Читать книгу The Hungry Ghosts - Anne Berry - Страница 8

I am sitting in the back room of Orchard House. I am always sitting in the back room waiting for something to happen. And when you sit, as I do, for hour after hour, you find yourself reminiscing. You cannot help it.You begin to wonder about how it all came to pass. The young look forward. The old look backward.

I remember the child I once was, the child who visited Kew Gardens with Mother and brother Albert. I craned my small neck, looking at the red pagoda that rocked upwards, diminishing into the unremitting drabness of an oyster-grey sky.And I dreamed my dreams. All the way home, as the bus rumbled and coughed, and juddered and spluttered, through London traffic, I watched a fly fling itself against a sooty pane of glass. Turning my head, I could see Albert, beautiful Albert, with his piercing ice-blue eyes, sensuous red mouth, and dark curls. And I could see my mother, her brown hair neatly crimped, her own prim mouth, bright with deep pink lipstick, her round cinnamon eyes, dancing with obvious delight. Their heads were touching, mother and son, their voices low and intimate, washed into one another. Close as conspirators they were, oblivious of me, gazing at them from across the aisle. So I turned away, back to the fly buzzing and battering itself against the glass, its frenzy futile. I imagined smashing that pane of glass with a closed fist, hearing it shatter. I pictured the fly bursting out into the infinite space, and whirring away, hardly daring to believe its luck.

I recall how years later, shortly after the war, my gentle giant of a father died. His disease-ridden heart, the organ that had prevented him fighting for his country and earned him a coward’s feather, finally gave out in peacetime. It seized up and froze before a plate of pink blancmange. As the breath trickled out of him he keeled over, right into the cold, gelatinous pinkness of it, a single bubble of breath breaking the surface seconds after. I remember my dismay looking on, knowing I had lost my only ally in the gloomy red-brick house in Ealing.

And I recollect my first sight of you, Ralph—dark, tall and dashing, with alert steely-blue eyes, clasping a camera before you.You were covering an amateur show for the local rag, and had come to photograph its parochial stars. I was numbered among them. Gwendolen in Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest. At best, my performance could be described as lacklustre; at worst, wooden. But you, it appeared, had seen a different play altogether, as you posed me for your photographs, your face so animated, those beguiling eyes of yours sparkling. Next to your striking looks, it was the enthusiasm that captured and held me. It was as if there was nothing you couldn’t do with it. Take a shabby little amateur production in a village hall, with threadbare costumes and tatty scenery, and transform it into a glittering spectacle, showcasing the astonishing talent that lay at the heart of a thriving community. Or, perhaps, take a dull British girl destined for banal suburbia and transform her into a shimmering princess?

‘What a superb show! I don’t know when I’ve laughed so much. And you, well, you were wonderful Miss Lambert, entrancing. I brought Lucy, my sister, along too.And she loved your performance.’

That’s what you said to me, as you pushed a strand of hair back from my face and, with a finger under my chin, adjusted the angle of my profile. You were wonderful. I knew I wasn’t. Hadn’t the director, Ron Fowler, spent eight weeks informing me of the fact? And all the while his invective boomed out, those expressive fingers of his would spear back his leonine mane, and his fleshy cheeks would colour plum-red.

‘Do lighten your delivery,Myrtle.This is Wilde at his finest,witty, effervescent repartee. It’s a comedy, darling, not a wake. Must you keep clinging onto the furniture, lovey? Anyone would think you were on the Titanic, hanging on for dear life, seconds before the bloody thing went down. Sweetheart, do pick up your cues a bit more promptly, you’re slowing down the pace to a deathly crawl. Must you keep folding your arms, darling? You look like the genie from Aladdin, not the alluring Gwendolen Fairfax.’

They just kept coming, and the worst of it was knowing the comments were completely justified. I had no talent: my foray into amateur theatre only served to confirm what I had always suspected. I did not have the fascination of the sea about me, no glittering treasure lying undiscovered many fathoms down. It was disheartening to realise the truth. Oh Ralph, I just wanted to shine for a time, the way Albert did, for Mother to be just a little in awe of me…as if…as if I really was an interesting person. Is that too much to ask?

You did that. Looking back, I think something in your exuberance answered to my reticence. I was self-contained, you were abandoned. Opposites attract, isn’t that what they say? But I knew, almost immediately I knew. As I sat there wishing I was not quite so tall, that my hair would not fall so stubbornly straight, that I could instil some mysterious depths into my eyes, like Rita Hayworth or Bette Davis, and your camera clicked and flashed, I knew. You were my ticket out of there, away from Mother and the ever-present reprobation in those grim button eyes of hers, away from Albert, the brother, the boy, the son and heir, who had been given so many gifts that there were none left over for me. And away from the gloomy corners of the red-brick house, and the grey that I felt my soul was steeped in.

