Anne Berry - The Hungry Ghosts

‘I think it’s for the best,’ Myrtle says again, taking a gulp of whisky herself.Then, when I turn to her, my face blank, she adds a reminder of the subject under debate, ‘Sending Alice to boarding school in Scotland.’ She takes up the brochure, leafs through it, and seizes on the very page with the grimacing netball player that I stumbled on. She brandishes it at me, stabbing a manicured fingernail at the action shot.‘Just look at that,’ she urges.‘That girl wants to win.That could be Alice in a few years from now. Think of that!’

I do not tell her this is the very thing that I am thinking of, this is what I am afraid of. I am too spent to argue. Besides, Scotland seems a long way away tonight, as does England. Sometimes I think I have forgotten what England is like, forgotten that it is home, my country. I feel as if I have been trying to create a little England, here, on the doorstep of China, and that anybody who really considers this will see that it is an impossible task, the work of a lifetime. For what? In just three short decades, as the century closes, China will reclaim her island, and she will probably do a very thorough job of obliterating all evidence of the British, as speedily as she can. And who would blame her?

‘Ralph? Darling, are you listening?’ Myrtle’s voice sounds in my rambling thoughts. ‘About Alice? Scotland? What do you think?’

From somewhere I find the might to withstand my wife’s determination to dispense with Alice. I take a shuddering breath and meet her eyes, my gaze steady.

‘No. It wouldn’t work out for Alice. She would never settle in a boarding school.’ My voice is unwavering.

‘But 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.