The Devil's Garden (6 page)

He smiled ingratiatingly, ‘I am afraid, Lady Pendleberry, that any such information I may once have possessed has long since been seized by the Nips. My notes at the museum …'

‘I should have thought that any such dangerous material would have been destroyed in good order. And this is no time for defeatist talk or running down our allies. Don't you know, young man, that there's a war on?'

‘Oh, do wrap up Betty. Leave the poor lamb alone.' This from the figure beside her, a stout lady with swollen and bandaged ankles and tired, mottled arms and dressed in an extraordinary patchwork dress. The Japanese normally left the prisoners much to their own devices, mounting the occasional search for illicit radios, contraband or simply objects they might want to steal. Yet, at unpredictable intervals, like a capricious wealthy relative, they gave unexpected and ill-judged presents. Recently, out of the blue, they had delivered two large crates of female underwear of a design so bizarre—capacious and flounced, some in loud, thick tartans—that they seemed to hail from an eighteenth-century brothel specialising in Scottish-themed perversities and had provoked real fears among the women that they were all to be shipped off to become ‘comfort women' elsewhere in the archipelago. Possibly the INLA would be involved. Indians, after all, were known for their ragged and unruly bagpipes. Nothing of the kind had materialised, however, and gradually the huge knickers and vests had been reduced to reason, snipped up and stitched into a hundred more serviceable garments, the offcuts—too valuable to waste—being made into patchwork dresses and skirts. Pilchard recognised the wearer as Dr Voss, the elected women's commandant. Doctors seemed to gravitate towards positions of authority—except for him of course. He smiled wan thanks.

‘Like so much else,' he intoned. ‘Cocos-Keeling all began with Stamford Raffles, or rather with his friend, Alexander Hare, a trader who ran a company called the House of Hare and registered in the city of London. He was known amongst the British as “the eccentric Mr Hare”. We shall see why in a minute. Between 1811 and 1816, the British ruled Java, having seized it from the Dutch to prevent the French making use of it who, in turn …' Lady Pendleberry cleared her throat and impaled him on her glare. ‘… Anyway, he came to an agreement with Raffles who sent him off to combat piracy in Borneo and there he wheedled a large estate out of the sultan and chopped down the trees to build ships. The labour was supplied by Raffles from among his Javanese convicts and Hare both charged for their board and lodging and then sold the ships back to the East India Company for yet more money. He was doing very nicely. And then, of course, the British withdrew and the Dutch came back and ran Hare out of town as a British stooge.'

Lady Pendleberry harumphed.

‘That is … our gallant Dutch allies came back and drove Hare out at bayonet point. And so he embarked his followers on his ship and set out on an odyssey around the archipelago. You see, he had become a collector and, like all true collectors, that passion had taken over his life—an omnivorous, all-consuming passion that devoured everything in its path—until he neglected everything else, his job, his friends, his family—everything. In fact, he became the outcast of the islands. By the time he finished, the eccentric Mr Hare would have over a hundred of the finest examples of their kind and could never resist buying more—to the point that it became difficult to move the collection about.'

‘Then why on earth did he keep moving?' interrupted Dr Voss.

‘Well … once the Dutch found out about the collection they always ran him out of town.'

‘But you haven't told us what he collected.'

‘Oh. Didn't I mention? It was ladies. He collected ladies.' There was a stunned silence. Two Japanese women began whispering and looking puzzled. The word ‘ladies' echoed around interrogatively. ‘An ethnographic seraglio, a harem. Female slaves, like one of the old rajahs. He wanted one of each tribe of the Indies and aimed for exhaustive coverage.'

Lady Pendleberry snorted and made to say something but Dr Voss put a restraining hand on her arm and threw back her own head and laughed. ‘How gloriously stupid! How appalling! A hundred women? Would any man think that would make him happy? A harem of the local races? The poor booby must have got more than he bargained for. It's like a doctor deciding a drug was good for you so a hundred times the dose would be a hundred times better. How did he justify having so many?'

Pilchard smiled.

‘Well. It's like a museum. In a museum, when you write a proposal to make an acquisition, it only ever comes in two forms. The first is “We already have ninety-nine of these so we must have another to complete our collection”. Or “We have ninety-nine of those but none of these so we must get at least one to correct the imbalance in our holdings”. I imagine Hare's logic was much the same, one or the other, depending on circumstances.'