I sensed you were attracted to me that first meeting. It was quite enough to be going on with. Had director Ron only known it, I followed my dismal debut as Gwendolen Fairfax with a breathtaking improvisation of Myrtle Lambert, the woman every man wants by his side, his perfect helpmeet, the accomplished hostess, the contented housewife, the adoring lover. I gave it everything I had, because, you see—and here, believe me I am not exaggerating—my future relied upon it. And when you didn’t ask for your money back, but seemed entirely swept away by the illusion,indeed,just kept following curtain-call with curtain-call, I knew I had a triumph on my hands. Maybe not worthy of the Oscar which all Hollywood actresses hanker after, but then who wanted some old statue gathering dust on their shelf when instead they could have handsome, dynamic Ralph Safford for their very own. And more, a life as far away from dreary Britain as it was possible to get, thrown in with the bargain.

So we were married—you for love, and me for…ah Ralph, for a force much stronger than that: the longing for freedom. I was entirely satisfied with the arrangement, and be honest, so were you, to start with anyway. When you were posted to Africa, Kenya, as a government photographer, I was by your side.You whisked me away, leaving Mother seething far behind in the red-brick house, claiming she had been abandoned by the pair of us.

I used to love sitting on the veranda of our bungalow in Kenya, sipping scotch. I close my eyes and I am there. It is very hot. The air pulses with the heat. The chill of England seems so distant. I open my eyes sleepily, just a fraction, smile and take another sip of scotch. Having a drink together in the evenings was all part of the ritual. Do you recall, Ralph? The servant bringing the bottle of scotch on a tray, together with the ice tub and two glass tumblers, each already filled with chunks of ice. I loved the way the ice cubes chimed as I rolled them round the glass. I loved the whisper of the cold, golden liquid going down, a thread of flame tightening inside me. I was enthralled by the extremes, the last rays of the dying sun scalding through me, the cold of the frosted glass against my cheek. Sunsets were very different in Africa, weren’t they, Ralph? The sun was a fireball that sank very slowly into the parched red clay. The skies were almost obscenely brilliant—topaz, coral, mauve, malachite, banks of radiance shifting from second to second. Actually, I found the evening displays a trifle vulgar, wasteful, the squandering of so much colour.

It’s raining now, an insistent drumming on the rooftop, runnels of rain coursing down the sash windows,the sound of spattering droplets closing in on me. It always seems to be raining here in England. It wasn’t like that in Hong Kong, was it Ralph? Except of course during the typhoon season, or when the mists settled on the Peak, and the mizzle closed in.

God alone knows what possessed Nicola to choose that dreadful wallpaper for this draughty room.White flowers plastered over a red background. It calls to mind the new regional flag they’ve chosen for Hong Kong. An uninspiring design if you ask me. It looks like one of those handheld windmills you buy at a fair, or at the seaside. Hardly something you can take seriously. It can’t be compared to the Union Jack. Now there’s a flag you can be proud of, a flag that means something.

The roof of this wretched building leaks. Why Nicola persuaded us to buy it I will never know.

‘Orchard House.The two of you will love it.’That’s what she said, as if we didn’t have any choice in the matter. And, quite honestly, looking back, I’m not sure we did.

There are buckets placed at strategic points to catch the drips. I can hear them plinking now. It is a bit like a form of Japanese water torture, waiting for the next plink, watching the buckets and pails slowly fill, wondering when the silvery skins will rupture, and the collected rain will trickle down the sides and soak into the Persian rugs. I think I can say that the state of the roof is the most weighty problem here, but there are others. Damp in general, peeling wallpaper, rotting window-frames and cracked panes, missing floortiles, banging pipes and a faulty central-heating system, to name but a few. I think we may even have a bit of woodworm on the first floor that needs treating. Oh, we have mice too. Larry, my son-in-law, claims he’s dealing with them. But I doubt it. He says a great deal, and as far as I can see does very little. And Jillian’s not much better. What I wouldn’t give for a couple of amahs to set the place to rights. I thought Nicola said that having Jillian and Larry living with us was going to make life much easier, that it would alleviate all our difficulties. What’s more, I could have done without the boy being foisted on us. Amos. What a ridiculous name for a child! It’s not even as if we’re great ones for religion. Besides, I have never been maternal. I can’t think why Jillian and Larry spent all that money trying to have a baby.When the doctor told her they had problems (something odd about Larry’s sperm, not that I pressed them for any details you understand), in my opinion she should have just accepted it. I would have. Gladly, as it happens!

I’m sorry, Ralph, but you know I never really wanted children. Not all women hanker after a family you know. We aren’t all programmed for reproduction. Some of us don’t need miniature replicas of ourselves to make our lives complete. Conversely, in Alice’s case, far from completing me, she very nearly destroyed me. I had her for your sake you know, so you can’t blame me entirely for what happened, what happened to our daughter, Alice. You were determined to have your son, weren’t you? Oh, you never put it into so many words,but the understanding was implicit.I did my best,Ralph. You must give me that. I tried my hardest to produce your boy, your heir. And if it did take me four goes, I managed it in the end. Don’t judge me, Ralph, wherever you are now.You have no idea what it was like for me producing girl after girl, producing Alice at that hospital in Ealing. I had to feel Mother’s scorn at my inability to get a son for my husband—not once, not twice, but thrice. After all, she had managed the feat first time, hadn’t she?

