Ghosts of Manila

by James Hamilton-Paterson

  Corpses here were frequently exhumed to establish identity or to prove that justice had or hadn’t been done. Bodies were exhibited on pavements where they’d been shot; in police stations to which they’d been taken; on a runway where they’d been landed on by an incoming Jumbo jet (not a lot left of that one. It was claimed to have been a sleeping squatter, then a salvage victim, but on this occasion even the wristwatch was missing). The picture of the tousle-haired body variously identified as the notorious Commander Mubarak or else an unknown duck-raiser had been printed and reprinted a dozen times as the case was closed and then opened again. And chief of all, of course, were the Marcos bodies: first Ferdinand’s mother and then that of the ex-President himself, which had lain for four years like a dud battery in a Hawaiian deep freezer, his veins full of icy chemicals but still managing to leak a musty political voltage. The whole thing was bizarre and seemed to belong to another era. Twenties gangsters, was that it? People called ‘Lips’ and ‘Muggsy’ lying in waxy state with satin up to their jowls to conceal the damage that meathooks, blowlamps and Thompson submachine guns had caused and which not even the best Italian morticians had been able to disguise.

  The Cessna flared, crabbed sideways, straightened at the last moment, touched down faultlessly and ran up to a tiny terminal with a flagpole and a crowd of faces pressed against wire netting. The children who had chivvied the goats and dogs off the airstrip went back to playing on it. A languorous sea breeze puffed through the opened door.

  ‘Welcome to Magubat,’ said Benigno Vicente, and emerged to greet his probinsyanos.

  Another van, a Lite Ace with tinted windows and ‘Gov. Vicente’ stencilled on the doors. They climbed in. ‘My brother,’ Ben introduced Ysabella to a hayseed version of himself. ‘Doy’s the Governor of this province.’ Ysabella was reminded of Jimmy Carter’s brother Billy, hairy-gutted beer drinker, Ghadaffi crony and general embarrassment. The van yawed over an unmade track like a speedboat trailing an ochre plume of spray which blotted out wayside huts, fences draped with washing and narrowly-missed buffalo carts. They came to a jetty. The plume overtook them and thinned out over the water. There was a smell of drying fish baskets, of ozone and iodine and ultraviolet light bouncing off the sea’s live glitter. A few hundred yards away across the blue strait a green-heaped islet stood on white foundations of coral sand. A knifelike craft with bamboo outriggers took them across. The sea had the clarity of a paperweight in which rocks and corals and fish were embedded. When the engine was cut and the prow grated into the sand there was a fortuitous instant of complete stillness before anyone spoke or moved. The cove was a hundred yards wide narrowing to fifty deep, a V of rocks and trees enclosing a beach at the top of which stood a futuristic house, hexagonal, octagonal, Ysabella didn’t count, with tall narrow windows in each face. So skilfully contrived was this piece of modernism that until the moment of landfall she hadn’t even noticed it.

  ‘What a beautiful place,’ she said for the hundredth time in a social career which had seen many a pleasure dome, many a fake-humble country retreat, manor house, castle, penthouse overlooking a sweep of river and a Renaissance city. ‘What a beautiful place,’ and for the first time really meaning it, suddenly pleased that gloomy Hugh and the rest would never see it.

  ‘Well, it’s just a beach house,’ Liezel said, ‘but we’re fond of it. The children love it here. Woopsy adores it and so does Danny. Danny’s our youngest. He’s at the Sorbonne right now, did Ben say? He’s always writing and asking about Bantol.’

  ‘Bantol?’

  ‘Oh, sorry, that’s the name of this island. It’s the locals’ name for a kind of fish which has a big head and a little tail. They say the place looks like one from the seaward side but I have to admit I can’t see any resemblance.’

  Come to that, Ysabella thought, it wasn’t much like Mont St. Michel, either. Smiling people were hurrying down the beach to greet them and unload the provisions.

  ‘Our caretakers,’ Liezel explained. ‘They live down there and keep an eye on things.’

  At one end of the cove a couple of thatched huts stood on stilts among boulders above the high tide mark, sheltered by overhanging branches. Nets were hung to dry on tall bamboo frames. A smaller version of the boat they had just crossed in bobbed at anchor a few yards offshore. Panting boys in tattered T-shirts began overtaking them with crates of beer on their shoulders.

