The Girl in the Shadows Page 7

  AB told me not to worry about what had happened at our former home; ever since his enemies had committed the crime of evicting AB’s CC, AB had unleashed ‘ABSOLUTE BERSERK TERROR’, he said. As the previous house had a green front door, AB had unleashed greenhouse gases, causing global warming in retribution for the eviction. AB said they had walked ‘100 per cent into his trap’.

  In fact, I wasn’t worried – I was excited to be somewhere new – but I did miss my things. All our belongings, including the yellow blanket I had loved as a child, had been lost in the move. We had to start from scratch.

  Refreshingly, however, that included the unexpected rewriting of some of the rules. I was now informed that I would be permitted to use the toilet on my own for the first time in my life – ‘But, Comrade Prem,’ AB instructed, ‘you must always tell somebody when you are going to pee or shit.’ On 22 June 1990 another gift was given: ‘Comrade Prem,’ AB said benevolently, ‘you can put on and off the hot and cold water taps in the dirty white basin – not the bath.’ Previously, this licence had been denied to me.

  If I hadn’t been fearful of self-love, I’d have been proud of my new responsibilities. Surrounded by adults and castigated for my ‘infantile disorder’, I felt a strong yearning to grow up and hated anything I felt was childish – such as the fact AB insisted I call my knickers ‘nappies’. I wasn’t yet allowed to bathe alone, though. Given my new liberty in the bathroom, I felt the presence of their ever-watching eyes more pointedly after that. I used to pull the shower curtain round me so my nude body wasn’t completely at the mercy of their unblinking gaze.

  It was something of a revelation, being allowed to go to the bathroom alone. At first, I was hesitant, the warnings of so many years still embedded in my brain, but with AB’s permission given and no fascist agents swooping in, I began to enjoy the time on my own. Before, being alone had always been a punishment. Now, I experienced a different side to solitude.

  The bathroom had a lino floor made up of squares. While I sat on the loo, adjusting to the sensation of not being watched, I used to stare at each one and imagine it was a sheet of paper I could write on with my eyes. Every now and then, I sang quietly to myself. Before long, I treasured being alone in the bathroom. I began staying longer than I needed to; I reported that I had constipation and required more time.

  The slim chink of autonomy seemed to open up my mind in other ways, too. When I’d been watched all the time, every changing expression on my face had been noted, just as cloud-spotters track the shifting landscape of the skies. I’d had to be careful not to think too much, just in case I had a Maozi-wave thought and the comrades identified it. Now, with no one monitoring me in the loo, I could finally let my mind wander.

  I found I kept thinking about Chairman Mao. Perhaps this felt a safe place to start, because I was still confused by AB’s about-turn on his former hero. Every day, I had to listen to long lectures about how terrible that ‘prostitute’ Mao was. I felt Mao was being picked on; I wanted to be there for him, in a way no one had ever been there for me. So I developed a crush. AB used to talk gleefully of how much pain Mao had been in before he’d died, debilitated by his motor neurone disease, and I would fantasize that I was looking after him, mopping his brow and bringing him trays of healthful food.

  It was so nice, living in those fantasies. I was aware, of course, that it was wrong to like someone AB had denounced, but AB had also preached that we should be kind to people, so I hoped it wasn’t too much of a transgression … Perhaps I would only get a runny nose rather than a vomiting bug. I was enjoying myself so much that I concluded any resulting illness was worth it. I took pleasure in my small act of rebellion. Though I feared AB, I also felt a kind of righteous satisfaction in liking the very person he had singled out for attack.

  I spent more and more time in my imaginary world. Perhaps for the first time in my life, I found I could be happy. In my mental cocoon, no one ever shouted and everyone was always smiling and nice. It was the safest place in the world. I would jump up and down in the bathroom, thrilled, knowing no one could get into that world with me.