We didn’t put Alice’s name on your gravestone. The children wanted to make a dedication to you, a personal thank-you to their father. We talked about adding her name after theirs, but in the end we decided it wasn’t appropriate.We felt she hadn’t earned her place there. And Ralph, this once you weren’t around to make a fuss. So there it is, Jillian, Nicola and Harry, but…no Alice. If you want my opinion, and you never really did when it came to Alice, this is as it should be.

‘Is it a boy?’ I asked the midwife repeatedly. She was quite terse with me in the end.

‘It’s a girl,’ she snapped. ‘I’ve told you it’s a girl, a lovely girl.’

That was an oxymoron to me by then, Ralph. Can you understand that? I’d had Jillian and Nicola, and each of those pregnancies cost me dearly. But as a man you could never appreciate that. Besides, delivering Alice was meant to be my last messy natal performance. I deserved to have a boy. I deserved a son by then.You know what they say, Ralph, third time lucky.Well, it wasn’t for me. Having Alice was the most unpropitious thing that ever happened to me. Our daughter, our third daughter filled me with dread. But not you, oh no. You adored her, didn’t you?

The midwife was a big, hearty woman, with apple-red cheeks, and large pink hands, butcher’s hands I recall. She reached towards my chest and started fumbling with the tie of my nightie.

‘No! No, no!’ My voice was pitched too high. It reeked of panic.

‘Put her to your breast,’ she urged, still pulling at the lacing. She had a slight burr to her voice, though what the accent was I couldn’t tell you.

I thrust her hand away.‘I am not feeding it myself.I need a bottle,’ I told her succinctly. I had an image of a stray dog then, a dog I had seen on the streets of Nairobi, its dugs heavy with milk, puppies suckling frantically at them. Its eyes were rolled upwards to heaven, you could see their whites, but it lay in the gutter, and was coated with filth.

I suppressed a shudder. She stopped scrabbling at my painfully engorged breasts and nudged the baby forwards instead. I took it awkwardly, as if I thought it might bite me at any moment. I looked into the face. The wispy hair was lighter than Nicola’s. The mouth that rooted hopefully towards me was pretty enough. But the eyes unsettled me.They were the rich brown of tobacco, and preternaturally alert.They were needy too. I have been told a newborn cannot focus immediately, but as this child stared steadily up at me I had my doubts. Returning her gaze, what I felt was not a trickle of love, but a wave of cold dislike. ‘She’ meant that I would have to do it all once more. She was unnecessary, surplus to requirements. She did not even have the decency to look abashed,as Nicola had done.And quite suddenly, with the smell of disinfectant and warm sweet blood, and the distant muted sounds coming to me from far corridors of rolling trolleys and muffled voices and footsteps, I felt afraid.

‘Shall I show your husband in?’ asked the determined midwife, her tone brisk, business-like. And when there was no response, she added with unnecessary emphasis,‘To see his beautiful baby daughter?’

For a second I wondered who she meant. Then Ralph, in you came. You took the bundle carefully in your arms, studied it for a moment, and then your face lit up.You looked so delighted.

‘It is a girl,’ I explained, thinking you had not grasped this. It was the year 1956 and I had given birth to yet another baby girl.

‘I know,’you said.‘She’s beautiful.’To my amazement, your shining eyes proved the sincerity of your words. The baby seemed to sense this, following the sound of her father’s voice. Father and daughter’s eyes locked. Ralph, you looked smitten, mesmerised. I felt a pang just under my ribcage and had to turn away.

‘I think the name Alice suits her,’ you said. ‘Oh…yes, definitely. Alice. What do you think?’

I shrugged indifferently. ‘If you like,’ I said. I wasn’t really bothered one way or another. Alice would do as well as the next name.

There was black magic involved in the coming of my son though. Oh, scientists would say that I was just being fanciful, but I know. I was in my sixth month. We had since moved to the British Crown Colony of Aden. Having developed extreme eczema, blistering and bleeding over your hands and lower arms—a reaction to the chemicals you used in photography—you had been persuaded by George Walbrook, your friend in the Foreign Office, to apply for a posting in government information services in Honduras. Failing to secure this, you were offered instead an administrative post in Aden. And it was here, in the merciless heat and chaos of this busy port, with its shark-infested harbour, that we settled with our growing family.This time, I had decided not to return to England for the birth. I did not think I could bear Mother’s disapproval if yet again I failed to produce the necessary male. Besides, I had been assured that they had the very best of facilities and doctors here in Aden.

We were having a party when it happened. Do you remember, Ralph? We had many friends there, British and Arab. I was wearing a voluminous midnight-blue affair. Quite suddenly a tall Arab gentleman, with sable skin and very white teeth—dressed, I couldn’t help thinking, with his turban and glittering tunic, a bit like a fairground magician—seized hold of the hem of my dress, folded himself in half, and with his other hand flung some white powder up under the bell of my skirt. It coated my mound. The gentleman’s name was A…A…Akil, that’s right, and he worked with you.

