The Girl in the Shadows Page 9

  I was older and wiser now. Aged four, I’d been overwhelmed; aged ten, it was much, much worse, because now I had crystal clarity on all the perils that awaited me if AB didn’t let me back in. I banged as hard as I could on the locked door, delirious with danger.

  When AB had first opened the door again, my spirits had soared, but he’d merely stripped me of my tracksuit top and thrown me back Out again into the freezing January day. I was beyond distressed. He only let me back in when he considered I was suitably terrified.

  I had learned my lesson well. No matter what, no fate could be worse than the idea of leaving the Collective. So, that October day in 1993, I spoke to no one in the housing centre – but I was keen to listen. Despite the comrades’ instructions, I slid off my plastic chair and began edging closer to the desk, wanting to hear what they were saying about our new house.

  Although the Collective was now eight-strong (AB, Chanda, Shobha, Sian, Josie, Aisha, Oh and me), the comrades were discussing a property for just four people: Chanda, Shobha, Sian and Oh. The rest of us were not on the list. I hated being excluded from official paperwork like this.

  I could hear the woman behind the desk speaking now. She had a bossy tone and everything about her manner screamed self-importance. I could sense the comrades’ dislike of her because I knew them well, but she may not have known. Only if there was an issue – if they thought someone was probing a little too closely into their affairs – would they show the other side of themselves and go on the attack.

  ‘Who is she?’ I suddenly heard the bossy woman ask. I glanced up to see that she was pointing a finger straight at me.

  As one, the comrades’ heads swivelled and they all stared angrily down at me. No longer was I standing at a distance from them as they’d directed – I had walked right up to the desk.

  ‘Oh, she’s just staying with us for a few days,’ the breezy lie came. ‘Her parents are coming to take her away soon.’

  The woman nodded and bent back to her paperwork: curiosity satisfied; explanation accepted. Though the lie chimed a little bit off with me – AB always insisted on honesty – I believed they had done it to protect me from the BFS. If the SWG found out where I was, I would be kidnapped and killed. What was one little white lie in the face of that?

  I tried to bury my instinctive feeling that lying to the woman was wrong. Everyone else thought it was right, so I took my gut feeling to be a Maozi wave; my desire to listen to it evidence of my 30 per cent. Rather than the lie being something the comrades had done wrong, I believed it was my reaction to it that was wicked.

  The reference to parents intrigued me, though. AB had told me by now that I hadn’t been born on to his hand after all – I was a test-tube baby, born of machine rather than of man. But what was strange was that despite this explanation, which made sense to me, any time the comrades lied about my origins to Outside they always gave me parents, as though everyone had to have them in order to be born. In the run-up to the eviction – perhaps anticipating that questions might soon be asked – AB had even drilled me in the explanation I must give if anyone ever interrogated me. He and Comrade Sian had sat me down one day and directed me to write the following:

  My father was a Peruvian Communist freedom fighter who died in a people’s war. My mother was an Englishwoman who died giving birth to me. They were friends of AB, which is why he is now taking care of me.

  I knew it was a story but I wished it was real. Lately, I’d decided I would like to have parents, despite all the trouble the comrades had with theirs. To know where I came from would have given me some substance, a child born of someone and not just shadows, but I knew it was impossible. I came from a test tube; there was nothing behind my origins but empty glass.

  I’d written out the story of my so-called parents happily, excited to be given something imaginary to inscribe. The unsettling thing about the episode had been Comrade Sian’s reaction. As she’d been dictating the story to me, the words had kept stopping; mid-sentence, I’d looked up at her to discover the reason for the delay.

  Comrade Sian was crying.

  Comrade Sian never cried, unless AB hit her head too hard; she was the sheepdog, she made others cry.

  ‘W-what’s wrong?’ I’d asked, cautious in case she snapped my head off.

  ‘The story of your parents is making me emotional’ was what she’d said.

