Ghostwritten (6 page)

‘Mine too,’ Klara responded warmly. ‘My dearest friend, Jane, was a terrific reader and she introduced me to her books. I used to adore
Sleeping Beauty
but, now that I’m old, it’s
Mrs Palfrey at the Claremont.
’

‘I love that one too,’ I said, feeling sad for Klara that her best friend had died.

‘Please excuse the clutter,’ she said, changing the subject.

‘I hadn’t noticed. But it’s a lovely flat. And you can see the sea.’ Now I glanced at the wooden dresser; on it were rows of blue and white china plates decorated with flowers, peacocks and boats. ‘Is that Delft?’

Klara lifted up the kettle. ‘It is – it’s from my grandparents’ home.’

‘Which was where?’

‘In Rotterdam, which is where I was born – I’m a “Rotterdammer”.’ She filled the kettle. ‘Coffee?’

‘I’d love some. In fact I need some – I’m incredibly tired.’

Klara studied my face. ‘Didn’t you sleep well, my dear?’

‘Not really, no. I … was just excited from the trip,’ I lied.

‘I hope it’s not the bed.’

‘Oh, the bed’s very comfortable, Klara; but I never sleep well, wherever I am. My internal alarm goes off at an unspeakable hour.’

A look of sympathy crossed Klara’s face. ‘What a nuisance. So what do you do when that happens? Read?’

‘Yes, sometimes, or listen to the radio. Usually I get up and work.’

‘Well … I’m sorry you have that problem. I shall pick some valerian for you and dry it; it helps.’

‘Thank you. That’s kind.’ I felt a little flustered by Klara’s concern.

She opened the fridge, took out a Victoria sponge and put it on the kitchen counter. ‘You’ll have some cake.’ I realised that this wasn’t so much an invitation as a command. ‘Yes please – just a small piece.’

‘It needs a little caster sugar on the top.’ She sprinkled some on then got a knife out of the drawer.

‘It looks delicious. May I look at your pictures, Klara?’

She glanced up from her cake-cutting. ‘Of course.’

Arrayed on the sideboard were photos of Klara with her husband, and of Henry and Vincent. I stared at them avidly. I always love being with clients in their homes – it
gives me a strong sense of who they are before we even begin the interviews. Then, once they start to talk, I feel as though I’m right inside their head; plunged into their thoughts and memories. It’s as close as I can get to being someone else.

Amongst the snaps were some formal portraits in silver frames. It wasn’t hard to guess who the people in these ones were – Klara’s parents on their wedding day; Klara herself at eight or nine, sitting on a pony. There was also a studio portrait of Klara, aged about six or seven, with her arm round a little boy. They both had short blond hair and stared solemnly at the camera with the same large round eyes.

‘This is you with your brother?’

She looked at me then glanced away. ‘Yes.’

‘What’s his name?’

‘Peter.’ Klara’s face filled with grief. ‘His name was Peter.’ I immediately wondered when, and how, he’d died. ‘All those older photos belonged to my grandparents,’ Klara went on as she spooned coffee into a heavy brown jug. ‘Fortunately my mother always enclosed a few snaps in her letters to them, otherwise we’d have had no record of our ten years on Java. Everything we’d ever owned there was lost or destroyed.’

The kettle was boiling. Klara tipped the water into the jug and the aroma of coffee filled the air.

‘Let’s use the Delft, as we shall be talking about Holland.’ She took down some plates and cups and put them on a tray. So Klara was ready to start. I began asking her more direct questions.

‘How old were you when you went to Java?’

‘I was almost five. My father decided to try his luck
in the NEI – the Netherlands East Indies, as it then was. He got a job on a rubber plantation, not far from Bandung.’

She picked up the tray and I stepped forward. ‘Let me help you.’

‘If you could take the jug, I can manage the rest.’

Klara carried the tray to the low wooden table and set it down; then she sat on the right side of the sofa while I took the armchair opposite. She poured me a cup of coffee then handed me an enormous wedge of Victoria sponge that almost covered the plate.

‘Oh, could I have half that?’

Klara passed me a fork. ‘I’m sure you can manage it.’

‘Well …’ I didn’t want to argue with her. ‘It does look good.’ I tasted it. ‘It’s delicious.’

‘We really ought to be eating madeleines,’ she quipped. ‘Not that I need help in summoning the remembrance of things past. My memory is quite undimmed. Which I sometimes feel is a disadvantage.’

