A Gentle Occupation Read online

  ‘You see? And it’s not too red, it is just perfect. How can I thank you?’

  ‘Oh nonsense. Clair dear.’

  ‘Restoring a woman’s confidence is not nonsense.’

  ‘No, quite. It really does that? A bit of pink on your lips?’

  ‘Really. A bit of pink.’

  ‘I must keep one for myself next time. God knows, I could use it. Don’t suppose it works for a chap though, does it?’ He was smiling gently. ‘Been a brute of a day today. This is the first pleasant moment I’ve had. Here with you.’

  ‘Even the tears and sobbing?’

  ‘Even that. Because of that somehow. Funny—’

  ‘Well this evening we will have a celebration. My first guests in my own house for, oh, such a time. And a lipstick and a refrigerator.’

  ‘Which doesn’t work yet.’

  ‘But which will. And Emmie is coming also, you remember her?’

  He wrinkled his forehead and pressed worried fingers into his scalp. ’Emmie. Ah. Yes. The van Hoorst girl. Tall, dark, good English?’

  ‘Exactly. Did you see her today? She had an appointment; you arranged it.’

  He looked lost for a second, slipped the tobacco pouch into the haversack and started to strap it up. ‘Do you know, I can’t remember. Yes, I think she went along. I had these two chaps to cart about … I was in the Planters this morning, there were quite a lot of girls there. Nettles’ lot. So I imagine she must have been. Can’t be sure … anyway, I must be off, dear Clair. Bless you for the drink.’ He got to his feet, took up his cap, his swagger-cane, patted his pockets and looked vaguely around. ‘I always seem to leave things behind me these days. You’d never believe I was a quite efficient Staff officer not so long ago. In battle, that is. Not much good as a Nanny trying to settle all you women; what a business!’

  She took his hand, and leaning upwards kissed him gently on his cheek. She thought that he had blushed, but his grasp was firm.

  ‘You could do that again if you cared to,’ he said.

  She kissed him again, not smiling, and pulled slowly away, eyes bright. With her free hand she lightly traced his lips. ‘I won’t what you called “blub”, don’t be afraid. I don’t do it very often, sometimes even not for years. And now, because of you, perhaps never again. I’m quite restored, you see. You have given it all back to me: self-respect.’

  ‘With a little lipstick.’

  ‘Not just that—that and all the other things, my house, my son, my job, my life. In these last few, strange weeks all the past has gone.’

  ‘All?’

  ‘Well … almost all. Not Pieter, sure. Not him, never him, you know? But all the rest …’ She broke away, and leant over the wooden rail, hunching her shoulders and looking out into the suddenly darkening garden. ‘And when I know about him, for sure, because deep inside I have known for sure instinctively … you will have given me the courage to face even that. You can’t imagine what you have given me. I could never manage to explain.’

  ‘Oh, it’s really not important you know, my dear. I think I do understand.’

  ‘I wonder if you do?’ She turned and was smiling, leaning back against the rail, her hands crossed in front of her. ‘You know so much about me, I so little about you. You never speak, I mean about yourself. Just the little things, but I don’t know you at all, do I?’

  He settled his cap neatly on his smooth head, tucked the haversack under his arm, tapped gently with his little stick on the tin-topped table. The glasses jumped. ‘Good Lor’. Nothing much to know, honestly. Run of the mill …’

  ‘I don’t think so. Very English, very correct, insular perhaps?’ She was smiling.

  ‘Oh no. Not that. Insular. Very unattractive, I think.’

  ‘Then just reticent. Is that the word?’

  ‘Could be. Mustn’t be a bore, you know. Fearful thing to be. Voltaire said, “The art of boring someone is to tell them everything”.’

  ‘Did he?’

  ‘Something like that. Yes.’ He picked up his glass and finished off the last of his drink; replaced it carefully. Smiled at her suddenly. ‘Don’t want to use up everything I have to say to you in the first few weeks, do I? What would we have to do in the long winter evenings?’

  Wim’s voice cut through the falling light, high with pleasure. ‘There are nuts inside. Inside both.’

  Pullen gave her a neat, mock salute, tipping his cap with his cane. ‘A figure of speech. Nothing more. About half past eightish all right?’