  I knew better than to pursue it.

  AB had issued several other mysterious guidelines in the run-up to eviction. ‘Don’t smell AB Outside’ was one; ‘Don’t tell anybody AB beat you’ was another.

  As it turned out, however, there was no one for me to tell anything to. No one I encountered asked me any questions at all. With a final flourish, the housing officer signed off our application. Smooth as silk, Comrade Sian ushered me out of the housing centre, walking fast so I struggled to keep up with her, in order to express her displeasure that I’d dared show myself to the woman behind the desk.

  So quickly did she escort me out that I only had time to capture one last, fleeting look at that office of authority: the staff behind their counters, the piles of paperwork, the filing cabinets filled with form after form … Everything was a blur of bureaucracy: a world of which I had never been and would never be part.

  One last look … then the door closed softly behind us.

  14

  We moved into our new home in Wembley, north London, on 5 November 1993. Unlike our previous houses, which were relatively large and self-contained, this was a tiny three-bedroom flat on the ground floor of a low-rise apartment block. With eight people living in it, we were at close quarters. AB commandeered the box room, Chanda and Shobha shared, and the rest of us slept in the third room.

  In this house I saw much more of Comrades Chanda and Shobha, who had previously kept their distance. It was fascinating for me to observe the interaction between AB and his wife – because Chanda didn’t worship him as slavishly as the others. She would even dare to say, ‘Hold on!’ when he called her name, rather than scurrying to attention the moment he shouted. It was eye-opening, as extraordinary to me as if a planet suddenly broke from its orbit around the Sun.

  Perhaps because of Chanda’s increased presence, morning singing stopped in Wembley. My interpretation of it was that AB did not seem keen to let Chanda hear our songs, maybe because Comrade Sian organized them and there seemed such a strange relationship between those women. For the same reason, Sian’s constant bullying of me was curbed too – though it did not stop entirely – as though she disliked Comrade Chanda seeing too much of our affairs. I was also no longer forced to write my diary every day.

  In Wembley the rules were also relaxed at a mind-boggling rate. The very first day we got there, AB taught me how to use the peephole at the front door. I was to be permitted to open and close it in this house for the first time in my life, but only when I was sure it was the comrades coming home. I was also allowed to speak on the telephone to AB or the comrades if they had gone Out or vice versa. The women would hold the receiver for me so I didn’t physically touch it.

  I believe the ethnicity of our neighbours had a lot to do with the regime change. Rather than being surrounded by ugly dirty whites, as we had been in all our previous homes, Wembley was full of people from ethnic minorities, and the Collective, initially at least, were much less hostile towards them. For my part, I still found the adult neighbours frightening – and there was one man in particular who terrified me. Once when I was gazing Outside, he glanced up at me from his basement flat below: his face was a grey-green colour in the shadows of his dreadlocks and seemed almost to loom up at me. I called him Uenis Cieppo, a name that, for me, captured his shadowy colour.

  For all my new liberties, however, by far the best thing about Wembley was that I got to go Outside much more. Previously, AB and I only really went Out when the relatives came, which was a maximum two or three times a year. But in Wembley, because the property was owned by the BFS, housing officials visited
once a month – and, naturally, my existence had to be concealed each and every time.

  Nor was it only my existence, but also the fact that eight people were living covertly in the tiny flat. We routinely removed excess toothbrushes from the common holder in the bathroom, piled pillows up on beds to conceal the truth of their multiple occupants; tucked away Oh’s fold-up bed and Aisha’s sofa bedding. Once the place looked as if just four people lived there, AB and I would take our leave, only returning when the coast was clear.

  The property didn’t have a garden, but there were beautiful communal grounds. I longed to be able to stroll around them, but I went in them just twice in all the years we lived there. I used to sit in the back bedroom and gaze forlornly out of the window. I had more time to do this than before because another relaxed rule was that I was allowed to change my clothes alone. I also had an hour to myself to do AB’s exercises (which involved lying in bed and stretching out my arms towards my legs until I reached the tips of my toes).