‘What do you mean?’

Klara poured herself some coffee. ‘A few months ago, my dearest friend, Jane, was diagnosed with dementia.’

‘Oh, I see. When you said she “was” a great reader, I assumed that she’d died. I’m glad that’s not the case.’

‘Oh, she’s in good health – physically at least. But, in a way, the Jane I’ve known for fifty-five years
has
died. When I talk to her about some of the happy times we’ve had, the people we’ve known or the books we’ve both loved, she looks at me blankly, or becomes confused.’

‘That must be heart-breaking.’

‘It is. It makes me feel … lonely.’ Klara sighed. ‘But I assume that Jane’s
un
happy memories are also
disappearing and I must say there are times when I envy her this. How wonderful it must be, to be unable to remember things that once caused us distress. Yet we should embrace all our memories, whether joyful or painful. They’re all we ever really own in this life.’

As I murmured my agreement I wondered what painful memories Klara was thinking of and whether she would want to talk about them for the book.

Klara sipped her coffee then looked at me. ‘One might say that you’re in the memory “business”.’

I nodded. ‘You could put it that way. It’s my job to draw memories out of my clients.’ While fiercely protecting my own memories, I reflected wryly. I glanced at the old leather albums piled up on the table in front of us. Rick had sometimes remarked on my own lack of family photographs. ‘You’ve got quite a few photos, Klara.’

‘I have.’

‘They’ll help hugely in the interview process – and we can reproduce some of them in the book, if you’d like to.’

‘I would. Having committed myself to this memoir, I want it to be as vivid as possible.’

‘I think it will be, Klara – not because of any photos that we put in it, but because of what you say. The key to it is not just to remember what happened to you at this time or that, but to think about how those events affected you then, to make you the person that you are now.’

‘Put that way it sounds a bit like … therapy.’

‘Well, it’s a journey of self-discovery, so the process
can
be therapeutic, yes – cathartic, even.’

‘I’ve been thinking hard about the past.’ Klara laid her hand on one of the albums. ‘I’ve been looking at the much-loved faces in these pages, and remembering what they meant to me – still mean to me.’

‘When you talk about them, try to recall not just what they looked like, but how they talked or walked, or laughed, or dressed. Any little details that will bring them alive.’

Klara nodded and sipped her coffee again. She flashed me an anxious smile. ‘How strange to think that I barely know you, Jenni, yet I’m about to tell you so much about myself – more than I have ever told anyone in my own family – my own husband, even.’

‘It must feel very strange,’ I agreed. ‘But try to think of it as a conversation with an old friend.’

‘We aren’t friends though, are we?’

I was taken aback by her directness. ‘No … But we’ll get to know each other over these next few days.’

‘Well, you’ll get to know me.’ She put her cup on the table. ‘But will I get to know
you?
’

‘Of … course.’

‘Because, this has all come up so quickly; and now that we’re sitting here I realise that I simply
can’t
talk to you about myself, unless I know at least a little about you.’

‘You already … do.’ I wondered whether we were ever going to start the interview. Klara was expertly deflecting my questions, beating me at my own game.

‘I don’t,’ she countered. ‘All I know is that you live in London and grew up near Reading, an only child, then moved to Southampton. I know that you’re a friend of Vincent’s goddaughter, and that you came here on
holiday, many years ago. So please, Jenni, tell me a bit more about yourself.’

This was the last thing I wanted to do. I forced a smile. ‘What would you like to know?’

‘Well … are you married? I don’t get the impression that you are.’

‘I’m not. But I live with someone – Rick. He’s a primary school teacher.’ Klara was looking at me expectantly. ‘He’s … easy-going,’ I went on, feeling myself flounder under her gaze. ‘He’s decent and attractive – at least I think so. He’s the same height as me, which I like, because we can look straight into each other’s eyes. His are the colour of the sea.’ Was that really all I could find to say about the man I loved?

Klara nodded approvingly. ‘He sounds lovely.’

‘He is. We’ve been together for a year and a half.’

‘So, you must feel that you know each other pretty well by now.’

‘I do feel that I know Rick, yes.’ Whether he really knew me was a different matter.

‘And do you hope to get married?’ Klara was certainly very direct.

‘I do,’ I answered. ‘We both do. If it’s right,’ I added, then wished that I hadn’t.