  But the cocoon proved fragile, spun by gossamer threads of fantasy that could be ripped asunder with a single report or beating. And the downside to our move to the Streatham house was all the beatings …

  For the room I spent a lot of time in was directly above AB’s study. The comrades kept telling me, ‘Sit still, sit still,’ but despite my aspirations to maturity I was still only seven years old: I couldn’t sit still. Not when I’d already been sitting all morning; not when I had to lie down for two hours for my afternoon nap. Sometimes the sheer kinetic energy inside me felt impossible to contain. I would have this intense need to run. Just to use my arms and legs: to leap, to jump, to scamper. Banned from the garden, where else could I go? Sure enough – soon enough – AB would hear the sound of my footsteps above his head.

  ‘SHUT UP!’ he would bellow. But if I’d provoked him that far, he wouldn’t hold back. Out came his fist or his palm or his ruler, and I’d be beaten fifty or sixty times for making noise.

  ‘Isn’t it easier to do as you’re told?’ he’d sigh wearily afterwards, pushing roughly on my head as I knelt subserviently before him. ‘Remember that I am in the house and take that into consideration – cherish the rare privilege.’

  Although Bala didn’t care about the bruises that bloomed on my body – who was going to see them outside the Collective when I so rarely went Out? – I cared. Bala may have called them marks of love, but I considered them marks of shame. I’d pull down my shirtsleeves to hide them; button my collar tight. They were an indelible sign of my evil nature and I hated the comrades seeing them: a visual and humiliating reminder of just how bad I’d been.

  But the comrades didn’t need bruises to remind them: they had AB. After a beating, the practice was that I would be shunned. Everybody would isolate me and make their disgust plain. It felt like the whole world hated me. I knew I was all alone. I was told that everyone, and everything, had turned against me.

  One day after such a beating, I retreated to the bathroom, claiming I needed to relieve myself, but needing to do so only through tears. I sat down on the toilet, miserable to the soles of my feet that were not quite brown enough. Every time I was beaten, my happy cocoon was smashed into a million pieces and it took time to rebuild it, so I couldn’t even comfort myself with thoughts of feeding Mao.

  I took a deep breath. I couldn’t stay in here any longer; it would start to look suspicious. To maintain the illusion of the necessity of my visit, I stood to flush the toilet, anticipating that the handle would jam because AB had said nothing would work for me now that I had dared to go against him.

  But when I pressed the silver handle down, water roared and gurgled – and the toilet flushed!

  ‘You’re on my side!’ I exclaimed, the shock of it almost bringing me to my knees again – this time in gratitude. I felt overwhelmed. Awkwardly, I bent down and wrapped my arms around the cool porcelain of the loo, squeezing hard. ‘Thank you, Toilet, for being on my side.’

  When I went to the sink, I turned the tap on in distant hope, but to my amazement it didn’t stop working either. The stream of water sounded like a melody. I washed my hands, an endorsement I had no right to receive. I could not believe the tap had gone against AB.

  So, before I left the bathroom, I bent my head to the sink and gave that tap a huge, affectionate kiss, my lips pressed against the cold metal.

  This was someone I could trust.

  ‘Thank you,’ I whispered, ‘for being my friend.’

  11

  The bathroom became even more special after that. The only drawback of my new friends, Tap and Toilet, was that they couldn’t talk to me. I used to hold back-and-forth conversations with myself instead.

  Such was my isolation that, despite the rules, I continued to try to see what was going on Outside. Having moved away from the elderly couple who wanted to drink my blood, I felt a bit m
ore confident. In the downstairs back room, there was a patio door that looked out on to the garden – and not just ours, but next door’s too. An issue of much anxiety to the Collective was that the fence between the two properties had blown down; they worried that fascist agents would be able to see in. To their relief, however, the ugly dirty white man next door began building a new boundary: a wall made out of bricks. To their relief – and to my fascination.

  I could only watch him when one of the more liberal comrades had care of me. If they’d caught me looking, they would have stopped me, but if I was careful I was able to snatch some time gazing out of the door, which was also covered over by the usual net curtain.