  For a while, I followed AB’s instructions to the letter, but my little-used body struggled with the stretches; in particular my tummy, which was often poorly (perhaps with anxiety), always hurt when I bent my body in two. Very quickly, I realized that my alone time was far too precious to be spent doing exercises. I started to secret-read instead. For a long time now, I’d yearned to read something other than Chinese children’s books or The New World. I’d tried to read the books AB did, but he’d told me brusquely not to copy him. However, when I was supposedly doing those exercises in my bedroom, AB wasn’t there to stop me …

  In the room was a cupboard filled with books. Books about China, Hinduism, leading figures of the Western world … AB’s philosophy was that you had to know what you hated: he liked to learn all about the things he detested so that he could repudiate them with authority. So at my disposal was a wealth of knowledge, though I could only read in snatches at a time, and always cautiously, in case a comrade came in and caught me.

  I began by reading books on Hinduism and the Indian mystics, Sri Ramakrishna Paramahansa and Swami Vivekananda. I fell in love with Hinduism: the colourful clothes, the food and the festivals, the divine trances the faithful had. I thought how nice it would be to fall into such a trance myself; I’d thought, before now, that my cocoon with Major and Mao was fun, but what a way this would be to escape the drudgery of my existence! I prayed – I wasn’t quite sure to whom – that one day I would get to feel as those mystics did. In fact, that polytheistic element added to the appeal: everyone should be free to worship the gods of their choice.

  Imagine having a choice, I thought, eyes wide with wonder.

  While alone in the room, I also used to open the window, so I could get a rare chance to feel the heat of the sun or the coolness of a fresh breeze fluttering on my face. I’d have a really good time looking Out, for as long as I could get away with it.

  With the window open, it wasn’t long before the laughter of the neighbourhood children reached me. There were perhaps six or seven other kids living in the apartment block and someone had rigged up a homemade swing for them opposite my window: a hanging bar that was just the right size for an eleven-year-old like me.

  It looked so good! And if the breeze through the window was welcome, I could only imagine how nice it would feel to climb aboard that swing and sail through the air, my legs and arms and body all flying … The other children played on it all the time, soaring backwards and forwards. I used to watch them and cry.

  ‘Why can’t I play on the swing?’ I asked AB tearfully one day.

  ‘It’s too dangerous,’ he replied in a kind, protective tone. ‘People might notice you.’

  I had to stay in the shadows instead.

  I felt so sad about it. The other children used to shout and run about and I’d sit silently in my room, watching them, wishing I could be part of the group. Bala ordered me to ignore them, but time and again I was drawn back to the window, unable to resist temptation.

  One day, while I was jealously staring Out, one of the little Indian girls saw me looking. She raised her hand eagerly; not to wave, but to beckon. Even to me the meaning was plain: Come and play with me …

  I backed away, terror firing my feet. With the Collective now on warmer terms with the neighbours, I couldn’t trust that she wouldn’t mention my existence to her mother, who might say something to Sian, who would say it to AB, who would beat me for not keeping myself hidden.

  I didn’t think she was a fascist agent, but I knew, nonetheless, that she could not be my friend.

  15

  One February day in 1994, I carefully stepped up on to the side of the bath and reached up to the window. At eleven years and one month old, I was a tall child – AB said ‘too tall’, but that was perhaps because I was now almost the same height as him – so I could just manage to hook my fingers round the bar and push the window open. The bathroom window was opaque, so to see Outside I had to do this.

  I was very, very cautious every time I did, fearful that if the Collective caught me they would impose time restrictions on my bathroom visits again. I’d been delighted to find that my old friends, Tap and Toilet, had transferred their loyalty to our new address; I may have been forbidden from forming friendships with other children, but AB had no sway over me and my mates. Consequently, I thought of the bathroom as my home. It was a beautiful place to be – when I was alone. For despite all the rule-relaxing happening in Wembley, one remained sacrosanct: I must be watched by the comrades in the bath.