  She nodded and watched him cross the verandah, back straight, haversack under his arm, steps very sure. He called out to the boy, and she heard his laughing answer smothered by the starting of the jeep and the tyres crunching on the gravel. Heard it turn and swing out onto the street as the dimmed-out headlights streaked through the tall rank grasses, and lit up the motionless leaves of the giant datura. And then it had gone and the darkness swept across the verandah. From the house a candle glimmered. Wim in the kitchen. She clinked bottle and jug onto the tray and her glass. Taking Pullen’s carefully she examined it closely, holding it up towards the soft, distant candle gleam, and then deliberately almost as an act of acceptance, she pressed it lightly to her lips.

  To have had absolutely everything in life you ever wanted, except perhaps blonde hair, Emmie thought ruefully, cycling along Nassau Boulevard in the fading dusk, and then have it all removed in one fell swoop, was a very salutary thing indeed. It was perhaps a pity that it had to come to her so late in life. And twenty was late, she thought. The awareness of small pleasures, the value of trivial things, of rare and treasured possessions had taken her by surprise. A shirt, a spoon, a bed, even this dangerous bicycle which once, in the happier days long past, she had only ridden to someone’s tennis match, to go swimming at the beach, to ride up into the hills. She now rode desperately, if professionally, as a life-line. Take my bicycle from me now and I am ruined, my life would be in a tumble of rubble and dust. I would no longer exist. Which is ridiculous, because I could and I did before, but it would make life practically impossible. And life is very good. That has taken me a long time to discover. I must have been a very spoiled and irritating child. I know that I was. And a very arrogant young woman. I know that people said so. And I was because I thought that arrogance might protect me. From what? From whom? It protected me from nothing; now I find out. Why all this self-revelation cycling to dinner with Clair? Why now, on the long deserted length of Nassau Boulevard? Why not years before? In the camp, in the broom-cupboard at the Convent. Before that in the really very bad days. Why not then? Because then I was looking so hard for hope that I had no time even for myself. It was enough to just exist. But now I have the hope. It is all here about me. Today, for the first time, I am quite reborn. I start again. With nothing but faith and this hope I have suddenly discovered for myself.

  She turned right into Brabantlaan just as a jeep turned out of Clair’s driveway. She watched its rear lights winking red going up the street. Clair’s Protector, the British Officer. The British, she thought, pushing the bicycle up to the wide front verandah, are almost as dull as the Dutch. She unstrapped the bashed music case from the back, and with infinite care disengaged the mandolin from the basket in the front, with cautious fingers opened the door of her little oil lamp, smothered the flickering wick with a pinch of her fingers, and went up the steps. A light glimmered somewhere from one of the windows. She walked along in the darkness, feeling her way with one free hand, until she reached the light and tapped at the glass.

  Inside the room the light moved suddenly. Wim appeared among a host of stretching shadows, a candle held high above his corn-silk head. He turned and called back into the house.

  ‘All right. It’s only Emmie.’

  ‘Only Emmie. Thank you. Who did you expect, Saint Nicholas?’

  ‘He’s been already. Chocolate bars and a new refrigerator for Mamma, now!’

  ‘Marvellous.’ She followed him across the hall. ‘From the British Sa
int Nicholas, I suppose?’

  ‘Major Pullen? Yes. No; it is just that you might have been a Jap.’

  ‘Not any longer.’

  ‘Ah yes, Emmie, they are still about. Deserters and the extremists, even now. Mamma has a gun.’

  ‘From the Major?’

  ‘I suppose so. She knows how to work it, she practises shooting at bottles.’

  ‘But this is all the British area, Brabantlaan. The big Mess is up the street.’

  ‘The der Elsts’ old house, yes. And the Indians patrol at night but it is all a bit funny still, you know.’

  In the kitchen Clair was busy at the cooker in a sparkle of candles.

  ‘It looks like a crèche, Clair. Why the candles?’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Well, the power’s on again, I think. It was in Rembrandt Plein—’

  Wim pressed a switch, the ceiling lamp glowed a dull orange, they laughed and Clair wiped her hands on her trousers.

  ‘Save them, Wim … the candles. I just supposed it was off. I seem to accept so willingly these days.’

  Emmie placed her music case and the mandolin on the table. ‘Flour! Tins of bacon. My God, such riches. It pays to collaborate.’