  ‘For an English ambassador’s daughter,’ Liezel was saying, her intelligence apparently clouded for the first time by the concerned hostess, ‘I’m afraid it’s probably too simple here. We’re not grand people, you know.’ No; not the concerned hostess. The politician’s wife. ‘Ben’s very much a man of the people. He isn’t old money like so many senators.’ Somewhere along the way – in the van, presumably – she had changed out of her high heels and into a pair of lime green trainers which went oddly with the Imelda outfit and the ‘Jicky’, though Ysabella supposed she would have looked a good deal odder trying to walk up a coral beach in Ferragamo shoes.

  They had reached a paved area in front of the house. She could now see how artfully the site had been planned, for it extended on both sides behind rock formations which hid its true dimensions from anyone landing on the beach. Also concealed from view was an oatmeal awning in whose cool shade lay a sagging black bitch, whacked out from long years of labour down the puppy mines. There was a table made of a slab of rock and various easy chairs. On the other side, equally hidden until the approaching observer drew level, was a miniature reproduction of the house itself, in size somewhere between a hut and a pavilion, finished in the same materials and with the same care.

  ‘Oh, what an extraordinary idea,’ exclaimed Ysabella involuntarily. Outside the little house a mountainous boy sat at a table, engrossed or asleep.

  ‘That’s Herman, our eldest son,’ said the senator, who had come up with them. He was now wearing a Mighty Meaties baseball cap. ‘I’ll introduce you. You mustn’t mind him. He’s rather retarded, I’m afraid. He lives here. It’s the only place where he’s happy.’

  They walked over. If Danny was at the Sorbonne, she thought, and Herman was older he must be twenty at least. It was the face of a huge child which was turning slowly to face them like a bronze moon emerging from cloud. Round, flat, blank.

  ‘Hello, Boyboy,’ said his father, laying an affectionate arm about the great shoulders, ‘Here we are again.’ Herman smiled up at him uncertainly, like someone who knows he has seen a face before and then remembers where. His eyes filled with tears. Before him on the table were neat heaps of seashells, sorted neither by size nor variety but, it seemed, by colour. ‘And this is Ysabella. A long, long time ago I knew her father.’

  ‘Father,’ echoed Herman. His gaze fell on his objects. A slow, pudgy paw went out and picked up a cone beautifully marked with curving lines of diminishing brown peaks like a landscape of mountains sketched by a Chinese brush. The pattern, endlessly repeated, gave off a Zennish suggestion of infinite distance. The hand came up and held it out to her.

  ‘It’s lovely, Herman,’ she said.

  ‘That’s for you. He’s giving it to you. Oh, wait,’ Ben said sharply, taking it from his son’s hand before she could. Holding the shell by the fat end he examined it. ‘Still alive,’ he said and gave a shout. A retainer came over at a trot. The senator held out the shell, uttered scolding phrases in a crescendo while the man, a leathery fellow in his forties with a few curling fish scales dried to his mahogany calves, looked crestfallen and went ‘Opo. Opo. Yes, sir. Opo,’ before taking the shell away with him. ‘Bilo’ll bring it back when he’s cleaned it,’ explained Ben soothingly to his son, ‘it’s all right. Then you can give it to Ysabella.’ He picked out a textile cone, examined it, put it back in its pile.

  ‘What was that about?’ she asked as he turned away with another fond pat of the boy’s shoulder.

  ‘That species of shell’s very dangerous. It’s the only one here we have to be careful about. They’re po
isonous.’

  ‘I wasn’t going to eat it.’

  ‘They’re quite nice to eat. No, the point was, it was still alive. He must have found it this morning. They have a defence mechanism. They shoot out a sting like a needle from the tip of the shell. It’s not like being stung by a bee. They say it’s as bad as sea-snake venom. Bilo’s supposed to keep a close watch on Herman’s shells. It’s what I pay him to do, after all. That’s our problem here,’ he said, and it wasn’t clear whether he was referring to his island or his country. ‘The watchers themselves need to be watched. Bilo and his family have lived here since before we built the house. I bought him his boat, his engine, his nets. I sent both his boys to trade college, a hundred things, plus a salary to be caretaker and Herman’s guardian here. All that and still you can’t rely one hundred percent on these people. He drinks. Which reminds me, lousy host that I am.’