‘But presumably he did not limit his activities to arranging them in glass cases and just dusting them off from time to time as in some living museum?'

‘Apparently not. The male offspring, he formed into a brass band. Apparently they were quite accomplished and in great demand for social occasions.'

‘And the females?'

Pilchard blushed. The abraded saucy pictures on the walls zoomed into focus.

‘Er … well … It's not entirely clear. His enemies, of course, claimed that he … er … ploughed them back in.' Lady Pendleberry transferred her stick to the ‘present arms' position and rose like a black storm cloud over the sun.

‘Enough! When we came here this afternoon, we did not expect smut and innuendo.' She breathed through flared nostrils. ‘A little geography and geology would have been quite in order, even a modicum of natural history might have passed without comment, though it is always dangerously physical. We did not expect the documentation of depravity. Dr Pilchard, as a public servant, you should be ashamed of yourself.'

‘Oh put a sock in it Betty. Thank god this is more interesting than last week's “Punctuation in Shakespearean English”. I want to know more.' Other women murmured assent. ‘You go if you want to. Nothing wrong with a bit of historical “how's yer father”. You weren't such a prude when we were at school together.' Pilchard thought he heard a threat of inconvenient disclosure there. ‘Carry on Dr Pritchard.'

‘Very well then.' It is hard to stalk out haughtily when dressed in pink tule with holes in it through which show chicken-wing legs, but Lady Pendleberry made a worthy attempt.

‘Now,'Dr Voss smiled, settling roundly in her chair. ‘Let's get back to the dry bones of history and, please, for God's sake, Dr Pilchard, try to put a little warm flesh on them.'

Part II

The Garden in the Wilderness

Pilchard looked back the way he had come. From afar, the whiteness of Changi prison gleamed like a jewel in a setting of base metal, the streaks of lichen and decay invisible at this distance. It was possible to imagine it as a sort of enchanted medieval palace. Clustered around it were the carbuncles of barracks—Selarang for the Australians, Roberts for the Brits and the Dutch and a strip of no man's land in between to keep them apart. But the perimeter leaked like a sieve. Goods could be traded in and out on a flourishing black market fuelled by the work parties who stripped their worksites bare. Charged with clearing a warehouse, they would steal not only from the cargo but virtually demolish the building. Some were from London dockers' families and had generations of traditional skills in low thievery. Beams and hinges would be magicked into thin air. Doorlocks would evaporate, nails from the walls, pipes and taps would suddenly dissolve into nothing. Give us the job and we'll finish the tools.

From the tarmac road, radiated a network of dirt tracks linking up the little Malay villages and their emerald fields. Here, the locals dwelt in insanitary ease, replacing the lost income of fishing—prohibited by the Japanese—by a windfall of commerce. Chinese middlemen had moved in, relations of sponsorship and clientship had blossomed, trading circles spontaneously formed themselves. In less than three days, the same distributor-head of a looted Morris might be stolen by POWs on the docks, smuggled into the camp, smuggled back out to the Chinese, exchanged in half a dozen trades and sold back to its owner as a replacement through an established store. Life reasserted itself.

They had come for Pilchard before breakfast, Sergeant Fukui, a rat-faced Korean, and worried-looking Truefitt, floor supervisor with his clipboard, and kicked him listlessly awake.

‘You come! Speedo! Speedo!' He had struggled unwillingly to consciousness. In Changi oblivion was a precious state, almost holy, that had to be respected by others.

‘What? Who? Why?' Giggling Fukui mimed exaggerated cutting of throats and kicked again. O'Toole watched impassively.

‘Shitbags,' he observed quietly and dispassionately, to no one in particular, as if identifying a particular species of insect. Manson woke up and let out an experimental hiss of steam, boilers not yet up to pressure. Truefitt sweated copiously.

‘They've got a chit. From Yamashita's own office.' Droplets began to gather at his temples. ‘I hope you've not been up to anything that will get the rest of us into trouble, Pilchard.'

‘Oh for God's sake stop kicking me. There's no point.' He struggled for sandals only to have them kicked away again.

‘Speedo! Speedo! Japan number one. Britain number ten.' Fukui all teeth and spit. Why did he smell of garlic? It was the French who were supposed to smell of the stinking rose.

‘Yes. Whenever I do number one's I think of Japan.' Pilchard struggled to his feet. ‘If I don't come back O'Toole gets my kit.' Spoken with the force and clarity of a deathbed declaration.

