The Girl in the Shadows Read online

Wow. Is that me?

  A person stood before me: brown eyes, brown hair, big smile. I could just see down to the swell of my developing breasts, and the sight of my body clad in that forbidden dress was fascinating and thrilling. Comrade Sian said in disgust that the lumps on my chest were ‘dirty fat’, but I liked them. To me, they were more evidence I was a girl, and that was something to cherish. It was a shame my hair was so short, only a few inches long, but maybe I could do something to improve it …

  I stepped out of the bath again and crossed to the cabinet. Chanda and Shobha wore delicious-smelling oils in their hair; sure enough, I soon found the luxurious-looking bottle. I poured out the tiniest smidgeon and rubbed it all over my head. It smelt wonderful. That was better. I grinned in pleasure at my new game and quickly changed out of Chanda’s clothes before I got caught.

  AB soon wiped the smile off my face.

  ‘You are a criminal!’ he roared. He’d noticed the sweet-smelling oil in my hair and immediately realized I’d ‘stolen’ it from Chanda. He grasped a fistful of my hair and yanked, pulling it out.

  ‘Stick this in your diary,’ he ordered, throwing the ripped strands at me, ‘to remind you of your crime.’

  I did so obediently. Yet these days I wasn’t always quite so obedient as I’d been before. Inspired by Comrade Chanda’s more relaxed interaction with AB, I aspired to copy her, hoping such behaviour might win me more respect as she was the most highly regarded woman in the house. So I began to dally when AB summoned me.

  Yet he merely screamed for me in an increasingly imperious manner, as though I was a dog and he my master, until I came to hate every nuance of my name.

  I tried another tack. When AB gave me his daily creepy cuddles, I began to pull away. He was furious: I was his.

  ‘OK,’ he huffed. ‘You don’t want me to touch you? Then you can’t touch me either.’

  I lasted only a few weeks before I caved. Without AB’s touch, I got none at all, and life to that measure of loneliness was impossible to bear. The women were all still banned from touching me; Bala accused me of ‘neglecting’ him if I paid particular attention to them. Very occasionally, Oh now let me tickle her hand as she lay beside me on her fold-up bed, but if anyone caught us AB denounced us as ‘lesbians’ – whatever that meant.

  Yet in some ways – only some – AB was not quite the same implacable tyrant I’d always known. Having so many Indian neighbours seemed to make him reconnect with the Outside world in a way he hadn’t for years; it seemed to prompt memories. He and Chanda often joined us for lunch (another new development) and, because there was no kitchen table in the tiny flat, we would sit together and eat from our laps. To my surprise, I observed that when he and Chanda ate, they talked to each other. As they did so, I heard, perhaps for the first time, the lilting, back-and-forth lullaby of a respectful conversation.

  It was extraordinary! They didn’t just lecture or obey – they exchanged stories, sparked off different topics of conversation, and wound their way around words with a casual indirection that you simply didn’t hear in AB’s sermons.

  There was another, very strange thing about the way AB and Chanda talked. Unlike in Discussions, when the women would be torn apart for all they’d done before meeting AB, these were recollections to be revered, taken out like special treasures to be exclaimed over. I could hear it in their voices: the warm way they would recount an anecdote, as though giving a precious jewel a polish. In such delighted tones, they used to talk about their childhoods and the fun they used to have.

  Until then, because of what I’d heard in Discussions, I’d thought that no type of childhood but mine had any merit. Yet these childhoods sounded pleasant; something you would want. Having so recently seen the children Outside playing on the swing, this idea that there were actually different good ways to grow up made a lasting impression.

  I also heard stories of how the comrades used to help people in the community, back when the Collective was based in the Mao Memorial Centre on Acre Lane in the 1970s, well before I was born. I learned there had been fifteen comrades back then: they used to flyer on the streets of Brixton as well as selling Marxist and Maoist tracts for pennies and hosting public political meetings at which AB would preach. AB used to talk about the conferences they’d all attended.