Klara nodded thoughtfully. ‘And why did you become a ghostwriter, rather than, say …’

‘A “proper” writer?’ I suggested, smiling.

Klara flinched. ‘Oh, I didn’t mean to be rude.’

I laughed. ‘I do get asked that question.’

‘How annoying.’

‘Not really; people don’t mean to be insulting; they genuinely want to know why I don’t write my own—’

‘Story?’

‘Yes.’

Klara stared at me. ‘So why don’t you?’

‘I guess I … prefer other people’s.’

‘I see. But how did you
get
to be a ghostwriter? Is that what you always wanted to do?’

‘Not at all – I was a researcher for a breakfast television show. It was my job to invite the studio guests onto the show and brief the presenters about them. One day I had to book a well-known actor; he was in his seventies …’

‘Can you say who he was?’

‘I can’t – I signed a confidentiality agreement – but he’s a household name. We got on well, and while I was chatting to him before he went on, he told me that he’d been approached by a publisher to write his memoirs. He said his agent was keen for him to do it, but that he didn’t want to, because he hated writing. He added that he wished he could find someone to write it
for
him. Without even thinking, I said that
I
could.’

‘And you did.’

‘Yes – and the book was a success and got good reviews. More importantly, I’d loved doing it – taking someone into their past, like a personal historian, helping them see the fabric and shape of their life – helping them tell their story; it fascinated me. I’d never done anything I loved as much. So I quit my job and set myself up as a ghostwriter. That was twelve years ago.’

‘Who else have you worked with?’

‘A few athletes, several actresses, a famous milliner, a couple of TV personalities, a well-known explorer … a fashion designer.’

‘Celebrities, then.’

‘Yes, but after a while that sort of work palled. I found myself more intrigued by the lives of “ordinary” people – not that they ever are ordinary. Far from it.’ I put my cup down. ‘But that’s how I got into ghostwriting – quite by chance.’

‘I don’t think it
was
just chance,’ Klara remarked. Her eyes were thoughtful.

‘What do you mean?’

‘I mean that you must already have wanted to do it. Otherwise you’d simply have said to that actor, “How interesting, I hope you find someone,” then carried on with your job. I suspect that he simply showed you a path that you were already looking for.’

‘Perhaps. Anyway …’ I opened my bag. ‘I hope you feel a bit better acquainted with me now, Klara.’

‘I do, Jenni. Thank you.’ She cocked her head. ‘The odd thing is, I feel I’ve met you before.’

‘I don’t think so.’

‘Perhaps when you came here on holiday that time? Maybe I chatted to you when you collected the milk. You’d have been a little girl, and I’d have been in my fifties … Something about you is familiar.’

I had no recollection of her. ‘I’m sure we’ve never met.’

‘I think we have,’ she insisted. ‘It’ll suddenly come back to me.’

I knew that Klara was wrong, but there was no point in disagreeing with her. I took out the tape recorder and placed it on the table in front of her.

She glanced at it anxiously. ‘So what do I do? Just … start talking?’

‘No; I’ll guide the conversation with my questions. I already know quite a bit about you from Vincent.’ I glanced at my notes. ‘I’d like to divide up the interviews more or less chronologically, starting with your early life in Holland.’ Klara nodded. ‘Then we’ll talk about the move to Java, and your memories of the plantation, of your family, and your childhood friends. After that I thought we’d talk about the war. You would have been, what, nine, when Java was occupied?’ She nodded again. ‘Vincent told me that you were interned.’ She didn’t respond. ‘So … I imagine we’ll be talking about that,’ I pressed on. ‘Then we’ll come to the liberation of Java and the turmoil that accompanied the struggle for Indonesian independence. Following that I’d like to talk about Holland, and what it was like going back there.’ At that Klara smiled a grim little smile. ‘Then we’ll come on to your meeting your husband. He was in the British Navy, wasn’t he?’

‘He was. We met in September 1949. His ship, HMS Vanguard, had berthed in Rotterdam for a few days; he had some shore leave and I met him at a dance. I was sixteen, he was nineteen and he began chatting to me.’

‘Could he speak Dutch?’

‘Not a word.’ Klara smiled. ‘Fortunately I spoke good English, otherwise I don’t suppose we’d have “clicked” in the way that we did. Harry told me within a week that he’d fallen in love with me and hoped to marry me. But he had two more years to do in the Navy and I had to finish school; so we got engaged in 1951 and were married the following year.’