by Nigel Barley
There was the famous Vanda Miss Joachim with its dense pink and purple flowers, an early, rather flouncy, hybrid, perhaps a little like its Armenian discoverer who, unlike most pioneers, had no need to scour jungles for a new plant but found it and instant fame, to hand, in her backyard, over the polite tinkle of spoons, one day when the Botanic Gardens’ director was round to tea. And that, surely, growing exuberantly in a raised bed of broken brick, must be the superlative Tiger Orchid, largest in the world, an epiphyte that favoured the crowns of the highest trees. Oishi hissed with pleasure and stretched to examine the massed flowers that ran from greenish-yellow, through orange-yellow, to ochre and dark purple—ink droplets on pale velum. And there, dangled a Phalaeonopsis, a Moon Orchid of purest white, discovered in the 17th century by Rumphius himself, then lost until rediscovered in the early 19th by the aptly named German, Prof Blume, each flower the size of a man’s hand. He groaned and reached out to gently touch, fingers anticipating ridged silkiness and received, instead, the shock of a blast of cold water.
‘Oh my gosh! Terribly sorry!’ Captain Oishi straightened, wide-eyed and face-wiping, to see a very red-haired Englishman smiling excessively innocent regret at him through a fringe of beard from the other side of the flower bed. Behind his mask of apology, the man raised an old Flit gun to an ironic ‘shoulder arms’ position. ‘Just misting the orchids. They tend to dry out so in this weather. I didn’t realise we were honoured by an eminent visitor. Oh! Sorry, I forgot to bow.’
The Captain smiled shyly, bowed back himself and peered, without comment, at the teeming rain. ‘Yes please. I think we have met before with Mrs Erica. You were to show me the museum but … I wonder … Do you please have a Dendrobium cruminatum? I should very much like to see one please.’
Pilchard was surprised. The Japanese military was not known for its use of the word ‘please’ nor for its taste in rare orchids.
‘Well, yes, but not at its best. As I am sure you are aware, cruminatum likes sudden drops in temperature. A fall of ten degrees, triggered by a storm, leads to flowering in exactly nine days’ time. The natural temperature here is too stable for them to ever flower. But I do have one I can show you.’
The young soldier hesitated, then bowed again and extended his hand. ‘Perhaps you have forgotten my name. Oishi.’Across the civilian gesture, he attempted a low-pitched, manly military bark that caught in his tender throat and made him cough. He swallowed and spoke again in a clear light tenor. ‘Captain Oishi, 25th Imperial Japanese Army.’
‘Pilchard,’ the other reciprocated gruffly, smiling in unwilling friendliness. ‘POW… retired.’
The Captain straightened up abruptly. ‘You are the man with the chest!’
Pilchard frowned. Chest? He looked down at his front, seeing nothing particularly distinctive about his own chest.
‘No. No. I have your chest.’ Pilchard looked at him, puzzled, again seeing no resemblance in his pectoral development. ‘The chest with your notes on Cocos-Keeling. I have been reading them. The Kempeitei let you go so soon? But that is good. They are men of little education with no interest in history and your notes are incomplete. Alexander Hare. His ladies. Please can you tell me how the story ends? Many of your papers were missing. I think they sold them in the market to wrap toffee.’
‘Why to wrap toffee?’
‘Toffee is sticky. It is more convenient wrapped.’
‘No I meant … Never mind.’ He brightened.. ‘You really want to know?’ He was, he knew, something of a bore on the subject of Cocos-Keeling. ‘That’s hunkydory.’
‘Hunkydory?’
‘An expression meaning “perfect”, “fine”, derived—I believe—from the Japanese honchodori, the name of the main street of Yokohama, and, in the last century, famed among sailors for its attractions.’
‘Please?’
They sat outside, on the soft, shaded grass, under an ancient banyan tree, like Buddhist sages, Oishi neatly cross-legged, Pilchard sprawled, and he took up the tale from across the road. He told, illustrating with the boat of a dried leaf, how Hare sailed to the Cocos-Keeling Islands, tricking the crew about their destination, uninhabited outcrops of coral, thousands of miles from anywhere where he could build a closed world to conform to his imagination. He shredded the leaf and told of his rage and dismay on discovering that one of his own sea-captains, a Shetlander called Ross, had pre-empted him and established his own settlement on the atoll.