  I dared to wonder aloud why we, as a group, didn’t do any of that any more; I would have liked to help people and sell them books. It was explained to me that when I was born in 1983, they’d had to go underground to protect Project Prem: from that point on, our activities became top secret; all public interaction ceased.

  But as I listened to those lunchtime chats, I realized that public interaction had once been a big part of AB’s life – of all the comrades’ lives. Perhaps because of hearing AB and Chanda talk so warmly of their formative experiences, I now listened more closely when the comrades talked of theirs. Comrade Sian had been a postgrad student at the London School of Economics; that was where she’d met AB. Bala encouraged her to talk about her past – he said she needed to ‘cleanse’ herself by telling him about it – so I had lots of opportunity to hear her recollections. I heard about her childhood growing up in Wales, about holidays in the Mediterranean, about riding a horse in the splash of the surf. Though always recounted in a derogatory way, these stories were nonetheless bursting with colour.

  They took root in my imagination: the fierce gallop of a horse’s hooves; the crack of a cricket bat in a freshly mown field; the chink of wine glasses on a summer’s day … They lodged there in my mind, beside memories of a bright-red slide in next door’s garden, of children playing on a swing, of a man on a motorbike zooming down the road.

  None of it seemed dangerous.

  None of it seemed wrong.

  So I started to think: why can’t I experience any of that, when everybody else has had the chance?

  By far the worst thing to hear about, however, were all the friends AB and Chanda made when they were young. There was no mention of fascist agents, old-world ideas or the need to keep your distance, such as I was always told. In my world, a sheet of glass always fell between me and others, but AB had once run with his friends and played with them in the street. He wasn’t separate from the world, despite his divinity – he’d been part of it.

  I wanted to be part of it too.

  Because, as I listened, I was starting to realize something – an idea that grew stronger with every anecdote I heard. Outside wasn’t all about danger. Yes, there was murder and mayhem, but there were also picnics and ponies.

  And if Outside had been good enough for AB as a child, why couldn’t I at least try it?

  Before, I’d always felt grateful to the Collective, thankful for my protection from Outside. Now, listening to the comrades speak, for the first time I didn’t feel defended, but deprived.

  16

  Though I was not permitted friends, AB had them, and in Wembley I got to meet one of them.

  His name was Comrade Simons. A Jamaican man, he had the most beautiful white-toothed smile. He was part of the Collective – often helping AB and the comrades by driving them about – yet apart from it too. I loved it when he visited, for his natural niceness seemed to encourage everyone else to be much nicer too. He was never nasty to me; instead, he had a quiet, placid way about him I found rather peaceful. He visited twice a week on Wednesdays and Sundays. Immediately, they became my favourite days of the week.

  Everything was better when Comrade Simons came. AB presented a different side of himself to Simons; he never offered to beat the Maozi waves out of him. In fact, there were no beatings and no nasty tongue-lashings when Simons was around; instead, we ate food together and talked about the world. Comrade Simons shared the same views as the others and adored AB. I suppose that emphasized the truth of what I’d been told about the coming Overt, because Simons believed it too and he came from Outside.

  AB always told me to wear a long-sleeved shirt for his visits, so my bruises weren’t visible. It was an advisable precaution because I loved nothing more than to be seen by Comrade Simons. Whenever he visited, I liked to show off to him at every opportunity, in love with the novelty of his presence.

  So I’d stand in the doorway while he sat on the sofa, melodramatically beating eggs with a fork while I grinned inanely at him. Look at me! Look what I can do! the clatter of my fork seemed to say. Or I’d beg to be the one to serve him his food, rushing up to him with his plate and then standing back and staring at him, so agog at this new face in my midst that all I could do was gawp. Comrade Sian used to get so mad at me – ‘Stop showing off!’ she’d hiss – but I’d do anything to get one of Comrade Simons’ smiles.

  ‘I’m going for a shit!’ I announced loudly one afternoon when Comrade Simons was visiting. I was following orders – I had to do this whenever I went to the bathroom alone – but to my confusion Simons looked mightily embarrassed at my words.

