The Kindness of Women. J. G. Ballard
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about Shanghai and Lunghua. It’s all over.’
‘I don’t think about it, actually. But it isn’t over.’
Peggy took my shoulders, as if we were back in the children’s hut and she was warning me not to provoke Sergeant Nagata. ‘Jamie, try to remember – you’re here, in England.’
‘Yes … in a weird way Lunghua was a small version of England. I used to wonder why no one tried to escape.’
‘Where would they have escaped to?’
‘That wasn’t it. Lunghua reminded them of home. Remember all those signs? “Waterloo Station”, “Piccadilly Circus”, “The Serpentine”? That was a stagnant pond that gave everyone malaria.’
‘It kept people’s spirits up. Besides, you’ve forgotten that some people did escape. You were the one who wanted the war to go on for ever. While David and the Ralstons were trying to break out, you were trying to break in. People thought it was very funny.’
‘The food store? So everyone knew? I wanted us to live there for ever. Hansel and Gretel, I suppose. God, I loved you so much …’
But when I placed my hands on her waist, trying to thank her for all she had done in Lunghua, she slipped away from me. I sat down in my armchair, as the organ blared insanely from the chapel, thinking of the elderly lechers who had made Peggy’s last year in the camp such a trial. Something about my books and reproductions disoriented her; perhaps she feared that Cambridge might be dismantled like the Tsingtao of her childhood. The French novels and my feigned world-weariness were not merely frivolous and adolescent, but dangerous, like my decision to dissect a female cadaver. Peggy had been my first love, but sadly not my first lover. She had known me too closely in Lunghua, washing and feeding me when I was ill, and sharing too much emotional stress, to want us to come together again.
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