The Devil's Garden (24 page)

‘Where could we run to? We have no Cocos-Keeling. Even there, the world would come between us. There is no danger, here. I am only going to run about and shout at everyone as they expect me to. They will mostly be just hitting local people who look happy. That organises itself. But you must try not to look happy. Yes, that's perfect. Have you got the pass I gave you? Good.' They would also be beating to death anyone denounced by their spies as brave enough to cheer at the bombing but that, perhaps, should not be mentioned.

She stopped and took his head between her hands. ‘What is a … what was it? Cocos-Kling?'

He laughed. ‘Cocos-Keeling. It is a place some people dream of. Sit here on my lap and I will tell you all about it.' They settled the way a father would tell his child a fairy story, his arms around her closing off the outside world, his mouth close to her ear. ‘You are so innocent that you may be a little shocked.' He looked in her eyes and stroked back her hair and told her of Hare and his ladies, at which she laughed and pinched his ears as the representative of his whole foolish sex. He told her of the haven on the extinct volcanic rim in the vast blue emptiness and the still, silver lagoon that it sheltered at its heart. He spoke of a simple life of fish and coconuts and of palms, swaying in cooling breezes and of the furthest horizons on earth where the loudest sounds were the distant thunder of the surf and the cries of wheeling birds. He embroidered his dreams and fantasies, in bold colours, onto the bare canvas, evoking a paradise immune to change or strife, a place of warm hearts and honest ways, full of the laughter of children, adding—as a final afterthought—groves of benodorous peach trees, for no paradise is thinkable, for a Japanese, unless framed by flowering trees. Soon they had sunk down onto the island of the bed and were the only people left in the world.

* * * 

Lady Pendleberry had never found the Japanese easy to understand. They were, if possible, even worse than the Irish. Inscrutable, was the word one used, an odd, unpronounceable, very awkward word, that was itself suitably hard to grasp. Sometimes they smiled at you and it was then they were most dangerous. She had never seen one cry—not even the twittering Japanese women in the bitches' barracks. But now there was something about them that made them even harder to get along with. It was the constant indecision and prevarication that she recognised in the daily changes of policy that unnerved and displeased her. In any of the large houses that she had run, it would have been a sign that the butler and housekeeper were at loggerheads and marked the moment when the mistress intervened to push through the green baize door, sit them down and bang their silly heads together. First, rations had been cut as punishment for the Allied air raids on the harbour area, as if the prisoners had had a hand in them. This was announced by Colonel Saito with visible pleasure. He really was a horrid little man. The knowledge that his true place in life was that of a greengrocer only made his oppression worse. Then, his assistant had smarmily increased the rations again to be at the same level as those issued to serving Japanese soldiers. Then they had been cut once more to a level that varied according to the whim of the man who had the key to the supplies shed. Then, out of the blue, came an issue of Red Cross parcels that the Japanese had always denied receiving in the first place. Having lurched across war-ravaged Europe, trundled through frozen Russian nights on the trans-Siberian railroad, rattled through deserts, trailed across the islands of Japan and tossed on steamy shipboard to Synonan-to, they were simply dumped in the yard, in the streaming rain, names written on them in blue wax crayon, cardboard boxes of that weird pinkish brown favoured by continental postal services and tied with string. It was immediately clear that the boxes themselves were a valuable resource, that the string must be unknotted and not cut. It could be unpicked and used to suture wounds, or made into wicks for oil lamps or traps for birds and the busybody administrators of the prison bustled into unnecessary action, confiscating the parcels, so that they could redistribute them again with proper lists but no string. The Jews, under a hirsute Armenian with wild hair, immediately came and shouted at Dr Voss, demanding its restoration.

‘What for you take our string? It is contrary to the Geneva Convention to take the string. It is not British string but the string of colonial peoples. Even the Japanese do not steal the string of the oppressed.' Wearily, she handed it back.

