Ghostwritten (9 page)

Up in her flat, everything looked familiar, except for one change. On the table, next to the photo albums, was a large, intricately carved wooden box.

As she made the coffee Klara started chatting. ‘Before we begin, Jenni, do tell me about your friends. I’ve met Nina – many years ago. She came here with her parents. She was about twelve, and seemed a lovely girl.’ It was odd to think of Nina being here, walking down the lane and playing on the beach that held such difficult memories for me. ‘What does she do?’ Klara asked as she filled the coffee jug. ‘Vincent did tell me but I’ve forgotten.’

‘She’s an account manager for one of the big advertising agencies. She’s run some very successful campaigns – for cars, and hair-care products and mobile phones. She’s done really well.’

‘Are you a close friend of hers?’

‘I am.’

‘So how did you meet?’

‘At Bristol; we were both reading History but didn’t become friends until the first summer term, when we took part in a student production of
A Midsummer Night’s Dream.
Nina was Titania, and the girl who was to become my other great friend, Honor, was Hermia. That’s how we all met.’

‘Who did
you
play? I can see you as Helena, with your height.’

‘The director did ask me to audition for the part but I didn’t want to – I was happy just to do make-up.’

‘So you preferred a backstage role.’

I nodded. ‘Always have done.’

‘And your friend Honor – tell me about her.’

‘Well … she’s very effusive, and expressive. She used to be an actress – she read English and Drama; but she gave it up to become a radio reporter. Now she presents a chat show on Radio Five. It suits her, because she’s always talking and laughing, engaging with other people, looking for common ground. She’s friendly and upbeat and—’

‘Extrovert?’

‘Yes. I’ve always found that very attractive in a person, perhaps because I could never be like that myself.’

‘You’re … not shy, Jenni; I don’t think you could do this job if you were shy. But you are reticent.’

‘I guess I am, but Honor charges straight in, which makes her easy to know.’ Talking about Honor made me want to call her; we hadn’t spoken since the wedding.

‘So Honor and Nina are your closest friends.’

‘They are. After fifteen years, I don’t know what I’d do without them.’

‘I expect they feel the same way about you.’

I smiled. ‘I hope so. Anyway, Klara, it’s nice to talk – I enjoy our conversations, but …’

‘We need to get on,’ Klara concluded.

‘We should really. So … where had we got to?’ I glanced at my notes. ‘The fall of Holland.’

Klara heaved a painful sigh. ‘That was so dreadful, because there was a ceasefire in place, but the Germans bombed the country anyway, destroying the centre of Rotterdam. Hundreds were killed.’ She glanced at the tape recorder. ‘Is it running?’

I pressed the button. ‘It is now. So shall we start?’

‘Yes,’ Klara agreed. ‘Let’s start.’ She clasped her hands in her lap.

I leaned forward and turned on the tape.

Klara

Holland was now
bezet
– occupied. My mother was distraught, believing that her parents must have been killed. But as the weeks went by we learned, to our relief, that their part of Rotterdam had escaped the devastation. I used to terrify myself, imagining them looking out of their windows and seeing German soldiers in the streets below.

Peter had a wooden popgun that my father had made. He’d wave it about and say it was a machine gun, and that he’d use it if the Germans tried to occupy
us.

‘That’s not going to happen.’ My mother put her arm round him. ‘Java is very far from the war.’

‘How far?’ he demanded.

‘Eleven thousand kilometres,’ my father answered. ‘So you mustn’t worry, Pietje. There won’t be any fighting here.’

