. Last week she smashed a bottle of ink. I’m told it was all over her dress and hands, and that she just stood there staring at it, as if she was in some kind of stupor. At least that’s what Christine Wood the French teacher said. In chemistry she very nearly set fire to her desk a month ago, and now Frank Devine has her sitting at the front of the class, where he can keep an eye on her. In art, her still-life painting is anything but still, I’m reliably informed—things flying about all over the place.

Only last week in the staffroom, Karen Manners, her art teacher, cornered me. I was gasping for a coffee and in a hell of a rush too. But when Karen wants to talk, getting away from her is no easy task. Anyway the upshot is that she told me Alice is always painting the sea, junks and boat people, even soldiers. Japanese, she thinks, she recognises the uniforms. I countered this with some crack about women loving a man in a uniform, which Karen swatted down without so much as the suggestion of a smile.

�I find that remark inappropriate. This is no joke, Brian. It’s dreadfully serious,’ she flared.

These women! Christ! The trouble is they have no sense of humour. Mind you, I’ve always wondered if Karen mightn’t be a lesbian. That would explain her dour exterior. As Head of English the teachers naturally come to me when they have a problem. I understand that. Though sometimes the stuff is so trivial, I can’t help wondering why they can’t work it out for themselves. Hand-holding. They all seem to need their hands held. But I have to concede that this time the problem, Alice, is a substantial one. I like to tackle things head on, so I naturally went straight to her.

�Alice,’ I said, �if you keep skipping classes you do realise that it’s going to have a detrimental effect on your grades, perhaps even your O levels when you come to take them.’

I’d caught her at the end of the day, hovering in her classroom, after everyone else had left. I don’t even think she was listening to me. She was staring out of the window, eyes dreamy and distant.

�Alice,’ I tried again, �where do you go?’

Perhaps I should have said �where are you now?’ She just looked right through me, as if…as if she was stumped by the question, as if she honestly couldn’t remember where she went when she played truant.

As a last resort I called in her mother. And that was the weirdest thing of all. Oh, she came immediately. She didn’t try to put me off the way some of the parents do. She was punctual, too. Smartly dressed, stylish, you know. A belted, pale yellow shift, with a faded rose print in blush pink and gold. It was silk, I’d bet on it. Not Chinese, but that rough Thai silk. Over it she wore a white, short-sleeved jacket with embroidered sleeves. Her shoes were white as well, with very high heels. Not all women could carry off heels like those, but she could. And she had make-up on; not so much that she looked cheap, but applied subtly, giving her class. She was well-spoken too. I can’t help but appreciate when an effort is made. It sets the scene I always think. Gives a meeting a professional air. A few of the parents I know, rolling up in jeans and flip-flops could learn a thing or two from Mrs Safford. She was the finished article right down to her painted pearly-pink nails.

Niceties first. Must observe protocol. I began by congratulating her on the OBE Ralph was awarded earlier in the year, in recognition of his dedicated service on the island. I told her that I’d seen the wonderful pictures of him, in full regalia at the presentation ceremony, on the front page of the South China Morning Post. Her too. And was it their son Harry by her side? She smiled appreciatively and inclined her head. And that lovely shot of Alice with her father,very moving.All traces of pleasure instantly vanished.I forged on.Weather.Always a safe bet.Then a smattering of politics, perhaps not quite so safe considering the current climate among the natives. Just lately I’d say they were definitely a wee bit restless. Still, it looked as though the riots were behind us, thank God. Hardly surprising they’re fed up,considering we’ve been bleeding them dry for decades. But naturally I didn’t say that to Mrs Safford. No, no!

Then I informed her as tactfully as I could about Alice cutting classes, about her erratic behaviour, about her obsession—yes, her obsession with the sea—which seemed to be influencing all her work in art, and closed by voicing my anxieties over her tumbling grades.As I spoke, Mrs Safford nodded and made small sympathetic noises. She didn’t try to deny any of it, didn’t make excuses for her daughter. Didn’t make excuses for herself, come to that. Finally, when she did respond, I was so taken aback, for a moment I couldn’t speak.

�Mr Esmond,’ she said,�I appreciate you imparting your concerns to me. But,’ she continued, her diction frighteningly perfect, �I’m afraid there is little I can do about it. Alice can be…intractable. She doesn’t listen to anyone. Certainly not to me.’ She fixed me with her unreadable brown eyes.

She left me nowhere to go after that. I recall muttering something about hoping that we could work together from now on. And her response? Mrs Safford bent, lifted her white handbag from the foot of the chair, and delved inside it. She fished out her sunglasses, opened them up and dangled them by one arm. Then she let the other arm rest momentarily on her flame-red lips, the gesture deliberately provocative, before putting them on. Her eyes now concealed, she pursed those lips lightly together, then gave me the kind of supercilious smile that makes a man wither away.