  Later, Bala said I had to be ‘polite’ when Simons came. Apparently, it wasn’t the done thing to announce one’s bowel movements to the room, although I’d been taught I always must. Instead, AB said, I should only tell the comrades in the kitchen now; or, if we were all together, simply say, ‘Excuse me, please.’ I noted the revised instruction, but little understood why it had been given.

  During those visits from Simons, in Discussions and over lunch, AB began to describe in detail the reality of his planned new world. When I’d first started helping with our homemade newspaper, I’d realized exactly why the old world needed to be replaced, but I hadn’t given much consideration to what AB would be replacing it with. In Wembley, I found out.

  The new world, AB declared, would be a ‘Communist Terrorist Dictatorship’ with him as GPCR (God, President, Chairman, Ruler). If anybody commit
ted the slightest indiscretion they would be subjected to EAT (Execute, Arrest and Torture), no matter the triviality of their transgression. To AB, violence against one’s own people was laudable. Although he’d denounced Mao, his issue was not Mao’s track record on so-called human rights. AB thought the torture and oppression of one’s opponents was exactly the right way to behave (indeed, AB claimed that because he was the natural centre, he had overseen the Chinese regime that carried out such activities, and it wasn’t Mao’s initiative at all).

  The massacre at Tiananmen Square in 1989 (what AB called TAMS) was held up as a victory of AB’s too: extreme hard-line Communism triumphing over disgusting Western liberalism. Every time he talked of TAMS, his voice would ring with mocking hatred of ‘democracy’ and ‘human rights’. He almost licked his lips at the thought of the bloodbath, seeming to anticipate with glee one day having the Overt power to do the same. He often went into graphic detail about how he’d like to torture all his enemies, including the unborn babies and pregnant women in their midst. And though he’d usually work himself up, spitting and shouting, what I found most chilling was the casual way he would describe the mass murder that would happen in his new world. He celebrated it even in the old world; to him, terrorists were martyrs, champions against the West.

  In AB’s view, ‘Which Side Are You On?’ was the question that divided life and death. If you went against him, you were less than human and should be crushed like a cockroach. His was a black-and-white world, coloured only by the blood of his betrayers.

  But even at eleven I was starting to see the world in shades of grey, something that only increased as time went on, directly in line with the number of books I secret-read from the cupboard. One of those books was about the Chinese military leader Peng Te-Huai, who’d been tortured to death for daring to challenge Mao. Reading about his fate in the book, rather than learning it from AB’s lips, put a different spin on the situation. Previously, I’d only ever heard AB’s account that torture was correct, and that fitted with all I’d learned about Maozi waves and my 30 per cent: people deserved to be beaten. I’d squashed down all my gut instincts that told me such violence was wrong or unfair. But in the books I read, the authors seemed to take that instinctive opinion of mine and unashamedly spread it all over the page, as though it wasn’t something to be battened down, but a viewpoint to be celebrated. In the books, torture wasn’t endorsed; quite the opposite. And when I read Peng’s story, I felt sorry for him. It made me feel rather differently about my friend Mao, too. I was really upset with him for his part in it and couldn’t condone his actions. Yet my anger was primarily reserved for AB as he was the one, so he said with pride, who was really behind it all.

  Ever since birth, AB had told me that when his leadership became Overt I’d have everything I’d ever wanted – and more. So, ever since birth, I’d longed for that day – the day when I’d have no more need to fear fascist agents, when I could walk in the sun and everybody could know that I existed. No more need to hide in the shadows. Oh, how I longed for that day. But as I listened to AB outline these details of his new world, and paired them with what I was learning from the books, another sensation overtook me about Overt. Though I loved the sound of the liberty I’d have, I was chilled to the bone at the thought of all those deaths.

  I don’t want happiness if everyone else can’t share it too.

  For I knew better than anyone what it was to be lonely and afraid. I didn’t want anyone else to feel as doomed as I so often did.

  I thought about what AB had always said: that if we followed him properly, we too could live long lives, perhaps even achieve the eternal life he so enjoyed. But now I dared to think the wayward thought: Would I want to live forever in a world like that?