‘Could they not divide the islands between them?’ Oishi proffered a cigarette case stamped with a perfect chrysanthemum. Changi habit made Pilchard seize a cigarette and pocket it ‘for later’.
‘No. There was ill-feeling so that the two men who lived side by side, a thousand miles from anywhere, barely spoke but feuded via solicitors’ letters exchanged slowly and expensively in London.’ A curled twig became London. ‘Their intentions were incompatible. There are two visions of Nature that dominate the West. One is Paradise. Nature is perfect and you just build a big, high wall to keep bad things out. That was Hare and this garden. The other is the Wilderness. It has to be cleared and improved, redeemed. That was Ross. He wanted to set up a whaling station where ships could be repaired and the needs of rough sailors met even though he was a Bible-thumping fanatic. Hare just wanted a safe place to stow his collection. It culminated in Hare establishing a sort of stockade and a terrible scene where, one morning, he was found screaming over the fence something about a rose being stolen from his flower garden.’
‘Why was he so angry about a rose?’
Pilchard smiled, laying a windblown blossom at his feet. ‘It wasn’t really a rose. It was one of his ladies that he meant.’
The Captain blushed and shook his head wonderingly, took off his cap and placed it between his knees like a modesty garment. ‘Ah-so! A lady.’
Pilchard sat back against the tree, spread his legs in the dry shade, closed his eyes.
‘Other things happened until, I think, Hare went a little mad. He took his slaves’ children hostage and locked them up. His overseer disappeared in odd circumstances. Ross was short of workers, maybe he lured Hare’s people away. Anyway, finally, one night, they rose up and drove Hare off the island and Ross made them sign some sort of primal covenant with him, like the Israelites with Jehovah in the Bible, giving him absolute power over their lives. On that island, he made himself god. Hare tried to come back with his son and they drove him off again.’
‘How did they survive in the middle of the ocean?’ The young Captain shuddered in sympathetic loneliness.
‘The boys all learned simple, godly, trades as carpenters or fishermen or copra-workers. They brought soil from Mauritius and built up their own island. The fertilising guano of Christmas Island was only a hundred miles away and the Rosses grew rich on it. They selectively bred and grew coconuts—cocos. And they were tough. There is a story of the Ross boys being made to build a boat and sail it to Scotland when they got old enough for school. If you look at the photos of the St. Andrews University rugby teams, there are these big, strapping, Polynesian-looking lads—the Ross’s intermarried with the local ladies. Then, when steam shipping came in and communications got easier, they could import expensive, fancy, white wives and the boys in the photos gradually turn European again—also less good at rugby.’
Oishi laughed and blew smoke, celebrating the age of steam. ‘And what did the ordinary islanders do, just marry each other?’
‘Ross also imported women from Java—a bit like Hare, I suppose—by the dozen, and you could pay for your wife on tick—credit—via the company store.’ Oishi grinned. Pilchard could see him picturing the women, lined up on a shelf with price tags around their necks. ‘You might think that—stuck out there in the world’s biggest ocean—they would all pool their differences just to survive but no islander would marry the descendants of the Africans anyway because they were dark.’
Oishi nodded. ‘Ah! They were burakumin, unclean people. In Japan also we have them.’ He yaw
ned and stretched, happy to find other peoples so accepting of Japanese ways. ‘And how did Cocos-Keeling end up as part of the British Empire?’
‘The story is that, in the 19th century, a young naval lieutenant was sent to grab the Cocos Islands, the ones that lie off Thailand, and got his charts muddled up. After that, the navy was too proud to admit its mistake so the claim just stuck. It was less bother that way.’
‘And how is all this know?’