�I understand your frustration, Mr Esmond. In fact, I empathise with it,’ she said, rising so that I rose too without thinking, and automatically put my hand into her outstretched one. �But thank you so much for alerting us to the problem and for giving up your valuable time. Naturally, I will do my best to impress the gravity of the situation upon Alice. And if you could keep us informed, I should be most grateful.’ And with that she bid me good afternoon.

I even remember the feel of her skin. It was very soft and cool. And her nails, they were long and sharp like a cat’s, one of them scratching my hand lightly as she withdrew hers.When she’d gone, I tried to get on with some marking, but my mind just kept skipping back to our meeting.

�I’m afraid there is little I can do about it. Alice can be intractable. She doesn’t listen to anyone. Certainly not to me.’

Those words of hers played over and over in my mind. I’ve met enough parents now to expect the unexpected. But nothing could have prepared me for that.You see, what struck me so forcibly was that Mrs Safford had spoken about Alice as if she was not her child.




Myrtle—1970 (#ulink_3cd03ac8-2152-53d3-bc66-f768c0dd6278)


I am sorting through my box of newspaper cuttings, cards and the children’s scraps. There is a write-up about the play, The Crucible,in the South China Morning Post. I’m holding it in my hands, letting my eyes run down the print, picking out the salient points. There is a photograph of Alice too. She is wearing a floor-length dark dress, long sleeves, a square white collar and a white cap.The colours stand out well in the black and white print. Her eyes are fixed upwards, stretched wide in terror at something they see. It is a good review. Well, it would be, wouldn’t it? It’s Martin Bishop’s byline. Ralph’s been friends with Martin more or less since we arrived on the island. They’re drinking buddies too, so it stands to reason that he’d be extravagant with praise when it came to Alice.

���Alice Safford’s performance as Abigail Williams was electric. She lit up the stage. She was every inch the part.”’ Hmm…

Actually, I thought she rather overdid it. You can do that you know, overact. They used to love it in Victorian melodramas. Hiss the villain. Great fun. All that screaming and hysteria. I might just as well have stayed at home. At least here it’s free.

I screw up the review and bin it. I can’t hang on to these things forever. I have other children you know. If I kept all these bits of paper I’d have a roomful by now. I glance down at the next snap. It is of Ralph being presented with his OBE at Government House this spring. What a day that was! I beam. He looks splendid, better than Sir David Trench I think. I’ve always thought Ralph would make rather a good Governor. I don’t think I’ll hang on to the one of him and Alice gazing down at the medal. No point really when there are so many others.

Since the play Alice has been worse than ever. Fancy that silly Mr Esmond trying to tell me what Alice has been getting up to. As if I didn’t know.I live with her.Alice’s bad behaviour is part of our daily routine in our flat on The Peak, I’m afraid. Doesn’t he realise that if I could have waved a magic wand and put her right, I would have done it years ago. She’s unmanageable. And he’s out of his depth, though he probably doesn’t realise it. Of course he is. Most people are with Alice. Why Ralph can’t accept there’s a problem I do not know. He’s blind to it, and nothing I do or say or even show him makes any difference. Of course I told him about Alice’s latest debacle, about being summoned to the school, about her playing truant. His rejoinder—she was going through a rough patch. Well, if she is, it has lasted fourteen years.

In any case it’s not just Alice’s scenes I’m concerned about now. She’s infected my son, she’s infected Harry with her spleen. He used to be such a nice boy, so good-natured and malleable. I need a drink. I know it’s early, that the children aren’t even home from school yet, but I need to speak to Ralph tonight. I can’t put it off any longer. One drink won’t do any harm. I’ll fetch it myself. I won’t ask one of the amahs to pour it for me. They’re so mean with the measures. I wish this damn bar door wouldn’t make such a loud noise each time you slide it open. It doesn’t seem to matter how careful I am.

�It’s all right, Ah Lee. I’m fine thank you. Mrs Safford fine, okay? I don’t need any help. Not just now.You carry on with the ironing.’

Snooping about. She might spend half her life giggling, but I’ve noted those sharp, calculating eyes of hers. I know how these servants gossip.That’s the trouble with having servants. No privacy. Nowhere is sacred. Damn. No ice. I just can’t face going into the kitchen to get some. How many times have I told her to keep the bucket topped up each day? I’ll have another word. Ah! That’s better. Never mind about the ice. I’ll take it into the bedroom. Shut the door. Give myself space to plan what I’m going to say to my husband. In here the sun has been beating down on the bed for most of the day.The purple satin quilt cover is baking hot. I’ve kicked off my shoes and I’m sprawling out, letting my bare feet slide. The glossy fabric is so slippery. Its touch burns.And the whisky—that burns too.The wound has been cauterised, the flow stemmed. Now I can cope.

Alice has rubbed off on Harry. He is following her bad example, mirroring it. And he’s grown, well…fat. Harry has become fat.




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