  ‘Emmie!’ A warning in the voice.

  ‘A joke. I’m a collaborator myself. Since this morning.’

  ‘Ah good! They took you on?’

  ‘They took me on. Wim, this is for you. It’s a mandolin.’

  He took it in some surprise. ‘For me?’

  ‘It was just lying on the street; it’s not broken.’

  ‘Can you play it?’

  She pursed her lips thoughtfully. ‘I’ve been asked that already today.’

  ‘But can you?’

  ‘No.’ She laughed suddenly and shook her head in disbelief. ‘I said that I cooked in it!’

  Clair looked up at her from the stove where she was opening a tin. ’Emmie dear! Are you mad?’

  ‘Oh you know, I was so angry, a British officer, so rude, you know. A perfect stranger, very sure of himself. I just snapped back; that put him in his place, I can tell you. Everyone laughed at him. Serve him right. No, Wim. There it was, in the street, belonging to no one. I just took it. After three years of having nothing I refuse nothing.’

  Clair poured the tin into a casserole. ‘I got a lipstick this evening. Look!’ She smiled a wide, advertising-smile, dead eyes, white teeth. Emmie looked at her critically and sat down on a stool by the table.

  ‘Very pink.’

  ‘Very nice. Like you, after three years of nothing I refuse nothing too. Anyway I feel marvellous. In electric light at least. You don’t think so, really?’

  ‘Well: it’s pink.’ Emmie opened the music-case, scattered her belongings across the table. A folded shirt, a small purse, her battered box of Tarot cards, a Dutch-English dictionary, some hairpins and a copy of The Daily Cobra. Wim was plunking ineptly at the mandolin.

  ‘All my worldly possessions. You know about the Dakota? Women from Ledaweg Camp. All dead.’

  Clair was stirring slowly. ‘Yes. I know. Is there news of the road convoy yet?’

  ‘No. They killed the Commander and some soldiers. They’ve sent soldiers out to escort it in, maybe tomorrow at Rozendaal.’

  Clair put the lid on the casserole, looked at the tin clock. ‘We’ll eat about nine. Not too late? Nigel, Pullen, you know … is coming in, he’s on late duty. I thought we would have a little celebration. He had this sent up today. Brand new. I was so stupid, behaving like a school girl. Crying. Do you believe it! I haven’t got used to things yet. The house. My house again. But so strange. I don’t recognize anything … nothing …’

  Emmie folded the paper carefully. ‘They didn’t leave you much to remember, did they?’ Her voice was dry, almost amused.

  ‘No. But all the charcoal! Can you believe it? They looted everything from sheets to the lavatory brushes but left all the charcoal we bought in at the start of the war and hid in the inspection well in the garage! So now I am really rich. And five deck-chairs. And we have beds. One for you. You’ll stay tonight, anyway. The curfew is too early. I have said so … but it stays. For a little while longer.’

  Emmie cupped her chin in her hands, her elbows wide on the table. ‘Who is Noah Coward?’

  ‘I don’t know. Who?’

  ‘Someone called Noah Howard, Coward. English.’

  ‘Clearly. I don’t know. Ask Nigel.’

  Emmie pulled a strand of hair across her face, sucked it thoughtfully. ‘Oh it doesn’t matter. Wim, I think that was a mistake. You make an awful noise. Plink, plank, plonk. I suppose we speak English at dinner. Pullen.’

  ‘Of course. And useful practice. You said you have a job with them?’

  ‘I had my interview. So formal! About fifty Chinese and Eurasians. Not one single Dutch girl. They are so silly really. They should help. There was a strange officer, very tall and thin, long fingers. An El Greco angel. Very polite, but he was so formal. Asked me to read something aloud. We did dictation, and shorthand, and he asked me about typing and I pointed out that the Dutch machines had a different keyboard from the English: which surprised him of course. They are so Imperial. Everything has to be English. And when I told him I’d been in Eastbourne for two years he was more surprised and said I would do “very nicely”.’ She laughed and shook her long hair about her shoulders. ‘So now I have a job. I think,’ she indicated the folded newspaper, ‘something to do with this.’

  ‘My dear Emmie! A reporter!’ Clair laughed and started to set the tray with plates and cutlery.