The battered face crumpled into softness. ‘That's very decent of you, old man.' He leant up on one elbow. ‘But don't you go worrying about that. It's probably just some admin thing. You'll be back in a jiffy. Seen it happen loads of times.'

‘Speedo! Speedo!' Jostling and shoving. The droplets at Truefitt's temples gathered and flowed. Manson let out a whistle and juddered his pistons threateningly. As they marched him away down the gloomy pre-dawn corridor, Pilchard could hear the whispered news of his removal already rustling through the prison like a swarm of cockroaches and felt a sudden puzzled numbness, as of a man reading a newspaper and coming abruptly upon his own obituary, written by a normally authoritative source.

He did not wonder what it was that he had done. We are all overdrawn at the moral bank and, anyway, the old rules no longer held. All pretence of living in a just or even comprehensible world had long disappeared. But he did worry slightly over which of his offences they had discovered. That could shape his end. Was he to be swiftly executed or merely to suffer endless, unspeakable pain and mutilation? Or would one come before the other? Would it be the march onto the parade ground in the hot sun before ranks of horrified troops, the forced kneeling, all the time making the decision whether or not to beg and grovel wretchedly for mercy? You knew it would be pointless but it seemed stupid to toddle off into oblivion without even playing your last card. After all, for one who had no faith in an afterlife what did the dignified manner of your going matter one way or the other? At the hospital, if you were the doctor on duty, they always wanted you to say that so-and-so popped off laughing and joking, saluting and singing the national anthem. In reality, most went screaming and cursing if they had the strength or whimpering if they didn't. They had already reached the administrative block, a series of tired, brick huts faced by an open corridor. He was already being pushed and shoved into an office, already bowing at someone he had not bothered to identify through the mist of fear and confusion. It was one of those irreversible moments in life, a climacteric, that governs everything that is yet to come, the opening of a buff envelope that held the key to one's future, the saying of ‘I do', the signature on the army application form. There was an officer's voice coming at him. He tried to concentrate, blinked the sweat out of his eyes.

‘The paper says you will report at once to Stamford Road. The order is straight from headquarters. You will carry this pass and wear this armband on your right arm.' The uniform pushed over a piece of cloth bearing a red sun and a snarl of characters. Pilchard was dazed. He was to go back to the museum? Someone had pulled some strings. He was not going to die after all. He immediately began to regret his missed breakfast. And then they had taken him to the gate and just pushed him out. No transport. Nothing. An orphan. Barely a penny in his pockets. Gesturing with their rifles that he should walk, no longer the master race. ‘Japan number one. Britain number ten!' It sounded like the house chants of his prep school. On such childish principles are great empires based. Fair enough. The morning sun was still gentle on his face. He felt like a bigger schoolboy getting a sudden, extraordinary day off while everyone else was still swotting at their lessons and set out, hesitantly at first, then—like Felix—kept on walking, kept on walking, even humming to himself and possessed of a curious lightness of being.

* * * 

‘Hong Kong' Fong settled back in the great rosewood chair that was the over-literal mark of his office, Chairman of the Chinese Traders' Association. His hand dropped casually to find the comforting chip in the antique mother-of-pearl inlay of the armrest and he explored it with a canny fingernail, experiencing the same guilty pleasure he had got as a boy from picking at the scabs on his knees, finding the fault lines in them, easing them up, enjoying the rush of blood as they came away and their sticky chewiness on his tongue. He had been smacked by his mother for that. He was too young for this job, too insignificant, too small, a child again. They all knew it. With his taste for linen suits of skimpy, modern cut, he contrasted with these old patriarchs, from established trading houses, sitting round the table in their motheaten silk tunics and embroidered slippers. Most of them were barely out of pigtails. He spoke the wrong language too, the Cantonese of his Hong Kong parents, not their Baba Hokkien mix of mainland language and Malay. He was not King's Chinese. He was his own man. HK. Above his head, a poster from the Propaganda Department made the point. It showed an elderly Chinese merchant in despair over his boarded-up shophouse with its Union Jack while next door, a young, laughing Chinese, looking very much like HK, was chubbily beating off the customers clamouring for his Japanese products. A slogan read ‘Make Fortune By Cooperating With Japan'. It was the Japanese who had chosen HK over the heads of his elders and he felt the resentment that radiated from these old men so used to deference and submission from wives and children, employees and colleagues, even from salaried government officials. They made absolutely sure he felt it.