Shadows Over Paradise (9 page)

“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 realize 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 … easygoing,” 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 color 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 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 important, I’d loved doing it—taking someone into his past, like a personal historian, helping him see the fabric and shape of his life—helping him tell his 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,’ and 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 looked at her, surprised. “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.” Klara cocked her head. “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 Royal 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.”

“What a romantic story,” I said wistfully. “I shall love writing about it. We’ll also talk about your life in Cornwall. Does that all sound okay?”

“It sounds fine,” Klara replied. “Except for one thing.”

“Yes?”

“I’ll find it extremely difficult to talk about some of the things that happened during the occupation. I’ll talk about the historical
facts, of course, and about the kinds of things that people suffered.”

“During internment, you mean? In the camps?”

“Yes. But there are some things … particularly toward the end, in the last camp that we were in, Tjideng. I don’t think I’d be able to find the words to describe what we … what I …” She inhaled, her breath juddering.

“Klara,” I said gently, “you don’t have to talk about anything you don’t want to. Memoirs can take people into quite dark emotional territory. But it’s up to you how far, or how deep, you want to go. You have to feel comfortable with what you say.”

“Yes.” She swallowed. “I do.”

“So you’ll see the manuscript before it’s printed, and you can add any further stories or reflections; and I can delete anything that you’re unhappy about, or regret having said.”

“Really?”

“Yes. So don’t worry. This is
your
story. You’ll be in control.”

Klara gave a little sigh of relief. “I’d been feeling quite apprehensive, but that does make me feel … better.”

“I’m glad. I want you to be comfortable. So …” I put my pad on my lap, then turned off my phone. “Are you ready to start?”

Klara folded her hands in her lap. Her eyes were steady on me. “I’m ready.”

As I pressed Record, I felt the frisson that I always feel when I begin a new memoir.

“Klara, could you tell me what your earliest memory is?”

Klara

I remember the little
tjik-tjaks
, dainty beige lizards that used to run across our sitting room walls. I used to stare at them as they zipped about, mesmerized by their miraculous ability to cling to vertical surfaces, and even ceilings, without falling off. They were called
tjik-tjaks
because that was the noise that they made, and we loved them, because every night, when the lamps were lit, they would eat the mosquitoes that might otherwise have given us malaria. Less welcome were the snakes that would sometimes slither across our verandah, especially during the rains. I recall once seeing my mother throw boiling water over a deadly black-and-yellow krait. I stood in the doorway while she did this and, with appalled delight, watched it writhe.

My mother told me, before we left Holland, that we were
going to live in a faraway land that was warm and colorful—an “earthly paradise,” I remember she said. To me this description seemed to be true. From our windows we could see mountains swathed in jungle that was every shade of green, yet was also filled with the hot pinks and reds of hibiscus, bougainvillea, and oleander. These flowers not only looked gorgeous, they attracted butterflies—scarlet and yellow, emerald and black, burnt orange and shimmering blue.

When we first got there, I’d lie in bed, unable to sleep because of all the weird noises of the tropics—the trilling of crickets, which was always especially loud at night, or the sudden shriek of a bird or a macaque, one of the monkeys in the rubber forest that surrounded our house. Sometimes there’d be the howling of pye-dogs, and the strange, guttural cries of the
tokeh
, large stripy salamanders that sounded like frogs. If you heard the
tokeh
seven times in a row, you could make a wish; so I’d listen to their croaks, and would get upset if I lost count and had to start all over again.

Our house was large, single-story, like most houses in the East Indies, and built of brown brick with a roof made of curved red tiles. It had a circular drive and low, wide steps on which my mother placed pink and white orchids in big pots. All the rooms had high ceilings and ceramic floors, which were polished with slices of coconut tightly wrapped in muslin. I still think of this house as my childhood home.

Around the sides of the house were covered walkways called
émpérs
, and behind it was a smaller house called a pavilion, in which were the kitchen, the
gudang
or storeroom, plus the washing facilities, bathroom and loo. We had an enormous garden, with a banana palm, a mango tree, a cherimoya, and, at the
end, a big waringin—an Indian fig, with a thick, rippled trunk and long aerial roots. Bats roosted in that tree. At dusk we’d see them spread their cloak like wings and swoop out.

My mother loved gardening and created wonderful flower beds in which she grew roses, gerbera, and lilies, and I’d make the petals into dresses for my dolls. The garden was full of exotic birds—hoopoes, golden orioles, and hummingbirds, which hovered over the jasmine like iridescent bees. But my favorite bird was the Java sparrow because it looked like a puffin.

As Dutch colonials we had a privileged life. We employed a gardener, Ismail, who I thought of as extremely old, because his hair was gray, but he was probably only in his forties. We had a maid named Jasmine, who was married to the plantation’s head foreman, Suliman. They were in their midthirties but had no children, which caused them great sadness. Because of this, I think, Jasmine was very affectionate to my little brother, Peter, and me.

Jasmine and my mother were always cleaning, because in the tropics mold and mildew take hold very quickly. They’d hang the rugs up in the sun and bang the weevils out of them. They’d take books off the shelves and wipe the covers and give all the clothes a vigorous shake. I remember once my mother being very upset about a favorite dress of hers that Peter, ill with typhoid, had thrown up on. She had taken it off and left it in the pavilion; when she went to wash it the following morning, the part he’d been sick on had been eaten away.

Every week the floors had to be disinfected or the insects would move in. If termites showed up, we’d have to place the furniture legs in saucers of carbolic acid. Once, we forgot to do this with our piano, and they destroyed it from inside, leaving
hillocks of sawdust beneath. And I remember, once, seeing a huge bird spider scuttle across my bedroom floor. It was so large that I could hear its feet clicking on the tiles, a memory that still makes me shudder seventy years later! So I remember this constant battle we all waged against bugs—cockroaches and moths, stick insects and giant centipedes the length of a forearm, creatures that I could never even have imagined back in Holland. But I always thought of the East Indies—never the Netherlands—as
home
.