The Hungry Ghosts. Anne Berry
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how can you know that, Ralph, when—’ Myrtle persists.
‘It’s too late,’ I interrupt.‘She has started at the Island School. She has her uniform, her timetable. She may have already made new friends.’This last seems an absurd objection even to me, considering she doesn’t have any old friends to speak of. But I plough on regardless. ‘Moving her now would cause havoc.’
Again Myrtle, eyes alight, starts to argue, and again I break in.
‘That is my final word on the matter, Myrtle.The subject is closed. Alice stays where she is.’ I lower my head and stare broodingly into my glass, daring my wife to speak again. When several seconds pass and she does not protest, I glance up. She is staring moodily ahead, chin up, mouth set. She is furious and I do not care.
The year is drawing to a close when I hear at last that an order has come from Beijing, reining in the insurgents, effectively curtailing the violence and bombings for the present. It seems the riots, that will come to be known as the Colonial Riots, have finally subsided. I feel as if I have been holding my breath all this while, and now I can release it. Again I am looking down on the streets of Central and they are blessedly safe. Of course there is the accustomed bustle of this overcrowded island, but the faces I spot are benign, and the scurrying people are devoid of menace. I indulge myself. I dare to think the troubles are behind us, that the structure is still solid, and that Her Majesty’s Crown Colony has been delivered back to her safe and sound.
I try not to dwell on the lives lost, or on those men, women and children whose futures will forever be blighted by this appalling time. I try to do what I can to improve the lives of ordinary Chinese citizens, driven now by guilt at what I know were the intolerable conditions they had to survive under. I admit, if only to myself, that corruption in both the ruling classes and the police force has been rife. I use what influence I have to combat this. My motives are not entirely altruistic though. I am driven on by guilt.
I have felt the immense might of China bearing down on me, on this tiny island of Hong Kong. And although this servant of the British Empire stood his ground waving the Union Jack, in reality I know that, like King Canute, trying to halt the rising tide, we never had a chance of holding the colony if China had really wanted to take it. Who knows what deals were done behind the scenes to persuade China to stand down when she did. But no matter the reasons, China has decided to let the British play ‘I’m the King of the Castle’ for a short while longer.There is no question in my mind that we are only able to continue with our precarious little lives on her say-so. For years I will toss and turn through sleepless nights, my dreams crowded with the ghosts of people killed and wounded, while I was on duty. I will wonder if I might have done better, if my actions might have been speedier, if more lives could have been saved. When the pats on the back are a distant memory, I will wonder truly if it was all worth it.
I cast Alice Safford in the role of Abigail in Arthur Miller’s Crucible, because I thought it might bring the kid out of herself a bit. As Head of English and Drama at the Island School, the annual play is my baby, as agreed when I took up the post. I select it, direct it, produce it, sort out scenery, costumes, lighting, programmes, and just about anything else you care to mention. In short, I live it for a term. With the school only open three years, there was a lot riding on this first spring production. I couldn’t afford mistakes. But I just had a feeling that fourteen-year-old Alice was up to the job. She’s so much more grown up than the other girls in her year—intelligent, observant. Even at that first reading there was something in her voice that made me think she could pull it off.Which is more than can be said for Trevor Lang playing John Proctor. But then again, what he lacked in talent he made up for in enthusiasm. And frankly I didn’t have much to choose from, well nobody actually. He was the only boy who showed up to the audition.
Alice was captivating from the outset, endlessly changing, one moment the seductress, the next spitting like a cat, then all wide-eyed innocence. In the court scene, where Abigail drives the other girls into a frenzy, she actually had the hairs standing up on the back of my neck. We even had a few visits from worried parents complaining their children were having nightmares, questioning my choice of play. But if I’d hoped that acting was going to help her overcome her shyness, or curtail some of the strange behaviour she’d been exhibiting at school, I was to be sorely disappointed. Throughout rehearsals and following the success of the play, Alice continued to prove difficult.
She’s not a favourite among other teachers, that girl.And recently, I can’t deny her conduct has been challenging. But what the heck, I like Alice. I don’t mind admitting it either. I like her. Now when I say that, I don’t mean I want to fuck her. Not like some of the older girls. And can you blame me? Sun-tanned legs peeping out from under those flimsy, striped, summer shifts. The zip down the front, with the metal ring through it, that looks like the ring-pull on a can of lager. God, the times I’ve dreamt of easing those zips down, of glimpsing those lacy, little-girl bras, of touching those firm young breasts and…The winter uniform’s not much better either, with the chocolate-coloured skirts, so short that you can sometimes see the crease in the girls’ thighs, and a hint of their curved buttocks beneath the fabric.
They know it too! Ah, believe me, they know what they’re doing to you, as they sashay about this wreck we’re having to make do with. A decrepit army hospital full of ghosts. Well, that’s what the kids say anyway, whispering horror stories to one another about the morgue. Oh yes, we have our own morgue here at the Island School, very handy if any of the kids expire before close of day. Actually most of the students won’t venture anywhere near it. Even Melvin Furse, the Head, hates it, says he can’t wait to have the wretched thing demolished.
I’ve wandered around outside it once or twice, but I’ve never had the desire or the nerve to enter. There is something really menacing about that place. Gives a whole new meaning to the nicknames the Chinese have for us British. Gweilo. A dead corpse that has come back to life, a ghost man, or gweipo, a ghost woman. Apparently, so I’m told, years of oppression earned us such unflattering sobriquets. Still, it’s easy to see how the Chinese populace first coined them, staring amazed as their new white rulers paraded before them like the living dead. The Chinese are a superstitious race.They believe in ghosts.As for me,before I came here I would have said it was all nonsense. Now, I’m not so sure. This entire building has an unsettling atmosphere you simply can’t ignore, a mausoleum, smelling of damp and mould, paint peeling off walls, loggias open to wind and weather. Completely impractical. Furse keeps promising it won’t be long before the new premises, currently under construction on the terraced slopes above us, are completed. Though quite honestly there have been so many delays, I am beginning to feel it will be little short of miraculous when it’s finished.
And yet, I maintain there’s something rather sensual about seeing a lovely girl stroll around this ancient ruin. Echoes of the dying and the dead, screams of agony, groans and sighs, rattling last breaths, mingling with the quick footsteps, fits of giggles, yelps of excitement, and whispered secrets, of ravishing young beauties hurrying to class. Like a film set: the girls playing the leading roles, the ghosts providing all the atmosphere. After all, I’m only flesh and blood, and surely there’s no harm in just looking. Honestly, what man wouldn’t let his eyes rove a bit with those slim hips swinging ahead of him, those breasts glimpsed from open-necked shirts, through the grinning teeth of an undone zipper. Seeing those swells of warm flesh lifting and falling, beads of sweat adorning them like crystal necklaces. They do it deliberately you know. Leaving one too many buttons undone, innocently hooking that ring with a curved little finger and easing it down a few inches, leaning forwards on purpose so that you can’t help but look. What can I say? I’m a good-looking, testosterone-fuelled, young man. But don’t get me wrong. With Alice it’s never like that. She doesn’t flaunt herself, not like the rest of them.
Alice has always been quiet, even from that first day in September when the school opened. Worryingly quiet if I’m truthful. But lately…well, sometimes I think she’ll disappear, drift away if someone doesn’t anchor her down. It’s peculiar. Every teacher