Pilchard laughed softly. ‘Ah, well … Hare wrote a journal that was abandoned when he fled. It fell into the hands of his enemy, Ross, who had it copied. Of course, he may have changed it a little here and a little there, as it was copied, to improve his own case against Hare. That cannot be known. The only Hare we know is the Hare of those pages—delivered to us by a man who hated him. Then, after I saw it, all this material was put in a chest that was sent to Colombo, for safekeeping, but that chest too has been lost—just as my own chest with its material on Hare has been partly lost. Perhaps both will be found again. Perhaps neither will and the only Hare to survive is my own Hare that will run for a hundred years. There is no evidence that Hare ever came to Singapore but I like to think he did. I like to see him sitting on the Singapore Stone with his old friend Sir Stamford, trying to work out what it said, not realising that his own trace and meaning were being sucked up and obliterated by the world as he did so.’
The Captain rose rapidly to his feet and blushed again as he adjusted his cap. ‘Dr Pilchard. Thank you for helpful insights. Now I must go and write to my mother.’ As he rose, he glimpsed a notice, pinned to the tree, in the Professor’s own careful brushwork. The style was rather old-fashioned and conventional, he thought and he bustled breathily away, improving the calligraphy in his head, leaving Pilchard lying sprawled on the ground like a beached whale or a small, unclaimed, Pacific island.
* * *
From the first, HK had disliked Baba Chinese furniture. It was heavy, overornate and fussy. The hard, black wood spoke of iron duty, obligation, the dead hand of the past. It smelt of incense and embroidered textiles and it was full of gaudy, tasteless colours like a tart’s parlour. Come to think of it, he would much rather be in a tart’s parlour than sitting here again, trapped in this chair that felt like the execution chair that the Americans used. Matters had gone from bad to worse—from worse to worst. The Japanese, great diplomatic prevaricators and oblique strategists in their own right, had not been fooled by his delays and requested clarifications. HK explained, like a pupil before the headmaster, the many promising and devious routes he had taken only to see them swiftly closed off and sealed against him.
‘In short,’ he concluded, ‘the General insists that the money be paid in full by the end of this month.’
‘If it is not,’ asked one, ‘what will he do?’
‘You know what he will do.’ They knew. A second Sook Ching massacre. A fly, as if to make the point, gave up circling and ran in on a strafing run the length of the table, pulling up at the far end to circle again.
‘Can we not,’ another wailed, ‘at least pay him in his own worthless Japanese banana money?’
‘He has demanded Straits dollars. He will not accept banana money. There is no way to raise this sum. Our people have given their life’s blood already.’ He himself had been squeezed till his eyes nearly popped out—heirloom jewellery, the gold sovereigns bricked up in the fireplace, the houses in Bukit Timah—all gone at crazily low prices. At breakfast he had found himself staring at the rings on his mother’s fingers. At all costs he would hang on to his visits to Lily. That alone made life tolerable. He sighed at the remembrance of the feel of her long hair tickling his shoulder.
‘What does the total of contributions stand at, the collections already made?’ This from Loh Ching, ringing out like the voice of the Jade Emperor himself.
HK sweated, pulled out a sheet of paper, totted desperately with pencil and bowed head like a child having difficulty with his homework. ‘We are $22 million short.’
Loh Ching smiled. ‘$22 million only?’ Despite themselves, they laughed. He took from his pocket a crisp folded letter and pushed it across the table to HK. Not quite to HK but far enough so that he could just reach it if he prostrated himself uncomfortably across the table. They stopped laughing.
‘What’s this?’
‘Through my contacts I have arranged for the Yokohama Specie Bank to lend us up to $25 million dollars for one year at 8 per cent.’
‘Eight per cent is high.’
‘Not given the circumstances. We use Japanese money to pay the Japanese.’
‘General Yamashita would never agree to this. Why would he agree to this?’
‘Because it allows him to report to Tokyo that he has carried out the order and it takes the problem from his desk and places it on another’s desk. That is all that is required in the army.’
‘And what happens at the end of the year when we cannot pay?’
‘If Heaven is right, the war may be over by then and the Allies will quash the debt.’
‘What if Heaven is wrong?’
‘Then we extend the loan.’
‘What if the bank will not extend the loan?’
Loh Ching chuckled. It was not a sound they heard often and it made the hair stand up on their necks. ‘If, if, if. Then we owe a Japanese bank in distant Yokohama many millions of dollars that we cannot pay, instead of owing a similar sum directly to the Japanese Army who are heavily armed and angry and bored and a mere half a mile down the road.’ He stared at HK with bottomless contempt. ‘Which would you prefer?’