  ‘No, no, a secretary. They don’t have reporters. And when I told him that my father had the biggest paper on the Island he was very interested indeed. I am to start on Monday next. But they will pay me from tomorrow. So I am rich too. A rich little collaborator. It’s not my name for it you know, Clair, the Dutch call it that. Collaborating with the enemy. Just because the British aren’t fighting the extremists and won’t protect the Island.’

  Clair carried the tray across the hall. ‘Wim, come and help. Put on the light, please. The British are here to repatriate the internees. Nothing else. Everyone knows that.’ She slid the tray carefully onto the rather ugly oak sideboard she had chosen the day before. ‘No one expected the Japanese to capitulate to the Indonesians! Everything happened so quickly after the bombs on Japan. No one was sure what would happen after that. After all, no one had ever dropped those things on people before.’

  The dining-room was cool, dim, sparsely furnished. Emmie stood leaning against the door. ‘You didn’t take much. No pictures. I remember two portraits. I always used to think they were watching me eat at table, disapproving of my table manners.’

  ‘Pieter’s grandmother and grandfather. Oh yes! Very grim. Very Colonial. They went … with all the rest. No; I didn’t take pictures, pictures are such personal things. I couldn’t have taken them. That would have seemed like stealing. Only Basic Essentials, it said on the form. So that’s all I took, and odd plates,’ she said, laying them round the oval table. ‘I am a Navy wife, remember. Was. We’ll put Nigel at the top, Wim here.’

  On the verandah, sitting in the deck-chairs round the tin table, a candle flickering in the still air, the moon rising above the frangipani trees, a bottle of Geneva between them. Emmie suddenly stretched her arms above her head and clasped her hands like a winning boxer. ‘Oh! This is so good. To be secure again, even like this, with patrols in the street and snipers sometimes … even this is so good. I suppose we should thank God. My Calvinistic upbringing, I imagine.’

  ‘It has nothing to do with God. You should thank yourself. Your own faith, in yourself. That’s why you are here. We are here. Our faith in ourselves. Three years in the camp taught me very clearly that there is no God. Religion, of any kind, is only for people who lack faith in themselves. People couldn’t believe enough in themselves to create their own destinies so they invented gods for comfort. Buddha, Shiva, Mohammed, so on. I can’t believe in
God or in his discriminations, they are cruel, unfair and illogical.’ Clair laughed suddenly and waved a moth away from the circle of light. ‘What a way to talk! My father would turn in his grave.’

  Emmie reached across and took the bottle. ‘You said it was a celebration? Well, let us celebrate our new Faith. Ourselves! We are the gods. It has taken a cataclysm to teach me serenity. I suppose my father, who was a great deal more serious about God than yours, would say that the cataclysm came from God. As a punishment. Or a gift.’

  Clair dismissed the thought with an impatient wave of her hand. ‘Nonsense. The collapse of the British in Singapore brought you your cataclysm, my dear … and our own insularity and belief that the Japanese were nothing but a lot of bandy-legged idiots wearing glasses. That was the gravest mistake. I don’t think that God had much to do with anything.’

  Wim came on to the verandah, slid his arm round his mother’s neck. ‘Did you see my kite? I left it here. A truck is coming, I saw the lights.’

  ‘Now we start in English,’ said Clair, getting up. ‘The kite’s here. Where you left it.’

  ‘Oh my God!’ sighed Emmie.

  ‘God won’t help you. Just remember your grammar. Wim, go and open the door … he’ll break his neck on the steps.’

  ‘You don’t mind if I propose a little toast, Clair, do you? To the new old house, to the new old company, and to you.’ Pullen had raised his glass. ‘Your health, your happiness, and your future.’

  ‘I never know,’ said Clair suddenly, ‘if one drinks to one’s own health? Not, surely? So in fact we let you drink to us, and afterwards we will drink to you and the refrigerator and Emmie’s job, and everything. A night for celebrations for us all.’

  ‘The interview was all right, I gather? Nettles said he was very happy and that you had been to England, that so?’

  ‘Eastbourne, you know it? But I’m very out of practice.’

  ‘Well, Nettles was delighted. He found a couple of the other girls were fair … he’ll use them as dispatchers for that newspaper. The General insists it is sent to all the Brigades. He’s getting very steamed up about the bloody little thing. Terrible flap in the Mess this evening.’