The Devil's Garden by Nigel Barley Read Free Book Online Page B

take over the female dustbins delivered into the yard of the women’s quarters by one of them, empty the bins on the male side and bring them back. A stringent secret rota, organised on toilet paper pushed through a slit in the brick wall, ensured that married couples should be paired and briefly coincide over the reeking garbage. Hands might fleetingly touch, screwed up notes be dropped, damp-eyed, reassuring smiles be silently exchanged amidst the buzzing flies and the stink of decay. For these precious moments, wardrobes were ransacked, precious dresses borrowed, even a priceless dab of scent behind the ears might contend with the sickly-sweet stench. The Japanese never seemed to wonder why the only occasion when prisoners dressed up was to move dustbins and why the experience invariably seemed to move them to tears. For them foreigners were just crazy.
    â€˜Christmas Island may be characterised as a large heap of guano populated by swarms of coconut-eating crabs and is currently otherwise under only Japanese occupation. On the other hand, I spent some time on Cocos-Keeling and it remains—thus far—held by our own forces …’ Lady Pendleberry, dressed in a vest under a ratty peignoir, like some impoverished aristo after the French revolution, rapped her stick loudly against her chair.
    â€˜Dr Pilchard! I’m sure if my husband, the Governor, were here, he would wish me to remind you that you should beware of saying anything that might be of the slightest use to our hosts. Even here they have ears.’ She turned and glared at Miko, one of four inoffensive and unfortunate Japanese women, ears modestly covered by their hair, married to British husbands, who had ended up here in a sort of limbo of administrative disapproval. Japanese, but not Japanese enough for the Japanese.
    He smiled ingratiatingly, ‘I am afraid, Lady Pendleberry, that any such information I may once have possessed has long since been seized by the Nips. My notes at the museum …’
    â€˜I should have thought that any such dangerous material would have been destroyed in good order. And this is no time for defeatist talk or running down our allies. Don’t you know, young man, that there’s a war on?’
    â€˜Oh, do wrap up Betty. Leave the poor lamb alone.’ This from the figure beside her, a stout lady with swollen and bandaged ankles and tired, mottled arms and dressed in an extraordinary patchwork dress. The Japanese normally left the prisoners much to their own devices, mounting the occasional search for illicit radios, contraband or simply objects they might want to steal. Yet, at unpredictable intervals, like a capricious wealthy relative, they gave unexpected and ill-judged presents. Recently, out of the blue, they had delivered two large crates of female underwear of a design so bizarre—capacious and flounced, some in loud, thick tartans—that they seemed to hail from an eighteenth-century brothel specialising in Scottish-themed perversities and had provoked real fears among the women that they were all to be shipped off to become ‘comfort women’ elsewhere in the archipelago. Possibly the INLA would be involved. Indians, after all, were known for their ragged and unruly bagpipes. Nothing of the kind had materialised, however, and gradually the huge knickers and vests had been reduced to reason, snipped up and stitched into a hundred more serviceable garments, the offcuts—too valuable to waste—being made into patchwork dresses and skirts. Pilchard recognised the wearer as Dr Voss, the elected women’s commandant. Doctors seemed to gravitate towards positions of authority—except for him of course. He smiled wan thanks.
    â€˜Like so much else,’ he intoned. ‘Cocos-Keeling all began with Stamford Raffles, or rather with his friend, Alexander Hare, a trader who ran a company called the House of Hare and registered in the city of London. He was