He fixed me with his black hawk eyes, Akil, and straightened up. As I moved away the remaining powder fell softly about my ankles, like a dusting of snow. I was taken aback. I had not been prepared for someone shoving handfuls of unknown substances up my maternity dress, and did not know quite how to react. He bowed to me graciously.

‘The baby you are carrying, it shall be a boy now,’ he said in a deep, sonorous voice.

I was so delighted with his prediction that I forgot to be annoyed. At least he understood the turmoil inside me.The thought of another girl growing there, another Alice…dear God! Later that night as you and I tried in vain to slumber in the heat, you mentioned the encounter. I didn’t think you had seen it. Even in my tangle of sheets, hot and bothered, with the child stirring restlessly inside me, as if it too was finding the intense heat unbearable, I was surprised.

‘That Akil has a cheek,’ you mumbled through a yawn.‘Throwing talcum powder up your dress, and coming up with that mumbo-jumbo about our baby.’You thrust the sheet back from your body, and I saw that your skin was slick with sweat.

We were sleeping beneath mosquito nets, and I found the effect of that claustrophobic haze disturbing.

‘He took me unawares,’ I responded primly, pushing down my own portion of our sheet, sitting up, and resting back against the pillows. ‘He told me that now we will have a son.’

You laughed. ‘What, as if it was down to him!’

Outside the netting, the high-pitched whine of a mosquito could be heard, fading and then coming back, as it attempted re-entry.

‘It might be true. It might be a boy,’ I commented casually, as if I couldn’t have cared less.

‘And it might be a girl,’ you said equably.

After that you fell asleep. But I remained awake for some time, my hands exploring my bump, glossy with moonlight. I could not bear to go through this again. There was no choice in the matter, and the child should know this. It had to be male. Our son was born three months later. Clearly he had been paying attention to our Arab friend.But he had obviously been a touch overwrought at the prospect of his much longed-for arrival, and had wound the umbilical cord around his neck like a noose. He emerged not a healthy shade of pink, flushed with his first breaths of life, but milky-blue, his lips an even deeper hue, kissed with death. The doctors were uncertain if he would make it through the night. They took him away to wrestle with the black prince, promising to do their best to snatch my son from his grip. I lay alone in bed that night, in a white nondescript room, in a hospital in Aden. I felt bleak. I had produced a son. Finally I had produced a son, and now he might die. I thought about our three healthy children—my firstborn, Jillian, a girl, but welcome for all that, and my second, Nicola, impossible not to like, with her indomitable charm and her discretion. She understood the boundaries so well and never overstepped the mark. And then our third daughter, Alice. Alice had already made it apparent that she did not understand about boundaries. She was colouring outside the lines. I felt annoyed just thinking about her. If I could…if…I could…swap her life for his, then…At first the thought was so terrible that it floored me. It had all the menace of dark fairy tales. I will give her up if you will…

But gradually in the dullness of that room my wicked thought glowed like a hot coal.You may take Alice but leave me my son. I will never renege on the contract. Take her. Take Alice. Take Alice. Take Alice, was my incantation. She’s yours. I shall never want her back, only leave me my son. It seemed the demons were not listening, or perhaps they didn’t want Alice either because as it was they both survived.The next day you brought our daughters to see their new brother. You stood, Ralph, and the girls sat on the low wall that surrounded the hospital.They squinted up through the fierce sunlight as I stepped onto the balcony from my second-floor room, my fragile son in my arms. The doctors felt it would be better to keep my sickly babe away from any possible source of infection for the time being, until he grew stronger.They recommended no direct contact with our other children during those first crucial days.

The girls were wearing matching pinafore dresses, with white blouses, Jillian in French navy, her blonde hair in pigtails, Nicola in bottle-green, her dark silky locks cropped short, and Alice in red, blood-red, her mousy-brown bob with a side parting, held back from her face with a grip.The green and blue blended in with the flashing gold of the sun and the cooler acid green of the young palm trees. The girls waved.You waved, Ralph. I looked down at my son and felt pride wash over me.

‘Here in my arms are all my hopes and dreams,’ I thought.

But the red of Alice’s dress hooked me back again. Even then she was a jealous child.

You were reassigned after that, this time to the British Colony of Hong Kong. When you first mentioned it to me, the new posting, I was intrigued.

‘How would you like it if I spirited you away to a beautiful island in the Orient?’ you asked, jumping up suddenly from the wicker chair you had been sitting in. We were in the bedroom of our bungalow home in Aden.Above our heads a fan rotated noisily,doing its best to hold the heat at bay.

‘I should like that very much,’ I said, only half listening, concentrating on our blue-eyed, golden-haired boy, wriggling in my arms.

‘Then your wish is my command. I shall transport you to Hong Kong,’ you shot back, unable to hide your delight.

‘Hong Kong?’ I said, trying out the name and finding it both familiar and unknown.

You elaborated. ‘It’s a small island in the South China Sea, not much more than 400 square miles I believe. But then there is the Kowloon Peninsula and the New Territories too, just across the harbour.’

‘Oh,’ I said, trying to sound enlightened.‘It seems odd that we should own an island so far away.’ You smiled knowingly and continued.

