Shadows Over Paradise (28 page)

“I was worried that you’d think badly of me,” I’d confessed.

“But you were a child,” Rick said vehemently. “I don’t think badly of children, whatever they do; and you didn’t intend any harm to come to Ted …” It gave me a jolt to hear Rick say Ted’s name—a name I’d concealed from him for so long.

“My mother said that I
did
intend to harm him.”

“But … why would she say that, Jenni?”

“She said that whenever Ted annoyed me, I’d tell him that I wished he was dead.”

“Children do say that kind of thing. Siblings struggle against one another; they can be vicious.”

“She told me that I’d often say I wished he’d never been born.”

“You wouldn’t have
meant
it though.”

“But I
did
mean it.”

“Why?” Rick asked after a moment. “Were you envious of Ted? Because he was younger?”

“No. That wasn’t the reason …”

I saw my father, hoisting me onto his shoulders and charging round the garden with me; I remembered him reading to me in bed, telling me stories that he’d made up, just for me, about a mouse called Milo. Then I remembered my mother, with her big tummy, tearfully pleading with him not to leave.

I exhaled. “My father left us the day Ted arrived. Not long
after that, he was killed, and so in my mind, my father died because Ted had been born. Perhaps my mother was right. Perhaps that was the real reason why I walked away from him …”

“Now I understand,” Rick said quietly. “I understand why you don’t see your mother, and why you’ve never wanted me to meet her.”

“Because if we’d gone there, you’d have seen the photos of the brother you didn’t even know I’d had.”

“But where was
she
when it happened?” I told Rick where my mother had been at the time. “Then she should have blamed herself,” he said. “Or maybe blamed no one. Because from what you say, it was just one of those awful things—a combination of circumstances that led to a tragedy no one could have foreseen. You didn’t want Ted to die, Jenni.”

“Of course I didn’t. But I’ve never been able to forget my mother saying that I did; and now I’m here in Polvarth again, I feel …”

“What?”

“Ted’s presence.”

“You must be acutely aware of him.”

“I am, but it’s more than an awareness—I
hear
him, Rick. I hear him crying, and calling to me. He’s here. He’s haunting me.”

“Haunting you?” Rick echoed. “No, Jenni, he isn’t. Don’t talk like this, please. Just finish the job and come home …” Then the signal went and I couldn’t hear him anymore.

I descended the steps and walked across the sand to the water’s edge. I listened but could hear nothing except the rush and suck of the waves.

I walked back to the slipway and up the lane, past the hotel,
aglow with lights, then unlocked the cottage door. I went upstairs, undressed, and got into bed, leaving the curtains open.

I slept fitfully, and dreamed of Peter, in the truck, waving goodbye.

Sometime before dawn, I awoke. I sat up, my pulse racing. There was someone with me in the room. I could sense it in the darkness. As I peered into the gloom my heart beat wildly, thumping against my ribs. Then it gradually slowed as I realized that there was no one there but me.

I pushed back the duvet, went to the window, and sat looking at the moonlit garden and the glimmering sea. I stayed there for a time, then went back to bed. As I got in, I looked at the painting on the wall. There was the churning sea beneath the marbled sky, the waves rearing and breaking, smashing the water into foam. But now I saw something that hadn’t been there before. Standing on the rocks, clutching a net, was a small, fair-haired boy in red trunks.

I lay awake, seized by fear. Then I heard Honor’s voice. For a moment I thought that she was still in the cottage; then I realized that I’d fallen asleep and that it was just the radio coming on. I pushed myself up, then stared at the painting. The figure in the red trunks had gone. Or, rather, it had never been there, I told myself sternly. My tortured mind had conjured it. I was going mad.