Reassured, we found our lives went on more or less as
before. The trees were still being tapped and the rubber continued to be processed. Peter and Jaya played their games and Flora, Susan and I went back to school, running up the steps each morning in our blue tartan skirts and white shirts. The sun continued to shine down on our corner of Paradise. The war seemed far, far away – so much so, that I remember this period as a particularly happy time. We went on a trip to East Java and spent a few days in Surabaya where we visited the zoo, full of different kinds of monkeys, a Java rhino, and a sad-looking white tiger. There were birds, including an eagle with which Peter was very taken. We visited a beautiful bay called Pasir Putih where we stayed in a small guesthouse, right on the beach, and were lulled to sleep by the waves. Every day Dad caught fish, which he cooked on an open fire, and we ate it with Semanggi, a wild clover that has four heart-shaped leaves. Dad laid one on his palm. ‘This is how I think of our family,’ he told us.

Perhaps to distract us from our worries about the war, my parents indulged Peter and me. When we returned to the plantation, Peter announced that he wanted a rabbit; so my parents got him a pale brown and white one with long lop ears and a coat like swansdown. Peter called it Ferdi, and my father built a big hutch, and made a wire run on the lawn for it, with a coconut shell for water, and a section of split bamboo ‘roof’ to give it shade.

More happiness was in store when, one morning, my mother asked me to go onto the verandah to fetch her book. As I opened the front door, I stopped. Standing in the middle of our lawn was Jasmine, holding the reins of a small white pony.

I stared at it, my heart racing, scarcely daring to hope. ‘Whose is it?’

Jasmine laughed. ‘Yours!’

‘Mine?’ With a cry of joy I ran up to it.

I’d wanted a pony for so long. I’d count the croaks of the
tokeh
and each time I heard seven I’d squeeze my eyes shut and wish for one. Now my wish had come true.

‘Is he
really
mine?’ I asked my mother, still unable to believe it.

‘He really is.’ She crossed the lawn towards us. ‘He’s called Sweetie.’

I stroked Sweetie’s velvety muzzle, and felt his warm breath on my hands. ‘But where did you get him?’

‘We bought him from the Bosmans, tea planters near Solo. He belonged to their daughter, Lara.’

‘Doesn’t she
want
him?’

‘She does,’ my mother replied, ‘but they’re going back to South Africa and can’t take him with them. We heard that they were looking for a good home for him, so Daddy went to see him last week. He promised Lara that you’d take great care of him.’

I flung my arms round Sweetie’s neck. ‘I
will
.’ I ran to my mother and kissed her. ‘
Thank
you!’

At first, Jasmine would lead Sweetie round the garden, while Flora or I sat on his back making clicking noises; then Susan, who’d done some riding in England, showed us how to make him walk on, turn to the left or right, and trot. She used to come with us on rides into the rubber forest, though somehow we’d always end up wherever Arif was working. He and Susan would sit next to each other on the ground, chatting quietly in
Malay, their heads and hands almost touching, while Flora and I kept a lookout for Wil.

And so, despite all the trouble that was in the world, I remember the summer of 1940 as a very happy time.

My parents tried to stop Peter and me listening to the radio, but it was on so much that we couldn’t help but hear what was happening in Europe. The main news was that the Germans were using Holland as a base from which to attack Britain. The British were fighting back, though no one seemed to think they could win. But they had a new plane, the Spitfire, which everyone was excited about. We all listened to a broadcast by the Dutch Prince Bernhard, in which he said that the RAF needed hundreds more of these wonderful planes. He talked about the Spitfire Fund and asked the Dutch in the Indies to contribute whatever they could to this important cause. He appealed for money and, just as importantly, aluminium.

I remember my mother and Jasmine taking saucepans and cake tins from the shelves in the
gudang
, and I used to collect up our used toothpaste tubes. My father raided his tool shed for nuts and bolts and old paint tins. The Jochens even donated their aluminium kitchen table – I remember it being carried onto their lawn where it got hot in the sun. All these things were packed up and sent to the docks at Batavia to be shipped to England.

There were Spitfire Fund parties at the Rotary Club in Garut, our nearest town. For one of these gatherings, my father made a huge plywood caricature of Hitler’s face, which Susan painted, and Flora, Peter and I varnished. People queued up to throw coins into its
horrible, shouting mouth, and I was thrilled to think of all that money going to the fund.