  Ysabella was not surprised by the big Sony colour TVs, the wet bar, the shelves of paperbacks, but by the billiard table.

  ‘A weakness of mine,’ Ben explained as he poured her a Rose’s lime juice. ‘I caught the British habit rather than the American. I much prefer snooker to pool. It’s altogether subtler.’ He was still wearing his baseball cap. ‘And as you see, I’m a Mighty Meaties fan. That’s Swift Hotdog’s basketball team. Another weakness. I don’t think the British play basketball, do they?’

  ‘I haven’t the faintest idea, I’m afraid,’ said Ysabella.

  ‘Oh. Well, anyway, this year the Meaties’re going to walk all over Purefoods.’ He noticed his guest’s attention had wandered to the shelves. ‘Ah, yet another weakness. One you’ll be a good deal better informed about than I am.’

  It had also been a surprise seeing the pots and bowls and plates, as well as a beautiful spotted ching-pai boat. Several of the ceramics were superior to those in the Philippine Heritage Museum, she noticed.

  ‘They’re from all over,’ he said dismissively in answer to her question. ‘Just hide things I’ve picked up here and there. My better stuff’s all in Manila, I’m afraid.’

  ‘I think Dr Liwag would be quite jealous of one or two of these.’

  ‘Bonnie? Not him. We’re old friends. He’s got stuff tucked away that makes these pieces look like Tupperware.’

  ‘Not in the Museum, surely?’

  ‘Oh, not in the Museum.’

  ‘Is it true he’s a member of Opus Dei?’

  ‘That I wouldn’t know. Where did you hear that?’

  ‘I can’t remember. Gossip.’

  ‘Would you like a swim before lunch?’

  She swam; they all swam in warm water so clear it felt vertiginously like flying. Far below, among stone exfoliations and spires, heavy fish moved. They were served lunch with chilled beer. They drowsed in darkened rooms. They swam again when the worst of the afternoon heat was past. Woopsy practised dives off a rock, slim and pale, the platinum wire glittering across her pleased smiles. Some way off, the hard walruslike folds of Herman’s dark blubber sank and surfaced in the shadow cast by the island. He couldn’t be induced to join his family but wallowed in silent industry among the offshore boulders in front of Bilo’s huts. He seemed quite at ease in the water. Sometimes Ysabella caught the moon face turned towards her wearing a diving mask’s blank glare before it sank once more. A hand with a net bag tied to the wrist would flail the surface and he would be gone.

  At dusk a generator hummed somewhere on the jungled slope behind the house and fireflies drifted down to the beach. The senator wore an apron and lit the barbecue, laying beside it with a surgeon’s care knives, spatulas, forks and pots of sauce with brushes in them. Soon the smoke of grilling fish rose into the night air. ‘If it weren’t for this place we’d die,’ he said. ‘Or go mad.’

  ‘It’s true,’ his wife agreed. ‘We’re both from this province. Country folk to the bone. City life has its advantages but this is where our heart is.’ She was wearing a simple gown by Armani with a single tiny gold button up on one shoulder. Across the narrow strait came the soft glow of oil lamps on the mainland.

  ‘There’s no electricity?’

  ‘There is in the main town. It’s taking its time to reach the barrios,’ the senator replied. ‘One of brother Doy’s priorities. Along with roads, water, a hospital, the telephone and so on. I’m afraid we’re still quite backward here in Magubat. For God’s sake don’t quote me, but as a Magubateño rather than a senator I’m sometimes not unhappy that we are. Among all the hardships there are still simple pleasures which I’m afraid are the first to be corrupted by progress, as it’s called. In any case I’m sorry Doy can’t be here this weekend. He’s having to meet our Congressman.’

  ‘Who is?’

