Anne Berry - The Hungry Ghosts

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 has a different story to tell about her lately. But they all agree on one thing—that Alice is skiving classes regularly, and that, when she does deign to show up, inevitably there is trouble. In maths they tell me she’s proving obstinate and unpredictable, that she walked out of class for no reason last week and hasn’t been back since. In French apparently she’s been deliberately obtuse, pretending she can’t understand a word. Last week she smashed a bottle of ink. I’m told it was all over her dress and hands, and that she just stood there staring at it, as if she was in some kind of stupor. At least that’s what Christine Wood the French teacher said. In chemistry she very nearly set fire to her desk a month ago, and now Frank Devine has her sitting at the front of the class, where he can keep an eye on her. In art, her still-life painting is anything but still, I’m reliably informed—things flying about all over the place.

Only last week in the staffroom, Karen Manners, her art teacher, cornered me. I was gasping for a coffee and in a hell of a rush too. But when Karen wants to talk, getting away from her is no easy task. Anyway the upshot is that she told me Alice is always painting the sea, junks and boat people, even soldiers. Japanese, she thinks, she recognises the uniforms. I countered this with some crack about women loving a man in a uniform, which Karen swatted down without so much as the suggestion of a smile.

‘I find that remark inappropriate. This is no joke, Brian. It’s dreadfully serious,’ she flared.

These women! Christ! The trouble is they have no sense of humour. Mind you, I’ve always wondered if Karen mightn’t be a lesbian. That would explain her dour exterior. As Head of English the teachers naturally come to me when they have a problem. I understand that. Though sometimes the stuff is so trivial, I can’t help wondering why they can’t work it out for themselves. Hand-holding. They all seem to need their hands held. But I have to concede that this time the problem, Alice, is a substantial one. I like to tackle things head on, so I naturally went straight to her.

‘Alice,’ I said, ‘if you keep skipping classes you do realise that it’s going to have a detrimental effect on your grades, perhaps even your O levels when you come to take them.’

I’d caught her at the end of the day, hovering in her classroom, after everyone else had left. I don’t even think she was listening to me. She was staring out of the window, eyes dreamy and distant.

‘Alice,’ I tried again, ‘where do you go?’

Perhaps I should have said ‘where are you now?’ She just looked right through me, as if…as if she was stumped by the question, as if she honestly couldn’t remember where she went when she played truant.

As a last resort I called in her mother. And that was the weirdest thing of all. Oh, she came immediately. She didn’t try to put me off the way some of the parents do. She was punctual, too. Smartly dressed, stylish, you know. A belted, pale yellow shift, with a faded rose print in blush pink and gold. It was silk, I’d bet on it. Not Chinese, but that rough Thai silk. Over it she wore a white, short-sleeved jacket with embroidered sleeves. Her shoes were white as well, with very high heels. Not all women could carry off heels like those, but she could. And she had make-up on; not so much that she looked cheap, but applied subtly, giving her class. She was well-spoken too. I can’t help but appreciate when an effort is made. It sets the scene I always think. Gives a meeting a professional air. A few of the parents I know, rolling up in jeans and flip-flops could learn a thing or two from Mrs Safford. She was the finished article right down to her painted pearly-pink nails.

Niceties first. Must observe protocol. I began by congratulating her on the OBE Ralph was awarded earlier in the year, in recognition of his dedicated service on the island. I told her that I’d seen the wonderful pictures of him, in full regalia at the presentation ceremony, on the front page of the South China Morning Post . Her too. And was it their son Harry by her side? She smiled appreciatively and inclined her head. And that lovely shot of Alice with her father,very moving.All traces of pleasure instantly vanished.I forged on.Weather.Always a safe bet.Then a smattering of politics, perhaps not quite so safe considering the current climate among the natives. Just lately I’d say they were definitely a wee bit restless. Still, it looked as though the riots were behind us, thank God. Hardly surprising they’re fed up,considering we’ve been bleeding them dry for decades. But naturally I didn’t say that to Mrs Safford. No, no!

Then I informed her as tactfully as I could about Alice cutting classes, about her erratic behaviour, about her obsession—yes, her obsession with the sea—which seemed to be influencing all her work in art, and closed by voicing my anxieties over her tumbling grades.As I spoke, Mrs Safford nodded and made small sympathetic noises. She didn’t try to deny any of it, didn’t make excuses for her daughter. Didn’t make excuses for herself, come to that. Finally, when she did respond, I was so taken aback, for a moment I couldn’t speak.