‘It was leased to Britain after some skulduggery which involved the shipping of a great deal of opium grown by us in India into China.Very lucrative apparently. When China, unsurprisingly, protested and asked that we desist in the trade, we were so outraged we went to war with them.’ Here you paused mid-stride and chuckled.

‘Ah,’ I said, switching my son from one shoulder to the other, and patting his back gently. In a while I would call for his nanny, but just for now it was nice playing mother. You packed tobacco into the bowl of a wooden pipe, then paced thoughtfully around our bed. You used to smoke a pipe back then, though you gave it up when we got to Hong Kong. I rather liked the smell of it and missed it later. ‘And we won?’ I asked.

‘We did, and among the spoils we acquired Hong Kong Island in 1842, and a bit later on, Kowloon and the New Territories, leasehold for 99 years.’

You perched on the side of the bed, Ralph, leant forwards and gently stroked your son’s golden curls.Then you placed the stem of the pipe in your mouth, struck a match, and held the flame to the bowl, sucking hard until the fragrant strands of tobacco caught. For a while you puffed contentedly, your expression dreamy. After a bit you removed your pipe, those engaging eyes of yours searching my face. ‘So how do you fancy a spell residing on Queen Victoria’s ill-gotten gains?’ you asked, your eyes alight with mischief.

I thought about it for a moment—only a moment, mind. I recalled a red pagoda towering up into the sky, the roof of each diminishing segment looking like an oriental hat, the brim curving upwards into delicate points. I recalled a fly beating its wings against the grubby window of a bus, longing for liberation, and I remembered too the dull greyness that seemed to encroach on everything back then.

‘I think I should like that very much,’ I said. So we packed our trunks and set off again. In the late spring of 1962 I had my first sighting of Hong Kong,as we sailed into busy Victoria harbour.We would come to know that bridge of water between the island and Kowloon as if it was an extension of our own bodies.The dull, green face of the sea was dotted with sampans and junks and ferries. From here, my gaze strayed past the mass of buildings that crowded the waterfront, and on up the verdant slopes looped with winding roads. We had docked off a bustling, mountainous island, the summits veiled mysteriously in dense powder-grey clouds. And it was a short while later up these mountains we wound in a shiny, black chauffeur-driven car.

‘Our flat is set almost on the highest point of The Peak,’ you told me,Ralph.‘Fabulous views.’We threaded our way higher and higher, into what seemed to me an impenetrable fog. ‘That is of course, unless we are temporarily lost in the mist. I understand it can be a real problem here,’ came your wry observation.

But any qualms I may have had about our mountain home were soon quelled. Here was a grand, airy, top-floor flat, situated right at the summit of The Peak, with the views you had boasted of to be enjoyed from every window.The white, flat-roofed building was only six floors high, double-sided, the central column housing the stairwell and the lift. Our front door opened onto a hall that would have graced any stately home back in England, while doors to either side of it led on the left to a lounge, this in turn giving onto a long, open veranda, and on the right to a dining room, and thence into a spacious kitchen. Beyond the kitchen was a communal sheltered area for drying washing. It led through to the servants’ accommodation, six tiny bedrooms in all, with a shared rudimentary bathroom and toilet, and for their use a separate stairwell leading down to the ground floor. Returning to our hall I explored further, the children running ahead excitedly.My high heels clicked smartly on the wooden floors of the long corridor that ran the length of the flat. Light flooded through tall wide windows to my right, while on my left doors led off it into large bedrooms, the first of which had a luxurious en suite bathroom. A second bathroom lay at the end of the corridor from which, on fine days, you assured me, you could look out over Pokfulam and the sea.

There was room aplenty for the Safford family and we had soon settled in. I told you that, for the time being, I could make do with just two servants. So Ah Dang, with her glossy jet-black hair drawn back into a tight bun, her wide girth attesting to her own passion for food, and her glittering gold front teeth, became our housekeeper and cook.And Ah Lee, with her bouncy, dark curls and her constant nervous giggling, juggled the tasks of washing, ironing, cleaning and shopping and, it seemed, found plenty to amuse herself in each.We provided them both with the standard uniform—drawstring black trousers, and plain three-quarter-length white tunics. The children were dispatched to English-speaking Little Peak School and Big Peak School respectively,both within walking distance,Alice attending the former, and Jillian and Nicola the latter. Four-year-old Harry, our son, soon followed, so to a large extent I had my freedom. Quite what we would do when Jillian finished at Big Peak School I did not know, for exclusively English-speaking secondary schools were in very short supply.

Life on The Peak in Hong Kong was punctuated by regular letters from Mother. I had come to dread these epistles. I had forsaken her. I was on the other side of the world, living a life of opulence and indulgence. I never spared a thought for her. In these aspersions, Mother was wrong. I thought about her a great deal. After careful consideration, I decided to make a sacrifice to appease her. I would give her Jillian and Nicola. They would be dutiful in my place. It would soon be time for Jillian to go to secondary school. It made perfect sense to send first Jillian and then Nicola to a boarding school in England—and not just any boarding school, but the convent at which my mother was now employed part time teaching English and Drama. Of course, she had no qualifications for the job, but apparently rearing Albert, now a professional musical actor, was pedigree enough.’