The boxes weighed more than ten pounds so the prisoners were too weak to carry or even drag them very far. Lady Pendleberry sat on the floor, legs splayed, looking out on the yard and lifted the lid from her own box. Someone had cut two little half moons at the bottom of the lid so that your fingers could slide conveniently underneath without lifting the whole thing. At such a mark of consideration, she started to cry. The pictures and colours of the labels, the disproportionate size of things, transported her back to childhood, Christmas in the nursery, nanny telling her not to eat all her sweets at once. She handled the rusty tins with awkward wonder—cocoa, treacle pudding, greasy meat roll, processed cheese—items from another world, lower class, gross and queasy but undeniably British, part of that distant dream of the time before. Tears refilled her eyes, overwhelmed them and trickled down her thin, crêpey cheeks and her whole body was racked with sobs. She cried for a lost past of certainty and confidence, for houses with white pillars and pattering servants where cups came with matching saucers and tinkling teaspoons, for tea with cake and the fact of idle, smiling conversation taken for granted at meals that were more than just fuel. She cried for her stiff, arthritic hands and her cloudy, unfocussing eyes. She cried most of all to see her name written on the official lid by someone out there who assumed that she still existed while she knew that her old self had gone for ever, like a woman who comes across an old, forgotten photograph from her youth and realises—now that it is too late—that she was once briefly beautiful. And then the sobs were crosscut by shocking titters, the two combining to make a rhythmic sound rather like an old, squeaky bicycle at the realisation that nowhere, in the whole women's section, was there a single tin-opener.

* * * 

Professor Tanakadate sketched the cross-section of a perfect volcano in the margins of his annual report. It was a mere doodle that indicated his mood and his distraction—a moodle perhaps. The final draft would be sent to the administrative office. He had no idea who read it, if indeed anyone did but, if he failed to submit a document, some sort of automatic and unstillable cry for food was generated within the hungry bureaucratic machine. Ignoring it was futile and this was no time to attract attention. His pencil gathered a large pool of magma at the side of ‘Visitor Numbers' and disgorged it dramatically through the cone of the introductory section. Last year he had asked Pilchard to write the report and have it translated but the young man had regarded it as a work entirely of fiction and felt challenged to supply as implausible an account of the Museum and Gardens' doings as possible. Under ‘Staff Changes' he had noted that Mr Dagama had been devoured by a carnivorous plant, leaving behind only his hat and a shoe, and that one of the under-gardeners had been dismissed for public self-pollination. He had then illustrated ‘Current Research' with a botanically impeccable image of the Gardens'
Amorphophallus titanum
that had indeed produced its towering, carrion-reeking and steaming phallic flower during the year. But he had added and fluently detailed an entirely imaginary programme leading to the cultivation of vast acreages of beef-, pork- and chicken-flavoured varieties of the plant, with the hope of an as yet undeveloped, cheese-flavoured version, as a contribution to the city's food supply. The Professor had unwisely signed it, unread, and now lived in fear of its being taken up by some higher authority. He sighed and picked up a letter from the desktop, hastily written on thin, translucent paper. It was from his wife in distant Nagasaki, full, he could tell, of deliberately distracting cheery tittle-tattle—equally a work of fiction. The baker just round the corner, had retired, though he was still young, and gone off to a hot-water spa. They had eaten lovely, fresh duck meat on Saturday while the sounds of construction at the Mitsubishi shipyard showed that our glorious Imperial Navy was ever-growing. In other words, food shortages were hitting them hard, there was no bread to be had, the bankrupt baker had been conscripted despite his crippled leg and the ducks had all died. Meanwhile, the shipyard was being bombed, now within range of American forces. The whole world floated and bobbed on a sea of lies. There was no mention of his little daughter, which was a relief. If there had been good news about her, he would really have worried.

There was a knock at the door. Young Captain Oishi entered, bowed.

‘Tanakadate-
sensei
.' He accepted the offered chair.

The Professor shouted for tea, accepted a vestigial cigarette in exchange. ‘There is so little tobacco in these now that it seems like the waste of a match. What brings you to the Gardens, Captain?' One of the undergardeners bustled in with overstewed, guava leaf tea, plonked it down, left. ‘I am afraid it comes with condensed milk and sugar. They save it specially for me, denying themselves, so I cannot complain.'

