Shadows Over Paradise by Isabel Wolff Read Free Book Online Page A

say.
    On the train, I stowed my case in the luggage rack, then found my seat. Soon there was the slamming of doors, a shrill whistle, and the creaking and groaning of the train cars as we pulled away from the platform. As we trundled through West London, my mind was in turmoil; my future with Rick hung in the balance, and I was heading for Cornwall, a place I’d shunned for twenty-five years. I’d been unable even to look at the county on a map without a stab of pain. Now, for reasons I didn’t even understand, I was going back.
    Desperate to distract myself, I got out my laptop.
    The Dutch East Indies was a colony that became Indonesia following World War II …
    Through the window the urban sprawl had already given way to fields and coppiced hills that were tinged with gold.
    Java lies between Sumatra to the west and Bali to the east.… A chain of volcanic mountains forms a spine along the island … four main provinces …
    Soon we were passing through the Somerset levels, where weeping willows lined the riverbanks. A heron shook out its wings, then lifted into the air.
    On 28 February 1942 the Japanese 16th Army landed at three locations on the coast of West Java; their main targets were the cities of Batavia (now Jakarta) and Bandung …
    The train was running beside an estuary. The tide was out and flocks of wading birds had gathered on the silty shore. My mind filled with thoughts of Rick again, but I forced them away. I returned to my research and read on about the fall of Java.
    At the next station, a woman got on with a small girl and boy, and they sat at the table across the aisle.
    The girl had short brown hair, held off her pretty face with a yellow clip. She read a book while her little brother, seated opposite her, played on a Nintendo.
    The Japanese began interning nonmilitary European men—mostly planters, teachers, civil servants, and engineers—from March 1942. Their wives and children were interned from November of that year. For many, this was the start of an ordeal that was to last three and a half years
.
    “Fear!” I looked up. The boy had put down his Nintendo and was looking at his sister. “Fear!” he repeated. Absorbed in her story, she ignored him.
    “
Feear …
” He grabbed her arm. “FEAR!”
    Their mother, who’d been texting, lowered her phone. “Sophia, answer your brother, will you!”
    Sophia glared at him. “What?”
    He held up his Nintendo. “Could you do my Super Mario for me, Phia? I’m stuck.”
    She peered at it. “Okay.”
    The boy passed the console to her, and she began tapping the screen with the stylus while he watched, rapt, resting his face in his hands.
    Some 108,000 civilians were herded into camps, where they were held in atrocious conditions; 13,000 died from starvation and disease
. I tried to imagine the dreadful reality behind those figures. Klara must have been through so much, and at such a young age.
    As we left Plymouth, the woman put her phone down again. “I want you to stop playing and look out the window,” she told her children. “What huge ships,” she said as we passed thedockyard. “We’ll be crossing the river in a minute.
Here
we go,” she sang as the train rolled onto Brunel’s great railway bridge.
    The girl stood up to get a better view through the massive iron girders. “It’s like flying!”
    A hundred feet below, the Tamar glittered in the sunshine.
    “Look at all those boats,” said her mother. “Now we’re in Cornwall,” she added as we reached the other side.
    “Yay!” the children exclaimed.
    After Saltash the train proceeded slowly through steep pastureland, then through a conifer plantation. We passed Liskeard and Par, then St. Austell with its terraces of pale stone houses.
    The loudspeaker crackled into life. “This is your train manager speaking. Next stop, Truro.”
    My hands shook as I gathered up my things. I smiled goodbye to the children’s mum; then, as the train halted, I stepped off with