‘I’ll miss Jillian,’ you admitted, as we sat sipping scotch on the veranda one evening,watching dusk deepen and the lights of Aberdeen start slowly to glimmer, appearing one by one, as if by magic.You looked shattered.These days your only escape from work was on our boat, White Jade, and even then we had been tracked down by the marine police a couple of times with urgent messages.

I freshened up my own drink, and ran the frosted tumbler between my hands before taking a hefty swallow. Cars purred by on the road below.I waited a moment then took another gulp.The whisky seemed very watery tonight; the bite was slow in coming, and the accompanying numbness even slower.

‘I’m sure Saint Mary’s Convent is a wonderful school, and that the children will relish a bit of time with their grandmother,’ I persuaded you.

You sat forward in your chair and sighed. ‘I’m just not certain—’ you began, but smoothly I interrupted you.

‘These insects can be a real problem in the evenings,’ I said, swatting away a flying ant. Even paradise has its drawbacks.‘Let’s go inside. I’d better check that everything’s all right with the amahs in the kitchen. Take your eyes off them for a second and they start doing all kinds of silly things.’ I picked up the bottle of scotch and stood up.When you did not move,Ralph,but just sat brooding and staring into your glass, I told you dinner was almost ready and took the lead.

I had thought that sending Jillian and Nicola to boarding school would free me up to devote more time to you and my social duties as wife of an important government servant. I had even looked forward to seeing more of my friend and next-door neighbour, Beth Fielding, and enjoying a leisurely lunchtime drink with her once or twice a week. But this presumption was flawed. Alice, a demanding, insecure child from the outset, was becoming steadily more and more difficult. My mind teemed with a growing tally of unnerving incidents, where her behaviour was both unpredictable and extreme, incidents which no matter how much scotch I drank often refused to melt away.

The part of a king in the school nativity play became a nightmare when I tried to apply shoe polish to her face, in an attempt simply to make her look authentic.

‘What are you doing, Mummy? You are making me all brown! It’s horrid of you,’ she wailed, plucking the crown from her head, and letting it fall to the ground.

My entreaties that it was just for the role she was acting were ignored.‘I don’t want always to have a brown face!’ she had screamed, so loudly that several other mothers in the school changing rooms looked round and grinned.‘Why have you done this to me,Mummy?’

Painstakingly I explained that with the help of soap and water, the shoe-polish would quickly wash away, but Alice only shot me a disbelieving look and abandoned herself to racking sobs. Finally she tottered onto the stage, her blotchy complexion attesting to hurried attempts at scouring her face of its autumnal hue. But even this did not assuage her histrionics, and she broke down before a baffled Mary, and had to be coaxed from the stage. This scene marked the first of several involving the parents of other children, teachers, and even on one occasion the headmistress. No matter how much I implored, cajoled and pleaded, there was no reasoning with Alice once her mind was made up.

In addition to this, you and I, Ralph, were called upon to attend many performances celebrating Chinese festivals.I had come to loathe these very public outings. Inevitably you would insist that the children attend, though goodness knew why. I felt they would do very well with the amahs at home watching a bit of Chinese opera. Certainly Alice would. But you were immovable on this, as you were on many issues involving our youngest daughter. So there we would be, in VIP seats at the front row for all to gawp at. Harry, of course, would always sit placidly, entranced by the colourful spectacle, Nicola on her best behaviour at his side. But Alice would fidget incessantly. Never content simply to be near me, she would have to keep tugging on my sleeve, stroking me, resting her head on me, reaching for my hand, tickling it, patting the necklace I was wearing, or the bracelet that adorned my wrist, or twisting the rings on my fingers. On one such occasion, a dragon dance by the harbour side, my patience snapped. Oblivious to the massive, bobbing, brilliant, red head of the dragon, with its swivelling, bulbous eyes, only feet from us, I suddenly sprang up, thrusting Alice from my lap where she had been settling herself.

‘Oh do stop touching me,Alice,for goodness sake!’my voice rang out over the clanging Chinese music, as Alice tumbled to the floor. ‘Leave me alone. For the love of God, get away from me!’

I must have shouted. Faces turned to look at me. Alice righted herself, and gingerly sat once more in her assigned seat between you, Ralph, and me. Locking eyes with you for a second, the look you gave me would have frozen blood. The dragon head bounced and shook, its gaudy finery a blur before me. Its striped body writhed and twisted. Then it froze for an instant, the great head seemingly suspended in the air right before my eye-line. Slowly it blinked its white, fur-trimmed eyelids. And in that moment, I would have liked to dash forwards and gouge its impertinent eyes from their teacup sockets. Like Alice’s, their gaze was far too astute.Then the wretched little man who jigged by the serpent’s side put his hands on his hips and shook with pantomime laughter. Not satisfied with this, he went on to clasp both hands over the mouth that was slashed into his enormous, lobster-pink, papier-mâché globe of a head. He wagged this monstrous mask from side to side, the focus of his slit eyes on me, the butt of the joke. Briefly I glanced down at Alice. Always she was thinking, the wide, solemn eyes seeing everything. Thinking, thinking, thinking! Then the beast shivered and burst once more into life. My daughter had shown me up yet again, in front of all the important guests in the audience. Even the Governor was there, enjoying the jest I presume. It was a high price to pay for losing my control, for letting my guard slip. Alice had humiliated me publicly, before the most important British official on the island.