Even with this activity, we felt removed from the conflict. So I was shocked one day to hear a classmate, Corrie van der Velden, tell our teacher, Miss Vries, that there was going to be a war with Japan.

‘What makes you think that?’ Miss Vries responded calmly. As she began to wipe the blackboard her engagement ring sparkled. She’d told us that she was getting married in the spring.

‘My father says it’s going to happen,’ Corrie answered, ‘and he’s a major. He says that the Japs will come here and fight
us
and that it’s going to be terrible. I overheard him telling my mother, and she got very upset.’

Miss Vries put the blackboard wiper down. ‘I really can’t imagine that that’s going to happen, Corrie, so let’s have no more talk of it. Now … would you all get out your maths books?’ After school I tearfully asked my mother if the Japanese really were going to invade Java.

‘Of course they’re not,’ she answered. ‘I suspect Corrie’s only saying that because she thinks it makes her seem important. What do you think, Flora?’

Flora looked up from her book. ‘I agree. Just because her dad’s in the army. I’m not taking
any
notice of it.’

‘Nor should you, Klara,’ my mother told me. ‘The only thing you’re to worry about is your school work.’

But the idea of the Japanese fighting us wouldn’t go away. During the summer holiday I heard my father and Wil arguing about it one evening as they sat on our verandah.

‘It’s a ludicrous notion,’ Wil declared.

My father lowered his beer. ‘Why – given that the
Japanese have already invaded Manchuria, Korea, Formosa, and most of eastern China?’

‘All right, but they’d never dare attack
us
in those planes of theirs – they’re just tin cans! I tell you, Hans, it’s
not
going to happen.’

Even when the Dutch government asked plantation managers to start a
Landwacht
, or home guard, to train units of local men for guerrilla warfare, Wil scoffed. But my father took it seriously. He formed a platoon.

He chose twenty of our best plantation workers, including Suliman and Arif, and drilled them on our drive, using rifles that the Dutch government had provided. Peter, Flora and I used to like watching the ‘cadets’ being put through their paces. Susan would join us and pretend to be chatting to my mother, though she’d shoot glances at Arif as he marched up and down. I can still remember the commands that used to ring across our garden:

‘Schouder
geweer
! Pre-sent
arms!
Links, rechts! Links, rechts!’

But the months went by and to everyone’s relief our small army didn’t seem to be needed.

Early in December 1941, Flora, Susan and I were at school. It was almost the end of term, and we were looking forward to our Christmas concert. But at Assembly one morning the headmistress, Miss Broek, announced, with a grim expression, that the holiday would begin that very day.

‘The reason,’ she told us, ‘is that yesterday Japanese planes attacked the US Pacific fleet in Pearl Harbor, sinking eight of their ships. America is now at war with Japan.’

As a gasp rippled through the hall, Miss Broek added that the Netherlands, as a close ally of the United States, had declared war against Japan too.

‘So we must all pray that the brave Dutch soldiers will protect us,’ Miss Broek went on. ‘Please bow your heads.’

Prayers were said – I heard stifled sobs; then we all filed out and collected our bags.

As Flora, Susan and I walked down the school’s front steps, I saw Corrie being met by her mother, a blonde Australian woman who was always smiling. Normally petite, she was hugely pregnant, with twins, Corrie had told us.

I went up to Corrie. ‘So you were right.’

‘Well, not me – my
papa.
’ She flashed a rueful smile. ‘It’s scary, isn’t it?’

I nodded. ‘Very.’

‘Oh, it’ll be
fine
girls,’ Mrs van der Velden said. ‘It just means you’ll have a bit longer for Christmas. Enjoy it, though, because I’m sure you’ll be back in class soon enough!’

The next day, as we decorated the house for Christmas, I put on the radio and heard that the Japanese had attacked the Philippines. A few days later the announcer told us that Japanese pilots had made strikes on Singapore and Borneo. Then, as we sat down to lunch on Christmas Day, we heard that the Japanese had captured Hong Kong.