Part III
The Wilderness in the Garden
Today,’ declared Professor Tanakadate roundly, ‘is a verry special day.’ He twinkled around the table where plates and glassware winked back the light from the flickering oil lamps. It was, Pilchard thought, all inappropriately romantic. ‘Today is day when Greater East Asia Co-prosperity Sphere comes to the Botanic Gardens, the Emperor’s Birthday. All races celebrate together happily under Japanese flag and we share a meal as one family.’ He bowed his head down slowly towards his magnificently sere, grey kimono and then raised his eyes to embrace his somewhat hushed and overheated household, mostly unused to being here at night, this celebratory meal an unwelcome penance. The windows were flung open but not a breath of air stirred the bushes and trees. Inside, the atmosphere weighed on them like a hot, wet, blanket. Lizards chased each other around the dead light-fittings.
In the past, formal dinners had often been served in the house’s rather grand, panelled dining room but now fine linen and candlesticks had given way to Robinson Crusoe improvisation. An old damask curtain had been dextrously salvaged from one of the devastated Cluny Road houses and pressed—unpressed—into service as tablecloth. Beneath it, the ancient but rickety table itself had been extended on packing crates and the Indian, Malay and Chinese staff crammed around it, gamely supported the unsure tabletop on their bare legs, the curtain rings digging into their knees. Each place was set with an old jamjar for drinking, polished to crystal perfection, and a wad of newspaper substituted for placemat. Only the Professor gripped an incongruously perfect balloon brandy glass, sole remnant of vanished elegance. In the centre, steamed a heap of chewy manioc bread. As the occupation continued, more and more had to be made of manioc as everything else disappeared even from the black market. Now it made unconvincing loaves, biscuits and brandy but very good glue that served, amongst other things, to anchor the Catchpole wig. Elsewhere in Syonanto had been marches, patriotic songs parroted by schoolchildren, endless waving of flags, the usual tired hypocrisies suffered, without particular rancour, by subject peoples, but nothing so uncomfortable as this forced propinquity of race and class.
The first course, borne in, aloft, by whippet-hipped Ping and Pong, had been a nightmare of mixed crustacean sashimi that had appalled all but the Professor. The Indians had been repelled by its rawness and slithery blandness and picked at it with reluctant and disbe
lieving fingers. Revenge might be a dish best served cold but not shellfish.
‘Prawns. Heads full of shit like Malays.’
The Malays had feared, as always, the introduction of unclean species, liminal creatures that moved between sea and land and were therefore forbidden. They sipped water virtuously from their jamjars, fingered unbreakable manioc bread and argued in whispers over the acceptability of sorting one creature from another on their plates or whether all were now hopelessly polluted. Pilchard had sat queasily and recalled his walk on the beach at Changi and watched reluctantly the Professor’s busily clicking chopsticks as they probed and plucked at the meat of crab joints and sockets. Post and Catchpole frowned and nibbled innocently and old-maidishly with dabbing forks. Like Brussels sprouts at Christmas, such food must be faced. Only the Chinese fishermen reached forward eagerly.
‘Chinese eat everything with legs—except table only,’ they laughed indifferently, shrugging down the raw ingredients as welcome fuel.
‘Yes! Eat! Eat!’ the Professor urged with high crablike waving. ‘Syonanto people are always so polite and shy. Not like Japanese. Eat!’
The Indians’ palmwine concession had been abrogated for the day to provide drink for all and Tanakadate swigged happily between mouthfuls—the musty, mildewed flavour recalling student bouts of sake-swilling in fair Kyoto—till his eyes grew misty. Around the table, hands of different colours profited from the darkness to stow food away in pouches and banana leaves or simply dropped the loathsome flesh out of sight onto the floor and Ping and Pong had seized the scarcely depleted platter and carried it away rejoicing like Salome bearing off the head of John the Baptist. All the more for them. Their already-smoking wok would soon turn these primitive chopped ingredients into a proper human meal. The Professor smiled benignly through his milky glass like an old man through cataracts.