Our daughter was making life intolerable, Ralph, whether you were prepared to acknowledge it or not. She went for sleepovers with friends, vowing that she wanted to go more than anything she could think of, only to be returned home, sobbing and distraught in the middle of the night. The cause of these upsets remained a mystery both to you and to me. She was beset with night terrors, where she roamed the flat in strange trances, sometimes dragging her mattress great distances to find rest. And being Alice, she was not content to suffer her insomnia alone. Stricken with fear, and knowing very well that she would get no sympathy from me, she would turn instead to you, her beleaguered father, and make you sit up the night with her. She would beg you to tell her that she was not alone, for she felt, she said, as if she was the only person living in the blackness, and that all the world was dead. As a result, struggling with the demands of your high-profile job and little sleep, you were jaded and consequently short-tempered with me. Her selfishness was astounding. But if you tackled her about these episodes, the resulting dialogue simply revealed Alice to be an irrational child, deaf to reason and common sense. Often in the evenings she would scream for me, and when I came running I would find her peering out of a bathroom window at the corridor’s end, mesmerised. She would insist that I look at the sunset, exclaiming that she had never before seen anything so beautiful. She would gasp, and tell me that she could barely breathe at the wonder of it, that it made her want to cry and laugh all at once. After a time, like the villagers charging up the mountain in response to the shrieks of the boy who cried wolf, I would dismiss her summons, or just give her a cursory nod in passing.

I even spoke to you and arranged for Alice to have a dog. Of course at the time I said it would be a family pet and lovely for all of us. It was really for Alice though, to occupy Alice, to absorb her, and perhaps give the rest of us a little peace.We fetched the wretched creature from the Hong Kong SPCA.Alice chose him. If I’m honest I thought him a disagreeable mongrel, quite absurd in appearance—a motley assortment of colours, brown, black, white, grey and even a bit of yellow. He had a feathered tail far too long for the compact body, huge paws, a ragged ear, a long thin snout, and a black tongue which, when it hung out, very nearly trailed to the ground.

‘Really Alice! Why him?’ I asked her, running my eyes over the scrappy mutt. ‘There are others that are so much prettier.’

But true to form, never taking her eyes from the dog she had selected, Alice seemed not to hear me.

‘I shall call him Bear,’ she had announced, as I filled out the paperwork. I resisted the temptation to state the obvious. It was a dog not a bear! I thought it an absurd name. Why not call the thing Rover or Sparky or Rusty? But Alice was adamant. And to be fair, ‘Bear’ did fulfil his allotted task of providing a preoccupation for Alice. It was not unknown for the two of them to disappear for several hours at a time. Though Alice, when present, remained just as challenging.

Why, I asked myself countless times, couldn’t she just take things at face value? Why was she was forever digging under the skin, probing things best left alone.Yet despite this you seemed to relish her company, Ralph. And for her part, Alice would happily have followed her beloved father anywhere. As Alice began her final year at Big Peak School, my relief was palpable. Soon, very soon, she would join her sisters at the convent in England, and then it would just be you, Ralph, and me, and our son of course. I broached this subject one weekend after a particularly good meal, when I knew you were relaxed and mellow and would be most receptive.We were sitting at the dining-room table and enjoying a small cognac with our coffees.

‘It’s probably time for us to make arrangements for Alice to join her sisters,’ I ventured. I waited. There was no response. I took a mouthful of brandy for courage and soldiered on.‘I can hardly believe it, but Alice is in her last year at Big Peak School, and with the problem of finding suitable secondary education here I—’

‘I’ve been thinking about that,’you said, uncharacteristically cutting me off mid-flow.

Had you indeed, I ruminated.You continued.

‘I’ve heard they’re opening up a new school on Bowen Road. They’re setting it up in the old British Army Hospital while they make a start building new premises on the terraced slopes above. In time they plan to demolish the hospital entirely, making way for further expansion. I want Alice to go there.’

I drew in a breath sharply.You gave me a quick glance.‘Is there a problem?’ you asked, a dangerous note sounding in your voice.

I felt stunned,as if I had been slugged over the head and temporarily my eyesight was blurred. I tried to hold onto the salient facts.You had been thinking, you had been thinking about Alice, thinking about keeping Alice here with us, despite the chaos she was causing, Ralph, you wanted to send her to a new school they were building, a school I had heard nothing about.

‘But darling,’I said,reaching for the cognac bottle,‘we don’t know anything about this school.’

‘I do,’ you fired back. ‘I’ve been to see the site. Nigel has been telling me all about it.They’re considering sending Christopher and Anita there. Actually, I’m surprised Beth hasn’t mentioned it to you.’