‘
Surely
they’ll stop there!’ my mother cried. Her face had grown pale and I was suddenly frightened. The war seemed horribly close.

‘No,’ my father said grimly. ‘They’ll come here, because they want oil, and this is where the oil is.’

Now every adult conversation was about the war. On the radio and in the newspapers, citizens were advised how to prepare for it, where to hide in case of air attacks, what to pack if your home had to be evacuated.

‘Where should
we
hide if the Japs attack?’ I asked Flora anxiously. ‘Under the verandah?’

Flora thought for a moment. ‘No,’ she replied. ‘Because of the snakes.’

‘That’s true. Maybe our dads will build an air-raid shelter,’ I suggested. ‘Let’s ask them to do that.’

The next day Flora came to me, her eyes red with weeping. Her father wouldn’t be making an air-raid shelter, she told me.

I was horrified. ‘Why not?’

Flora’s eyes shone with sudden tears. ‘Because we’re leaving Java.’

It was as though I’d been pushed off a cliff. Then I heard approaching voices and saw Wil, with my father. I ran to them.

‘Mr Jochen …’ I was so upset that I could hardly get out the words. ‘Is it true, Mr Jochen? That you’re leaving Java?’

He nodded. ‘We are. I’ve just been discussing it with your dad. As my wife and the girls have British passports, I’ve decided that we’ll get a boat to Singapore and stay there until the hostilities are over.’

‘But …’ I felt a wave of dismay. I was losing my best friend.

‘What if the Japs take Singapore?’ my father asked Wil.

Wil laughed, then slapped Dad on the back. ‘My dear Hans, Singapore is
invincible!
’

The day before the Jochens left, I went to their house. I could see that Susan had been crying, largely because of having to leave Arif, I suspected, and I had to swallow my own tears as I watched Flora pack. I helped her choose the clothes that she was to take, and her mother said that she could bring one or two toys so she packed her favourite dolls: Lottie, a china doll with brown ringlets, and Lucie, a rag doll with big button eyes. Flora also had a brass lizard that she treasured. It had delicate hands, a wonderfully sinuous tail and green agates for its eyes. I’d always coveted it and hoped, with the selfishness of a child, that Flora might leave it behind for me to look after. But to my disappointment, she put that in her case too.

The next day the Jochens drove away. My father was angry that Wil had decided to leave; it would hugely increase his own workload; he would now have to be the plantation administrator as well as the manager. I heard him tell my mother that he thought Wil Jochen a fool to put his family at such risk, given that the sea was full of Jap submarines. But my mother, Peter and I saw them all off with hugs and smiles, and promises to write. I watched Flora waving to me through the rear window until the very last moment. Then, as their car disappeared from view, I burst into tears.

My mother put her arm round me. ‘Don’t be upset,’ she said, though she was almost crying herself. ‘Two such good friends can’t be parted for long. I’m sure you and Flora will see each other again.’

My mother could not have known then that we
would
, but in circumstances that none of us could have imagined.

Everyone was talking about Singapore. Most people insisted, as Wil had done, that it was an ‘impregnable fortress’ that would ‘never be taken’. But in mid-February, Singapore fell. Knowing that many people had been killed, I was terrified for Flora’s safety. Then, as the Japanese swept further south taking Borneo and Sumatra, I began for the first time to fear for our own.

‘Will they
definitely
come here?’ I asked my father.

He hesitated. ‘I’m not going to lie to you, Klara – I believe that they will.’ He touched my cheek. ‘But you mustn’t worry because there are rules about what they can and can’t do – international rules.’ Despite this, I had a dreadful sense of foreboding.

My mother began sewing rucksacks for us all. Into them she carefully packed tins of beef and beans, milk powder, packets of biscuits and medical supplies, especially quinine tablets against malaria. Her great fear was that Peter would get malaria again. She also made some outfits for him and me to grow into.