  He had a little mixer that went round and round, and I enjoyed seeing him layering up the crimson bricks, one by one. I would love to do something like that, I thought. How nice it must be to work outside and do work where you have to use your body.

  I watched him day after day, always careful to keep to the shadows, knowing I must not be seen. Yet he must have felt the weight of my eyes. One afternoon, while I was staring at him enviously, he straightened up from the half-built wall and squinted in my direction. Then he lifted his hand and waved.

  My heart thudded in my chest. But unlike in our previous house, fear wasn’t the overwhelming emotion – not fear of him, at least, more fear of how the Collective would respond. For his wave was accompanied by a friendly smile and that made me feel my usual joy at being smiled at by a stranger.

  He hesitated after he waved, as though expecting some response from me. But I’d swiftly darted back into the shadows, my hand glued firmly to my side. I couldn’t wave back.

  Yet I felt an odd sense of having done something wrong as I moved away from him. Was it rude of me not to respond?

  I was in a state of panic afterwards. To tell or not to tell? What if the man told on me; reported I’d been looking out the window? Was this AB testing me somehow? I knew I was meant to report straight away if anyone from Outside ever communicated with me.

  Yet part of me didn’t want to report, treasuring the gift of that wave and smile – the man had seen me, which made me feel a bit more solid in myself. Nevertheless, the years of training had taught me that such niceness could be a trick.

  Confused by my feelings about it, in the end I told the comrades he’d waved. Luckily for me, they were so enraged at his behaviour that they didn’t discipline me. I think they thought he had taken advantage of me standing near the window, so I was simply told to make sure he could never see me in future. I obeyed. If I ever saw him in the garden again, I moved away.

  Perhaps the neighbour’s audacity prompted another rule change that happened around this time. AB announced that things were getting ‘more dangerous’ as the time for the ‘all-out lightning war’ approached. It was never explicitly stated what would happen before AB’s leadership of the world became Overt, but AB sometimes talked of ‘a victorious war of annihilation to the finish’. The coming conflict sounded scary, but AB said all would be well as long as I followed him. Now, as a measure of added security, AB declared I could never go Outside without him – even to the garden. Before then, I had been able to leave the house with three comrades present, even if AB wasn’t there. But the world was now too dangerous for him to entrust my safety to the comrades. I could only ever go Out with him.

  It meant my rare outings became even more limited – because AB often didn’t want to go Outside himself, preferring to stay at home, though we still went Out when Comrade Chanda’s relatives came, which happened two or three times a year. When he did go Out, to the cinema or a museum, he rarely took me with him.

  Once or twice, he took me to the corner shop, where I was entranced by the cashier and the musical ring of her till, though I had no understanding of the concept of money or how to use it. AB said that when it became Overt he would abolish money, so I had no need to learn.

  It was so dull indoors. Every day was the same. When the clocks went forwards or backwards in the spring and autumn, it was a highlight of the year because it made for a change, a little lighter or darker in the evenings. In Streatham we still did the same daily singing and Discussions and I found I often had to stifle my yawns as AB lectured on and on; the other comrades seemed to find him charismatic, but I didn’t. With my diary-writing overseen, even that task, which could have been enjoyable, was oppressive. I always wrote in the third person: ‘Comrade Bala disciplined Comrade Prem for wanting to look at ugly dirty whites’; ‘Comrade Bala denounced Comrade Prem as a superidiot and gave her ultra-ugly grade’; ‘Comrade Bala made Comrade Prem go down on her knees. He said how can she criticise others if she doesn’t criticise herself?’

  Writing in the third person may have been intended to ward off fascist individualism, or came about because Comrade Sian had originally written the diary for me, but as I grew older I liked the distinction. ‘Comrade Prem’ almost became a different girl to me: the things in the diary, and the beatings and reports, happened to her, but I was the friend of Chairman Mao, who made him mashed potato. Over time I became two people: the comrade working for AB and a fantasist living in my cocoon. My active imagination made the beatings much easier to bear.