And so was I. Although this could not quite be classed as deception, my friend and neighbour Beth Fielding’s omission to acquaint me with this startling news came a pretty close second in my book. I tipped up the bottle and refilled my glass. ‘I see. Well. Well, well, well.’

‘Myrtle, be honest with yourself,’ you went on as I stiffened in my seat, ‘it would be a disaster sending Alice to boarding school.’ Under your breath you added, ‘I’m not at all sure it’s been a success for Jillian or Nicola either.’

I sipped my cognac, then cradled my glass, slowly swilling round the amber liquid.

‘I feel we should at least discuss it,’ was my face-saving remark.

‘We have,’ you said brusquely, rising from the table.

Tonight Alice is worse than ever. Sometimes you can almost believe she alters with the rising of the moon, a kind of moon-madness. She is like a lone wolf howling and prowling all through the night. Ralph is dealing with her. With Alice his patience is inexhaustible. Harry seeks refuge in my bed.We close our eyes and block our ears.Finally I drift off to sleep. I dream we are on our junk, White Jade, which we have moored in a pretty bay. We are floating on a cobalt-blue sea. I feel the gentle rise and fall of the boat like breath coming in and going out, the rhythmic lift and fall of the thing. The sun is shining. We are fanned by a light breeze. And we are fishing, Ralph and Alice and I. We have cast out nylon lines with hooks knotted at the end of them. We have speared wiggling maggots for bait. Time passes. Ralph catches nothing. I catch nothing.Then Alice reels in a fish. It is several inches long, and it flaps dripping over the wooden deck, the silver scales brilliant as coruscating diamonds kissed by the sun. We all point at the fish as it gulps in air, and slaps and slips about. Our faces are masks of delight. Then quite suddenly the fish starts to inflate, like a silver balloon spiked with prickles. It swells up obscenely until it no longer flaps over the deck. It is a motionless bubble. Its prickles become barbs, hooking into the soft flesh of the damp wood.

‘It is a puffer fish!’ cries Alice in dismay. ‘It’s poisonous!’ She is standing now over the gasping, hideous thing, hypnotised.Then she looks up at me. ‘If you eat my fish you will die, Mother,’ she says, and I wake.

My hands itch all day. When Alice returns from school we have a row. I do not like rowing. Some people can shrug off rows like a dog shaking water from its coat. I cannot. Brutal words stay with me…well…sometimes for a lifetime. I keep count of them. I notch them into the bark of my life, so deeply that they will never grow out. I tell Alice she cannot carry on with her deranged nights. My voice is quite calm, quite steady. I tell her they are taking a dreadful toll on her father. I tell her how hard he works, and that she is making him very ill.And when none of this seems to have any effect, I tell her that she is coming between us, that she is forcing us apart, her mother and her father. Alice’s voice rises up like a snake with its egoistic jingle-jangle, as if she really is the only person alive in the world, and not just through the long, dark nights but through the long bright days as well. My voice shifts key. I feel the ‘demon rasp’ tolling in me then, purifying, abrasive, because Alice smiles a foolish smile. The demon is full of wrath, and he spits words out at the smiling, loon-faced child.

We are in the bathroom, the same bathroom where Alice has summoned me so many times with her games. The window is open and the sky is red. I feel it bleed into me. I am dimly aware that my mouth is still working, and that my voice has grown deep and masculine, a war cry, and that my limbs are flaying. Alice is bold and stands her ground. And still she is smiling, smiling! I want to wipe that smile off her face. I draw back my hand and deal her such a blow across her grinning visage, that she is sent reeling backwards, covering the distance of several feet to the window, sliding down the wall, crumpling on the floor, while incongruously, above her head, Alice’s wondrous sunset is framed. I am transfixed by the white face looming through the long brown hair. The eye is already puffing up. The cheek is split with a deep gash. Her blood is such a vivid shade of red. It dribbles from the wound and down her chin. It drips onto her summer school uniform, flowering on the white cotton.

I think: I am wearing my wedding and engagement rings and they must have cut into her cheek, a marital knuckleduster. I think, I have committed a mortal sin, somehow or other the Mother Superior at the convent back in England will know of it. I am envious of Alice. I am envious of my daughter. Alice, who has roared through so many nights, is silent now. I cannot even hear her breathing. I watch the blood spill and grow more copious. It pools in a crease at her neck. This creates the impression, reminiscent of a horror movie, that her head has been severed from her body, and that, if you push it, it will tumble off and roll over the green, marble-effect rubber tiles of the bathroom floor. I wonder what time Ralph will be home. I have an idea he is out tonight and will not be back until late. By tomorrow it will not look so bad. Besides, a story can be told. I feel sure a story will come that fits my purpose. Alice, I know, will never tell. She will hold it all in, keep it contained. Like Iwazaru, one of the three wise monkeys, she will speak no evil. She will gag herself. I gaze unmoved at the sunset, then my eyes slide downwards and hold Alice’s.

‘At last,’ I say,‘when I come, there is something to see.’ My voice scrapes the silence. My hands have stopped itching. They are trembling now. I need something to steady my nerves.