“Remember, the clocks go back today,” Honor said. “So if you were about to drag yourself out of bed—don’t! Stay snuggled under the covers for the second half of the show, in which we’ll be talking about Halloween. What do you think of trick or
treat?” she asked. “Do you enjoy it, enthusiastically carving pumpkins, spraying fake cobwebs on the windows, and dragging your kids round the block dressed as vampires and zombies? Or do you thoroughly disapprove of the whole thing and pine for the good old days of ‘penny for the guy’? We’ll be hearing your views on that a little later, but first here’s Jason with the news …”

I went into the bathroom and showered. When I came back, Honor was chatting to the weather presenter; then, still focused on Halloween, she began talking about ghosts.

“Do ghosts exist?” she asked.

“Yes,” I murmured.

“That’s what we’ll be discussing this morning, as a new survey shows that a whopping forty percent of us believe that they do. Joining us now is Barnaby Crewe, a professional ‘ghost hunter.’ Barnaby, welcome to the show—you’re obviously a believer.”

“Oh, I am,” Barnaby responded. “I absolutely believe in ghosts, because I’ve seen them for myself on numerous occasions.”

“What have you seen?” Honor asked as I pulled on my jeans.

“I’ve seen the ghost of a little Victorian boy; I’ve seen the ghosts of two monks, each holding a lighted candle; I’ve seen the ghost of an elderly woman sitting in a chair, knitting. I’ve seen the ghost of a young girl running down a corridor—I even heard her footsteps. I’ve seen things that simply defy any rational explanation.”

Barnaby continued to list his ghostly encounters, then Honor said that she was going to take calls from listeners.

“You can tell us about your own experiences of ghosts, or
put questions to Barnaby,” she explained. “And we have Cathy calling us from Sevenoaks. Good morning, Cathy. Have you ever seen a ghost?”

“I have,” a woman answered firmly. “It happened thirty years ago, when I was ten. I saw my grandfather standing at the top of the stairs, smiling at me. I was surprised because I hadn’t realized that he was in the house. What I didn’t know was that he’d collapsed and died two hours before; my parents broke the news to me later that night. When I told them that I’d seen him, they said that I couldn’t have done, but I
did
. I believe that my grandfather had come to see me to say goodbye.”

“Ooh, you’ve made me go all goose bumpy!” Honor exclaimed. “Thanks for that, Cathy, and do stay on the line for a moment while we talk to Patrick, from Bath, on line two. What’s your view, Patrick?”

“I’m skeptical. I think that once people are dead, that’s it—we don’t see them again.”

“So you’re saying that Cathy couldn’t have seen her grandfather?”

“I … guess I am saying that, yes.”

“Look, if I say I saw my own grandfather, then I did,” Cathy retorted. “It’s like if someone says that they’ve had a religious experience—a vision, say, or a visit from an angel. No one has the right to say to that person, no, you
didn’t
. That would be total arrogance.”

“Nonbelievers
can
seem arrogant,” Barnaby agreed. “I’m with Cathy on this. If a person believes she’s seen a ghost, or experienced an angelic presence, then that is that person’s subjective truth.”

“Yes,” said Patrick, “
subjective
being the operative word. So,
as I was saying, I don’t believe in ghosts—but I
do
believe in hauntings.”

“What’s the difference?” Honor asked.

“I believe that under acute psychological pressure we can feel ourselves to be haunted, but that there’s nothing really
there
.”

“Which is to reduce it all to hallucination,” Honor said.

“Or … neurosis.”

“I don’t buy that,” Barnaby insisted. “Nonbelievers say that to see a figure float through a wall could never happen, because it defies the laws of physics—the person’s ‘seeing things.’ But who’s to say that a ghost isn’t a manifestation from some
other
universe that has different physical laws from our own?”

“That’s certainly food for thought,” Honor said. “Pattie on line three—what do you think?”