  I hated it. Unlike in our previous house, there was no shower curtain here, so there was nowhere to hide. A string ran over the bath for drying laundry, so I’d try to conceal myself by hanging my towel across it, but it wasn’t very effective. It felt particularly oppressive because my body had started to change: beneath my nipples small breasts had begun to bud. I didn’t want the Collective to see, yet nor could I mention my distress; Bala used to say, ‘If I find out you don’t like something, I will do it more until you subordinate.’

  I let out a sigh of satisfaction as I peered Outside: I hadn’t missed him. One of the highlights of my day now was watching one of our upstairs neighbours leave his house. The bathroom looked out on to the main road, as well as the apartment block’s parking spaces, and this particular neighbour had a motorcycle. I loved watching him get ready to go Out on his bike in the morning. On would go his gloves, then another pair of sturdier ones, then a huge helmet … and only then would he swing his leg over the bike and make the engine roar. I’d begun timing my visit to the toilet so I could see him. I adored the sheer freedom of it: he was not closed in, as in a car, yet still had the ability to zoom off!

  I had no real idea of where he, or the other neighbours I saw coming and going, went every day. Other than the Science Museum, the Commonwealth Institute and London Zoo, where did people go? Yet I felt envious all the same. How lucky they are, I thought wistfully, they get to go Out every day.

  Distracted, I wobbled a little on the edge of the bath and clutched at the window to steady myself, heart pounding. I found, these days, that it was sometimes hard for me to keep my balance; I used my body so little that when I was upright and moving, I experienced the physical exertion in a kind of head rush. I’d begun to fear I might fall over; I didn’t trust my body.

  I regained my balance and craned my neck to see out of the small window again. It was a wonderful view. The road was always busy. As well as the neighbours coming to and fro, I loved to watch the traffic, especially the bright-red double-decker buses thundering past.

  I stepped down from the bath with a satisfied sigh. I just had time for one more game … Quietly, I dug into the laundry bag, hunting through the dirty clothes … Bingo. With a triumphant grin, I pulled out one of Chanda’s beautiful salwar kameez.

  Seeing more of Comrade Chanda in Wembley had made me even more aware of the hierarchy in the house. It had jarred with me even as we’d unpacked: Chanda, Shobha and AB got one cupboard each to put
their things in, whereas the five of us had one cupboard between us. More obvious, too, was what I took to be Comrade Chanda’s intense dislike of me.

  ‘Will you and Comrade Shobha be joining us for dinner?’ I’d asked her one evening at Comrade Oh’s direction. Sometimes, she and Shobha ate alone.

  But she had not responded. I’d cleared my throat and asked again, a little louder. Yet she’d ignored me completely, as if I was a ghost.

  Her response – or lack of it – was particularly hurtful because I already felt so much like an unperson, always skulking in the shadows. Now, even within the Collective, I’d spoken aloud but my words hadn’t registered. I couldn’t think what I’d done wrong to make her treat me in such a way. It must be something inside me, I’d thought. I am wrong, not just my actions.

  Knowing time was against me, I hurriedly pulled on the salwar kameez, drawing it on over my shirt and trousers, playing dress-up in Comrade Chanda’s dirty clothes. Oh, it was so gorgeous, despite the smell! The fabric floated around me in a vibrant pool of purple. I twisted and turned to show it off to better effect, attempting to dance across the bathroom and quietly whispering, ‘Woo! Woo!’ to myself. It was such a nice feeling. I felt glamorous and feminine … I wanted to see myself.

  There was only one mirror in the bathroom. It was positioned so that Chanda could see herself, but with my new height I’d discovered that if I stood in the bath I could see myself too. Holding the salwar kameez carefully, I stepped into the bath and turned to face the mirror.