The Captain smiled. ‘Thank you,
sensei
. I have learned to take it this way. In answer to your question, I am here to film the American plane that crashed near the northern end of the Gardens and exhibit the charred corpses of the crew. I am relieved that no damage was done to your Orchid House, just a few native homes destroyed. The film will be shown in the cinemas We have to prove that the enemy aircraft are not invulnerable. In fact, of course, being pressurised, they fly faster and higher than our fighters and we have no modern anti-aircraft guns on the island, so we can only hope to catch one occasionally by sheer good fortune. They have devastated the offshore islands with firebombs and mined the channel. Already, supply ships have been lost and food will become scarcer. I am afraid we are now in the situation the British were in at the start of the war. It is much easier to attack than to defend and we cannot be everywhere at once.'

The Professor tapped the letter on his desk. ‘It seems to me that there is something very childish about warfare. It is like two little boys in boots, taking turns to kick each other on the shins. They are raiding Nagasaki. Thank God my family are in a little valley away from the Mitsubishi shipyards and so are safe.' Oishi nodded.

The Professor sighed again. ‘It is a lovely spot amongst the ricefields, with a little river and a big meadow where the schoolgirls can do their spear practice after school.'

‘Spear practice?'

‘Yes, they practise killing American invaders.'

‘With
spears
?'

‘Well, sharpened bamboo poles really. The good thing is that my daughter learns something about bamboo and its habitats.'

The Captain shook his head wonderingly. ‘Is that what we have come to? I am sorry. Spears sound so primitive. The future surely lies in the air. Balloons are the future. Which reminds me, Professor. I wonder if I might use the gardens to launch some test flights of my balloons where no one can see. Teething troubles. I need a place of peace and privacy. For research purposes only.'

Professor Tanadatake did not really want to think about his little daughter, with her flying pigtails, facing a huge, heavily-armed, gum-chewing, American GI in single combat. Perhaps they would even be black GIs who—they were told—ate their rice raw and slept in rudimentary nests in trees. Surely such a confrontation could never really happen? Spear practice must be seen as a military form of exercise only. A poor man's
akido
.

‘Of course. Ask Dr, Pilchard to help you. He has some experience of using weather balloons to study wind-pollination in the upper atmosphere. But why do your duties include film-making? Do you not plan to rejoin General Yamashita in the Philippines? I understood you were very close.'

The Captain blushed. He had not liked Yamashita and the world of green and khaki that he represented. ‘Indeed, the General is like a father to me, always slapping me and shouting at me for my own good.' He laughed gratefully. ‘The new commander, General Itagaki, is a very different man. Since I am not attached to his staff, he does not know I exist. I sit in my office and the telephone never rings. So I do little jobs for the intelligence section and, in return, I see all the latest intelligence. But, between us, the news is not good. My General has withdrawn his forces to the north of the Philippines. He has no air cover, no fleet support against the invaders. The Americans call their progress a ‘meatgrinder advance' since they are paying in blood for every inch of ground and no survivors are left after their passage. General Yamashita will soon have the honour to die for the nation. I must remain here and carry out his final orders.' He sipped tea and grimaced at the mix of sour tannin and sugar. ‘And look after his baggage.'

‘His baggage?'

Oishi rolled his eyes, sighed and laid down the clumsy, barbarian cup with its gross, ugly handle. ‘The General always has so much heavy baggage. He collects things, you see.'

The Professor's mind flashed to the gold he had taken from the Museum. ‘Yes. That I have seen.'

After the Captain had left, Professor Tanakadate turned to more immediate concerns. His shoes were worn through and he set one on the table top and examined it. Carefully, he drew around it in a last inch of pencil stub and cut out an insert in old lino—filched from the Cluny Road house and representing genteel parquet flooring—to patch the hole, slipped it on and tapped his foot experimentally. It would do. Then, heavy-hearted, he returned—slipshod and pernickety—to his report. It was too short, too undramatic but the ‘Research' section could now be padded out. ‘Staff, under the direction of Dr Pilchard, participated successfully in a joint research project with the aim of transforming the Gardens into a state-of-the-art weather balloon-launching facility and valuable on-going links with eminent collectors in Dai-Nippon were established and consolidated.'