“I think that the dead can leave behind an imprint of themselves,” Pattie answered. “Like an echo that we can sometimes detect. I believe this is more likely if the person has died in a violent or traumatic way …”

I switched off the radio, not wanting to hear any more of the discussion. Remembering that Honor had recommended the Tjideng Revisited website, I turned on my laptop and found it. There was a history of the camp, with photos of the derelict houses, their gardens strewn with basins and potties and buckets and broken chairs, their verandahs strung with lines of ragged washing. There were haunting images of children with stick legs and huge eyes, and of lines of women, bowing, their arms clamped to their sides.

I clicked on the survivors’ stories. A woman named Renata wrote of picking through the rubbish for anything still edible
and of trying to catch grasshoppers to eat. A man named Max wrote of the thrill when, occasionally, they’d get an egg; he and his sister would share it, then their mother would grind up the shell, dissolve it in water, and make them drink it for the calcium. Katrin described how she once watched her six-year-old brother trying to make a toy out of two rusty nails—a memory, she wrote, that could still make her cry.

Now I read a posting by someone called Edda.

Klara

It was now a month since Peter had left, and we’d heard nothing. We could only hope that he was amongst people who treated him decently, or at least didn’t mistreat him. I consoled myself with the thought that wherever Peter was surely couldn’t be worse than Tjideng; but perhaps that was just a lack of imagination on my part.

One morning, Flora and I were on sweeping duty when we saw the bread truck drive in. As it took its usual route up Laan Trivelli, we could smell the bread, and soon the children were rushing out of the houses and racing toward it with as much energy as they could muster. We waited for the truck to stop, but it didn’t stop. Instead, it did a U-turn, went back down the street, and drove out of the gate.

“Why’s it done
that
?” Flora wailed.

I shook my head. “I don’t know.”

A minute later the truck came back in, drove up Laan Trivelli again, followed by the children, only to turn round and go out once more. By the time it had done this three times, everyone stayed inside. We now understood just how determined Sonei was to make us suffer.

Later, Mrs. Cornelisse told us why Sonei had told the driver to do this. The day before, she explained, Sonei had seen the vegetable truck come in. But not one of the prisoners on the street had bowed to the driver—an employee of the emperor!

“Lieutenant Sonei feels that this was a grave insult to His Imperial Majesty. And so …” Mrs. Cornelisse paused, and I knew that bad news was coming. “I’m afraid he’s going to withhold food from the entire camp for the next three days.”

There were wails of despair.

“He can’t
do
that to us!”

“We’ll die!”

“He’s
insane
!”

“Speak to him, Mrs. Cornelisse!”

“Yes—in the name of God, beg him not to
do
this to us!”

“I’m sorry,” Mrs. Cornelisse said. “All the group leaders tried to dissuade him, but Sonei’s mind is made up. We’ll just have to cope as best we can.”

The cries of anguish continued, but worse was to come. The kitchen workers were ordered to dig trenches and to throw into them all the porridge and bread that they had been about to distribute. Sonei himself was seen shoveling dirt onto it to make sure it was inedible. And so the food that would have fed ten thousand starving women and children was now destroyed!

That night it was impossible to sleep. The constant weeping rang in my ears. The twins kept crying, and Corrie screamed at them to be quiet, just be quiet, be quiet …

We heard the monkeys shriek.

“
They’re
being fed,” Kirsten said bitterly.

A deep despair descended on the camp. Some of the women, crazed with hunger, said they were going to break in to buildings and find food. There must be
something
to eat, they screamed, somewhere in this hellish,
godvergeten
place. They even said that they would sneak into Sonei’s villa—there was always a smell of delicious food coming from
there
!

“My cousin has to cook for him,” said a woman called Mies. “Sonei tells her to bring her children with her so that they can watch him eat—that seems to make it taste
extra
delicious, God damn that devil!”

We all slept as much as possible to avoid wasting energy. As I lay there I thought of all the things I regretted not having eaten in my life. I regretted not eating rice pudding at school; I regretted not having eaten cassava cake when I was at Flora’s house once. I regretted turning up my nose at bread crusts, and buffalo milk, and the insides of tomatoes. I even wished that I had eaten more snails.