  I couldn’t express my nascent resistance – everywhere I looked, the comrades seemed in full agreement. As always, they spoke with one voice, eyes shining with awe, voices lifted in fervent passion: ‘YES!’

  I started, subtly, not to join my voice to theirs. Yet the small rebellion was hopeless in the face of the inevitability of AB’s rise to power. As we sat in the living room for Discussions (the standing circle being another relaxed rule), AB showed us articles that he said foreshadowed the Overt. Then, he would ask us, ‘WHO is coming to WHOM?’

  ‘THEY are coming to YOU!’ we would chorus in reply.

  I was only eleven; I couldn’t compute all this. I began spending more time in my mental cocoon, trying to lose myself in happy fantasies of John Major (who hadn’t, to my knowledge, murdered 75 million people like my old friend Mao). Dissociated from the world around me, I felt in a dream a lot of the time. But, always, AB’s beatings and the subsequent isolation would burst my bubble. Then, I’d have no choice but to face up to the pain.

  I began retreating to the bathroom – this time, not to play or look Outside, but to face myself in the mirror and look frankly at the tears running down my cheeks. My feelings were so often belittled by AB that I found a certain comfort in allowing myself to see them, even if no one else cared to look.

  A few years before, there had been a lot of newspaper coverage about confessional interviews that Ronald Reagan’s daughter, Patti Davis, had done on TV, talking about how her parents had treated her badly. It gave me an idea. In the bathroom, I started standing before the mirror, imagining I was seeing myself on a TV screen. I decided I was going to tell the world about AB and what was happening; about how badly I was treated, being beaten black and blue.

  Since I’d been able to think a bit more for myself, I’d become more confident in my hesitant belief that AB’s beatings were bad. Though I still believed I was a bad person, I no longer believed hitting it out of me was going to help – not least because it kept happening.

  I found it really helped to talk to the ‘camera’. I would whisper all manner of truths that I could tell no one else, watching as if from a distance as the tears tracked down my cheeks. Knowing that AB said the BFS was always listening, part of me hoped that someone might be able to hear; that maybe they’d come and put a stop to it.

  Yet that idea was also tinged with fear (I was still scared of fascist agents and the neighbour from the basement flat) and also with confusion – for if they were listening, why did they allow AB to continue with his plans? After all, for all AB’s insistence on ‘no talking’ and ‘KQ’, he lectured us every day in Discussions; if the fascist state was listening in, it would be pretty obvious they’d found their man. Perhaps they were gathering intel; maybe that’s what it was.

  That idea made me feel hopeless too. To think that Outside was listening in but didn’t want to save me was perhaps the bleakest realization of all.

  17

  Those bathroom retreats were a lifeline. The ‘TV interviews’, the dressing up, the motorcycle man and Tap and Toilet: these were the things that made life worth living.

  That was why I would stop at nothing to protect them.

  One windy day when I opened the window, the bathroom door started shaking on its hinges as the gusts blew through the flat.

  ‘You must have opened a window!’ one of the comrades accused when I came out.

  My heart started banging in my chest. If they realized what I was doing, somebody would tell Bala. I dreaded his reaction: he might revoke the private toilet privileges and ask a comrade to be with me all the time. I couldn’t go back to a life like that. I swallowed. I had a choice. I could lose every drop of freedom that I had, or I could lie.

  It was a big step for me. I hated lying, but there was no choice. It was a strategy to survive. So I arranged my features into what I hoped was an honest expression. I couldn’t be sure I would get away with it because these people had watched me almost every minute, every hour, every day of my life. But nevertheless I had to try.

  ‘I didn’t,’ I fibbed, holding my breath afterwards …

  To my relief, they accepted it, and after that the floodgates opened. If the comrades interrogated me about something I was doing wrong, I was able, if needed, to lie to save myself. In Streatham, I hadn’t been able to keep the neighbour’s wave from them, but now I was better equipped at keeping secrets. It still felt wrong to do it, especially to someone like Aisha or Oh, but to my mind it became a necessary evil.