  There was one new element to my studies that began in the Streatham house. Every day now, Sian, Bala and I put together The New World, a homemade newspaper for the Collective which everyone had to read. Five or six newspapers from Outside would be read by AB, he’d cut out particular articles of note, and then Sian and I would stick them down on a sheet of coloured A3 paper, laid out in columns like the Outside media. We were not permitted to read those parts of the newspapers that AB had not selected.

  After Sian had given the finished A3 sheet back to AB, he would add his learned comments before The New World was circulated within the Collective, so that all the comrades could benefit from the wisdom of his insight. He would cross out ‘1997’ in any mention of the scheduled Hong Kong handover, because the Overt would have happened by then so AB would be ruling it instead. He would declare that the upcoming 1992 Olympics would be the last to be held before the Overt. Repeatedly, he reminded us that we must not read his scribbled comments aloud because of fascist spies listening in; once, Aisha forgot, enthusiastically praising AB for some comment, and was beaten for her stupidity.

  To begin with, I enjoyed helping AB with The New World – it was something different and, as I was always yearning to read more, I loved having a daily newspaper to pore over. But the more I learned of Outside from the articles, the more scared I became. Frankly, Outside sounded petrifying. No wonder AB wants to build a new world … I grasped the necessity of his plans, perhaps for the first time.

  For I read about children being kidnapped; women being raped. (AB called this ‘poking wasteholes’ and told me sex was death.) Very quickly, I realized it was not just fascist agents I had to fear. Children were starving to death in their thousands; others brutally shot by death squads. The Gulf War was raging at that time and AB insisted on showing me nightmarish pictures of the grotesque burns suffered by Iraqi children in the Allied bombing; as well as, a bit later, images of Somalians dragging round the corpses of US soldiers.

  I also discovered a lot more about the horrible reality of old-world families. AB chose articles that described how one man cooked and ate his wife; how newborn babies were abandoned in rubbish bins; how another man murdered all his relatives.

  ‘See how you’re protected from all of this?’ AB would say benevolently. ‘This is why I do not want you to go Outside.’

  And I did see. What a blessed relief it was to be a member of AB’s CC! I felt thankful for his protection all over again; glad the glass was always between me and the world when I looked Outside.

  Yet not everything was bad … One day in June 1991, I was sneaking peeks into the garden when I saw something unexpected. Vaguely, I could hear the laughter and chatter of several children in next door’s garden; I couldn’t see what was happening because of the brick wall
, but it was clearly some special occasion. As I stared aimlessly Outside, several brightly coloured balloons bobbed up over the wall – and came into our garden!

  I was entranced. I never saw anything colourful; I had never had a balloon. Now, five of them appeared before my eyes: green, yellow, blue, red and dirty white. They floated over the wall as though dancing in the wind, playfully bouncing against each other. On their sides was printed: HAPPY BIRTHDAY.

  AB, as ever, was on his guard. As I cautiously watched from the window, he tore out of the house and ran towards the balloons, enraged at their infringement. I think he must have thought this was a ruse by the BFS. To my bitter disappointment, he burst every last one.

  I yearned to see what was going on next door: I wasn’t scared of the balloons; they had been so beautiful. The only way I could properly see into their garden was from Comrade Shobha’s room, but as she was always sitting there in her wheelchair I knew I wouldn’t get a chance. However, a few days later, while she was going to the loo, I snuck into her room and stared out at next door’s garden.

  It had changed. Set up on the neatly mown lawn was a beautiful bright-red slide. I realized the laughing children I’d heard must have been playing on it; it must have been a birthday party. I felt a twist of jealousy in my gut. Why couldn’t I have such things?

  I dared to ask Bala.

  ‘I don’t like the rubbish that goes on next door,’ he said brusquely.

  Yet I kept on talking.

  ‘If you’re so interested in the bright-red slide and all the rubbish games they do next door, you should join them!’ he declared angrily.