  ‘Jaime Vicente? Ah, you’d know him if you were a film fan. He used to be an action movie star. He and Lito Lapid used to sweep the box office together. Martial arts and shootouts. He’s still tremendously popular and fit. He may be making another film this Christmas with… who was it with, Lee?… Vic Sotto or someone. Vic’s one of my fellow-senators. I’ll have to ask him on Tuesday.’

  ‘Jaime’s another relative, I presume?’

  ‘Just a nephew. I apologise for the coffee in advance. I’m afraid it’s only local instant.’

  The big, dull question underlying everything, she thought, was how had an embassy driver reached all this? But she doubted she would be given a clear answer so after dinner asked a more minor and personally interesting one. ‘Have you actually met my mother?’

  The senator looked at her in surprise and sipped Cointreau. ‘Well, of course I have. Has she never told you?’

  ‘Don’t be offended, Ben, but I truly can’t remember. I sort of grew up knowing about you as a heroic figure somewhere at the back of our lives. I’m not sure if I ever asked or if she ever told me. Don’t forget I’ve spent most of my life away from home, first at boarding school and then at university. We’ve always been independent. I mean, I do remember during term getting Mum’s letters from all over the place, but there wasn’t anything strange about that. A young widow of independent means who used to travel and see her diplomatic friends. I suppose I vaguely thought she stayed in embassies, but I see now she couldn’t have. She’d only been an ambassador’s wife, after all, not a dip. in her own right. She was always very interested – still is very interested – in sort of developmental things. UNICEF and Save the Children. Oxfammy stuff. I don’t know. She had romantic foreign lovers, we used to imagine, me and my friends.’ And then stopped herself, too late, her brain too slowed by languor and drink and tropic night air and the foolishness which tends to exempt one’s interlocutor from any function other than this present conversation.

  ‘We met several times whenever she was in this part of the world,’ he said carefully. ‘Which for a while was not infrequently. But I’m sad to say her travels no longer seem to bring her out East, do they? In any case she remains someone I enormously admire. I like people – women especially – who are purposeful and principled. Beauty and an independent intelligence are a powerful mixture and one I find irresistible. If I may say so, you are even more beautiful than she was twenty years ago, and she was very beautiful indeed. But in addition to her looks I can see your father’s aristocratic features.’

  Liezel had gone to bed some time ago. Ysabella wondered if her husband’s verbal gallantry had shot its bolt or was about to become corporeal, extending a hand and obliging her to decide how avuncular it was. When nothing happened, leaving his last extravagant compliment drifting away on the warm breeze, she glanced sideways at him and saw nothing to suggest he had spoken in the last half hour. He was gazing out into the dark, his face closed, as though watching figures on a screen. There was no moon. An unnoticed overcast had been sealing off the sky. Out beyond the mainland’s tip night had leaked straight down into a black sea so that she couldn’t determine where the horizon was. Two small lights trembled far out, surely much too high to be fishing boats but equally too low to be stars. She felt the ear
th tilt backwards to reposition the sea and refloat the stars as lights.

  ‘You’ll be tired,’ he said at length. ‘I know I am.’ He got up abruptly. ‘I don’t imagine you’re a midnight bather, but if you are –’ he touched a switch and down at a steeper angle than she would have imagined a patch of water glowed bright blue-green. Far away the generator’s note dropped a quarter tone.

  ‘What a lovely effect,’ she said.

  ‘I was afraid you might think it vulgar. I installed the lights for those of our guests who like frolicking after dark. If you remember, that spot is practically a natural pool. All we had to do was put underwater lights at strategic points. They attract certain species of fish and people like watching the night life in the corals. It’s quite safe.’

  ‘No sharks?’

  ‘Oh, they mostly like deep water. They’re way out beyond the reefs. I have Bilo keep the place clear of sea urchins and those stinging fern things. Hydroids.’ He plunged the water back into invisibility. ‘But I can see you’re more interested in your bed so I’ll wish you goodnight. We turn the generator off so I’ve left a flashlight in your room. You must feel absolutely free to come and go as you please. Treat this place as if it were your own. You –’ he paused. ‘You can’t possibly know how truly pleased I am to have Chris Bastiaan’s own daughter here. It feels as though an unhappy episode has at last been tied up into a happy ending. After all these years. I can hardly believe it.’